- Snapshot(s)

Retrospective (9/14)

Patch #243 Rain chain

Original post 

When I posted a picture of how much the front view of our house had changed in the past 6 years, I decided to take a new round of garden photos. The fact that we've had so much rain helped, too,

So, no patch yet (travel will cause me to go back to my retrospective strategy), but lots of pictures ...

Front porch ...

weathered flatware rain chain ...

complete with rain drops ...

my stitching window ...

and the view from there ...

the side garden ...

up close ...

the back garden ...

by the driveway ...

and the breezeway ...

Many of the plantings were here when we moved in, but they have grown and Don has added all the rock work plus many new plants. Well worth remembering and very much appreciated by our neighbors ...

- What makes a home

Patch #242 Blueprint

When the land was exceptionally droughted in 2011, we brought our family pictures to my daughter's house in Austin in case of brush fires. We also brought the blueprints for our new-to-us home as I knew I would want to rebuild it if the worst were to happen.

The drought passed and the blueprints came back home, home being the place we love being together. But I can't honestly say if it's the concrete and timber that I love most or the land upon which it sits ... the land that I'm slowly but surely documenting week-by-week in One Hill Country Year.

And because we will be on the road come Wednesday, Week 5 

http://onehillcountryyear.blogspot.com/2016/08/week-5-august-28-september-3.html has joined the cloth a bit early ...

It's ironic, living in the hills when we had always thought we would retire to the beach. And even though our planned two-month sojourn to the Outer Banks has been shortened to a tentative single week in October, Don has made my daydreaming easier with his new "paint by number" series in which he colors within the lines formed by wood grain ...

leading to depictions of beach ...

and mountains ...

both of which we now call "home."

- Sometimes you can't go ...

Patch #241 Home

I used to do cross stitch a lot ... exclusively at times. This is the first patch of cross stitch in this project and I'm over it. Lesson learned. 

But the concept of "Home sweet home" felt right since Facebook reminded me of this post from six years ago ...

Hard to believe how much has changed ...

Moving on.

The sun decided to return over the course of last week ...

but it wasn't until today that the excess moisture in the ground dissipated and the air felt less like a wet sponge.

As I made my picture walks for One Hill Country Year (Week 4: http://onehillcountryyear.blogspot.com/2016/08/week-4-august-21-27.html) I found more flowers each day. And butterflies, but they eluded my attempts at photographing them.

No matter, there was more than enough to fill a week's worth of patches saturated with color ...

which joined up with the previous week's to make one month ...

I think it's becoming a habit.

- Finished ...

Patch #240 But not done

One year to the day, the project that began as patchplay has become Land of Flood and Drought ...

Finished, which is to say backed, quilted and edged ...

64 inches long by 10 inches wide, representing over five feet of rainfall in the year 2015.

The winter/spring months of January through April ...

The first flood of May ...

The drier summer months of June through September, especially July and August when only one inch of rain fell ...

The second flood in October, one month which had rainfall equal to the entire year of 2011 ...

Ending with more dry times in November and December ...

But the cloth can also be "read" from top to bottom. The thermals and clouds in the skies ...

water flowing from Hill Country creeks to rivers ...

The earth rippling with the heat of summer sun ...

cooled by rain ...

water moving through cracks in the land ...

roots reaching for the water below ...

There's so much more I could say, so much more I could stitch. So yes, it's finished, but I hope it will never be done.

- So close

Patch #239 Land of Flood ...

It's so close I can taste it ...

Close-up: attaching a solid linen backing to a paperless pieced top using overcast stitching

like the scent of rain about to fall.

- 52 weeks ago

Patch #238 Patchplay

As I pulled out the final basting thread in Land of Flood and Drought, I had a strange feeling. So I looked back and found this post http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2015/08/more-nuts-than-usual.html from 52 weeks ago, to the day. It was the first time I invoked the phrase "Patchplay" ... the day I came up with my own funky take on Jude's paperless piecing ... the day I truly embarked on the cloth that is now almost complete, although I had no way of knowing that at the time.

A couple of months ago, I "edited" the Land of Flood and Drought by cutting off the top ...

Today I cut out two of those yellow patches as memory keepers ...

and any day now, I think I'll be showing you the finished piece. But in the meantime, feel free to check the Index to see how "Patchplay" and "Land of Flood and Drought" evolved.

- What's in my head

Patch #237 Writing purple ...

I'm reading a book of essays (meditations actually), written after and in response to September 11, 2001 ...

I've never been a huge fan of Barbara Kingsolver's fiction (or anyone's fiction for that matter, with the exception of J.R.R. Tolkien ... who actually was strongly "influenced" (ahem) by various mythologies ... but I digress). Yes, well, I very much liked Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, so when Don spotted her Small Wonder in the used book store, I was all in.

So far I've read half of one essay, skipped over another, and enthusiastically read three or four more. There's much to like and I'm making note of quotes such as this one:

" ... writers will go to stupefying lengths to get the infernal roar of words out of their skulls and onto paper ... " 

Or blogs, as the case may be. I fortuitously discovered during my time at the Eastern Virginia Writing Project that my mind was very good at thinking up words to write, even when I was fast asleep. I came to trust the process, realizing that the words would wait to be written down, racketing around in my brain until I got around to it.

None of which has anything to do with "purple prose" except that I really wanted to make a purple patch. And write about writing. And how the only way I ever get the music to stop in my head (see yesterday's post), is to imagine the words I want to write ... purple or otherwise.

Yes, this is how my mind works. It's a crazy place.

And with all due respect (as she might not appreciate the comparison), I feel like Barbara Kingsolver is a kindred spirit with quotes that range from ...

"Political urgencies come and go, but it's a fair enough vocation to strike one match after another against dark isolation, when spectacular arrogance rules the day and tries to force hope into hiding."

to ...

"Mosquitoes, I have been told, are important pollinators in the Arctic. So good, they have their place in the grand scheme ... but it's taking me some time to get to that emotional plane where I can love a mosquito."

I can't wait to read the rest ...

- Days of future passed

Patch #236 Every good boy ...

My brain is all over the place on this one. At first I was going to title the post "Monday music" in recognition of the fact that The Mama's and the Papa's song Monday, Monday has been running through my head ever since watching a PBS special Monday night.

Those of you who have been visiting the blog for a while know that I'm quite deaf, so music runs through my head pretty much non-stop. There's actually a scientific explanation for that which I wrote about here http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2014/12/my-own-personal-soundtrack.html.

In any case, I've actually been somewhat relieved to have 1960s music overlay the trumpet voluntaries that NBC played incessantly through the two weeks of the Olympics. And as I thought about music generally and the music of my 1960s youth, I recalled the few short years when I played violin. That was when I learned the mnemonics FACE and "every good boy deserves favor." Sadly, I had to look up the notes of the four violin strings, which were lost somewhere in memory. GDAE ... to which my monkey mind immediately ascribed an Aussie-inspired mnemonic of "g'day." I won't soon forget that.

I must have been at least passably good at violin as I was tapped to perform in a school district-wide orchestra when I was ten. The experience of that is also lost to memory, except for the mortifying recollection of being called down to the principal's office in 5th grade. Walking down the long, dark halls was dreadful (truly, full of dread) as I wondered what terrible transgression had resulted in my being called down. If I was relieved to discover that I was being given good news, the fact of the matter is that 50 years later I only remember feeling terrible.

Likewise, we moved the following year to a new school district where I encountered the polar opposite of my beloved violin teacher. Instead of sitting to play in a small group, as I had been accustomed, I was forced to perform alone, standing through the entire lesson. Though I didn't know it at the time, my low blood pressure made me lightheaded and weak at the knees. At eleven years of age, I only knew that I was utterly miserable and begged my parents to let me stop. Which they did.

This little guy loves music, too ...

I just hope he finds much encouragement as each year slips by ...

Every good boy deserves that ...

- To the gills

Patch #235 Gills

Today a tiny patch-full of pin-tuck pleats as a memory keeper for this ...

No, it's not an umbrella. It's one of the mushrooms from week three of One Hill Country Year (http://onehillcountryyear.blogspot.com/2016/08/week-3-august-14-20.html) that morphed from tennis ball to lunch plate to this ...

The gills ...

looked like pleats of fabric. So I went to school on pintuck pleating.  Fortunately, I had a sheer thrifted blouse that had fine lines already printed on it ...

Not exactly the right color, but the 1/16" spacing was (ahem) tailor-made for pleating. However, I quickly realized the flower motifs were going to limit the working length of cloth available for the patch, hence the tiny, but very satisfying, end product ...

As for the title of this post, the following Merriam-Webster definition ...

made me think of an alternate example:  <The patch was packed to the gills with pleats.>

- In closing

Patch #234 Lace making

I confess ... I sorta watched a lot of the Olympics, staying up much later than usual and feeling the effects of way more television than I'm used to.

By the time the closing ceremonies began, I was over it and back to stitching. Except something made me look up and put on my glasses. Lace? And women of a certain age. Dancing?

The commentators made some inane comments, but I picked up just enough to pique my curiosity.  And in so doing, learned that it was bilro lace that was being featured. I googled it and found this slide show: https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/Elizabethb/the-art-of-lace-in-northeast-brazil-41772330 which begins with bilro and continues with a number of other lacemaking techniques practiced in northeast Brazil.

Recalling that I had recently gotten a lace print linen shirt at the thrift store, I looked to see if it might work as a memory patch ...

You (can) learn something new every day ...