Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Tutorial: Fluffing Vintage Silk Flowers

When I got hold of the box of Mary Beth's flattened vintage flowers, I went online looking for information on how to un-flatten them.  The bulk of what I found involved using iron steam:  there was a problem with this because of the sheer volume of flowers with which I was faced.  If you are restoring more than a few flowers you will need more and hotter steam to unfold them without scalding your fingers.
Flat Anemone
Flat Pansies
The materials from which vintage flowers are made vary:  there are ones that are crisp;  ones that appear to be made of organza; and ones of silky velvet.  Naturally, each material behaves differently as it is exposed to steam:  it is important to treat each flower individually.

Aside from reshaping the flowers, areas of concern are leaves and stems.  Florists' tape and glue seem particularly susceptible to the effects of steam.  If it sits all right with you that you might have to re-glue some leaves to their wire armatures and that your stems will for a time become sticky, then by all means proceed.  Otherwise, I would say go for the steam from your iron.

The Pot
You will need a soup pot, a colander that will fit over the mouth of the stew pot, a heat-resistant measuring cup, and a lid.  For shaping larger, round flowers, a custard cup works nicely.

Fill your soup pot a third of the way and set it to boil.  Set your colander over the water, and be sure that it sits well above the water (you don't want slosh over from a rolling boil).

Before you set your flowers into the colander, you will want to try to unfold and shape them a bit.  Be ginger with them, but these flowers are tougher than you  might think.  Again, the leaves and stems may be more delicate than the flowers themselves.


Measuring Cup in the Colander
Arranged in the Colander
At first, you will set the flowers around the measuring cup.  Cover the colander with a lid and do a couple of dishes or unload the dishwasher--I get a lot of chores done while I am steaming flowers!  The point is that small tasks provide good intervals between  adjusting the flowers' positions.

Note:  this whole process requires PATIENCE.  No matter how focused you think you are, you cannot try to push through an entire box of flowers in one afternoon.  Each flower requires individual attention and rushing just doesn't work.  You'll find yourself getting frustrated and tossing your failures back into the box for another day.

As time passes and the flowers' fabric relaxes, you'll want to take the flowers out and adjust them, folding petals back and unfurling leaves.  This may require turning the flowers, laying them face-down over the measuring cup, or gently tucking them into the cup one at a time.

DO check the flowers OFTEN.  When I say that you can get chores done, I do NOT mean that you can clean the whole bathroom in between checking the flowers.  If you compartmentalize your hypothetical bathroom cleaning to clean toilet+check flowers, clean bathtub+check flowers, etc., your results will be much more satisfactory.  If you steam too long or hard, you will for example find that you have inadvertently eliminated the texturing on the leaves.

Custard Cup
With roses, anemones and other large symmetrical flowers, the next step after the steamy measuring cup is a cool down in a custard cup.  This will help the flower to retain a shape:  otherwise it will be a lovely, steamed, FLAT flower.   Once the flower has cooled and dried, it will take on a three dimensional appearance.

Note:  I am still working out the issue of reforming flowers that have been wired together.  I'll post more when I find some solution.

Further Note:  You will also find that there is a certain percentage of your flowers that will not immediately respond to your best efforts.  For example, the batch I photographed had daisies that would not unfold themselves to my satisfaction.  I just put them aside until something else occurs to me.

This batch also contained velvet pansies which had been pretty well smushed.  These responded well, with considerable manipulation.  To my surprise, I discovered that they are more resilient than I had expected:  one accidentally got wet and dried well without losing most of its softness. (You don't want to do that too much, though:  it wreaks merry havoc with the glue holding it together.)

Unflat Pansies
Unflat Anemone






As you can see, the pansies are now open and more lifelike, and the anemone has gone from flat to three-dimensional with the soft lines it should have.


To avoid crushing the flowers , I suggest poking holes in the top of a shoe box lid:  some flowers can be stored inside the box, and more delicate ones can be stuck upright through the lid.

Good luck!

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Relaxing the Flowers

Helen Gombar, my friend Mary Beth's mother, started her career as a milliner.  She made beautiful hats; I have seen some of them.

To make beautiful hats, one needs the right materials, including hat blocks for shaping, display stands, and decorative elements such as feathers and flowers.

Helen had LOTS of each.  Display stands occur in profusion in the basement:  together they comprise a virtual forest of hat display ware.

Marlene Dietrich?
Hat Blocks (and Canned Goods)
Deco Hat Stand
Likewise, the hat blocks occur in large numbers.  When I gathered them up in one place earlier this year I lost count at 40.  Some are one solid piece of wood; others are sectioned so that they can be removed without disturbing the shape of the newly formed hat.  There are brims and crowns of every conceivable size and shape.  It is really something to see.


Today I came upon a box of silk flowers that had clearly been intended for hat decoration.  I had known of the box's existence, but haven't had much of a chance to do more than glance inside.  Because I have nothing better to do (HA!) I decided to bring them home and see about steaming them.

What a Mess!
The contents of the box were a mess.  If my calculations are correct they have been in the basement for twenty years, and some of the flowers probably date back much further.   The flowers, which are silk or velvet are crushed and bent.

I looked online.  Advice online includes using a hair dryer or steam from an iron.  I opted for the iron:  my iron throws LOTS of steam.


Only my iron seemed woefully inadequate when pitted against the huge pile of flowers, and there seemed to be an increasing chance that I would burn my fingers.

I got out the big soup pot, the colander, and a lid, set a bunch of water to boil, and then steamed the flowers.  Well, some of them, at least.

Those of you who are into Cyberpunk will perk up at these beautiful black flowers that unfolded in my steamer.  They are not perfect, many of them being more than fifty years old, but they are in better condition than you might expect.  The large black roses are a combination of velvet and organza, and have soft stems rather than the heavy gauge wire stems we see these days.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the biggest issue with these flowers is with the leaves, which have often come unglued after years of sitting in a box in a mostly but not always dry basement.  Steaming the flowers did not make this worse, as far as I can tell.

Some of the flowers, like the ones at the right, literally popped open with exposure to the steam.  There is some slight discoloration in the white flowers, but often it is so uniform that it's difficult to tell whether or not they were originally off white.  I have some ideas for whitening the flowers (NOT involving bleach, thank you very much!) and will experiment on those flowers I deem irredeemable.

The variety of flowers is staggering:  not only do are there roses, there are daisies, gladiolas, sweet peas, wisteria, peonies, and orange blossoms.  There are strings of tiny roses and bunches of asters and little velvet grapes.

I hope that I can recover some of these treasures.  So far I think it's gone pretty well, but I also think I did the "easy" ones first.

Next up...FEATHERS!

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Small Victories


Panoramic View of the Front of the Store

About a month ago, I posted part of a story about Organization Project at my friend's fabric store.  When I started helping out there, over a year ago, I couldn't walk far in any direction, but the back of the store was a frightening mess.  First of all there was the wildly out of control fake furs (nicknamed "Jim Henson's Creature Workshop"):  these come on huge bolts and had taken on a life of their own to the point that the area behind the front counter was knee-deep in acrylic fur.  Attempts to organize these on the cutting table in that region of the store were stopgap at best:  if my friend needed a specific color it was inevitably on the bottom and getting it out would result in another furry avalanche.  I can't tell you how dirty I got, how much I sneezed, or many times I lost my Bluetooth, water bottles and other things (last night I found a roll of tape that HAD to have been there over a year) in my quest to bring order to this chaos.

It was behind and below the furs, in the sweltering near-darkness, underneath a display table in the back, that I discovered the Lurex brocades.  If you picture Indiana Jones pulling glittering treasure out of a dark tomb, then you get the idea.  (BTW, I have the hat:  it was a gift from someone who said I was the only person they knew who was qualified to wear it).

 It was a remarkable time for me.  Fabrics I had only seen in finished garments emerged by the bolt, in perfect condition. I was galvanized and spent a great deal of time making sure I had extracted all of these potentially collectible textiles.




Of course, all good things come to an end.  Once I had extracted all of the treasure, I had to have a place to put it.  This required more fabric tossing, usually of bolts of polyester doubleknit, straight to the back of the store.  And thus, once again, the very back of the store became impassible.


Out of necessity, our priorities shifted.  There were many cottons, and as our region has many quilters, we spent time organizing these.  We pulled out and shelved bridal fabrics and trims that hadn't seen the light of day in years.

And This is AFTER We Did Some Organizing!

We also needed to keep the sales floor clear because there was the concern that a customer would trip over something (this remains a consideration, though perhaps less so than previously).  

So the back of the store sat.  

And sat.

And sat.

Until August, when we started looking at the costumes at the back of the store with an eye towards selling them.  Digging commenced:  fur cascaded; remnants of polyester came down in doubleknit avalanches; three-tier slips tried to take over.

...I hadn't mentioned the slips, had I?

Bridal slips have become the bane of my existence.  They are poufy, slippery, take up a LOT of room, and they were EVERYWHERE.  So along with the bolts of polyester, the slips became missiles, filling up space at the back of the store like packing peanuts.  In sections the pile was six or seven feet high.

Finally I had to do something.  The front of the store had once again cycled around to critical mass and I needed room to put more fabric away--and there was only one place left to put it.  

A chief deterrent had been the polyester fabric.  There were bolts and bolts and bolts of it, and the owner and I finally came to the agreement that I would leave the gabardines out but put the qianas away.  (For those of you who don't know, qiana is the silky fabric that disco dresses, those funky print shirts of the 70s, and the dresses in the original Battlestar Galactica were made of. The name "qiana"was randomly generated by a computers at DuPont Corproation in 1968.  

The second difficulty arose from the fact that the huge display table that occupies the back wall of the store had been so overloaded with fabric that it had broken, necessitating a Day of Carpentry.  I had to move fabric for that as well, and the resulting mess was spectacular.  But the table got fixed.     

Now I delved into the closet under the steps, yet another fearsome mess which to date I had actively avoided.  And got lost.  At one point my friend couldn't find me, and had to call me on my cell phone. I am pleased to report that I have signal in Uncle Joe's closet.   Then I called my good friend Beth and said, "Gosh, I could really use some help in the store again."  

Beth is a fantastic organizer.  She came up and gamely stacked bolts of qiana in the closet until it was stuffed (I should point out that qiana is slippery as heck and thus really a paint to stack), going so far as to clear out the closet in the front of the store so that we could store useful fabric there.  Meanwhile, I attempted to organize the remaining doubleknits and move the furs over to the newly repaired display table.

Yet at the end of that evening, even knowing that we had done a tremendous amount of work, neither Beth no I could SEE any progress.  The aisle I'd hoped to clear wasn't even visible, and there still seemed to be too many polyesters.  Even though I had relegated most of the slips to a huge barrel, the barrel was stacked on top of another and leaning at an alarming angle.  We left the store downtrodden, and were only cheered by some of David's amazing cooking.  

The next day I went in, planning to deal with the issue.  HA.  It's October.  My friend rents and sells costumes.  It was NUTS.  All I succeeded in doing was making a bigger mess.

Now I was REALLY frustrated.  I told my friend I would come Tuesday evening and just do it.  

And I did.  Four hours, twenty sneezes, three broken fingernails, and a fair amount of dirt later I managed to not only carve a path through the back, but also organize everything, including the fur.  If I go in this morning it may actually be possible to make a circuit (however circuitous) around the store for the first time in years.  

Whee!




Monday, October 11, 2010

On the Just Shaping of Murals

This past weekend, I challenged myself to do a door-sized mural in a day.  I had been commissioned to do work for a store called Portals in Berkeley Springs, WV; the owner was thrilled when I suggested that we use "doors" and "windows" as the theme.

In August, I went into the store, which is in a beautiful building where homeopathic medicines used to be made, and took pictures of the beautiful oak cabinets:



David and I got moulding that was similar to this.  He assembled it and and I painted it to look like this.  The color in the photo is a little off because of the fluorescent lighting.

Last Friday, David affixed the plywood panel on which I would be painting onto a solid frame, which we mounted directly onto the wall in the store.

Once that had been done, we attached the moulding to the plywood, to complete the "door" effect.

  This past weekend was the Apple Butter Festival in Berkeley Springs, so in order to get a parking space we arrived early.   I set up and started working at about 11 AM.

Tom, the owner of Portals, had chosen the Bubble Nebula to go into this first portal.   We found a photograph similar to this one in an issue of Beautiful Universe.


So here goes...I set this goal for myself without telling Tom what I had in mind.  I'll be honest with you:  I asked myself more than once what the heck I had been thinking.

I had to keep reminding myself that I had customers who called me the "Queen of Starfields".  Of course I could do this!!!

12:15 PM


3PM
There was a point at which I really thought I had lost my touch.  It's a lot to ask of oneself to paint, not only in public, but also under the clock.  I love painting in public:  I like talking to people and explaining how I do what I do.  But there is always a fear that I will blow the process completely, forget how to paint or how to render clouds and stars...you know.
Finally I hit my stride!

4:15 PM

The finished product!  6:30 PM

I'm sorry that the photo of the finished piece isn't better but I hope to get a photographer in to try to do a better job with the lighting.  So there I was, at 6:30 PM, with a finished mural and no brain cells left!

Oh, and a stiff neck...

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Blessed Rain

Hemlock Hole, April 2010

All summer, the water level in Sideling Hill Creek has been creeping down.  This is in accordance with the creek's annual cycle, which starts with the spring floods and ends with the winter freeze.  This year started out like the others I have seen at Four Quarters Farm:  in April, frigid water rushed past us as we rebuilt the steps to Hemlock Hole, deep enough that canoeists could navigate the rapids.
By July, the water level had dropped significantly:  you have seen my photographs of the dry creek bed as I took advantage of the lack of water to explore the geology of the Land.  The flow of the creek was reduced to a trickle, rendering Hemlock Hole a foul, stagnant pool; by the middle of September even a swim in Stoneledge Hole left me smelling like a pond.  

Emily's Photo of the Dry Creek Bed
24 September 2010
You know you're really connected to a place when you welcome the news of a huge rain storm by rushing out to your campsite a day early so that you can be there to witness it.  I had enjoyed exploring the areas of the creek that had previously been unaccessible, but the Land ached for the renewal that could only be brought by rain.  

The rain started a little later than predicted, which provided me with the time I needed to install the wood stove into our new tent, bring in wood, batten down the hatches, and enjoy dinner at the Farmhouse.  While the first droplets struck the tent, I fired up the wood stove, lit my lanterns, and settled in for the duration.  

I spent Thursday in my tent, dry, warm and happily painting.  Periodically my curiosity would get the better of me and I would venture out to see how the creek was faring--and get really, really wet.

The transformation was gradual.  At first the creek looked mostly unchanged; then a trickle of water began to flow in the area we had tried to clear back in July.  But Friday morning I walked out to Hemlock Hole and heard a sound I had not heard since the Spring:  running water.

Running water!  I sat on the bench above the water and closed my eyes.  I had not realized how I had missed that sound, how its absence had left a void in my summertime experience.  

The Same Portion of the Creek
as Above,  1 October 2010
It gave me hope.

The Same Portion of Hemlock Hole
from the April Photo
 30 September 2010
No Canoes Here
Hope is important to me in the autumn, a time of year that I anticipate with both dread and eagerness.  While I love its clear, crisp days and cooler nights, the beautiful leaves, the smell of apples and the sight of fields dotted with pumpkins, I have not looked forward to winter since I was in grade school.  Snow is pretty, but I do not like shoveling or driving in it.  I'm not a fan of walking the dogs in 90 degree heat, but I'll take that over walking them in 34 degree slush.  (Incidentally, the dogs don't care!)  Long about February, my husband starts desperately looking for someplace warm and sunny to take me before I implode.  By late March I am watching the long range forecasts, and the moment I see a promising stretch of weather, I am on the road to Four Quarters to set up my campsite, and when I arrive out there I will hear the rushing water of the creek speaking to me of the spring floods.
Same View as Above
1 October 2010
And here I was, in early October, hearing those waters speaking to me of renewal from the drought and reminding me that the cycle is endless.  The creek will be there waiting for me when I return in the spring.  

Though the steps you saw us building at the top of the page probably won't be...as Orren gruffly says, "The creek is the creek."

I wouldn't have it any other way.



Wednesday, September 29, 2010

The Age of the Pigeonhole

I am a Trekkie.

I do not need to be psychic to see the images and concepts flashing through your minds:  an overweight, possibly unwashed, geek with pointed ears or Klingon ridges and a zillion t-shirts, out of touch with reality, watching reruns in Mom's basement, buried in 20-year-old fanzines that feature bizarre and unlikely relationship pairings.

Anyone who actually knows me will tell you that nothing could be further from the truth.  Just go look at the picture of me on my first post.  For starters, I am out of doors, and  everyone knows that Trekkies never, ever go outside unless it's to attend a convention, right?

Behold the power of the label.

Humans love to classify things; classification begs labels; and labels are dicey business.  On the one hand they help us to describe with great specificity what we want; on the other hand they encourage the very human tendency to try and "pigeonhole" everything--and everyone.  These days the"pigeonholes" have become more like those really cool plastic tackle boxes with bunches of dividers you insert into slots to create sections of whatever size we want.  Each box has its main classification, say, "Apples", and then upon opening the box you can view all the different sorts of apples, from Macintosh to Red Delicious, each in its own section.  This system is great, because then I can tell my husband to pick up not only Golden Delicious apples for a pie but also several Fujis and Braeburns, because using a variety of apples makes for a better tasting pie; it enables me to say exactly what kind of fabric I need or whether I want oil paints or watercolors or gouache.

Unfortunately, humans don't just classify things:  pretty much since the beginning of civilization we have been classifying ourselves and each other, often with disastrous results.  Man, woman, hunter, farmer, warrior, husband, wife, priest, foreigner, have, have-not, friend, enemy:  these labels--and their subsets--have served as the basis for every conflict in history, and the more specific our classifications have become, the worse the ensuing conflicts.

But after all that, these days the trend seems to be that people have begun to return to the "pigeonhole" mentality.  The people in my circles often bandy about terms like "Republican", "Democrat", "conservative", "liberal", "Christian", and "Pagan",  without even qualifiers like "some Republicans" or "some Christians".

Let me present you with the "Christian" tackle box.  It's one of those HUGE ones, with multiple levels and drawers you can pull out.  The two main drawers would be (despite the Great Schism) Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Catholic, and Protestant.  From these simple divisions would rise the myriad sections (though the Roman Catholics remain largely undivided):  Baptists, Anabaptists, Calvinists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, etc.--each with their own set of beliefs and practices.  I am also fairly certain that a number of these groups would object strenuously to being in the same tackle box as some of the others--and I won't get into groups like the Mormons, Scientologists, or Jehovah's Witnesses.

In my community, whose varied groups and people embrace Earth Spirituality, I have friends who toss the entire "Christian" tackle box onto the table, point at it and declare, "They hate us and they want to kill us!"

Uh, no.

I agree there are whacked-out Christians, like the Westboro Baptist Church group, who picket the funerals of soldiers killed in combat not because the soldiers themselves were gay, but because the military allows (in a twisted and ass-backwards fashion) gays into their ranks.  There are whacked-out Earth Spirituality people too:  no group, and no one, is perfect.

By definition, real Christians follow the word of Jesus:  Jesus was a wise and kind individual whose ideas were far ahead of his time (and, it appears, far ahead of ours).  From time to time he had a heck of a temper, but by all accounts it only surfaced when it was needed.  Real Christians walk the walk, following Jesus'  example of tolerance and kindness towards those less fortunate.  Real Christians don't want to kill anyone.

The Real World doesn't always allow for strict adherence to these tenets, especially the latter one.  I am not talking about the killings that would have Jesus deploying his temper in spades like the Crusades or witch burnings or the Spanish Inquisition:  I am talking about wars like WWII, where evil threatened the core of civilization.  And each of the events mentioned was brought about by labels:  Christians killing Moslems; Christians torturing and killing people they perceived to be witches; Christians torturing and killing Jews and Moslems and others because they wanted to be "sure" that they had given up their old religions; Nazis killing people who didn't meet their idea of ethnic perfection .  (Looking back at my examples it appears to me that the Christians have an awful track record...that's because my education was largely focused on Western Civilization:  one only has to look to Russian history to read about Uncle Joe Stalin's non-Christian pogroms.  No worries:  Christians haven't cornered the market by a long shot.)

I don't want to digress into the reasons that people find it important to self-identify as a member of any religion.  In my previous blog I discussed the escalating numbers of "Jesus fish" I see on vehicles and business cards. and pentacles the size of dinner plates hanging from the necks of Pagans.  Back in the day, before crosses and crucifixes became fashion accessories, these were almost always blessed by a Catholic priest and worn by the faithful.  In fact, even today, most crosses and crucifixes (and Stars of David) are small and tasteful, because most members of traditional religions--like Presbyterians, Jews, Catholics and Greek Orthodox Catholics--don't feel a need to throw their spirituality in anyone's face.  The "Jesus fish" however, is symbolic of evangelical Christians, and I believe that it is in response to this burgeoning presence and their sometimes extreme views (i.e.,  "YOU ARE A PAGAN--THAT MEANS YOU ARE A SATAN WORSHIPPER!" ) that Pagans find it necessary to wear jewelry that screams "I AM A PAGAN, AND I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK!"

Gah.

If we don't want to be labeled by others, why do we label ourselves?

Here's my label:

I am a person.

Find a tackle box big enough for that.


















 

Friday, September 24, 2010

Religious Freedom, Redefined

Here's a bill I'd vote for:  ban all political ads.  GAH!

I'll admit it:  I am a conservative.  I am not a Republican:  I believe Republicans in Washington have tainted the party's ideals, and do not deserve re-election.  I wish to see our Constitution returned to its original purpose; I wish to see powers returned to the states; I want less government and less governmental control in my life, and I crave fiscal responsibility.

This is not something my friends always understand.  Most of them are of much more liberal leanings, and that's okay, it doesn't make them evil or any less my friends, and NO, I don't think they are deluded.  Given that the Democratic party has in the past gone to some lengths to be the "party of inclusion", there are many people who feel more comfortable identifying with this political group.

Who can blame them?  After all, the Republican party and its spinoff, the Tea Party, often seem to be very much the party of "religious freedom means 30 different kinds of Christians."  If you're anything other than a Christian or maybe a Jew, you are nothing and no one--or worse, you are seen as downright evil.

Republicans' horrified reactions to this week's "revelation" that Delaware Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell "dabbled in witchcraft" as a teenager have just been one facepalm after another for me (the real horror in that 1990s interview was not what she said, but her HAIR, OMG that was, like, Mall Chick Hair...)

Let's get some things straight:  O'Donnell is correct in saying that teenagers do rebellious, stupid things like "dabbling in witchcraft".  I disagree with her that it was a less destructive rebellion than, say, alcohol or drug abuse, but the effects of alcohol or drug abuse are often more obvious than those of "dabbling in witchcraft".   The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines "dabbling" thusly: to work or involve oneself superficially or intermittently especially in a secondary activity or interest <dabbles in art>  I think that in this circumstance "dabbling" might be further defined as "messing around without intent". 

The popular imagination, fueled by Harry Potter and other similar publications (did you know there were others?) envisions witches casting spells, riding brooms, and making potions.  The books one finds in the Occult/New Age section of your local bookstore (many of which are bogus) focus on spell-casting --which I feel is NOT something that should be tried by amateurs, rather like driving on the Schuylkill Expressway when you only have your learner's permit.  

The part about the satanic altar (this was a triple facepalm moment)...well, that was just plain stupid and the whole community practicing Earth-Based Religion could have done without that association.  I have already had to call the middle school principal and "explain" to him that witchcraft does not equal satanic worship.  Geez, even the Harry Potter books define the battle between good and evil pretty plainly!

Some facts:

1.  Most people who are "witches" (i.e., self-identify as Pagan, Wiccan, Shamanic, or as a practitioner of Earth-Based religion) do not practice spellcraft.   They are cautious about such work:  like many things it should be left to the Professionals.

2.  Witchcraft is NOT Satanism.  Satanic worshippers occupy a very specific group.  

3.  Witches do NOT sacrifice animals or babies or anything living.  In fact, some of them are pretty wildly against such practices. 

I know in my heart (and from what I've read on Facebook) that my friends are already up in arms at the Republican party's reaction to O'Donnell's admission.  It looks like it's going to be "damage control" for her instead of the golden opportunity for a statement about religious freedom.  

Unfortunately, I don't see the Democrats stepping up in defense of witchcraft.  

Since this is an Equal Opportunity Blog (EOB) I will now turn to the rumor that the President's mother-in-law practices Santeria, and that the President is beside himself with fury.  

Some facts:

1.  Santeria is the Real Deal.  Even the Supreme Court said so.  Santeria makes everything you see in those books in the Occult/New Age section of your local bookstore look like Dick and Jane.  This is Serious Shit and people often turn to it when there is dire illness in their families. 

2.  Santeria is an Afro-Caribbean religion:  it is based on traditions brought over from East Africa by slaves and then blended with the Christianity that was imposed on these slaves by their masters.  This means that as an African-American it's part of President Obama's heritage.  
.  
3.  Just as is the case in most religions (I would say "all" but I'm not a fan of absolutes) most practitioners of Santeria are Really Good People who provide sound advice to those seeking it, and who use their connections to the spirit world to do good.  

4.  Santeria IS a blood religion.  This means that goats, roosters and other small animals get sacrificed.  Before you object, they are probably killed more humanely than that chicken you had for dinner last night.  Yes, I have seen it, though I am not a practitioner.  

According to the news media, we should be horrified by both of these stories--and I am, except not the way that that writers and spin doctors (gods, I love that title) want me to be.  I am horrified that this has become NEWS.  After all, when was the last time that you saw a headline like "OMG, NEWT GINGRICH DABBLED IN BEING A CATHOLIC!" Those of you who are Protestants will chuckle.  

A person's religion should be a VERY private matter--and it should not affect one's opinion of another.  These days we see more and more escalation of in-your-face religious expression:  business cards with the "Jesus fish" on them; people wearing pentacles the size of dinner plates.  Actually, of all of them, the practitioners of Afro-Caribbean religions are the least conspicuous:  lacking fish, pentacles, burkas, yarmulkes, or other traditional dress, they blend into society, often so smoothly that their neighbors have no idea what they believe or don't believe.  

The bottom line is that religion needs to be removed from politics in every way, shape and form.  If people have to have a reason to vote for candidates, it should not be because of their religious preference (because we all know how THAT  has worked out in the past because religion does not equal morality): it should be because of issues like governmental reform and taxes.  I want to be free to practice the religion of my choice, without suffering the judgment of my peers.  And it would be really nice if the candidates didn't have to worry about their past "dabblings" to the point where they have to apologize or explain how "misguided" they were, because in doing so they are offending far more people than they realize.  When was the last time someone apologized for being a Baptist?









Monday, September 20, 2010

Waking Up Laughing

Watching the news I sometimes wonder if many members of our society suffer from the dysfunctional misapprehension that if they appear happy the whole weight of the world will come crashing down on them.  If there are not enough murders, assaults, traffic deaths, natural disasters, and terrorist attacks, newscasters focus their attention on the weather:  too hot, too cold, not enough rain, OH MY GOD IT'S GOING TO SNOW A FOOT!

Similarly, music, poetry, and other arts often seem dominated by references to love lost, love scorned, drugs, and death (thank heaven we no longer have to endure the lugubrious "my sweetie died" songs of the 1960s).  If you peruse the Young Adult section of your local chain bookstore (I used to work in one) you will find entire series of books whose theme is "too young to die".  I am still weighing whether or not the Twilight series is preferable to these maudlin paperbacks.  Song lyrics are chock-full of references to dreams:  sweet dreams, broken dreams, "dream a little dream of me".  Singers even wake up screaming.

But do they ever wake up laughing?

Yesterday I did.

In the dream I realized that I hadn't seen my dog Leeza in like a week.  Perplexed, I sought out my husband, David:
Nyssa (left) and Leeza (right)

"Where's the dog?"  I asked.

David's expression was that of a man who had been dreading this moment.  "Borneo," he replied.

"BORNEO???" I shouted.  "They EAT dogs in Borneo!"

"It's okay!" he assured me.  "She's on her way home!"

David
Emily

It turned out (in the dream) that one day Emily (our daughter) was home by herself when someone accidentally came to the wrong house with a UPS-like call tag, and she didn't check with us before sending the dog off.  David had been hoping that I wouldn't notice the dog was missing until she got back!

Borneo.  I awoke, rolled over and looked up at the hotel room ceiling.  Borneo?  I chuckled.  I got out of bed.  "Borneo,"  I said out loud.  "Borneo!"  I began laughing in earnest, until I couldn't see, could hardly breathe, and certainly speak even to say "Borneo" again.


Over the course of the day, fragments of the dream surfaced.  This dream had been about miscommunication and innocent mistakes turned serious:  earlier in it someone had posted something totally inappropriate on a website because they had accidentally copied and pasted the wrong pictures.

And when I got home, I forgave Emily for accidentally sending he dog to Borneo...

Friday, September 17, 2010

Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained


I met my friend Mary Beth a little over a year ago.  I had gone to her fabric store--a hole-in-the-wall mom&pop place--on the day after I found out that my sister Tina had stage 4 lung cancer, when I needed to be somewhere else than my house.  

I had been to her store at some point in the past:  I remember getting lost finding it; I remember digging through fabric to see what I could find; and I remember being utterly overwhelmed.  There were piles and piles and piles of fabric in remnants and bolts, zippers everywhere, thread, masks and costumes.  Everywhere.  I remember not being able to walk in sections of the store for the mountains of stuff.  

Fast forward to May of 2009:  having learned about my sister, and knowing in my heart that not only did she have cancer but that there was little hope for her recovery, I went over to the store to bury myself (literally) in the comfort of our mutual obsession, fabric.  

Trims (and Not All of Them)
I burrowed into the fabric, but, having been in retail most of my adult life, I started tidying up as I went.  It was, I suppose, my way of taking control in an overwhelming situation (not only was Tina mortally ill but she lived in Colorado Springs and did not want me to come out).  

Each day, I was galvanized by new discoveries. I organized the trims and laces--all of which pre-dated 1980--and became aware that there was a vast treasure trove of vintage fabric on the disorderly shelves around me.  

I am pretty sure that Mary Beth didn't know what to make of me.  It became apparent that, even though it was clear that she was overwhelmed by her surroundings, no one had ever thought to try and help her.  The advent of the local Wal-Mart several years before had gone a long way towards putting her out of business--to this day many people don't know the store is still open.  (When it opened the Wal-Mart sold fabric and patterns:  after they drove out Jo-Ann Fabrics and nearly killed Mary Beth's store they stopped carrying both.  Go figure.)  They had also suffered a flood and the movers who had packed everything so that the store could be cleaned up had packed and unpacked them carelessly, making what had by all accounts already been a cluttered mess much, much worse.

As spring moved into summer, new sports developed:  Fabric Diving, the Fabric Bolt Toss,  and Costume Wrangling.  When I was not camping, I was crawling over, through, and around fabric and racks in the darkened and HOT (no A/C) back section of the store.  

THAT is where the treasure was.  At least, the fabric treasure.
This one is in the Better Homes and
Gardens Sewing Book
!

In the deepest, darkest part of the store, underneath tables that had been stacked high with bolts of (ew) polyester double knit, on shelves that I had not realized existed because they were buried beneath three feet of piled bolts of fake fur, were the brocades, the boucles, the Lurex brocades...
Lurex Brocades
This is stuff you will see as clothing in vintage clothing stores.  Mary Beth had it by the bolt.  The caves at the back of the store yielded one stunning fabric after the next:  often as I pulled them out all I could see was a glint of color or metallic thread and it was only after I got them to the front of the store that I realized what I had found.  
IT'S PINK!!!

I can't tell you how much I sweated, how much water I drank, how much dust I inhaled, how dirty I got, how many bags of trash I put out, or how many times I lost my Bluetooth.  Eventually Mary Beth stopped fretting that I was going to end up in the emergency room because I had been buried by an fabric avalanche (believe me, it happened; I survived).  What drove me to do this was not the promise of more incredible fabric (although that was a factor) but her gratitude for what I was doing.

Flashback!
Double Flashback!
As time went by, Mary Beth started pitching in (I am convinced she didn't know what to do in the beginning; the mess was so overwhelming that she didn't know where to start).  



One day, I brought my little black light into the store and made Mary Beth turn off the lights so we could watch the screaming psychedelic fabrics fluoresce.  (Note:  apparently these fabrics are so screaming that Blogspot can't upload them.)

To be continued...





 




Tuesday, September 14, 2010

They Call it "Crazy" Quilting for a Reason

Last year I painted "I Rise Up, Not Without Help", which was intended to be submitted for the 2011 We'Moon Women's Calendar www.wemoon.ws.  The theme was "Up Rising":  the editors asked what trials we faced, how we overcame them, and what we brought with us into an uncertain future.  I chose to portray myself moving over and past the stressful or tragic events I have experienced.  After much mental wrestling and many sketches, I settled on a crazy quilt robe to acknowledge the people who have supported and taught me over the years.

"I Rise Up, Not Without Help" (2009)
Watercolor and Gouache
I do sew, and have won awards for my beading and embroidery, but I have never, ever quilted anything.  I had been exposed to crazy quilting by a fellow vendor at Free Spirit Gathering:  she showed me how she did ribbon embroidery on velvet:  her work was dazzling and I enjoyed watching her, but I wasn't burning to do a crazy quilt.  However, the idea stuck with me and was a huge inspiration for the painting.

The final painting--which was accepted not only for the 2011 desk calendar but ALSO for the wall calendar (I kept walking around, dazedly mumbling "One of twelve...one of twelve...") --features myself walking up a slope, upon which are inscribed the most recent obstacles in my life:  my husband's year-long deployment in Afghanistan and deaths of my father and sister.  I am wearing a cloak which is casting off black feathers in favor of white ones and which features--as the peace I bring with me into the future--a view from the labyrinth at Four Quarters Farm (you will see the photo in a previous post) and a crazy quilt robe, each of whose patches represents someone who has helped or influenced me throughout my life.

I showed the painting to my friends, and the first question out of their mouths was, "You're going to make the robe, right?"

"No," I said.

"I dare you!"

"Nope.  It would be a huge project, and I don't have time."

"I double dare you!"

Fine.  Double dare the Badger.  Well, heck, I reasoned, I had more than enough fabric and ribbon, yarn and embroidery floss to give it a shot without spending thousands on materials.  Because I have a well-documented habit of diving into new medium head first, I found a book of stitches and a robe pattern, and started planning.  We were going to Tucson for the Gem Show, so I made a bunch of patches with the basic form appliqued on them and then took the appropriate threads and yarns for embellishment.

The Dad Panel
The Pele Panel
Embellished Printed Fabric

I love trying new media.  I determined that I should teach myself a new stitch with each patch:  not only would I be learning something but it would give the quilt more variety.  It also, incidentally, fascinates fellow airline passengers, though you have to be careful not to accidentally stab your neighbor (who, thanks to airline designers, is probably uncomfortably close) with your needle.


The Dad Panel features three things Dad, who was an artist, taught me:  "You don't have to draw every damned leaf on the tree; you don't have to draw every damned brick on the house; and STOP RIGHT THERE".
The Digger Panel

Some of the panels are recognizable in the robe; others are slightly different; others are completely different.  Given that I now have an entire robe to cover instead of just one side, I have a lot of leverage with design.  Also, if I had left the panels the size they were in the painting, they would have been miniscule.

Digger was a good friend.  He was a cantankerous old miner, discoverer of amazing linarite and wulfenite deposits.  He was responsible for getting my art into the Tucson Gem Show and he gave me my very first nickname, "Tiger".  We lost him this past January, but he did get to see the patch in the painting.

 
Mark's Dragon
Back in May or June, I suggested to Orren Whiddon of Four Quarters Farm that I do a workshop on crazy quilting at an upcoming festival.  He looked over at me in only the way that he can, and said,  "Describe to me in one sentence what crazy quilting is."

I should have known this was coming.  Orren likes brevity and specificity.  I took a deep breath.
Tina and Rob Panel
"Crazy quilting is a less structured, more organic form of quilting."

He was satisfied.


I became bolder.  I pulled out metallic threads, and started embroidering in earnest.

Badger Panel
I also went to town with the fancy stitches, combining stitches to attain more interesting effects.  I got out my beads.
I found that it while it is possible to create a patch with which I am dissatisfied, it is impossible to overdo a patch.  With the Badger and Tina panels I simply ran out of room to do more.  Note:  the associated Rob panel is actually my design, following the lines of the fabric from which I made the Tina panel.

   Eventually I realized that in order to know what size of patches I needed to design I would have to start actually assembling the ones I already had.  I cut out the pattern pieces for the robe and stitched down the extant patches.  I would also be able to add the interstitial patches (you can see some to the right of the Digger panel) needed to complete the design.

Right Side Robe Front
Left Side Robe Front
Fancy Stitches
Since I took these photos I have added the panel next to the Badger, which will eventually have a platypus (I figure that since I am not traveling, I don't need to use the more compact method I described above).  Here is a close up of the fancy stitches I used to integrate the blue with the red of the Pele panel.

If Orren asked me to define crazy quilting again, I would change my response.  Crazy quilting isn't quilting, really:  it's painting with fabric; it is less about sewing and more about fiber art.  It's "anything goes" using thread and yarn and fabric, beads and buttons.

It's CRAZY!