Joyeux Pacques!

I left my hermitage today to go to brunch at a restaurant that looks like a funeral home and has waitresses who've been working there since the Johnson administration. It is the towniest of townie joints out on the far south side. What could get me out of my sewing cave for that? Well, not just my love of all things townie (as long as there are no hipsters stinking up the place), but the suggestion of my dear cousin Bam Bam that we take our grandmother out for brunch there. She's been ill for the better part of year, currently living in a rehab facility. She's the only person I know who goes out less than I do, so I immediately agreed. She clearly had been looking forward to our outing all week, because she was dressed to the nines in an all purple ensemble when we arrived, ready to go. The weather was perfect, the company lovely, and the food fantastic. Our waitress looked like a drag version of Jennifer Coolidge's character in Legally Blonde. The complete lack of irony was amazing.
I should get out more.

I am almost finished hand-quilting the secret 48 x 54" quilt. I have spent easily a hundred hours quilting this thing and have realized a couple of things in the process. Because of the busy patterns on the front, I decided to mark and quilt from the back. A mistake. I soon realized that my easygoing stitches that looked fine on the back were not so hot on the front. So, I've had to resort to super tiny, show-off stitches, as though I was trying to make a precious heirloom, in order for it to look decent on the front. I'll not be doing that again. Also, the thread that I chose, which claimed to be good for machine or hand quilting is total crap for hand work. It splits. It breaks. I hate it. Once I am done with this project, it's gone. I used a fusible batting in this quilt sandwich. You don't have to baste or pin, jut "tack" it in place with an iron. This sort of works. I've had to re-tack it a couple of times and am not impressed. That said, I really don't miss getting basting safety pins caught in the frame of my hoop and them stabbing me in the wrist. Last of all, my choice of motif was unexpectedly labor intensive. I decided to do an all circular quilting pattern, tracing around various household objects. Well, the problem with curved hand sewing is that it is impossible to do a running stitch. Every single fucking stitch in that quilt had to be pulled through by itself. It is so much slower going than a linear pattern would have been. Fortunately, I really like the texture that it makes in the quilt, but I will think more than twice before doing that again.

In order to sew all those single stitches, I work with my right (dominant) hand above the work and my left below, to catch the needle and feed it back through. As a result, an overly long quilting session will leave me with aches in both hands. This has severely limited my knitting output. I am currently neglecting or ignoring the following knitting projects:
* Metro cardigan in Dream in Color Classy. It needs a cuff finished on one sleeve, the hem re-knit, and its collar sewed down. I haven't figured out the best way to attach the collar.
* Embossed Leaves socks. The first one just needs its toe kitchenered. Then the second can start traveling with me on the El. Maybe.
* Helmi cardigan in Allhemp 6. It's hemp, which isn't the easiest on the hands. Also, lots of stockinette, not in the round. Yawn.

To follow up on previous posts:
I haven't picked up that Double Irish Chain quilt that I started last year (or the year before?). I took all the pieces out to figure out how it goes together, but packed it back into its box. It's strip pieced, and only some of the pieces has been done. After that, the pieces get chopped up and sewn into blocks. Then there's more cutting and piecing. I already have a batting for this, but not a backing. Maybe by the time I get around to finishing the front, I will have found a suitable back. I want to learn to machine quilt before this gets quilted, so I've decided to make another throw (for myself, for once) before tackling a bed sized piece.

I never got around to going to a museum.

I'm still happy with my Soda Stream machine. The Dr. Pete flavor is my favorite.

My gall remains mitigated. My amazing acu-pal Stacy is a total miracle worker and has gotten my gallbladder back on an even keel. It's also really helped with some long-term lower GI problems (which might have been gallbladder related, I have since learned) and my overall feeling of well-being. I am a total acupuncture convert. I don't plan to be as annoying about it as religious converts or ex-smokers, though. I'm one of those two things, by the way. I'll let you guess which.

Crap. Is it already the middle of February? Guess I'd better decide which heavy winter sweater I want to knit next (of all of the ones on my mental list) and let the rest wait until the fall. It hasn't seemed like a pressing issue, but I suppose spring will be here soon. If I want to wear the next sweater, I better get a move on.
I was planning to visit a museum today, with my newly acquired museum card from work, but I decided to stay home and wash all of my clothes instead. No, that is not an exaggeration. I procrastinated on doing my laundry, then the laundry room was closed for a week for upgrades. I've got a lot of clothes, but there's a limit to the number of re-wears I'm willing to do.
In any case, I'm looking for a way to recharge my batteries. I'm practically hibernating these days, which is a great way to entrench a rut. So, the Field Museum? I haven't been in ages and ages. The Museum of Science and Industry? I haven't been since they moved the submarine (by hand!) to its new exhibit. My old favorite, the Art Institute? An afternoon with some Impressionist masterpieces would be very soothing, but I'm afraid I'll cry in front of the Seurat. Decisions, decisions.

The catch up

I left my hermitage today. It was an acquisition mission. I went to a quilting store (not to be confused with, say, Joann Fabrics, though I ended going there too for notions), where I bought some really beautiful batiks to make a purse for my Grandmother. The trouble is that I love them so much that I will probably end up keeping it for myself. She loves blues and greens, as do I. As do a lot of people, since blue and green are the most common favorite colors in the world. The least favorite? White. I suppose most people don't consider it a color.

I'm trying to recharge my batteries. My creative battery, my mental battery, my give-a-shit battery. Time to dust off the sewing machine! I also recently started a new sweater in a divine shade of green from Dream in Color. I bought the yarn from them ages ago, when they were selling some test lots. I showed the work in progress to my Grandmother while we were waiting at her doctor's office and she remarked on all of the colors in it and how I'll be able to wear it with a lot of things. I hadn't really thought of it as having a lot of colors, but as having a lot of tonal variation. I love implied texture, but not to the extent of having trompe l'oeil walls.

I've also been thinking about picking up the quilt that I started a couple years ago. It's a double Irish chain in modern prints. I haven't figured out what kind of motifs I want to quilt on it. A lot of people do shamrock designs, but I think that is a little too twee. The fabrics in mine are large scale florals in turkey red, with a pale yellow for the plain squares. I suppose I can finish the piecing before deciding how I want to quilt it. Long, time-sucking google searches for quilting stencils are in my future.

Other recharging things: I've started drinking more water, thanks to my SodaStream. I use it mostly to make seltzer water. Seltzer wasn't really my thing before, but I find it refreshing when freshly carbonated. It also fills my need for gadgets, because I get to play with the carbonator to make it.

In surprising news, I've recently started getting acupuncture. My fear of needles previously prevented me from even considering it, but it actually doesn't bother me (as long as I don't look). I wouldn't have started, had it not been for a really painful gallbladder attack about a month ago that kept me up all night. Since then, I have learned that I was probably passing a gallstone. It was so fucking uncomfortable that I would eat tacks if that was the cure. Fortunately, I can get acupuncture from one of my college classmates instead, who recently got a masters in oriental medicine. I was always a little in awe of her commitment to photography when we were in school, so I figured if she was half as serious about acupuncture as she was about art, it would be okay. I've had two treatments now and they've really helped with my gallbladder and general well being. Paired with Chinese herbs, this should help me to avoid "real" medical intervention. They usually just cut 'em out and I'd like to stay with as many of my original parts as I can. And really, does the world want me to have unmitigated gall?

An Open Letter to a Producer

I am not going to name your organization here because I don't want to be accused of libel, even though what I write here is true. You don't pay a living wage, or anything approaching it. Still, you expect your employees to work extraordinarily hard in dangerous conditions to make your shows a success. When is the last time your space got a visit from the fire marshal? I ask because one of the stagehands got a nasty shock when she tried to plug something into the electrical outlet backstage that was just dangling out of the wall. Cap that shit off or fix it before someone is seriously injured.
We had a standard contract that you would pay half of my fee on opening night and the other half on closing. I kept up my end of that agreement, but on closing night, the production manager didn't have checks for the crew. Sure, the actors, who have the legal muscle of Equity behind them, were all paid on time, but the crew got lame excuses about a printer in the office being out of toner. I guess the accountant's check writing hand was broken, too.
Isn't it bad enough that you paid members of your run crew $200 total for a five week run? That's not even minimum wage. Then you had the audacity to take your time paying them after they've performed the work. You ought to be ashamed of yourself for treating fellow artists this way. Hell, for treating fellow human beings this way. When I mentioned that US Labor Law requires employers to pay their employees on the date agreed upon, your production manager told me that some people in town don't even pay. I know. One of my exes got an Equity agreement yanked from a company that stiffed him $700. That's not a threat. You eventually sent me a check with both my first and last names misspelled. Thanks for that laugh.
The saddest part of this is that I had a wonderful time working on your show, with really great people. It's just that asshole in the office who handles payroll that completely soured me on your company. I wish you all the luck you deserve in finding qualified people willing to work under these conditions, because I certainly will never work for your company again.

What Would Laura Ingalls Wilder Do? Drink Some Wine and Sew Some More.

I stayed up until 4 am last night sewing xmess presents. I realized today that the sound of the machine, so comforting to me, probably irritated the neighbors. Then I though about how their child has endless screaming tantrums and decided not to feel guilty.
In the past twenty-four hours, my sewing machine has:

• Refused to work. The thread wouldn't catch. I disassembled it, cleaned its nooks and crannies, swapped bobbins, everything. Turns out that the problem was a little burr on the spool of thread I was using that prevented the thread from feeding. 
• Broken two needles. This was my fault. I recently fell in love with a quarter inch foot that is apparently NOT for zigzag. My previous favorite utility foot is, so it didn't occur to me that the slimmer foot would be a problem. Thank god I had a whole pack of needles, but I could definitely have done without catching part of a needle in my hand.
• Burned through a surprising amount of bobbin thread. I could probably wind a bobbin in my sleep now. Maybe I did last night.
• Installed many a zipper (with my guidance). The new fave quarter inch foot is great for zippers, so I don't have to swap feet to put them in. Zippers are now my bitch.

Even though the sewing has been a little fiddly, it has been so much quicker than knitting presents like I usually do. I've decided that most of my family aren't knitworthy. I got tired of seeing the presents that took me hours to make get casually tossed on the pile. The work was not appreciated.

Mad Men has fueled my holiday craft marathons in the past (or one year, shamefully, Gossip Girl), but this year I'm working my way through all of the episodes of Saving Grace on Netflix. Maybe I needed a badass Holly Hunter fix and didn't know it. I've also got the new Jane Eyre adaptation out from the library, but that seems like something that requires a little more attention. 

In other news, my cell phone broke. It still works, after a fashion, but the scroll pad refuses to scroll. I can't check my email, text messages, use the internet, turn my ringer back on, or about a dozen other things without it. All those reasons I want a smartphone now don't work. So, if I've missed a call from you in the past few days, I apologize. I'll call you when I get my new phone tomorrow. I decided to abandon the Blackberry (8 track of the 2000s) for an iphone. Yes, I've mocked them in the past. Yes, I tease one of my friends for his near-obsessive love of his iphone. I just want a smartphone that works, has no scroll button to break (which killed my last two phones), and doesn't have a squint-inducingly tiny screen. That leaves android phones and the iphone. The tech support guy who remotely reprogrammed my Blackberry when its data service went out told me that iphones generate the fewest number of problem tickets of any phones on my carrier. What else do you need to know? My new phone is in the FedEx depot across the street from my apartment, which has me as antsy as a kid waiting for Christmas. I wish I could just go get it, but I'll have to wait for them to deliver it tomorrow. Sometimes the tracking page is not your friend.