- Life is short ... enjoy every minute

As we were out cactus and bush whacking this morning, my eye was caught by two perfect feathers. This is unusual ... it is rare enough to find one perfect feather, let alone two.

"Kachina feathers!" I called over to Don.

At which point he noticed many more feathers, some bloody ... no body to be seen ... but there was a hole at the base of a nearby tree, a den perhaps, so we gave it a wide berth as we gathered ...

                                  

wondering if it was a fox that did the deed ... although I'm beginning to suspect the local stray cat that frequents our neck of the woods.

Anyway, the feathers are now in the freezer ... a strategy suggested by our hosts at Ravens Ridge who claim it kills the mites that otherwise turn feathers into ragged shadows of themselves.

Later in the day, we headed to the Fiber Art Show that I first read about on Grace's Windthread. Underlying Order would have caught my eye had it been there, no question about it.

I asked if photos were allowed ... and was pleased by the affirmative answer.  As we strolled through, Don was taken by a piece that brought Kachinas to mind ...

Note the feathers ...

                                                                     

and by the golden piece behind it ...

the color more faithfully captured in this detail ...

                                                   

But my eye was caught by this rusted gem ...

which included a fair bit of hand embellishment along with machine stitching ... 

Turns out it was made by a neighbor just down the road ... a kindred spirit, for sure ...

                                                   

But I've saved the best for last and will let the pictures of Sara Coppedge's Enigma speak for themselves ...

A day well spent, not a minute wasted ...

- 'Tis the season continued ...

I spent over five hours in a courtroom yesterday ... part of a 250-member jury pool that was whittled down to 12 brave souls. Kantha saved me from despair and I'm thankful to be home today.

While I was gone, Don sanded down the salmon milk paint on the wooden blocks,
revealing the warm golden base coat and wood grain below ...

And I've completed revisions of My Hippie Grandmother ...

in hopes of providing a bit of levity during bedtime reading for some special little ones who grace our lives ...

- 'Tis the season to be making ...

This is a bit of vinegar rusted cloth that I pulled off recently ...

                                        

However, having just read that adding different kinds of tea to vinegar will push rust into different colors, I'm looking forward to more experiments ... with thanks to Lotta Helleburg's blog post that alerted me to Jennifer Coyne Qudeen's rust work.

And while I won't be posting as frequently for the next couple of weeks, I won't been idle ... it's just that showing in process and finished projects might spoil Xmas surprises, although I don't think I'm giving too much away with this sneak peek ...

I'm also looking forward to finding the time to blog about a stitch that developed while working on this gift ...

Last, but not least, while checking out the latest treasures at the Bower Bird, I couldn't resist two $10 finds that asked to come home with me ...

                          

The book is mid-1930s vintage, with amazing plates like this one ...

Felt pads have been placed on the tile so it can serve as a trivet without damaging the dining room table ... meanwhile, the book is occupying the coffee table in the living room while I ponder how best to make use of it.

- Assemblage doodling: Another impression of New Mexico

Don's already playing around with bits and pieces from yesterday's Junkology field trip ...

Note: the roadrunner is an old adding machine cash register key

He's definitely got New Mexico on his mind ... and I'd better get some rust dyeing done before he bolts everything down!

- Black Friday: The jaunt to Junkology

We've been to Junkology before (see the new index link to the right, along with one for By the Bridge, another one of our favorite suppliers) ... finding bits of board and rusty metal for Don's folk art fish and assemblages.  So how could we resist a 50% off sale on Black Friday?

Resist we didn't ...

And this time I was "all in" looking for metal to use for rust dyeing ... 

while Don got a personal tour of the board inventory from Shawn (who now sees us coming a mile away) ...

'Twill be fun to see what comes of it all ...

- Love letters: Burning words into wood

While I'm pretty new to hand-lettering, Don's been at it for some time. Except where I stitch with needle and thread, he wields a wood burning tool of his dad's that was originally used for feathering duck decoys.

This is his most recent project, intended to encourage us to drink more ...

It's like back stitch in burn marks ...

He's also crafted mementos of significant events during our time in Texas (although this one needs a bit of updating) ...

including these two bits of windfall oak perched on a shelf in the kitchen ...

My all-time favorite poses the perennial question ...

Although today the answer is "Neither ... " because home is where my heart is.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

- A river ran through it: Scenes from a gully-washer

                             

Even though we live in drought much of the time, every year or so we get enough rain that our homestead becomes waterfront property. Of course, by the time the thunderstorms pass through and we get out to the flood plain, there's not much left of it ...

We were fortunate this time around that we didn't get 7 inches, as we did during the Halloween 2013 flooding. Even so, 4.3 inches of rain is enough to fill a copper dye pot ...

freshen up the windfall lichens ... 

beat down the "bad grasses" and leave the little bluestem standing tall ...

wash all the acorns down the driveway ...

where they can be gathered along with the oak galls ...

and douse the burn pit, readying it for another day ...

There's so much promise in the land, just waiting for the seeds to fall ...

                               

- Bell bottom blues: Boro-style saves the day

                                             

My favorite jeans played a supporting role in yesterday's post about Pitt pen lettering and were called out by a couple of sharp-eyed commenters.

So here, as promised, is the back story of how they came to be. As you can see, I wear my jeans a bit on the long side, a habit I acquired over 40 years ago and never let go ...

This particular pair of Levi's was a rare find ... a perfect fit in a soft denim. But after a couple of years, the knees shredded, leading me to patch them last March.  Since then, they've been laundered repeatedly, but by and large the raw edges have held ...

                                              

The knee patches were necessary since the denim had already worn through, but I discovered that they didn't exactly lie flat ...

And so, realizing the thighs of the jeans were rapidly approaching the shred point, I decided to try stitch alone as the way to reinforce them. First vertically and horizontally ...

then diagonally ...

 

  

It worked ... and because the stitching was done in cotton floss, there is a softness that has a very appealing tactile quality.

So there you have it ... the beginning of my journey into a new way of looking at needlework not just as a decorative art, but as a functional one.

- Being brave: Lettering with a Pitt pen

I have never been satisfied with my handwriting ... scrawl really. And so at first I tried using rubber stamps to letter my work, but the size was too fixed, the letters too regular.

Then I tried  writing in my own hand using water erasable markers, but the lines were so heavy that it wasn't much fun.

So this time I decided to use the permanent ink Pitt pen ... worried that I would make a mistake halfway through and ruin a piece of cloth ... deciding to use a scrap of rust-dyed cotton muslin that hadn't taken a strong image of Don's wonky metal thing ... I could always try again.

The point of the Pitt pen was so fine it surprised me when it didn't catch on the cloth. I lettered TRIANGULATION with such care ... holding my breath.

Then stopped and wrote out the rest of the words on paper, just to see. And it looked okay, so I wrote them on the cloth. Faster at first, until I stumbled on the "f"  in "from" at the end of the first line. Then slower.

And when I finished, I wished I had left more room at the bottom of the cloth, but I didn't and it was okay.

I basted the rust-dyed cloth onto a piece of lichen-dyed muslin and began to stitch ... one strand of floss in a short, fine needle ...

stitches so small they made my heart happy ... even the wonky "f" ...

Don asked me if I had printed the text out on the computer somehow ... he has the perfect, regular hand of an elementary school teacher who has written on blackboards for decades ... it was the best thing he could have said.

And the two layers of cloth together ... how is that that I never realized how much easier it would be to stitch through two thin layers rather than one?

                                     

Thank you Jude for this revelation. 

Addendum: Here's the link to the jeans in the background ... I've posted an update on their current condition