She Knits! She Sews! She Sells!

Here's the latest little project I finished over the weekend, and promptly decided to sell it.

It's beautiful, luxurious, silky, beaded--and a bargain at $40 at my online Etsy store.

I made it for myself, and after admiring it for a few hours, realized that someone else would love it, and it hadn't given me any grief to make it, easy to let go. A sexy linen/rayon blend with faceted beads and paillettes (sequins), and the manner in which I did the pattern stitch wrong made it come out looking like elegant chainmail. I was impressed and wrote my mistake down so I could do it again on purpose. It is scarf season again, and it's easy to whip some up while watching a DVD or two on a rainy afternoon off, and enrich the hand-craft marketplace.

Besides, I'm in full assault job search mode right now and am not anywhere nears the challenge of a Shula-sized headache, like a cashmere sweater made with spiderwebs and pins.

I have an interview with an esteemed Portland art glass company tomorrow morning, and I'm trying to not be nervous. Love love love glass, always have, and I think it would be a fun job and give me something new to learn from the inside out. It's just been so long since I had to cold-interview, I hope I do alright. The responses from all the applications I was sending out are coming in steadily, so tomorrow will be good practice no matter the outcome.

Plus, I've decided to try and get back to school next year, and have begun the whole process of filling out applications and forms for that, also. It is very different than the first time I did it while still in high school, but luckily some things are now free (sending transcripts) and almost everything is online and fast and easy to find. The thought of Portland State has been floating around in my mind for a few years, and somehow the idea of being in a classroom and writing clicked for me the last few weeks. What will transfer, what will not I can only guess, but after all these years, anything that does will help. Skipping down to the PSU bookstore to pick up a course catalog will send me spinning with excitement (it always did, even then) as I mentally try on taking these classes. Getting into the Spring term would be great, but it all depends on if I just am too far past meeting any deadlines for applying. There's a department for Women's Resources that includes Women's Continuing Education, and I contacted the point person there, and the admissions folks---where do I even start with this? I can already hear the snickering of the poor student working at processing these emails "Duh, hello? It's obvious, damn boomer" delete delete. Maybe not. Going forward, this is another layer to the Larger Plan I have, finish the degree, keep learning, that's always been the plan: Keep Learning. Always. Keep knitting(thanks, gramma).

Laugh Your Ass Off

Today's Poppalina Blog


I'd love to go get sloppy drunk with this woman, or a least tea-tipsy...

Okay, the joke is that the sweater pattern came from an old
knitting book from the 40s or 50s, I think, and the pattern
was called 'Jason', and Shula started the sweater and began to
refer to it as Jason, and it took on all the qualities of this bloke
in the picture and their up and down relationship (hell of a
knit project, tiny needles, yarn like thread, huge size, tedious),
and increasingly she was over it, over it, OVER IT!! See the
relationship connection? Plus she whaps us with her cursing,
biting humor, and it's a riot (to us knitters). Never mind.

The Actively Waiting Game

Absolute flurry of activity since Monday, and now I am on pins and needles, wondering, waiting, carrying my phone to the powder room so I at least hear it ringing, checking email 17 times an hour---no it's not the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, I'm waiting for word from some of the many applications I've been submitting, and still applying while I'm waiting.

My friend Steven has helped me do a breakthrough with this process, by reminding me of some staggeringly obvious things about Working: A: If you don't like it, quit soon.
B: If you need to work ASAP, it's okay to take
another retail job and keep looking for
a new job while you're earning money.
C: There's a million office jobs that will allow you
to leave the job at the office, to go home and
do the art, writing, craft pursuits that you
have re-prioritized as essential to your new,
non-B.store manager Life.
D: You had a great sabbatical, keep your values.
E: Get serious about your money & your worth.

Whew! Is he a pal or what? I've promised him a fine dining experience at our favorite local restaurant Venerable Quandry as soon as it is feasible for me, and probably some more stops at Pok-Pok nearby.

I've already checked phone and email twice while writing the above, this is madness.

So, part of the Re-invention Process for me is also remembering the interview process from the side of the table I am now on, and being warm, engaging, disarmingly competent, using just enough corp-speak to sound like I know what I'm talking about but not so much to sound like a Dilbert cartoon, and find out what the holiday scheduling will be like---I'd still like to figure out a way to get in a four day stint to FLA for Christmas, or at least get a few days off. My new priorities are showing.

I also need to make a list of all the places I've applied to, after 12 you can start to forget. This is when it really hits me that I haven't applied cold for a job in over 10 years, and before that, there was a lot of 'he knows my friend, who worked for them, who dated her' kind of thing. How often is too often to call to check on your app? My rule was if they call more than once every other day, that's too often. If I didn't respond within a week, it meant I was not interested in setting up an interview with the applicant. But the County, State and City hiring procedures are based on a cut-off application date, so if someone applies right after the job was posted, the waiting period may be three or four weeks until the hiring manager even looks at the applications. Now that I am the applicant, it gets me growling, grrrrrr.

My booth is still operating, but I had to re-evaluate the profit vs expenses aspect of it, and since I always knew at least a part-time job was in my future, I decided to do something full-time that was less interfering to my personal life than retail management, and secure benefits, too. Once I gather some more capital funds to invest in the project, I'll see greater returns, and besides, it's still a blast and very creative. In fact, I feel like I'm just getting started with it, so taking the pressure off of it to be my sole income source opens it up to more whimsical and funky ideas, just in time for the Holidays. Overall, all is good with Groovy Rhubarb. I have so many cool sweaters to sell, and things made from old sweaters that I felted and fabricated into new items. My great-aunt Meta would be so proud (and 112 years old) to see my craftiness, and she would know that she was the greatest contributor to this obsession I have, Auntie's influence lives on.

Official Blog Day Official Post

My favorite blogger has stopped blogging, and I'm concerned.

But I don't want to be a nudge, so I'll just hash it out here, in my safe little blogspot.

This esteemed person has put years into building this blog, has thousands of readers, hits and links, hundreds of posts, topics and famous persons who read it...and it's fizzling it seems due to situations beyond their control, and I'm getting frantic that all that work will be lost to the ethers.

Reading this blog re-started my own blog engine last year, after I had already given up on one that was pious and book review-based, and I couldn't keep at it in my free time because it was just more work, at home and that killed the thrill of doing it. This inspiring bloggerperson set the spark to the gasoline that was forgotten, and I was ignited to write again.

So I'm kinda worried, and how can I help out?

And how does one end a blog, anyway, if one wants to be done with it? A formal, Fare-Thee-Well posting, with a connecting link to someone similar for your avid readers to try instead of you? A quick and brutal, "F-you, I'm outta here!" and eternal silence? Delete the whole thing at your server page with no peep, evermore? Like breaking off a starter-phase romance that you just don't have the time or energy to hand-hold at all, "Look, it's not you, it's me, and you deserve some blog who can better meet your needs, I'm just not in a good place right now, no it's nothing to do with you (but it does, you're drippy) I just need some space and maybe started this without being really clear about what I want yadda dabba doo" and it's over before the drinks even get to the table? TMI, I know.

Maybe some anonymous reader (who happens to know the blogger's location) could send them some incredibly decadent chocolate somethings, with a teeny note that says "Get writing soon" and a smiley face.

Or a new laptop.

Not that I am in any position to manage anyone else's life (my own is barely managed) but sometimes a person has an insight, and it can't be too nosy to pass it along, right? With cookies or cuppycakes? Or that lively young stripper who works at---never mind, it was just a thought.

One of My Favorite Fantasy Journeys

Okay, so now I am your personal New York Times Liaison---

Take a trip to Darjeeling

Nobel Prize for Literature: Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing interview

Gosh what a lot of carping about her winning this year, some of the comments are so snipping (Harold Bloom, of course) and almost sophomoric, I was laughing in my coffee this morning.

"Unreadable" Harold said. When has that ever stopped someone from winning the prize?

And I have to confess that when I tried to read "Love, Again" this summer, I put it down and walked past it for a week or two, then finally tossed it into the next bag of books to sell at my booth.

It's still there.

And I gave it a really genuine try, but the fault is entirely my own. After a long stint of reading only magazines this spring, Doris' book was not appropriate for me to pick up then, I hadn't yet adjusted my language cortex vocabulary back to books and British English. She never had a chance. But I've fixed it now, and will pick her up again. And the new War and Peace translation I've been waiting 20 years for.

But I've loved reading about her in the online articles, of which there are the usual slew after her win. The link above is an interview from a few years ago that I liked the best; honest, just crabby enough, and unapologetic. Don't mess with a woman who wants to write, you're going to get hurt.
Doris on P.C.
Doris Wins Nobel

I Miss Radio

You know, real radio, without 10 minutes every half hour of amped commercials, chatter heads filling every nanosecond of non-vocal intro and fadeout with inanities, overgrown adolescents trying to be Howard Stern in the morning, or the new dentist's office soundtrack of "smooth jazz".

Help. I thought I was alone out here. With mp3 players and portable CD players, a whole generation watching videos never needed radio, it was that talking crap their parents listened to when dropping them off and picking them up at school, "EN-PEA-ARR" holy holy holy. Or the right-wing-nut AM guys shouting at each other about family values and football. Obsolete.

For years, I had this idea of resurrecting radio theater, with sound effects and background music, character voices and serial stories, 30 or 60 minutes each week of pure audio adventure and movie in your mind. People gave me weird looks and shook their heads. "How would that make any money?" they asked dismissively. I was thinking how it would be great fun to introduce middle schoolers to it, with the whole "studio" experience so there would be some unknown territory for them to be awed by and then learn to master, grow confident, and have some secret swagger to take to high school with them. "I know how to mike sound effects and shrill character voices," she said a bit smugly to her guidance counselor. Kind of like Steamboat Punk, leaning back onto older technology and see what it can do now, make it do new things now, revive it for a new generation.

This summer, I had this vision of "Old Fashioned Porch Nights", with some strings of icicle lights glowing, a bunch of neighbors sitting on a wide porch after sunset listening to some old radio show recordings (mp3 or CD) and old big-band music, and talking, sipping cold beer or wine, knitting, mending, reading the paper or even laptopping, no agenda, no plan, just folks and some low-key leisure. People I shared the idea with nodded and said they thought it was a great idea, kinda odd but weird in that Portland-kind of way, "You should do it!" they said. Remember the whole Utne Reader magazine "salon" thing from the 90's? Great idea, no legs.

The other day it hit me that having no real radio in my world has left a huge gaping hole in what I have always considered my foundation identity. Ye-gads, why has it taken me this long to realize it? I don't know really, having OPB and 89.9 and KBOO just wasn't exactly hitting it for me. For all the years working for the Big Book Store, we had new music coming out our ears, and played a revolving playlist every open moment and the really good stuff before and after hours. You got to hear music from co-workers you would have never found on your own, and the best of local heroes who play around town. I took it for granted, completely.

Now that I solved the puzzle, I took immediate action. Not willing to sell my soul and remaining self-employed dollars to iTunes, I started searching for the best of what had to be on Internet Radio, and I found one that has pleased me very much. The name implies its philosophy, and I'm not endorsing it for any reason other than it has served me nicely so far, and I hate to keep secrets about something this inalienable-rights-ish and easy to share: Slacker.com Rules!

No, they don't have old radio shows, I'm still on my own there (for now) but they do have a pretty broad assortment of music and the gadget to make your own list of stations and play any version of the Way-Back Machine you feel the need to indulge. And unlike playing a stack of your fave CDs or iPod playlists, you get to hear random songs by random artists so the whole tedious predictability of spinning your own tunes is blasted out of the water. WOW---the randomness of Real Radio, and no videos to distract you from what you're doing or supposed to be doing, leaving you free to work or whatever. The magnitude of that alone made me feel as if I had rediscovered electricity, and after a whole energized afternoon of productivity, I emailed my pal Jolie that it felt like a blood transfusion, "This is the missing element, why did it take me so long to figure it out??"

"That's what kids are good for, I get to hear it in the car everyday, happy you're back on it," she laughed, "I'm downloading the Slacker desktop player right now, thanks!"

So there's the feeling silly part, that it took me years to figure this out, but there it is. Fixed now. And no pesky commercials and robot DJs or idiot un-comedians. My productivity has quad-rupled, making the inner Boss Lady very very happy. "Back to work, slacker!"

Nostalgic Autumn Projects

Autumn Childhood Fun Ideas:


Iron beautiful leaf specimens between sheets of waxed paper (low to med heat setting on iron)

Add grated or shaved crayon bits to it for a stained glass effect

Collect glossy horse chestnuts and pile in a bowl or fill a vase---add branches of sumac, mountain ash or bittersweet

Drill holes in chestnuts and make big strings to hang up on fences using shoe laces or twine

Caramel apples with wrapper caramel (easy) or microwaved caramel cubes (still easy)

Rice Crispie treats with some melted caramel cubes stirred into the marshmallow goop, a dust of cinnamon and some chopped dried apples stirred in, too

Dip pretzel rods in white chocolate for skeleton snacks

Make dried gourd monsters (or luminarias) with sandpaper and a Dremel tool, paint and tea light inside

Thread sunflower heads together and hang along with the chestnut strings on your fence posts for the birds and squirrels (peanut butter is optional)

Make a giant Trick-or-Treat loot bag out of a white pillow case and, with a black marker, draw the mask from "Scream" on it so the open side is at the top

Make more "Scream" masks from white pillow cases, open side down, for your shrubs near the front door to pull over the bushes on Halloween Night.

Fill an old (clean) milk carton with ice cubes and a candle wick, then pour melted max over it to make ghost candles

Designate once and for all that Candy Corn is purely ornamental and not really edible by gluing a bunch to some white pillar candles

Save some egg shell halves to use as bug-eyes for your Jack-o-Lanterns---carve the round eye holes the same size as the eggshells, and have the bloodshot eyes already drawn on with a pinhole poked through when you put them in the pumpkin--scary!

Turn your homey porch "Harvest" hay bale and corn stalk display into the "Children of the Corn" theme for Halloween with a big plastic scythe and ax, some fake blood, some zombie dolls
and rubber masks peeking out with red glowing eyeballs--or Amityville Horror, depending on your style of porch

Remind your mom that the "Elvira Mistress of the Dark" costume is not appropriate to drop off the cupcakes for the lunchroom Halloween party---besides, you're wearing it to school

Free Burma!

Participate here

No Shame and No Apology

NYTimes Dining Letters Re: Portland Restaurants: Golden Age of Dining and Drinking 9/26/07

Well, you know I have to run off immediately and buy copies at 7-Eleven and Fred Meyers so I can mail off the Dining section to Betty in Florida. I have to. Small and petty though it may be, I need to show her this, even though I can hear her comment from here--"What? It's not like you got paid for that."

And it is so abbreviated, and they left out the "See you at Pok-Pok!" which I thought was friendly and a genuine sentiment. Oh well.

More later, you know it.

Falling Water

Five pm and it's dark, blowing, rainy and cold.

Sorry to state the obvious, but I just needed more time to bid summer good-bye, and I'm not going to get it. There's some leaves stuck to the street, anything yellow glows supernaturally, and everyone is wearing their shoulders in the "up" position, total defense. I begin hearing the sawing of the strings in Vivaldi's Four Seasons, audio shadows, abandoned porches.

The grass looks great, as do the remaining dahlias, chrysanthemums, and the tawny gold hydrangeas. How about some snapping fresh-crop apples and a few caramels? That's much better.

The last two days I have spent in the belly of the bureaucratic beast, three hours one day and almost three the next, remembering a time when people grew or traded for most of their food and material needs, and wondering how to get closer to that myself. By the second day I was almost in a trance from the noise and frustrated hostility of the workers and their customers, and watching so many toddlers running around with circles under their eyes and gray skin. There were five people I saw reading the Jon Krakauer book "Into the Wild" which is a new Sean Penn film also, and the irony of it made me smile. Surreal bureaucracy and eccentric survivalist meet in the Oregon Job Search offices. Unexpectedly my caretaker instinct rose up, and I wanted to sit all those little kids down to a good hot nutritious home-cooked from scratch meal. No nuggets of any kind. There's my Mid-west again...

The change in weather has brought an abrupt end to the "outside on the porch" season, and for the distraction I find such weather to be, and it's all scrub-a-dub-dub indoors. Sewing, posting items on my online site, writing, going to the booth with more stuff, putting on a pot of rice and beans, start some soup. 'Portland Rain' is a scent you can find at 'Escentuals' on Hawthorne and also on NW 23rd, and it has that subtle fresh smell with a hint of spice and wet leaves, not too heavy, and perfect for this early Autumn time of year. What they don't (and can't) manage to capture in the scent's complexity is the occasional wave of thai wok from down the street and the chimeria in my neighbor's back yard, and the wet mulch from the garden. Or whatever else you smell in your part of Portland---pizza, headshop and fried chicken? Bio-diesel, burnt toast and coffee roasting? I'm not going to go into what the waiting room at Job Search smelled like.