Life In The Slow Lane; The Lost Month

 Some teeny snowflakes that I cut for fun. They look perfect on a piece of Sashiko!

My spousal always takes the month of October off for his vacation. He saves his time  during the year to make this possible and, I suspect that after 26 years on the job, he has the right to do whatever he wants to do! As October approaches each year I always feel a bit of trepidation as the "vacation begins" day approaches. The first week is always a bit tenuous as we each try to settle into a life that has both of us home more of the time than we are used to. My routines, per force, are readjusted. or perhaps I should, more correctly, say they are obliterated! I always feel a bit exasperated because I feel like I am not getting enough done when he is on vacation. My household routines are thrown so off track that I scramble to get things done in a totally different pattern. The thing is though - that as I settle into his slower pace  I begin to feel like I'm on vacation too - even  though  I go to work as usual. When I am off we sleep more. Both of us believe in naps but when he is working I seldom take any. Generally, I work through the days - and have more to show as a result. I have been so quiet on my blog that I had not realized how much time had slipped by since my last post. Since the subject  in my lost post was, more or less, hibernation you could see that the vacation spirit was filtering into my consciousness my then.

Backet fungi on a lovely old cedar stump.

Yes, I have managed to get some ATC's done for a swap I'm in and yes, I have played with a few things new things that I am still working on, but the issue is that I really have not cared too much about the 'small' things. The floors have remained dirtier than usual, and although the laundry still gets done it gets done at a different pace. 'My' laundry day is off kilter now too! During the time "we" have been off this month the days have grown shorter as we have become slower, we've marked another anniversary, we've eaten well every day and we have enjoyed doing nothing together. Every year I worry about the "vacation month" and yet every year I remember, after about a week, how much I enjoy his vacation too because I slow down as well. I must need that! I hate letting things slide and I do feel better when I have something to blog about. My spousal returns to work after this week so I suspect I will soon have more to say. Next year I'll try to look forward to slowing down for October rather than fighting it. After all, life in the slow lane has it's own rewards !

I Must Be Part Bear....

I must be part bear  - otherwise why would I be hearing the  siren call to hibernate so early this year?  We've had overcast days this past week that have partnered their grayness with the bleakness of steady rain. The kind of rain that spills & splashes it's way hurriedly through the downspouts. The days are beginning to end early; night creeps in on silent wings bringing full dark before dinner. I see the darkness fall & begin to feel the need to doze - barely remembering to hold onto the knitting needles before they fall to the floor with a demanding rattle. I look at my desk thinking, briefly, of the things that I need to/want to get done .. but isn't that for morning when coffee & sleep combine to bring me clarity  & energy? Do I want to get into a project when I am longing only to slip earlier and earlier into the soft,seductive arms of Morpheus.

The paints twinkle in their pots, the inks,lush & black in their bottles seem to ask me to pick up a pen. The paper lies there waiting, smooth & pale - so perfect & clean. Across the room my sewing machine sits and looks as if it it too is beckoning to me. Neat piles of carefully cut strips & pieces that will, when evenly combined, become a beautiful quilt. The painted surfaces of other sheer bits of silks & gauze almost compel me to get up and get busy - but still I sit. Mesmerized by the fall of evening's dark & rain filled gloom. I listen once ,then twice, again to the rain lashing at the windows & doors and again think that surely I must be part bear or else the pull of such lush, soft laziness & the promises of a good book would not overcome in me the generally so strong need to produce!

Surely I must be part bear? I'll have more to show for my down time when tomorrow dawns and I have sleep and coffee on my side once again !

"ThreadWork Unraveled" My Friend, Sarah Smith's Wonderful New Book

Last week, before she left for Houston, Sarah sent me a copy of of brand spanking new book. I am so proud of her! Sarah is one of those people that always manages to find the best way to get something done. I always knew that when she pursed her lips and sort of "chewed" on something she was in the middle of figuring out something that would be good! Sarah has managed to cram a lot of very valuable information into this book. Sarah has had a clear vision of where she wanted to get to from the moment I met her. She has inexhaustible energy and will and this book is really a dream come true - for her and for all of who need the information contained in the book!

Congratulations dear friend! Bravo!!

Have a look (double click) at this table of contents! Each one is a treasure trove of information!

This is one of those books that you will return to again and again.

Buy it!

You will not be disappointed if you do, but you might be disappointed if you don't !!

 

 

What A Trade! Fingerless Mittens For Gorgeous Hand-Dyed Fabric!

 

You can double click on these photos

 to get a much better view of the gloves and the fabric!

I love make & wear fingerless gloves/mitts.  Making them is like therapy for me & wearing them has proven to be the cure for my endlessly cold hands in the winter - when I wear them almost around the clock! I offered to send  mitts to cyber friend Terri Cohen (owner of From Here to Quilt Eternity) who said "sure! I'd like to try them" so I popped a dusty plum colored pair in the mail  - hoping that she would enjoy them.

Fast forward about a week and an envelope arrives that is filled with glorious hand dyed fabric. It was a "thank-you" from Terri! I had neither expected nor wanted anything in return and I definitely think that I got the best of this 'gifting' ! Terri sent a six piece gradation of browns as well as yardage of my favorite green ever and a glorious, eye popping, piece of red. Her hand-dyes are lush and beautiful and I was thrilled to see them!

I ask you- don't you agree that I got the best of this ?!! Anyone else need a pair of fingerless mitts??!! Thank you Terri - your generosity was not expected but I can't wait to find the perfect quilt to use these fabrics in!! Who says cyber friends aren't 'real' friends??!

Quilts: More experiments is Transparency

I have become somewhat obsessive in my quest for a combination of transparency and quilt. The process' have sparked my imagination more than anything has for a long time - and it is a quest that will take some play time and experiments for some time to come!

This face began as a thrift store sheer curtain panel....one of those polyester things that were so in vogue at one point and, who knows, maybe they still are! I thought it would be fun to see how much of an image I could get on it. I used Golden Digital Medium in Clear Semi Gloss and was rather surprised that it would really well .. better, in fact, that a lot of other base materials I have tried recently! Imagine that! Wonder if I can find some more sheer panels cheap now?! Sorry about the blue cast on this photo - it was a cloudy day and Photo-shopping it seem to just make it worse so I gave up.

These are two separate images. The one on the left is made from the the sheer polyester curtain panel  and the one on the right  was printed on Lutradur Lightweight.  I am doing a couple of small pieces for C&T Publishing - using some of the products that they sell in, I hope, a variety of unusual ways. The Lutradur is from them and the face, which I have called 'Balance' is going to be sent to them. Sure hope that they will like it! Since they gave me the product I added C&T's link for for it but Pellon makes it so it's available from other places too.  C&T has some great things going on so it is worth a visit to their website to have a look! They offer "give-away" promotions & coupons - plus they have a great newsletter that you can sign up for. I am also playing around with another Lutradur product that C&T sent to me - black Lutradur!  I'll have to show you some of the thoughts I am working on using the black Lutradur in another post! As an aside - Joggles, one of my favorite mixed media emporiums, also sells Lutradur in a variety of weights.

Here's the full face. I used kimono silk from Ah!Kimono for the borders and I am totally happy with the way the transparency effect I was able to get using the Lutradur.  I still have a little bit of primping and ironing to do on this piece but all in all I am happy with the experiment and hope that C&T will be too !  Next up I will be making another small quilt similar to this using the curtain panel print! I am enthralled with the concept of transparency & fabrics and can't wait to see where my experiments take me next!

Life: It's Difficult When Your Doctor Moves Away

After this more personal note I will go back to "regular" programming about fabric and art - I promise! I have just been pondering life recently too much I guess!

I am  old enough to remember doctors that called back when a patient or their family called in with a question. I am old enough to remember when doctor's seemed to actually care about their patient's and when health management was more about health and less about management and dollars. I  am also old enough to remember when I never needed to go to a doctor so that having a "family" doctor was anathema to me. A "quick clinic" was always good enough for bronchitis or simple matters that required a 15 minute visit and a single script for antibiotics or cough medicine.

I have always had a difficult time liking doctors and I am certain that this aversion lies with my mother's doctor. Mother was an alcoholic - dt's, hallucinations, hospitalizations etc. Her doctor gave her ups, downs and in-betweens. I always had a difficult time with that but have come to accept that this was, after all, the era of three martini lunches and no restrictions on medications that today we would be shocked to ever see prescribed. I don't blame the doctor - it was the time & space and my mother's own refusal to acknowledge that she had a problem at all ... neither did my father or step-father for that matter.

I have been very hesitant to see doctor's and, when I do see them I generally think that they are only half listening to me and only giving me credit for having half a mind and no body  'smarts'  at all!  Over the years I have been been fairly lucky to have found several doctors who I felt very comfortable with and two of those were people that I could easily have been able to think of as friends had I known them outside of their practice. One of these wonderful doctors retired - finding that insurance companies were too tedious to deal with any longer. My next doctor was young and excellent and I was glad to have had him as my "family doctor"for several years. He moved on to bigger and greater things - and for him this made sense I  know. My latest doctor was the best. He was like Marcus Welby - he actually c-a-r-e-d about his patients, he made the call-backs himself (!), he followed up on things without lots of phone tag. He was young and up-to-date on the latest & greatest that the world of medicine had to offer. This doctor even gave me credit for knowing my own body and he l-i-s-t-e-n-e-d carefully. He was all business - but practiced business with a heart. Now, after only a couple of years he too has left the clinic that many of us go to. If it were a publicly known reason why he left I think many people would have campaigned to keep him here. Some of us have hoped that he will one day return.

So I have "lost" three doctors over 10 years. Now what? Where is my next "Marcus Welby MD"? Unfortunately, unless I travel far away I will need to chose another local doctor. Before he left "Marcus" told me who he thought would be my best local choice (and why) and he also recommended some "traveling distance' physicians in the event that I was not happy with anyone here. I am back to having my blood pressure rise & my heart beat faster every time I have to show up at a doctor's appointment. I hate it...I miss my "Marcus Welby"as I know many others here do. There are not many of them left in the world of medicine which has become a world of dollars rather than sense.

Life: It's Just The Way It Is

Aging!  It's Just The Way It Is !

Aging is an interesting business and I believe that most of us, at one point or another, vow to accomplish this journey with grace and finesse. No screaming and denial for us! I was relatively petite for most of my life, enjoying the ability to eat pretty much what I wanted to with no obvious deleterious effects. That was then you know - this is now - or was it then? No it is now - not then I am quite sure!

The other day a friend of mine called. After "hi what's new" we began comparing notes about the sometimes funny and, at times, not at all  that funny, passage of time. I used to think that no matter what size you wore - that was the size you wore no matter who was making the clothes. If pants were snug then surely it was me who needed slimming - the manufacturer could not have skimped. Surely no kindly manufacturer would intentionally send a size conscious female into a tail spin of depression and angst by cutting their patterns smaller than the "normal" size recommendations that the 'international bureau of clothing size standards'' dictated? A good friend who I have always thought was quite  a small person once gifted me with a PILE of clothing. I am still wearing some of these gems years later. Her taste ran parallel to mine and she could have been my personal shopper any day - wait! she WAS my personal shopper sometimes come to think of it!  The clothes she donated to a good cause (me) were all sizes from 6-14. I was flummoxed. I asked her once if she had kept all of the clothes for a long time or if some of them had been pre-pregnancy clothes? She looked at me with somewhat serious look as if she were speaking to a dullard - huh?!! Indeed she, the fashion-ista of us all clued me in that there was no 'international board of clothing standards'. She imparted the precious knowledge that manufacturers made clothes is what ever measurements they wanted to make them in. One company's 8 could mean another companies 12. This was one heck of a liberating moment for me! No longer was I chained to a can of dry tuna when a pair of slacks felt too snug. I'd just pick a pair from another manufacturer! Yeah! As the years marched relentlessly forward and my distractions made me no longer a long distance runner but a small distance walker, the non existent 'board of international clothing measurement standards' kept expanding my concept of permissible size ranges...when one day I noticed that my unmentionables were also playing this "no standard size" game? How  could that be? Jockey had always been the last bastions of size conformity! At last I take under consideration that it might now be time rather than clothing manufacturers that were the issue. I cautiously pushed the ubiquitous "buy me" button and ordered a larger size. Ahhhhh! relief! I was no longer suffering from a lap band on the outside of me ... comfort ruled once again.

The last few years have been a real eye opener for me. I hate things like belts now. I hate having anything that is not loose and soft of my person. I kept wondering why I was always comfortable at home - ah! could it be perhaps, that I always were elastic waist pants at home?! They may be soft linen Flax pants - but they still have elastic rather than unforgiving stiff roll bands! I like long flowing clothes anyway - and, if I had the wallet to afford it, I would look for a new wardrobe that suits my new, increasingly need for s-o-f-t-n-e-s-s life.  Longer tops with less shape and soft fabrics can sometimes make my short self look somethign akin to a walking toadstool about to tip over. But, no matter - I am comfortable and now understand the adage "made for comfort not speed". Yet another rather rude awakening that I have been able to take with aplomb - it is, after all, just the way it is.

Just as my friend and I (notice how she is remaining nameless less she kick me when she sees me next time!) had finally decided that aging is, really and truly, okay and that we accepted  as 'simply the way it is' the larger sizes we seemed to be gravitating to these days (notice I said we were gravitating to - not that gravity was taking us to them!) began to discuss clothing patterns. "Nameless friend" was just beginning to construct a new jacket from some wonderful fabric that she had recently bought. It's rather like a  jacquard in a scrumptious low key pumpkin color that managed to camouflage small pumpkins within it's weave. She said that, after taking some measurements she was going to have to go and exchange some of the patterns that she had recently bought for larger sized patterns. Why?, I asked - you KNOW that those clothing manufacturers are all different and ALWAYS add a lot of give don't you!! The size you got will fit just fine!

Yep. we're fine with aging - it's just the way it is - right?!