Swatching it!

Well, well, well...look who is swatching!  The plan (here goes...) is to knit my grand daughter a sweater.  This will be my first knitted sweater. 

Static, Tipple, and Crescent Moon....Day One

Phuck the details so I'll sum it up by stating this year my inclinations to create got bull dozed right out of me.  Since early Spring of this year I've not made much...not even crochet.  About a month ago I forced myself to pick up a Shrug I started over the summer.  I completed it.  Last week I knitted one row or Moriah's poncho and I was worn out afterwards. Yesterday I practiced some crochet stitches by making swatches and then I pinned them into an old art journal.  Making the stitches stilled me but tired my arm out.  When I stopped I wanted to do something more.  I chose Zentangling.  It felt risky yet safe and unimportant and that felt good. My hand isn't as steady as it was back when I was drawing the faces. Life has felt heavy and everything so damn critical this year.  I'm aiming for 30 days of zentangles.  The title of this post identifies the name of the patterns used to created this one.

Mr. Tolson, I need your help...

I am still trying to "take back and keep my righteous mind".  I have been decluttering since 2016.  Household is pretty much done, except for books.  Remember back in the 70s how paperbacks looked.  They were much smaller than today's books classified as paperbacks.  I really should send them on to Goodwill.  But its hard to part with them for the sole reason they are African American literature and our books are the least to go into reprint or even digital availability.  Also, its hard to part with them for what they represent to me in my development as a teen-ager and young adult who struggled to be aware and conscious or as they young admonish today "stay woke".  That is an emotional attachment.  I will never reread those books (my aged eyes can't handle the print).  My oldest son reads and I have been passing some on to him.  I thought about just giving him most of them and let him pick  and choose what to keep and what to pass on.  That sounds like a sound plan...I think I'll go with it.

A friend who is a volunteer at an Art House in Louisville's West End took some art supplies.  I'm trying to keep a minimum.  Today I returned to the basementm (I had been avoiding the space for month and months), to move some things around.  Oh mercy me! More is more.  If I had my phone down here I would snap a picture and let you see all the stuff that has ended to one side of the room.  I want to go through and make a keep pile and a giveaway pile.  This pile includes more art supplies and art instruction and quilt instruction books.  No, I do not want to have a yard sale, (although, I might do Half-Price books).

The wall next to the pile in the floor is an old Elna system of wire drawers (that I found on CL for 20 bucks!  I was happier than a pig in slop!  I'm channeling my Mother with that one.(  I want to get back to quilting...contemporary and art quilts; but I do not want to keep a large stash.  Not that I have a huge stash, but I still think I can go through what I have and let go.  For contemporary quilting, I want to buy as I make and for my art quilts I want to keep a a couple of different rolls of PFD and paint and dye as I go.  I want to create more slowly and with intent.  Which means my blank art journals are definitely a keeper.  Its better to make crap in a journal then with fabric.  Restarting a journal practice can translate to a masterpiece in cloth.  Right? Just say sure and lets move on.

I want to be a good steward of the spaces I have to create in but to tell you for true, my creativity was higher and more productive when we lived in an apartment where I used the wall in the hallway and the kitchen table and cleared it up daily before my kids came home from school and we ate together as a family.  The next morning after everyone left I hauled my projects back out to the kitchen table and hallway.  To dye fabrics I rented out space 2-3 times a year at Mary Anderson Center (is that now defunct?) for the Arts on the grounds of Mount St. Francis (a peace/piece of heaven on earth).
 in southern Indiana.

But whenever I glance at the chaos on the other side of this room (I'm still in the basement) I envision Mr. Melvin Tolson placing his hands firmly on my shoulders and looking me in the eye and saying with conviction "I'm trying to help you take back and keep your righteous mind".

Until next time, Peace.

Here I Am

I should be trying to get the broken needle out of the bobbin carriage but instead I'm pondering how the needle was broken.

Last Monday I had surgery to save my eyesight.  To save where my vision is now.  Looking at everything through a light gray curtain.  The surgery's intent was not to reverse the damage but to prevent it from getting worse.  Have I placed this worry at the feet of Jesus?  Yesterday I did.  But am I picking it back up by writing about it here?  I don't know.  I know that I have know way of saying if my sewing is good or if its good because I can't see yet keep trying and does it matter, should it matter.  Really, what I want to acknowledge is the fear I feel even when I'm trying to find my way yet once again.

When the needle broke I had to question if it was due to my lack of vision.  Then I even debated writing this blog entry but my words in my head felt like an essay starting to form and I thought it best not to neglect any form of expression coming through me.

But it feels like I've come full circle here...starting this blog in '04 as a way to go beyond pulmonary hypertension diagnosis.  I have indeed inherited my father's people's health or ill-health.  Something that most of my genealogical interviews never touched upon.  Yet here I am.

I sewed on my machine for the first time since my vision began fading.  I did some free motion quilting using a green metallic thread against a medium toned gray fabric.  I've spent this week slopping paint around in journal using bright bold colours.  I can see that if my creative work continues, my palette will change to high contrast.  And because I can't see dept in colours, the palette might become wild and loose.

This small quilt is a very old slow cloth that I've showed here before.  I'll share it when its complete.
Peace and Love.

Something More

There is life in this blog.  

I'm trying not to overthink matters, but instead, just relax into the rhythms of change.  (and this in no way, shape or form refers to the politics of my country, I can hear the voice of Sofia (played by Oprah Winfrey) from the film The Color Purple, saying "all my life I had to fight")

Naw, I'm talking about the rhythms that occur in my "making" space and in my creative spirit.  I started with a quilt at the beginning of the year and I'm ending the year with another quilt.  One where I'm asking myself "is it enough just to take these bits of color and sit and sew and pray them together?".

A month ago I called another artist which I hadn't spoken to in a few years but a sister spirit all the same I and I was describing the space I'm in and where I am pondering the question.  She started replying and as I so often can forget when two artists begin talking, energy rises....spirit wants to run, leap into explode into the next quilt, quilt as performance art even...

 There was joy in the quickened impulse and the vision...but will my body let me do it?  I mean will it physically sustain enough energy/air to move into a full blown project?  I intentionally started working slow, even when I'm fast, I'm slow.  Although, I've had a few close calls, I've only had one hospital stay this year.  Crocheting fills that space.  I do not think non quilt makers know how physical making a quilt can be.

These hexie are addicting, but not only that, sewing them together by hand places me in that quiet space I live for while simultaneously producing that something more.

Until next time, Peace.

House of Stitches, Episode 4

I know I haven't written much here but trust that I am doing my best to keep it moving ;) Wishing you joy and peace!

What about those Praying Crows...

I'm working up to working on a quilt.  Designs have been rolling around in my head for months.  A few weeks ago I began touching cloth.  I know I want to use this slip which has been in my stash for years.  It was among my oldest Aunts items years after she passed and right before her daughter made the decision to "let it go".  In my eyes it was the last tie we had to rural life.  But none in our family were interested in farming or even renting the land out to other farmers.

Here is the slip with the praying crows I thought I would be using.

I ex-nayed the crows for now but am making hexies as part of the design. And drawing and some writing on the quilt will be involved.  The working title is "Something Beautiful".  It is my emotional response to so much heaviness and injustice.  It will be a take on the phrase #BlackGirlMagic.  

Above is the beginning sketch for the quilt which was preceded by writing about my vision. The writing helps me navigate the competing ideas in my head and arrive at at centered intent.  It also helps me make and understand my decisions to alter things in the process.  The only time I don't journal is when I'm doing a quilt filled with mark making and exploring colour and abstract.  Those quilts have been driven by processes of moving while handling the cloth and paints and tools for marks.  Picture.narrative quilts are driven by the finished quilt and are not my favorite quilts to get out of my head.  I was kinda hoping that this one would turn but that slip (and the crows) have been whispering at me for years.

And this is a quilt with a deadline for an exhibit...maybe I need those praying crows afterall.  Hangeth in. Peace.

Episode 3 is Up.

This is episode #3.  I share a finished hat I made for an Aunt and talk about what is due to be made, including an quilt that has a deadline.  Below is the rough sketch for it and the hexies for the flowers.

The slip will be used in the quilt and it has since been dyed a burnt orange.  The crows, I'm undecided about including in this quilt.  The working title is Simply Beautiful.

Soooo Young Grasshopper....What do you really want>

Okay, something is really wrong with me...I have been aiming to go to bed since around 10 p.m.  It is now 3:41 a.m.  I can't stop knitting!!!!!!  Let me continue.  I'm a newbie knitter depending on YouTube and Craftsy.  Going Continental because I crochet (and do it a heck of a lot better).  I've wanted to cry, scream and throw these needles across the room. At one point I considered putting my small stash of knitting needles in the Goodwill box.

Just when I am about ready to call it quits, I find a new YT video and I say "this one is better, I can do this".  Right now I have 4 rows of 43 stitches and I guess I will make the dreaded boring scarf that is every beginners fate.  I purchased Pure Joy, a beautiful shawl by Joji Locatelli that I wanted to be my first knitted item but that ain't happening no time soon I think.  As for now, this young grasshopper is really quitting for the night while me and this yarn are still on speaking terms. Peace.

Rambling thoughts...

For over a month I've been going to sleep with the thought that tomorrow I'll wake up and get to the garage early and dye or marble on some fabric before the days turn cold.  I have yet to make it.  I haven't dyed, marbled, screen printed, laminated on fabric for 2 years.  All of last year was understandable.  And even some interruptions in this year, but to let the summer completely go by and now Autumn is here, I am not sure if I will or not.  I don't have and haven't had the stamina for it.  The physical stamina hasn't returned.  I have returned to sketching out new quilt ideas but now that I'm faced with wanting to really get going on a new quilt, to really engage the process again, the question of how to get it all completed by hand stitching arises.  What I really want to do is sit and make little hexies and sew them together...little hexies from my own dyed and painted fabrics.  But I have a quilt that needs to be completed by the end of December, so hand work is out of the question.  The part that I'm mostly dragging on is sitting down at the sewing machine.  Also, my mind feels cloudy when I try to approach design on the design board.  Everything feels new like I have never performed any of these tasks before.  So I just keep sitting my happy butt down to crochet or flip through crochet patterns.  I even tried to impose a "learning curriculum" on myself and the one book I keep avoiding is Ruth McDowell's book on piecing because I need to sew.

What is appealing to me about crocheting and making the hexies is not having to tax my soul to create from scratch.  Although deciphering a pattern in crochet and learning to knit has it brain boost challenges, its no where near the same.  It connects back to the stamina.  I am due to start strength training around mid-October.  I can't imagine not hooking and want to add yarn dyeing to what I do.  I already have everything I need to do that so it would be a natural fit. Just need to figure out who I am once again.

If you don't change, life will sure change you.  Peace.

Pilot: THIS IS THE ONE

Hello.  Finally decided to just go with it instead of waiting until I get it "perfect" which could be the 12th of Neverary.  I'll learn as I go and hopefully improve over time.  The pilot episode for my YouTube podcast about my yarn related (mostly) projects is up.  It is 42 minutes long.  I'm aiming for 30 minutes in future episodes.

Here are the show notes with links of items referenced:

Pacific Rim Shawl
Jojoland Yarns
Malabrigo Yarns

Child's Crew Neck Pullover
Yarn Bee Soft Secret (is a Hobby Lobby Yarn)

Project Bags by Kim the Crafty Nomad (EboniePearl on Etsy)

Izumi 

Lacy Fans and Feathers Wrap
Juniper Moon Farm Yarns

For Viking of Norway Yarns, Google to find inventory at either you local yarn shop or an online retailer.

Lion Brand Yarns

Evening Shimmer Wrap
Cascade Yarns

Clover Armour Crochet Hooks

Nancy's Waves Scarf
Windowpane
Premier Yarns

Creative Strength Training by Jane Dunnewold

Piecing Expanding the Basics by Ruth B. McDowell

Mixed Media Portraits with Pam Carriker

Strathmore Journals

Artist Journals & Sketchbooks by Lynn Perrella

Crocheter's Skill-building Workshop by Dora Ohrenstein

Loops & Threads (is a Michaels Yarn)

Yarnbox

MITU Yarns (will need to translate page or check with online retailers)

It is 42 minutes long.  IF you view it in its entirety, then miracles do happen and I deeply thank you. You are encouraged to offer suggestions, comments, evaluations...will be deeply appreciated.  For those who know me, is this me????  It is like listening to one's voice on a tape recorder and being surprised at the sound of your voice.