What's Up at The Voodoo Cafe

Someone asked last week how I got the name for my blog, and although I'm assuming I've told this story at some point, I sure don't remember it--and isn't that a surprise?

Snort.

Long ago, in another lifetime, back when I was writing how-to pieces for Rubberstampmadness and making samples for rubber stamp companies, I had to do the whole tax-exempt thing. Y'all know how much I hate anything having to do with finances and taxes--how terrified I've always been of The IRS, for reasons unknown to me (I must have read some mystery series in which evil government agents in bad suits figured prominently)--so I wanted a business name that made me happy. At the time, Maxwell was my constant companion, with his own drawer in my work desk so that he lay right by my right arm, always purring, always delighted to be near me. We were such buds.

Sigh.

Anyway. Someone had given me a set of rubber stamps with a vintage (!) image of a black and white cat dancing on his hind legs. I loved these--they were a perfect expression of Maxwell, who was always happy.

That's the "Dancing Cat Studio" part of my official business name:  Dancing Cat Studio and Voodoo Cafe.

Around the same time--and I get hazy about dates, so I'm not sure about the chronology here--I got into the whole voodoo doll thang. We made our first trip to New Orleans, and my life changed in such a wonderful way. First, I wanted to find a "real" voodoo doll, and although I hunted everywhere, all I found were things made of moss and slick paint and stuffed dolls with "Made in China" on the back. So I came home and began to make my own, doing a lot of research, tinkering with stuffing, herbs, eyes, bones, hair, etc.

But wait! There's more! On that same first trip to New Orleans, we were riding the St. Charles streetcar, and at one of the stops I glimpsed a young woman in a skirt. It looked as if it were made from a pair of jeans, although my glimpse of her was truly a glimpse--fleeting, half-seen. I was trying to lean out the window and get a better look, but she was gone. The idea of creating a skirt from jeans and then using it as a canvas for telling a story, though--that stayed. It's still with me, and it was the beginning of the Journal Skirts--I made a bunch, sold a bunch, taught the process at Artfest one year, had skirts in a bunch of books and magazines.

The voodoo dolls? I came home and made them and then sold them, and then, in the perfect ending to that saga, I did a wholesale order with one of the voodoo shops in the French Quarter, one where I'd first gone when I was trying to find an authentic voodoo doll. After that, on our yearly trip, we'd go in and see one of my dolls hanging from the ceiling, turning back and forth as if keeping watch over the shop. The first time that happened, we walked out into the street, and I told The EGE that, if I got run over by a truck right then, I would die happy.

So that's the "voodoo" part.

The "cafe" part is not about a place to eat; it's about an imaginary coffee shop, one that's existed in my head for as long as I can remember. Because I've always longed for a community of creative, passionate, driven people--people who are always creating and dreaming of new creations and wake up with ideas and can't wait to try something new (as opposed to people in real life, who have actual lives and go to the movies and host dinner parties and all the things normal people do, at least I'm guessing, since I don't know), I dreamed a place like it, a cross between Poppy's Grill in the French Quarter, with its black-and-white tiles and red stools at the counter, and Ichabod's, a coffee shop that used to exist here where they had live jazz at night on the weekend, which is where we met The Ribz. It was fabulous, but it didn't last long in Midland, Texas. And isn't that a surprise?

The Voodoo Cafe would be red and black and white, like my kitchen, with art on all the walls, coffee during the day, wine at night, when there'd be live music--jazz, blues, smooth jazz, classical guitar. The guys who play guitar sometimes at Starbucks would be regulars. And any time of the day or night, until midnight or so, you could wander in with your sketchpad or laptop or stitching or iPod and find someone who'd listen to the track you just recorded or look at your photographs or help you figure out French knots or read your introduction. There would be a table with a couple of people working on a play, and another table where someone was doing a watercolor, and another table where someone was just taking a break from working all night on their novel. Local people who loved to bake would bring in and sell their cookies and pies and sandwiches, so you'd never know what would be available, but there'd always be something, and there'd always be someone creative who shared your passion for just that:  being creative.

This would not be, I have to add, a place for crafty get-togethers by people who actually just wanted a chance to eat snacks and giggle. Those are fine--absolutely!--but I'm talking people who are truly passionate:  people who have something that won't let go of them and that they love more than DisneyWorld.

Sigh. I've given up on this particular dream in real life, but it exists in my imagination, and I can see the walls and smell the coffee and hear the quiet clicking of keyboards.  This is the "cafe" part, and it's where I spend most of my time.

So that's where it all came from. For me, Notes from the Voodoo Cafe is about notes from my imaginary place, where everyone is creative and excited and productive, like-minded people who understand what drives me and don't look at me like I'm nuts because, at my age, I'm supposed to be settled down in front of the tv, looking at photos of my grandkids and thinking about what I'm going to cook for dinner, not excitedly talking about what I want to do next or how I could alter this coat or that jacket or whom I want to interview next. Everyone would feel that passion, that drive, for whatever it was they loved to do.

So there you go. I created the place I imagine in my head and gave it a name so I could go there and send notes out into the world.

"Notes from the Voodoo Lounge," on the other hand, is in iTunes--that's the podcasts. It's a lounge, rather than a cafe, because you hang out and listen. It's not as busy because you come and kick back and hang out and chill while you listen to someone talk about their passion.

See?

Well, it makes sense to me. Maybe only to me--which is kind of what I'm talking about.

Anyway. So that's the story of that. Guess I'd better remember to label this in case I ever want to refer back to it.

And what's going on at the Voodoo Cafe this week? Working on a profile for one of the magazines. Doing book reviews for the soon-to-be-launched website (I hope to have more on that soon but am waiting until I know stuff for sure). That kind of thing. And then I did this with one of the cotton sweaters I got this weekend. I love cotton sweaters--I love the Mr. Rogers' vibe I get when I wear a sweater around the house, even though I catch myself and think, "My god, I'm turning into an old codger! What's next, black knee socks?"

It looked like this:

I took off the buttons and got some coverable ones and covered them in pink flannel:

Et voilá:

I may add more pink to it, but it's not a priority, since I like it enough this way to wear it, and there're a ton more pressing alterations waiting in line.

If you follow the tweets (you don't have to go to Twitter; they're over there on the right), you might have heard me say that my goal for the beginning of this week was to have three sewing machines set up and cleared off so that they were usable. I brought in the Singer my mother gave me long ago and set it up in the former living room (I'm going to try to do a little video of that room soon). You can see the instruction manual beside it because I never really learned to use it--it's got very few miles on it:

And then, in what used to be the dining room (that would be:  Before We Moved In), the Janome on The EGE's old desk from school (missing that top middle drawer, so they were going to throw it away--coaches always got the hand-me-downs). This is the fanciest of the machines, although it's not really fancy at all, definitely not one of those top-o-the-line computerized machines like the ones the Janome people tried to sell me. I told them I like doing things my own self and don't want a computer doing fancy-ass embroidery for me. Where's the fun in that? Sheesh.

My trusty 35-year-old all-metal Kenmore I use for everything except free-motion stitching. But now I'm going to give it some breaks as I work with the other two now and then:

OK. Time to get back to work~~thanks for coming by and joining me in the Voodoo Cafe. Hope you enjoyed your latte~~

XO