Rose Schnitzer Manor and One thing leads to another, part 2

Today was my big day at Rose Schnitzer Manor. I met with the volunteer coordinator in the morning, although arriving a whole 24 hours EARLY for my scheduled appointment. But she was able to meet with me and do the volunteer orientation, and get the information she needed for the background check. I was so groggy and not myself, I'm sure I didn't sound like I was all there.

In the afternoon I met with the activities coordinator, hopefully sounding more like myself, having rushed home from my morning meeting to consume some coffee, and then some tea, just to be sure. I should be meeting with my first partner this coming Thursday. Yay!

Continuing on the cleaning and reorganizing kick, I went looking for some shelves today. Had a hard time deciding what would best meet my needs, I ended up not getting anything. I did make a few different piles of things in the closet, the biggest being old belly dance costumes. I'm ready to part with them.

One thing leads to another

So this is how cleaning my studio went today — I guess I'll store some of these things in the closet...oh, but there's no more room in the closet...hmmm, I guess I'll move some of the stuff in the closet into the basement...oh, but there's no room in the basement. I guess I better clean the basement.

I keep things. If they're useful, I think, oh, I'll use them someday; if they're not useful, I think, oh, some day they'll figure out how to recycle it. And although The Good Prince is not a pack rat, he's not The Organized Prince. This means we leave a trail of what most people would probably consider garbage strewn about, until I finally, absolutely, must, must, must do something about it.

So I've cleared out some boxes. Boxes for ancient computers and monitors we no longer have. Other more useful sizes, I've flattened and stowed against the wall. It's not spic and span, but it will do for now. And now I have a clear table top space where I HOPE to start working on my LO piece soon. I heard from another artist who's also doing the LO show and she's well into her piece already.

As a demonstration of how long I do keep things, this is a towel I inherited from my younger sister back in '87, '88:



However, it only looks like a towel, but it's really a bath mat now, thanks to the magic of the serger!

It had gotten pretty thin over the years and fell out of favor as a bath towel. So today, it was turned into a bathroom mat, and it will be much appreciated as a bath mat. The serger has been the most useful acquisition, and I'm about to go mend another towel that has frayed along the edges...

Silk road flowers web site wrap up!

Sort of. We did Part I of the training session this afternoon, got through 2 of the 3 lessons I prepared to teach her to edit her html files. But she's a quick study, pretty much figures things out on the first run, from not having seen any of it before. If only she can remember it!

Got home just dead tired, a lot more tired than I'd expect from teaching 1 person for 3 hours. So rather than cleaning my studio as I hoped (to get ready to start painting again, now that the pillow books are out of here), I did more mending. Didn't quite finish, and now it's time to go to bed. Especially since I ran out of thread...

A treat!

I sent off my 4 boxes to Tennessee today, and only used slightly over 1/2 of my shipping allowance the university is giving me (and that includes the return trip). Yay!

I noticed yesterday that Jules of Morocco, a clothing shop in Multnomah Village, is having an inventory sale. So I decided to see if one of those embroidered coats that I've been coveting for years would be, perchance, on sale. Well, they weren't, but I decided to splurge and buy one anyhow, especially since they gave me a fairly large discount. It was one of the older coats, and the sales lady says that it was THE coat that convinced the owner to start doing business with the group in India that produced these coats. It is very nicely done, with silk lining and all (which I noticed when I put my hands in the pocket; you can tell). Anyhow, the story goes, the subsequent coats were not as nice -- the linings were no longer silk (which I also noticed in the other coats), and some lacked pockets. I noticed that some had pockets that were rather too low.



Behold the coat! It's mid calf length, and I wore it tonight already, to Mike's company dinner. With my chicken hat!

So, that was my clothing budget for the next 3 years...

Finished the training manual for Rebecca so she can update her web site herself. We'll be meeting for the training session tomorrow afternoon, after we visit the Iranian Women Speak Out Through Art exhibit at IFCC.

Packing art is hard work

This was a long day of packing, over 9 hours! (OK, I did other things too, like sanding the plexi, get some bubble wrap, look for boxes, etc.) Of course it also didn't help that while I was packing, I decided to sew up the openings of the 6 tiny pillows (I had previously decided to leave them open), which of course means the photographs from yesterday's photo session are no longer true. I also didn't take pictures before I packed them up. Those were hard to photograph even by the professional photographer (Aaron Johanson), because in my head, I want them to be sequential (although non-linear), and one would just end up with one long skinny photograph. Anyhow, I got the CD's back from Aaron today, and here are 3 of them, now titled, in order, The Dog's Tale, Random Cruelty, and Tenuous Connections.





I found boxes exactly (!) the right sizes for Random Cruelty and Tenuous Connections; the die went into a box by itself; The Dog's Tale and Cradles For Our Memories (previously titled 6 Tiny Pillows) went into a box together.

So tomorrow, they are off to Tennessee.

To see The Dog's Tale being made, in reverse chronological order, start here.

To see Tenuous Connections being made, in reverse chronological order, start here.

To see Random Cruelty being made, of course in reverse chronological order, start here.

Slowing down

That's the trouble when you finish a project, you mentally reach a milestone and then it's hard to do the rest. I still have to sand the plexi (support for the pillows), find suitable boxes (surely something in the basement will work), and buy clean bubble wrap and pack. And I have yet to title the pieces and sign them. I had completely forgotten about that part until the photographer asked about them this morning. Photos will be back late this week or early next week.

I did catch up on a bunch of Portland Open Studios chores & correspondences, which I had let slip while I was finishing the pillows. A couple of the Open Studios artists had their studios featured in Oregon Home this month, so I had to go out and buy a copy so I can ogle. Nice. Drool.

Done, done, done...for now

Since I'm getting professional photos done tomorrow, I'm not bothering with photographing them myself tonight, but everything is sewn up, sewn down, trimmed up, tacked down...more or less finished for now. There are still a couple of undecided things, but I'll have to stew on them some more; I might work with them some more after they come back from the Tennessee show, but not now.

The other big part of the day was preparing for the Portland Open Studios meeting and the actual meeting tonight. We got quite a few things done/decided, so that was good. Between the two, it was a pretty long day.

Pillow book IV, day n+9

OK, Saturday's unexpected car shopping experience set me back a bit, and I'm not finished with book IV as I had hoped, but I'm close. The pillow form is finished and about 1/3 of the 'booklets' of words are now sewn on. Problem is, tomorrow is pretty full and my appt with the photo is on Wed at 11am. We'll see how far I get. I've also realized that with the die weighing down on the pillow so much, a deck of cards will probably not work very well...they'll just all slide down and snuggle up towards the die. At this point, I'm also out of time for making them. Lets see, here's the last entry on this book.

Tonight's Random Movie — The Savages. Interminable! I have no patience for irrational and dysfunctional people in the movies (not in real life either, but you have no control over that).

Pillow book III, day n+6...and poor Jeep is dead...

Had to rescue the Good Prince again. We thought maybe he could drive the Jeep just a couple of more times to use up the tank of gas, but no such luck. And this time, it was stopped at a most inconvenient spot. We had to push it (uphill, no kidding) into a parking spot. As the Good Prince shut the door, something underneath rattled. "The catalytic converter, it's about to go," he said. Sigh. 15 years of service, now the Jeep is all alone, left at some parking lot waiting for the tow truck to arrive. I didn't even get a chance for a last ride. It's funny, but I do feel sad. It's the first car I've had for such a long time. It's the first car I've had that was purchased new, and we've had some fun times going on road trips with it. Coming back from Texas one year, we had been given a giant container of Texas grapefruit by relatives. As we came close to the California border, I suddenly remembered that California had all these laws about what fruit you could bring in. Not sure that we would be allowed to keep the bounty, we stopped at a rest area right before the border, and ate as much of the grapefruit as we could! We ate and ate and ate, sitting in the Jeep, in the middle of the night, and we didn't make a dent in the amount of grapefruit we had. It was a very big box. Turned out, California didn't care about grapefruit, at least not that year.

I guess it was fortuitous that we got the Subaru last night. Here's a picture of the Good Prince removing all our things from the car:



The first not rainy day for weeks! I celebrated by going out for a long walk up Nansen Summit. Partly to walk, and also because I needed to collect some materials for the piece I promised for the Lake Oswego Chronicles. It was a misty, foggy day, but clear at the top:



Spent the bulk of the day trying to finish up book III. Although I'm not quite there yet, I'm very close. The pages are very loosely sewn down on the left, using little tiny gray glass beads as spacers to keep the pages loose. The first few pages are also not sewn down all the way, and the threads are all left loose and dangling. I want the whole thing to seem to be on the verge of coming apart. So here's a shot with the book closed:



With one page turned. You can see the first page is not sewn down on the bottom:



The last page. I used the glass beads to frame the image, and here on the last page, the framing is complete. As you flip backwards, the pages lose their framing. The first page, only a little bit of the beads are left on the upper left corner. You can sort of see it. Again, threads are left loose.



To see the previous day's work on this book, see this entry.

In lieu of work...

...we bought a Carr today. Rather unexpectedly. To me, at least.



The day started out as planned — Tom's for breakfast and then the Met Opera's simulcast of MacBeth at the movie theater, and then a late lunch. On our way to the theater, we drove past the Carr Subaru dealership and the Good Prince said, how about if we stop by to check out the cars after the opera. Ok, sure.

We've been needing to replace his Jeep for a while now. At 15, it's not all that reliable anymore, and I've never liked the bad gas mileage. (Plus it's just too big for my comfort zone, so I've only driven it once or twice, only when absolutely necessary.) A couple of days ago, it wouldn't get out of P and refused to start.

He had pretty much done the research and decided on a Subaru. Having had 4, 5 Subarus between us, that was ok with me. He had also talked to the car buyer at the credit union and decided what he was willing to pay. Well, wouldn't you know it, after an hour and half, they actually came down 3k and met his price. Since they were willing to take a personal check from me, much to my surprise, we left with the car.

So there it is.

And in case anyone should care — I'd recommend Carr's Subaru. Nice sales person, nice manager (of course he did try to get more money out of us...), not much pressure throughout the afternoon, although it did take a long while.