Spiraling

I couldn’t stitch yesterday … I’d pick up my phone, scroll, put it down, pick it up … so many times.

Bad weather was coming … would the power hold? Would the dripping faucets be enough?

But mostly it was about ICE and Minneapolis and murder. Why? How? And what will end it? Or will it?

Spiraling. 

This morning the sun came up, obscured by clouds but lighting the world nonetheless. The world sheathed in ice.  Today I stitched.

Each stitch over two threads of linen cloth, the curved lines following one after the other, spiraling outward …

Colors breaking through darkness, one after the other …

But even as the spiral pulled the line of stitch inward, the edges of the cloth pulled the line outward … the forces shifting, the gap widening, through no intentional thought, my fingers guided the needle outward sooner than my mind intended, the line wobbling as intention gave out to some other guiding force …

We do not know what drives us, let alone what drives others to do what we do. Stitches can be pulled out and stitched again, lines can be drawn and then erased … but some things can’t be undone and we have to live with the imperfection that was created, whether intentionally or not. And then continue on. It’s what we do next that matters.

How is this possible?

This morning’s online reading brought news of yet another fatality due to ICE in Minnesota. I’ve written to my senators and representative, for all the good that will do in Texas. Thank goodness I read this poem by Karen Salmansohn which was posted by a local friend …

Except even this brings to mind the sweet child in the bunny hat abducted by ICE. And how sad is it that you all know what I mean?

Still, I did receive some treasures in the mail from Fiona. The postcard that inspired my first patch arrived in real life …

To which I’ve circled back and added a patch to match the project title Remember 2026 …

Three books arrived in a separate package from Fiona, about which I’ll write more in a separate post as they deserve extra attention …

 

Meantime, let us pray for the good people of Minnesota. And may you all be safe and warm at home during the storm, wherever you may be.

Scintillating

A week or so ago I experienced a scintillating scotoma during an ocular migraine (which thankfully did not include any pain or headache). Wanting to document the experience in stitch, I began by searching through Hazel’s Instagram posts, as I recalled her having painted and stitched geometric forms that looked  remarkably similar to my experience. I had to dig pretty far back to find this …

Close, but not exactly, so I kept digging until I found this in 2018 …

And yes, that bit above the left side of the roof looked just about right. So I grabbed some Deb threads and free-hand stitched some zigzaggy triangles of light that recalled how my experience began …

But no, that wasn't quite right ... so after looking at it for a couple of days, I tried again ...

 

 

Better, but still not quite right. Honestly, it defies description to explain how tiny shards of light grow into shimmering fields … although some medical journal reportage comes close. I can’t say I look forward to experiencing it all again, but neither do I dread it. Then I can try again to capture it in stitch.

Marching for MLK

San Marcos, Texas has a unique intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Baines Johnson Streets. There a simple structure symbolizes the meeting of MLK and LBJ in the Oval Office. And for the past 24 years, a walk has commenced from that location, through the Dunbar neighborhood, and on to the Hays County Courthouse, where speakers commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.

 

  

2026 was no different, as memorial wreathes were laid, and hundreds of college students and boomers, families and church groups marched in solidarity. I am sorry to say I had never been before ... I'm glad to say I made it this year. 

P.S. I did bring my Hippie Nana for Peace sign and a fellow Boomer asked to take a picture. And here’s a link to the song I mentioned in the comments:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTqCbBNEcZd/?igsh=aGtwZzIyOHU4bXF3

Ametrine?

The ring that Ellis is wearing in my last post was given to me by my Great Aunt Jean ... my mother's mother's sister, who never married. Jean lived with my mom's family, helping to care for my grandmother's three children and my grandparent's house in Rockville Centre on Long Island. When my own parents wanted to get away for a weekend, it was Aunt Jean who came to watch my brother and me. As with my grandmothers, I remember her wearing boxy belted housedresses and black tie shoes with chunky heels. It amuses me that the eyeglasses they all wore are now retro-trendy ... amuses me, but I doubt I'll ever wear them myself. 

 

 

As you can see in the close-up, the stone is chipped and pitted. I've thought about having it polished, but I doubt anyone could guarantee that the stone would survive intact. So I keep it as is. It fits my right ring finger perfectly, and I'm giving serious thought to wearing it again.

I decided it would make a good memory patch for Remember 2026, so I hunted through my Deb Lacativa thread stash, finding these two silk/cotton bits ...

 

 

If you look carefully, you can see the purple flash that appears in the stone when it is turned in the light. I don't know that I ever heard what the stone was, but some quick Google searching leads me to believe it might be ametrine, which is a portmanteau of amethyst and citrine.

As ever, I loved seeing Deb's threads serve up one subtle color after another as I split backstitched a la Jude Hill ...

 

 

And I don't think I've mentioned this, but each patch is my usual 1.75" with the turned-under edges secured with yet another Jude Hill creation, the glue stitch. Really I don't know what I'd be doing if I hadn't encountered her incredible Spirit Cloth blog and classes back in 2014.

If at first you don’t succeed

Try ... and try ... and retry again.

Ellis comes to our house once a week after school to play games, create art, and eat dinner (always followed by  a scoop of ice cream). Her favorite thing recently is to go through my very limited jewelry box to try things on …

Not that there’s a lot to try on, since most of what I had has already been given to our daughters. I did keep this ring, though …

Now let’s see if my workaround with photos sticks 🤞 ... Dang it … obviously not

Okay, maybe the third time's the charm. Yep ... that did it ... for now.

And now this …

 ICE has come to town …

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ZtumarP9q/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Blocked

Well, this is new … Google will not let me add photos to my blog posts unless I turn off my iPhone settings that currently block Google from tracking me and having full access to my photos.

So no. Not doing that.

I am pondering next moves.

Dailyish

The universe has a great sense of humor. Right after I wrote yesterday’s blog post, I picked up a book I’ve been reading titled Meditations for Mortals (which also made a recent appearance in Lyn Belisle’s Shards blog) …

and read a chapter “On doing things dailyish.” Talk about affirmation! I underlined:

“… the obvious that if you want to get good at something, you should do it a lot, preferably more days than not.”

“Deep down you know that doing something twice a week doesn’t qualify as dailyish, which five times a week does, and in busy periods, three or four times per week might get to count.”

“Balance the need for order with the need for individual freedom … [the] need for solitude with the universal human need for a social life.”

“The point isn’t to spend your life serving rules. The point is for the rules to serve life.”

Which leads me to the next two dailyish patches, one which reads “PEACE” in Fiona’s alphabet, the other which will serve to remind me that dailyish is a good enough rule to Remember 2026 …

A plan … sorta

Yesterday I was busy baking cookies and cleaning house. So as I expected, no post was written. And I’m okay with that.

Today I was expecting to be at a reunion (which was part of the reason for the cookies), but last night I had the first recurrence of a retinal/ocular migraine since a year or two ago. No headache, but very unusual visual effects lasting about half an hour. Which is why I’m not going anywhere today as driving didn’t seem like a great idea.

Instead, I’m posting about the tentative beginning of a not-quite-daily stitching project …

The patches to be inspired by whatever catches my interest on any given day. Like Fiona’s postcards on New Year’s Day and the Run Out Soup …

Likewise the fair linen I’m making for St Liz and the starfish that topped our Christmas tree …

There will be more, which I’ll post whenever I have  few to show.  Unlike past birthday patch cloths, I’ve decided to make all the patches the same size and to alternate light and dark patches. Or not … I’ll just see how it goes.