Yahoo!
Ply Magazine, Fall 2021
is out in the world!

If you have a subscription
it should be winging its way to your hands right now.
If you don't, it is also available HERE.

The theme of the magazine is "Consistency"
which makes me giggle whenever I think of it.
Me, consistent?
Well, I can spin a pretty decently even yarn after all these years,
but as you might gather from the snippet  above,
my essay is not so much about spinning consistent yarn
as the consistently inconsistent
(or maybe inconsistently consistent?)
way my work has unfolded over the years.

It's no coincidence that I named this website
a field guide to needlework .

The field, indeed, been a useful metaphor over the years,
for it can include endless bits of the textile landscape--
from things that are new to me
to the unseen areas of techniques I think I know.
Not that I don't often imagine someone asking:
"is she into mending or spinning or tapestry or paper yarn
or wool or barefoot running or comics or....what?"

Yet what can I say?
The ideas keep showing up
on this circuitous path of mine,
many exuding such irresistible pheromones
that I'm instantly distracted from whatever I am doing.
How many times, without really knowing how
have I ended up deep in a rabbit hole
or embroidered into a thicket of blossoms and thorns
 trying to train my hands and mind
to do whatever it is that has captivated (or captured) me.

All of which is to say,
 it is more than a teensy bit delightful
that PLY is coming out right now,
just as my new zine/guide
of coffee filters and rabbit holes.
is also freshly in the world.
Consistent inconsistency, right?

Of course the coffee filter guide
 has instructions on how I turn coffee filters into yarn.
That is part of its point.
But like the Ply essay
  it is also about feeling my way into an idea,
noticing how that idea tastes, smells and interacts with my hands,
and figuring out how to pursue only the aspects
that go straight to my core and refuse to be ignored--
despite good sense, hard evidence
or cultural programming that can lead a gal to believe
(if not act upon)
 the notion that focusing on one thing,
and only one thing,
 is the best.

For long time blog readers
my inability to adhere to this last idea
will come as no surprise.
For even as I am given to pouring
everything I have into the tale of the moment
(generally sure that it'll last forever),
I continue to be taken aback,
(and completely diverted again and again)
by the power of pure delight
as exuded by those mysterious somethings
that shape my life.

That are, indeed,
having their way with me
even as as I type.
For it is time
(and has been for a while even as I've had my fingers in my ears),
to shift things yet again--
to slip away from this blog and off into the forest
where I hope to work quietly on my own for a while
and see what comes my way.

Which means that this is my last post.

Of course given the circular nature
and general relatedness of everything
(not to mention my addiction to parenthetical asides),
another blog with a different focus or structure
might well show up some time in the future.
But lest I start repeating myself once too often here,
or this becomes one of those sad blogs
that, guiltily ignored, slowly grind to a halt,
I'm going to deliberately sling my bindle over my shoulder,
and see what what lies ahead.

 Thank you so very, very much for your company
in this marvelous blogging rabbit hole these many years--
for your support and inspiration,
for your patience with my creative peregrinations,
and for all the rich, delightful, warm and rewarding
ideas and you have shared.

May the fleece be with you.
xoxoxo
Sarah

ps. On the technical side--
For the time being (the next few months anyway)
the store and website will stay live
with the 7 little  PDF Guides in the store available for purchase and download
and all 334 (or does this one make it 335?) blog posts
here for your meandering pleasure.
I'm not sure I want to clutter up the inter-webs forever, however,
so may eventually clear this space for other voices.
We shall see.
For now, however enjoy!

In the midst
of the ever-flowing river
​ of (often absurd) ideas
I want to share with you,
I keep trying/starting/experimenting with
"just this one more little thing"--
​and my body doth protest.

So though I just got back 
after the winter hiatus,
it seems the better part of valor
to stop once again--
and REALLY try
​ this time
to be still.

​So till we meet again
take care--
be well--
and make
what you can't
not
begin
(gently, of course).

Oops!
Looks like a proper blog post
is not going to happen this week.

Time — sometimes
she just vanishes--
and she takes Energy with her.
Sigh.

Have you noticed this?

That said
after all the thread and sewing machine love last week,
​I can’t not leave you
​with this:

https://youtu.be/8lwI4TSKM3Y

and
a wee comic--
the only medium I’ve yet found
that allows me to do
all the things 
at once.

So you know what's cool?

Well, lots of things are cool:
spinning
and weaving
and looms
and friends
and solitude
and vaccinations
and sunshine
and rain
and baby plants
and one syllable four letter nouns...

Today, though
the thing that delights me
more than I can say,
is noticing--

that I no longer notice--

that I wear a hand spun/knit wool shirt
every single day
summer and winter.

Well-- truth to tell--
in the summer I occasionally wear
those handwoven linen
and  linsey-woolsey shirts.
But still--
(and somewhat to my amazement),
I've made more than enough
next-to-the-skin-soft
wool shirts
 to see me through.

And though I wasn't thinking at the time
about  why it was possible,
one of my great daily pleases
these last months
has been dressing up for my loom every day.
And I think the loom appreciated my effort.

But I had  forgotten--
until tidying up a stack of
"magazines with articles I wrote"--

that once upon a time
having enough such garments
was a deliberate plan--
my mid-life self
committing
to the sartorial comfort, pleasure
and general well-being
of me,
now,
at 60.

So golly thanks, former Sarah
for the serendipitous Magic Medium--
for the blissfully approachable Somewhat Slanted
(of which I now have five)--
for The Cloisters (pictured above)--
for Kestrals Alight back in 1996--
for all the unnamed others
(many of which I've given away)--

--for all the glorious fleeces
(and the sheep that grew them)--
and for uncountable days and weeks and years
of pleasure--
past, present and future.

And yes, also for my Sarah-Dippity Skirts
which though they are not shirts
and were completely unplanned,
I nonetheless wear so often
that I'm now having to patch them.

So you know what's cool?
That the midst of one of the weirdest
and most unsettled
and oddly fascinating times of my life so far--
that even as I am taking a break from knitting
to rest and reset--
it is yarn, once again,
that is seeing me through.

Wow-
it's March!

How are you doing?

Me--I am well,
(how happifying is that?)
And the snow is melting!

It's amazing to be back here--
 familiar and strange
at the same time.

I mean
after three months
there is so much to say,
and also, nothing at all.

For while listening
to other people express essential ideas
with perfection and beauty--

--I've been spending my days
with one word at a time.

I mean--
quag.
Isn't it lovely?
What a thing
to get to balance
(or try at any rate)
on its delicious
q-centric
syllable.

And really,
does a person really need
entire sentences?

Even my inner Storymaker
has been mostly OK with it.

She is all about words to be sure,
usually ready to cram in
as many as she can
(Verbs!!! Adjectives!!!!!
Parenthetical Asides!!!!),
but it turns out
that reading dictionaries
studying etymology,
and debating the merits
of this word
or that
is wildly entertaining.
(OMG--a double ff-- YES!)

Almost as satisfying
as having chopped
the ice dams
off the roof.

Now it could be
that writing this essay
back in December
for my friend Debbie Lee's
monthly blog: Witness Wilderness,
was all the Storymaker needed.

Or maybe she has just been biding her time,
waiting for the thaw
while the Luminist blissed out
on quiet(ish) winter days.

Either way,
we're decidedly out of shape
for this blogging biz
and it might take a while
 to fully emerge
from our wintry ways.

Though I suppose that is
what spring is all about, eh?

Lots of things happened in 2016 --
not least
that I  built 
my first backstrap loom.

Though probably not directly connected,
this elemental tool 
has helped to see me through
some of the other world-rocking
​ events and emotions of the last years--
the reverberations of which,
(as you might have noticed yourself...),
have yet to settle down.

For these years have
 asked-- nay, demanded 
so very much --
​not least
the development of
new levels of fortitude--

-- a massive amount of trust
in some absurdly fragile-appearing 
​threads of connection--

--and even some heart-expanding joy
when the  threads 
​actually hold.

So it is with a peculiar kind of curiosity
that I remembered, just now,
that it has been just over four years
since I first leaned back against 
my needlepoint strap--
and to spend some time thinking about
what has happened to me
​since then.

Of course it was tapestry
that started it--
the desire to begin weaving
with a single word
and follow it, letter by letter,
wherever the unfolding idea chose to go--
a deeply unsettling thing 
for a person given to weaving
from  carefully composed cartoons
(and thus even more worth pursuing).

The idea of plain plain weave, however
never crossed my mind.

Well, not until
the very second warp anyway.

And then --
well then I was a bit of a mess for a time.
A happy mess to be sure--
bounding back and forth
between delicious, weft-faced text
and luminous, drapy, open cloth--
yet also thoroughly confused
and bemused
by my new divided attention.

Luckily, I blogged about it at the time.
​(three 2016 posts: One, Two, Three),
then wrote  Backstrap Dialogues,
in order to dig even deeper
into what felt, in the moment
like uncertain direction.
"Who am I
to enjoy both of these?"

There were days, indeed,
when my head
felt as divided and divisive
as this country--
a place where "and" was not a thing--
my internal state
 as seemingly unreconcilable
(and sometimes downright cruel)
as the national mood.

Four years,
many many many yards of cloth
and more miles of yarn
than I can even begin to count later, 
much has changed--
​and much has not.

 As thrilled as ever
​by the breadth of possibility
inherent in the simple tools,
I now don't think twice about using
un-sized, super fine singles as warp.

And in endless, in-depth conversations,
Luminist and Storymaker--
though sometimes not as polite
as they might be--
have, over time,
come to realize how
interdependent they actually are,
and to make space for
techniques, ideas and materials
one or the other
might once have disdained 
(or, more truly, never even considered:
coffee filters? wedge weave? milkweed?
tapestry book covers? nettle baskets?).

Though not always been a cakewalk 
(as you might imagine),
even my tradition-bound inner Storymaker
has begun to concede
that tales can be told in many ways--
narrative, light and local materials 
coexisting
in a single swathe of cloth.

And​ at least some of the time, 
​in a single human as well.
​
(Or heddle -- Margaret, with her sweet, bemused smile,
is pretty much up for anything--
the more untried, the better).

For I do so hope,
 along with the unmitigated joy,
brought by final ballot counts,
that civility, kindness
​and attempts at being helpful
might be possible 
in our government
and amongst ourselves.

Or, at the very least
that we can remember
that taking turns
is a thing.

11.8 grams--

a week's work.

Or, more truly,
a week's pleasure--

day after day
of long white fibers
making themselves known
a strand at a time--

beautiful  bast
in a small clump
of Aphid-infested plants
my neighbor wanted gone.

For months --
nay,  years--
​I've been trying
to learn about local bast fibers--

Nettle, Dogbane, and Milkweed too--
reading the sparse literature--
 mostly about working with Nettles
(thank you Allan Brown for your work)--
watching the odd video
(thank you Sally Pointer),
and trying,
​with limited/mixed success,

to make friends 
with these glorious materials--
one of which,
this week,
for whatever reason,
​and rather against the odds,

agreed to work with me. 

Well, truth be told,
I'm grateful, too,
to all the people
who have worked with
​these plants for millennia,
as well as to all the plants
that have helped me,
in turn, to practice
and learn.

And really,
how not to also be pleased--
in the moment
and in retrospect--
by my former self
for her persistence
​and (sometimes painfully)
​ slow acquisition
of knowledge
skills,
​familiarity,
dexterity,
and
dare I say,
patience--

all of which have helped
​to make me available
for these beauties:
to the obvious long fibers,

to the 'leftover' medium length ones
that were ready to be re-combed,
drawn out into a form of top
wound on a  wrist (vs stick) distaff
​and made into lovely yarn themselves,

and to the shortest ones
which were just the right length
for a couple of easy-to-spin
​hand carded rolags
and allowed for
absolutely no waste at all --
barring the now composting
​scraped off outer green bits 
and the drying-for-kindling inner stalks.

How lucky ​can a gal get?
(says she to her future self,
lest she forget, sometime, 
how wondrous and generous
​ the world can be).



--and a sartorial post script--
You might well think my just-off-the-needles
Targhee/Debouillet/Cormo etc tank top is all I've worn this week.
And you might be right!
Also the blue pants. I have to say. Oh my word.
They come from MAIWA --first new pants in years and years.
A gift to my legs and butt, from me.
No promotion thing -- they have no idea-- I am just utterly in love.
Be warned -- there will be patched pants and long term mending
(as needed though none yet despite continual wear), in future blogs...

How else but with two aprons,
 to pick ​rapidly ripening raspberries

and carry a garden watering timer
​(aka phone)

when neither your linen shirt
nor the  hand-me-over-unfinished-skirt
you're wearing underneath
​has a pocket?

Not that I couldn't remedy that.
A nice patch pocket on the skirt
would be the work of a moment.
​
And the shirt
is a continual work in progress--
the fact that it already has
a teensy tapestry pocket on one side
no reason to neglect the other.

It's just that I wear the shirt so often--
 like every day I'm not wearing
  the linsey-woolsey one--
that I just haven't gotten around to it.

Yes -- it's hard to tell from the drawing
that I'm wearing the linsey-woolsey shirt.
But it is  only short-sleeved shirt I have,
so not a tricky deduction.
Besides, it was just a few days ago.

Also, though I occasionally
bend the absolute truth in my comics
(for narrative clarity only),
I generally aim for sartorial veracity--
if only because I love my clothes
and am oddly attached
to the idea that  future me
might like to enjoy seeing them too
(while remembering what. weenie I am about shopping).

It also helps with the laundry.
("I seem to have worn Sarah-Dippity Skirts
in almost every drawing for this entire diary--
definitely time for a bath!")

But I digress.
Paper pockets
were the topic of the moment.
And they might actually be
a compelling experiment. 
Though the coffee filter yarn
is itself pretty fragile,
especially as singles
(I can't imagine using it for warp for instance),
it seems to stand up remarkably well
 tightly packed in a weft faced plain weave--
at least to the wear and tear 
of life as a diary cover--
growing soft, pliable,
and almost leather-like
​(if a little grubby),
with daily use.

And true shifu,
(woven from hand spun washi)
has been used for clothing for centuries,
so the idea is not totally outrageous --
except of course, that washi
(and the resulting kami-ito)
is often specifically made
for strength and longevity
while coffee filters are (usually)
single use items.
Though expected to withstand
 boiling water and soggy grounds, 
they are definitely not​
as intrinsically strong as washi.
But who knows?
In case you haven't noticed,
my life is a constant work in progress --
my chief delights arising from
​experiments with the materials at hand,
no matter the source.

And as we all learn daily,
you never know 
what is going to happen.

Indeed, I'm super excited
about watching the evolution 
of this diary I just made.
Not only do I get to play
with the wedge weave tapestry
I wove last May.
(2-ply vs the singles of the last one)--

​but I also got (and get) 
to see how the dog bane binding cordage
(made in the fall of 2018),
behaves with constant handling.
It's pretty rough right now,
but super strong
even if I did have to punch
​extra large holes in my signatures. 

Now what was this post supposed to be about?
No idea. 
Undoubtedly something
satisfying and insightful
that would rock all our worlds--
though nothing could equal
the roller coaster ride
of real life just now--
my mind growing, I hope,
as strong and flexible
and welcoming of change and possibility
 as dog bane cordage.
So a bit of paper-induced absurdity
never hurts alongside, say, things like
the recent groundbreaking
 Supreme Court Decision
that almost half of Oklahoma
falls within a Native American reservation!

So I'll just end with this photo--
because it makes me happy,
and is a good reminder
to enjoy the hidden richness
in even the simplest
of moments.

​ps. Tiny chair carved by Linda Ligon's grandfather in about 1915 --
and though this chair didn't start
Thrums Books , Long Thread Media,
and the once-upon-a-lifechanging  Interweave Press,
Linda did, and all three make (and have made)
the world a better place for textiles
and their makers.

pps. Squash plant--a volunteer,
​grown by itself from a bit of compost,
whose contributions to my world
are blossoming even as I type.

ppps.  Because it has to be said:
​Fuck Trump

Oh goody--
back to the blog
after a whirligig of a month.

Except -- 
this business of typing words--
​ I think I must be rusty.

(Listening to Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi 
and here with Yo Yo Ma)

(Ki/Kin Pronouns from Robin Wall Kimmerer )

And oh yes,
a chemo holiday
​ is an amazing thing.

Dear Sarah,
I just have to ask--
why are you sometimes so rude to me? 

"Why oh WHY did you do that thing
back when you were eighteen???"
you moan.
"It would have been so much better if..."

If what? 
​That's what I want to know.

ps
and don't forget
that I started working in the weft ends too
so that  all of the tapestries in this post
(plus the bazillion others in the archive)
could be woven that way --
 AND so that you could write
TUCKING THE TAILS.

I mean, it's not like the technique is limited 
to the monochromatic/geometric stuff
you're doing now.
Right?

So come on --
let's mess around some more.
It's still so interesting.