Kelee: Sewing Skirts

I have been wanting to learn to sew. I have been trying to learn to sew. Sewing makes my brain hurt and makes me fill my swear jar right up to the tippy top. Quickly.
Initially, my problem was my sewing machine. My mom gave me her old sewing machine when I graduated from college. I love it because it's green and old and my mom's. I could not even figure out how to load it up with thread. I had to finally give up the sentimental idea of sewing something for my little girl on the same sewing machine that my mom had sewn me those uneven shorts with one pocket that went the wrong way and one pocket too small to hold more than a dime. My mother was quite wonderful at many things, but sewing was not one of them.

My instruction-manual-loving husband gave me a brand new sewing machine for Chrimbo two years ago, and imparted upon me the Biblical wisdom of the Wise Men (because it was Chrimbo time):

And I say unto ye, if swaddling clothes were good enough for the baby Jesus in the Manger, why are you trying to sew a dress for your child? Doth thou believe that your child needs better clothes than the human form of the Creator of all things? Oh, you do? Then thou shalt read the manual if you expect to learn to sew.

Manual, relay instructions.

I learned how to thread the machine. Easy enough with a handy diagram to follow.
I learned how to load up the bobbin. Pretty simple.
And the manual has a simple diagram that shows if your tension wheel number needs to be more or less. That solved three of my sewing problems.

My new problem was that every time I started to press the accelerator to start sewing, my needle would become unthreaded. Every single time. It would take me forever to sew something what with all the stopping, and the starting, and the rethreading, and the swearing, and the depositing of quarters in my swear jar. I finally called my sister who suggested turning the sewing knob at the end a few times so that the thread would already be anchored into the fabric and therefore less likely to pull out and more likely to impregnate the fabric with stitches. Genius. I've been sewing like crazy ever since. Except for all that time I spent at the lake, and at work, and reading, and sitting around listening to music, and playing matching games with my kids, and going for creemees, and updating my facebook status, and pulling teeth, and thinking about doing the laundry.

Anywho. I am still in the very extremely early learning phase of sewing. I am just so excited to finally be moving forward in the process. When I kept telling people that I couldn't sew, they seemed to think that I was saying, "I cannot sew as well as someone who can sew really, really amazingly." However, it was just this week that I discovered that those little markings next to where the needle bobs up and down are measurements to help you sew your seams to the measurement that the pattern suggests. And just today as I was taking pictures, I discovered that the lines continue down so you can keep your fabric lined up as you make your 3/4 inch seam. I really meant that I could not sew.

The girlchild's butterfly skirt turned a wee bit hoochie after her last growth spurt. I decided to make her a new skirt. I read some tutorials online:

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cornpatchcreations/twirlyskirt.htm

http://www.houseonhillroad.com/photos/twirly_skirt/index.html

I decided to pass on the math and go more with a visual, trace-with-a-crayon pattern.

I ended up making three of them. Making changes in the "pattern" as I figured out new stuff.Until I ran out out of fabric.

Let's say you were going to sit next to the sweet girlchild on the fabby orange couch. You could find at least 372 things wrong with this skirt, but you'd have to admit she looks more stylish than if I'd just wrapped her up in swaddling clothes. I call this progress.

Alison: Um, the dog ate my homework?

Why Alison is SO LATE with her blog entry...

Kelee: Why Al Swearengen is an Alien

One Sunday morning my kids and I found a package of unlined notecards. It was winter so this was a big find for us. We all took turns drawing stuff. My girlchild drew horses and unicorns with “hearts for wings,” and the boychild drew monkeys and monsters. Then they started telling me to draw stuff. Draw a robot. Draw a cat. Now draw the robot and the cat sword fighting. But put hearts around it so you know the swords are just for fun. We spent a whole day drawing on those cards.

In order to be able to squeeze in time to work on crafty whatnots, I often have to incorporate my children into the craft. I have crocheted many a hat with a child sitting on my lap. So when it came time to trim the batch of mugs that I'd thrown, we all squeezed into my studio, called The Portal, and recreated our notecard drawings on these mugs.

This is going to seem like a total change in topics, but stay with me, and it'll connect back around. Ben and I had been watching Deadwood, the HBO series based on the town of Deadwood. It came into the store used, and we sold it right away to our friend Louise. She was giving it as a gift and didn't need it until Christmas so she loaned it to us (which, by the way, is a good indication of how awesome our customers are!). Ben and I were watching it at breakneck speed. If you haven't seen it, you should. Unless you are offended by immense profanity. While we were watching it, Ben and I were swearing like, well, like characters from Deadwood. “That cocksucker wants a hazelnut soy latte. Can you make it?”

“Well, fuck yeah.”

The politics of Deadwood were head-spinning. The backstabbing, the lies, the double crossing, the double crossing of the double crosser. One of my favorite parts of the show was that Swearengen and his fellas would sit around and talk about who was backstabbing whom. This was terribly helpful for me. “That cocksucker thinks that I think that he knows that I know that he was lying, but he's fucking wrong.”

Now back to the mugs. The difference between drawing a cat sword-fighting an alien on a note card and on a mug is the circular nature of the mug. So while one hand was sword fighting on one side of the cup, the other hand was completely free on the other side of the cup (insert montage of Deadwood here) to lie and double cross. Of course the doublecross of beheading is befriending, which is, according to Deadwood, the sharing of a drink. Clink clink.

I don't know if it was the genuine giddiness of making Al Swearengen as an alien and Seth Bullock as a robot or that fifth of whiskey I just drank, but these cups make me so happy.

I drink my kool-aid and ponder.

What does a monkey band sound like?

Do robot dogs poop?

Why is this cat hanging out with robots and aliens?

Why does the cat stand on its hind legs but not the dog? What kind of gift is that cat giving that dog? A box of bones?A box of fleas?

Alison: Misty summer morning meanderings

The dogs and I walked along the rail trail which runs through our town. I love this time of year because lupines are blooming along the trail.

This is Misty - or Mistopher - or Twisty. I like to make new names out of the given ones for our two dogs and six cats. She is blind. When a stranger is allowed to pets her she likes it, but when one of us pets her she licks her little black lips over and over again.

There are two abandoned houses near the rail trail. I don't know why. They're just empty. These two benches are in the back yard of one, in the unmowed yard.

For a short time we rented a house on a dirt road about 5 miles from the Village. I loved it so much. We had chickens that lay little blue eggs. One day I came home and they were all gone.

I love cemeteries. And old churches. I am not burdened by guilt from a religious upbringing. I like the peace in those places. I am most at peace sitting on a rock in a river being pummeled by rushing water barely warmer than snow melt. I can open up when I am walking through a damp field studying turn of a dying leaf, or the composition of trees to water to sky.

I love the smells of the seasons. I need to touch these things I see. To hear the sounds and the quiet.

I love weather. I love the buried emotions that surface when I am in different kinds of weather.

I spent early to full blown spring photographing this barn. One morning near the end of my photographing venture I wandered the field behind this barn. The grass was heavy with dew. The morning fog was thick. Old rusted farm machinery lay in brush and grass behind the barn. I am at home here, in the grass, soaked with dew. I wish I had touched the rocks so their imprint had stuck in my brain. I will have to go back to do that.

There is an old fire station in town that has been a number of things since its fire station days, most recently it was a hardware store. Now it is for sale. Upstairs are floor to ceiling boarded up windows. Wouldn't it make a wonderful studio? I wish I had a studio with light, so my mind could expand through the windows. And high ceilings so I wouldn't feel trapped. This one has a curved ceiling made of wainscoting, as are the walls. Then, place this studio in an old field (logic be damned), where cows used to roam, and tractors used to plow.

And music made from the wind, the rush of water and the songs of summer birds back from the south would fill the room. I would bathe in the river, sleep in the field, and eat berries the birds and I would find near the woods. I would on the earth that fed animals and people long gone.

That would be my heaven.

So Many Social Engagements, So Little Time

The Vermont winter is hard on cars. By the end of this winter, I had zero front doors that would open from the outside. I had to unlock the doors and then crawl through from the back to reach the front handle and push it open and pray it wouldn't latch back by the time I backed out of the backseat. I was quite excited when spring finally came, and I could leave my windows down and just reach in and open it from the outside like a normal upright human. Only we had the rainiest spring on record. I can no longer remember the final straw, but we got both door handles fixed. You should see me opening the doors. I look so high class. The best part is how easy it is to get in and out of my car.
I recently got a clay/pasta roller and an extruder. In polymer clay arting and crafting terms, this is the same as getting functioning car doors. It was possible to mix the clay before, but holy macaroly! It is so easy to do now.

Unfortunately, real life has been so busy lately that I've only had tiny pieces of time here and there to use them. This past weekend's 55th Annual Vermont Dairy Festival, which surrounds our tiny little Ma and Pa Coffee Shop in a fiscally supportive hug, was the final event of the Too Busy Month of Super Busy-ness.
The O-man has been surrogately working with clay for me.
New clays, too! Notice Stella, the dog,'s spokesmodel skillz.