Christmas Week

The Adorables were with us yesterday.  When they entered the house the first thing they noticed was the hearth covered with wrapped presents.  Ethan's little face became a study in happy absorption as he asked, "Which one is for me?"  Bethy, though, didn't ask.  She went directly to the hearth and studied the labels, finally announcing, "That one is mine.  I see the 'B' on it."  I did not dispute this, as her tone was not a question, and she needed no reassurance.  A woman who knows how to get the job done!

We moved from the house to the studio, where Ethan climbed into my lap to make more Christmas ornaments at one of the work tables, and Bethy chose to look into every nook and cranny of the studio (there are many!).  They can recite the lines to "Santa Claus is coming to town."  We do it as a call-and-response:

Me:  "You better watch out. . ."
Adorables: "You better not cry. . ."
Me: "Better not pout. . ."
Adorables: "I'm telling you why. . ."
All Together: "Santa Claus is coming to town."

This through the entire song!  They both went to great lengths to assure me that they are on the "Nice" list, that they have both been much too good to be on the "Naughty" list.

I think Christmas Day will be the loveliest day we've spent in a long, long time!

Week Seven

I am now a little more than seven weeks past hip replacement surgery, and it could be that life is returning to normal (whatever that is!).  I walk unaided some of the day ("slow and deliberate; good," my doctor said on Tuesday), and I occasionally bend far enough to pick things up that have fallen to the floor.  This is still not easy, but it is coming.

I have been (most irregularly) to the studio, and I still find that to be my favorite haunt.  Yesterday the Adorables were with us after school, and I took them studio-ing with me.  It was a nice experience for all three of us— until Ethan had a Code Brown in his pull ups and we had to go inside to the changing table.  When I opened the door to the outside I saw (with horror) that it had been sleeting while we were tucked so cozily in the studio, and before I could call to him to be careful, Ethan had slipped on the ice and fallen.  I was slow-motion walking so I didn't fall, too, but Bethy, ever the agile and graceful sprite, was sliding along in her boots and enjoying herself immensely.  Granddad came out and rescued Ethan and warned me (quite unnecessarily) to be careful.  I was wishing he would throw me a rope and just pull me across the patio to the kitchen door. . .

The studio is the Adorables' favorite place to play.  Bethy wore a beautiful organdy apron trimmed in pink, a gift from Jill, and she called it her "princess skirt" (anything smacking of the royal life is grist for her mill).  There are so many interesting things in the studio that she had no problem keeping occupied; cork stoppers, empty wooden thread spools, tons of paper and pencils or crayons, her own little desk (which had been her dad's and mine as little children), beads, buttons— and when she is really really good, she can organize the pins in one of the pincushions (too many to count).  And Ethan has cars there and a small drawing board with an racing oval attached to it that he and I designed one day.  There are small lacing boards, too, that fascinate him almost as much as the shiny beads.  There are even blocks stored on their tea cart!  When all else fails, he curls into himself and rests his head on a stuffed animal.

Today they are with us the entire day, as school is cancelled in Cherokee County due to the icy conditions, and both parents are working.  They are napping now, giving my tired voice a rest from reading book after book.  When I was a child, the rare treat of having an adult read me a book was simply heavenly, and I love having them in my lap and helping to turn pages as I pass that treat on to them.  Charles laughs at the physicality of my reading(I am drawing swoops in the air, changing voices, and generally becoming one with the story), but Bethy and Ethan are rapt.  It's a good thing I'm not reading to him— how could I put any personality into a book on the American Revolution, or Jimmy Carter's White House Diary?

Collecting

"The" season is upon us, and being a list-maker, at the top of that page of "To-Dos" is to remove the gourds from the mantel to make room for the Dickens Village.  Once the Village is in place, I start to think like a real Christmas Person.

I am concerned with all the "stuff" in our lives.  I was looking at the pine cupboard in the dining room, thinking about removing pieces of the ironstone creamer collection to make room for Christmas decorating.  We received a lovely gift from Dennis and it would be perfect in a corner of a cupboard shelf.  And the replaced creamers?  Or the chocolate pots?  Boxed away, of course, in the company of so many other boxes.

I have been a collector since I could remember.  My first love was small boxes, where I kept my childhood treasures.  Teapots followed— this was a direct influence of my grandmother, the Irish link of Mother's family.  My aunt Nancy Cile had Christmas dishes, and I wanted that special dining experience for my own family (which I managed, over a period of years of collecting).  And books?  My mother was the book worm who encouraged us from an early age to have our own personal libraries of favorites . . .

I wonder now if collecting is becoming a thing of the past, a relic from a time when homes were expected to graciously accommodate the various interests and collections of its inhabitants, when these habits could spill over without the need to be Better-Homes-and-Gardens neat at all times.  The perfectly-in-place house always makes me suspect that a very dull group of people live there, and when I am in these spic-and-span homes, I find myself looking for the collection that gives identity to an individual, some small clue to the interests of the family in the house.  Today's open floor plans don't lend themselves to corners where children's crayons and books are stored or wall space for displaying drawings, photographs or a shelf of rare antique books.  Where in the world would we put an old egg carton that cradled a little rock collection?

Which makes me think twice about the pine cupboard and the creamers.  This house is smaller than the one we left in Knoxville, less wall space, not enough book cases or closets.  There are boxes and boxes of pictures (many of my own making) that I have no place to hang, so I have not hung anything yet!  Is it possible that, at the end of things, a collector should not downsize, but UPsize?  And how do you take care of the UPsized home as you age?  A dear sister-in-law one time told me, wistfully, that her ideal home was a large concrete-floored room with a drain in the center of it . . .

What a list of questions without answers this is!  How do I solve this very knotty problem of re-forming the habits of a lifetime?  Is it even possible, at this stage, to aspire to change?  Maybe I should not go antiquing any more, not be lured by the gentle, classic shapes of creamers and white china.  *Sigh*  Glance away from beautiful tea pots.  *Double Sigh*  Never again ask to see the leather-bound books in the glass cases . . . Use the fragile chocolate pots until they are all broken and the problem of preserving them is solved by simple attrition—

Aaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!! (to quote Snoopy.)

Is there a support group "out there" for collectors wishing to go Cold Turkey?

Item two on today's list:  Bring the Dickens Village from the basement closet and become a Christmas Person.

Item three on today's list:  Think about everything else Tomorrow.  After all, tomorrow is . . . . (thank you, Scarlett).

Little Ornaments!

I was challenged by my son to find something creative to do with a bag of wine corks.  My initial thought was that they would make good trivets, laid on their side and glued to a piece of plywood, trimmed out on the sides with narrow wood.  They were not all one size, however, so they did not lie in a neat, level line that would be safe for resting hot pots or plates on the surface.  Fixing that problem meant actually dragging out a saw and miter box and doing serious work.  Serious grunge work.  I was looking for something with more gratification and less work.

Moving on, I thought about the challenge of the corks for months.  Last week I finally decided to just jump in and make a Christmas ornament with one.  It was awful.  I, however, had been challenged to make something creative, and I kept slugging away at those corks with whatever fabrics and threads I could find.  Eventually a lovely tree ornament emerged from the piles that had started forming on my worktable.  This morning I engaged C3's services to hold the cork still while I stapled a lining in place, then I began to decorate over that lining.

The result was a small box of eight wine-cork ornaments for the Adorables and their Christmas Tree.  Some of the efforts:

If I could have found my bag of foil candy wrappers, this would have been a cinch!  The ends of the corks are the hardest thing to decorate.  Sparkly paint might have worked, but cork always looks like cork, so I was trying to cover it.  Unfortunately, I could locate only one green wrapper!  Everything else was done with fabric and thread.  This is Mr. Fuzzy-Cork:

This is the Snow Queen:

These little felted guys came originally from The Container Store.  They were a little plain, so I added wings and put Ethan and Bethy's names on the tall hats . . .

And this is my interpretation of a tree that might have grown in Whoville:

Enjoy!  And Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving

Our family has two Thanksgivings.  On Thursday, Julie works at the hospital so she can be off at Christmas with the Adorables.  This gives everyone a chance to have Thanksgiving dinner with the other side of their various families.  This year my sister and her friend are coming for a non-Thanksgiving dinner of roast beef, fresh creamed corn, butternut squash soup, and asparagus.  Jordan may drop by with the children after he has visited his dad's family dinner (but I doubt they will sample the asparagus!).

Our second Thanksgiving is on Saturday, when we will all go to my sister's house and enjoy the larger family there.  There is a tractor show and auction nearby, and while the men are cavorting there, the women play catch-up at my sister's house and get the table ready for mid-day dining.  This year, Billy is not able to prepare the huge meal he normally slaves over, and we are all bringing a dish or two.  I look forward to seeing what shows up!

How nice it is to be twice reminded of the blessings of family and food.  Life is good.

Wednesday's Child Grows Older

Mondays child is fair of face,

Tuesdays child is full of grace,

Wednesdays child is full of woe,

Thursdays child has far to go,

Fridays child is loving and giving,

Saturdays child works hard for his living,

And the child that is born on the Sabbath day

Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

Yes, I did a bit of sleuthing and found out that I was born on Wednesday.  Up until now, I was never sure.  But with evidence in hand, I am blaming my Wednesday birth date for the computer failing, the heat going out in the studio, and a miscellany of little things that annoy me.

Alas!  Alack!  Woe is me!!!

Enough.

Demise of the I-mac

RIP faithful friend.  The I-mac is down.  Jordan will try to resuscitate it tomorrow evening, but Charles reported in such vivid detail the death throes that I have dim hopes of a recovery.  The new wrinkle is how to get things hooked into this little notebook, such as the camera download, so life can continue along.

I thought it would be enough to simply recover from surgery.  How silly— women are supposed to be the consummate multi-taskers, and "simple recovery" doesn't qualify in its present stand-alone form.

*Sigh*

Third Week Begins

What a day yesterday was— the jewel in the crown being a care package that arrived from Anne.  In it was a selection of dyed cottons, wool, cotton velveteen, a skein of thread, and some vintage French sequins.  They are all in my bright spring-like palette of blues, greens, and pinks.  After the past week of stitching with autumn colors, this is a breath of fresh air.

Thank you, Anne!  Even if the rain continues today, it will be brightly spring-ish here in my corner!

A Woman With A Plan

This might all be the result of something as simple as sleep, that I have slept well for three nights now, and I can think clearly—or, what passes for "clear" with me.  Or, maybe I'm not really very good at being sick and my crabby genes have gotten out of hand.  But for whatever reason, I got up this morning with a plan.  And a woman with a plan is hard to defeat.

First, in an effort to find the perfect place to sit peacefully and recover from surgery, I have sat on every chair in this house except one low one, and none are even vaguely comfortable after five minutes.  So there will be little sitting today. Yesterday my sister came and switched out the front legs of the walker for wheels, and of course you know how empowered anyone is with a set of wheels.

Re-establishing the kitchen is a slow bit of work because the glasses and dishes and cookware that were in the upper cabinets must all be pulled down and washed and the bits of sawdust cleaned from the shelves.  Charles has been kind enough to take that on.  Which leads to Part Two of the plan: Studio Time.

Of course, it is as cold as a Warlock's Wookie out there and my blood count is so low I wear two pairs of pajamas and wooly socks and a long robe and wrap in blankets and still shiver in what Charles thinks of as an overheated house . . . but once I make it across the courtyard and down the little bit of walkway, I should be at the studio door and hoping to negotiate that single step without mishap.  [Addendum to plan: wear heavy outdoor clothing, in case you need to call 911 for assistance.]

Third part is the studio itself— the creative spots, the boxes and drawers and stacks of materials on tables, the sketchbooks on their shelves . . . and those wonderful, energy-saving rolling chairs!  I will fill a tote with things to do that are not messy.  Well, maybe a little mess is allowed.  Instead of staying there and working, though, I will bring my work with me into the house.  Jill was right when she said that she can plan best when she's away from her studio.  I think there are too many interesting things in a studio that can distract from process and method . . .

Fourth part is the trip back, maybe with a tote-bearing husband in tow, and finally settling down somewhere in the house with hot tea and my playthings.  If I am absorbed in something interesting, these chairs might not be so uncomfortable.

Now, how's THAT for a plan?

Home Again

When you have been away from home, your perspective of that place changes.  I have had complete hip replacement that has altered my life.  I can walk without pain for the first time in seven years.  My yard and garden will not be off limits to me much longer.  I look forward to walking up and down stairs again.  In the next week I will begin re-assembling my kitchen as well as setting up a play and craft area for my grandchildren in the room where I will spend a lot of my rehabilitation.

And I have had some empowering experiences.  I had lost 1/2" of height through the progression of the disease in my hip over the years.  My surgeon restored that balance between the length of my legs, which means I should walk upright again, without listing to one side or the other and causing further damage to my lumbar.  How intricately intertwined our body parts are!  And the home is just as intricately involved with its own parts.

Home was much more beautiful this morning, my husband more dear.  My son and daughter-in-law and their two children came for a visit that brightened my spirits, and I realized as they were leaving that there is no way to separate any of these deep relationships without everything suffering, impossible to repair.  How marvelous interdependency is!

F as in . . .

Flowers.  Flower Doodles.  Lovely, deeply textured flowers and foliage were the inspiration for this experimental Doodle Cloth:

I was trying out different threads and yarns to get different effects as I stitched, and the effects were so richly textured that I sort of forgot to go back to my original idea and just played with the threads and stitches for a couple of days (my idea of heaven!).

A silk flower:  A chrysanthemum:

Foliage.  The piece following is done entirely in straight stitch, in Walsh wool.  Blending the larger areas, like the pink wall and the table top, was so absorbing that I sat working on this for hours at a time, going through piles of wool to get the right color to transition from one place to another.  The work is so densely stitched that it lies high above the surface of the linen ground.

The pot of flowers is part of a series of blue vases I did to expiate my guilt over breaking a blue vase of my mother's.  There are more than two dozen works on this subject (over a period of about 15 years; who could withstand Mother Guilt?).  What an interesting single-theme exhibition they would make!

Fantasy Flowers.  This collection of flowers is the charming outcome of a Freestyle Round Robin Project in 2008 where the participants each chose a subject, prepared guidelines for one another to follow, and each month we received a different box with notes about the piece we were to create.  My subject was the Fantasy Flowers  From A Far Planet.  I asked that the Freestylers simply let their imaginations run wild and create outlandish flowers.  I also asked if they would write a small guide to the flowers on a 3" x 5" card.  These are the truly outlandish and utterly fabulous fantasy flowers I received from my friends:

Above, by Sandra Beck.  Below, by Anne Stevenson (and I'm sorry about the color, Anne, but the dark would not adjust without changing the other color).

By Peggy Huffine (the color is not completely true, but lightening it allowed the little seed pods in the background to show up better):

And by Cynthia Patrick:

An odd thing happened in the uploading process.  Jill's flower contained an image of Elvis Presley, and the server would not allow it to be posted.  Up until this moment, I sorta liked the guy.  Sorry, Jill.  I'll work on this and try to find out more . . .

Kitchen Magic: Slow Slide to Home Plate

Our builder did not quite believe all this white was going to work.  His own kitchen reflects great effort to disguise the sticky finger prints of three sons.  I have only one sticky-fingered individual to worry over, so the white is manageable here.  I think the brown kitchen that was here when we bought the house reflects a man's horror of anything too clean-looking.

When the quartz counter tops came in and the double enamel sink was replaced with this huge stainless one, I began to have visions of using the big pots again— the ones that are difficult to clean because they don't lie flat in a double sink or they bump against the sides of most sinks.  Family spaghetti dinners, stir frys, maybe a great chilli night!

And the great new doors on the wall cabinets, a mixture of white panel and glass-panel, are like a neat series of frames around the walls.

Pix come at the end, after surgery.  Imagine what a nice thing it will be to come home to a completed kitchen!  I have threatened Charles with bodily harm if he puts one tiny item in a drawer before I come home!

I am, however, sensible enough to thank him for his semi-patience through all of this.

Garden Weekend

Saturday's report: The worst-looking mulched area adjoining a home I have ever seen was in our back yard until this morning.  The work of morphing this area into two wings of extended patio began today.  Workers trucked loads of ugly mulch, rock and Georgia red clay to the back of our lot where a drop-off was just waiting to be filled.  Warren, our yard man, and three helpers, worked non-stop.

The materials for the flagstone extensions arrived yesterday afternoon.  Along with the stone, the bags of dirt, gravel, and sand were left in front of the studio near the gate to the back yard.  Charles had to investigate everything as the fork lift brought it up the hill.  Men ARE just over-sized little boys, aren't they?

Sunday's Report:  Wow!  This is a case of the reality being much more beautiful than the imagined product!  Warren has brought a master craftsman to lay this patio, and I am too intimidated by the precision of his work to even think about walking on it when it is done!  I see myself standing on the old patio staring in admiration at the flagstones . . .

There is a narrow border around most of the two parts of the patio where I can plant low bloomers next spring.  And a few bulbs, a mossy patch or two. The wide spaces between the stones are for planting Irish or Scottish moss, probably next spring.  The planting season is just about gone for 2010.

 This is the new patio on the studio side of the terrace:

What a nice walk this will be next spring, with the dogwood in bloom and the borders planted!  And below is the sun room side of the terrace:

A little patch of grass and stepping stones separates them.  Tomorrow morning quite early, Eric Hill from Autumn Hill Nurseries will set up the new fountain on this side (to enjoy the fountain from the sun room next spring!).  What fun!  Except for the being wide-awake and capable of making decisions at 8:00 am, this is good.

Tuesday's report:  Here it is!  My little fountain, up and gurgling just outside the sun room!

Whee!!!  Three very large men brought it in.  "Permanent" gets a new definition in the OED.

E as in . . .

Elephant.  Shakespeare writes: "He is as valiant as the lion, churlish as the bear, slow as the elephant."  Which is how I move about these days.  Very elephant-ish.

Eggplant.  Euonymus.  Eggs Benedict.  End Zone.  None of which show up in my embroidery.

More Neighbors: The Gardener

I think this is the house next door to mine in my imaginary neighborhood: The Gardener.  Here lives someone who has such a passion or fetish or deep and abiding respect for gardening that it has taken over everything.  Absolutely everything!

This one was "built" a number of years ago, another "find" in the studio boxes.  It was made by laying pieces of wool fabric  on a base of wool and heavy linen, then sewing the blocks down to form a rough patchwork of wool over wool.  Next, the pieces were cut apart and re-assembled.  This new, re-assembled piece became the fabric the house shape was cut from before decorating with cotton prints, embroidery, beads, buttons-- anything bright and flowery, including a little pewter watering can!

Above Boone, NC, there is a terribly winding road that connects it to Banner Elk, Cranberry, Spruce Pine, Little Switzerland-- small, beautiful Western North Carolina towns.  In one of the curves of this road is the smallest cabin imaginable.  In the late spring, summer, and early autumn, it is so suffused with flowers it can take your breath way.  The cabin is not so much a house as a frame for the hanging pots, planters, flowers and vines that are climbing and draping every small space!  It is an excess of beauty and a testament to the love of growing and nurturing plants.  I have never seen anyone stirring in the yard or on the porch, but I have often thought I would be able to sit down and have a long and deep conversation with this gardener-- like the gardener who must live in my little embroidered house.

D as in . . .

Doodle Cloths!  The funnest of all embroidery, Doodle Cloths are places to explore the effect of a new thread on a stitch, of pulling the edges of a stitch to re-shape it, or trying out an idea before you invest hours of labor in something that doesn't quite fit your mental image-- a sort of embroidery where you kick off your shoes and thread a needle and just see what happens with a line.  Paul Klee called this type of un-pre-meditated drawing "taking a line for a walk."

The doodle cloth below is one I carried with me for more than a year and embroidered in the tiny minutes between things-- waiting in doctors' and dentists' offices, stuck in the traffic in Buckhead, holding for some recorded message on the telly . . .  I kept it in the corner of my purse, with a handful of threads, needles, and small stork embroidery scissors tucked inside.  It will always remain my favorite because it was the one I lived with for so long:

Here I discovered silk ribbon and began to look for the most textured stitches and threads to use with it:

This Doodle cloth was done at a Freestyle meeting when we were studying chain stitches.  Beth had a lot of cotton fabric in varying colors, and I took a load of it home and cut it into 10 inch (roughly) squares and painted or used discharge paste and re-painted the squares several times . . .  It was a colorful room of Doodle Cloths that day!

This one is from a Campbell class, random and exploring layering with appliqué as well as plain stitching.  It is a bright, happy bit of needle rambling.

I have a box of these experimental cloths, and they are some of my favorite rainy day contemplations.  I mine them for new ideas-- they are a bit like having a stack of embroidery notebooks always at hand.  I learned this habit from reading Jacqueline Enthoven, in the 1960s, and I began to keep a Doodle Cloth in my embroidery bag at all times, ready for the next trial stitch or two.  Then the embroidery bag grew too bulky, and I began to store things in boxes, but the Doodle Cloth never fell by the wayside.

When I taught at Campbell, I always brought the box of Doodle Cloths from the past.  Seeing all the possibilities was a way to generate enthusiasm for the coming week of projects.  As the class worked, I began new Doodle Cloths to demonstrate the basic stitches, to explore the contrasting effects of heavy or light threads, and to see how much distortion we might try with a stitch before we had to call it something else entirely. Sampling stitches and threads is fascinating.

Sampling stitches . . . this sounds as if we're talking about Embroidered Samplers, doesn't it?  Doodling is free-association sampling, and sampling is a form of structured doodling.  However, there is quite a difference between the appearance of a Sampler and a Doodle Cloth.  A Sampler is more organized, and has some element that pulls it together-- color, line or shape, theme, stitch, etc.  The orientation is always a single direction in a Sampler, where the Doodle Cloth can be turned in any direction to find some interesting stitch variation.  I will confess to being less capable of stitching a Sampler than a Doodle Cloth, because I often lose interest in the organization process, and what started out to be formal (think: stitches dressed in Sunday best, sipping tea with hands still and gloved) ends up in a riot of color and stitch placement (think: children on a playground, out of earshot of anxious nannies).

The name/pigeonhole really doesn't matter-- except for the fact that this was to be a "D" day in the alphabet series.  The stitched ideas are saved there for some future day when I may want to investigate them on a larger scale.  Making Samplers or Doodle Cloths is a lovely way to spend a quiet afternoon!

Kitchen Magic: Continuing Saga

Oh, my gosh!!!  What a mess.  A naked kitchen!  And we were going to have only this tiny little bit of change made so we wouldn't have to crawl around on the floor to use the base cabinet area . . .

This morning, Charles was not to be done out of his coffee and bagel.  He is not a man to let a little thing like no available kitchen stand between him and his breakfast.  Ever the clever one, he brought the electric kettle and toaster into the hall bath and set up his make-shift kitchen on the vanity there.  When I stumbled down the hallway and saw it, I couldn't stop laughing.  In fact, we both laughed until we had tears on our faces.  I took my seat at the oak table and was presently served my morning cup of tea and bagel.  To the more important point:  CHARLES had his morning cup of coffee and bagel.  As we have suffered a number of hesitations, hiccups and a major pause in the forward motion of the kitchen, his only comment was, "Those suckers better show up today!"  That was a reference to our 10:30 appointment to have the countertops installed.

Our builder, Dennis, was here, Johnny-on-the-spot, with his help, and they immediately set to ripping out the last of the trim on the old cabinet bases, full of assurances that the cabinet people would be here shortly.  A very skeptical Charles watched with a slight rise of one eyebrow.

I decided to be far, far away if there should be fireworks, so I went to the downstairs office and burrowed in to download photos from the camera.  A little ahead of schedule, I heard voices, the signal that the countertop had arrived!  From there, it was a series of bumps and groans and tramping feet overhead that let me know the progress was unimpeded.  I waited downstairs in an excess of patience while the work went on.  An hour into it, I couldn't wait any longer, and I crept upstairs (I don't even want to tell you how long THAT took!).  My first impression was to be stunned at how clean everything looked!  My kitchen had moved from cream and dark brown to white and bright, and life suddenly kicked up a notch.  In my pleased amazement I happened to glance down.  Oh, dear, but the floor, in a lovely pale beige tile, looks in need of replacing. . . God, cut out my tongue, please.  Don't let me even MENTION that to Charles!  Especially since the drawers and doors haven't arrived yet!

Earlier this morning I was feeling sorry for myself because I couldn't make the trip to Knoxville for the Freestyle Meeting today (at Carol's house, and all dressed up for Halloween!).  I think the excitement here was a gift, to help me through what might otherwise have been a really long-faced grumpy span of hours.

C as (also) in . . .

Chair.  Inspired by Van Gogh's yellow chair, and set in a corner, the chair is visible from several points at once.  Worked in varying weights of cotton on linen, with ultrasuede in background.

Another Little House For The Neighborhood!

This little house was "built" several years ago, and I only re-discovered it yesterday in a box in the studio (I will ever be sorting and discovering, I have come to believe).  The house was created separately of layers of wool and cotton prints and later  appliquéd to pieces of linen and silk that were laid over a thin cotton batt.  The patio and garden around it are stitched in silk, a softly variegated floss.  I imagine the family living here to be fun-loving, on-the-go folks who are not as concerned with housework as enjoying travel, the sort who maintain a beautiful garden while the house goes a bit seedy . . .

It's really starting to be an interesting neighborhood, isn't it?  Imagine a tea party with all these assorted neighbors walking over to visit!

Book In A Hurry

When you have two grandchildren, it is difficult to do something for one without providing something of equal emotional value for the other as well.  I think that falls under the old "Even Stephen" rule of my childhood.

So when Charles bought Hot Wheels for Ethan, we needed something that Bethany would also love to play with.  As she cannot resist stickers and tattoos, I am always on the look-out for these.  I had a little book of stickers I'd bought last year, putting it up to wait for the Perfect Moment to give it to her.  But the "Lucky Lady Bug" stickers didn't hold its own against seven new Hot Wheels, so I went into the studio last evening and made her a book where she could draw and add the lady bugs to the pages.   Today, the Perfect Moment seems to have arrived.

The book cover is made from a cotton print and a strip of very sweet pink and white swan-themed ribbon (thank you, Jill!).  The inside cover is pink and white polka-dots.  Light weight buckram and some soft acrylic fabric line and stiffen the cover, and zig-zagging finishes off the edges.  Our combined efforts:

Note:  Hmmm . . . I see that Photo Booth isn't awake yet, that he needs to flip the photo so things read properly, left to right.  One of us, the Ap or myself, has a flat learning curve.

These wait for the Adorables when Charles picks the up from nursery school today-- along with oat cakes and fruit juice.  Now, isn't that a nice way to start a visit with grandparents?

Sew Much To Do!

My little scrap bowl is the measure of how busy things have been in the studio.  With all the kitchen work going on, and the boxes of kitchen gear sitting everywhere, it seems so much nicer to go to the studio and play.  Not that the studio is a model of neatness, but there is such a difference between a cluttered house and a creatively cluttered studio.  Besides, in a week or two, I won't have an excuse to avoid de-cluttering the house, and I'll spend several agonizing days without the comfort of my needle and thread (think: Linus without his blue blanket, and you'll have a perfect portrait of my mental state).

Charles moved some things in the studio for me yesterday afternoon so that my coming and going will be less an Event than a simple Occurrence.  When I move into left-brain mode, I am a marvel!  I have often wished I had a business where I could come into a home, office, or studio and bring my crew of smiling and eager workers and be given carte blanche to organize everything.  This is a woman's dream job-- people who actually do as they are told and move things until they are in exactly the right spot, and they don't argue, whine, or talk back when they're told to do something!!!  Now, that said, I can leave my dream world and come back to reality, where I have devised all sorts of ways to slide furniture into place by using old cotton throw rugs, and place boxes on office-type wheeled chairs to ferry them from place to place.  Where are those smiling and eager workers?

Birthday Party

My sister so kindly sent me photos she took at her grandson's third birthday party on Saturday.  Alex turned three.  The next generation sits on the back porch swing at Jessica and Adam's house: Bethany, Alex, and Ethan.

And later on, my Adorables are having cake and ice cream, still on the back porch:

Aren't birthday parties wonderful-- except that we have to count them as we get older!

Studio Notes: Clutter vs. Accessibility

Most Recent Dilemma:  It is difficult to maintain a gently untidy studio and negotiate my way through it on a walker.  My style of creativity doesn't thrive in pristine settings, yet the clutter that I find so inspiring doesn't allow me to get around very easily.  We are now at a point of impasse.

I have been combining things that were separately housed, and this took some real thought.  I was one of those children who never let the carrots touch the green beans on her plate, and if the gravy from the meat ran into the peas, I was physically unable to look at it until my plate was sorted out for me by my impatient mother.  Eventually I learned to eat mixes of things, and that is the type of thing I'm trying to do in the studio (hyperbolically speaking).  Perhaps all those carefully-sorted buttons (by color, and tones of color) in a divided box could be moved into an attractive glass or ceramic jar and sat with the mother-of-perles.  Picking through all those cheery colors for just the right button could be a nice experience one day.  And there is always my little studio helpers to be considered:  Ethan loves to arrange the spools of threads in the acrylic thread drawers; Bethy is my button girl.  A fun task for her as well as a way to use an old kitchen canister.

But there are boxes and boxes of knit/crochet yarn that need to be moved from near the entrance.  And despite my serious and continuing search, I cannot find the right place for them.  The answer might be to simply sit down and crochet the whole lot, but I would be crocheting for a long, long time.  Really.

The twelve boxes of picture frames were moved to the basement storage in the house.  My husband has not been the same since then.  The studio is much improved, though.

I made a solemn promise to myself to sort through all the woolens and keep only what will fit in a 50s-style cupboard at the front of the studio.  This decision involves an overflowing box of men's wear suiting samples that I do not use very often.  This extra box will go to the Freestyle November Embellishing Day, and we can play and sample ideas without feeling too guilty about the waste of wool.  I discovered them embedded in a large lot of quilting scraps my sister shared with me last year (over-sized bins filling the entire bed of a pick-up truck went for $20!).  And I  have a good bit of white wool for Kool-Aid dyeing . . .

My worst clutter-ful habit is that I defer returning bobbins of thread to their proper drawers after a project is done, and they stare up at me from little piles that range up and down the embroidery table.  I solved this by devoting a large wooden salad bowl to that clean-up process, and on a day when the muse has excused herself, I pull out the bowl and put all these things back in place.  The muse, suddenly aware that I am quite content without her, will return almost immediately.  The truth is that handling the threads and opening drawers to all the blues or greens or yellows stored there sets the juices to flowing, and I'm back to searching for linen and starting up the next round of projects.

One day I will have a wholesome and organized studio.  At least, that is what I tell myself when I see something that needs to be somewhere else.  I am a firm believer in telling yourself things over and over until you believe them enough to eventually make them happen!

A Little Pink House

One of the nicest things about make-believe is that anything goes, anything at all.  I have a soft spot for painted houses, and that shows in this little pink house.  It is built on layers of felted wool, the top layer being the result of heavy needle-felting (the embellishing machine) and embroidery.  I used scrim in little tiny bits and roving and some scraps of colored wool to get the basic texture, then turned the fabric over and stitched the tiniest french knots (a single strand of floss, one wrap around the beading needle) to give a suggestion of orange to the mix of colors.  The door is a piece of vintage fabric, outlined with pink floss.  The windows are scattered across the front of the house.  I think this is to accommodate furniture placement (how many times have you wanted to move a window just five inches to the right or left?).  And if the furniture inside the house is moved around, the windows can be moved, too, by swishing across them with two fingers, the way we do those magic telephones.  Simplicity itself!

Now, the best part is imagining who lives here.  A room under the eaves would be my favorite spot, a quiet place away from the noise and jumble of family life below.  Maybe a little girl has her room here?  Bookcases everywhere, the shelves groaning with books . . . . 

This house would be located in a neighborhood of quite colorful homes.  I'll consult my muse to see who lives next door, and post that picture another time.

C as in . . .

Cup.  Cup of Tea.  This one seems a bit excited, so it must be highly caffeinated tea.  Maybe kicked-up Earl Grey?

Cats.  If cats didn't have a certain attitude of self-importance and extreme satisfaction with him/herself, they would not be such interesting subjects for study.  In these pieces we see a little striped cat who has no problem deciding what to have for dinner.  And after dinner, the little stroll around the block to settle the tummy is as much a promonade as a healthy outing!

Kitchen Magic: The Slow Version

Monday morning, a week and a half past, the work in the kitchen began.  Short of carrying the laptop to the kitchen and holding it up and taking photos (are you getting a mental picture of this?) and looking like an ancient goddess presenting sacrifices to the kitchen god, I don't know how to get photos on this computer.  So reading this will require a great deal of imagination.

Out with the old base cabinet experience of hanging upside down and peering into pure darkness, or down on all fours and wearing a miner's hat to search out anything stored there.  Old-fashioned cabinets these were, with mullions dividing the space, so anything going in or out had to be turned on its side . . .

I will spare you the gorey details.  Drawers will be replacing all of this!  Even in the island-- extremely wide, and very deep drawers.  Having all the flatware and cutlery spread out in one wide space will be heavenly.  In the pre-drawer era, the silverware resided in a divider tray on the counter top, covered with a linen towel to protect from kitchen grease and dust.  At present, with things moved out of the kitchen to accommodate construction, it would take a long prayer session to uncover it.  We have been eating a lot of take-out, and because the weather is nice, we eat on the patio.

Since the kitchen would be semi-new with the addition of under counter drawers, we decided to add a new dishwasher (the present elderly machine can be very tempremental).  And a vent over the stove that will actually take the cooking smells out of the house (yes, this house is so old that nobody did that in the 1970s).  While we were re-configuring, we asked the builder to hang the microwave over the stove.   That freed the counter in the pantry for the food processor, crock pot and hand mixer to be instantly at hand.  And to be honest, the pantry needed an overhaul, too.  After that, how could we neglect the overhead cabinet doors?  That said, we were left with only a few "old" areas in the kitchen.  The refrigerator is fine.  And the gas range is a wonderful war-horse with many campaigns left in it.  But the countertop?  And the sink?  Faucet?  Dear, me!  Bring on the samples!

Yes, it got out of hand.  And no, I'm not sorry.  I only wish I was relaxing at a beach resort near Savannah while all of this was going on.  I'm afraid this will be one of those long sagas.  I pray to be proven wrong.

Baby Doll Clothes

October crept up on me.  One day it was summer, and the next it was long-sleeved weather.  No more cropped pants!

One day last week, Bethy made an impassioned plea for clothes for Baby Doll.  How do you turn down a four-year-old with tears in her eyes?  Of course, the books of dolls dress patterns that I owned eons ago is not in the library anywhere, so I had to wing it (every day that I need something I no longer have makes me more reluctant to clean out things I think I don't need; bad logic).  After some struggle (of course, the little pajama crawler the doll wore was made of knit and would not adapt to cotton prints), I came up with a muslin pattern, and from that could begin to put together the pieces.  My vision and the resulting garment were two entirely different things, but when you are sewing for another and they don't share your vision, you aren't obliged to "tell all," are you?  The feet gave me a problem, but after two false starts, I remembered how effective tucks could be, and the feet magically appeared when I turned the garment.

The body of the "Thingee" is made from a lavender print fabric from a quilting binge about 25 years ago.  The sleeves are from scraps of a soft cotton Mother used to make a pair of pajamas.  My mom was remarkable-- until she died, at 81, a store-bought item of clothing was a still treat.  Had she been born a generation later, she would have been a fashion designer.  We used to whine, if you can imagine, because we didn't have dresses from the Sears Roebuck catalogue like other little girls in our classes at school!  Ours were unique, one-of-a-king designs she adapted from several patterns and her ingenuity.  What ungrateful little imps the three of us were!

So, this is my first attempt at dressing a little doll since I made Barbie Doll outfits for nieces Jenny and Lisa in the 1980s.  Naturally, it doesn't stop here.  I have yet to figure out how to make bloomers with lace ruffles and a matching dress (and I thought making an outfit with feet in it was trouble!).  Am thinking seriously about teaching Bethy how to sew.

The Neighborhood: Little Houses

I love any home and heart theme, and keep returning to this highly personal theme in any art form.  Lately the home theme has nagged insistently at me, and I started a little neighborhood of these small houses.  They are about 6" tall, built on layers of felted wool fabric or sweaters, and pieced with all sorts of fabrics and stitched with as many beautiful threads as needed to finish them up.  As they are stitched more and more, they become sturdier, and will eventually be appliquéd to another piece of linen to make a framable piece of the collection.

This group of three is in a more sober colorway than I normally use-- it is the influence of the autumn, I believe.

Tiny stitches.  Sometimes VERY tiny stitches, but so worth it when the lines are finished.  Rubbing my finger across them gives a heavenly bumpy feel to the surface.  Some of the fabrics are very old, pieces from old quilts that chopped up and sold at a flea market (could not resist all those beautiful old fabrics squashed together in the two plastic bags!).

"Home Sweet Home" has taken on a new meaning now!

Fountain!

The saga of my fountain is a story fraught with ups and downs, finger-nail-biting moments . . .

The "new" house came with a lovely water feature, a small three-bowl fountain in the back yard on the lower terrace, just outside the studio, and framed by the large window in the bathroom.  It was love at first sight with me.  Charles, however, saw it with other than rose-colored glasses.  He remembered ten years of the swimming pool in Smyrna.  Hard to believe, I know, but this small little pool with innocent cherubs cast into it became part of his hatred of all things water.  The fountain was set in a small pool, so he had to get down onto the ground to clear the pump in the autumn.  And it had to be drained and closed in the winter, just like the pool.  But, somehow, I was never able to completely grasp Charles' connection between a 20' x 40' swimming pool and a small verdis green fountain.

Then, last winter, the unspeakable happened:  the ground froze and heaved the fountain to one side.  Charles had tied it up so well, however, that it did not fall, and we didn't really realize what had happened until the next spring.  I thought it only needed to be re-set in its little pool, but that was not to be.  I was broken-hearted.  Charles gave an Apache war whoop and all but danced around the scene of desolation.  He had it disassembled and out of the ground before lunch.  It was with great effort that I kept him from sledging it and carrying the pieces off to the county dump-- I reminded him he would have to pay to do that, and things immediately settled down.

Because I believe that all serviceable things have a life and that the life of this lovely fountain was not yet ended, I called my friend Jill and asked if she and Joe would like a fountain for their yard.  She said yes, and I was so happy.  Joe spends all his spare time working in their yard, and it is simply the most splendid garden spot in the Knoxville area.  The back yard drops away, and he has done a remarkable job with stone there, even creating a sheltered place for a fish pond.  It is hard to carry on a conversation sensibly, there is so much distracting beauty there.

I digress.

Joe put the fountain in, and Jill and he are happy with it.  A nice ending, yes?

This left me, however, without a fountain of my own.  Discussing this with Charles has been difficult; it has been a brier patch in our existence since last spring.  Charles had one problem as the result of the passed-along fountain:  a 54" diameter hole, 2' deep, in the back yard.  It began to fill up with water when it rained, and we were afraid one of the grandchildren would fall in it.  So we planted a dogwood tree there, circling it with stone and planting dwarf zinnias within the circle.  It is lovely.

But the fountain?

Well, the fountain problem is now solved (no; I have not murdered and buried Charles on the property).  After some months of looking at small back-yard fountains, we found one that does not require a grown man to crawl about on all fours to attend it.  We were particularly attracted to this one because it is a large, low bowl on a wide base, one that will not tip and that will be a pleasant place for our two Adorables to play.   A more traditional fountain is tall, and Ethan is short enough that he would grasp the rim of the bowl and try to pull himself up--which would only have disastrous results.  I have a small bowl of beautiful green sea-glass and glass droplets that they can toss in and fish out to their hearts' content.

Now, we have a small wait-- the area for the fountain has not been finished, yet.  Two sides of the lower terrace of the back yard are mulched with layers of (from bottom to top) medium-sized stone dyed red, red mulch (that has faded to grey), and fragmented pine straw.  This brown disaster has been a thorn in my side since we purchased the otherwise quite nice house.  Warren, the young college student who does our yard for us, said he would lay stone there for us, and when the flagstones are down, the fountain will come next.  We will be able to enjoy the fountain from the sun room, and the Adorables will be able to play there in plain sight of anxious eyes.

Don't you love it when a plan comes together?

The Might Of The Laptop!

Unbelievable!  Here I am in the living room posting to my blog, just like a real 21st Century person.  I feel I have shed my medieval garb, and have gone from flowing robes and braided coif to mini skirt and punk hair, all in a single morning.

Charles so kindly purchased, and Jordan so kindly spent hours in setting up this marvelous link with the world.  I feel a little as if I have just been invited to drive a powerful new Porsche, and the engine is throbbing with impatience as I crawl down the driveway and creep onto the street, not quite sure of how to shift into low gear . . .

There are "Universal Symbol" keys aligned along the top row, and I have to smile at the misnomer.  Universal to whom?  Fortunately, if I push one key and it does strange things, I can push the key a second time and it un-stranges everything.  And the tracker pad replaces a mouse, but by swiping with one, two, or three fingers, you can scroll or enlarge or squeeze the image size.  Mercy!  Has Apple ever had such an awed and ancient user?

Now, to think of a way to get to the studio with the laptop, a cup of tea, a small basket of threads, my long grabber tool, and manage the walker, too.  The rain makes it tricky.

Wish me luck as I leap into this new world.  Charles and Jordan may have created a white-haired monster.  What if I insist on being given an i-phone for my birthday?  I keep seeing young people swiping their i-phones to get information from them, and I'm practicing my swiping as we speak.  Ah, such grace is possible here . . .

Books

It has not been a particularly active week.  A trip to the doctor was the Big Event.  You see, just before they left for England with their mum, the Adorables gave me a small gift: a virus!  I have been unable to speak for a week, now. This morning I woke up able to make a few small noises, which seems to be the harbinger of healing.  As the simple act of speaking left my throat raw and swollen, it has been unusually quiet here.  Charles has had enough of a rest, however.  When I'm 100%, I'll talk his ear off, and he'll revert to not using his hearing aid and reading uninterruptedly in the living room!  He has been something of a saint about cooking and fixing me innumerable cups of tea, however.  Thank you, dear.

I have been digging into Agatha Christie during this enforced sit-and-wait-out-the-virus business.  Miss Marple and Inspector Poirot never fail to keep the pages turning.  If I see another crossword puzzle, though, I may start to speak gibberish and have to be carted off to a quiet place with padded walls.  There have also been some newer books in my stack.  I'll make a list of these,  some you might like to read yourself.  Note:  I avoid offensive language, gratuitous sex, and forensically graphic reading, so the list may be a bit bland for many tastes.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.  Mary Ann Shaffer.  It is very moving, a look at WWII on the island of Guernsey, off the English coast.  It is one of the few newer books that actually moved me to tears.

 The Writing Circle.  Corinne Demas.  This is a type of writing that is a bit like Anita Shreeve's style, less action and more psychological drama.  Compelling, thought-provoking.

The Postmistress.  Sarah Blake.  Another WWII book that moves between a small town on the Massachusetts coast and the War in Europe as seen through the eyes of a young war correspondent (a woman) based in London.  A letter is entrusted to her . . . can't tell you the details!  This was also very good, absorbing reading.

The Thirteenth Tale.  Diane Setterfield.  I read this last year, or the year before, but it was good enough for a re-read.  Mystery, scandal, creaky old English mansion . . .

I read several of Rosamunde Pilcher's novels, particularly The Shell Seekers.  I cannot stop re-reading this book.  There are others, of course, such as September, Winter's Solstice, and Coming Home.  All have characters who settle in your heart as you progress through their stories.  None like Penelope Keeling, though, of The Shell Seekers.

I am thinking about going through the Ellis Peters series, Brother Cadfael, which I re-visit every decade of so.  All twenty of them, read like a continuous long story, are as lovely both as history as well as who-done-its.  Life in Shrewsbury Abbey can be awfully eyebrow raising!

So, there.  Books for thinking about.  And a caution:  Avoid all school-age children if you can possible manage such a thing!

Making It Work

I bought Tim Gunn's new book, the 18 golden rules book.  This inspired me to go into the studio and pick up a piece that I had enjoyed creating, but somehow got bogged down in the process and never could seem to finish.  I read his section on "Make It Work" very closely, and I was ready to go.  For a few moments, it seemed possible that I might just rescue this old idea.  But, two hours later, and amid a pile of clipped threads and a slit in the fabric from too energetically removing an appliqued piece, I have to concede that there are some things that, when the towel has been tossed in, might better be left in the "Evermore Unfinished" box.

Jan and Jean stress this same concept in their classes at Callaway.  Although the piece might not finish as the image you began with, don't throw all  those work hours away, but think of some way to keep going with it.  Improvise.  Take the risk.  And I've done that several times quite successfully.  There are some things, however, that, when they're down, picking them up months and months later with the idea of continuing the work might not be the best use of our time.  Rather than struggle on with this idea, I think I'll simply wad it up and wrap a ball around it.

Now, THAT'S Making It Work!!!

Test Driving the Walker

Charles, who must be out and about every day (it's a genetic trait; I should write about the adventures of his father and grandfather some time), proffered a trip to a bookstore and lunch at Sweet Tomato(e).  So, here I am, ready for the big outing.  I still haven't figured out how to attach a tote to the walker and make it look attractive.  That will be next week's little project.  And I probably need to do something about the crocs.  Tim Gunn calls them "hooves."

The book store, a lovely gently-read shop, had a nice selection of Agatha Christies, so I bought several for reading in the next months.  I am stockpiling good books against the more stationary times to come.

At lunch, would you believe there was another lady with a walker?  Hers was the race track model, quite unlike my more modest one.  But she had such a great attitude about her own mobility that I don't feel so badly for myself, now.  After all, I am out and about, the day is a 12 on a scale of 1 to 10, and there is always the studio for playing.