The New Deal

An existential lightening bolt, or perhaps a dry dream, or maybe just a dash of reality has hit.  I pass a guy in my industrial park every day who does web design, but I haven't had enough nerve to hire him to re-jigger my website which I know won't 'fix' what I want fixed.  The pandemic, umm, two years after my last post actually, has pretty much brought the monkey wrench into my ---er---EXPECTATIONS--- for the remainder of this planet ride of mine.  I'm on a new tangent and that is just to use up the stuff I have accumulated so far and make it into something else.  I am tying to organize things I will possibly use and get rid of things I don't have any interest in revisiting.  The order of business is as follows:

USE UP:  1.  all my vintage fabric, 2.  all the hand painted-printed-screened fabric both my own and collected from various admired artists, 3.  must rethink all started and discarded things that I thought were worthy,  4.  the giant tub of Kaffe and the pile of Marimekko and the shelves of linens, vintage and home-dec.

DONATE to Repot Depot:  all still usable art supplies, papers, equipment, duplicate tools, yarns, threads, and books.

TOSS IN THE DUMPSTER:  used shipping materials, cardboard, tubes, and noodles, covering fabrics, broken or things that used up their shelf life, notebooks of lesson plans, outdated printing materials, directions, ephemera, clippings, too-tiny-to-contemplate scraps.

FOR SALE:  a serger, an undated Bernina emergency machine, a Q-20 quilting machine, a shredder, a red Koureg, a tiny red microwave, and a baby red refrigerator.  Ask for specifics, all perfect for studios, all working but buyer beware.  Ask if you are interested, all are for pick-up, not for shipping.  

The THING is that I am simply not spending as much time in the studio as I have for the last 15 years and things have accumulated and taken over what was once a wonderful space.  I need to pare down to only essentials so I can concentrate on doing projects I enjoy, like the Unification of Unicorns quilt and the big one with only big peaches that look like they were possibly originated in a coal mine.  

federalisation undset dobbin

"You are a victim of the rules you live by."

— Jenny Holzer

There are many aspects of the poster above that can make it art.  There is the color, the font, the spirit, the graphic design, and of course the text.  It could be changed with a yellow line diagonal or a punched out series of circles around the edge.  It could have an image of a monkey hanging from the dot, or be printed on a map.  The fact that somebody thought about it, made the changes, or left it alone, makes it a successful creative project.  Art.  Please make sure and surround yourself with art at every opportunity.  Even a soapdish can be art.  Be aware and make necessary changes- your life will improve.

And now this-  I am SURE someone thinks this is art but I will argue about it

It IS a cheesy squirrel ceramic piece that belongs in an old Aunt's china cupboard.  Maybe the person who poured the slip into the manufactured mold thinks it's art, guess it isn't mine to call SO take it as the Squirrel Of The Day, not art.

I need to talk about the virus, and I will take a stance that is quite unpopular.  I believe that the worse has past.  We stayed away from each other, we socially distanced, we cooked and cooked and cooked, and we put up with no toilet paper for months.  Here in Florida things are loosening up and restaurants are open, the mall is phasing back in, and dearLordthankyou, TJMaxx opened yesterday. Since the beginning of this isolation, I have dreamt about getting back to TJ's-  I use it as a social observatory and it lets me 'buy' anything I want.  I love it, I load it up in my basket and drive on.  When the basket is getting too hard to push I find a dark corner and reassess what I picked and most of it is crap so then I circle around again and hang things back up and stick things back on shelves and I FEEL like I have been shopping. I drove by and saw cars in the parking lot, tied on my mask and waited in the short line to take the place of someone leaving.  Everything i the store was on sale and it was so good to look and touch again. I bought very little, but got to see everything I wanted to.  I did get two B&W striped beach towels since Ollie has shredded our in a frenzy.  Everybody stayed 6' away from each other and everybody was masked.  And I felt normal for about an hour.  Like I took a drug.

SHELF ISOLATION

Tonight for dinner I hauled out a frozen turkey and heated it up.  It was a leftover from Thanksgiving since I bought 2 turkeys.  I will make soup tomorrow and eat it for a few days.  Sandwiches tonight were pretty good actually.  I am on a mission to empty out the refrigerator and freezer so I can start anew but I am not doing a very good job so far.  Thankfully the turkey took a lot of room so I can unjam the rest of the stuff.  Of course all the damn bread Ive been making is also in there so one of those loaves may come out in the morning.  My goal is to get down to just the misc. containers of stuff I forgot to label, then have a surprise night to find what is in there and make dinner around it.  Another rule-  it has to be consumed in ONE meal, I cannot make leftovers out of leftovers any more.

AHHT OF THE EVENING

When he’s not cooking them, Japanese chef and food artist Takehiro Kishimoto is turning fruits and vegetables into intricately carved sculptures too beautiful to eat. Using sharp handheld blades, Kishimoto combines the centuries-old art of Thai fruit carving with the Japanese art of Mukimono to decorate apples, carrots, broccoli, and broad beans with geometric patterns and elaborate designs.

The precision easily could be mistaken for digital photo manipulation were it not for the process videos that Kishimoto shares on his Instagram, where he also writes that he hopes the Thai carving tradition will spread around the world.

Since it is Memorial Day, I will spend time remembering our family Marine and wondering where the time went since he was killed in 1968.  Unimaginable from this vantage point, I still miss him every day.  What a waste of a wonderful young man.

The final words from General Thomson, who was Army:

                                                                                                      Sandy

waltzing psychology inconsumably

When you have time the soul begins to decipher things more and more.  -John O’Donnohue

And we do know what it means to 'have time' these days.  It's just a question of how we use it.  I'm in the studio now to pick up my little knitting 'machine' that every 6 year old has-  remember nailing 4 nails into a wooden spool and making yarn snakes up through the center hole?  Well that's it except mine is now made of sparkly pink plastic, cost money from the craft store, comes with YouTube directions for the terminally inept and I am using it to make iCord to add onto my latest shawl.  I figure making snakes is good for quite a few Netflix series since I don't have to actually look at what I'm doing!  Here's the shawl, so versatile, I can wear it so many ways:
 
Shawl needs iCord, I need iBrows

The other thing I have decided is that the latest quilt about Raccoons actually needs RACCOONS.  So I have been mining the inter webs for good pictures and have collected a mess of them BUT my printer is having a problem printing solids black, which I need for their masks.  So much for the easy fix.  Now I am taking the printed images and over-embroidering them which will look better in the end but be a pita to accomplish-  thread painting ain't my thing.  But I have to stretch myself and do it so I have the Rave of Raccoons that I need.  How could I not use this little guy?
                                          

And that brings me to the Squirrel o' the Day, as a Girl Scout badge!

Time now for your AHHHT LESSON!

Artist Ava Roth loves working on collaborative projects. But her studiomates aren’t fellow two-footed friends. Rather, Roth pairs with her backyard honeybees to create mixed media collages combining embroidery, beadwork, fabric, tree bark, and honeycomb. 

Roth pairs with her backyard honeybees to create mixed media collages combining embroidery, beadwork, fabric, tree bark, and honeycomb. The Toronto-based artist builds artworks inside the comb frames, and the bees complete the pieces by encasing them in organic honeycomb patterns. “This project is a collaboration in the truest sense. It involves careful listening, respecting the bees, and cooperating with them entirely, from the choice of materials, size, timing and scope of design,” 

The artist explains that she had been working in encaustic, a painting technique that incorporates wax, for several years, and decided to start collaborating with her bees as she learned more about Colony Collapse Disorder and sought to uplift and honor the bee’s work.

The threadwork in this collection mirrors the fragility and beauty of the honeycomb in which they are encased. By placing the embroideries in hoops, I am also giving a nod to a tradition of women’s work. Since the working bees are all female – and not making ‘fine art’, the finished pieces are very much in the tradition of marginalized women’s work, and sewing in particular. Because both the bees work and traditional women’s work have been largely functional, their beauty and significance have been easily overlooked.


Well, time to get myself and doggie outta the studio-  we are having a hail storm and I guess that's a signal to give it up for the day.
                                                                       Sequestered Sandy (and Ollie-as-shawl)

                                         (note we have the same color hair!)

muggings ultrastructure muscles

“Collect items you fancy and for different reasons attract your attention.  Remember also to collect and study things that seem for the moment to be meaningless or irrelevant.”  -Maja Ratke

 

No, not dead, just has his head up his ass, not unlike your lazy blogger.  

I have spent the morning trying to print off some raccoon pictures, but have wasted half my new TAP paper and a yard of fabric.  For some reason when I try to print black it blots out on the print.  I've tried all three cartridges of black and every single setting possible from every image program I have and I am getting frustrated.  This all started when I decided to add a couple of raccoons to the raccoon quilt, needless to say there are not any bolts of raccoon fabric out there with the correct scale so I did like I have always done, printed my own.  But the MUSE is apparently wearing her Covid mask too tight and can't see over the top of it. Dammit.

And yeah, I have made a bunch of the masks but nobody wants them,I cannot imagine why-  but it looks like we will be wearing them for months now.  It's a 'look', but the weird thing is that wearing them you cannot tell when the grocery checkout woman is smiling or grumpy.  You cannot even recognize acquaintances to wave at.  Basically they suck and we have to get over wearing them sooner.  Or possibly just go with the Bandito bandana.


     

     
I know I need a haircut, no need to comment on that.  Think 'Crusty the Clown'.

These things work fine at Publix, the only time I wear them.  Fortunately I live in a community with public distancing so I can actually breathe air when I walk.    But some day I may drop dead from no oxygen at Publix, stay tuned.  Toilet paper and eggs won't be my problem any longer.

No plans to go back to MA for at least another 2 months or so.  The building manager up there has told us that there is a mouse infestation on our floor, So much fun to go back to that.  Last time it was two leaks in the ceiling from the unit above us and when it was repaired the new ceiling paint is a completely different color-  so homey.  So nice to come home to.  Today I am leaving the studio not just out of frustration at the printer, but to meet our friend's new puppy.  Their first dog is lovely, hope this one follows suite.   

                                                                But, sew what?  Want a mask?     Sandy

tzaddikim statutoriness huge

I don't need to caption this, do I?

Corvid Squirrel, not a relative of that original bat.

OK, as if you didn't know, Florida is on lockdown.  Everything closed but Publix and gas stations, and thankfully doggy day care which someone decided is ESSENTIAL. So, my travel circle and schedule is now 9AM Ollie plays with his BFF Pit Bull next door.  10AM Sandy throws Ollie in the pool to clean him of the mud and gradeau he accumulates rolling in the bushes.  10:10 We try to catch Ollie to dry him off and isolate him in a spot that he can air dry himself-  the lanai or the kitchen.  11AM Sandy or Sandy and Ollie go to the studio, 1 1/2 miles down the road where we shelter in place for as long as we can get away with, OR Ollie is dropped at daycare and Sandy gets a little actual work done.  Then we go home to make dinner, do laundry, pick up all the stuff lying around because nobody else does, get mail and throw in recycling, take dinner out of oven and eat.  Leave dishes for the dish fairies who are apparently also on lockdown wherever they might be.

We do a whole lot of walking, around and around the block-  we have the WALK walks and the SNIFF walks and the HEEL walks.  It's .7 miles around the block so three times around is 2 miles +/-.  And we get 3 times around plus several free-style additions every day.  WHY are my pants getting tighter?  Because I am cooking and eating more now than I ever have, and of course all the wrong carby stuff to sooth my soul.  I have resisted mac and cheese so far but certainly not other pastas.  And every night TY goes looking for dessert: "Didn't you make any cookies today?"  If not he goes to Walgreens for some Talenti gelato.  Damn.

“Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.”  

                                                                                                                -John O’donahue

I got all my quilts rolled up and secured and plasticized and protected ready to send to the Rocky Mountain QuiltMuseum show.  I took 2 of the requests out and will send only nine but whine hell is going to escape Colorado's lockdown to go to a quilt show IF it even opens.  Every day I check email to see if it's cancelled yet, but all I know is that the museum is NOT open now.  And I don't think Colorado is receiving full force Covid-19 yet either.  

Enough whining, sorry.  I am experiencing something I never have before-  I am bored and it's making me quite lazy and nothings getting accomplished, no drawers cleaned out, no closets blitzed.  I sit and knit, notice a mistake 5 or 6 rows back and then Unknit to fix it, then Reknit back to where I stopped and admire how well I am doing.  Two steps forward, three steps back, four steps forward, five steps back, etc.  This is forming a negative quota most days.  I have two more projects in carry bags if this one frustrates me too far.

Got a message from JetBlue today about travel so I checked flights back to Boston and believe it or not, it was $18 for a oneway flight for the next two weeks or so.  EIGHTEEN dollars.  Trouble is if I get there I will be quarantined for 14 days in the tiny condo where I don't know anybody.  Aint gonna bite.  Then, to get back to Palm Beach I would have to go through 14 more days of self-pity.

Oops, I said the last paragraph was the end of the whine.  Sorry.

Lets talk Ahhhht:

Norwegian-Finnish artist duo Karoline Hjorth and Riitta Ikonen bring a folklore-inspired vision to the relationship between humans and nature. The majority of their subjects are elders who often have a deeper connection to the lands they inhabit, work on, or cultivate.

In 2011, the pair started an imaginative series called Eyes as Big as Plates as a contemporary exploration of characters from Nordic folklore. Their photographic odyssey across 15 countries and creation of more than 100 portraits evolved into a general exploration of modern humans’ relationships to nature. The title of the series not only comes from a folktale but also represents the curiosity that guides the way Hjorth and Ikonen interact with the world.

  People!  Healthy People!  Stores, Stores with Stuff in them.  Friends and friends in restaurants!  And free access to EGGS and PAPER TOWELS and Yup, Toilet paper.  Wake me when it's over.    Love, SoWhatSandy 

diplomatizes pontine prognosticator

 Light travels faster than sound.

This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. 

You know, I am so over this corona virus thing.  I am just tired of hearing about it because everybody is in similar boats and wanting to get back to our regularly scheduled programs.  I want to watch the news without a main story about how many people are infected in any given state, and how many died.  It's not that I don't care, it's more that I DON'T CARE.  I don't care to hear from non-experts spouting all their experienced advice.  I don't want to be judged because I won't wear a mask to Publix. And especially I don't want anybody elbowing me as a handshake replacement.  Just don't do anything but greet me with your voice.  

I am sorry for the people out of work, people on the edge-  of course I care about them, but there are so many in that situation that they are getting a bailout.  Of course they want their jobs to return (and so do I!) but things are going to be way different when we get back to the new normal.  Many companies will be out of business completely, Many new restaurants will fail before they even had a chance.  Mom and Pop stores probably won't make it through, but there will be new things ideas pop up that we cannot even imagine.  Just let's get on with it.

I've been walking with my friends down the center of the street, no problems-  nobody is driving around here.  I run errands-  pharmacy, grocery, pet store for giant bags of puppy food, and the bank.  Mostly I go to the studio as my destination- we'll talk about that after the Squirrel Part:

I've been noticing how few squirrels we have here this season, probably because I remember walking Molly around 15 years ago and there were squirrels yakking at us from every tree.  Now I do similar routes with Ollie and don't see a single one.  But we DO see a bunny-  I believe the same one every morning.

End of the Squirrel Part.

It looks like the show must go on in the Rocky Mountains.  The Boston part of the group is getting their things together and I am too-  I had thought 5 or 6 pieces but they requested 11.  Just the sheer terror of getting them there made me shake and cut out two of the smaller ones which would have required a fourth box.  Already I am going to have to sell my blood for what it will cost- I have three sons tubes packed tight and I cannot lift two if them.  Today I taped the ends on and they are completely ready to haul to FedEx.  My PROBLEM?  I am gonna send all these quilts out there, they will get hung by the chimney with care, and nobody will be able to come SEE 'em.  Our panel discussion, the opening, and our field trip to the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum- all is cancelled.  So, if you are anywhere near Golden in May, please stop by IF IT'S OPEN.  Thank yew...

I found out today that the Lush Puppy Pet Resort, where I take Ollie for playgroup once a week (hopefully soon to be twice a week!), indeed is an ESSENTIAL SERVICE and they are staying open.  Only change is they come and grab the doggies from the car, then when it's pick up time they bring them out to the parking area.  He has such a good time there, and lets go of some of his excess energy so he's a happier little fellow when we aren't screaming at him continually.  Well, we try not to..

Spent FIVE hours in the studio today not doing anything creative, just Unknitting a shawl that above mentioned puppy grabbed and ran with yesterday.  I was dealing with half an unwound ball and some chewed and lost stitches in the shawl.  It took major forensics to figure out what was salvageable so that's how I spent the day (after packing the quilts and hemming 2 new pairs of Levis.-  and I know someone of my age should not be buying new Levis but someone of that age should also not be chasing a puppy around with knitting in his mouth.)  I am not of that age yet.

Everything is shut down, Florida has State Troopers stopping anybody from NY trying to get into FL.  They are flooding down here to escape the city.  

OK, I need some Ahht :

Rejecting anthropocentrism, Liz Sexton wants to break down the boundary between human and animal life. The Minneapolis-based artist creates large papier-mâché pieces of foxes, owls, and other wild animals designed to be worn by humans, creating a hybrid being that she often situates in non-natural environments, like a rat near the subway lines or a porcupine fish out of water.

Sexton began making her facial masks a few years ago after constructing a couple of Halloween costumes, although she’s worked with the versatile paper material for many years. Made of brown paper, paste, and paper pulp, each piece takes a couple of weeks, if not months, to create. The artist tells Colossal that her “hope is that the viewer gains not only awareness of the animal but a sense of kinship and empathy.”

I often work on species facing existential threats, such as marine life, though I suppose this uncertainty applies to most animals at this point. Photographing the animal heads worn out of their natural habitats, and in our immediate world, highlights the displacement that many creatures experience. I also enjoy working on animals that likely live very close to us but we don’t necessary see. Bringing them out into our human habitats, on a human scale, they become neighbors, commuters, a visible part of our community.

Have to run, TY had some luck with making Sunday Sauce the other day and now wants to master bread this evening.  I know, I know.  He thinks he will be biting into his very own sourdough tonight because I haven't told him about the overnight rise.  

                                                                                         A Bad Sew and Sew

request flooring philanthropies

Sew Depressed

“The true method of knowledge is experiment.” (William Blake) 

“I didn’t think; I experimented.” (Wilhelm Roentgen)

Here I sit in self imposed isolation while a damn squirrel scurries in the trees outside my studio without a thought as to when this will end.  There he is with his mouth full of tasty bits, and that is unfortunately what I identify with since all I do is cook and eat these days.  Nope, haven't watched Netflix except for Tiger Man over 2 nights because I already listened to the podcasts and wanted to actually see the criminals who care and breed tigers.  But that's something else I will get pissed about some other time.  Today it's being isolated.

Finally at Publix today I arrived at the same time as the egg cart and snagged my allowed 2 cartons of  Non GMO, Cage free, Organic, Range fed, Heritage Breed, Gluten free eggs.  They were only $6.15 a carton.  WHERE ARE ALL THE CHICKENS these days?  Isolated?  Did someone release Avian Flu too?  Somehow no eggs are getting to the markets and I had to pay that ridiculous money because I really need eggs!  Can't even make meatballs without an egg, forget baking, and I would die for a pancake.  I'd happily use egg substitutes but those are gone too.

Spaghetti gone, all except brown and green varieties and the big stuffing shells and manicotti.

 I can buy Kraft Mac and Cheese except my pride stops me because I hate it.  My kids used to love it because mine was very sharp-cheesy and crusty baked top-  they liked the dark orange stuff in a box that didn't require teeth.

Someone to Watch

Australian artist Shane Drinkwater writes on his website that when it comes to painting, he’s interested in the “making.” Using a system of lines, dashes, numbers, and circles, Drinkwater creates works that often appear as astronomical maps of imagined star systems. Abstract stars form repeated patterns around vibrant planets. The artist allows the act of painting to dictate how the cosmic compositions land on his canvas, and the results are visually arresting.

“I delve into the act of painting with a minimum repertoire of visual elements aiming for a maximum visual intensity,” Drinkwater writes. “Ideas and images appear through the making of the work, language becomes unnecessary, I let the work speak for me.” 

How I love this work!

During my 7 AM dog walk this morning we came across my next door neighbor and her Pit Bull and the dogs started to relate, so off we went, 6 feet apart, down to the only remaining vacant lot where we undid the leashes and let 'em rip!  They had a ball, finally a dog that equals Ollie'd energy!  They played for 15 or 20 minutes until they both fell in the wet grass panting, we leashed 'em up, and headed home.  And Ollie has slept since!    

Here they are telling secrets just before we ended it.  So happy he has a friend he can jump on that LIKES it!  

I've had enough, gonna leave you with a flash back on something I made for my kids when they were in elementary school for their LLLOOOnnnggg walk to school, BOTH WAYS UPHILL.  Even then they wouldn't wear them.

Ah yes, she knits too. What a talent...  

I kinda hate to sign off knowing next time I appear things will be even worse.  Good luck to you all, may you never run short of eggs, or meatballs.     Sandy