Gathering momentum

More pins are heading out into the world.

One for Dana in Washington who spoke of cerulean blue skies, and also wrought this study in blue for Dee Mallon's Hearts for Charleston

https://deemallon.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/hearts-for-charleston-dana/

The second for Joyce in Virginia, who loves green and natural dye colors. I confess I thought back to our former home in the Virginia Tidewater as I stitched hers ...

And a third for Jude, who lives on Long Island where I grew up 50 years ago. It was stitched on vintage linen from one of my mom's tablecloths, dyed with windfall lichen from the Texas Hill Country, and backed with more tablecloth linen dyed with indigo ...

I'm sending it with a notecard picked up in Santa Fe, New Mexico after seeing Gustave Baumann's 1920s woodcuts in a museum ...

And as I was thinking back 50 years to growing up on Long Island, this quote seemed timely ...

Although I confess to still feeling this way more often than not (with deep regret that the distinctive voice of Amy Krouse Rosenthal, author of the delightful children's book Little Pea, is now gone from the world).

Wouldn't you think?

Addendum: Link to peace pin arrival here ...

http://handstories.typepad.com/blog/2017/04/peaces-pieces.html

It seems like I've made enough of the peace pins that I should be able to stitch them free-hand. Or at least with minimal hand-lettering.

So as I worked on a pin for Hazel, I decided to use a white marking pen to give just a hint of line on madder dyed linen ...

with blue and green to go along with her recent posts ...

http://handstories.typepad.com/blog/2017/04/in-search-of-enchantment.html

Except, as is often the case, what's in my mind doesn't always translate smoothly onto cloth ...

Fortunately, I have one of Hazel's boats close at hand for encouragement so the third time was the charm ...

backed with a bit of indigo shibori ...

and now ready to sail away.

The best laid plans

Fiona Dempster posted recently about how she plans ...

http://paperponderings.blogspot.com/2017/04/planning-and-preparations.html

As always, I loved seeing the process. And if you've been with me a while, you know that Fiona's process has been inspirational in the past ...

http://paperponderings.blogspot.com/2015/04/poppy-progression.html

Her use of upper case lettering within undulating lines fascinated me, ultimately leading to my own work on Hearts for Charleston ...

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2015/07/hearts-for-charleston-one-step-closer.html

Which is all by way of saying how I came to try replicating that technique whilst making a peace pin for Fiona ...

But in the end, it just didn't feel right ...

So when this beautiful piece of Poppies arrived, I found myself going in a different direction ...

Soft gray linen with a variegated floss called "soot" ...

 that reminded me of Fiona's letterpress post ...

http://paperponderings.blogspot.com/2016/08/piles-of-peace_28.html

Backed with madder ... all part of a call and response ...

where the plan evolved into something better.

Waiting

The question every mother at 37 weeks and holding asks: "Are we there yet?"

I did manage to eke a pillow out of my unsuccessful crib quilt adventure ...

It too is now waiting for the arrival of G's baby sister ...

Soon, but never soon enough.

Springtime joys

Life has been busy what with trips to Austin and getting the yard ready for an Easter gathering.

Peace pins are always on my to do list, but when we're visiting G it's hard to find the time to do focused work. So I gathered up more shirt plackets to work on a cloth I started earlier this year ...

I figured it would be the perfect project for G's "rest" time, when he usually falls asleep watching me stitch ...

except I didn't anticipate this complication ...

Oh well.

In addition to weeding and rock hauling, I took some time for a couple of picture walks. 

These nerve rays are a favorite, with their boxy, 4-sided buds ...

that open into a spectacular composite flower ...

I still don't know the name for this tiny white wildflower, but it's everywhere right now ...

as is the antelope horn milkweed ...

this one sprawled out in a heart shape, just waiting for the Monarchs to come ...

Our floodplain has been scoured down to the bedrock in places ...

but when flooding water encounters an obstacle like this poverty weed ...

seeds drop out of suspension and establish new bluebonnet beds ...

Now we mimic nature and create our own water brakes (breaks?) to preserve trails ...

and keep the driveway from washing out ...

which in turn creates safe haven for grasses like this little blue stem ...

And if the water is rough on the floodplain, the lace cactus just hang tough ...

I do love cactus blooms, like this horse crippler ...

which are gone in a day ...

Likewise the prairie nymphs ...

Fortunately, the dewberry flowers leave good things in their wake ...

This one's almost ready ...

My fingers fairly itched to pick it!

And here's what's coming next: Mexican hats, aka thimble flowers ...

Aptly named, wouldn't you say?

Forgiveness redux

This is how I began yesterday's post entitled Forgiveness:

Three more peace pins have fallen from my fingers, the a-sides all hand-dyed cochineal linen (which is not as pink as it looks here, but the color was saturated enough to give my camera fits) ...

with the b-sides also reflecting each person's named peaceful colors ...

Clockwise from the upper left, indigo blue and rose for Stephanie in California, any and all colors for Vicky in Washington, and wild rose colors for Suzanna in California.

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There was more, but I did the blog-equivalent of hitting "Reply to all" instead of "Reply to sender" ... I inadvertently hit "Publish" instead of "Save to draft."

So it was that some of you saw the unedited, first draft version of what appears below (with a tip of the hat to Ann Lamott's classic Bird by bird, which introduced me to the notion of "sh---y first drafts"). I didn't realize my error until later in the day when comments started to arrive in my inbox. I quickly rectified my error by reverting the post to draft mode and sent explanatory emails to the commenters. Then looked at the stats and realized the post had been seen rather more widely than I might have hoped.

Ah well.

Here's the more circumspect version of my less-than-perfect first draft:

Back in my teaching days I attended an amazing training program called the Eastern Virginia Writing Project (one of 200-some sites in the federally-funded National Writing Project). The two month Summer Institute was designed to give us the tools to become better teachers of writing by taking us through the recursive writing process of plan, draft, revise, edit ... repeat as needed, then publish (cue irony here).

Anyway, one of many prompts was to write about forgiveness. I liked the resulting piece well enough to revisit it in one of my earliest blog posts entitled Food is Love (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2009/08/food-is-love.html). 

Long story short, I re-revisited that piece yesterday. Without going into the details this time around, I will simply say: life is recursive and being a parent never ends, even when your kids are in their thirties. The corollary to that being: the need to seek forgiveness never ends either.

And who knows, perhaps yesterday's slip was more Freudian than not. Because it turns out my daughter was among those who read the inadvertent post. Now a parent herself, she brought a new perspective to my gaffe and sent me a text message that read, "Please don't feel guilty." To which I responded, "But I do guilt so well."

So I guess I've already been forgiven ... but I'm still bringing her some cookie dough tomorrow.

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N.B. To those kindly commented yesterday, I am keeping your comments along with the original post, which will remain a draft in perpetuity (or however long Blogger exists). Thank you all, as always, for your presence here.

Back on track for the moment

I've been working on a project that just didn't work out ... a baby quilt knockoff of something my daughter saw and liked. "I can do that!" I said. Wrong.

So I'm back on the peace pin track ...

sending out watery blues (indigo dyed linen, above) and greens (not shown because the camera could not capture it to my satisfaction). They are headed to Hunter in Hawaii and Carol in Indiana.

With especial thanks to Carol who reminded me of this New York Times article from last November 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/14/fashion/safety-pin-ally-activism.amp.html

that first put the safety pin idea in my head.

I received in turn a "care package" from Fiona Dempster in Australia (who hopefully has not been affected by the recent cyclone) ...

Even the envelope was a joy to behold! If you haven't already, I very much commend her blog to your attention:

http://paperponderings.blogspot.com/2017/03/celebrating-and-giveaway.html

I also heard from Dee that her pin arrived in Massachusetts ... her email arriving on a day when I had lost sight of finding joy. Reminding me when I needed reminding.

On the brighter side, Spring has drawn us out of the house for many more hours, in spite of the pollen counts. And it's not all work, as we introduced G to the gentle art of kite flying last week ...

being sure to point out the perils of kite-eating trees ...

And here's the latest view of the mealy blue sage bud that I've been photographing for the past few weeks ...

Imagine them by the hundreds ... drought and deer resistant, blooming in spring and fall ... they are a true gift of the land. Once they make a mass appearance, I'll try to capture an image of them to share here.

Life changing?

Whatever else I might think of Marie Kondo's book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I would not recommend it to anyone without the caution that some of the sentiments are cringe-worthy.

That being said, I do think her ideas about folding clothes for storage are well worth considering. So much so that I applied the technique to organizing my cloth stash with happy results ...

which isn't surprising considering much of my cloth is thrifted linen clothing. Now the question is, can I follow Hunter's good example and use what I have rather than looking for more? The jury's gonna be out for a while on that one.

Meanwhile, Spring has sprung in the Hill Country, complete with a mega-dose of pollen ...

That's a black (not a green) truck, in case you were wondering. Aka "the little black truck," which ably picks up various gardening necessities ...

Don got a half-yard of soil to prepare new homes for some of the plants that self-propagate throughout the property. Here's his work in progress, with a wheelbarrow to show scale ...

I confess that transplanting is not my gift, although I did transport some of the rocks shown above. I simply don't have the patience to prepare the soil, water in the plants, and then look after them the way Don does. And never would I have thought to put buckets on the west side of each transplant to block the afternoon sun, which has been warming things up into the high 80s this week ...

No, my fortes are more along the lines of cactus whacking, pruning, weeding, and other "destructive" activities. Still, I have my constructive moments, as with this series of "baffles" ...

strategically placed to slow the flow of flood waters that barrel through our yard during heavy rains. Composed of the aforementioned whacked cactus and topped with dried grasses ...

these rows of debris will eventually decompose, at which time the newly created compost/soil will be carried through the yard by future rains. Fortunately, the aesthetic in our neighborhood allows the time necessary for said decomposition.

Finally, here's a follow-up on the nascent bud of mealy blue sage I photographed a week or so ago ...

Now I'm waiting on the thimble flowers ...

which are looking like they'll make quite a show this year.