Sunday snippets

progress on the applique project - the wolves are all stitched down as are corner motifs, once the silvery thread border is couched down they will be finished and can be sent on to their future home

waiting for the picklepot to warm up, and this evening's soldering... lots of little half and whole loops need fitted, 'tis picky work, but soonest done, soonest finished, and I can go on to something new...

Yesterday a half grown raccoon almost walked right up to me while I was sitting at the bus stop. Came right up over the top of the cliff embankment and then noticed that there was a human there. I didn't have my camera accessible, unfortunately. Raccoons are a little bit scarey (big nasty teeth) but this one was not yet adult; oddly too, it had almost no tail - for a moment it wasn't immediately recognisable. Need to make particularly certain that my hens are tucked up safely, as before long the young raccoons will be looking for their own territories.

Made this jam tart yesterday for M's birthday tea, using a large jar of strawberry-rhubarb-redcurrant-vanilla jam; it was beautiful, smelled heavenly, and was eagerly eaten. Since there is rather a pantryfull of jam here, jam tart will probably be show up for future potluck events as well.

another touchstone

Marge Piercy has been a favorite writer of mine for decades, particulary for her poetry, though I have enjoyed her novels as well, but there are gems in her poetry that shine like navigable starmaps in my mind, that keep me on course...

here is a fragment from  the longer poem "Living in the open":

No more lovers, no more husbands,
no masters or mistresses, contracts, no affairs,
only friends.
No more trade-ins or betrayals,
only the slow accretion of community,
hand on hand.

Help me to be clear and useful.
Help me to help you.
You are not my insurance, not my vacation,
not my romance, not my job, not my garden.
You wear your own flags and colors and your own names.
I will never have you.
I am a friend who loves you.

 

and another favorite: "A new constellation"

We go intertwined, him and you
and me, her and him, you and her,
each the center of our own circle
of attraction and compulsion and gravity
What a constellation we make: I call it
the Matrix. I call it the dancing
family. I call it wheels inside wheels.
Ezekiel did not know he was seeing
the pattern for enduring relationship
in the late twentieth century.

All the rings shine gold as wedding bands
but they are the hoops magicians use
that seem solid and unbroken, yet can slip
into chains of other rings and out.
They are strong enough to hang houses on,
strong enough to serve as cranes, yet
they are open. We fall through each other,
we catch each other, we cling, we flip on.

No one is at the center, but each
is her own center, no one controls
the jangling swing and bounce and merry-
go-round lurching intertangle of this mobile.
We pass through each other trembling
and we pass through each other shrieking
and we pass through each other shimmering.
the circle is neither unbroken
nor broken but living, a molecule attracting
atoms that wants to be a protein,
complex, mortal, able to sustain life,
able to reproduce itself inexactly,
learn and grow.

Thursday tidbits

Time to shift to a larger project... My new handwork for transit time is two symmetrical embellished and appliqued panels, inspired by the small wolf motif in the lower left corner of this Scythian repousse piece.

The applique is cut from ultrasuede, so as to allow tiny pierced holes that suggest the texture of the original work (meant to convey wolf fur) without fraying with wear or washing. Though tacked in place with heat-n-bond, it will need stitched all around the outside edge for permanence.

Hopefully there are some hand sewing glover's needles in my box of leatherworking tools. Glover's needles have a tip that is triangular in cross-section, so that it slices through material, rather than passing through like regular cylindrical needles do. Only suitable for sewing leather, they make the task so much easier to do. Still, a thimble will be my friend, as hand sewing leather always requires more effort than fabric alone.

The panels will be used for decoration on garments for the current An Tir royalty; though my SCA activity has waned recently, it is not through lack of interest, and this is a way for me to still participate, in the time and with the resources available.

~ ~ ~≈:::≈~ ~ ~

Another good animated feature comes to town, this one is by the same folks that did "The Triplets of Belleville" It opens tomorrow downtown, and though my weekend is pretty busy, I plan on going to see it in the next week or two...

"The Illusionist"