- Cloudy with a chance of no rain

Addendum

Patch #205 Summer sky

Somehow I managed to forget to include this patch yesterday. In any case, it was cut from this indigo-dyed shibori cloth made last November during Maura Ambrose's dye workshop ...

Original Post

"Clouds," I thought to myself yesterday, "that's what I'll write about tomorrow."

As with last summer, depicted here in the cloth Land of Flood and Drought ...

there has been no rain this July either ...

And while there was still enough residual moisture in the ground last week to raise some morning mists, this past week has been bone dry.

Amazingly, though, there are often clouds in the afternoon, hence these streaky white patches ...

Sometimes there are even enough clouds to raise the (false) hope of rain. But rather than massing and turning somber gray, the clouds of Texas summer stay white and puffy, if they stay at all ...

Meantime, the floodplain belies its name, turning the dormant brown of an east coast field in midwinter ... 

And irony abounds as Snow-on-the-Mountain and Frostweed are the only wildflowers that are coming into bloom. 

- If at first you don't succeed ...

Retrospective (7/25/2016)

Patch #204 Tennis whites

While we were (belatedly) in Austin, we spent some time bouncing tennis balls to G. Turns out he's a natural. Anyway, his Wilson kid's racket brought back memories of fingering the strings on my beloved Slazenger wood racket. Guess that and the reference to tennis whites pretty much date me!

Original Post

So, I wanted to make a patch that recalled the beautiful presentation of the A-Tan Sushi Tuna Tower on July 19th. Eventually, I ended up here ...

but it wasn't easy. 

My first try looked like this ...

and the back was even worse ...

But I persevered, deciding to make a much larger version ...

which I stitched Spirit Cloth style onto a fine linen backing ...

Then I auditioned possible patches ...

ending up with the final version shown up top for the July 19th post. I dare say, it had a much neater back than my first try ...

And unlike lunch at A-Tan, this time there were some leftovers ...

- The way it was

Retrospective (7/25/2016)

Patch #203 Sometimes stuff happens ...

Original Post

My father passed away in 2012, but my brother and sister-in-law are still sorting through all the "stuff" he left behind in his house on Shelter Island. Every so often, they find something they think I might be interested in and stick it in a box. When the box is full, they send it off to Texas.

This is one of several things that arrived in the mail last Thursday ...

I was probably 8 or 9 years old, but I remember buying this kit at Claudio's Marina in Greenport on a rainy day during our annual Shelter Island vacation. No doubt it was intended to keep me occupied on the days we couldn't get to the beach. What I liked most about it was the departure from the stamped cross stitch that had been my initial training ground. And I thought it was beyond cool that you got to combine threads of different colors to stitch the clouds and the waves.

My current-day self was aghast at the subject matter: the harpooning of a whale. Likewise, I lamented my parents' use of Masonite as a backing board, the acid from which effectively "cooked" the cloth.

Still, a memory is a memory, so I cut a patch of blue sky ...

and added it to my July 14th post "Learning as I go" ... which seemed apt.

The rest of the day was odd ... two patches just didn't work out so I switched to stitching the patches for the first half of July onto Remember 2016 ...

Honestly, I think the convention coverage has gotten to me ... and there's still another week to go.

- Go Tribe!

Today is my son-in-law's birthday, so I made Patch #202 William and Mary cypher in his honor ...

As usual, I didn't get a card in the mail in time. It's one of my (many) character flaws that I am consistently unable to buy, sign, stamp, and post birthday cards in a timely manner ... even with automated calendar alerts.

But hey, this isn't about me. It's about sons-in-law. Not just Jake, whose birthday is today, but also Paul, whose birthday was March 25th. You could look back to my blog post for that day and discover that I neglected to create a birthday patch for Paul. 

Furthermore, you could look back to my blog post for June 17th, where you would find that I also neglected to create a birthday patch for Don ... my husband ... whose birthday is the day before mine.

But as I said, this isn't about me. It's about Jake, who attended the College of William and Mary ... where he played football ... in Williamsburg ... where he met my daughter Meliss  ... where I too got my undergraduate degree, and eventually (wonder of wonders) became an adjunct faculty member. But it's really not about me. 

Jake's family has a wonderful tradition wherein all the guys have the initials JWW. It's a tradition that has been carried on with our grandsons Jackson Wyatt (fondly known as "J") and Jace Weston (who is rapidly outgrowing his "Baby Jace" moniker).

So Happy Birthday Jake! I'll bake you a cake and make a lasagna when we come to St Louis next month. In the meantime, I don't know if you ever noticed, but if you flip the W&M cypher upside down, there's another W ...

Just what you always wanted, right?

P.S. Paul, I owe you one.

- Mountains or beach?

Retrospective (7/22/2016)

Patch #201 Tuna Tower

Original Post

My belated patch for July 8th is a play on Don's assemblage Beach or Mountains, which I first wrote about two years ago (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2014/06/good-very-eye-imho.html?m=1). 

I've turned it around to ...

One way or the other, this question has been asked of boyfriends, and then of potential spouses for our daughters. For many years, the "correct" answer was "beach." However, once we moved to the Texas Hill Country (1000 feet closer to heaven), the answer changed to "yes" because we've come to love both (okay, Don's always loved the mountains, but now I've learned to love the land, too).

Around the same time as Don was making his Beach or Mountains assemblage ...

I was embarking on Jude Hill's Considering Weave. There I met an amazing group of Kindred Spirits who inspire me to this day. Mo at It's Crow Time was working on an illustration of Old Man Crow's music that included a lock and key. So I sent her a bit of rusted cloth, much like this one ...

made while rusting the key for Don's assemblage ...

She in turn used that bit of rusted cloth in The Key Book last year (https://itscrowtime.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/the-key-book/).

Perfect, I thought, I'll use my bit of cloth for a Remember patch (at last). Except ... there was the comment Mo made about how tricky it can be to stitch on rust ... and the size wasn't quite right for the Remember 2016 patches.

So I drew a new, smaller key, colored it with Inktense pencils, carefully lettered the words with a Pitt pen, and stitched a single strand of floss around the edges.

Oh, and there's this ... when I made the Inktense tulip yesterday, some color bled. Not a lot, but not intended. Today, I took advantage of that tendency, letting the colors bleed, as they did in the original rust cloth. And truly, the Inktense was much easier to stitch through than rust.

So, Patch #190 Mountains or Beach? has found its way to the original July 8th post.

As for today, I'm wondering how I might remember this ...

exceptional tuna sashimi at A-Tan Bistro in San Marcos, Texas. Gotta love it ... and the colors!

Addendum: The Key Book by Mo was gifted to me in late 2017 ...  words fail me
http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2017/11/letting-go-of-dream.html

- A great day for stitching

Retrospective (7/24/2016)

Patch #200 Radio recollections

Belated recollection of a morning memory can be found in the post on July 24.

Original Post 

Five patches popped out today as the thermometer climbed into triple digits.

A tulip done in Inktense pencils for July 7th ...

inspired by this piece of Newcomb pottery ...

The star-studded wall in Amy's Ice Cream for July 13th ...

Scraps from Georgia's Window stitched under the influence of Jude Hill's Spirit Cloth for July 9th and 15th ...

culled from a lap-full of scraps ...

using two different techniques: seaming edges together (top) and layering them on a base cloth a la Spirit Cloth 101 (bottom) as revealed on the B-sides ...

and the neon sign in Riley's Tavern for July 10th ...

Next up?  My take on Don's Beach or Mountains for July 8th ... still working on that one.

- A lot to remember

Retrospective (7/24/2016)

Patch #199 Quail

There's lot of room for growth, but I'm happy to document where I am in the journey.

Original Post 

A new trio of patches for July 4-6 fell from my fingers today ...

And, as you can see, Don has been working with much the same palette in his latest assemblage ...

I'm finally comfortable with the process that has evolved of blogging every day, sometimes with a patch, sometimes not. When I get around to working on patches for the days I've skipped, the blog posts trigger the ideas that end up in stitch.  

It was the beach towels that I blogged about on July 4th that got re-imagined with my latest thrift store linen find ...

Then the safety pin on the July 5th post caught my eye. I sketched one, but it turned out to be a bit too big. Rather than try to redraw it, I reduced the image to 75% on my copier, pricked the outline, and marked it into cloth ...

I've learned that I trust my eye more with needle than with pen in hand, so I just followed the general direction of the dots using Jude's split backstitch, finessing the single strand of floss as needed ...

My last patch for the day involved the picture-book quilt in the July 6th post. When I brought it up on my iPhone, it occurred to me that I could enlarge the picture to fit a 1 3/4" patch and lay it on my copier to get a perfect-sized image to work from ...

Then I once again pricked holes in photocopied image ...

and used water-erasable marker to convey the design to cloth ...

A bit of practice with two-strands of floss convinced me that the marker dots were too hard to follow, so I sketched in blocks with my XS Pitt pen ...

with a very satisfactory end-result.

And just so I have something to work with for today's patch (whenever I get around to it), I took a picture of our first-ever pair of quail, spotted by Don just as we were sitting down to lunch ...

If you squint, you can just make out the male sitting on a rock directly above the airplane on the left (and no, Don didn't make the mobile, though I'm sure he could) ...

The quail are well worth remembering, but I'm not yet sure if this is how it will go ...

I'll let you know what I come up with ... eventually.

- The jury's still out

Retrospective (7/24/2016)

Patch #198 Weather wise

I guess the new patches are here to stay.

Original Post

I'm reserving judgment on the newest weather patches made from the thrifted linen dress I bought last week ...

They're the Sunday, Tuesday, and Saturday patches in the last row, meant to depict overcast mornings followed by blazing hot Texas afternoons. I may keep them ... I may not. We'll see.

Meantime, I indulged myself in a look at my current works in progress ... which are all too long to show in their entirety, so they've been strategically draped and folded ...

Clockwise from the upper left:

   - Unnamed (2016 weather patches)

   - Georgia's Window

   - Land of Flood and Drought (2015)

   - Remember 2016

And I'm thinking I need a design wall ...