Plain and Practical

Hitting my pace now!

Well, the studio (ahem, my living room actually) is all set up and I've got shelves and shelves of materials for all kinds of keepin' busy, all organized and ready to use.  This meant some sweating in the two closets where I store all the crafts materials, so I could organize all the boxes of fabrics, sort out yarns, pull out fiber to spin, get all my art-o-mat stuff into one box, and otherwise get it all somewhat under control. 

Obviously, BooTheCat sleeps most of the day, he laid in the hot sunny doorwall and cooked himself into oblivious states of consciousness, little paws twitching every once in awhile with his whiskers stirring the air.  I kept busy, finishing Joey's wool penny rug, working three hours on the green crazy quilt, finishing these two twined frame potholders, and then this blog entry, and then onto the couch for more knitting.

These mats will be on my Esty page when I get it going in a couple of weeks.  I am shooting for a goal of $1000 merchandise to open up the page, a little of this and a little of that, to see what folks are interested in.  Tomorrow I'll be hitting all my Ann Arbor loop of thrift shops, looking for more goodies to recycle!  Wonder what I should charge for the pairs of mats.  It's so hard to figure out prices when you start with just pennies of supplies and it's just your love and effort.  Good Husband is better at that sort of thing!

First Box To Barnesville!

Well, in a beautiful and quiet part of the planet where the birds and squirrels grow very large and noise, big trees hold them, and everywhere the grassy places are strangely lumpy, there is a home where the elderly, whatever their stage of health, can go to retire and enjoy this peace.  And having been busy all their lives, they like to keep on doing purposeful things, so I will be sending a few boxes of my abundance.  Here's a bunch of embroidery supplies, plastic canvas, embroidery hoops, painted embroidery hoops, cross stitch fabric, and a little package of lace.  Next box will be completely different!  As my friends know, I find these goodies at rummage sales and the Art and Scrap box, so the money spent was to good causes, the purchased items to good causes, and the person inbetween--me--very happy to be using my resourcefulness to good ends!

It will be a Green Scrap Quilt

Wow, isn't it odd how sometimes the camera's eye sees colors a little differently?  These don't look very nice together at all.  But all these fat quarters (some second-hand from church rummage sale), cut up shirts and skirts, and leftovers from other projects, will blend together and make a neat scrap quilt.  All I'll have to buy is the backing.  Just zillions of little pieces all patched together, then sent off to Sue for long-arm quilting.  It will be one of the first items on my Esty page, which I'm planning on putting up in three weeks.

Also in the works are a wool embroidered crazy quilt, some wall pockets and bowls made from gourds, some "shopping totes" made from recycled denim skirts and dresses, frame woven rag mats, and much more.  All the UFOs (unfinished objects) are being sought out, brought out, and examined for what they need done.

Today my Grandpa Max turned 94 cheery years old.  He sounds great, he has hospice coming in now but just had a lift installed in his minivan so he can take his scooter with him places.  Wish I didn't live six hours away.

Next three quilts stacked up on the ironing board, yes, the apartment is stil a mess.  But Lord, my heart is happy and I am praying every day that my old workplace will find someone stronger than me to turn it around.  Tomorrow, the tax paperwork, grocery shopping at the Mexican market, and maybe--hah, maybe--a little proper cleaning on the living room.

Got a Question for You

So, been thinkin' and dreamin' on my dry goods store idea while spinning and cleaning and organizing and running errands.  Would you do me a favor?  Please list the kinds of beans and lentils and rices you like to always have "on hand" in your cupboards, and send it to me.  Are you like me, some in cans for quick cooking, some dry in bags to save money?  Some in the freezer already cooked, ready to chuck into a soup or stew?  Enquiring minds and all that, sort of like a database building exercise.

My husband says I have more beans than anyone else.  I replied, only one cupboard full, and that includes rice, peas, garbanzos, couscous and popcorn . . . is this really a lot?

Today is more cleaning and organizing day.  Trying NOT to work on any crafts until the apartment is all straightened up and cleaned again.  It was very nice to serve my husband a real dinner, at a cleared off dining room table, but the living room view is still a disaster zone.  Much to be done, but I think I can squeeze in making some fresh cornbread to serve with the white bean veggie soup I made yesterday in the crock pot.  Easy livin' for this unemployed bum.

This is the way you look insane, look insane. . .

This is what happens when you are a thrifty person and you quit your job.  Cleaning up means cutting up and reducing to quilting fabric and sewing fabric, all those shirts and denim dresses and printed cotton shorts and everything else you've accummulated!  But when you are cutting up clothing with giant gingher scissors and making a button-snaps pile for Kay, a seam pile for weaving on the loom, a recycled-bag fabrics pile, and a quilting pile . . . perhaps best if done when good husband is not home to see what madness it appears to be.  I found all this stuff at the same sale with the shelves and bowls, what loot.  Paid so little I feel like a Viking raider.

So, I finally could not bear it any longer, I left my job on Monday.  And almost immediately it looks like we may be moving so I was out scouting lofts today ("Some people are waking up to intruders who came in off the fire escape.  It's okay to shoot them.  If you miss, it's just a parking structure next door.")  We'd like a loft but silly us, also a place for our vehicle?  And maybe it would nice if the elevator worked when you are showing me a fourth floor apartment?  And the one, I'd need to pick up another language to talk to any of the neighbors.  I long for sweet old Ohio.  Why hasn't anyone thought of putting gardens on the rooftops here, like in other cities?

It will take me two weeks to do the job list currently on my computer.  It's over five pages long.  Starting with cleaning and organizing all the shelves.

Then, making quilt tops, handspun yarn, handwoven rugs, and other items and posting them on Esty.  I have about $400 of art-o-mats to do, a second art-o-mat idea to develop and send for jury with Clark, a baby quilt to finish, $600 of yarn to spin and send to two shops, and mailed 8# of exotic llama/alpaca/wool mix to the mill this morning for carding.  A friend is having surgery soon, same as one I just had in late December, and I am eagerly working on my business plan for the dry goods grocery.  Many many things to do, waiting for God to tell me what he plans for me next!

Startin' on my Dream

Well, some of you know, and some of you don't, but my secret little plan for the future is to start a "dry goods store" with beans, lentils, spices, some practical kitchen things, my little booklets and stories I write with patterns and recipes, and otherwise healthy kitchen and home related items.  Now, it occurred to me that I could be getting a "jump start" by making the spice racks, containers for gift baskets (large and small) and some of the sewing--aprons, shopping sacks from recycled denim, etc--done and stored carefully away for the anticipated opening day in a year or two.

So, off to rummage sale at the Lutheran Church in Wayne this morning, and then two thrift stores that benefit the disabled and challenged, and I came home with all of the items you see, as well as fourteen picture frames, a wood box about 8 x 12 x 4 inches, and two loads of calico fabric to wash.  And a bag of several hundred wood golf tees.   That part was pure impulse.  Dunno what I'm going to do with the golf tees.

So I'll clean up everything and make it ready to sell and pack it away.  After the shop opens I will have no time for such hobbies and crafts, so will have to find local crafters within a few months of opening, wherever it may be.  It will be the most social-conscious shop around, I think, I am hoping to have the kind of place where people stop by and ask where something else is, or whatever happened to so-and-so, or who in the area has extra firewood for sale, and all the other nuances that make a small town a small town.

You would not believe my to-do list.  It starts this weekend, goes all through the week, and all four days of the following weekend, ending with a day of finishing the doc's baby quilt while visiting with Kathreen at her house, plucking loose hair from the dog when she isn't looking.  Shame to waste good spinning material when it's just walking by with a wet nose and all.

My office window

This has been a week where I was witnessing violence but just barely on the periphery of it.  My office window was shot out (I covered the bullet hole with my office wall cross) and thankfully only the outer window was penetrated so I don't have bees and bugs moving in to find my date and cracker stash in my desk drawer.

Then, I was turning left into my friend's driveway to deliver her safely home, and a car sped around on my driver's side and hit us at the front wheel.  $4000 suspension damage.  I wiggled and caressed it home and the insurance company decided to total it, so a check is coming Monday.  Meanwhile my white 185,000 mile truck that's been rear-ended four times (none my fault) is having a rebuilt transmission put in.

The staff watched while a woman screamed for hours into a cell phone across the street, angry, bitter.  The men in the Bed and Bread lines were especially saddened and were hard to cheer up.  I put $3.69 gas into my rental vehicle and visited my grandfather several hours away, and saw how his leg is being eaten away by circulation problems, when the hospice staff was changing the dressing.

But I did make great progress getting a proposal together to have shower facilities open a couple hours a week for the homeless, starting in September, and just need to find a church to cover the laundry cost ($700 a season, Sept-April) and a generous person to buy the socks ($3.50 a dozen).  I had a nice conversation with someone who needed a listener to help solve a health problem that I've experienced, and had names, numbers, and web sites to share with her to help her move forward to a solution.  So there are always little pebbles to drop into the lake.  We may not see the water level rise, but have faith that it does, and just hang on until you are given the next pebble to put in.

They will come soon and replace my window, but guess what?  the broken tiny bits catch the sunlight and sprinkle my office with tiny moving diamonds.  You can see beauty, or danger, or you can choose to see both.

Thrifty store yarn again!

I don't know why I am always torturing you showing off my cheap yarns.  These were from the Scrap Box, both Ann Arbor and Detroit, as well as the PTO thrift store on S. Industrial drive in Ann Arbor.  Unfortunately I have to be a nice friend and give up half of it to Patrice, who can take that giant ropey stuff and it just flies from her needles.  See the big dark brown-black stuff in the middle and the pink?  Patrice's.  Ah, well.

So a former student is learning to knit and I want him to be spoiled rotten and have our addiction we all share, and am preparing him some handspun wool-exotic fiber mix, a nice bulky two-ply he can play with.  I don't think he's used much wool so far so must get him hooked as soon as possible before he becomes one of THEM from the OTHER SIDE working with cotton all the time, you know, dishcloth zombies.  It is ever so much better to be a fuzzy warm scarf and sock zombie, yes?  Hello?

Happy Birthday To Me! Package from England!

Okay, yes, it was more than thrifty store prices, but at long last I have a maakin--a knitting belt--and the proper needles.  So when you order all the way from England, might as well get a pound of the world's very best shetland wool . . . and pay $16 for all the yarn samples and catalog to share with friends . . .

As you can see, the box was not only tied with string (!) but also very beaten up, but all was in good order inside.  I laughed and laughed when I tried on the belt, I weigh 165 and wear armor for fun and am not a wallflower by any means, and the belt will need a hole punched some seven inches in from the last hole--guess they have well-nourished women over there too, hahahahahhaaaa!

The yarn is just lovely.  I was thinking it would be heavier but this is all right.  I am lazy and will double it and make a nice shawl for winter or for gifts.

The company contact information: Jamieson and Smith, Shetland Wool Brokers Ltd. 90 North Road, Lerwick, Shetland.  Ze1 0PQ.  I did it all by email, sales@shetlandwoolbrokers.co.uk.  I just typed in my debit card information and they did the rest.  I thought I did a great job calculating the exchange rate but was off by almost $20, ooops, on a $100 order.  I had hoped for black wool but that was out of stock.  I will definitely order again soon.  Oh, by the way, took about six weeks.  AND the maakin is actually traditional and stuffed with real horsehair.  The cat is attempting to drag it under the table and is kissy-facing it vigorously to adopt it into the household.

This is a Sample of Peaceful Insurgency

Except for painting over the tops of the bottle caps, my new Mbira is on its way to much use.  I played it while waiting for dinner last night, and have shared it with three children already and been amazed at their responses.

The Mbira comes from Africa, where occupiers forced themselves into the continent, attempting to spread new beliefs.  In many places and times up until WWII, playing or owning a Mbira was a serious offense.  Because it was believed to connect the players and listeners to their ancestors, both for protection and guidance, it was not approved by the europeans who had other agendas for African peoples.

So in the way that a hidden cupboard behind the fireplace that was used to hide slaves, and the exhumation of a Polish coffin that hid a Torah for decades until its community could relocate and send back for it, the Mbira represents that sense of justice.  When people have the courage to follow God's law, not man's law--when they are able to find in themselves the power to do what is right in spite of fear of painful consequences--those symbols, like the underground railroad cupboard or the Torah or the little simple rain-like mbira, those symbols should help us carry the message that peace and not violence are the method we should use to respect and love one another.

I named my Mbira "Scattergood."  May the opportunities to use it to teach and to spread Peace be many and often.  In the manner of tradition of respect to ancestors, I have attached to my mbira not only some color, but an iron piece I got while walking with my brother, some bells from my wedding, beads from my grandmother, and a spirograph to remind me of a long-ago teacher.  You can learn about mbiras, or order your own, from Solomon Murungu, 1 McNulty Road, Bolton MA 01740.  Spread Peace.