Baby it's cold outside

It's a good day for wearing warm socks whilst mending ...

I do love patching jeans, especially those with holes worn into the knees by our grandkids, imagining the stitches inside absorbing future falls, like a hand slipped out just in the nick of time ...

Fortunately, padding shouldn't be needed today as everyone's safe inside ...

while everything outside is being slowly encased in ice ...

Don said he saw a local news report last night on how to use an ice scraper (if you had one) and cautioning against pouring hot water on car windshields. Good advice under the circumstances ...

Addendum:

No hole yet, so (sew) a bit of preventive maintenance ...

Booking it

I laid out all the mail received from kindred spirits last year ... spread it out on a coffee table, considering whether to try collaging it all.

And no, I didn't take a picture. Because I began to pick up piece after piece, realizing that the words within each one were as valuable as the images. 

Of course.

So what to do? Sorting them into stacks of portrait-oriented cards, landscape-oriented cards and two-sided postcards, an idea began to form and ended up as three book-like constructions ...

Here then, is the back story. 

First I turned on my little-used sewing machine (a sturdy old Kenmore from the 1970s which continues to chug along in spite of getting but one proper servicing in all the years since). Tearing strips of hand-dyed cloth purchased last November from Jean Dahlgren (more on that in another post), I tried to stitch portrait-oriented card edges together ...

with this less-than-satisfying result ...

I tried again and again, but as the machine jitters set in, I realized a more soothing, hand stitched solution was called for. And yet, there was no way I was going to subject my fingers to forcing a needle through cloth and card stock. 

Lunch and time to ruminate led to this solution: machine stitch folded strips of cloth to the edges of each card, with the fold just barely beyond the card stock ...

Then hand stitch the folds together ...

Paper-full piecing, if you will (with a wink and a nod to Jude's paper-less piecing). And as I jittered my way through the machine stitching, I realized the source of my unease: I hold my breath whenever I put the pedal to the metal. Well.

Thank goodness for the soothing pace of hand stitches. Soon I had a book of portrait-oriented cards, both fronts and backs visible, fronted by this apt phrase ...

I tackled the two-sided cards next ...

and was gratified by how well they stood together ...

And as the last rays of sunshine beamed through the window by my chair, I stitched the bases of five landscape cards together ...

offsetting them to good effect ...

I am utterly delighted by the results and looking forward to coming up with a solution to the tiny bits of notepaper and fanciful envelopes that remain.

Stay tuned ...

No apologies, just "write"

So you might have noticed I've been gone for a while ... having fun with our grandkids mostly. They range in age from 13 to 5 to 3 years old, down to Little P who has somehow managed reach 9 months already. We put way more than 2000 miles on the car in the past 3 weeks. And yes, it was all worth absolutely every minute of the beautiful racket (with credit to Mary Chapin Carpenter for the phrase, which captures the wild joy of kids at play).

Now it's finally time to be just me again, which includes looking back on last year and looking forward to the year ahead. The first post of 2017 included a list of past resolutions and an overly optimistic new resolution (at the end of this post):

2013 - Create

2014 - Blog

2015 - Stitch

2016 - Remember 

2017 - Enjoy 

In hindsight, I would rename my resolution for 2017 "Imagine Peace" for the project that ultimately reached over 70 individuals in six countries and twenty states ...

There was also the completion of two projects from the previous year: Land of Flood and Drought 2016 ...

and Remember 2016 ...

Followed by new grandchild projects like this pillow ...

and these nursery wall hangings ...

for the arrival of Sweet P in April ...

I surprised myself by actually finishing a new bag made from linen shirt plackets ...

while only making a start on The Land as the Crow Flies ...

and the Pojagi-inspired Peace Pin Project Shawl ...

Fortunately, I can also report the actual completion of the pennon for Mo's Dream, seen here in a picture from her blog It's Crow Time ...

And in spite of the two projects-pending above, I started yet another in December to commemorate our 40th wedding anniversary (which has since passed, but the project is yet to be completed) ...

Which brings me to here and now: the year 2018 and my resolve to "Write" ... which will include sending "real" mail to kindred spirits in recognition of how much I appreciated the "real" mail that arrived in my mailbox last year ... a continuation of the Peace Pin Project Shawl, which will most likely be renamed the Commonplace Shawl as I intend to stitch words and phrases that I wish to recall in the coming year ... a book for our grandkids tentatively titled Moon Myth ... and last, but far from least, continued posting here on the blog.

So belated best wishes to all for the new year ahead ... may it prove memorable in all the best ways possible. However it turns out in the end, though, I am grateful for your presence along the way.

Treasures

Mo's card arrived yesterday, along with a number of additions to our assemblage pantry ...

Merry Christmas to us!

Icons

Don: "What are you making?"

Me: "I'm not sure, but I'll let you know when it's done."

Grace-less

I miss Grace. And I'm sure I'm not alone in wandering over to Windthread, even knowing she's no longer there. The Rolling Stones song Wild Horses plays in my mind's ear. Grace always did say she liked Mick Jagger.

Surely she has made her way home to The Hill by now. Tay and Tazmeena and the goats exploring. Grace and Emrie getting acquainted, at long last. A family reunited.

So while waiting for word, this cloth unexpectedly demanded to be made ...

Grace will surely approve of the glue stitching that has bound these Texas-dyed cloths together with Deb Lacativa's hand dyed harem cloth backing. 

I'll let you know what becomes of it.

US

It's done ...

and hung ...

the wonderful puzzle ...

that is US ...

a sampler in bits ...

and pieces ...

of love avowed ...

40 years ago come December 30th ...

Snow!

Two days ago it was 85 degrees ... snow is a rare thing in the Texas Hill Country ...

20 minutes later ...

One hour, one inch ...

and counting ...

Collaboration

We've enjoyed many house guests this year. In order to show why we've fallen in love with Texas, we take them on whirlwind journeys to favorite haunts and we've-been-meaning-to-see sights.

So it was that we found ourselves at Uncommon Objects

http://www.uncommonobjects.com/

(sadly no longer on South Congress Avenue in Austin) where we scored an old Post Office box door. It's been sitting in the garage since last spring, biding its time until the perfect assemblage opportunity presented itself.  

It didn't take long. Don is now in the process of creating a piece to honor our upcoming 40th wedding anniversary. The PO box door was a perfect fit. But what to put in the window?

After poring over old photos, we decided some rust dyed cloth and stitch might be a better fit ...

Can't wait to show you where it ends up ...

Need

I sat with the cloth, The Land as the Crow Flies, for a long time. Hours I think. Looking at it, trying to figure out what it needed. Well, I knew actually, it just wasn't what I wanted to know.

It needed to be quilted. The raw edges of the linen, even after multiple passes of Jude's glue stitch, were simply too unstable.

I had already stitched the elevations of the land in the upper and lower corners, so those became the points between which I drew a single line and began stitching ...

Kantha, one strand of Deb Lacativa's magic floss (sorry Deb, it's too beautiful to call it "dirty") and one strand of variegated floss. Greens and golds above shading down into browns and grays below ...

The lines running in the direction the water flows through the land during heavy rains, from 1015 feet of elevation down to 994 feet ... a 20 foot drop over less than 1000 feet.

No wonder the flood plain becomes a river ...

Then I added up the elevations, because that's how my mind works. 

          1015 + 994 = 2009

2009, the year we came to Texas.

It's magic.