Sorry It's Been Quiet

I hadn't even realized it's been quiet here. The podcasts are kind of labor-intensive, and after I post one, I'm always like, "Whew. Let's rest up." Plus I don't like to step on them with a lot of other posts because I reallyreallyreally want everyone to listen to them--there's nothing like listening to artists talk about what they do, especially really informally, where they're not repeating stuff they've said in interviews or reading a script they wrote or something.

But I am sorry not to have given you much of anything else this week--no links! No rants! No photos!

But wait:  here are some great photos. You might have seen them on Facebook last night.
I cleared out a bunch of artwear I don't wear. Some of it has been in magazines, some of it was created for the column I did for a while for Altered Couture (the Grackle Moon shirt).
I hated that it was just hanging out in the storage building because some of it took hours and hours and hours to bead or stitch or whatever. So when Nan Spring, a fabulous photographer in San Antonio, said she was my size and would love to have and wear some of this, well. Poor woman had no idea what she was getting into.

See, here's the deal:  this time of year, I'm always obsessed (snort) with clearing out, cleaning up, making room--trying to get things empty and ready for new ideas and projects. The new website is supposed to launch this month (I'm hoping, I'm hoping!), and there's a ton of stuff I want to do for that. I have a bunch of garments I want to work on, and I have other ideas I really want to pursue. But this other stuff--these bits and pieces of projects and assignments and stuff--they're in the way, cluttering up the studio and the office and my brain, and so I've got to get them out of the way first. I hate having things I need to do lying around waiting on me. And none of these are onerous chores--no! They're things I like to do. They're just not The Things I Love Most.

So, for instance, I'm doing little video peeks inside a bunch of books. I've done 4 this week and hope to do one or two more today. This means I have to 1) read the book, because I don't think it's fair to talk about something as if you've read it when you haven't and then 2) take the photographs to show what's inside and then 3) do the quick little video, which means I have to, you know, be dressed and stuff. And then I have to upload all of that and put it together and finish it and put it in Dropbox so the other editors can get it and upload it to the server. I've done a bunch of these that will go on the new website (soon! soon!), and I've got 12 more to do with another half dozen books on the way. So you can kind of see what's going on there.

Then there are all the little piddly sewing projects--I bought a bunch of stuff in the last couple months--thrifted stuff for $2 each, vintage (!) coats on sale at The Cat's Meow. Stephen sells vintage to people like Vera Wang for inspiration for new lines and to movie studios--there's a piece of his in True Grit, for example, and Barbra Streisand and Annie Lennox have bought from him. His prices are amazing, and when he has a half-off sale, I like to get things that aren't top-of-the-line (missing buttons, a stain, labels cut out) and then embellish them. Because I sold a bunch of hand-made books to him wholesale years ago, we go way back, and he'll make deals if I buy more than one needs-to-be-worked-on thing. We kind of went crazy this year. Meaning: I went crazy finding stuff I wanted, and The EGE was his usual Enabling Self, adding to it by buying a coat that I had, until that point, resisted.

Hence the bunch of coats--silk, leather, wool--that I've been working on. I need to get photos, but we haven't even been doing that:  The EGE has a bit of a cold (shhhh--don't tell him I told you that, because he insists that he's Just Fine, I Said!), and it's been frigid here (well, by West Texas standards) and so everything hurts and a couple days this week I didn't even leave the house. At all. But let's not even go into that because typing just makes it worse--one of my fingers is in the process of "changing," which is what I call it when the joints start to be altered by arthritis. They do this mostly one at a time, and it's a long and painful process of swelling and pain. After they're finished, the joints are larger and bony looking, but they don't hurt any more. I'm hoping that in the next half dozen years, they perfect speech-to-text technology. Sometime before my fingers crap out completely.

This is all just a bunch of excuses, isn't it? No, not really:  it's just a list of what I'm doing because it helps me to see it in print and see how much I've accomplished this week. Every day when The EGE comes home, I'm doing a little happy dance, telling him all the things that got checked off the list for the day. Even he's impressed. The desk looks amazing.

 Well, maybe it doesn't look amazing to you, but it really is:  the piles of To-Do Stuff are all gone. There's only one little batch of things I need to do. Everything else is just tools and stuff I use. No piles! And here's the rest of the desk--it's 11 feet along this wall, and there's a 6-ft table and a 5-ft one filling it up. The 4-ft table with the iMac is at an angle on the other wall, which would be to your right as you look at the photo above. This photo, below, is the left end of that wall.

 OK--I went in and took a bunch of photos to show you some stuff. Here's a silk coat I'm working on (on which. . . .). It was about $24, I think. The cuffs were all funky, and The EGE spent half an hour pressing it for me (I don't iron clothes. I never learned how, because my mother did it for me; The EGE learned how because there was no way his mother was going to iron for nine boys, so they all learned how to iron their own clothes).

I removed and re-attached the buttons using a little guard button on the inside of each to reinforce them.  I decided--help me!--to bead the cuffs and collar. When will I learn it's not fun to sew black beads on black fabric with black thread? But it's gorgeous, although I do need some small shinier beads. This is taking forever, as you might imagine. I've finished about a third of one of the cuffs. Sigh.

 This is the pile on top of my Janome. I'd mend my favorite jeans, but I can't get to the sewing machine until I figure out what I want to do with this artwear--stuff on which I spent way, way too much time but which has been hanging in the storage building, something that is NOT going to continue:  wear it or move it out. (The Kenmore is the one I use every day, but it's no good for free-motion embroidery, which is how I attach patches for mending). I refuse to just shift the piles to access the machine:  deal with it NOW. Which is why nothing's going on here at all:

 This is the smaller table in the sewing room--the big one got moved out--see below~~

 The big table all set up in what used to be the living room:

 Fabric storage bins brought in from the storage building so I can actually get to what's in them--I avoid going out there and digging around when it's cold. There are, needless to say, many bins still out there. This is just my current favorite stuff.

 A really cool score from Lowe's:  I needed a high stool to sit on--always gotta think about the neck and back--but didn't want some flimsy thing from Wal-Mart (they don't have them, but if they did, they'd be a Seating Disaster just waiting to happen). We saw these at Lowe's. They didn't have them in stock, but I sweet-talked the young guy into selling me the display AND into giving me a $20 discount because it was a display (normally they'd have charged extra to assemble it). As The EGE said when we walked away, "It never hurts to ask." I always ask about stuff like this--and then thank them profusely. I was making a big fuss over this kid who made the deal for me, and an older guy walked up and said, "Gee, you always get to make people happy. I should have been here." Everybody was happy. Anyway, it's adjustable--even the back--and very sturdy and HIGH--at its highest, I'm taller sitting down than I am standing up. Whoa! Plus it swivels = always lots of fun.

 Here's what I hope to tackle today: I want to move those cabinets to the right and put a 4' table on the left, but it can't stick out any into the doorway to the kitchen. To move those cabinets, I have to take out all the drawers. When I put the casters on the bottom, years ago, I didn't think that someday I'd want to move them from side to side, so I got ones that roll only forward and back--no swiveling. To move them to the side, you either have to 1) pick them up, which is not going to happen or 2) take out all the drawers and move the frames and then put all the drawers back in. Sigh. First I have to set up the folding table and make sure it will fit. I want to put the heavy duty Singer machine on it--my mother gave it to me years ago, and it's been used about twice. I don't know if by "heavy duty" it means it will sew tough stuff, like jeans, or if it means it was made to be used in schools, where it would get a lot of use. I think it was the latter, but my mother thought it meant the former and got it for me to use on denim, which was really sweet of her. Anyway, I want to set it up and see what I can do with it:  there's absolutely no point in having a sewing machine in storage. Good grief. Then I need to get her ancient Elna out and take it to the guy in Odessa and see if he can give it a tune-up--I know he's worked on Elnas because I saw one just like this one in his shop years ago. I just hope he's still in business. The Elna is the one my mother used to sew all my clothes from the time I was born.

 Lennie Lulu, bathing in the sun from the front door--I put down their fleece every morning when the sun comes in. I touched her, and she's toasty, jack! That sun is wonderful~~

 Here's another cool coat. Stephen thinks this is couture. He's pretty sure it's Japanese couture, because the woman in whose collection it was traveled widely and bought really nice (i.e., astoundingly expensive )stuff. The problem is that it's reversible and doesn't have any tags, so he can't be sure and can't sell it for vintage couture prices. He thinks it may well have been a $10,000 coat when it was new. I have no idea--before he told me all this, I was buying it just because it's quilted and I could wrap up in it while sitting at Starbucks, but once he told me that, I was thinking I should bead it--it seems only fitting, you know? Like it deserves that much to make it All It Can Be.[ Look:  I'm a recruiting poster!]

 The inside, to the left:

 Yeah, I'm afraid I'm going to have to bead all the discharged-and-dyed circles. It will be gorgeous, but, man: I'll be doing this until I die. Maybe just the ones on the front? and surely not solid beading--scattered beading, I think. Still a lot of work.

So that's what's going on here. Now that I've spent an hour typing and taking photos, I'm way behind on the things I wanted to get done today. I worked hard all week and said I'd take today to finish up loose ends, but it's 11:30, and I'm way, way behind. Yikes.