I have been working on these pieces since last July. There is a certain flavor of anticipation and anxiety I always feel when I'm close to getting home... or my hometime destination... after I've been over the road for a while. I'm familiar with this feeling from all my experiences nearing the completion of pieces in my previous career as a clothing designer. I always knew then that I needed to calm down. Slow down. Be careful or I will make a mistake. Out here behind the wheel I have to make sure I don't run anybody over.
Starting to see the finished product of these two street wear pieces is exciting. The waistbands will bring it all together, I just hope it doesn't end up looking like a group project that got turned in at the last minute. But nobody would say that about the finishing details because I am going for quality.
Don't get me wrong, I AM proud of my mad scientist/ Mary Poppins/ Merlin's leaky turret alchemy workshop aesthetic...but I admit it can be a *bit* much. I miss having a proper sewing studio with a waist high table to spread out on...that I can work in regularly. I have my little hideout in ABQ, but I'm not there now, am I.
* sigh* So close to being done with these. Added elastic cinch straps to tie up inside for fit, to help support the weight of the optional floof.
I have the good fortune of being able to easily watch the sky, and recently Venus has disappeared as an evening luminary. For these few days it is in the sky during the day, invisible beside the light of the sun. In the next few days it will reappear as a morning star. There are many ancient myths related to this celestial event, mostly having to do with the goddess traveling into the underworld.
I tried to go on a hike in Palo Duro Canyon in November of last year, but it had rained a few days prior. The trails were impassable rivers of sludgy mud. So, in honor of this time of heavenly folklore I decided to try again. I have a piece of writing I'm working on with a scene set on a hike through the canyon. Since November I have been reading "Empire of the Summer Moon", historical non-fiction written with a sensationalized tone.
The book has given me more of an understanding of why Texas culture has the brutal character and belligerent, rugged machismo it does, and how that relates to the landscapes I've been across so many times.I'm so proud of my two little lions. They hiked the entire 7 miles out and back of the Lighthouse Trail. There were dust storms with gusts of up to 40mph in the days before we got to Amarillo. Trucks were getting blown off the road. The night before, in Lubbock about 120 miles south, the winds rocked the truck whilr parked for the night. In the morning a thin layer of red brown dust had infiltrated and covered all the surfaces around the windshield.
I suppose I'll say Venus sent us her blessings on the day of our trip because the winds subsided. The morning started off bright and cold, only warming into the 60's by the late afternoon. This landscape is terrifying anytime during the year, but trying to go anytime other than late fall through early spring is especially deadly.
Tza Tza is so proud of herself up in the wind on top of the mountain.
Sculpted by wind and rain, stunning colors of clay, veins of selenite and ocres. When we were here in November we were stalked by coyotes who gave me a big smile when I'd turn and look at them materialize out of the grey brown scrub brush.
I've crossed Palo Duro Creek before, more than 200 miles north west of the canyon in the NW corner of Oklahoma on the border with Colorado. Before it cuts this canyon it meanders through the desolate cottonwood graveyards and endless rolling grey brown hills, a hazy horizon hovering over unalloyed emptiness. S.C. Gwynne cobbles together so many phrases repeatedly to capture the emotionality of the bleak vastness of the territory. He really had to work at it, and I commend him. No words can really express how disorienting, terrifyingly harsh, brittle, raw it is west of the 99th meridian, where the tree end. This canyon is like being in another dimension, and from even a mile or two away you'd never guess it's there.
The Lighthouse & views from the top.
The Palo Duro Canyon is the 2nd largest canyon in the US, about 20 miles south of present day Amarillo in the Texas panhandle.
