a re-mix of adjectives

Is there a collective noun for a group of adjectives?

If so (and if it has four letters) I might have to add it to my collection.¹

If not—well it doesn't really matter because these words on my loom—

—unfolding a letter at a time—

—are together proving to have a wild kind of agency, with or without a collective noun to define them.

Yes, I always say that about my work in progress (and it is always true)², but this time it seems particularly noticeable.

For not only have do the words keep choosing each other (“Hey,” says calm, “let quixotic use my c”), but I keep embodying the adjectives even as they are tapped into place: volatile to calm, calm to quixotic, and for a time all of them at once.

It’s disconcerting to have my emotions bounce around like that at the mercy of a loom, so you can imagine the relief when I came to be focused (if, for a time, in a quixotic way). But how to cope as I grew irrepressibly focused, hardly able to pause or stretch weaving r after r and e after e? ³

Well, I could revel in the irrepressible tapestry-centric way of being alive that only warp and weft can manifest, that’s what.

(For the good of my shoulders and hands I was glad practical was simultaneously growing on the left).⁴

But a practical, focused rhythm cannot last forever and all too soon it came to pass that being irrepressibly alive and a little bit practical was not enough.

It was time (or so declared the tapestry), to embody those things in a radical way.⁵

Now it happens that I do not like being told what to do. It also happens that my crotchety soul truly bridles at the idea of being told how to feel—especially by an unfolding swathe of woolen cloth—

—but once the idea was introduced I found I actually wanted to be radically alive and wondered how to go about it. Well according to the loom-centric remix of the moment, being radically alive includes being brave, and being brave and alive includes noticing things, and noticing things includes making room for the quixotic quirks that show up, and just now that means—

—sharing the part of me that in its irrepressible enthusiasm has inadvertently misspelled the word crotchety.⁶

So that is where you find me—sitting with the absurdity of it all, curious about what is coming next (there are still twenty or so inches of usable warp on the loom), and delighted to invite you to join Beryl and her irrepressible, (im)practical, radically crochity (sic) person on a crepuscular walk to relish the calming auditory aliveness of ducks, creek riffles, and a dog’s jaunty jingle.

1. The 99 Noun project I “finished” earlier this year. A noun about adjectives would be delicious, don’t you think?

2. Who is in Charge? (see the 13th and 15th tapestries on this page of my archive.

And speaking of the archive, I have at long last updated the it to include work done in 2023 and 2024 (so far).

3. Truth to tell I would prefer to weave an r to an e, but an irrepressible word will have its way.

4. And speaking of practical, here is where I get to say again that NEXT MONDAY, 2 DECEMBER, Rebecca Mezoff and I will have a free live YouTube chat and I hope you will be able to come.

That’s Fyber Monday (Rebecca’s term for her once a year sale), at 10 AM AKST, 11 AM Pacific, 12 PM Mountain, 1PM Central, 2PM Eastern, 4 PM BRT (Brazil), 7 PM GMT ), 12:30 AM on Tuesday in Delhi (I’m so sorry) and 6 AM (also on Tuesday) in Sydney.

It is, of course, silly of me to try to find all the times for all the countries you’re in as you can do that better (and more accurately) than I, but honestly, I am so very thrilled by the idea of you reading the Gusset in South Africa, Chile, France, Finland, Vietnam, Sweden, New Zealand, Bangladesh, Canada and more, that I can’t help but imagine what each and every one of you might be doing right now. Snoozing?

5. I’ve no idea what it means to be radically alive—how I personally might/could/will embody that notion—but now that the tapestry and I have woven the concept into being, I find it irresistible. Especially since I get to be radically practical (or is that practically radical?) at the same time.

6. Funnily enough, a couple of days ago I said something to a friend about how crazy it would be to misspell something in tapestry, and suddenly (while typing the word crotchety into the Gusset), I see that I have. You’d think that the pace of tapestry would ensure plenty of time for looking things up in dictionaries (given that there is no spell check on the loom), but apparently not. Reminds me of the fizz tapestry of last year (14th tapestry on this page).