winter solstice

 i have moved away from traditional christmas 

to an awareness and need for a

solstice celebration

 but of course there is the last

day

of 

school

to get through before

the holiday.

 so we resorted to video

the morning group: the polar express

the afternoon: santa claus conquers the martians

my belly hurt from laughing!

 as we watched, the rain/sleet/ice

came down and began another storm.

 so on saturday afternoon

we had some icing

 pretty 

very lovely 

 really amazing

 hollyhock seeds

 icy slippery elm for aimee

because that's what we've been 

talking about.

and then night fell

and fell.

and the electricity went out,

taken down by some iced trees

who gave up last night.

 at my house there's no backup heat

except this

 which ate wood

all

night

long.

yawn.

 more ice today.

st lawrence county is under 

a state of emergency.

and hannah is coming home.

my nephew's family, too.

but not yet

 the grandmother maple

in the back yard

is still holding her limbs,

the white pine, is not.

i dug into one of these piles

(this one has hosta under it)

and dug out another day's wood.

but this afternoon

a miracle:

electricity again!

i am eager to move off grid 

these storms will then be far less difficult.

fiber thinking

 top fiber: slippery elm

bottom fiber: hollyhock

slippery elm, hollyhock

slippery elm

hollyhock
potential

two books

 work for the exhibition:

Natural Colours Exhibition 2012 Miyagi-Tohoku
two books about
 north country

bloodroot and violet

shifu, slot and tab, natural dyes

a page spread

spine 

the poem does not want to live inside this book

so it's printed separately.
a small, cube of a book

~and~

Indigo Patterns

shifu with slippery elm bark

stationers binding, sewn on tapes, tacketed

vintage pattern paper, indigo dyed
a nice reading in bed sized book
posted first to oz, then to japan. 

months without r

 in the mail 

 about healing

 making paper

 and books

 dyeing

 harvesting

(in a month without an r)

 slippery elm

 using felcos

 being assisted

dear friends

working together

one to mark time,

one to heal wounds,

two together,

three together

coming together

last night i walked wendy and made a decision...

to warp the funny little good wood loom.

august is itchy when you wear a fur coat year round,

wendy pretending to not hear me say, "let's go!"

 besides cockroaches,

 when the world ends,

 there will be wild grapevine

opportunistic climber.

if you stand still too long, look out.

i battle it on the fringes of my modest "lawn".

habu linen paper

there was a round bale 

on my table

 ~in washington i tried renier cherries.

i found them here, very expensive, delicious~

so the habu linen paper was warped

weft was the habu, some indigo dyed old pattern paper

 and some slippery elm that i fetched from the perennial border

i am astonished

how my seeing outside and inside

mirror

in the landscape and in the studio

verge 

(with bows to the northeast shakers,

dorothy liebes

ed rossbach

john mcqueen

who played with warp)

thursday & friday

 aimee and i harvested one of the slippery elms in my perennial border

bark, we scraped the outer bark after dark, until i went to bed!

 i finally have a shifu sample book

 and it's now labeled, too

a tiny book present, with slipcase.