Life is what it is...........

Some days my perception of the world is better than others. Today .. life is just what it is .. nothing spectacular .. ordinary sleepy day .. with some work smattered through out ... enough to break a sweat and need a rest. So right now .. i'm peaceabley tired. Satiated......enough.....

It's a nice place to be. Amazingly a word read through my blue colored glasses can on occasion come acrossed as a searing bolt of whitesh blue ... like lightening striking me hard .. a blow to my heart. I never know when it will come. I never know when my minds going to think that no one cares, i never know when the world will appear only black and white .. I never know when it will feel as if the sound stops and I hear no one talking. I never know when I will feel invisible. Sometimes I know that that's what it was like for real .. for really real long ago. Long ago..

So today .. I'm just here .. thinking, feeling stuff... just passing through it. I will never be just like anybody else .. I will always be just me. Hoping that sometimes I could just take off those blue colored glasses and wear a pair of red or purple or yellow colored or just plain so the colors I see are never even slightly altered but just the colors that they are... of course I'm speaking metaphorically here. I think that things in life that happen to you cause you to see through colored glasses. I know this, but no one else does until they get to know me. But I really just wanted to talk about the pictures.

So ..yesterday .. I was thinking .. I love to take photos of all the incredible bugs in my yard. I think it's funny that I love to see the creatures that inhabit my space .. even the ones i don't like .. and even the ones that have to go.......but i also realized there are alot of other things I like .. fabric for one .. and I came from a woman that loved fabric too .. she sewed all my clothes when I was little. When I was five years old we moved from the USA to Africa... imagine that .. during the cold war........an odd but wonderful time to live over seas. For six years. Wonderfully exciting times in my life!!! without a doubt .. My mother sewed our outfits for all of our trips. My sister and I wore matching dresses .. sometimes me and my sister and my mother would all have the same fabric in our dresses. I loved that .. I so so loved that!!! . It was so exciting to be going on a plane .. and we had to look presentable. We looked spectacular!!!! My mother was a wonderful seamstress!!! She never just sewed one or two outfits but three or four ... and other pieces to complement other things .. so we always felt like we got a new wardrobe. She did also sew for holidays and special occasions. She sewed my confirmation dress, my prom dress and my wedding dress and even an extravagantly beautiful cover for a bassinet when my daughter was born. I hadn't realized that sewing is probably just in my blood. Happy memories surround fabric and sewing. So I have a love of fabric just like my mother. And I love many other things too as I'm sure my mother does. I know that I got a huge creative streak from my mother. That and dragging me out to every single museum and art gallery that she could on our yearly summer travels through Europe while traveling from Africa to the US and back. This certainly influenced my creativity. Today .. i realized I haven't shown too much about what I've been creating lately even though i think photography is another one of my creative outlets.I do enjoy doing more hands on art even though it's hot out side and even though I'm not boiling things up .. i've been making a stash of fabric .. that I've dyed or rusted or just sun streaked. Here's some of my stash .. oh and even some is thrift store bought . I never go to fabric stores and buy anything new. It's either a yard sale or a thrift shop.or a dress that has a fabric that I love, it's just the way I am. So here's some of my stash and what do you know but while I'm in the middle of the shoot of my fabric .. a beautiful butterfly lands on one of my dye pots .. and he stays there a long time .. even gets on the fabric. Then flutters up to my fabrics that are all laid out and pressed and sits there in front of them and then on them and then flies away and I am brought back again to grateful. For the butterfly is all the affirmation I need. And I feel the transformation continues ...and i see his colors plainly and they are spectacular!!! So below is my yard and all my fabric on my car .. it makes a great table in a way. Then there are the solar dye pots. The yellow is Turmeric, the brown I think is a bit of rust and some walnut and oak galls that I'd forgotten for months. The purple is the blueberry.. the green pot that the butterfly visits? That's rain water, vinegar, and a copper pot with pieces of fabric and it looks like it's developed some mold on top. I know there are a lot of photos here so .. just look or don't. The long strip of stitched cloth is my version of Jude's straps, I like it so much I may not fold it .. not sure yet. I may just put a back on it and make it that wide.. but I love the colors on it. I like the edges of things .. I like drawing on fabric and stitching on parts and not other parts.. I love dyeing fabric. I love nature. I love the sun dotting in different places. I like defused focus of sunlight. I love seeing with a camera... maybe thats how I see best!

This is the back yard. I have put up a table
out here and want to move all the dyeing
to back here. I like the quietness of this space.

Misty, she loves to survey the land from the front
porch. I think she mostly loves the cool concrete!

strips of cotton and silk eco-dyed

Turmeric glass jar dye pot, center is the walnut, rust, oak 

gall pot and the right one is empty... waiting for something. 

Cotton dyed in a walnut pot

red cotton ribbon which also

transferred to the fabric.

This is on the side, I can see this looking

out my kitchen window. I love the sun 

streaming down the path.

Eucalyptus dyed silk!

Silk shirt piece where the buttons are that I used as a strap for tieing up other silk bundles. 

I love the texture of fabric like this!

I do love to draw eyes! 

The beginnings of a beast maybe? This is discharged black cotton that was something my son had and was going to trash. I got it before he did that. I have a matching pair. He was using this fabric to tie something in his car where it got several years of exposure to the sun. I love this haha!!! 

Peace everyone .. I know this was long .. but this was just one day. Now I know why I don't do this so often. There is a lot of work in just editing photos.