I noted in 2022 when posting this first on a tumblr that some blog writing and social media posting has given us ways of imitating what newspapers already did, especially with lifestyle and health pieces.
Now that I read papers more frequently in their online apps, I find that their lifestyle and health sections are quite aggressively promoted. It is hard to believe as many people read them as they would suggest.
Which is an unwieldy way of declaring here today that if I could learn one thing, it would be that just because somewhere, someone on the internet, for example, a crafter or a writer, is selling a kit or a practice that sounds irresistible, it doesn’t mean I have to go out and try it, or keep all my projected balls in the air at once.
Today the project that has fallen by the wayside for a while involves textiles.
For some time now, natural dyes have occasionally captured my attention. I even have a beautiful book on the subject by a master in the field, India Flint. (I have just found that website! Oh My Goodness.)
In 2022 when I first scraped this post off another blog to reload here, I wrote that I had resolved to give her book away as it is too damn enticing for words. I have occasionally flirted with the idea of planting native indigo in my garden, even though my wardrobe is dominated by blue already.
I broke my wrist in 2021, and during recovery and specialist appointments went for a walk in the grounds of Knox Private Hospital and found large plantings of indigo on either side of a path. At the time I wondered if I could have asked for prunings.
And yes, I’ve done one writing course online and I stay in contact with its creator, who was a blog friend fifteen years ago. Her work is very good, as is the recent snappy book on writing produced by another friend. Dipping my toes back into blog writing, particularly in June, suggests I may be about to follow their siren calls again, though most of my writing is done for technical reasons these days, providing support to my disabled son.
With regard to craft and sewing, I am asking, today and tomorrow and next week, for the skill to hold off.
It’s tough with textiles. Most days I wash towels, T-shirts and my partner’s shirts, in shades of blue and grey and browns and chocolate shading to purple. I look at rags from similar items in piles and consider them as an assemblage of some kind related to the people I follow on Tumblr and Instagram who exhibit exquisitely worked over pieces of old cloths, or teach meditation inside creative activity (@emmafreeman, @origidij, @spiritcloth all on Insta ).
I briefly considered a Japanese repairing practice, ordered some needles and then as briefly forgot its name (aaaah Shibori sashiko…BORO !!)
I’ve grabbed small bits of recycled fabrics here and there and even bought a few bits – some hand dyed squares from beautiful Jude Hill which will possibly be gifted to my sister one day if I am not spared to do this.
All three of the artists I’ve mentioned here work by similar principles – Dijanne Cevaal makes “travelling blankets” which tell stories.
I’m not going to make small books like Emma Freeman and bury them anytime soon. There is no need to bury anything – I have a pile of rags, urine-blotted from wiping up toilet spills, to wash and observe most days, as they come out of the machine to be hung on the line, flapping like pale grey, cream and blue prayer flags. Alongside a few of my husband’s soberly patterned shirts they are occasionally very attractive in themselves – before they completely collapsed, the grey pieces had a ribbed pattern that wore away in a very wabi-sabi fashion.
For many reasons, including the reason that I fit an “energetic” profile according to these clever folks, and have too many things on the go, the fabric stash will have to wait and wait…meanwhile:
I ask for the skill not to scratch an itch
To take pleasure in the wind and rain-rinse
Of our fading palette of purpling rags
Fluttering in the wild breeze.
Happiness for the gentle line
Of folded towel scraps on the kitchen table,
Placed carefully in the laundry drawer
By my son, the arranger,
to be used and reused
until they are loopy strings of fibre.
I ask for the skill to desist
From snatching these, embellishing them
with stitches and dyes
Instead of this, may I arrange, photograph,
get ideas
Then make something else
With something else, even words will do
Let the weathered materials
Continue to chatter gently amongst themselves
On the line, in the air,
In golden sunlight and chilly rains.
reloaded: 
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