giving thanks

giving thanks for things

thank you for all the friendly emails from folks who assure me that they do like to swing by this sometimes vacant lot in the hope of a story and for the kind words they leave in return

giving thanks for kind friends who have loaned me a baritone saxophone for the rest of my stay here in Portland

though the squirrels in the ceiling are not impressed.

giving thanks that i had done my yoga on Sunday morning
so that when i was affected by gravity on these stairs

and landed suddenly at the bottom
bent the wrong way and with my head making contact with the door jamb
i was properly flexible and nothing broke. not even the spectacles that fell out of my pocket

also thankful that i had a bag of frozen leaves in the ice-box
[frozen leaves make a much better ice-pack than frozen peas]

i think it was the Dogs Above telling me
slow down
look before you leap in
a timely reminder that we are really about as durable as a splash in the river

giving thanks, too, that i will be going home at the end of next week
home where my folks are
home to a long-overdue reality check
where my chillun will poke me if i get too full of myself
where my cat will [i hope] leap on to my suitcase
and glare at me, defying me to touch it [the suitcase, not the cat. she will require pats]
and where i can go and sit down in a paddock at sunset
knowing that sooner or later
a certain chocolate coloured someone with big feet will wander up behind me
blow warm grassy breath down my neck
and then rest her big velvet muzzle on my head

it will be summer
and warm
and i am going to spend most of it in this dress
that i have worn so much, the cloth along the seams was disintegrating

it is cotton, the kind that is fuzzy inside
bought for a song from a purveyor of remnants
because it was stained. [chuckles]
so after mending
and before dyeing

i drew on it with remnants from the kitchen

a turkey baster is useful for writing
[and for transferring indigo if you are attempting to emulate Hiroyuki Shindo's pool-dyeing methods]
and you can make moonstones
i love moonstones

even the ones that don't last


anyways
the dress turned out rather nicely
with a pleasant contrast between the SilkyMerino repairs, the silk stitching
and the worn cotton background

even the interior is nice [above and below], so it is now reversible as well

i dyed some cloth for labels in the same pot
ready to stitch with my name and a numerical code
that identifies the garment. something to do on the long plane ride.

the traditional Japanese saying "never throw away a piece of cloth big enough to wrap three beans" translated here to "use the little leftover bits for labels"

 

and before you ask
i have no idea what made that mauve


lastly
words of wisdom
found at Imogene and Willie

i'm taking that one to heart.

Happy Thanksgiving.

eucalyptus uses + studio placements

the genus eucalyptus yields so much more than just dyes

timber, honey, paper, oil

and

a very useful trick for cleaning rust from tools

i bought this lovely implement when i was working on costumes

in Yamaguchi, Japan

nearly seven years ago

it had been lost for some while

and then i found it again. rusty and in need of care

so

knowing that eucalyptus leaves yield acids and oils when heated in water

and that those acids work to assist a rust reduction whereby the red rust

[ferrous oxide] which is quite hard

is turned black and soft [ferric oxide] and is then easy to remove from the tool

i boiled up my little cutter in eucalyptus and water

after tying some string around the handle in case of accidental patterning

[those are not my paws]

after an hour or so

the blade was as black as its shadow

so i dried it and honed it

greased it with lanolin from a scrap of wool

and waxed the handle

so now it's as good as new

+    +    +

which brings me to the second part of this post.

studio placement.

it's the time of year when i am deluged with requests from people who want to come and stay so that in a few short weeks i can teach them everything i know. they say that in return they will help me with my work.
it's kind of y'all to offer

but
i already have all the help i can handle

 and in case you were wondering

the liquid left over from cleaning the tool

...perfect as an iron-rich mordant.