Thursday, July 30, 2015

two kinds of skein

two kinds of skein
but i'm looking at milkweed
 my camera and me are limited
we focus on one thing
and then another shouts to us
but we become confused
enamoured
aroused
full of wonder
 until i look up and see it:
landskein
 this lovely word, 
landskein,
 is exactly what i've been seeing
for a long time
 in robert macfarlane's book 
about lost or disappearing words
related to landscape
 LANDMARKS
 he mentions some new words
honeyfur, slogger, wolfsnow, sutering.
landskein is "the braid of blue horizon lines in hill country on a hazy day"
exactly.
 the word was first spoken by "a painter in the hebrides"
and it is 
like hortus siccus
a word for a new body of work.
landskein. 
i am making landskeins in a landskein.
the work began and the word found me, beautiful.
 i am also finding seeds.
i'm guessing it's dogbane
but i need to check.
it arrived in my living room
and took up residence on my warp.
 a new flower for me--
still looking this one up
but notice it has those odd stems
 tiny and bold.
 i have been in a struggle with emotion and exhaustion,
so
 the weeping of spent daylily blossoms
has properties i've tried to catch
 on spun lokta
another landskein.
and today,
another pot of contact prints. 

Saturday, July 25, 2015

here, again

the sky
 to the south and west was wild
and to the east,
here,
was quiet
 turning to this
that view--
turning
 i saw there was some action
where that white and bruised indigo meet
that's where the new place is!
and indeed there was a thunderstorm.
 back to the east there were 
delicious, qiuet

 i've been enjoying reading 
robert macfarlane, 
thinking about words and land
 many colors and threads,
mostly indigo and evergreen
around here, anyway.

~~~

continuing walking i find this 
 coyote berryeater has been by
 leaving notice all up and down the middle of the road
one for each night,
 walkers beware!
coyote is announcing stuff! 
 chamomile is richer than
i've ever seen it here before. 
 paths: coyote?
whitetail?
gray fox?
cottontal or showshoe hare?

 here, we got a paintwork
 strong color
 oh
 oh
 and then a second one showed up
 clouds lowered and a few drops hit
but i didn't get wet, not very.
looking down 
at my feet was a little bookish chunk of steel.

~~~

my wizard friend
carol blinn
presented me with this:
 a little book showcasing my paper
out of the blue
(and the press)
here it is with one of the latins newly named.
 at w.s.w. i took a chance on some weird pop.
  nifty bottles
and the flavors were curious
they say
BOTANICALLY BREWED
(so appropriate, maybe i should name my blog this!)
 and then this
became this
 a dye experiment
on spun lokta.
and then as i've been thinking and working 
with blossoms
i printed with daylily blossoms
the ones that drip rich magenta
syrup 
on the green leaves below 
so i contact printed/dyed on piece of case paper and 
teamed it up with indigo
and we'll see where they go 
 daylily and one lone hibiscus 
spent blossoms...
that weird experiment above?
we're half way through.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

return gift

before the trip to rosendale
i harvested a handful of st johnswort
and made a bundle with silk,
did a low temp cook
and put the whole shebang in a jug
in the sun
and subarued away.
 there was some color
 and some foam
 and some interesting smells
 and this



 a nice surprise amidst the unpacking
and all the sleeping i caught up on
 chris,
my australian student at wsw
made some mountains on flax,
the catskills,
and then the indigo vat
 got tired.
i woke it up a little bit
 and got some indigo after a little while
and got a wee bit of blue.
back home i slept a bunch and then
here the gray fox mama
put in an appearance in the side yard on sunday. 
i was gathering daylily blossoms 
and she, well, she 
had a nice fat rodent
in her jaws. 
she looked at me and then said she was leaving,
and off she went. 
she looked very comfortable here
and with me sharing her lawn.
but i won't try to find her den.
for you who know claudia
my sister
she had successful knee replacement surgery yesterday.
today i went to work to do 
reports.
tomorrow training,
then back to summer.
claudia will go to appropriate rehab 
and i will try to get organized.
today i found this again:
Osmia avoseta bees do not live in colonies. These solitary bees make their nests from collected flower petals. These tiny nests are about half an inch tall and hold a single egg. The mother glues the petals together with nectar and fills the inside with nectar and pollen before laying the egg inside, so that her offspring will have food when it emerges.

More pictures and info: http://bit.ly/LM91Kc 


Photo credit: J.G. Rozen, AMNH

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