Cogitations, a couple of questions, and Monday media

Sometimes life is just full of distractions, and at the end of the day, I feel like there has been nothing substantial accomplished. Of course, feeling looking at my life that way is not useful.

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Saturday I had a chance to spend time at the Sock Summit catching up with a friend from faraway, and actually that was priceless. The wealth in my life is the connections with my friends. Sunday I managed a morning grocery bikeride, then dithered about Acorn Cottage like a flea, hopping from project to project but not accomplishing as much as I'd hoped to. I did hang a curtain rod above the storage closet door in the corner of the living room, and the long shisha embroidered wool shawl that was hanging next to the computer is now a curtain. Moving that made the entire east wall look unbalanced, so I moved around some of the wall art, and repaired the mobile from last years swap (it had gotten all tangled from being in the pathway from the window fan), reattached all the decorative strings to a new support, and moved it from in front of the window to where the bluebird lantern had been. (the bluebird lantern will move to the bedroom, and I'd like to put the spider plant in the window, if I can find a hanging pot that doesn't look horrid.) Masses of laundry and washing up were done, and a bit of sewing...

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The Sock Summit Marketplace was sorely tempting, the colors and textures of fiber goodness were overwhelming. I felt drunk on "yarn fumes" Fortunately for my piggybank I was able to resist, but I did find a line of yarn that I fell in love with. Blue Moon Yarns, (local, based in Scappoose) has a color-group called Raven Clan. While I cannot justify spending over twenty dollars on yarn for one pair of socks (socks are utility knitting), I will be saving my pennies to get some of the Twisted in one or two of my favorite of the Raven Clan colors, to make either another shawl or a sweater. It is some of the most beautiful yarn I have ever seen, I kept coming back to that display all afternoon.

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Someone in my group of friends asked me about getting a start of worms, for setting up to do worm composting...I can't remember who it was (brain cell death from the heat wave), and I just recently re-did my worm habitat, so whoever you are, let me know please, I do have some "starter worms" that I can share.

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Does anyone out there have back issues of the magazine "Spin Off"? I found a shawl I really like on Ravelry, and the directions are in the Summer 2008 issue... inquiring knitter seeks instructions...

update: I love my library. They carry this magazine, in the closed stacks, and I was able to xerox the pattern...

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a quiet bit of hand drawn stop motion animation,
drawn and animated by Rima, music by her man Tui

outside a comfort zone

Finally completed the mobile for the 2009 swap. It was challenging to find suitable materials in the desired colors, I do very little with golden brown earth-tone, and I just had a hard time getting inspired for some reason. All my initial ideas just seemed too cute for me to stand making them, I try to make things that are a good balance between what I would enjoy and what seems appropriate. I'm feeling drawn to less figurative, more mid-century mobiles these days. Check out the wonderful mobile in this living room (September 1954, click the picture to enlarge).

I finally remembered that I had some scraps of indonesian silk-rayon ikat in rust and flame color, which ended up as raw-edged overlay on wool-blend felt, cut into vaguely ameoba shapes. I hope the recipient likes it. Here are the initial materials, and the whole thing laying flat.

I am as tired of being cold as I am of being hot in the middle of August. Must find a way to get some of the needed repairs done...

Last week, rambled around in some places I don't often go. Took the streetcar up to 23rd and walked around window shopping. Found a giant 4" tea ball that will work perfectly for making kombucha, and the closure looks durable. And I found a second magnetic test tube flower vase, so I can have flowers in the kitchen as well as the bathroom. I've often reflected on the way that window shopping is the vestigial remnant of the gathering part of hunter-gatherer. When I was a girl, my best friend and I (when we were not trying to figure out how to get off the planet and which of our classmates would make appropriately diverse spaceship crew) would play with our Barbies, but not the way intended by Mattel. Our girls were proto-survivalists, needing to survive in a post apocalyptic suburbia, and we cruised the neighborhood for suitable foodstuffs, berries and roots and pods. We fashioned doll clothing from leaves pinned with long thorns, and whole environments were built against the hedge in her front yard.

Anyone out there have a pickup truck and be around during the week - daytime? I need to get a cubic yard of leaf compost hauled, for my garden. I'll happily trade enameling, or whatever...

the gift that always moves

Midday today, the post came while I was on my way out the door to run errands, pick up some groceries, and go to work... There was a big cardboard box with my name on it. Since I am not at all good at delayed gratification, I headed right back inside to discover that the creative and talented Jackie (Smoothpebble) had sent me this lovely handmade mobile, a wonderful assemblage of various shades of actual linen and denim. I can't decide whether to put this in the living room for everyone to enjoy, or to put it in the bedroom, in that empty corner that really needs some love. For a better picture of the mobile, you can see it here

Last year in the mobile swap, I had a great deal of fun making and sending off a horse mobile, but sadly, never had one show up here. And when I ran across another person who was abandoned in the mobile swap roulette, I made one for her too, a bird mobile (you might guess, I love making mobiles, they add so much liveliness to a room).

I take my small projects with me, and am often sewing during my daily riding on public transit, which leads to interesting conversations with fellow travelers, when it is not too crowded. An older gentleman asked me what I was going to do with the little fabric morels I was so busy making... I described this bit of odd cultural phenomenon, this sending of handcrafted artifacts back and forth as gifts to various corners of the country and the world to people we have most likely never met. He echoed the comments other friends have made, that it seemed to be a lot of effort to put into something, trusting that there would be some return. Truth be told, I hadn't thought about that. It is a pleasure to make things, for me that pleasure has been most constant and faithful all my life. And it is a tiny bit of "the world I want to live in", to send off mysterious packages intended only to delight the recipient. And while it is true that my livelihood also consists of making things, whether fabric or metal or glass, there is a particular sweetness in this other sort of transaction...