Ironing, comedy of errors and Textiles and Tea

Too tired today for the knitting group after yesterday's exertions combined with the allergy season. So when my ride texted this morning, setting up the pickup I texted back saying not today. She also asked if Thursday would be good to pick up an artwork, and I said fine.

This surprised me because last week she'd said July at the earliest. Fine by me. Then when I was talking to her later today she was puzzled. Thursday? You mean next week? Clearly had forgotten it was her idea. Hm.

Then I got on with some sleeping, then dishes and picking up before the cleaners come tomorrow, and was just ironing this afternoon when I heard the doorbell. And a knock. And a little voice calling, asking are you okay. 

I heaved a sigh and went down to find my friend anxiously calling and worrying in the front hall. Evidently my text never got there, so she concluded when I wasn't ready and waiting, that something terrible must have happened. 

The extent to which people are convinced I'm going to keel over if they're not right there is amazing.  I can't take a nap without someone thinking I've gone. It's very kind of them, if a bit unrealistic, considering my health is better than the people worrying. 

Anyway she finally left after making sure I was as fine as I said I was. And we had the odd convo about Thursday. I wonder if her memory's slipping, I need to tread carefully there. And I resumed the ironing since I was on a roll.

That's done for the foreseeable future.

Textiles and Tea featured the wonderful weaver artist 

She's part indigenous, part Mexican, started life picking in the fields, crossing the border frequently as her undocumented father needed to work and flee.

 

Her weaving, mixing fine linens and wool with barbed wire,  honors the history of her people and the suffering inflicted on them by racism and borders. She is now a tenured professor at San Jose SU. What a trajectory.

Here are rebozos honoring mothers including the Virgen de Guadalupe 

This piece is the moon and honors her father's love for the moon with mist over it

Three heroes in fiber 

Joan of Arc, with folds and softness 

This is the border and the vegetation around it

There two are the Mexican and American flags blended and combined in the hope of erasing artificial boundaries 

I love this piece because it has a frame loom. Her father used to weave on one, and this piece honors his life and struggles.

She's a great person as well as a great artist, and has fought to get fiberarts recognized as art, not consigned to the lesser category of craft.

To have risen from being a ten year old crop picker working in the fields with her family to being a tenured academic professor is an almost unbelievable feat. 

She's aware of that but not too impressed because she's looking ahead not back, now working on her Celestial series about the planets.

Happy day everyone, what a privilege to see this marvelous woman today.

Flower divas, Misfits box

 My $2 of flower seeds have developed into a seemingly endless lovely supply of cut flowers. Every time I cut the positively last bunch of the season, they're all not so fast, missy,  and there's more.

Here's today 

One maybe last daisy, zinnias, marigolds, forgetmenots. 

Long ago I made a New Year's resolution to have fresh flowers once a month in the house. The pandemic interrupted, then I continued,  but with homegrown flowers whenever available. I think improving your life is a good resolution, not just improving yourself. That's a pretty hopeless endeavor at this point with this fallible character.

Since there was a bit of time available, I did an unusual thing. I ironed. These are linen, thrift store buys long ago, altered to suit. 

I don't iron much, and then it's more fiberart projects than clothes, but every few launderings, linen really appreciates it. 

I've upcycled quite a few linen shirts, cutting off cuffs and making them into pockets, making cuffed sleeves into roll sleeves, cutting shirttails to make straight hems. Simple changes, but they work a treat. 

My theory is that almost new linen items end up being donated to the thriftie because someone didn't want the fuss of ironing. I've paid about $5 for name brand clothes going for at least ten times more at retail. Then I wear them for maybe twenty years. 

So Misfits arrived, along with my deciding what's for lunch.

Which turned out to be a green salad with dried cranberries, chunks of Cheddar and homemade mayo. Fresh plum for dessert.

 

And instead of slinging the chicken along with the shrimp into the freezer for future reference, I roasted it right away, why not, for instant use.

Here seen in progress.

The sugar pumpkin is on the step, that and the wooden cat forming the entirety of my Fall decor.

In a few days it will be soup, but right now it's a decorative item.

The mushrooms will do something cooperative with the chicken or maybe the shrimp, we'll see.  Or chickpeas. 

Happy day everyone, even if your formatting has gone funny as here. Happens to the best of us. Not to Harris and Walz. Wouldn't dare.