The Good Ol' Days

I remember my mother telling a story of the summer she worked at a Piece Goods store to raise spending money for college. She learned to sew then, because the mannequins in the displays all wore garments made of in-stock fabrics and the employees were expected to know how to sew. Ahhh....does anyone out there long for that time?

I had a most unsucculent experience yesterday at a large chain fabric store. The employees might as well have been working in an ice-cream parlor, that is how little they knew about fabric, notions, and sewing. I think this is a trend in the larger fabric stores I frequent and it makes me sad. Maybe turnover is high or employee training is lacking, but it's always disheartening to visit a fabric store, so ripe with possibility and rich with sensory stimulation, only to see employees looking bored, often irritated, and worse of all - completely uninformed.

The obvious solution to this, of course, is to patronize small, locally-owned fabric shops staffed by active quilters and textile aficionados. And I do, with frequency. However, due to budget constraints, these sprees are largely limited to times when I am working on an extra-special project and am in need of only the finest fabrics. I really cannot afford to spend $9/yd on solids or interfacing, tempting as it is.

I think I am going to write these corporations and in my little voice encourage them to select and train their employees in a way that enhances the shoppers' experiences and just the general vibe of the store. There is actually one guy who works at said disappointing fabric store who is just *awesome* - so knowledgeable and passionate and helpful. He wasn't there yesterday and was obviously very missed.

ahhhhh...that feels better.

Goodwill, on the other hand, it a totally different story. I love it. I love, love it. I dabbled in some thrift shopping several years ago with great success, and for some reason took a break when we were in Manhattan. Now I'm addicted. Look at all of the beautiful things I found yesterday for less than $17!!! (2 exceptions in this picture : the pitcher was found at an antique show for $5, and I got the creamer/sugar on sale - they're Nigella's - at a local gourmet kitchen shop.) The little painted pitchers are Vietri and usually cost a pretty penny. When I saw them there for $1.98 my hands started to shake.




My sweet niece is coming to visit next week and I wanted to make her a little something (since I am her only crafty aunt!) and so I again attempted a project out of The Crafter's Companion and here it is - a little clutch designed by Lyn Roberts. She'll love it - if I don't keep it for myself!


I hope all of you have a most lovely weekend, filled with tender moments and little treasures.

Essential Reading

All my life I have felt called to particular books. A library is like a literary Ouija board for me...I walk the aisles aimlessly and inevitably the books I randomly choose seem to be exactly the book I was needing to read.

Although Anna Torborg's book The Crafter's Companion came into my life via recommendation rather than a karmic attraction, it is evidence none the less of books appearing in my life right when I'm ready.


I'm not going to go on about the lovely projects and photos (they speak for themselves), but I was so touched by the stories of the crafters featured in the book. What struck me about so many of them is that although they had always "had their hand in it", they weren't professional crafters out the gate...it was a place they arrived, instead of barreling forward to that career with blinders on. I can very much relate to that. I also felt inspired that so many of them had children at home. I've never felt more artistically prolific than I do now, but I do feel that having a small child around had really changed the way I work: no large blocks of time, my supplies get spread from one end of our home to the other, and I've had to become accustomed to interrupting a project mid-stitch. These crafters show that mothering and creating are beautifully linked and even just possible.

More than anything else, though, I was so moved by how candidly the artists spoke of their relationship with being a crafter. I struggle with my feelings of pursuing an outlet of expression so different than what I've been educated to do. When I was doing midwifery, I always felt very comfortable discussing it with anyone, but I find myself reluctant to tell people about Petite Toile and my other crafts. I was at the pool the other night and saw an acquaintance from the neighborhood. She has a son Andrew's age and went right back to work full-time after her son was about 3 months old. She's a really lovely woman, very sweet and smart. We chatted for a while and she asked me if I was working at all, and I said that I was still doing some shifts at the birth center, but I didn't tell her about my baby cloths. For some reason I suddenly felt timid and vulnerable about it. I'm working on letting myself share this part of my life with others...everyone I've ever told has been so incredibly supportive. I think that when one woman shares her dreams and passions, it shines light on those parts of the souls of other women.

I love, love the part of the book where Amy Karol talks about how crafting to her is just as essential as eating or sleeping. She says that it's awkward when people ask her how she does so much stuff - it's just part of her being alive. I had a friend over they other day and when I showed her my embroidered pillowcases she said with a smile and exasperation, "How do you do all this? It must take up all your free time!". What I couldn't seem to articulate then was how it isn't work to me, it is my free time. I find this hard to explain to non-crafters.

Which brings me to my final comment on this book (for now - it's really a treasure trove), which is the importance of having a crafting community. I find most of my community online, in the form of my lovely readers and other blogs, but I also have a craft bosom-buddy of my very own. What I love about her (well, one of many things) is that she manages to balance a very active professional life (as a tax attorney) with a downright impressive domestic prowess. She's a fantastic baker and quilter and decorator and we talk for hours on end about chocolate tortes and fat-quarters. The irony is that we were college roommates and rarely ever did anything even remotely crafty together. We don't even live in the same town, but I am so amazed and pleased that we share this love of crafting and we continue to deepen our friendship in this way, all these years later.

So thank you to all my crafting inspirations and to Anna for compiling a delightful, essential book for my library.


ps: this is my first project out of the book, a sweet little pillow designed by Lisa Congdon. I'm just tickled pink with it.

Who Knew?

Oh, sweet Durham neighbors...don't you love me no more? Why have you held out on me? Why did I have to hear about it from something as impersonal as a newspaper?



Well, the word is out about The Scrap Exchange in downtown Durham, one of those fantastic places that I could have only imagined in my wildest crafting fantasies. To borrow from their website, "The Scrap Exchange is a nonprofit organization that collects material donations from hundreds of individuals, businesses, industries, and municipal sources and distributes them through our Creative ReUse Center. The materials collected represent a snapshot of local industry and businesses. Our donors receive a tax-deductible donation receipt for the fair market value, the arts community has access to hard to find, affordable materials, and TSE prevents reusable items from entering the waste stream."

In other words, just unbelievable. I walked around for 1/2 an hour with my eyes bugging so far out of my head they began to ache. The Scrap Exchange completely embodies what I love so much about crafts...the ability and willingness to look at common objects and assimilate them into something interesting, and often useful. There were many items there whose use was immediately evident, like the vintage fabrics (for $1) and wooden boxes for Andrew's room. But the beauty of the Scrap Exchange is that it carries so many items which challenged me creatively, made me think about finding expression in objects I'd never considered before. Like glass pipettes and test tubes. Or huge old wood spindles. Or piles of 20-yr-old office supplies.

I had the feeling there that I experience infrequently, but always deliciously: the sensation that I'd stumbled upon a treasure right out in the open. I can't wait to go back.

Lucky Ducks

This weekend we were offered the vacation home of some friends of my parents in Wilmington, NC, right off the coast of Wrightsville Beach. It was a beautiful house in an even more beautiful development, full of multi-million dollar homes on huge manicured lots, each one deserving of a spread in Traditional Home or Architectural Digest. The Stepford-ness of it all prompted Pete to comment, "This does not look like the kind of neighborhood where people put their garbage for pick-up on the curb. In fact, this does not look like the kind of neighborhood where people even make garbage!". We did quite a bit of eating out, and stumbled upon this little gem, an Asian restaurant whose back patio made me covet.


It was a fabulous opportunity to spend some quality time with just my boys, and a wonderful place to celebrate Pete's 2nd Father's Day. Nothing that Pete does in terms of generosity of spirit surprises me, but I am continually amazed by his commitment to our marriage and to our son. I cannot imagine anything he could do to be a better father to Andrew, and my heart bursts when I am reminded of the obvious, that he is not just my husband and father to our son, but Andrew's dad. Our child is an incredibly fortunate little man.


Last week we were crawling into bed and out of nowhere Pete says to me, "Every night when I go to bed I have that great feeling like I used to have on Christmas Eve, knowing I get to wake up to Andrew in the morning."

I know the feeling.

Bonne Nuit

The last time I was home I went rummaging through my mother's linen closet and found a pair of pillowcases that my grandmother had embroidered for me when I was about 10:


I have very vivid memories of evenings spent at my grandparent's house, my grandmother and me sitting on her couch embroidering while watching ice-skating and eating popcorn with pecans. One of the first things I ever embroidered was on a little towel for my father. I carefully transferred and stitched a design of bowling balls and pins on the bottom corner of the linen. This is a funny gift to me now, since I have not even one memory of my father ever bowling.

The pillowcases stowawayed with me back to NC and the very same week Alicia posted an entry on her blog about the pillowcases she had done. Not to ignore a directive from the embroidery goddess, I immediately set to work gussying up my plain sheets and cases.



This is my first little project, for the sheets on my guest bed, and it turned out okay, I guess. I'd forgotten almost everything I'd ever learned about embroidering, like how many strands of thread to use and how to fashion a french knot, and these cases are Exhibit A of my learning curve.


This is my current project and I am really pleased with how it turned out. Isn't that just the sweetest little pattern? I have one down, one to go. There is just something so quaint yet sophisticated about sleeping on adorned linens...like with so many forms of art, improvement of the aesthetic can elevate a common event. Last night my dreams were filled with George Clooney, so something must be working.

Yummy

I think I neeeeeeeeed this book by Denyse Schmidt:


Has anyone bought it yet? Is it totally delicious?

I have so many lonely scraps that just sit around my studio languorously and I would love to be able to piece them into something dignified. The only quilt I've ever made is pretty but very formal-looking...a classic pinwheel design. I think if I do much more quilting I'd like to to be a bit more free-form, a la Gee's Bend.

This book looks nice because it seems to have some small projects that I could sit and do in a day and then feel gloriously triumphant in my accomplishment.

My 2 Cents

I have been to 3 universities for my 3 degrees, all private, all very expensive (just the thought of my $90,000 grad-school debt makes me throw up a little in my mouth). My first undergraduate degree (courtesy of my parents) was awarded to me by a prestigious southern college, an institution recognizable by its breathtaking and gated campus, old-south traditions, and a predominately Anglo student body with young adults who looked as if they had one foot in a J. Crew catalog and the other in a prestigious, stuffy law school.

It was its own unique type of hell.

It's hard for me to tease out my feelings about this school because even though I felt so screwed by it academically, financially and socially, I do count my friends from that place as among those very closest to my heart. (Some of those friends even survived the institution and subsequent prestigious law schools with a great amount of succulence intact.) I've been known to attend a few homecoming games and get a bit wistful when walking around campus (it is, after all, where I got engaged, many years later), but it has no real designs on my heart. I would not actively encourage my children to apply there.

Yesterday I received a large 8x10 envelope from the school, addressed to both me and my husband, who is not a graduate of said institution. The envelope was so large and somewhat grand that I had the fleeting fantasy that this might be an invitation of some sort. I've been known to do some guest lecturing on women's health there, so clearly they were granting me some honorary degree.

The contents turned out to be what I largely expected: fundraising propaganda. Let me preface this by saying 1)I know that schools are expected to do fundraising and that alumni should expect some degree of upper-echelon panhandling, and 2) I know that alumni gifts are credited with providing many opportunities for less-advantaged students. Even knowing these things I always bristle a bit at these requests. As the saying goes, you can't get blood from a turnip, and the way I see it, if Pete and I are able to scrape together a bit to give to a university, it will daggum sure be Andrew's future college, not the one who has already received a pretty penny from my parent's estate (to the tune of $100K +).

However, instead of just being able to shrug this off as yet another philanthropic opportunity for those graduates not living off a single, modest income, this year the institution urged us to consider ways that even the smallest donation could be a big help. And, in most cases, I believe this is true. We give to our church and other organizations not because we have a huge amount to give, but because I feel strongly that if everyone just gave a little, things could truly be improved for the human condition. Like famine. And health care. So I read on.

For example, it said, $18 would buy a case of toilet paper - to roll the quad!!!!!!!

Oh my gosh! Why had I never considered this? How selfish of me!!! You mean for just $18, an amount that would provide a full course of vaccinations for an Ethiopian child, I could buy a whole case of toilet paper not to be used, but to decorate old Magnolia trees after our basketball team won a championship game???

Now that's where the little man can make a difference!!

Once In a Blue Moon

Tonight we will see a blue moon. I learned on Good Morning America today that blue moons aren't actually blue (how did I go 30 years without that knowledge??) - it just refers to an occasion where there are 2 full moons in one month, a phenomenon that occurs only about every 2.5 yrs. I always kind of get a kick out of these events...maybe we should do something to mark it. Clearly a meal of Moon Pies are in order. God bless the South.


Aren't these just the prettiest things? Allyn brought them yesterday to our playdate and I picked up a handful for home because Andrew couldn't get enough of them. He even ate one pit and stem and all. It's funny - I don't like many things that are cherry-flavored (even cherry pie) but fresh cherries make me happy to be alive. I remember being in New York in the spring and I would buy cherries on the street...the gold and pink water-coloured looking ones, and I would eat them as I walked along to work or to do my errands.

We're expecting company this weekend, one of my lovely roommates from college and her hubby and edible little boy. The anticipation of company for me is nearly always a good thing, as it is the only thing that truly can motivate me to clean and tidy my home. We're thinking about hitting a farmer's market and getting ice cream from the local dairy and then having some other friends in to join us for cocktails and dinner. I can't wait.

As much as I think our new friends here just hung a blue moon, I do often think it's sad that some of my oldest friends are living so far away. I miss them so much, and although most feelings are lessened with time, my achy-ness for them only intensifies as the months pass. One of my very best friends just moved across the country and sometimes when I look at a map of the US it's like I'm looking at it through a fun-house mirror...the ones where the center looks really big and bulging and the sides are really tiny and so far away from each other. Last night he was going to pick up some gum at a little store and I found myself a bit jealous of the cashier and the other shoppers for just having him around. I feel that way about all of my friends who aren't close...I just would love to say to the people who interact with them in little ways all the time, at the grocery, the dry cleaners, Do you know who this person is?? This is only one of the most fantastic people to ever draw breath. You are so lucky to be ringing up their gum and bread.

I wish we could just all live in some little commune together, working the land and drinking martinis.

From Pete after reading 237 Curious George books to Andrew

I think when I read Andrew's book to him I am going to say, "This is George. He is a good monkey and always very bi-curious...".

Hecho a mano

It's no secret among my friends that I am one of the most frugal people they know. It's not so much that I don't like to spend money, as it is that I hate to spend money on things that I could so clearly make myself. This trait is both a blessing and a curse. I've attempted to make various items that would be obvious purchases to less financially neurotic folks, with mixed results: a wedding cake, my son's entire nursery linens, wool sweaters, board games, jewerly chests, built-in shelving. A few weekends ago we were invited to the our first BBQ of the season (sadly, our first BBQ in years) and I literally was sewing up a shirt to wear as we walked out the door, a necessity since my closet looked like a store of ugly clothing which had just gone out of business, leaving on the racks the garments that were just too awful to sell. It looked like a place where clothes go to die.

So no one was surprised when I launched my baby cloth business that I would need a website, and that, of course, I would design and build it myself. I realize that in this day and age building a website is really no big deal for a lot of people. But, kind reader, please keep in mind that I have an MA in midwifery. Web design is seriously out of my scope of practice. I'd always prefer the work of IUDs to CSS.

Although the site isn't totally complete and I'm sure has code that would make web developers die a slow death, I'm really tickled with how it turned out. Like with so many of my projects it's about the aesthetics - don't look too closely at the details. But I think it's a sweet-looking site, very friendly, which manages to capture the spirit of Petite Toile. It really wasn't that hard - I just spent countless hours on Lynda.com trying to maneuver my way through Dreamweaver, and it also doesn't hurt to have a live-in art director who is willing to trade Photoshop work for sexual favors.

Most importantly, building this website just reinforces what I've always believed and what I hope to teach to my children: even if you can buy something, there is a unique satisfaction in diving in, getting your hands dirty, and making things yourself - just as you like them.

I scream

The first year Pete and I lived in Manhattan we decided to buy an ice cream maker with some wedding-present credit we had at Williams Sonoma. This was a very logical purchase, since our kitchen was (literally) 21 sq. ft and we were already storing canned goods in our shoes.

Space issues aside, I have to say that I've never regretted the purchase. In fact, I nearly dropped to my knees and kissed its little base when it helped me produce Nigella Lawson's World's Best Chocolate Ice Cream this weekend. I urge you to get your sweet tooth on a copy of How To Eat and make some magic happen in your kitchen.

I won't kid you and tell you that it's an effortless creation, but you will be amply rewarded. It's everything I love in chocolate ice cream: smoky, dark, heady. Any ingredient would be honored to meet its end as part of this concoction. It will make you happy when temperatures soar.

This Time of Year

Although it's been beautifully detailed in both prose and song, there really is nothing like late spring in the South. Early March typically heralds its arrival with unfurling of daffodils and crocuses from the ground and the most delicate buds on the trees. By April the yard is a rapidly evolving ecosystem which leaves me, Queen of the Black Thumb, constantly questioning whether the many sprouts around our home are weeds or something that I may actually want to grow.

And then there's May. Oh, May. May is, for all intents and purposes, really considered summer in my part of North Carolina. Pools open early, the buzz of air conditioners provide the soundtrack to the outdoors, and lawns already suffer due to early droughts. But the most spectacular part of May is the presence of tremendous overgrowth of flora, cloaking homes in a shadow of Kudzu and ivy, a blanket to gently deflect the summer sun. The density of green has an unusual effect: instead of appearing brighter in the summer, many locations seem more obsure, darker, more mysterious. This is Flannery O'Connor's South; the alluring, enigmatic region that I love so.

Don't Feel Like Dancing

Although my friend Bo and I joke about it, I'm beginning to be a little concerned that all Andrew will listen to in the car is the Scissor Sister's Ta-Dah! CD. It absolutely never fails that 3 minutes into any drive he will start to scream, Song!! Song, Please!!!. If I do not immediately switch off whatever I am listening to and put in the Sisters, screaming commences.

It really is my fault, since after receiving the album in November I played it ad nauseam, but now the kid is the one that can't let go. I always suffer a pang of guilt when I'm around mothers who discuss their child's love affair with Raffi or the Wiggles. Inevitably they inquire about Andrew's musical preferences and I admit that no, G-rated albums simply don't stimulate him enough - he needs disco/glam-rock and yes, I listen to it with one finger on the fast-forward button to skip over the cursing and nasty sexual innuendos. Typically, this is the end of the discussion.

I'm not so much worried about the music itself, since it really is very catchy and fun and his comprehension is quite limited, but more concerned that he refuses to listen to anything else. It's driving me mad. Pete got me the new Tori Amos CD for mother's day (wonderful) and we tried to listen to it in the car, Andrew protesting the entire time. Finally Pete said, "Andrew - this is the new Scissor Sisters!!!". No deal. My sister sent me this link though, and I laughed so hard I nearly wet myself.

So we have kind of agreed to ride it out, although every time I put it on my eyes start to cross a little. However, the other day we were driving to church and Pete and I both looked in the backseat at our little guy. There he sat in his carseat, completely blissed-out, Scissor Sisters blaring, chewing on my sister's makeup brush.

It doesn't bode well.

Sloth

I am just totally useless today. I did manage to run to Trader Joe's and come home to make mango sorbet, which is truly one of the most magnificent creations to come out of my kitchen in a long time. But my house is dirty and I have cloths to make, and my mojo is gone on both fronts. I was sick last week and then Pete has been sick all this week and the house feels like it's come down with something too. I feel like I need to go around the rooms opening windows and waving a smudge stick and ringing a bell.

I finally got a big order of little cloths out to The Red Hen in Carrboro. I couldn't believe how long it took for me to finish them, but I was really pleased with how they turned out. The business is growing, slowly but surely.




Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of the "restructuring" of Pete's work at that awful agency. When I think back about that time I still get sick to my stomach, but I am also so, so grateful. What seemed like the worst-case scenario (new baby, single income, strange city) really made us reach out and grab opportunities which have been nothing short of miraculous. Case in point: If Pete had not decided to leave his job, I wouldn't have started working at the birth center. And the birth center's lovely little store wouldn't have asked me to make baby cloths. And then I wouldn't have decided to see who else was interested in my little cloths. And, of course, I wouldn't today have my sweet little business.

I think that Pete and I are going to celebrate all that we have done and become in the last year. Our wedding anniversary is lovely because it marks the day we made our vows. But May 18th is so meaningful because that's when those vows were tested, when we had the choice to fall apart or to meet our lives head-on, as partners.

Just Up My Alley

A few days ago we went to WV to celebrate my friend Karen's 30 birthday. Her husband was throwing her a surprise party (nearly always a very bad idea) and had recruited me to act as the ruse to throw her off the track of suspicion. So of course I agreed to help out with that and in a further gesture of generosity asked if there was anything else I could do (nearly always a very bad idea).

At first he declined, but then I heard a glint of opportunism in his voice. Yes, if you really want to, I have a project that is just up your alley, he says. He then points me in the direction of this site and tells me that Karen has dreamed of nothing more than a pineapple palm tree to call her very own.

For those of you who have always fantasized about sinking a 1" bit through tropical fruit, let me assure you it's a nasty business. Pineapple guts covered the floor of my parents' garage and I ended up having to spray a hose through their core, a pineapple douche, if you will, before sodomizing the poor things with table legs.

My 82-yr-old grandfather helped out and was both mesmerized and repulsed by what we were doing.

Sadly, the tree was not the hit I had anticipated and I think Karen barely noticed that it was there.

Upon my return to NC I emailed pics of the final products to friends and offered to extend my talents to mark their special occasions too. Like a guillotine out of field strawberries. Or a suckling pig out of kiwi fruit. These were their requests:

1. I think you should definitely make something for my wedding. Perhaps out of large bananas. Jumbo.
2. For my next decade birthday, I would like you scupt the Statue of Liberty out of hummus.
   
3. A fetal feline out of french fabric.

We all agreed that I should be very thankful that he didn't ask me to make this:

On The Bandwagon

I feel a bit about blogging as I do about popular TV shows - I never seem to get into them until they are in syndication. But I am feeling so motivated by some of my favorite blogs that I wanted to give it a shot. I assume that a first paragraph of a blog is most likely the hardest to write, just like with a term paper. Only, with a term paper, of course, you can go back and write the first paragraph last. Bear with me.

Yesterday was mother's day, and I have to say, this year even more than the last, I feel as if I'd earned it. I was awakened by Pete throwing Andrew in the bed to cuddle and then invited to a breakfast of popovers and insanely-priced butter and organic preserves.

Later we trekked it into Raleigh to do some flea-marketing. When we lived in DC, I thought the Georgetown flea market could not be topped. I stand corrected. The Raleigh one is absolutely fabulous and for $24 I amassed the menagerie you see before you:



Pete took a shot of this scary little dog.


We came back to the house, visited with neighbors, and after Andrew was in bed treated ourselves to what we call "Sideways" night - a dinner of (cheap) wine, cheese, bread, etc. And usually the movie. We didn't rent the movie this year because, wonder of wonders, it was supposed to be on TV. at 7 pm. I checked. not 5 pm. so we missed the film. but the evening was a big hit anyway, making ourselves sick on cheese and delicious farmer's market finds.


Really a perfect day in the midst of what has been a very difficult year.