The Sibs

DebR's post du jour with all the oldies put me in a way-back frame of mind and when you don't have anything to post about what art you are up to, resorting to pet and old baby pictures is always a safe bet. Yep, the big one is me, six or seven, the Ringleader and if sh*t happened.. it was all my fault. To my left, Kitty. How do you like them prison haircuts? I think it was the following year that Mom took Kitty and I to Macy's in White Plains (Where Santa Claus lived in the off season!) to a so-called specialist in children's haircuts. I will never forget how he sawed our braids off at the root without even undoing them. Mine, fat and stubby, Kitty's long and thin. My mother cried as she picked them up and wrapped rubber bands around the cut ends. The fiend gave us the popular Pixie haircut. My hair grew straight out from my head. With those giant teeth I looked more like a half-grown lion cub than a Pixie. These days Kitty is still the dashing professional. How many of you can say you have a following? Next to her is baby sister Patty, a single, two-job working Mom to a teenage daughter, but don't pity her, she's so good at it all. Martha Stewart could eat off her floors. On my right, baby brother Robbie, my charge, which is why he grew up wild. I have one of those half-baked memories that no one will admit to. We all had harnesses with zippers in the front and leashes hooked to the back and I seem to recall being hitched like a sled dog to Robbie's stroller. Why not? We were a powerful troika. I would have done the same thing with four kids. Rob became a father for the first time two years ago this April - twin boys! He lives to see Ryder and Reno conquer the world, all the while living with my parents and being their main care-giver - not that they would ever admit to needing one. The babies light up their lives. Right now my Mom is in the hospital undergoing a battery of tests before surgery. She has been in poor health most of her life and has outlived all of her friends, three of whom passed just last year, and most of her family. Eight hundred miles away, I am holding my breath too often these days.

the Zombies efforts

"E's not dead, just stunned" -Monty Python Here's evidence that I have not shuffled off this mortal coil - about one tenth of my stash folded and sorted by color...and then adorned with Cat Ass. Still no shelves to contain them so these stacks will probably go into right back into the plastic boxes.Deep in the night for the past week, I might have wished for that shuffle in my coma-dreams. There was little sleep. I injured my back last week in a very stupid manner.

For those of you who know about Yoga, I actually fell asleep in a fat woman's variation of the Child's Pose. You know, knees a-spraddle, belly dragging on the mattress and head cradled on folded arms as I listened to the music from the "Breathe" yoga show on TV. The Dr. heckled me for stretching my sciatic nerve (let's hope she's right) and then went on to prescribe some Hillbilly Heroin for me. I took one dose, spent two hours scratching madly, giggled inappropriately at the TV, goaded the sleeping cats into play, and to frost the cake, took out markers and started coloring in the dark. About two in the morning, my GoodMan rolled over and told me he was planning on smothering me with a pillow if I didn't settle down. The pain never left, I just didn't care. No more O. for me.

When not feeling too totally crappy, I have resumed machine quilting this un-named project I started last summer at Elizabeth Barton's studio. And no jokes about a dildo farm. This piece is quite large and I really didn't notice all things being at arm's length and all.

Head cold Redux

If boogers were gold, I could really retire. Did this cold ever really go away? My head feels like it's full of wet cement. I'm down to Alka-Selter for Colds mixed in Gallo Hearty Burgundy. Nasty but effective. In the meantime, all I can muster in the studio are more of these. I probably shouldn't be allowed to use the rotary cutter much less operate a Janome.

When in doubt, go Shopping!

Well, not doubt, just a wandering mind kind of mental inefficiency that goes along with a nagging back injury. I went to IKEA today, the big shiny new one in downtown Atlanta, a stones throw from Atlantic Station where my GoodMan is overseeing the construction of a new restaurant. I got there quite by accident - took a right instead of a left after dropping Colin off at the jobsite. The only thing I had in mind was a mini trash can for my desk at work. I came away with a whole huge bag of fun.Big enough to tote your average three year old in, they sell them for 99 cents. This silly business hangs up for drying one's unmentionables only I visualized pieces of hand dyed fabric flapping in the breeze. For 3.99, I can imagine anything I want. These are rubbery plastic ice cube trays but I could see them flipped over with paint on their cute little backsides all ready to pounce all over some fabric. And here's what IKEA is really famous for: stuff that you have to put together yourself. It took me about an hour to "build" this. Like most American households, the proper tools are never where you left them so I made this with the screwdriver on my grandmother's Boy Scout knife (it was in her sewing basket) and the wrong end of a staple hammer. I thought about glue but that would have been too much committment. Just the thing for all the miscellaneous crapola swarming all over my sewing table. Now to teach that drunken service monkey to put things away once I have finished with them. I'm sad that the second one came without it's bloody damn screws so I will have to visit the hardware store tomorrow to finish it off. I will have to mix up some sort of stain for these. Very theraputic.

contest

Prizes if you can guess the city/town/village that match my former locations: Four Places You've Lived: 122 Commercial Street 10 Bank Street 15 Baker Steet 25 1/2 Dykeman Road and here's another detail shot of my CQ06 entry:

Finished!

Here's just a peek at my entry for Considering Quilts 2006 and since the big computer downstairs seems to have suffered a power supply failure (a least I hope that's all it is) I will have to have the disc burned at Kinkos tomorrow and get it in the mail a mere One Day before the deadline. Next on the agenda - a couple of miles of machine quilting on a few major UFOs with lots of promise. And coming up fast, choosing a few little somethings for SPUN

I have been memetagged.....

By Debra Roby of the infamous AQRing Debs, and me with my shots out of date. It's the 4 Things Thing. Getting tagged is something like getting an eartag, the painful indignity inflicted on animals by people insisting on knowing where they are and what they have been up to and not unlike the alien anal probe. I was going to plead early onset Alzheimers and skip it but I had a vague notion that not meme-ing when tagged rates up there with farting in church and using your fish fork to scratch between your shoulder blades. I was also tempted to lie wildly but the truth is out there now. Four Jobs You've Had: Domestic Engineer (the Paid kind),Phone Slut,Proofreader, Computer Network Security Administrator Four Movies You Watch: Shakespeare In Love, You've Got Mail, Jaws, The Natural Four Places You've Lived: 122 Commercial Street, 10 Bank Street, 15 Baker Steet,25 1/2 Dykeman Road Four TV Shows you Watch: Law & Order, West Wing, Deadwood, The Gems Rotating on the Lazy Susan Show Four Places You've Been on Vacation: Panama City, FL, Hyannis, MA, Savannah, GA, Naragansett, RI Four Websites You Visit Every Day: NYTimes, CraigsList ATL, TheStreet, Refdesk Four Of Your Favorite Foods: Bing Cherries, Fried Clams, Key Lime Pie, Apple Cider Four Places You'd Rather Be: any beach, any sailboat, any frozen lake at night, any jurybox Four (real)Albums You Can't Live Without: Rubber Soul - Beatles, The Essential Artie Shaw, Hell Freezes Over - Eagles, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy -- Sarah McLachlan Four People You'll Pass This On To: Let's surprise them.

First DyeFest of '06

Well, there's nothing like a tidy crop of hand dyes to get the creative year started. I think there was something seriously wrong with the black though. I used a lot of it - I was in a broody mood- and looks like 99% of it left town in the rinse cycle. Anna! Do recognize any of these pieces? Can't wait to be hacking them up but that project is in a conga line of other patiently waiting it's turn. My UFOs are giving me nightmares so in self defense I am tending to those first for while.

unpacking (still)

Did you ever find yourself on the brink of change and the whizzing of it all leaves you just exhausted and empty? Deadlines, decisions and distant dread. There was a time when I had this much time on my hands. While the cicadas are chewing the air with their threats and the sweat rolls sweet, I think "All that is not given is lost" and wished that you could have seen how the flecks of gold stuck to my skin when the sand gave up and fell away.

Tornado Watch

OK.OK. So I looked up a bunch of lo-carb recipes and made a shopping list but I thought I would wait until the sky stopped being greenish-black before venturing out. Wonderful Winter in Georgia. Since we are under a flood warning with tornados for dessert, I though I would wile away an hour with an ER rerun and a game of solitaire with real cards! I got all the way to the end of a winning hand and found the six of hearts to be missing. "The Six of Cups (Hearts) is the only one in the Tarot that refers explicitly to the past, and of memories and good times experienced there. After losses such as those on the Five we sometimes have to take a time out to heal, to look back on the past and all the good that lies there. And during such times it's never the right thing to focus on the negative, and that's why this card is so positive and full of light. The fallen cups are now full and upright again, but with blooming flowers that cannot be spilled or washed away. Now that you have looked back, maybe now the way will be clear to look forward." What an opportunity for further honing my skill! My procrastination skills, that is. Here's all of what Tarot Master, James Rioux has to say about the six of cups and so I am properly chastened about not taking the time yesterday to reflect on the passing of 2005.

Happy New Year!

After reading everyone else's deepest thoughts on resolutions, I thought I would take a stab at it myself. Here is the Unvarnished Truth. And for those who need the warning, I have decided that Politically Correct postures will give you hemorrhoids. I decided to spend the day honoring Procrastination instead of denying her. My studio looks like Katrina paid a visit so I knew it was going to be a long day. My calls to FEMA have gone unanswered. The backdrop of my efforts today, A "Law & Order" marathon. Tomorrow, the bar exam. Before I could even get dressed I was finding ways to delay. I have several identical Wrangler denim workshirts, sized 4X, men's 4X. I wish they looked as huge on me as they should. I use them interchangeably as smocks, bathrobes, and my version of the Dixie Mink but I was getting quite sick of the corporate logo hovering over the breast pocket so I decided a little quick machine applique on one of them could cure my wardrobe blues. Now I look like a refuge from the Pyromaniacs Union.At least now I can tell which one to wear in the studio. Next on my to-do list, Breakfast. Two microwaved meatballs (in homemade 'sketi sauce) on a whole wheat roll (health food!), half a glass of OJ and two cups of coffee. Then fully dressed and fueled up, I jump on the bathroom scale - none of these "naked post-evacuation" weigh-ins for me. The awful truth lurked between my toes. At the very least I will break a sweat today. I filled several coffin-sized plastic tubs with fabric, vacuumed the nap off the carpet rather than pick up bent pins and decided a break was in order. More creativity! I really needed to finish this crocheted hat that I started last night. Wasn't Dick Clark scary? The Big Peach was out of sync with the big Apple while my neighbors treated me to fireworks and semi-automatic gunfire. Yee-haw Amigos! It's dark now. The first new day of 2006 is circling the bowl and I am quite satisfied with the proceeds of the day. No resolutions but some truth, farting around, sweat, a glimmer of order and whiffs of the promise of tomorrow.