The Jim Dine Experience

When I was in college, my friend Lisa (an art history major) told my friend Debbie and me about the painter Jim Dine, a guy who got so into the act of artistic creation that he was driven to drink the paint he was using. (Incidentally, I have no idea how accurate this story was--I just know that we thought it was hysterical and wanted Lisa to tell it over and over again.)

This weekend, Elliot and Astrid and I had our own version of The Jim Dine experience. After hearing a lecture by the sociologist Barbara Katz Rothman--whose beautiful grey hair was french-braided and streaked purple down the middle of the braid--I got it into my head (almost literally) that I needed some obviously non-natural color in my own quickly greying mop. All in all, I think I spent two hours (over two trips) at Sally Beauty Supply (an art supply store like no other....), and probably four hours doing the actual bleaching and dyeing. Elliot was characteristically stoic--we did him twice over two nights--hardly any complaints at all. Astrid, of course, was the opposite: head over the edge of the tub, screaming that her neck was being broken. Needless to say, I didn't rinse her hair "until the water r[an] perfectly clear." I vowed that under no circumstances would I ever, ever color her hair again, no matter how much she begged. Under his voice, Elliot said, "You don't really mean that, do you? I know you don't....it's okay, Mom."

So now all three of us have at least a bit of blue (in my case, blue and violet) hair. We didn't drink the dye, but it sort of feels like we did.

The littlest bits

I'm way, way tired today---it's been an incredibly long week, and I'm getting a cold--but I wanted to post pictures from the work I've done over the past seven days or so. Saturday and Sunday I worked on a collage I've been planning for a long time; it's all Astrid, and I'm very happy with how it came out. Elliot wants one now.

Last night before bed I embellished a nightshirt for my sister's birthday (I don't think she reads this, so I'm not ruining the surprise.)

Bamboo update

I can't remember the day for sure (it's been an extremely long and tiring week....), but the bamboo jersey I ordered from Wazoodle finally arrived on Thursday. It's beautiful---but I'm not delighted with how long it took to get here, or with the very vague tracking information I got from Wazoodle (on the same day I got the box, their website still said that my order was "in process").

Now I have to figure out the best way to wash it (it's a ten-yard jersey tube). I thought about cutting it into smaller pieces, but I don't know which patterns I'll ultimately use it for--and I don't want to waste any. I also have a feeling that washing a ten-yard tube could wreck our washing machine....I think Threads had a tip a couple of years ago about good ways to wash major yardage. It'll be fun to look through my old issues (maybe tomorrow morning, when I'm home with Astrid--she has a cold and tummy virus).

Somehow I managed to sew three skirts (and about six quilt blocks) this week. I have no idea how I did this. I am a lunatic. (But the skirts look great!)

I know when to say when---I do!

I finally got to some *way* overdue spring cleaning this afternoon. Back in January, I bought an exercise bike and put it in the dining room; almost a month ago, I bought a sideboard and china cabinet from IKEA, but, of course, I ran out of spring break assembly time before I was finished with the sideboard. In the meantime, my overstuffed backback got emptied onto a corner of the dining room so I could use it as a carry-on when we went to Boston. (Really, it's more like my bingeing backback threw up in the corner....what *wasn't* in there? Some highlights: five tubes of lipgloss and lipstick [neither of which I wear more than a few times a year--I'm a Carmex devotee], two pairs of black socks [one clean, one dirty], a sympathy card I never mailed to a mourning colleague, four different kinds of cough drops, unlabeled CD-ROMS for my office computer, two little tubes of toothpaste [one was probably five years old]....).

By Friday (my birthday), even our dining room table was covered with junk mail, birthday cards, baseball cards, toys, dishes. When I got up this morning, I knew it all had to go.

I spent probably six hours cleaning one room. (About 90 minutes of that involved finishing the IKEA sideboard so that I could load it up with game and photo boxes--I'm so happy with how it came out! All the drawers and cabinet doors are solid and smooth-running.) Here's the big news: I threw away all of my rug-braiding stuff. I haven't worked on it in a long time (I suppose I could go back through my blog archives to figure out when I left off, but why?), and I realized that, in spite of my initial success, it wasn't coming out so well. It looked like a polarfleece canoe--not a bit flat, and, unlike cotton or wool, it couldn't be blocked when it was finished (I didn't think of that when I started it). So I tossed both the rug and the polarfleece strips I'd already cut. I was in total tossing mode; I recycled whatever I could today, but if I had to think for too long about what to do with something, in most cases, I just got rid of it.

I didn't feel great when I tossed the stuff, but when I told my husband, the first thing he said was "You'll definitely get a blog entry out of this!" And I have.

Pieced or strip-pieced....doesn't make a big difference!

We're back from the Popular Culture Association convention in Boston--we had a very good time with our kids and with my sister Lora's two sweeties, Sam and Lilly--and now I'm semi-overwhelmed with all the work I have to do this week. Being Easter Sunday, however, I'm trying to honor the spirit of the day by not doing a ton of work. I also made a point of sewing for a while (and I hope to sew some more tonight). I'm almost through with the fourth block in the crib quilt I'm making. The design I chose alternates 16-patch blocks and pinwheel-shaped blocks; I've started with the 16-patch ones. They seem to be going pretty fast (ask me again next week, and the week after that, and.....). As careful as I've been to make keep my seam allowances identical, though, there are still places where the corners don't line up. This makes me mad. And, given the way I work (as fast as possible, mistakes be damned), it's not like I'm likely to get a lot more precise as I go along. I suppose I can say that these quilts are an honest reflection of my true personality.....

Before we left for Boston, I ordered a *lot* of black bamboo jersey from Wazoodle, and it hasn't arrived yet. I've never ordered from Wazoodle before; I expected them to be as fast as Fabric.com. At least this time, they're definitely not. (I was a bit worried that the package had disappeared from our porch, but their website says my order is "in process.") I want to make myself a bunch of cool summer shirts, and possibly some pajama shorts for Elliot. It's not like I am ready to sew any of this stuff, but the space between the impulse purchase and the gratification of holding the cloth in my hands is a bit wide for me. (Actually, this wasn't an impulse purchase, as I've been web-shopping for bamboo jersey for a couple of months--I just didn't plan to buy as much as I ended up buying--but I got a considerably lower price for buying ten yards at once.)

Los Payasos de Oak Parque

I can't say that I've ever thought of clowning as a craft in the way that sewing is....it's certainly a "craft" in the sense that it's an art form that takes a lot of work to get right. Bad clowns are depressing and sometimes even terrifying.

I don't know a whole lot about clowning, though Elliot has been studying circus arts for the past three or four years--he's a pretty proficient plate spinner, diabolo tosser, and juggler--and once in a while his teachers have the kids put makeup on and practice clowning. Over the past two weeks, though, Elliot and Astrid and I have been thinking and talking a lot about what it means to be a clown. We started because Elliot asked me to get him the long, thin balloons that clowns and magicians use to make balloon animals; the idea was for him to learn how to make a couple of shapes so that he could do them for Astrid's friends at her upcoming birthday party. While I was on the website to buy the balloons and pump, we started looking at clown makeup and decided to get some. Since everything arrived, we've been making *lots* of balloon animals. They're not at all hard to do! Once I got over my fear of having the balloons pop on me (not many do....they're pretty strong) I was shocked at how easy they are to make.

We're almost out of the first bag of 100 balloons (eeek--they went fast), so I ordered some more last night, along with some white clown makeup---we forgot to get it the first time around. Now the kids want to have a circus during our spring/summer block party. It's not scheduled yet, but I bet we'll need to buy more balloons before it happens.

Why do scrap quilts cost so much to make?

I'm suddenly interested in making a pieced scrap quilt--instead of my usual can't-be-bothered strip piecing. I'm reading a book by Roberta Horton about the theory and aesthetics of "real" scrap quilts....it's got me all excited. I looked forward all day to shopping on line for batting, templates, and a *little* bit of fabric. Yet I just got off fabric.com, where I spent $50....the fabric wasn't all that expensive--but the templates were $18 (I hope they're worth it) and the batting was $8 (not bad, really---it's the good cotton stuff). I guess I didn't absolutely have to buy five half-yards of fabric. On the other hand, given the kind of week I've had, maybe it's exactly what I needed to do.