Dogs and all

As usual today started out innocently enough with a need to catch up my blog and finish an article on Optical Blending in Tapestry. Mainly editing from way too much to what always seems to be way too little.  Every time I do this I know why  the editing process  emphasizes  to me why I prefer to write monographs.  I have just lost 6 weeks of my life to being ill with a cold(?)and then a cough that keeps returning and hindering my work patterns-etc, etc, etc.  Well, that is defiantly  and rather definitely enough of why the dog ate my  homework-moving on.

cutting it out

Anyway, I have stopped and started this poor tapestry-colour study  that I seem to have been working on forever and endlessly. I have had to relearn the colour combinations at least 4 times.  I am surprised that there isn't a line of demarcation for each new beginning. Granted I did put it on hold while I wove and finished Too Little-Too Late. It has the  maybe/possibility of being extremely interesting colour study, but the urge to call it a dog and cut it off the loom or weave it square and start another piece has been/is an intense on going discussion in my mind. Yesterday was close to being the last straw. I was soumacking lines that were suppose to be fragile-tiny life lines of a small almost hidden town in among the mountains  and evening  fog on Lolo Pass in Idaho.  I looked and realized that what should have been small small fragile lines of light were actually big out of proportion lines floating on the surface of the tapestry-not integrating well at all. I couldn't bear the thought of finishing the piece that was obviously AWFUL and a HIDEOUS waste of time. I had thoughts of leaving out of proportion  lines since the piece was obviously destined to be ostracized to a deep hidden and forgotten place somewhere in the studio where I would never have to look up on it again just to get it done. Never a good thing.

I have always maintained if you have a dog on the loom-apologies to Chene, no insult meant to the little guy, but idiomatically I haven’t been able to come up with better phrasing-sometimes it is just better to cut it off the loom and move on.

Shelf Surfing 

 I once attended a lecture while in grad school in the very early 80’s  where the professor said  and it has always stuck with me, “One of the nice things about the English language is that there has over 25,000 idiomatic phrases with more growing into and being used almost daily so live long and live to create idiomatic speech patterns to drive Grammarians crazy-if you don't who will.” Too bad his name didn’t stick with me or I could actually attributed this correctly to  him. With impressive sounds like something from the old Dragnet TV program and Law and Order- glockenspiels hammers and all for emphasis.

box of colour to lighten dark days

 So a dog is a dog, but when and how does it become a dog? So for the sake of procrastination and the expedition thereof(My Favourite saints-even though I have never belonged to a faith that had saints, but envied those who do. I Just think everyone should have one or several in case of need. St Expeditus of Melitene or Elpidius of Melitene; Possibly legendary. Unclear whether his name led to his association with expeditious matters, or the other way around. This association led to his becoming the patron of people who had to deliver things on time.St Jude; the patron of hopeless cases, and of things almost despaired of) This blog entry seems to be my way of burning sage-a cleansing ritual- and tying feathers to trees a releasing ritual for the last 6 weeks of what seems like a wasted lifetime

Sage for burning and clearing 

Sometimes  the feeling of having a dog on the loom  is the design that one ends up hating for one reason or another, or perhaps the colour palette isn't right,or a new thread didn't work, or it’s just been on the loom too long, ones skills weren’t up to doing it,

et al, et al, et al, et al, et al.

 Sometimes it’s just a feeling that may or may not be grounded in reality. It just sometimes happens.

So I love to procrastinate by searching out the meanings of idioms, before I start to write.

Red Primroses

    When I was in Grade School and

Academy and to certain extent while attending WWC,  I was not allowed to use slang or idiomatic language, because my parents felt that it was used only by uneducated persons and showed ignorance.  The school system I was in felt it made one too worldly when one should be set apart from mainstream culture. One Grandmother felt it showed bad taste and poor manners.. The other never thought of such things as being or having the least importance except as an explanation of where one was from and ones place in society and if it got the point across as quickly as possible.

So the first definition wasn't to my liking and a little too gender specific.

Dog; (derogatory) A dull, unattractive girl or woman. Wow, that’s bad I refuse to even acknowledge this definition, just doesn’t work for me especially in the context of a tapestry or anything-too rude!!

 So,  as the Queen of Hearts would say off with their heads and the procession moves on. (Alice In Wonderland)

      I still had not and  haven’t found the perfect idiomatic definition to define a dog on a loom that isn’t offensive, but perhaps that is the point. Ones cultural and location often applies a different meaning  or variation to a phrase. I went to  an on line Thesaurus and made for me some very enlightening discoveries. Every time I think or weave on this poor piece it gives me an attitude about not having finished something that should have been quite easy-a week two weeks at the most of work.

Main Entry:		dog
Part of Speech:		verb
Definition:		chase after; bother
Synonyms:		different, but the same bedog, haunt, hound, plague,pursue,shadow,tag,  tail, track,   trail,trouble
Antonyms: "It is ill wakyng  a sleapyng dogge." [Heywood, 1562] "Notwithstanding, as a dog hath a day, so may I perchance have time to declare it in deeds." [Queen Elizabeth, 1550] “…Cause Every Dog Has Its Day. Like every woman, she gets her own way…”Quote from a Slogging Molly’s song	leave alone, let go       Which led me to wonder, if out of shear  frustration with what was happening  in my  life that it wasn’t the piece , but the process  that I was reading into the  piece  and perhaps  it led me to another  Wikipedia enter(To work at the slowest rate  that goes unpunished. A surprise inspection of the night shift found that some workers  were dogging it. (intransitive, transitive)”        So, I am putting the scissors away  I am burning sage and tying the feathers to the  trees. It’s me not the piece. I cut out the soumack  and will do needle soumack to replace the  really awful clunk soumack with something  more into proportion with the idea I was trying to  achieve. I am back to being able to finish it and  move on by the end of this week

Dogs and such a side I don’t think that I wasted the time researching and procrastinating. I have always been drawn to both the written language and symbols for words, tarots with their opposite meanings and their definitions. 

         According to Wikipedia-“an idiom is an expression,word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that expression that is separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is made.”

Chene's kitten Wry escaping the rain. Who weighs 5 lbs more

Chene.

 Or in a slightly easier form to understand-at least for me-Maybe because I wrote it and meandered on  in my thought process-I don't even know if its correct, but it is a puzzle and a conundrum for me as a Between. an idiom is an expression, word, or phrase or a symbol that stands for something that is unknown and that cannot be made clear or precise whose sense means something different from what the words literally imply. It can also be something hoped for and not seen. 

 The importance of all of this is that one needs to have an understanding especially if one is a between that one can speak a given language, live in the same country and still be a between, When my life became so totally different from the one that I was raised in I fully became a between on three different levels of understanding-culturally and all it implies, iconically and its identifiers and symbolically both in language, music, philosophically, sometimes idiomatically, and…just between. 

      When an idiom is translated into another language or cultural its meaning may be changed and not understandable or meaningless to the new cultural or language. Idioms can be literal or opaque. The meaning can be changed or it can mean nothing, or retain a transparency or meaning when literally translated to the new language or cultural.

They can also be polysemes, the common use of the same word for an activity, for those engaged in it, for the product used, for the place or time of an activity, and sometimes for a verb. We do this all the time in English by just turning a noun into a verb.

      What I find really interesting is that they are culturally or sub culturally specific specific, not understood by outsiders,  and  are often based on conceptual metaphors and symbols that can be fluid in their understanding over time, stay locked and culturally specific or become deeply symbolic and iconic.

Chene Playing dare with fetch stick!

         And with all that aside, I am still trying to catch up and do all the terribly mundane things such as choose lights for a bathroom, clean a closet  the for new access for the attic and heat pump,  which I ended up buying a porch light for, because I hated all of the available “vanity lights” available,  keep up with Chene's training, find weaving time, write, work on studio, cook meals-it is till tax season, rebuild walls-where heaters are leaving, car repairs-some one backed into my new Prius and left while I was visiting my Dad in the hospital, ffp orders, 

et al, et al, et al. ad infinitum. 

But, best of all, I have a new soumack piece I have been studying. I picked this up at a flea market- Piccadilly in Eugene.  They don't seem to be the least bit faded. 

border is probably twined

Soumack patterning the direction it was
woven

      

   Speaking again of dogs--
Quote from a Toby Keith song that I love to read, but hate the sound- I just can’t quite do country western, but at least he finished it. It makes me laugh, which is a pretty good thing.

....One moment in the sunshine when the ducks line up in a row 

lucky dog gets a big ol' bed, stray dog gets the porch 

every dog has it's day dog, but today dog just aint yours 

fat dog, skinny dog, little itty bitty dog, hot dog, kurd dog, weenie dog, bird dog, hound dog, cow dog, bow wow wow dog, wonder dog, barkin' dog, chasing' parked car dog. 

every dog has it's day dog, when the big dog throws him a bone 

one moment in the sunshine, when your ducks line up in a row 

yeah lucky dog gets gets a big ol' bed, stray dog gets the porch 

every dog has it's day dog, but today dog just aint yours 

every dog has it's day dog, but today dog just aint yours."

Toby Keith

Camellias that are just blooming, but will be ugly tomorrow

once rained on. 

       Leaves me wondering what Schubert was trying to say with his very beautiful unfinished Symphony in E major (D 729) in August 1821 1340 bar is structurally complete, but he only orchestrated the slow introduction and the first 110 bars of the first movement-wonder if he thought it was dog and cut it off to soon or maybe not soon enough for him. 

MayFlower or helleborus blooms in Feb. an added respite
from drab!

O, well at least my blog is done,

Cheers,

kathe