a gift

i am a person who loves to give gifts

(as well as receive them)

i'm also a person who forgets things, special dates, etc.

(dates are numbers, numbers are slippery for me) 

this can be a problem, and i have been known to do odd things:

i have in my school bag a birthday card for a neighbor.

her birthday was around november 8th, more or less. see?

 a gift came to me this week

from pam

 whose shibori on paper astonished

and inspired me last summer

 well, these were wrapped up in cloth, 

walnut-dyed challis

 each one perfect.

 so i started playing

and playing and playing

 the cocoons have an affinity for each another

and hold on, hands-on, like hormonal teens

to one another!

 there is an amiable patterning

dancing across this page

 the brilliant white has been subdued

by pam's dyepots

 none of these photos were taken in good light

because all it does recently is snow

or threaten to snow

and it's winding into solstice. we are sun deprived.

so they began a new game on a morojifu folio,

 page from a book of secrets.

reuse, repurpose, recycle, harvest

these "shibori" scraps are actually gussets from two pair of old gramicci cotton climbing pants. and here's the small coptic bound blank book i made from the "shibori" waistline of one pair. 

pages of mohawk superfine. linen threads, davy board. about 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 in.

outdoors: 

bloodroot, puccoon, sanguinaria canadensis 

freshly broken and "bleeding"

freshly washed and waiting for action

waiting. this is actually quite a modest harvest. i have a hard time digging up this beautiful plant. perhaps because i know that this will kill the plant. i know better, if there is some rhizome left underground, it may regenerate.

i haven't got much energy at the end of this day, after yoga and walking wendy. we did see louise and family out back this evening. 

naturally dyed lokta and kozo, rust, black raspberry, and indigo on shifu (cotton and lokta) textile. i will try bloodroot on some spun paper, as well as cloth.

while this kind of inspiration is kicking around in my imagination. vellum books in arabic, in a leather case. from the inspirational gary frost's future of the book site.