It occurred to me that throwing my laptop loose into my (often overstuffed) bag may have contributed to its problems, so yesterday afternoon I took a deep breath, carefully followed instructions (inasmuch as I am able to) from a book I picked up in Toronto called The New Handmade, and made myself a laptop bag!
Change purse, version three: this one actually works and doesn’t leak out its contents!
Ahh, Sundays! A big stretch of unplanned time — my favourite thing. I could really use a month of Sundays.
I had another go at sewing. I started with making shorts from a pair of cargo pants. That was always my mother’s trick when my brother or I put a hole in the knee of our jeans. In this case, I got a hole in the trousers from a drop of sulphuric acid — you know, as you do. (Craig and I took a jewellery-making course last year so we could make our own wedding rings, and sulphuric acid is used to clean off the silver after you’ve been blowtorching it.)
Result!
I also put a hidden stitch in the side, because I was forever having to hike these up: a size 32 is baggy on me now, so now they also fit much more comfortably.
As they said during WWII, “Make do and mend!” I’m looking forward to getting to alter and salvage a lot of things now that would have just been waste.
My ulterior motive in doing this was to also get some pieces of fabric to work with. The bottom parts of the legs gave me some nice canvas material to use, so I set about trying to make a better version of the change purse.
The first try came out okay, but the material was too bulky, so the second version ended up as a puffy cube that didn’t fold closed well. (The image this one brought to mind for me was “executive killer whale”.)
I used a button my friend Lisa gave me at Christmas to hide the mess I made while inserting a magnetic snap.
In spite of what I just said about waste, I decided this one was a write-off — sorry, a “learning experience” — and tried again. This time I thought, “Stick to what you know” and made a little fabric envelope. (Imagery-wise, this one is uncomfortably death-camp-ish.)
Sewing that Velcro on after the fact was a b@„¢*ch, and gave me a couple of chances to use the seam ripper that Lisa also gave me.
I put the button on again, this time to make the thing look a little cheerier:
It’s a mess. I’m well aware. Again, though, it’s my mess.
I have a habit of doing this, jumping into a new skill at the deep end because there’s a particular result I want, rather than going through all the lessons from the beginning. At this point in my life, I’m okay with that. It’s how I learn, and I do keep learning.
(I credit my client, Strategic Coach, with instilling that idea in me, that my abilities and my way of getting things done are the perfect ones for me, and there’s no one else I should be trying to be. Last month marked my thirteenth anniversary of working with them, and with each passing year I’m more impressed with the people I work with there and the things the organisation achieves. And I’ve been working with them longer than I went to school — gosh!)
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I’d got up early in the morning because a friend of ours was scheduled to drop by for tea later, so I made a skillet apple pie for us to eat, along with some muesli bread and then some pancakes for breakfast. In the evening, for supper, I made parmesan aubergines baked in a tomato sauce — mmm!
All of these recipes came from a miracle of a cookbook my mum gave me for Christmas — low-carb, gluten-free, sugar-free dishes that keep turning out really, really well. Instead of making bread that resembles crunchy dog treats, I’m now producing spongey, sliceable, toastable loaves!
Our friend Donald came by in the afternoon, so Craig and I took a break. It turns out he was our first foot, and he’d just happened to bring a bottle of whisky. I’m not generally one for the whisky, but this was an occasion, celebrating a new year with a friend who’d lost so much in the last. He’d brought Clynlish, which is made in a town called Brora, not far from here (relatively speaking), and poured out a measure for us all.
We toasted then had a sip. What a complicated experience for my mouth! A celtic knot of fire wrapped itself around my tongue. When the liquid had gone down my throat, I breathed in and my mouth filled with the chimney-smoke from a peat-fire. Then my belly warmed up like someone had turned the furnace on in a cold house.
I still can’t say I like the stuff, but it’s a lot more interesting and real than, say, vodka and Coke (blyeech!).
For Christmas, the hubby gave me a sewing machine. No, he wasn’t trying to break the last bit of my spirit and turn me into a complete wifey — I actually asked for one. (Well, indirectly, but that worked.)
My intention was to do bookbindingy stuff with it, cover details, notepad spines, and such, but as soon as I got it, I started seeing the world in stitches. It’s amazing how much stuff in our everyday lives is sewn together, and we never even think about it.
The thought at the core of the DIY spirit goes something like “Hey, if somebody made that, then that means I could make one, too.” Of course, what that observation carefully steps over is the enormous talent or capability gap between not having a clue and being able to produce our own version of things we like.
Such is the case here, where even threading the sewing machine took about half an hour of careful scrutiny, gazing back and forth between the machine and manual, whose illustrations followed the last of the repeats of the instructions. So I’d look beneath the Russian text at the vaguely numbered graphic — like a keyframe in an animation with all the vital in-between frames missing — then flip back a page, re-read the English, then go back to the large plastic machine sitting on my desk like a porpoise. I felt uncomfortable echoes back to grade school Home Ec classes, where I constantly received “speeding tickets” for my lead-footed operation of the foot pedal. (This probably explains why I’m having so much trouble learning to drive Craig’s manual transmission Polo.)
In the end, though, I got it! I shortened a too-deep pocket in a pair of Craig’s trousers, secured the little hang-tags in the corners of all our dish-towels, and then I decided to make something I needed: a change purse. (Since we’re verging on me losing every last bit of my testosterone here, let’s call it a “change pocket”.)
Here’s the end result:
It’s somewhere between “pirate” and “steampunk” in design, looking like a cross between a casket and a desiccated mouse.
Still, I love it, because I made it. (Though I’ll undoubtedly be replacing it at some point with another try.)
After a really fun fortnight in Toronto, Im now in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island with my mum, dad, and nephew. Theres a blessed kind of rest thats available at my parents house that just cant be had anywhere else — nothing like the complete abnegation of adult responsibility to put ones mind at ease!
Almost as soon as I got here, we went shopping for food that would satisfy all my weird restrictions. Happily, Charlottetown turns out to be well-supplied with everything I could ask for.
I snapped this picture at one of the local supermegagrocery warehouses — of which Charlottetown now sports at least four, whereas when we moved here there was just one little K-Mart that managed to feed everyone.
Moments after I took a picture of the shop and joined my mum, a manager came up to me to ask why I was taking pictures. Apparently stupid terrorism-think has reached my home town, too. I spun her the story of the tiny little town where I live in the north Highlands of Scotland, blah blah blah… Everyone here on the east coast gets shortbread stars in their eyes as soon as you mention The Old Country.
Today its snowing out, which is making everything look nice and festive.
Dad took a break from watching Hitlers Secret Barber or whatever on the history channel and reading about the Third Reich, and went out to clear the driveway.
(Im not sure what his obsession is; Adolph Eichmann is more of a fixture here at Christmas than Santa. My nephews friends used to visit and remark that they thought Dad was a skinhead. I suspect this all started when Dad began working with Veterans Affairs Canada, a big question-mark about humanity hes never been able to resolve.) Snow-shovelling is an obsession he used to foist on my brother and me. Now I would have gone out and helped if hed mentioned that he was going to do it. Funny how chores are much more palatable when youre not asked to do them.
Meanwhile, I baked and baked this afternoon. With my apron on (which was my dads, at least), I felt like quite the wee wifey. We wont get into my excitement about Craig giving me a sewing machine for Christmas. (Theres lots of bookbinding stuff the can be done with one, but now Im awakening to all the other things I could fix, change, and make.)
Then there was my failed-yet-tasty brownies and successful-if-dry gingersnap cookies:
Happily, Ive not compromised at all on my food choices. My clients Toronto office was like a strip-mine in Candyland, with a constant conveyor belt of junk passing by me, yet I didnt feel the slightest temptation to eat any of it. I guess Im far too conscious of the after-effect, which is like feeling drugged or concussed for a week afterward.
But thats not to say Im being puritan or Spartan: Ive had lots of food I really enjoyed. It just hasnt been the default polyhydrogenatedwheatinjectedglucoinvertfructosugar stuff.
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This trip, Ive been taking a different tack in being with people — at work and in my social time. Rather than rushing to blurt out all the things Im excited about, Ive been pretending Im interviewing the other person. I listen then ask a follow-up question to something that they said. Sometimes I cant help interjecting, but for the most part Ive been trying to listen more closely. As a result, Ive learned lots of things I wouldnt have if Id just barged in when it was my turn.
Funny how people think youre fascinating when you just listen to them.
So this is the theme while Im away: Im here for other people, not myself. Ill get plenty of me-time when Im back home.
~
Gosh, I miss my husband. We got married a year ago. A year!
I was out late last night, having dinner with some of the folks from the Movies & Makers show at the old Fox Theatre in The Beaches. It was like doing an acting gig, being geared-up and needing to decompress with other folk who’d been in it.
I met a lot of great folk who really understood and loved what I was doing. And, not to be mercenary about it, it was great to be in front of a crowd who had the money to buy things, too. That more than makes up for the money I’ve spent since being here — much of it on supplies so I could make more “bind your own book” kits when the friends I’m staying with convinced me I should have a lot more of those to display. So I hustled around town several days after work to find the bits then spent Friday night late at work in the Production department cutting up paper. And? They didn’t sell. Still, so much else did that it’s quite alright, and I may still shift a few to people at work who’ve been asking about them.
It’s so hard to decipher what people will like and want, and it’s very different from show to show. I can empathise with my brother-in-law, who’s trying to figure all this out for himself, too, with his woodworking. Do you make a lot of inexpensive things that people will snap up, or do you go deep into your craft and develop things you really care about but have to charge significantly more for?
What was most exciting, though, was talking to people who really understand what I’m doing, and who caught the spark of it themselves. A number of them took the cards I’d made for the podcast, and several bought bookbinding presses (which is a package I’m really happy about — much more tactile and interesting than the book-bits-in-a-bag kits that slide around the table and don’t really suggest what they are, unfortunately). So I’m jazzed to imagine what those people might create, especially after having received so many kind e-mails about the podcast from people showing and telling me the great things they’ve done, which, before, they didn’t realise they a) were allowed to do, or b) were perfectly capable of doing on their own.
So it was a big, exciting day. I admit that life in Wick can be pretty isolating, so it’s nice to balance that with these trips, especially when I get occasions like yesterday to get out in front of likeminded people.
I’ve had the computer off as much as possible this week, ’cause I’ve been working on a new little ‘zine for a craft fair I’m doing (not grandmother crafts, but Toronto hipster crafts!). I did the whole thing by hand — illustration and lettering — and I’m really happy with it. But damn it was a lot of work!
Here’s the initial version, which I’m going to clean up a little (but not get into retouching with the computer too much):
I’ve also been totally engrossed in Stephen King’s latest book, 11/22/63. It was a treat to myself, bought with a birthday gift certificate from the in-laws. It’s bloody wonderful! It’s been so long since I’ve read a good, deep novel, and this thing is a whole world between covers. Normally I read things that I think I’ll learn something from, that will enable me to do something new or better, but this is just pure enjoyment. I’m drunk on the experience.
Even better: I saw a movie trailer this week that utterly gripped me and gave me permission to write about things I’ve been stepping over, which happen to be my life experience. No wonder I’ve been stuck, eh? So between that and enjoying this novel so much, I’ve suddenly found myself excited again by the idea I’d had for my next novel. And I’ve already researched and outlined the whole darned thing!
How to make an even simpler kind of DIY Book Press.
One of our first friends in Caithness passed away last week. It was a long drive down to Inverness and back for the funeral on Monday, but we made it, and the ceremony was actually the most beautiful I’ve been to.
Of course it was difficult, and I feel for the surviving Donald (the couple were both named Donald; quite confusing), but this really was a celebration of the other Donald’s life and impact. Lots of these events claim to be a celebration but end up being either a sad dirge, or an advert for a brand of religion in which the deceased receives an incidental mention. Not so this, which really did powerfully invoke the sense of our friend. We didn’t know him especially well, and I left the service, having heard a number of his (very eloquent) friends speak about him, feeling like I knew him better.
Donald wrote and taught about Celtic spirituality, so the service had a gentle touch of that, leaving room for anyone to believe what they like. By the end, I was intrigued to know more, and at the reception his partner very kindly laid out out copies of Donald’s book Walking the Mist for guests to take. I’ve since had a chance to start reading it, and Donald’s courageously, disarmingly, invitingly imaginative presence comes through loud and clear.
How rare, to have the person you’re missing actually provide you with a context for thinking about losing them.
Wow. Thanks, World.