The Booth In the Back, In the Corner, In the Dark

We watched the Flip Wilson Show with almost as much reverence as we watched Johnny Carson...

Anyway, I just returned from restocking at the Groovy Rhubarb booth at House of Vintage, and am pleased with the weekend of moved merchandise. As the owner said, the LPs seem to be the biggest sellers, and also the books. Sold the Ouija board.
"House of Tschochskies", step right up, don't shove, get out yer money, no $100 bills unless you're taking the lot! I was inspired by a website I visited for those of us who love to make bags, and I'm going to whip up some 1960's looking beachy bags and totey bags, simple simple simple, and make'em look like those butt-ugly ones my neighbor ladies always seemed to bring back from Mexico or Florida, and I'll make some cute ones, too. I'm discovering that kids pay money for bags. This---I totally can do.

(what in the world did I do before digital photography?) Here's the new string bag, the heavy duty, go ahead and get the bottles of juice bag, that I whipped up in less than 24 hours from 100% cotton. You could use this on a trebuchet, it's so strong. I'm pleased, and want to whip up a bunch in fun summer colors and punch 'em onto Etsy ASAP, along with the button bracelets and button-encrusted bags in progress. And you thought I wasn't 'working'. There being a slight difference between what is best for Etsy and what is better for the Groovy Booth, I'm floating both series of projects at the same time, because tiny and smaller objects are better for Etsy, and larger, harder to steal things are better for the Booth. Just give me the money and let me get back to the manufacturing.

The Portland 'locally made' movement is thriving this summer, and living in Southeast like I do, I forget that there are even things known as malls. In the neighborhood reclamation movement taking over little communities here, even the blight known as 'strips' are being re-done by locally owned businesses, retro-ed or modernized, and provide us with hand-made, crafted and Pacific Northwest originated products. I so dig this. Last week Linsey and I were discussing how hot Portland is with the New York Times this year, and how instead of Portlanders going East to NYC for inspiration, NYC seems to be testing the waters out here for new concepts and areas to pirate. It makes me feel kinda smug. As long as they leave our real estate situation alone, they can buy and import whatever they want to sell in Manhattan, here's my card.

My Powerball numbers weren't even close this weekend, so I'm going to hit up Craigslist again today, and drop off some clothes I sorted out of the closet this weekend that are not booth material. Jeans that I've given up on. Odd gifts from B. that I will never wear. The thinning of the house inventory is a great feeling, and again shows me how much my tastes have changed in even the past 7 years, since moving to Portland. What I can't sell I'm donating, even books. Yep. There was an episode of "Mission Organization" that was a woman setting up her sewing studio that was an epiphany for me, except for the wall color and $1500 worth of plastic organizer thingeys, on how much inspiration and productivity increases when you have all your materials easily at hand. Grab and make it! So, I'm making progress every day, and hopefully, making money, too. I may not be selling Harry Potter volume 7 this summer, but I'm plowing ahead nonetheless.

Raj is watching these local pigeons in the back yard cherry tree, and he chatters at them as if they will mosey over and say hello.
So he can snap their cherry-eating little heads off. Neek already had a go at them this morning, and is resting in the bedroom, so it's Raj's watch this afternoon. Later, when the squirrels come back for cherries, it will be utter madness. It can't be any better than this.
(well, I could somehow find myself rescuing Bentley the Dobie across the street and be a dog owner, but that's not likely)

Friday Finds Me Still Dreaming

I was all set to go on and on about my Mr Torso sighting today, shaved head and goggles above the water most of the time, until...good god rising up the pool steps and I lose all power of speech and reason...and I finally figured out who he sounds like, Roger Davis of 1960s TV fame (it's a Dark Shadows thing, shut up!). But I've been even more distracted than that.

Early this morning, like 3am probably, I was in the midst of a family drama involving three brothers and their Philly-Italian mom, who had just moved into her very first house of her own, and they were helping her move in, and tussling like brothers in their 20s do, and I was there, one of her gal pals, but I had to get to work at my warehouse, but no one had eaten all day, so she was making all this fuss to get us all to sit down and have some kind of dinner.

Where does this all come from? I do not know, and it has been happening all my life. So all during the day today, I am just a shade away from being fully back into that dream-thing, as if it's running underneath everything else I'm doing, and if I just ease off the attention I'm paying to, let's say, driving, or talking to someone, whatever it is, I am 100% fully back into this dream. Sometimes a dream can hang on for a few days, until it is supplanted by another totally different but just as intense dream, which carries me like a flying carpet for at least 24 hours. Does this happen to everybody?

It doesn't bother me anymore, it's entertaining, unless it's one of those horrific nightmares that hang on way too long and I can't shake it so I'll write it down to try and let it go that way. I write a lot of the dreams down anyway, it's good practice, and they may as well have a purpose. They become drawings, short stories, paintings to do, things to be on the lookout for, tangents to research in the Awake World (ask me about Carthage) and some scarier than any horror film I've ever seen. So I stick to Hammer Film Horror, because I don't need any further help there. The psychics I've spoken to have a pretty consistent theory about this, as do the astrologers, and most of my friends just think it's weird, so what? It feels like an interactive film. Actual movie making is just way too complicated for this stage of my life, but I could shovel pitch concepts like gold coins.

Maybe it's the knitting withdrawal setting in. No, that's not it, but something like old wooden lace bobbins can show up in an entire grimy, smoky HBO Deadwood-type Old West dream, which revisits characters I dreamt about in that same locale 25 years ago. Seeing those bobbins at a thrift store is enough to trigger this entire immersive revisiting of this place and cast of characters that drives the slightly askew plot along a bit more---leaving me floating between these two worlds for a day or two.

We all have this---right? We just quit talking about dreams after a certain point in life, right?

Wonder why?

Ice Blue Veil at 10:30pm

right click and click on view image, then zoom it up to the max---this view lasted for almost 15 minutes last night.

Fighting My (tiresome) Biases

I have them, you have them, let's put them on the table, leave them on the curb, throw them on the fire. But let's talk about them first.

One of my worn-out snobberies is the whole genre fiction thing. I've had to really look at this in the last two weeks because of wanting to dive completely into a writing project that would mean I was writing a (gulp) murder mystery. Oh. My. God. Yes, the end of higher western civilization as I have come to accept it, and I've had to begin moving on in the grief process yet again. (Remember the losing my job one from not long ago?) Researching, sketching out character profiles, plot projections...for one of those books. Still need some time with this one.

Another silly pigeonhole is the craft verses tschocshky polarity. Why do I insist on doing this? The artists who only pick up pure red squirrel hair brushes from the primeval forests of Bohemia and slouch towards another wearisome weekend with other trustafarians in the Hamptons call me a mere craft poser because I use something other than the finest canvas, brushes and oils. Smell the contempt? Then I do the same thing, looking at all these insta-plastic-collage things pretending to be cutesy knock-offs of Nick Bantock or Sabrina Ward Harrison and I wonder why these 50-somethings spending their husbands' money on expensive all plastic materials even bother. It all looks like Tammy Faye in her hey-day to me. I'm so unforgiving. To me, there's no creative spirit here, it's all pre-fabricated materials, it's all plastic, it's all overpriced, and these women are kidding themselves that they're doing anything more than the 21st century version of painting by numbers. They should take up quilting. And I know I'm being horrible, absolutely horrible. The plastic thing really bothers me. My Urban Portland Left Coast Liberal Agenda is showing again, sorry! I guess I should acknowledge I need more time to work on this one, too.

The SUV thing---more of the above Agenda Exposed, I'm afraid, but I've seen Jolie haul around horse barn stuff in hers first hand, it's not a grocery hauling chariot in her driveway.

Here's a good one---my old bias about people not (appearing to be) working hard---I am living first hand. Since I've been laid off, I'm getting some of this from other people, and my reaction to their almost dismissing of my time investment is curiously funny to me. There's an irresistible need to chronologically account for my day or week, which must sound really sad or over-compensatory. "Yes, I'm still important as a person, I am worthy, my time is valuable, too!" I almost didn't go to a party this past weekend because I was getting uncomfortable about responding to people's questions of "What do you do?" or "Are you working yet?" Still making peace with getting the business off the ground and doing the craft-art thing.

So---my own biases are biting my own butt. Terrific. So what is the answer?

Gotta get better at the snappy comeback, and get more comfortable with saying "I'm starting my own business," and not sound pathetic saying it. Me being an art or lit snob is actually keeping me from doing fully what I want to do, because the Acid Voice of Snark stays loud and clear the more I indulge it with other people's creative efforts, and I wind up leveling it on myself, like that's constructive. Some days it is so overpowering, I can't even make myself write or craft anything, and I retreat into the Wonder World of Magazine Potentialities. A cry for help certainly, and time to call my ArtPal, for sure. But I tear out pictures from the mags, and before I know it, I have a small stack of triggers for color or journal work, and...recovery ahead. Time to make coffee and get busy.

Finding an Art Friend

Yesterday I had the chance to talk at length with someone about some of the really "out there" ideas I have of projects I want to do. For well over an hour, she just let me go in a scattershot manner, covering galaxies of genres, narrow the focus for a while, then launch off into another dimension all together. No arched eyebrows, no grimaces of polite uncertainty, no sighs of impending heartbreak---she would hear the excitement in my voice, and ask me another question to give me a chance to hear my own passion when describing it. "Details, give me details," she said, like what can I do tomorrow (today) to get this in motion, who can I call right away, have I added a completion list in the sketch book to go along with all of the lists of potentialities I add there every day? After the first 45 minutes, I had uncovered enough ground to actually reveal what the big goal is for me, the 'not playing it safe' goal, and she just gasped--"Now I have goosebumps, now we're getting somewhere, how long has this been hiding in you?"

I'm jazzed, invigorated, ready to go, en fuego, re-prioritized, break out the art supplies!

The other thing I realized (again) is how essential it is to have a parallel reflection in your world when you are striking out on a new path. Not a yesman, or polite nodding and hand patting, but a source of enthusiasm, someone who understands how important this new venture is to you, and is a safe chat spot in the whirlwind of day to day life. The whole idea of 'coaching' comes to mind, and I did consider that, but sometimes it's even simpler than that, like making a new friend in your new area of exploration, or diving into something together with a friend who is also wanting to shake it up and plant a new flag. The ground rule has to be that staying the same is not the goal or default setting, wanting to be vividly creative is life-enriching and fun!

Okay, 'Art Friend', what does that mean? Does that sound too woo-woo? I'll branch it out---
Writer's Group, Work-out Buddy, Yoga Pal, KnitWits, you get the idea. Someone to speak the jargon with, swap the verbal shorthand, provide the knowing glances, call with breathless messages, open cafe meetings with the best question, "How fabulous are you today?" by getting to the good stuff right away, the new passion? And, I'm sorry, talking about something other than spouses, pets, kids, can we please? So many dimensions, so little time devoted to them.

In my pursuit of all things creative, artistic, exciting, and colorful, and being on a knit-fast, I have been surfing the creative sites for visual snacks and positive reinforcement, inspiration, and pure envy or idea-harvesting. So here are some places to visit that can show us how it looks when the flow is a river and we're doin' it for ourselves (in public) and loving it.

For we who have dreamed of having our own little shop: Reform School Rules

Places where the made by hand of all kinds holds first place: Craftster, whip up, Etsy

Quirky, wonderful, colorful, mad-wild art sites: River Bend, Soule Mama, Junk Market, more to follow...

Gotta go be Groovy Rhubarb, then do some more writing---it's a rainy chilly summer day here in Portland, and I'm actually grateful, no porch time today, no watering, all craft, all artful work all day today.

(serious knitting jonesin' goin' on here, no trips to Yarn Garden, go to Yarn Harlot's site instead)

Love That 'Completion' Thing

Going to ship off tomorrow morning to arrive in time for Betty's birthday next week.
The fastest I have ever completed a knitting project, it fits, I only had to rip out part of one sleeve, and this shot shows the blues and purples the most accurately.

I LOVE NORO YARN!!!

The t-shirt style took 8 and a half skeins of the 10 I got, so there's enough for me to make a little trophy piece of this yarn that I love so much. Maybe short fingerless gloves. With a thin leather palm for driving. Girl Genius works overtime even when unemployed. (Why am I writing in the imperative?)

Beginning week 3 of Groovy Rhubarb at the House of Vintage, and I am the only used LP vendor anywhere near the mid-Hawthorne shopping areas. This week it was all tourists branching out from the Waterfront Village areas (from the rain) and doing the vintage shopping trip, German tourists more than from anywhere else. Anything with a rose motif was hot, and I sold a lovely teapot set, big ticket item, ding ding! Since the urgent gift knitting is done, I am now launching full tilt into the crafting of the merchandise for the Etsy site, scrounging for more items for the booth, and desperately trying to finish organizing my work room. The coolest thing in the whole world was liberating some cardboard shelf trays from the recycling bin of the hippie grocery store on Hawthorne, which I painted a lovely French Blue, and now they all match, look like something from an organizing store, and suit my need for visual consistency in tools for stashing materials. And I truly dig dig dig French Blue, which is white and blue kids' tempera paint mixed together. Really. Basically free. I bought those quart bottles of tempera paint at Jerry's Art-a-Rama in Deerfield Beach at least 10 years ago. (shut up)

Along the lines of the 'Completion Thing', the Rose Festival is over, so I'm going to segue into Mock Oranges for the gallery this week. If possible, it's almost a jasmine-orange blossom blend, and 300% intoxicating. And it's been a cool spring the last few weeks, so everything is still in bloom instead of bolting and withering too fast. With glowing skies until 10pm and later for the next month or so, the perfume settles back onto the porch in the evenings, and it feels like being in a Maxfield Parrish painting. Or so it feels to me.

Congratulations to Linsey for completing her apprenticeship in horse gambling, slapping down and taking names, so she can get on with the tattoo artist apprenticeship. Or was it the Reading to Gifted Toddlers charity summer? Cruise Director for the Naughty Secretaries' Wham-Bam Whirlwind Tour of Patagonian Nite Clubs? Something publishing? Her blog kills! Read her brilliance while she guest blogs about crappy bookstores.

Peg did the gravity tests on the WWOTP IPA #2 and we are clear for take-off. The Summer Slug-a-Chug party is this Saturday, when the suspecting public will be sampling the new batch, lining up for more, and stopping the presses to make our brewery famous. It was suggested that the new finished basement space would make a perfect pub. Not by me, but I do agree. Since it would be down a small flight of concrete stairs, I'm thinking "The Fall On Inn". Or maybe "Den of Iniquity". I'll stop now.

Yes, I watched it

The only time I've ever seen an entire episode of 'The Sopranos' is the final show.

As if I'm not going to see it, and listen to all the press and wish I had?

There were many layers of interpretation, enough that even a novice like me could come up with my own spin on what was going on and how this saga ends. Not having watched it doesn't mean I had no idea what was going on about the show or the depth of the characters. When it came out 8 years ago, I didn't have HBO, and listened to all the hype and fevered talk after each episode at work. I thought, "Wow, way to capitalize on the Robert DeNiro movie 'Analyze This', mob boss seeing a shrink." I didn't really want to get that involved in a television show. While driving to Portland from Florida the summer of 2000, one of my Days Inn rooms had free HBO, and after driving 11 hours, I had taken a hot shower and bedded down with the cat, and watched about 30 minutes of this new mafia show, and thought it was great television. And never watched HBO again until this spring, when I got a digital cable adapter in March and it came with 6 months of free HBO.

I even watched last night's episode twice, because I thought I had only seen the second to last episode by mistake, because how can a series like this one end like this?

So the second time it went black, I thought I knew what most likely happened.

The Members Only dude was definitely a hitman. Heavy foreshadowing there, going to the restroom, like the Godfather hit with Pacino, clear shot to Tony when he comes out. The onion ring eaten the same way by all three; whole, straight into the mouth, like a wafer, like a family sacrament, like a halo. Since Tony directed the hit at the gas station, it makes sense that Tony would get hit in return. Neither his wife or his son are innocents, and may have been hit as well, although I don't think that is as likely as everyone else thinks. Meadow not being there is symbolic of her trying to rise above this mess, and marry the crusading lawyer and break the corruption cycle of her parents and family. Trying hard to park, trying to get it right, finding it hard to get it right. Tony seeing his uncle Junior and tearing up at the end shows him what living too long can be like, all the grief of this family doesn't mean shit at the end. Tony making sure his nephew didn't live is like Uncle Junior shooting him. Even the babies in the SUV at the gas station will grow up knowing they were in the truck when their grandfather was killed, blood upon the innocents. When Tony was raking outside, and he stood for a moment looking into the trees and the setting sun, I think it was like his moment of taking stock of it all, and knowing this was probably it. The end of his life pre-indictment, the end of his search for clarity with his therapist, his mentors and supporters were gone, this whole previous chapter of this life was over. Go talk to his uncle and tell him to give the money to Bobby's kids, then meet for dinner. Meadow escapes, if A.J. lives, he's pretty ineffectual and not a threat, Tony's wife is guilty by association, and if she lives, she's moving to the beach house and leaving the scene anyway. "Remember the good times," A. J. says, and that is why I think he and his mom live after Tony is hit, but they will have blood on them literally and metaphorically.

But I've only seen the one show. I could be wrong.