Category
Making
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06.26.08date nite
Daily, Damon, Exploring, Making, Self Portrait Tuesday (7)
He’ll call me around 6 from Streetlight Records in San Jose, telling me he’s found the vinyl he was looking for. The night is young and it’s ours, only us, but I run through the house in a delightful frenzy kissing the boys in one room, only to meet them across the house seconds later to kiss them again there. I always worry they will fall asleep without brushing their teeth. Or fall into the bathtub. Or involuntarily kill each other…those last minutes are restless. But once I’m on the road, it’s all good.
In fifteen minutes I’ve woven a peaceful thread around pedestrian traffic along the creek trail. My muscles are warm and loose and my soul is finally free. I sit at an outdoor table and order a pint of ale under palm trees and tall buildings. A crow flies directly across the peach evening sky. The smoke lingers, still without a smell; affecting no one, it exhumes the sun, a giant apricot, into its velvet folds and I sit there squinting in my chair with a foam moustache. Damon rides up alongside the table, golden with sweat and grinning. All eyes are upon him as he leans his bike next to mine against that palm tree. It’s hard not to swell with affection for this man.
We stay for another round, then bolt through traffic on into San Jose, where we stay a while eating red beans and rice, cajun shrimp and Turbodog to the beat of a blues trio. And then another round.
The trail, at night, is dark as pitch and it’s easy to spill over a catfight. So we slip out of the void and back onto the street, where we glide past rows of underlit palms and pawn shops and good folk waving us on. It’s a righteous pass through the soul of any city, un-tucked for the night but singing itself to sleep. There are no pretenses, just us laughing down the street half-drunk and whizzing off and on curbs because we can and because we should.
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05.15.08I finished the king quilt
Chas, Daily, Making (8)
Folded on the back of a chair in the studio, this quilt has sadly watched me come and go through several creative phases, none of which included quilting. But with the rising temperatures, it’s time to throw off the down and throw on the lightweight cotton.
It’s made from thrifted fabric I found in Austin, Merrimekko prints and monoprints made last year.
After a quick, sweaty run and breakfast, we’re off to spend the day in San Francisco, where we can stay cool ride bikes. Here’s Chas, who just woke up. That means I need to hurry up and get out the door.
Happy morning! I’ll post better pictures later, when the light is coming into the room.
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10.01.07Tying Summer’s Loose Strings
Daily, Making (3)
I propose that this week is Fall Cleaning Week. I’m taking inventory of all postponed summer projects and I’m going to obsess over them for the rest of the week. Like this one. One day, after piecing together a few squares, I hung it up in the studio. It was nice to watch the light pass through the colored fabric. Then Chas started peeing on the nasturtiums and I got distracted. I let it hang the rest of the day, which became the rest of the week, which became the rest of the month. And there went summer.
I’m not ready to let this quilt go dormant till next year. I’m finishing up this beach quilt because, here in northern California, it’s still sunny, and I’ll always be able to go to the beach, and grow beautiful flowers in the wintertime; which means, ofcourse, that I’m rationalizing. Mostly, though, I just want more frilly flowers in this house because I’m outnumbered by 5 males. And sometimes, like yesterday, I just want to doodle flowers everywhere.
Ford and I were drawing garden mandalas together on Sunday. Oh, obsessions! Ford is now on mandalas. Everything mandalas. While I pieced together the rest of the quilt today, I helped him start embroidering a mandala that he’d drawn on a fabric scrap. It really made me happy, watching him patiently stitch and breathe, quietly. Because he is never so quiet during the day. Ever!
Afterwards, he came up to me, very matter-of-factly, to tell me the entire contents of his dream last night, about otherworlds and death and a omnicient supercomputer…big stuff for another post, another day. For now, the fascinating dream is dutifully transcribed in my otherjournal, because there is a quilt to finish! And I mean it, this time!
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07.10.07Hue Cues
Making (1)
There’s a riot growing outside my front door and it’s slowly moving into the adjacent studio…
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01.30.07This one’s for you, Dad!
Making (7)
I hear you’ve been wearing the wool beanie a lot (the first beanie that I ever knit, which wound up being too short, that I nonetheless gave you for Christmas). Well, although it may be very sentimental to you, I insist you try this one that I knit the other night. It’s the perfect neutral Shetland virgin wool, and it’smells so rich with lanolin, you’d think they built the wool from the extract up. It’s soft and I didn’t make ANY mistakes either. It’s so genius. And it’s all YOURS. Enjoy!
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10.18.06Raise Your Hand If You’re Sick of Circuitboards...
Making (2)We aren’t! We, being everyone in this household besides myself. We like to carry little palm-sized circuitboards around all day, clenched in the grimy sweat of dirty boy hands; we have a pizza box full of different sized circuitboards in the boy’s room (the brains of a computer mouse, calculator, motherboard, to name a few); we leave them at the center of little robot crime scenes across the living room floor (and it really hurts to step on them, DAMNIT FORD).
All this deconstruction has led to a massive reconstruction project of knee-patching, due to all the time Ford spends on the floor laboring over his electronic hardware. Of all designing I could put into a knee patch, I never would have guessed he’d ask for circuitboards. Never in my life. So here we go:
Git yerself 2 layers to quilt with: fleece makes it squishy, cotton is a nice outer layer. Kids pick the colors if they’re lucky. Cut to size (to cover at least an inch around the perimeter of the holes? Use your judgement). I used the regular straight-stitch foot on my sewing machine to embroider the circuitboard design thingy, then I sewed around the perimeter of the patch. I then overlapped the edges with the cotton, ironed everything flat.
Next, I cut a piece of Heatbon UltraHold iron-on adhesive to match the shape. Affixed it to the bottom of the patch.
Then I ironed it onto the pants. I had to REALLY IRON that puppy down, with so many layers. A real pain because I’m pretty impatient. That’s why this isn’t much of a craft blog but I’m learning to find a quiet meditative religion in the whole craft process. Anyhow,
I decided to blbindstich (is that right?) around the edges, to really secore those edges down.
And viola
they turned out pretty cute he thinks, I think so too
I could shop for new pants. This rubs me the right way, though. Who doesn’t like being rubbed the right way?
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10.14.06Horsing Around in the Moonlight
Chas, Daily, Making (1)
It’s midnight and I can’t sleep. The shelf above my desk retains a wall of towering fabric scraps, folded in assembly and ready to be all cut and sewn up. Into what? Perhaps a glow-in-the-dark circuitboard horse? Why not!
Cutting through thick wool felt is so satisfying, like the slow and steady joy of learning to cut through paper in preschool. And the way it sounds, like horses chomping on warm hay.
The surplus yarn in the office here is Fall-friendly and begging to be touched, wishing it were warm enough to get all knit up into scarves and pants and hats. Otherwise, it makes great manes and tales. But do you notice that Chas is wearing fleece?? After eight months of flip-flops I found myself wearing wool socks under my Air Jesus’ and I felt so…back in northern California. Layering is fun. 60 degrees F feels so nice, so much better than 90 degrees in mid-October.
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10.13.06Oooh, If the Dust Ever Settles in This House…
Austin, Chas, Chickens, Daily, Home, Making (0)
A circuitboard made of white foam and leftover yarn that Ford’s friends made during his birthday party; Chas’ wild volcano painting, originally with volatile sound effects; A featherwreath adorned by Betty and Boo; Ford’s rock collection: “magic rock,” amethyst geode, coral from Galveston, birthday geode from CZ…
Our Fall nature table. Little Ivy Elizabeth Walker, Ford’s favorite character last year from The Village, sitting on the resting rock in the middle of a little Hill Country glade; Burr oak and Post oak acorns from around town; Edwards limestone; Ball moss from everywhere around town; chickenfeathers and unknown native grass, what I pretend is a White-Tailed deer…
at Ivy’s feet: “HEXAGONS!” that Chas found on our walk through the neighborhood (courtesy of a sunbleached, long-dead armadillo skeleton)…
Gretel, another storybook favorite, plays cavalier atop Big Billy Goat Gruff; and no nature table in our house is grounded without a chicken.
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08.03.06Garden of Earthy Delights
Chickens, Daily, Ford, Home, Making (2)The chicks are hardy in the heat. This has been the hottest week this summer and they’ve spent the whole time outdoors in their new tractor. I’ll return home at noon from the gym, walk barefoot to the edge of the deck, and peek down on them. Looking back at me are three chicks that are always an ounce heavier, more feathered and panting with open mouths. Every few hours I give them cooler, fresher water. I love the way they peep quietly as I move about, rinsing and rearranging.
We’ve been terrestrial lately, despite the heat outside, tending droopy plants, cultivating the soil, digging. We have a few good books to inspire more curiosity and garden-play: Diary of a Worm, by Doreen Cronin, and Thumbelina, by Hans Christian Anderson. Ford digs Thumbelina. Yak yak. We haven’t yet made it to Microcosmos yet. Then, of course, we have all the nonfiction we could need at home. The huge sci/nature nonfiction library in our bedroom: that would be my fault.
This afternoon, Ford and Chas helped me pin together a 3×4ish compost bin out of some remaining galvanized builder’s cloth. Once we’d finished, they helped me rake leaves and pile them into the compost bin. Somtimes they’d run through the piles and the lawn would look no different than it had before I’d organized the chaos, and a fuse would blow in my brain, but I’ve been more mindful of my wiring today. I’ll have to write more about that later, about what it’s like lately, ramming horns all day with the four year-old rebel. But right now I’m slipping like mercury through planks of burnout. And I’m falling asleep. But god, he has his Hallmark moments, too:
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07.26.06Chicken Tractor Links
Chickens, Daily, Making (2)I’m sensing that a few of you may be brewing a little chicken ideas in your mind, dreaming up having a backyard brood of your own. After all, it’s a great idea. Pest control. Companionship. Eggs. That cute sound of gossiping hens in the middle of the day. It’s really cute. Well, if you are thinking about housing options, let me share a few links I’ve used.
We’re building what they call a chicken tractor. It’s a henhouse that you can move throughout the yard, so the chickens always have a fresh patch to scratch on. They’re just as safe as a regular henhouse.
I like the ones below, which obviously required more time and labor to build. We don’t have much of that around here, which is why ours is, well, amateurish. But the hens will love it anyway. Here’s my thirty second link list:Chicken tractors
Chicken tractor project idea
& etcAnd here’s an article about the benefits of using a chicken tractor to benefit your soil.
I’m sure you can google all you want and find a good clutch of ideas out there. I say go for it. And let me know if you, too, decide to get a few chicks. We’re having a blast! Now, off to add the chickenwire…
recent posts
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