Moon Myth continues to grow

Here's how page 4 ended up (for now) ...

Working from this base ...

Then adding strips of cloth, some leftover from the pennant I dream of a world where love is the answer made for Mo's project ...

US II

I'm calling it done, with thanks to Don for touching up the frame ...

the cloth now named US II, a tribute to our 40 years together.

It was originally imagined in a much simpler form, but after the spare outlines were stitched, it began to tell its own story of the places we have called home.

First in Virginia, where we raised our kids ... rivers running through it ...

but a faded outline compared to the lighthouse at Cape Hatteras ...

long my heart's home ... where I've walked many miles by the sea, watched storms roll in, and caught the last rays of sunlight to the west where sea oats bend in the unceasing wind ...

And "can't you just feel the moonshine?"

How perfect then, that we found kindred grasses growing a thousand feet above sea level in the Texas Hill Country ...

prairie grasses that sink deep roots into limestone bedrock formed millions of years ago at the bottom of another, more ancient sea.

We share our Edwards Plateau home with abundant wildflowers ... bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, and countless little yellow ones... all interlaced with timeless rivers ...

And I dare to say the stars at night are big and bright, here inspired by Hazel and stitched on cloth from a long-worn nightshirt ...

Lastly the sun ... on a bit of Jude Hill indigo (as are the other two) ... a smoldering memory of the 2017 eclipse as seen in St Louis ...

because our hearts live there, too.

Wentzville 2017 - Eclipse

We head outside 

called by the changing light 
to seek a gauzy crescent funneling 
through a pin-pierced hole 

This is not the golden glow of dawn 
nor the rosy tinge of sunset 
not even the green fug betiding storm 

Rather it is a silvery light 
that throws grudging shadows 
but gives no warmth 

The silence is total 
street lights flickering to life 

A lone birdcall cuts through 
swallows darting in a twilit sky 

Quickening darkness 
overtakes long minutes of wondering 

Shadows finger out of western clouds 
as eastern cumuli glow a defiant white 

Cricketsong rises up 
to greet a single star shining in the gloam 

Something beyond twilight falls 
undeniably 
stirring deep-plumbed tears 

Until seconds become fleet 
and breath releases in a sigh 
with the return of the light 

as if 'twere a dream

Photo credit: Melissa Walker

- Starshine

Patch #342 Morning memory

This is what I remember from a week and a half ago ... waning crescent, morning star in an early morning sky. Recalled this morning by a song in my head ... Good Morning Starshine.

Ah well, not all memories are golden. I mean seriously, look at these lyrics ...

Of course, with my hearing, most lyrics sound like nonsense. Which got me thinking of this ...

which (inevitably?) led to ...

Apologies if I've left you with an unwanted song in your head. With me it's a chronic condition. For those of you new to the blog, you can learn a little more about it here:

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2014/12/my-own-personal-soundtrack.html

My afternoon star was just as silly ...

And just in case you missed it, the first week of December has already flown by ... 

and you know what that means.

- The Eiffel Tower of constellations

Jude Hill's SunMoonStars has been on my mind, but you would be hard-pressed to know that from my recent posts.

Nonetheless, her personal constellation post two days ago

http://spiritcloth.typepad.com/spirit_cloth/2016/10/sunmoonstars-night-sky.html

aligned with my own thoughts about the only constellation I've ever been able to spot with any reliability: Orion. But not the sword-wielding hunter, rather my own vision of an Eiffel Tower dangling precariously in the sky, aka Patch #287 ...

And of course there's a story to go with it, of crystal clear winter nights when my teen-aged self would walk four blocks south to my best friend Rachel's house. Always Orion hung in the sky, but I never noticed the sword, focusing instead on the tripod legs of my imagined Eiffel Tower. And yes, I knew it had four legs, but certainly if viewed from the side it would only reveal three, yes? Mais oui!

There was an earlier take on this bit of indigo-dyed vintage linen ...

but I'm well-pleased that I gave it another try. And even though I considered adding a field of tiny backstitches, in the end I decided less was more.

Addendum: The unused patch ended up in a bagstories piece, although you really have to squint to see it here (3/31/18)

- Star light, not bright

Patch #225 Perseus

We went out twice hoping to see the Perseid meteor shower. On Thursday evening, the waxing gibbous moon lit the sky and we only saw a couple of faint streaks.

So we set the alarm for 5:00 am and tried again. Even with the moon set, the sky was still a gauzy gray, rather than the incredible black slate of my childhood memories. A few more streaks lit the sky, but nothing like the light show the media had been hyping.

Back in the 1960s we spent every August at my grandparents' cottage on Shelter Island. And if it seems strange that I would recall seeing the Perseid meteor showers back then, it is perhaps understandable if I explain that my parents met on a blind date in mid-August of 1950. Every year we not only went out to watch the shooting stars, we heard all over again the story of their first night together.

I also remember how the Milky Way painted the skies back then, like one of Hazel's star cloths. Sadly, I haven't seen a similar display for many years. 

So if the stars on my Perseus patch seem faint, it is because they are a reflection of the light-filled skies of this new century. Perhaps our next visit to the desert Southwest will include clearer skies and a chance to experience the magic once again. I dare to hope ...

- What does it all mean?

Yesterday we got confidential news that a dear friend's cancer had returned and spread. Today the news is out in the open, but my heart remains heavy.

I turned to my Kindred Spirits, finding a thread running from tree graffiti at Tanglewood Threads to glyphs at Paper Ponderings to runes at Tales from the Birdhut. 

I couldn't help but think of J.R.R. Tolkien's writings, replete with elves and dwarfs (dwarves?), hobbits and wizards ... all with their own languages. Once upon a time, I even re-imagined this in stitch ...

dated 1973, when I was seventeen ...

and never quite completed (see tree on the left)

So today I stitched a galaxy ...

Patch #78

with no other message than this: it's not always clear what the meaning of life might be ... we just have to keep going.

One last thing, to end on a hopeful note. Every so often I look at the stats for the blog, which include the top referring sites. Today I saw a new URL and found my way to Bluebonnet Girl Weaving. The seventeen year old who still lives inside me found a new Kindred Spirit and takes heart that some things change for the better.

- Degrees of separation

This isn't exactly right, but it's as close as I could get ...

Patch #37 ... sadly the subtle yellow/blue/green color of the
over-dyed linen has been totally lost in the process of photographing it

Walking out a half hour before sunrise, the stars had fled from the sky ... even Venus was fading. But the crescent moon revealed its shadowed side as a mercury glass mirror of Earth's reflected light. And below the moon, a tiny glint ... at last, the planet Mercury. Between them, the orbs described a classic Pythagorean triangle: three lengths from the moon to Mercury, four lengths from the moon to Venus, and five lengths from Venus to Mercury.

The horizon was golden below a sky that rose above it from green to blue to grey  ... colors shifting like the sea.

Coming back into the house, I grabbed a pen and scribbled ...

Then, after breakfast, hunted down a yellow linen shirt over-dyed with Aquarelle Saxon Blue extract ...

and on a scrap of that cloth, I took the finest stitches I could manage to describe my recollection ...

But time and cloth and camera each imposed a degree of separation from what my eyes first perceived. The patch as memory ended up as most memories do: an imperfect reflection of the infinite subtlety that is first-hand experience.

Likewise, as another week passes by, the weather patches are the merest shorthand ...

for golden days of sunlit dryness broken only by the heavy fog that ushered in February ...

- Star gazing

I went out before dawn to get the paper, but I had an exterior motive: I wanted to see the planets aligned as they haven't been since 2005. I didn't even try to find Mercury in the trees, but I spotted Venus easily, caught a glimmer of red ... had to Mars, and Jupiter has been in my sights for a while. But where was Saturn?

In the end, I just wasn't sure which of the glimmering objects I was looking at was Saturn. What I really needed was a map. Now I have one ...

Patch #24
Planetary signs stitched over bleached dots on indigo dyed linen

And if that doesn't work, I'll use this one ...

But I still don't think I'll see Mercury.

- Moondance

I do love walking down to get the paper. Today the pre-dawn sunlight had already washed all the stars from the sky, which was itself turning from gray to blue. The waning crescent moon and two planets still held enough light to be seen: Venus low in the east and a smaller Jupiter higher to the west ... the moon almost, but not quite aligned between them, the points of the crescent at 10:00 and 4:00.

I remember this, holding it in memory for today's patch ...

Patch #4 vintage table cloth linen
indigo dyed at Maura Ambrose's workshop

along with a single sunny patch, anticipating the day ahead.

Don did some moonlighting of his own for Christmas ...

creating wooden nine-patches, unaware that this would be the first full moon Christmas since 1977 ... the year of our wedding on December 30th.

As he did with the wooden block houses, one Moondance was saved for us ...

This one, because I loved how the moon had skated over the edge ... 

- Close Your Eyes: The final chapter of the first edition

It's a book ... which is not just the title of my favorite toddler board book, but also the result of my most recent endeavor in stitch ...

Of course, a printed book would have a dedication page, but due to space limitations, this blog post will have to suffice:

Dedicated to Jude Hill
with much appreciation
for her artistry and inspiration

Because as I stitched the final page, I realized that Close Your Eyes had become a virtual sampler of the many innovative stitches and techniques gleaned from Jude's incredible online classes on Spirit Cloth.

First, here are the overview shots: the a-sides, if you will, to the b-sides shown in the last post ...
 

Then the close-up shots, with notes in the captions that detail the techniques, stitches, and back stories ...

Cloth weaving anchored with invisible baste, Kantha stitch (aka running stitch), split back stitch

Wrap stitch (aka satin stitch) and Kantha stitch (aka running stitch)
I never would have thought to use a tattered edge like this before Spirit Cloth 101

Closer view of split back stitch on a setting sun discharge dyed with bleach

Full moon discharge dyed with bleach on denim
Back stitch worked from the reverse side, see details in this post

A bit of silk tie from Don's school administrator days
spinning through a galaxy of thread bead stars

The back side of some rust dyeing and a picture of Melissa and Jace
inkjet printed on cotton fabric and attached with invisible baste and blanket stitch

Text hand lettered with a Pitt pen and back stitched with a single strand of floss

Each page was connected to
the spine with ladder stitching

Interior view of ladder stitch in the spine (top pulled tight, bottom left loose to show detail)

Cloth label hand lettered in Pitt pen and back stitched

Interior label lettered in Pitt pen on cotton cloth from a threadbare shirt of my mom's
that I wore as a nightshirt virtually every day of the six years following her death in 2008.
First repurposed here when I began following Spirit Cloth, a part of it will now be passed on to her great-grandson.