a going on...

"year's end is neither

and ending nor a beginning

but a going on,

with all the wisdom that

experience can instill

in us."

-hal borland

last year was a strange one for me here in montana.  the latter half being the stranger still...  a new saint came into my life, bringing with him all the joy, and copious shedding hair, that comes with such a delightful creature!  we both promptly had surgeries...though mine incapacitated me for much longer than his.  shortly before the holidays i was finally given the go ahead to start sewing again, but have found myself stuck in a dark corner of mind...unable to bring myself to stitch...

with the turning of the year's wheel has come a renewed sense of purpose. or at least a need to dig myself out of this rut.  my wrist is still tender and won't allow me to stitch for long without screaming out in protest, so i am contenting myself with simple thread chanting. endless miles of stitching on community.  it seems an appropriate cloth to work on at the moment.  one that fosters a sense of belonging. of community.  perhaps this will be a focus cloth for a while. simple stitching...nothing too taxing for the wrist...  slowly rebuild the strength in those tendons and muscles... a good way to spend cold, snowy evenings...

namaste'

boo!

joyous all hallow's eve to you all in whatever form you choose to celebrate it! bodhi and i spent a quiet night with a few friends, breaking bread, sharing sweets with neighboring children, and then snuggling on the davenport watching hocus pocus and allowing our respective surgeries time to heal. it is our sincerest wish that you all are enjoying the evening as much as we have been!

namastě

buzz, buzz, buzz!

"when the flower blossoms,

the bee will come."

-srikumar rao

introducing bodhi, my new little st. bernard puppy! he is just 8 months old and already weighs almost 100 pounds!  oh my, but he's gonna be a BIG boy! he's a sweet little doll baby that was rescued from an abusive home where he spent his first 5 months ignored and cooped up in a tiny kennel. the a-hole who had him bought him from the breeder and then abused him this way, letting him out only to go potty and then right back in. he was being fed the cheapest, worst food and was severely malnourished until the guy's sister confiscated him and nursed him back to health.

two weeks ago, he came to live with me. he didn't respond to the name they had given him (thor) so i started calling him bodhi, which is the buddhist term for wisdom.  he immediately responded and so it stuck.

i've been away from my blog lately as i injured my hand 6 weeks ago and have been unable to stitch, no matter how many times i've tried. my hand is numb and tingly like it's fallen asleep all the time. i herniated the bursa in my wrist which had caused 2 cysts on my bones and one ganglion cyst on my wrist that is wrapped around an artery and sitting on a nerve.  i go in for surgery this coming friday.  then it'll be a couple weeks in a splint and then physical therapy, so there won't be any stitchery or music for a while, but i will find other things to share in the meantime...

namasté

personal archeology

as an artist (though, in truth, this applies to most areas of my self), i sometimes find distractions mounting on all sides leading me astray from intended purpose.i begin to feel rather like the cartoon dog spotting squirrels and darting off in unexpected directions.  perhaps this is not always a negative activity for it uncovers many surprising treasures, both in experiences and objects.

this evening, the squirrels were stuffed away in several binders and boxes. pages upon pages of ideas captured in pencil and ink and paint and cloth. dolls/ quilts. instruments. carvings. paintings. all yet to be manifested.  a walk through memories forgotten. now revisited. it is at times like having a.d.d. of a sort.  the whispers drawing me in so many directions. it is a sublime bit of confusion in the moment. though eventually not very productive.

perhaps this little foray into personal archeology will inadvertantly redirect me down a more creatively productive path.... until then, i am enjoying the journey!

namaste'

working through

an uneventful weekend. one of those periods where you feel swaddled in cotton wool. everything around you seems muffled. so you busy yourself with things close at hand. the pants, which have begun to call themselves working through, stirred and whispered. they were as close at hand as anything else. i began laying the foundation. a scrap of red to remind one of the wound upon which this new cloth will be built. stitched up a few rips that were silent.  brought what was left of the hem back into close proximity of the leg.  on my last pair, i underlayed a hem from a different pair of pants. i'm not sure yet what i want to do with this pair. though i do not wish to repeat the past.  next will come layered fragments in a boro style...to strengthen and connect. 

namaste'

salvage blues

things that people

have used 

and cherished. they

have personality,

character,

and soul.

here we have two of my favorite things: music and cloth.  both created, or to be re-created, from salvage.  in the background is my latest acquisition, the troubadour, talked about here.  in the foreground is one of my favorite pair of work jeans. carpenters, complete with the extra little side pockets and hammer loop.  blown out knee with a minor repair already chanted in. chewed to salem and back heel cuz i love to were my jeans a few inches longer than my legs can manage. one of the legs is ripped several inches up along one side where i stepped on the trailing fragments of hem and continued to try to walk.

if you've been following my blog for some time, you'll remember i've already done a pair of skull pants. now it is time for something different. new. at first blush, i'm thinking something japanese. oni masks; foo lions; noh theatre; hannya masks...that sort of vibe. so, over the next few days, i'll be sketching some ideas while needle chanting in some stabilizing scraps and preparing the jeans for what is to come!

namaste'

to re-establish a sense of belonging

a bit of needle chanting on an often re-visited cloth, mind flowers.  no real reason to have chosen this cloth over any other. just the need to stitch without much thought. this cloth has many chant sessions to go before it will be fully realized. so it is as good as any to re-establish a relationship with fibre. a sense of belonging to something other than.  a union with cloth and community through stitch.

i spend too much time alone...

namaste'

perhaps...perhaps...perhaps...

"great ideas emerge

from useless fragments

of  thoughts."

-michael bassey johnson

perhaps time has slipped and left me along the selvage. sidelined. overlooked. perhaps this creates space. for thoughts. for dreams. perhaps what we think fills this space really only fills the expanse beside the space. like cloth filled with color and image beside the selvage.  

i seem to get lost all too frequently in these edges. of time and space.  perhaps it is simply a side effect of depression. or merely a forgetting to be present. perhaps i can nudge something from this stagnation. poke the hibernating bear, as it were.

play with some of these fragments. arrange a bit of a shrine, if you will. some tiny vignette  on my worktable to entice an idea. or three. from the ethers. to draw me away from the selvage and back into the tapestry of color...

namaste'

playing through the pain

"music washes away

from the soul

the dust

of everyday life."

-red auerbach

a few days ago, a log was dropped on my right foot, breaking two toes and smashing two others. talk about an extreme way to slow oneself down!  even though occupational rehab seems to think that the weekend is all i needed away from the craziness at my construction job to heal enough to return to climbing ladders and hauling steel, i'm still finding ways to take it easy.

i wanted to stitch this weekend...the gods know how much i miss my needle chanting!  but the pain just wouldn't allow me to focus.  so i turned to music.  strumming quietly upon one of my treasured dulcimers. it got me to thinking. i have a wonderful dulcimer collection, but have never catalogued them.  so i started rounding them all up and tracking down the various scraps of paper and digital files containing what information i have on each of them (some are better documented than others). 

these two lovelies are the ones that started my love affair with appalachian dulcimers.  the one on the left is by a wonderful luthier by the name of joe sanguinette (now deceased). it is made of walnut with a purpleheart fret board and dogwood inlaid centers on the hand-cut dogwood pattern sound holes.  it is one of two prototypes that he never put into production because they were too time intensive.  i was lucky enough to acquire this one, with the help of my mother, while he kept the other one (which ended up on ebay some years ago and sadly escaped my bids to be shipped to a buyer in england).  the one of the left is by jack lyle of waynesville, nc (also, now deceased).  this one is made from spalted wormy maple and has a quilted maple back and a mahogany fret board.  where the sanguinette has a lovely, mellow voice, the lyle has a bright, cheerful one.

as i began assembling all of my dulcimers in one place in my home (until now, they've always been scattered throughout the house - tucked in closets, under beds, displayed on shelves, in cabinets and on walls), i realized that i had quite a few more than i thought i did. thirty-six, to be exact. unless there are others lurking about that i don't remember owning...

the most recently acquired, and the most unusual, is this mandolin-dulcimer hybrid by eric holland of dark star guitars in eastern kansas.  eric started by deconstructing a pre-1895 bowl-back mandolin by luigi ricca, then completely rebuilding and restructuring it into a new walk-about style dulcimer.  his workmanship is superb and the sound is amazing!  i can hardly wait to get acclimated to its nuances and subtle differences from a traditional dulcimer, at which time i'll record something with it and post it here on my blog.

meanwhile, as i get them each photographed and documented, i am going to start a dulcimer page on this blog that will chronicle my collection in the coming months. look for it in the tabs at the top of the page.  and as the pain in my foot decreases and i am able to focus on my stitching, i have a couple newly started projects on my workbench that i will be sharing in the coming weeks as well...

namaste'