recent acquisitions and diversions + the haircut

It's a gorgeous first day of fall ... cool and crystal clear.  And what have I been doing?  Grocery shopping, laundry and making juice.  The laundry is close to being done so it seemed like a good time to share some recent finds, personal trends and diversions.

My most recent acquisition came on Friday and what a yummy deal it was ... 9 yards of vintage indigo homespun hemp or kaya/mosquito net from Japan ... forty bucks!  Okay, so the color is not very deep, but it's a lovely steel blue.  No idea what I'll do with it, but I knew I would surely regret not getting it.

Also in the fiber world ... my regular person stopped selling sari silk and very graciously suggested a different shop - JMozart.  The espresso and deep ocean skeins are even more gorgeous in person.  And I was relieved to find a couple of cones of my dark brown EuroFlax linen at a yarn shop in Maine.  It's a smaller size fiber, but much better smaller as I can easily ply it to the thicknesses I need.

Yes, I'm still deep into my chocolate and indigo obsession ... but there are certainly worse things to be obsessed about!

Another vintage treasure is this sweet little bottle I found at the same antique mall as the kaya - seven bucks!  It has a wonderful patina and will make a great little vase or prop for my jewelry photos.

I've also scored some good finds at the local used book store (Downtown Books & News - DBN) - especially nice as we still have a trade/credit balance.  Years ago, back in the early days of the Nick Bantock craze, another author put out a sweet little volume that is still one of my favorites ... Barbara Hodgson's Tattooed Map.  I knew she'd done other things since then, but none had crossed my path until this one ...

... The Lives of Shadows is now waiting patiently for me to dive in.

An ongoing interest has been sacred geometry and DBN had a couple of books to get my inquiry started - Drunvalo Melchizedek's Flower of Life books.  Then I remembered one I'd seen a while back and found one of those Amazon threesome deals - Quadrivium + 2.  Thinking a full perusal will be a winter project ...

Then for some further inspiration, I went on a Kiki Smith binge.  I found a copy of the DVD documentary, Squatting the Palace for a whole lot less than it's listed right now.  She's such an inspiration ... definitely an excellent role model.  The film is short, but really well done ... leaves you wanting much much more.

So I've been having a really hard time settling in to work.  I thought it was just me, but I've read a couple of fall astrological reports and it seems the universe is having an equally crazy time.  When I sat down to my worktable yesterday, I decided to consolidate my desktop juju.   Not an arrangement for the long haul, but it feels pretty good right now ...

And for an extra challenge, one of my shops wants a pick box of the Urban Primitive steel pieces.  It's been months since I worked with the steel.  I threw in the added challenge of trying a different version, made up a bunch of pieces and kept my fingers crossed with the firing.  Well, the first few pieces I fired did not sinter at all ... not one piece.  They all crumbled.  I went back to Hadar's blog and her insanely long instruction booklet and may have figured out the problem.  I'll try again tomorrow.

And then there's the haircut ...
So, this is from one of our staycation hikes in the beautiful Panther Town Valley.  Even with the hat, you can see that what I had was basically a fat triangle of hair ...

I didn't take any pictures of the between cut.  Nothing against the stylist, but it just wasn't what I wanted.  So here's the after ...

the side view

the back view

and the front of lil' ol' me

Like I was saying before, it's not so much a hairstyle as a haircut.  And since my hair has a fair amount of natural curl, getting it to look chopped up is not easy - it ends up just looking layered.  But, it's a whole lot closer to what I want and as it grows out, I'll chop it up some more.  You see, it's actually quite a bit shorter than I originally intended.  Thing is with that razor - you can cut a lot of hair really fast ... before you realize what you're doing and golly, if I didn't just take out a sizable chunk from the left side and then have to cut everything else to go with that empty space by my chin.  So, it's a start.  The fear is gone and, as I transition into fall, I'm looking forward to tackling a few more of my fears.

Okay, the last dryer load is about done and I'm heading out to sit on the porch, enjoy this nice afternoon and maybe finish my novel - for the second time - Shadow of Night.  This is #2 of a trilogy and I don't think she's even started on #3 ... gonna be a long wait for the conclusion. 

with deep gratitude and heartfelt blessings ........

l i g a - kvk