Hmmm . . .

My favorite line from my classes this week was one I came up with. We were talking about women's and men's attire in my Psychology of Women class, and one of the students talked about how she likes to wear "wifebeater" shirts. I stopped the class and asked them to think about that term, and whether they were comfortable with such a casual use of the term "wifebeater." I asked if they would wear a garment that got called a "child molester" or "pedophile" -- I think I'll wear the green pedophile today.

They cracked up at that, and told me I should consider a career in comedy. But they also admitted it was a good point, and that they'd never thought about it that way before.

I love teaching.

News from the fiber studio

I've been re-organizing my fiber studio for weeks (months?) now, which, so far, has mostly meant hours and hours and hours of ironing and folding fabric. I've filled 8 file boxes with quilting fabric, and I have about two more boxes worth to iron and fold. Then I have to organize the garment fabric! After that, we are going to put together a new sewing island and paint the room . . . it's a big project.

But while all this re-organization is going on, I can't actually get any sewing done because of the chaos in the studio. It's sort of disheartening, and I miss my actual sewing. So this weekend I decided to do a quick project for ancientsong's birthday. I had read about a technique for making scarves by layering yarns, threads, and other fibers between water soluble stabilizer and then sewing over the stabilizer to hold everything together. After washing out the stabilizer, one is left with a lacy scarf. It seems like the lazy approach to weaving or pinweaving. ;)

So I made a short scarf with some gorgeous blue and turquoise and purple yarns and stitched it with parallel horizontal rows and curving vertical lines. It was a bit more difficult to do than I thought, since the yarns moved more than I expected during the sewing (I think I should use a stickier stabilizer next time), but I think it came out pretty well. Alas, I didn't take pictures before it went to live with ancientsong, but hopefully I'll do another one and take pictures of that. I have all kinds of designs dancing in my head.

The scary part is that this justifies my emerging obsession with yarn, which is almost as expensive a habit as beads. I swear, it would be cheaper to have a drug habit. Oh well, at least my obsession is legal (for now). ;)

PSA: No shortcuts with paint!

You're repainting a room in an old house. You're in a hurry, no time to do a thorough prep job. You think to yourself, "No big deal, I'll just paint over this old wallpaper", or "I don't know if this is oil-based or latex-based paint on the trim, but I'm sure the latex paint I bought will cover it just fine."

STOP! Don't do it!

You may be saving yourself time at the moment, but later on, someone will pay for this choice. You're handing the job of scraping off the paint-over-wallpaper, latex-over-oil paint to future generations, just because you were too lazy or rushed or ignorant to do the job right the first time.

Don't skimp on the proper preparations. People like me will be cursing you as we peel the paint off in sheets to do the repainting right.

This has been a Public Service Announcement, paid for by the hours of tedious labor I have put in as a result of my overactive conscientiousness.

The Pesto Factory is closed for the year . . .

Today's total pesto output: 22 batches of basil pesto
Hours Q and I worked in the pesto factory today: 6+ hours
Total current pesto supplies: Who can tell? We may exceed the recommended residential limit for pesto, but I think the foundation of the house will hold . . . for now. Anyone want to come over for dinner? ;)

People do the darndest things . . .

I hear the most interesting news stories from the NPR show, "Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me" including this story:

Santa Barbara County sheriff's deputies come across a bizarre encounter at La Purisima Mission in Lompoc. Around midnight they found a 69-year-old Huntington beach man naked and covered in oats. Deputies say the man had covered himself in olive oil, rolled around in oats and allowed the horses at the mission to lick him clean. He apparently told deputies this has always been a fantasy of his and drove up from the Los Angeles area to play it out. Alfred Thomas Steven was cited and released for trespassing, animal cruelty and sexually assaulting an animal.

You can see the entire sheriff's report at The Smoking Gun.

I'm trying to figure out what the key element of the man's fantasy was here -- was he mostly into being licked by horses, and the oats were just the vehicle (with olive oil to make them stick properly), or was it the whole experience of being oiled, oated, and horse-licked? Hard to say, really, as the human mind is very inventive.

Paint whimsies

I'm painting various rooms in the house. . .

I just finished painting one of the bathrooms with the colored primer for a paint named "Startling Orange." This is an understatement. This room glows -- and it's in the basement! The paint should be called "Screaming Orange" or "Day-Glo Orange" or "Radioactive Orange" or "For God's Sake, Don't Look Directly At It Orange." It makes the art studio, with it's bright yellow walls, look understated. Of course, that said, I really like this color. But in deference to Q and any guests with adult, sophisticated color tastes, I will be covering it with a somewhat less intense glaze color, named "Citrus Blast." We'll see what it looks like after that.

The kitchen gives us no end of trouble in choosing colors, since any paint color has to coordinate with a beige cabinet finish that we don't like much, pinky-beige floor tiles, and black speckled countertops. So far, we've gone through five different paint colors. The winner seems to be "Soft Pumpkin."

The basement stairway now has beautiful two-toned peach walls/ceiling, an additional light fixture, elegantly finished stairs, and looks infinitely better than it used to. We've named it the "Peach Pit." I can't wait to put up some tiles and pictures to finish the effect.

I love color!

Hot weather

In cold climes (like upstate NY), the weather report in the winter includes an estimate of the length of time it will take exposed flesh to freeze. Presumably, if this time is short enough, one knows not to take the mittens off for any reason.

We've finally received the heat wave from the Midwest, and I wonder -- should they include an estimate of the length of time it would take for exposed flesh to fry?

It's really my fault for choosing today to attack the weeds in the front garden. Three hours of weeding, even in the late afternoon/early evening, was very warm indeed. Although, frankly, the mosquitoes bothered me much more than the heat.

I'm excited to be back on the internet! My computer developed an allergy to the internet, but Q was finally able to fix it. Yippee! I feel alive again! ;)

Cow poetry

I hadn't heard of this, but it was posted on one of the listservs I'm on. Apparently, a few years ago, a performance art piece was constructed to have cows create poetry.

Banks, a 22-year-old student at Purchase College, painted single words (from "a" to "existential") on the flanks of about 60 cows near his upstate New York home, then let them wander around to see if they could compose poetry. So Holsteins and Jerseys named Elsie and Maggie came up with phrases like "eccentric art," "performance as cow environment" and Banks' own favorite, "organic conceptual art as poetry." One animal seemed especially inspired -- with "away" written on her side, she broke loose from the herd for a while.

There's something about this that struck me as very amusing.

New garden statuary

While on vacation on the Eastern shore of Maryland, Q & I got new garden statuary, which was delivered yesterday. This statue/birdbath is in our front garden, and holds the remnants of last night's rain. She looks beautiful, peaceful, and sad.

Sparkly sparkly sparkly

I have been working (on and off) for some months now on a beaded necklace for my friend and dance teacher/mentor, Artemis. She is a fiery Turkish-style dancer, and she comes alive in red, so I hunted up all of my red beads, bought more (and more), and hand-beaded a necklace for her. It's finally finished! I can't wait to give it to her when I see her on Friday.

I started with a base of Timtex (stiff stabilizer) and covered it with stretch velvet. Then I sewed on Swarovski crystals in a random pattern and sewed on delicas (tiny beads) around each one. The fringe is silverlined ruby glass beads, Swarovski crystal bicones, and Czech glass butterflies (red with an AB coating), tipped with gold Swarovski crystals. Then I sewed two beaded strands with these same types of beads to link the necklace in the back. Finally, a lining was sewed on the inside, to cover all the stitching.

[Later thought] Oh, and I'd welcome any suggestions for a name/title for this piece -- I'm at a loss at the moment.

[Still later] I've named it "Turkish Fire" -- thanks for all the suggestions!