Toilet seats and tapestry

Saturday was very mixed. I had a migraine in the morning, when I got home from walking, which left me feeling a bit under the weather and my eyes not up for sunlight. 

After lunch, Gary hauled me out to discuss planting and doors. The metal doors are no go, they are only sold with a frame, which can't be installed in our setup. The solid core wood doors are $500. Each. The door question is still undecided. 

Meanwhile my new toilet seat arrived, nice wood thing. I spent quite a bit of time trying to install it. I removed the old one easily enough, done this before, but the new one was hard to install. 

Partly it was hot and stuffy in the upstairs bathroom, partly the room is tight, very little room to reach under and tighten the bolt. Also my hands were cramping and locking up. 

The other weird thing is that instead of the usual bolt mechanism with a fixed stem, there was a weird thing where you first installed the end of the stem into the riveted hinge, then dropped that through the holes and blindly tried to endlessly screw on the locking nut underneath. In the course of doing this, the stem fell out repeatedly, though I'd got it firmly in place at first.

I got overheated and discouraged and headachy, so I flounced out to sit on the patio in the shade and watch turkey vultures gliding about. Nature is a great problem solver. 

After a few minutes I thought aha, why don't I take the seat from downstairs with a simple bolt mechanism, I knew because I'd installed it, install that in the more cramped upstairs place, then install the new seat downstairs where there's room to work. 

I did that. Five minutes to install the downstairs upstairs, a few more to install the new one downstairs, and recycle the boxes and old seat. Done.

There was also a visit with baby A, three plus months old, cheerful and beautiful, and her sister K, eight years old and also lovely. Also Billie doing her best to trip everyone until she was put behind the patio gate, when she tried to dig her way out.

Among all this activity I did get a bit done on the tapestry, tapis and tapisserie front. Yes, it is all related, as I guessed, back when the words indicated any big piece of fabric, on the floor or table or walls. 

In early stone buildings they were for draft proofing the walls as well as being wildly expensive conspicuous consumption, before the days of machine manufacturing.

The word tapestry became more specialized in the last three or so centuries, referring to the weft faced pictorial weaving we now call tapestry. Like the Unicorn tapestries. 

But around the year 1,000 or so when the Bayeux tapestry was created, tapestry could still refer to a large wallhung embroidery like this one.

So there it is for the crowds of people wondering.

Meanwhile back at the fabric book, I did a bit on that pinloom weaving page, and have two pages to go. I'm thinking of creating a fall leaf design based on one of my pictures from Saturday's walk, in Bayeux stitch. I think it will work.

I've occasionally had requests for a guided tour of the artwork on my walls and I will do that at some point. 

I'm more interested in current work, so meanwhile, here's the pages done so far. Quite a bit of book type finishing will happen, especially the tree page, but this gives you an idea.

All different ideas, short attention span.

Speaking of which, I gave up on the endless Oliver Twist and the tendentious Pickwick Papers and the misery of Barnaby Rudge, for now. 

I'm now dividing my reading time between Austen, currently Mansfield Park, and Josephine Tey The Man in the Queue.

Much less annoying than Dickens. I bet he never got stuck in a stuffy bathroom with a migraine, vision disturbance and a glackity toilet seat nut 'n bolt.

Happy day everyone, hang in there, people in the path of storms. You got this.

Lost and found tools and pruning

 I've been thinking about pruning the Japanese maple of a lot of tiny dead branches and some interior ones growing across each other. It's good to keep a tree open so it doesn't get top heavy, to be felled by storms. Spaces for wind to get through are good. And it's better not to have branches crisscrossing and wearing off the bark where they rub together.

So yesterday I went to get the long handled secateurs, the only garden cutting tool I can use now because my hands no longer have the strength to open and close the blades of one handed clippers. These use two hands. Also I can reach with them.

My tools are all in the outdoor storage which I leave unlocked so anyone can borrow and return anything. They usually let me know, and return promptly.

Anyway I went to get them yesterday and there they weren't. Ah. Somebody probably using them. I tried again today. Not back yet. 

So I called Gary and it all came as clear as anything does with him. He'd lent his own clippers to his daughter, then when a neighbor asked him, he lent her mine, nobody realizing I didn't know. He retrieved them from the neighbor, and I was back in business.

Here's the tree, looking much less burdened 

As you see, I left some small branches so it wouldn't look too stark. But, also as you see, it's still casting a nice uncluttered shade. 

I picked a few flowers from my flower corner 

Still some to enjoy outside though.

This afternoon's skies were fast moving and changing, rain coming later

And the little weaving is now on its own page in the fabric book. More to come.

The running stitches make a frame and there's going to be more parts to it. As soon as I think them up.

I've had to reluctantly order a new tablet. The brightness function has been fluctuating wildly for weeks, and the max volume is suddenly very low, alternating with cutting out completely. 

Considering it's been running almost continuously for three plus years, this isn't bad.

It's my chief form, with my low end phone, of internet communication, so it's important especially now,  with a lot of political meetings online that I'm taking part in. Not exactly a fun purchase, but let's hope the replacement is audible anyway. 

I've been running both devices at once in meetings, the phone to hear and speak on, the tablet to read from. I'm hoping to reduce this to one device at a time.

First world requirements. 

Happy day everyone! Whatever it takes.

Hot air, poached cod and art

Yesterday the chimney people came, blew out the dryer vent, inspected the chimney, pronounced all was well, emptied my wallet and left.

Followed up by a couple of neighbors wanting to know how I'd found them, how to contact, etc.  Written clearly on the van, but they'd missed it! 

It pays to do business in a development, because people are happier to hire someone who's already been seen around than an unknown Google search.  They certainly earned their money yesterday, climbing on the roof in torrid heat, even early morning. 

Here's what explains the feeling the heat 

And this explains my swollen and itchy eyes

And this is why I've been coughing for days, smell of woodsmoke around this week.

And there's this

All in all, we've had better days.

Meanwhile there was cod to poach, and carrots and dandelion greens to steam, and capers to strew around.

And apricots to finish, with nutritious chocolate almonds.

Outside, when it was cooler in the evening, I did a bit of spotting, a little fungus, balsam flowers self seeded, and other self starting plants 

In other wildlife news, I was filling my rinsing water bowl for daily dishes last night, when I spotted a little clump being swept around the bowl by the hot water. 

I fished it out and found it was a little spider, waterlogged and half drowned. I tried to dry her out a bit without damaging any legs, then maneuvered her onto a paper towel. 

This morning she's gone, so I guess she lived to fight another day. Us spinners have to stick together, through hell and hot water.

Textiles and Tea featured a wonderful Japanese scholar, artist, painter, artisan in shibori dyeing, ikat weaving and boro, the preservation of tatters.

She spoke of this cultural museum in Basel, Switzerland, as a repository of fiber culture from many regions and centuries.

Boro is the preservation and respect for tattered, patched cloth, showing its history and place in the culture.

She wrote the classic English language book on shibori dyeing, before then the texts were in Japanese.

She believes in keeping a flexible mind, letting the materials suggest the next move, and not grimly holding onto the first design idea.  It was an education to listen to her. Check her website for more.

Last evening I finished the next page in my fabric book. Mary will recognize the original fabric, but maybe not its current form 

and yes, the fabric suggested each move, tearing, raveling stitching. I just followed her lead.

Happy day everyone, hang in there, despite climate and political setbacks, we, with nature and art, will survive and thrive.

Misfits box, drawn threads and immigrants

The Misfits box arrived, in time for me to have a tuna melt with spinach for lunch. To be exact, cheese arrived. I'd finished the curried lentils already, so there was a lunch vacancy.

The eggs were also the cavalry coming over the hill, since I forgot to order last week and was down to the last egg. Panic, couldn't make mayo! Or egg salad, no mayo, no eggs.

The nutritious crushed almonds in dark chocolate also saved the dessert day, no yogurt made yet. 

I got an unexpected helping hand, from Gary's little granddaughter, who ran over to give me a hug and tell me they were off to find a pool to swim in. Then she held the door for me while I heaved the box indoors.

The artworks were picked up promptly by a very excited taker, so I think they're off to a good home.

And I did some drawn threads on the latest piece.

All the threads I drew out completely will be useful to invisibly stitch down this page to the muslin base.  I've set it aside till tomorrow, and I'll see what fifty things need to happen next.

I was involved in a discussion elsewhere about being an immigrant, and some of the issues there. One of them is the definite message from quite a lot of people that you must justify being here. Unlike native born Americans, you're expected to give value.

I don't mind giving value, like many immigrants,  and I certainly have, in many ways blogistas don't know about because I haven't written about it.  There's a privilege in making it through all the bureaucracy and challenges, that you feel you need to more than justify. Immigrants get it done is not an idle phrase.

And then there's  the expectation also that you also have no business having opinions, particularly political ones, however long you've lived here. 

I've been challenged about that by people younger than I, who haven't lived here as long as I! Even told that "real" -- native born -- are entitled, but not people from "away". Naturalized citizenship simply doesn't count in some eyes.  

When people get really offensive about it, a rare occurrence, I play the eighth generation New York State card. That's my family who arrived in the 1850s  in New York harbor, just like me in the 1960s, and settled in northern New York State. 

This baffles people who know I'm first generation, and  can't grasp that entire extended families don't all emigrate together! There are always branches that stay. I don't know why this is hard to grasp, but it is. 

And don't get me started on people who flame out if I disagree with them. That's getting out of my assigned place as a permanent guest.

Sometimes I get annoyed, and sometimes I find it very funny. A lot of annoying things are eventually funny, when you reframe them as people worried that they're being outdone. I think it's not about me, it's about them, really, so I handle with care.

Happy day everyone, let's make interesting stuff and handle each other with care, if you follow me!

 

Back to the fabric book

It's the summer solstice, midsummer's day 

The freecycled art leaves tomorrow, and it's created a rush of energy for my next artwork. It never fails. Move out works you've moved on from, and ideas come crowding in. When you hang onto things, it's like a cork in a bottle. Pop the cork, champagne, bubbles!

And freeing up space does the same. Here's my treefree living room 

 I've been thinking about the next page in the fabric book, mainly about deconstructing a piece of fabric I was given, in various ways. I've had I dunamany ideas about it, including this kind of approach, a MOMA tutorial.

As you see, there's a history, Anni Albers being a leading light of the Bauhaus, then at Black Mountain College in its glory days. Anyway, this feel, but I want it less gridded.

pulling threads is something I've loved ever since I got hold of fabric to do it with, and when I learned drawn thread work at about eleven. It's playtime, but now with more meaning.

So here's the starting point

And we'll see!

Happy day, everyone! Art is hard, hugely important and the best fun. Maybe you'll do some. Or some more -- several blogistas are talented artists.  I particularly like it when blogistas with their own blogs share their work and process. Thank you,  everyone who does that. And thank you, the faithful readers who are happy to encourage.