She Can Skip the Pearls. Also the Underpants.

Thanks to HeyJude Of Straw Mountain Studio for sending this to me this morning and making both me and The EGE laugh out loud.

Meet My New Best Friend! Ummmm, What's-Her-Name

For years I've been wanting a sewing mannikin.

[Note: I started to write "lusting after" but since I'm getting ready to write about a naked life-sized human figure, I thought better of it. I did make myself laugh, though.]

I want one of those that has the fabric covering you can stick pins into, and I want it in Exactly My Size. And on a sturdy movable base.

Of course, I also want it cheap, which is why I don't have one in my house right now. It's kind of down at the bottom of the list of Things I Need. Of course, since I discovered yesterday that I won't be eligible for an upgrade so I can get the new iPhone until next August, there's one fewer item on that list.

So I was at BJ's this week (I've taken to hanging out there rather a lot, trying on other people's clothes and talking and thinking about ways to alter everything in the entire shop), and the owner, Trish, said she had an old mannikin in the back. She didn't want it, and I could have it. I didn't get too excited, because who knows what it would look like, right? It could have had some Frankenhead or something. A mustache. Who knew? I knew it wouldn't have the fabric padding, and I knew it wouldn't be Exactly My Size, but still--I could make it work, at least for now.

She brought it out, its nekkidness covered by a white shirt--"I made sure it was cotton because I know you won't take home anything made out of polyester!"--and we took her apart and loaded her in the truck. Still not excited, but increasingly hopeful.

Then we went to Lowe's to get a rod to stick in her butt because Trish couldn't find the stand yet. She's actually really well made, very sturdy, with a screw to hold the rod in place. (The mannikin, not Trish.)

Here's our trip to Lowe's:

I brought her home and got her set up. As long as she's leaning against the sewing desk (The EGE's old school desk that they were going to throw away (and isn't that just marvelous: they give you an old desk to use for years but then, because it's missing drawers and stuff, don't think it's worth saving when you retire)), she's very stable.

Although she's my height, she's definitely not my size. She's about 4" smaller than I am on every measurement. That would make her, I'm guessing, about 90 lbs In Real Life. Her feet are exactly the right size, though--my shoes fit her as if they were made for her.

 Her head is way smaller than mine (duh: almost every normal person's head is way smaller than mine. My head is the same size as my dad's, and he was almost 6' 5" and weighed 13 lbs at birth). She has no hair, although Trish says there's a hairpiece floating around somewhere.

And of course she's about 35 years younger than I am, poor girl.

So I got her set up and found some temporary clothes for her. The bustier is another Oleg Cassini one--I have the one that fits perfectly; this is a size smaller and too small for me (I can zip it up, but I can't breathe). But it's fabulous and was only $3, so I had to have it. On her, it's too big, but safety pins hold it in place. I'll ditch the apron as soon as I find some tiny black tights or bike shorts--something tight and black that will work under the stuff I put on her.

 Trish says there are arms in the back of the shop, too, and that she'll find them eventually. I don't really need them--she's got shoulders to hold stuff up, and that's all I need.

While the stuff I'm trying on her will all be too big, what I mostly need to see is how it will look on a body. I don't need it to fit--I don't work on a lot of form-fitting stuff (I have form-fitting stuff, but I don't mess with it much). Here she is wearing the vest I'm working on. It was a black Bryn Walker knit, on clearance, and I started not to buy it because it was--duh--black. And knit. But it was so soft, and it looked great on. So I bought it (months ago) and then thought about what I was going to do to it. First I stitched up the sides--they just tied and were dorky--and that looked so good I added pockets made from old t-shirts. Now I'm adding the heart on the front. Yes, hearts are cliche. And I'm going to find one that's actual-heart-shaped: for me, they're a reminder about the warning sent to me by my actual heart (you can read about that in yesterday's post, if you're so inclined).

Anyway, I got totally jazzed this morning--I put the vest on her and was pinning the heart in place, and it was one of those moments that is Just Perfect: a mannikin in the sewing studio, doing her mannikin job, making my life easier. Just Perfect.

I think I may call her Alex, after Alexandra Jacopetti Hart, who wrote Native Funk & Flash, the book that set my brain on fire in 1974. Although there's been a lot of other stuff along the way--other interests, various jobs, other lives--it sometimes feels, taking the long view, that I can see the whole path so far, leading me into the world of altered and embellished clothing. It was life-changing, although I didn't know it at the time, and since I have no idea what other life I might have had, it didn't feel like a change, but more like a spark. Whatever.

Feel free to suggest other names--she can have more than one. Everyone needs a middle name, a nickname, an Official Name. Everyone needs Three Different Names [smell a reference here, any nerdy people?].

And because I suspect that I'm not the only one who adores peeks into people's horrendously messy studios, I took these just for y'all so you can gasp and go, "Oh, my god, that poor EGE! It's worse even than we imagined!" and then make plans for an intervention.

 That table stays up all the time. It's on risers, so it's a great height. I'd rather have the 6-ft table up (this one is 4 feet), but it takes up so much room I can't get to one of the (3) sewing machines. Not that I ever use it, but still. That's the cats' daybed in the background and the window that was supposed to be THREE windows by now. Still no handyman/contractor/carpenter. None. None in the whole damn town. Since our economy is officially still booming and we have a severe housing shortage, I may NEVER get windows. Grrrrrrr.

 There's a sewing machine under the Snoopy pillowcase from when I was in high school. That blue butterfly shape on the bulletin board in the background is a pin cushion I made for my mother when I was about 5, out of 1)cardboard, 2) fabric, and 3) a chunk of styrofoam. In kindergarten, I'm guessing. I have so few memories of childhood that I just kind of have to guess when things occurred.

 No, I don't leave the ironing board up. I put it away at the end of the day so we can, you know, actually walk from the kitchen into the bedroom without crashing into one thing or another.

OK. I've got to go take a walk so I can get dressed and go over to BJ's and see if she has a 50-ish cocktail dress for really cheap. There's a Rat Pack Tribute benefit show tonight at the Hilton, and we were given last-minute tickets. I never liked these guys, but our parents listened to them back when were kids, so I thought it would be fun. Then I read that, for $5, you can get unlimited martinis. I don't drink those, but that made me think that some people, surely, will get into the whole mood of the show and dress up. That would be way fun--I love dress-up! would say I wish I had some of my mother's clothes from the 50s, when she was wearing little suits and white gloves and dresses with full skirts, but 1) she didn't keep any from that far back and 2) since she had a 19-inch waist for much of her life, there's no way I could wear them.

I could, however, put them on Alex~~

XO

#5 & A Bunch of Other Random Stuff. Oh, & #6, Too. I Think.

I wish I had a clue how to spell that sound I just made. You know, the one that, when your Adoring Spouse makes it, you say, "If you don't quit doing that, you're going to rupture your epiglottis." And then he makes that sound again.

It's a sound of "Gah," except rendered somewhere in the back of your throat. Sort of. I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Anyway, I made that sound. I keep thinking I'll sit down and write something, but somehow the time--the time! She just keeps going away from me! It's not that I'm so horribly busy, either. That's one of the things I wanted to talk about, about how I'm changing my life. Let's just start there, shall we? I wrote here about the various health stuff that's been going on, the tests and stuff. Boring stuff. Mendez called today with the results of the heart stuff I mentioned in that linked post, and everything was normal. No wonky valves. No arrhythmia.

But wait. He detected an arrhythmia. The cardiologist, via an EKG, detected an arrhythmia. But the Holter monitor, which I wore for 24 hours, detected nothing. How is that possible? Well, I'll find out next week when I talk to the cardiologist for a follow-up, but I'm pretty sure I know the answer. What changed? Well, besides giving up wine and caffeine. Sigh. But besides that?

Anxiety. Stress. Worry. I've been working on this. Not tackling it big-time, as is my wont, but working on it slowly, bit-by-bit, a little at a time. I know myself well enough to know I can't wholesale change everything all at once, but I *can* make changes. And I'm learning to listen to that little voice I hear in my brain, and what it was telling me all through the end of The Long Hot Summer, was this: "The worrying is going to kill me."

Remember I talked about that? About how you hear that little voice in your head saying something like, "I'm so tired," and you go, "Pshaw! Quit whining!" Now, if you're like me, say, just the tiniest bit obsessive and stuff, you will have learned, over the years, to ignore a large portion (read: almost all) of the things your brain says to you. In that post I linked to up there, remember I told you about how my own personal brain likes to tell me my head is going to explode and that Terrible Horrors are about to befall me? Right this minute! Beware!

"Emergency! Emergency! Everyone to get from street!"

It says that a lot. I have no idea why. I seldom stand in the street. Hardly ever, in fact.

But apparently it did have a point. The heart stuff, whatever it was--and there was something there, because two different doctors detected it, whatever its cause--may have been the only way it knew to get my attention. And it's a really good way, to wake someone up over and over in the middle of the night, night after night, with whamming palpitations that go on for hours. That will, indeed, get your attention.

Anyway, so I've been trying to listen more to my brain. I don't know that that's a good thing, but it could be a kind of psychological game, where I pay more attention to it and it gradually begins to quit throwing itself down on the floor in the Ladies' Lingerie Department and kicking its feet and screaming, "No, no, no, no, I hate you, you poo!"

Some discipline is obviously in order here.

So I've been stitching a lot. Stitching (hand stitching) is one of the very, very few things that is calming to me. I relax more when I stitch than when I do any of the things that are supposed to be relaxing. Getting a massage? Forget about it: I'm trying to entertain the masseur/masseuse (usually the latter, but not always) and make sure they're not bored. Floating in a swimming pool? Nope: too busy making sure boogers don't land on me (and I'm sure you've already heard my reasons for this: the summer I spent as camp counselor at the YMCA day camp, when we had to drain the pool more than once. Not for boogers. For poo.) Lying in the sun? Well, I used to do that, and it was quite relaxing. As was, sometimes, drinking a glass of wine while sitting out in the sun.

Man, where did all that go? Bummer.

Since I can't do that stuff any more, I have to figure out other stuff. Stitching is one thing. But also important is figuring out how not to get so tied up in stuff, in drama and worry and obsessive omigod, omigod, omigod that all your internal bodily organs go into overdrive, preparing you for disaster. In learning to let go of the things you can't control, which is almost everything having to do with the work you do once it leaves your hands. Once you send it out into the world, you've got to cut the strings. That's a tough lesson.

Like many of y'all, I am a product of the house where I grew up, where Work Was All. If you worked hard, you were A Good Person. If you failed to work hard, you would suffer the worst fate of all, the one my father predicted for me all the time: Not Amounting to A Hill of Beans. My parents thought I was--gasp--lazy. I was a bookish child and loved to read or to sit on the floor of my room and make up stories for little plastic figures, and I could do this happily for hours. I suppose I was supposed to be outside, running and climbing things. I did this, too, but apparently not often enough or with quite enough vigor. They worried that I would be not only lazy, but fat. Fat was the only thing worse than lazy. (My parents came from long lines of tall, thin, hardworking people, I think. Also people who did not exhibit an overabundance of glee.)

So you know how that goes--because you've internalized this idea of Laziness, you think you have to prove it false. You work all the time, and if you're not working for pay, you're creating work for yourself, chores and projects and busy-ness. The internet, of course, is a big help in all this, filled as it is with never-ending things to do and places to go and people to meet, oh, my!

I'm still trying to get to the place where I can stop at various points during the day and sit and stitch. I'm not there yet, but I do stitch for much longer in the morning. I try to keep to my rule of No Computer After Midnight and No Computer in the Morning Before Stitching. I backslide some. Someday soon I hope to experience not just sitting down during the day and stitching, but sitting down during the day and reading, which feels akin to setting the house on fire and then lying down for a nap. Speaking of naps, I hope to someday take one when I'm *not* sick. Just because it might feel good. Restorative.

Now, there's a word I want to embrace: restorative.

I hope to sleep for 8 hours. I hope to take strolls, rather than power walks. I hope to Learn to Lounge.

I'm trying to do more yoga (although it's after 9 pm, and I haven't done any yet) and meditate again (it's been a long while).

I am hoping to have fewer opinions. I'm hoping to have as my default setting, "Eh. Who cares?"

I'm working on all this. So far, I've gotten to the part where I can spend more time sitting and stitching and less time sitting at the computer, and that's a good start.

In short, I am working on Calm and Balance. I need a cushion that says not "Keep Calm and Carry On," but "Keep Calm & Let It Go."

OK, now to the fun part--the #5 part. I do so hope this is #5, because I've quite lost track. In fact, I just realized I have both what I think is #5 and what I think is #6.

 This was a cotton knit sweater, and the test was to see if I could keep it from falling apart when I cut into it. I was going to put a split stitch around the bottom, but I noticed chunks of yarn falling off as I stitched, so I had to go back to the rolled-and-whip-stitched hem. It's all one color because I couldn't figure out what other color I would want with it. Not more fall colors. Not red, for a Christmas Sweater. Goodlordalmighty, no.

I'm thinking now, though, that it's got to have some color. I've got a piece of orange-y red felted wool that wants to be cut into a funky heart shape. Kind of cliche, but I don't think I can wear this grey-ish green sweater like this. It hurts me.

And then here's the one I just finished (of course, I've started another one, but it's nowhere near ready to be seen. At. All.)

I've talked about boro style, about the heavily patched and stitched Japanese workers' garments that remind me of--oh, just go over to CreateMixedMedia.com and read what I said about it over there (that post will be up tomorrow). Boring to repeat myself here--it would make you want to smack me. Plus I put links over there.

 This is a fake white t-shirt--it's just the neck, which is really lame. It was almost enough to make me pass up this one because I hate stuff that looks like something it's not, but I'm really glad I didn't. Stitching on the white part was fun--I like the way it looks with the blue.

So that's what I've been up to:  trying to chill, stay out of drama, listen to that little voice inside. Right now it's saying, "Time for yoga! Time for yoga! Hey, you: TIME FOR YOGA, ALREADY!"

XO

Podcast with Jennifer New

Jennifer New is the author of Dan Eldon: The Art of Life, the story of Dan Eldon and his journals, which was a more in-depth follow-up to The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon, edited by his mother, Kathy Eldon. I knew I had to talk to Jennifer when I got my hands on one of my all-time favorite books, Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art, which she published in 2005.

You can find out more about Jennifer on her website, which has a link to her blog. Her newest book, just out this month, is Dan Eldon: Safari as a Way of Life.

Photocard: That's One Healthy Baby

Photocard: Bad Choices

Gert didn't want to go along with Ellen, but she didn't feel she really had a choice.

And Now There Are Four

{Note: I started this last night. Then I had to go eat dinner. Then we watched Netflix. Then I stitched. And read. And went to bed. Ergo, it seems I wrote it and posted it on two different days. Which I actually did.}

Oh, gee. Here it is, after 10 pm. We haven't eaten dinner yet--we just got home from Barrage, a fabulous concert performance. These twice-a-year performing arts events are made free to the public by the gift of a local couple.

The EGE's just finished feeding the cats, and I just did a run-through of what I'm going to take to wear at the family wedding Saturday afternoon in Ft. Worth. Well, not really in Ft. Worth: in Weatherford, which is right outside Ft. Worth but not nearly as well-known, except Connie, the wife of my ob/gyn, says Money magazine named Weatherford one of the top five (ten?) places to retire. Really. Neither one of us could figure out how come. We think it must have something to do with cows, but that doesn't seem right. Cows and retirees? Huh.

Anyway, so I've had this idea of what I thought I'd wear, a real puzzle because I'm always totally baffled by anything that contains an oxymoron: "dressy casual." I'm thinking our niece was just delighted with Mr. Wedding Planner Person. Let's just confuse the crap out of everyone, shall we?

It can't be both dressy AND casual. It's got to be one or the other, and if it's a blending of the two, what exactly are you expecting? Maybe you'll get a crowd like the one at the performance tonight, where some of the men had on jackets and ties, and at least one guy had on an old gimme t-shirt and a pair of sloppy-baggy overalls. Or maybe you're going for cocktail dresses with Chuck Taylors.

Or maybe this bothers no one but me. That's probably closer to the truth. Whatever. I have The Perfect Autumn Outfit. Well, perfect for a 4:30 wedding on a Saturday afternoon, when I'm not sure if it's outside or in and I'm totally baffled by Dressy Casual. I hope The EGE gets photos, because I sure didn't take any in the run-through. Imagine, if you will: full calf-length brown cotton Ralph Lauren skirt (last year at Goodwill, looks brand new, less than $2.50) with a full tiered orange skirt underneath (clearance, Dillards, many years ago, $19.99 (regularly $90)). This one shows maybe 1/4" inch under the brown one. Burnt orange Born sandals (new last year; we won't go there). Beaded and sequined (with beaded fringe! bling-y!) sleeveless bright orange top, $5 sample from a tiny shop in the garment district in Manhattan (no dressing rooms, grouchy women proprietors--you don't try on, you just grab and buy). Olive cotton wrinkled (totally wrinkled on purpose) long jacket thing--very cool. And a totally fabulous orange and green glass bead necklace made by Roz Stendahl. And you thought she just painted and drew and taught color theory. Silly you. That woman can do everything.

Anyway. All of this is neither here nor there. I wanted to show you the gray sweatshirt (#2) you saw looking like this:

Too bland, too borning. Now it looks like this:

Then--finally!--we move on to #4, which I finished yesterday. It began as an olive henley. I wrote more about it over at CreateMixedMedia.com, where I'm writing about the process of working in a series, using these tops as an example. Sure, I know this isn't Real Art, but it makes talking about art seem less formal and intimidating to relate it to stitching. At least that's my hope.

So here it is:

And if you toggle back and forth between these two photos, it looks like I'm stitching. Endlessly amusing. Well, it is if you're me.

And now we're off to Dallas. Ft. Worth. The buzzing metropolis of Weatherford. With cows!

XO

Photocard: Tequila Night

Podcast with Dawn Sokol About Art Journals

Dawn DeVries Sokol has written several books--last time we talked about Doodle Diary for Girls--including one of my all-time favorite books, my go-to reference for art journal artists, 1000 Artist Journal Pages. Dawn also curates artist journals for CreateMixedMedia.com, and she finds the most amazing pages for us there. So of course I wanted to talk to her about art journals. Turns out we had more to talk about than just journals, though--

You can find out more about Dawn, her books, her art journaling DVD, her blog--all at dblogala.com

Photocard: Sunday in the Park

Photocard: Stylish Stanley

Experiment #3

This one's my favorite by far--I'm so jazzed that today I began #4, #5, #6, and #7. I think. I'm not really sure--I did so much cutting and ironing and pinning today that I really don't know HOW many I've got ready to go.

OK--so I started out with an off-white waffle-weave henley, men's Extra Huge (XXL, or maybe XXXL).

I wasn't sure how it was going to act when I cut it off. Would it begin to unravel? I don't know nothing 'bout working with no knits (nor about birthin' no babies, but never mind).

 I cut it off and then abused the cut-off piece, tugging on it and wadding it up and twisting it, just to see what happened. Not much of anything, if you don't count the biting and scratching and saying, "ow! You're hurting me!" So I ripped off the cuffs on the sleeves, too. I could have cut them off but wanted the sleeves to stay really long, so I ripped out the threads and removed the cuffs. Then I dumped the whole thang in a purple (Procion MX grape) dyebath. No photo of that step, but you have a good imagination and can visualize Things Turning Grape-Colored. It was FABULOUS!

Then I started stitching it. I rolled the cut edges to the outside and whip-stitched them with doubled floss, all six strands (for 12 strands--not that it matters; I just wanted that fullness so the colors would show up). I knotted the threads on the outside, where it would show.

And here it is. My Favorite So Far:

 Quite a bit longer in the back to keep my lower back warm--

remember how I said I figured that out after the first one?

It's more symmetrical across the back than this. 

Since I couldn't see it, I didn't adjust it so it would show better. Sorry.

Now I just have to get new photos of #2--I've gone back and done a bunch of applique because it was just way, way too boring.

Photos. Ahh, photos. You'd think that, living with a photographer, it would be easy-peasy to get photos of everything. The problems are 1) time and 2) lighting. In the evenings, we go to Starbucks to relax before dinner. If we don't get photos while we're there, it's too dark to take them outside when we get home. Inside, it's tough to get the colors right because of the colored walls (even though he adjusted the white balance before he took these, the colors still came out wonky, and I had to go back and adjust them all before I uploaded them). I can't use the self-timer on my little camera and take them myself because I get really irritated with not having a blank wall against which to stand and take them--everything is messy-looking, even when it's not actually messy--the stuff on the wall interferes with what I'm trying to show, and--well, I get grouchy trying to do it.

Anyway, we got these taken just moments ago so I could show you. We'll eat dinner in an hour or so--about 10 pm these days--and then I'll get to stitch some more on #4, I hope.

XO

P.S.  Good grief, what an evening. Larry escaped, so we had to get a flashlight and go look for him and get him back in the backyard. This was after we got home from going to get floss: we went to get floss, and we were almost there--all the way across town--when I realized I'd left my list at home. Since I ended up buying 80 skeins of floss, the answers are no, yes, and yes. No, I couldn't remember what I needed. Yes, I had to have the list, and yes, we drove home and got the list and went back. This afternoon when I took a shower, there was no hot water. Brrrrr. We waited to re-light the pilot until we got home from getting the floss, but the hot water heater doesn't seem to be getting any gas, and we have no idea why. The meter looks fine (you always have to wonder if someone's backed into it in the alley). I hate dealing with gas stuff--I was poisoned by natural gas when I was a kid, so it's reallyreallyreally scary to me. So no hot water until we can figure out what's going on. Sigh.