The change of season has revealed the small basket feeder I hung on the fence in early spring. I forgot it was there. The summer growth had woven another basket around it. It became a nest. It's the time of year for seeing through.
I remind myself that design is a kind of mending.
This cloth, The Mother-Ring, is so thin, unstable, worn, stained, reworked, holding but useful maybe only for looking. I made some changes. Folded the edge in to hug it, loosely, wove into a corner, stitched a lot of little stitches. Reversed the openness of the Moon, making the sense of time more expansive..
It feels a bit like letting go and holding at the same time.
Today I am the thinness.
I love weaving the cucumber vines through the web to get them to grow up and off the ground… next year we are planning a large garden arch to grow something viney on. Will be a garden adventure… like every year!
I once wove a sphere – some of the vines were ivy with leaves still attached and I wished they would stay but eventually they dried and fell off. Still I like the idea.
The useful strength of the small basket to facilitate growth, and the absolute beauty of a cloth foundation that has, perhaps, given its usefulness except to our senses.
Beautiful images of real and imagined, Jude.
Everything becomes thon enough to see through over time. I love that.
“useful maybe only for looking…” You say.
That is such a precious usefulness which can so often be overlooked and lost in the midst of all the busyness- of -things.
Maybe old cloth deserves a rest
The story in the thinness…
So beautiful.
Our hearts leapt at the sight of the crescent moon this evening…a mirror image of yours here, as she waxes.
I forgot to mention the basket feeder and how nature’s weaving claiming your gift made me sigh with happiness.
I really love how it happened…
thinness has no limit until it completes the magic and disappears!
I love this quilt. It speaks of November, the woods, the silver moon in the sky, the thinness and fading of the light and leaves, of letting go and yes, still holding together with many loving threads. Thank you.
I cannot seem to keep it from floating…
appreciate the thinness that is life these days. the transparency of it. the passage through it…
thin cloth is my favorite kind. your’s is special…
gosh, the throughness is so full.
The thinness…the ‘old cloth’ and the fine quality of this all being okay, even a good place to be. I have a friend who Really, Really does not want to age. I find that thought hard to relate to. The found basket, like my found CMB of yesterday…becoming so embedded in their environments, which takes time. A lesson there for sure (thinking of how when each of us moved to new spaces and the time that took). Enjoy the walk of a long view.
Nancy, I so relate to what you’re saying. The aging….every day now it blows me away to look back on things that have happened in my life and see how they all comes together into this moment, and the seeing of that is so beautiful. It seems that to deny aging is in some sense to deny where you are and where you’ve been. I find it all quite exhilarating.
yes, imagine not being able to know the beauty in it.
the time it takes.. yes, and I love the word embedded here. Ageing is all we have it is our life right from the beginning.
love thinking about design as “a kind of mending”. how we mend ourselves in the process…
everything seems like mending to me now, even cooking.
The basket becoming nature and may nurture. The quilt as a mandala for meditating.
I love the basket here, as if it is growing on the vine. I thought, just now, imagine weaving with living vines…
I used to weave living Willow…good memories.
oh, do you have pics?
Hope these work!
https://flic.kr/p/9UBi1G
https://flic.kr/p/fEgQx
https://flic.kr/p/gQ5XS
The only pics I have are of the little living arbour I built in our old garden. Excuse the one of us kissing on our 13th anniversary!
The yearly practice of weaving in the seasonal growth every Autumn gave a great feeling of reconnecting.
oh these are the best! thank you…!!!
I have a few favorites of yours and this one is right up there. I just love the look of old worn cloth and all the sketched points with some ink still showing. It is amazing when you enlarge it and can see all the fraying and detail work.
❤️
I thought this one would be something else but it has become very much about the nature of cloth and stitch. And I think I am done and then I just keep going…
Love all the stitching 💙
I like how it has a crumpled appearance, the ripple so random.
A home of nourishment and rest! It’s so devine! Nesting!
the concept of nesting offers so many images
My favorite piece of yours.
It almost seems as if it is not there…
at the bottom of the nest photograph…how the one still green leaf
holds hands with the not so much one
this is the kind of photograph that makes me want to
DRAW
it…care full y in complete detail…layering the graphite leaving
negative space
i breath this in is a real gift. Thank You
I really became engaged in this one too. I just love it, the tangle of change. I think that green leaf is the malabar. some berries still hanging there, I wonder if it will reseed.
I like walking and taking in the longer view.
Deeper breaths seem possible
It is, even the light is thin. Design mending is one of the most loved things I have learned from you. 🙂
today the thinness has become apparent. I am going to go walking and take in the longer view.