wienerdog tricks.

Where I Make A Movie About Making a Purse, At The End of Which You Will Probably Not Be Able To Make A Purse

I decided to videotape myself making something. Actually, it wasn't a decision--it was an event. I had the thought, "I wanna make a purse" and then I hit "record" and started talking.

Here's a clip about the video piece, "Ginger Has An Idea About Making a Purse," to make you:

        A) Want to watch it    

        B) Wonder why anyone would do this [especially in their Effectual PJ's]  

        C) Want to go make something  

        D) All of the the above

Answer: D.

The full "video piece" (not sure yet what to call it. Not a movie. Not a film. The word "video" makes it sound like a VHS tape.) is right here. You can just click on this link and you'll get to it. This is where to click. 

And this is what I would say after having shot it and put it together:

1) It's long. I mean, unless you are close enough to know my middle name (well, both of them), you are probably not going to watch it in its entirety. OH WORSE--if you ARE this close to me, you're going to feel like you HAVE to watch it and will then have to LIE to me about it. Shoot.

2) Filming from below one's neck highlights one's multiple chins.

3) I should have added some sort of surgeon generals warning about the Need for Dramamine to the opening. Watching it is like seeing something put together by J.J. Abrams or the earliest episodes of ER.

4) When I am making something ABOUT making something, I am a seriously happy human form. Not kidding. Dangit. I had a really good time doing this. I was thinking of you the whole time. For reals.

[insert clip of my good friends shaking their heads while they wildly call each other to coordinate a brief intervention that might involve medication and plans for special "girls relaxation weekends" where we soak our feet and "let off steam."]

Go make something.

Post-Capitalism & Wonk

Mab said something this week that I have said many times to the sort of friends that I can fall into Making Revelry with (translate: the sort of people who will hear me wax on about The Way It Should Be Out There) and I absolutley think it's worth digging around about. It's this:

"Afraid your project won’t look like it came out of a catalog? It won’t. It’ll look like something you’ve created with your hands. If you want it to look like something from a catalog, then have it mass produced in a factory."  --Mab.

Highly Wonky-Highly Useful-Highly Happy Pillows from Old Quilts. Crazily unmatched corner meeting spots that some would deem Un-Okay.

I think we're at an interesting time in our country. Am I an Economist and do I have the credentials to say this? No. I think more people feel poor and disconnected from the life power of an actual dollar bill than any other time since I can remember. Am I a historian? No. I think we're all scrambling to get more dollars because we don't like to feel powerless. Am I a social psychologist? Nope. And because, of course, we need stuff.

The weird, imperfect back of my favorite summer skirt (made from old jeans) that turns out to be just the spot for my backside but looks super wonked on the hanger. Easy to judge, still wonderful.

And also we're diving in and trying to make the stuff we need. And we're doing this with gusto (at least some of the time--I was glad to hear in your comments that for many of you it's a LOT of the time. Woo hoo!). And so great mothership sites like Craft are guiding us and we're corralling the power of googling How To Do Whatever We Feel Like and we're all helping each other by putting up free tutorials. We're up to our necks in the really fun effort of providing for ourselves.

But then we finish what we made.

And it doesn't look like what we thought it was going to.

It looks, well, Wonky. Off just a bit. 

And we say: Guy. That doesn't look right. I must not be good at this.

And we set that one aside and go buy a (cheap) one that looks more like the one we had in our head.

I know all the flaws in this bag, and I also know that my daughter's teacher really liked it when I gave it to her.Wonk and all.

And we pay double--for the supplies we bought to make the one we wanted + the cheap one that we bought. But WAIT: we pay even more--we pay the cost of this message ping-ponging around in our heads looking for a place to land fester: I. Must. Not. Be. Good. At. This.

I think we have to shift our heads aroud a bit about all of this Making we're tackling to get what we need. And it's exactly what Mab said: "If [we] want it to look like something from a catalog, then have it mass produced in a factory."

We need to make friends with Wonk. Invite it to tea. Service it biscuits. Ask it about its childhood. Consider its finer points and stop judging its obvious irregularities. Because when Wonk is present, it's a sign that an actual human has constructed the thing we're looking at. Wonk indicates Humanity. I mean, sure, it might indicate some factory mishap where fire shot out of some gnarly big machine and smoke blew everywhere and all the little stitched-on animal logos landed on the bellybutton spot of all the shirts, but that's not the scenario I'm envisioning here.

In the things that we make ourselves to provide for what we need for ourselves and for our homes and our familites, Wonk just means that we didn't walk into a store to meet our own needs. And it probably means that we or whoever made the thing in front of us Experienced Something in the making--joy, relaxation, the frustration of trying something never-before-tried and straining toward pulling it off decently.

Wonk means a Something happened for a Somebody.

A highly Un-Factory-Like Zipper/Pocket treatment on a duffle bag for one of my boys. Still useful. Still charming. No need for perfection to be Just Right for camping.

Wonk is lovely. It's not an indicator of lack of expertise of failure or some sign that maybe you should try paper crafts instead. It just means that you made it.

And I'm so glad that you made it.

Time to Grow a Pair, Ladies Part II & Also a Winner

First: congratulations to Holly whose #3 comment was chosen by random to win her very own Go!Baby from the nice Quilt People at AccuQuilt. I'll email you soon, Holly, about how to get your nifty prize. Fun.

And also, I have more to say. 

I was recently sent a review copy of a book about sewing. It's a perfectly fine book. Probably terrific for a beginner because the pictures are clear and there are a lot of them. I would likely use it as a reference if I ever referenced anything myself. 

I'm tackling this ratty one now. Wasn't sure what I was going to do because it's so Completely Tattered.

And that last sentence makes it sound like I know all the stuff in the book. And, in fact, I don't. I regularly botch zippers (I mean, they work, but the ends of them are not Beauty Pageant Material), only recently heard that gray is a better thread color choice than white for quilting, and my eyes roll into the back of my head and the room swirls around a little when anybody talks about warp and weft. (Terms make me queasy.)

And the book I was asked to review could have fixed all of that for me.

But this is all I could think of while I was reading through the (very thorough) sewing book: we don't need any more information about sewing.

See? Way. Tattered.

We just need more guts and less nervousness and more surety that nothing bad will happen if we just tuck in and try.

I really don't think anybody out there is rightfully confused. And hold on, here's how I mean it: there are plenty of resources (many, many of them completely free now) that will help us figure out the snazzier tricks of sewing. And there are a few pretty friendly guides for getting started (this one's still my favorite). 

But we still just all need some more gallons of bravery.

Somehow, though, publishers believe we need more guides--that our big glitch is informational, some dearth of data--so they must be getting some word that we want them, which mean we must, in fact, be doing something to make them believe that we do (that was Capitalism as an Idea, Working Backwards, by the way).

And I'll allow for this VERY real possibility: maybe everybody does feel this way. Maybe I'm off my thrifted rocker here. It's always a possibility. I recognized that. Sometimes the bats in my belfry need more water and less caffeine.

So I just started cutting it up into panels. And then I put some good ones back together. And now I'm working on turning it into this.

But I'm still wondering what you all think about this.

Why do we feel like we need to know what we're doing in order to do it? What are we afraid of, ladies? What can go wrong? I'm not yelling this. I'm leaning in across a small table at a coffee shop, asking you. What can go wrong? Why do you need to have it all figured out before you dive in?  And I haven't been to some blogger conference that's told me to ask you questions to get you to leave more comments. I'd really like to know what you think about this. And that desire is probably mostly selfish--I mean, I don't want to be the girl at the party with her Creative Philosophy Skirt tucked into the Pantyhose of Her Ideals.

It's just what I kept hearing in my head as I read that perfectly lovely book: We don't need more information. We need more fearlessness, more unbridled willingness to Try.

Because when we do, we figure out all of the things that the lady in the book has tried and figured out and is showing us so that we won't have to try to figure it all out for ourselves.

My favorite part: because I could get panels out of either the front of the back of most of the whole thing, this is the entirety of my Thrown Away Scraps Pile. Excellent.

But having to figure it all out for ourselves is the best part. I'm sure of it.

How I Hate to Wait for Things and How I Am Waiting for Zippers and How I Wait on Purpose

A Craft Debt '11 Update

I am at a bit of a standstill on two projects: both of the pillows for me [#5] AND the two bags [#2 & #6] that I swore a couple of posts ago were my First Priority Projects. And here's the thing: I'm not stuck creatively. They are all projects coming along swimmingly in terms of function and color and the weird combining of strange old pieces of fabric and such that any regular human would have put in a boat and floated off to some Other Country's Landfill long ago. But I heart them all.

I just don't have long enough zippers.

Go to the store and get them, You Say.

That's the thing: that's not how we roll here at WDT. We (and I mean the Royal We) wait until the pieces it takes to put a nifty something together all appear before we run to the store. Even when we are in our car tempted to pull into whatever Zippers for Cheap store may or may not be just a handful of blocks away from Our place of work, we keep driving. We don't go in. 

Instead, we dig through our Monstrous Stash of culled-as-we-go bits and pieces of notions and when we come up short, then we hit the thrift shops in high hopes of the Just Right zipper and when we go there and there is nothing but a Sea of 6" Closures, then we wait.

We wait because we have found that the tension of waiting and the tension of Only Using What We Find causes curious, interesting things to happen as we make. Sometimes the Just Right Zippers never do appear and so we tackle the envelope closure-d pillow or we start to experiment with snaps.

Right now we are waiting.

And in some ways it might seems strange, what with wanting to get those pillows onto my bed and cover up the fugly floral that is currently gracing the top of my (purchased with a christmas gift card) super expensive sheets, but that's how we roll.

And usually the commitment to just sit tight means that Oprah herself (or whoever IS in charge of the universe) drops in our lap the Zipper of Our Dreams.

Or at least a one-day haul like this:

You will be the first to know when when the zippers arrive. Right now we are waiting.

Where I Talk About Money at the Sewing Table [Next Up: Politics & Religion]

I have been haranguing myself for some time now, have recently come to a realization, and have now declared to myself that I will share it here as a sort of Special Sharing. [In the spirit of allowing you to learn from what it's like to be me.] 

I read over here at Sister Diane's and was blown away to follow this discussion about crafting and money and [even more uncomfortably] making money and [even more uncomfortably, I thought after reading the discussion] crafting while not even wanting to make money.

And I've been thinking about all this crappy money and crafting business business for so long. I've downright tortured myself about it if I'm perfectly honest.

The metaphoric sign hanging in my metaphoric window, metaphorically.

Here's how the torture goes: If I like sewing so much then shouldn't I do it as a job? Sure, what a good idea. Well, if I'm going to do it as a job, how much would I need to charge? How much would I need to make? [she scribbles numbers down, writes in a book, and then stop and stares] Oh. Well, that won't work. So if I love this so much but I can't do it as a job, shouldn't it be at least a Wildly Popular [as rated by Others] Undertaking that people sweep in and pay large amounts in small bursts to share in? Subquestion: How much would I need to see people paying in order to BELIEVE that it was a "Wildly Popular [as rated by Others] Undertaking"? Oh. Well, that's not happening.So if that's not happening, then this must be a Wildly Un-Popular Undertaking. So why am I doing it? And [here comes the downward spiral] why is it so lame anyways? And maybe shouldn't I be embarrassed of it? Who would even pay for what I do anyways? [slump.] I'll just give it all away as gifts. And right there is the moment that every single gift I give becomes a weird, inwardly apologetic moment of Consolation to me, sort of devoid of joy, a Jr. Varsity Happening.

 From my journal: wherein I blab to myself on and on about the circular nature of trying to price something. [you can click to see it bigger.]

 
This sort of dialogue can occur for me over a period of months or within a single day, is inevitably re-set by some sort of Pep Talk + Carbs and then I step out into another day, at any moment vulnerable to fall headlong into the same Pit of Crafting Despair. 

I have come to the conclusion, friends, that it's not so much money I'm always wanting, as it is the message that receiving money would give me: YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH AND SMART ENOUGH AND PEOPLE LIKE YOU ENOUGH TO DO WHAT YOU ARE DOING. Sort of a Stuart Smalley Self-Talking To that would justify my hours upstairs surrounded by old polyester while my kids run around downstairs with knives eating nothing but boxed food and my husband languishes in a corner watching old Office episodes.

Somehow, in my mind, Money = The Internal Justification for Time to Sew [insert the name of whatever undertaking you absolutely love but make no money doing].

And that, I have come to realize is very, very tricky math. What happens, for instance, if the people around you are just like you and don't have or plan to spend a lot of money on anything they love to do? What happens if your personal aesthetic {*cough*} is unusual {*cough*} and not every single person {*cough*} shares it? [Insert photo of polyester baby dress here.]

And so, at least for now, I am unplugging that metaphor for myself. The electric socket that it's running through is marked Capitalism (Roughly: my supply not bumping up against a Demand = my non-viability.) And I'm hereby plugging myself into a different metaphor. This one includes bunnies and unicorns and people dressed in weird costumes jumping around a lot--something to do with the circus, maybe. 

This lovely imgage was garnered right here.

So I'm taking down my store for now and working to find the best ways to offer up the patterns I've got there and the occasional Made Something that I haven't given away already as a gift. Maybe it'll show up again someday in some other form, but not until I settle this issue for myself. Not until I get it straight in my head that I can sew if I want to and that my very soul is not for sale.

It's my circus party, and I can sew if I want to. That's my t-shirt today. Here's to you, friends, and all the circus sewing you're doing. I would, of course, love to hear your thoughts about all of this. 

*Editor's Insecure Clarifications: Am I slamming others who sell their stuff? Holy Toledo, No. Am I saying I'll never have a shop EVER? Holy Toledo, No. Am I a Socialist or something? Well, Holy Toledo, Very Often. So do I wish I could sew all the time and do nothing else but write about it? Holy Toledo, Yes. Will I wake up tomorrow and wonder if I am a nutbag for writing all this down and sharing it? Holy Toledo, Probably. But watch Jerry MacGuire and you'll know that wild declarations of truth, while they sometimes make us sick to our own stomachs, most often lead to better roads.

Time to Grow a Pair, Ladies

I know it's rough to consider such vulgarities, but I already warned you about my New Year's Resolution, plus I keep trying to write a different post and it just won't happen because, well,

It's time to grow a pair, ladies.

I am struck over and over again by how flabbergasted my sewing friends are by what I'll tackle at my machine: couch cover?! free-motion quilt? weird curtains from an old sheet? polyester what?

I loved free motion quilting this thing, but it was like riding a rickety go cart down a steep hill half the time--I was sort of careening a lot while I did it. And I ripped a LOT of it out from tension troubles while I was in the middle of the project--but then, really, who knows that once it's washed and all crinkled up? Exactly: Nobody.

I hear a lot of You are brave.

And I want to clear something up here: I am not gorgeously, amazingly skilled or anything. I'm just gutsy. I look around my house and ask myself, "What needs to be done around here?" Then I sew something for that.When friends say things to me like, "If I buy a headboard cover from target with an ugly fabric cover will you take the $200 worth of gorgeous linen that I'll buy at a remnant shop and make a new cover for it?"

To which I say: Sure! Why not?

Is this because I am an expert? Nope. It's because I'm willing to dive into the deep end. Because--why not? Where do I need to be? 

I just loved this bag, but I totally took it apart again after this post because--while I think the strap looks dramatic and all--it's just too blasted low. So I ripped it out, cut it off by about 6", and then re-attached it. No biggee. No animals were harmed by this re-do.

What are we afraid of? Are we a man woman or are we a mouse totally chicken person who thinks that everything we sew has to turn out perfectly? I want to stand up on my roof and yell that IT'S OKAY IF WE SCREW UP! And, sure, that's true everywhere except in neural surgery and at Christmas Dinner, but it's MOST OF ALL true when we sit down at our sewing machines.

Let's not be afaid--let's screw up! Together! Honestly, my best projects have emerged from projects that I had to think and re-think and rip and then re-think again. 

And, really, being a Perfectionist is just a fancy way to say that you're scared shitless of Doing It Wrong. 

I made this cover today for a little handed-over-to-me footstool and it's far from perfect (Here's my math about that: 3 good corners + one semi-weird corner = perfectly good enough to put your feet on.)

And holy toledo, this might all sound much crabbier than I intend it to, which of course is influenced by my current hormonal status (the exact moment of which I am aware of, as  you know, because of my skill with this). 

But I really mean it like this: if we're not enjoying the process of our sewing--the idea-having, piece-cutting, problem-solving, sewing-it-all-up and then tearing-it-apart-because-it's-not-quite-right-yet--as much as we're loving what we end up with when we're finished with a project, well, then, we're just flat out missing the boat. And also, if we're not willing to live on the edge a little and dive into a project that might not turn out perfectly, well then we're missing another boat there too.

And I would hate for you, of all people, to miss the boat.

Come get in the It's No Big Deal If I Screw Up boat. Who knows--maybe there will be some big fat hole in the bottom of it, but then we will fashion a CORK from WHATEVER FABRIC IS IN OUR POCKETS. It will all be fun. And we will do it together. Not to worry.

Give More Advice

This is the best resolution to make, in my opinion.

I am skipping Get up Early,  Drink More Water and Complain Less and diving for the thing that I know I will accomplish. This way when someone comes to me just needing a kind ear--someone who absolutely knows what, when and how they need to accomplish whatever dreadful or saddening reality is in front of them--and I blather on about how they need to blah blah and then blah blah, well, then I will have accomplished something. And so, rather than having to say to myself, "Really you can't just listen?" I can say, "Hey--you said you were going to do more of this in the new year. Good job!"

So here's my advice for the New Year:

#1: Sew More. I know you saw this coming, but I don't just mean do more projects. I mean use your brain and your machine and your thread and your guts to make more things around just like you want them. I'm starting to believe that I need to make myself see , really see, what's in front of me more often so that I can accept the tiny flaws and fix them where I can.

Case in point, I found this quilty languishing on a top shelf next to the games that aren't that fun and so are on the highest shelf. I yanked it out and inspected it like I'd never seen it before. It has been understood as Too Old to Use but Too Important to Throw Away. (It's my late mother-in-law's girlhood quilt. You don't huck those.) Hence: top shelf city.

 
But then I really looked at it. And yeah, there are a couple of holes. I mean, it's about 70 years old, so they're legit. But when I looked more closely, it's really just the edges that make the thing look wild and unusable.

And I gave it some attention--just a pack and some scraps of binding from my stash and some hand-sewing time, and now it's this.

Lovely, and ready to be a part of our life.

#2 Read More Books that Tell More Truth. I am swearing off the Father Time series--that terribly alluring set of books wherein a faithful priest does the faithful thing in a faithful world every time. It was like Perfection Porn for me.

More books like these, is what I advise:

I don't suggest, necessarily, that you lose your mind and start reading the completely depressing, soul-destroying novels suggested by my favorite wealthy female role model (who I appreciate in every other way except for her penchant for stunningly depressing narratives), but I do suggest opening your eyes and arms to stories and memoirs that are willing to be honest about brokenness and imperfections. I am in the middle of Carol Burnett's second memoir now.

#3 Figure Out a Way to Love Housework. Sadly, I have nothing to say but that. And I don't know how to do it. I just know that all the hours I spend disgruntling about picking up detritus off of floors and finding dirt in places I didn't know dirt could stick to, it seems could be better spent trying to conjure up an answer to a bigger life problem than, "Why is my house always such a wreck?" This is an existential question that has no answer and the true answer ("It's a wreck because we live here") seems only to lead to deeper, more exasperating existential questions ("Why are we such wrecking live-ers?"). Seems better to claim some new mantra ("I am thankful for all I have!"; "I am glad to be living this life!") But that attitude might be left to only Snow White and her bird friends. 

I am straining, currently, to be more Happy Birdlike myself.

#4 Print more pictures. Why keep them only in your computer?

I will start with this one.

Happy New Year. Cheers to more Making and Reading and Non-Existential Cleaning and Picture Printing in the new year.

Seasonal Transfixing-Disgruntlement Disorder + One More Quilt

Okay, I'm going to say it: I have an STDD.

Every year right about this time it hits like a clockable lap around the track of my life: Seasonal Transfixing-Disgruntlement Disorder. I start seeing what I don't have approximately 8.75 days before Christmas, and it's all I can see. I just stare stare stare at what's missing like I am a bug and it is a light. Can't stop looking. Sooooo prrreettyyyy.

I am convinced that I just don't have enough: Not enough presents to give. Not enough energy to give. Not enough money. Not enough time. Not enough chicken. Not enough emotional strength.

For the first 16.25 days of December I am all "Hey, I'm just keep my lists short and giving simple gifts" and "Thrifted gifts are where it's at" and (my favorite) "I think we'll just skip the stockings this year."

And I am all zen Simple Life girl. Making handmade gifts and crossing off names of people that I realize I love very much but don't need to exchange gifts with me and adding to my list of Experiential Christmas Traditions. Envisioning game nights and our fake gas log on and all of us smiling and sipping cocoa together. Feeling firmly in my heart that what we have is Enough. More, really, extravagantly more, than enough.

And then my STDD arrives. And I'm counting pennies and scheming trips to Walmart and wringing my hands in my destroyed work space upstairs and frantically trying to sew more things and checking to see if there's any room on credit cards to buy something that costs at least $50 for everybody I'm related to. And I can feel the squinched look on my face. And the heaviness that what we have is not Enough. 

So I'm writing it down here so that I can stare at it and try to recognize that I'm probably not the only one who gets it right about now and that it is, well, just a crock of Freeze Dried Horse Crap. And that it's wildly contagious.

And also that it's really not true. I have what I need.  

Also, I made another little(r) quilt from the oldest, tatteredest one of these.  

Merry Christmas, Maker Friends. Here's wishing you see your own Enough.

Let's talk about Art and Saying.

First, everybody show know about what my friend Anthony is doing with found car parts. His work makes our use of that much-loved upcycle term we like to throw around seem really not quite all it could be. I like the word of Re-Make. Or maybe with have to go with Calvin's Transmogrify. 

I'm thinking about him in part today because I'm still chewing on that How do you have time for that? question that I was kicking around last week--and that some of you were bitchin enough to kick around with me--and I see Anthony and his family living the Making Life that I keep talking about. Being near them this year has cheered me on to keep at my own Making. And we've had some great conversations about what art is supposed to do. What it's for.

 

So, I'm going to live on the edge and offer up a piece I wrote a few years ago about the poetry writing that I've done for many years. I'm just going to paste in the big fat document. And if you don't write poems but you do make quilts or tote bags or re-make old shirts into new dresses or like to glue bottle tops to things or find yourself carving wood or building renaissance palaces out of sand or knitting things with tiny thread, then you get this question too. Just substitute your own Making for the word poetry. Here it is . . .

 

What Is Poetry For?

 

About ten years ago I went unsuspectingly to my mailbox and found an acceptance letter for my first published poem with a check for $50 dollars--and, in the same stack, a letter from the IRS telling me I owed $500 dollars in back taxes. (What, exactly, they thought they were taxing is still a mystery to me, as I was a two-part-time job/living-on-student-loans graduate student at the time.) Questions of taxability aside, this was the moment I first asked the question: “What is poetry for?”

 

Stay with me. I’m about to talk about something you think you know about completely. I’m thinking of the Inuit people—all of their 7 gajillion words for ice. A well-studied linguist will tell you that all those words are a true proof of the ever-changing, always-adapting nature of language.

 

I say that’s not all. I say those really not 7 gajillion but 200 words for ice (or 15 if you’re some guy from the University of Texas—but 15 is still more than we’ve got and if you ask me the guy is a linguistic pessimist). I say all those words are the proof of the thing that drives the poet--Saying.

 

I don’t marvel that Eskimos had lots to say about ice. I do marvel that they kept trying to say and didn’t stop after ten or 12 words. They kept saying: ice that’s melted, ice that’s melted and refrozen, slippery ice, stinging ice, slushy ice, powdery ice, squared ice, ice with flavoring,  the shiny thing about ice that makes you squint, the hot-coldness of ice on your tongue. They just kept at it because there was so much to say about ice. That passel of words is a tribute to Saying.

 

And more than an indicator of how much there was to say (because they could compound the pieces of their language in a way that English doesn’t let us, so they could describe intricate differences with a single—maybe really long, but still single, word) those 15 essences or roots of that one word ice that turned themselves into those 200 words make me think they wanted to keep saying. They wanted to keep saying about something that was in front of them in every direction they looked—under their feet, out along the horizon, over their sheltered heads at night , in their tea, between their toes if they weren’t so lucky, somewhere a couple of layers of warm fur down below their backs as they slept—all around.

 

I’m no linguist, but I say they kept talking about ice because it kept being around.

 

I know how they felt. I’m looking under my feet, out along the horizon, over my head at night, in my tea, between my toes, below my back as I sleep—and I’m saying. I’m just going to keep saying. Because the ice of my life just won’t melt. So I have to keep saying.

 

I hear the voice of my writer friends in my ear as I write: “Are you saying that the end-quality of the poem is only a secondary consideration to the poet’s experience of writing it?—that a bad poem is as good as a good poem?

 

Well, of course I’m not saying that. I keep working to write good poems so that I believe them myself. Saying is only as good as it is believable. When I say my life, I hear my life; when I hear my life, I start to believe that it’s all real.

 

 And that’s what poetry is for, if you ask me. Not the said—the Saying.

How do you have TIME for all that?

I'm getting a lot of that lately. Like I say, "Want to talk about my new hobby of sewing for the next 45 minutes, wherein I will give you 6 reasons for loving old polyester and draw a map of local thrift stores on a cocktail napkin while you nod and glance over my shoulder for somebody else you know at the party?" And they say (about whatever rant I'm on about the importance of Making in our lives), "How do you have time for all that?"

And I'm wondering who else out there is hearing it, and I'm also wondering if anybody's responding with anything real. I mean, there's 

 

1) "Well, I MAKE time, because I believe my creative life is important."

 

But then I sound like a Mom Prick. And nobody likes a MP.

 

2) "Well, I never do the dishes, my kids haven't had haircuts, and I recently found the baby swishing around a thumb tack in her little mouth. Oh. And I don't volunteer in the kids' classroom.

 

But then I sound like Slacker Mom. And everybody talks about SM when they go out to coffee before their volunteering.  (And for more of the rub and stretch of that one, read on over here.)

 

3) "Well, my husband pitches in a lot with the kids. And around the house." [to which they look sideways at me and either ask or think "He's not annoyed that you're always SEWING?"]

 

But then I sound like She's Got a Perfect Husband Mom. And everybody really hates SGPHM because they think of her house like the Lido Deck of the Love Boat of Living.

 

The real rub here, though--beyond not wanting to sound prickish or slackery or overly-taken-care-of is that I really don't know how anybody else doesn't have enough time. And by that I mean Time. I don't know how anybody else is managing to do their Kid Life and their Husband Life and their Work Life and their Self Life without their Creative Life. And I really don't understand how our culture has sold us (and by us I mean the uterus-keepers) that the list is supposed to go:

 

1. Kid Life

2. Husband Life

3. Work Life

4. Self Life

5. Creative Life.

 

Or maybe if you're Oprah or the President of Ebay or an Ambassador to BosChiGoviaLand #4 goes first, followed in a dead heat by #3 and you may or may not skip #1 and #2.  

 

But why is a life Making a luxury? The more I Make, the more I believe that it's not a luxury. It's a life means.  I would even say it's a lifeboat means. It keeps me bobbing when a lot of the other stuff looks like wreckage.

 

And maybe that's why I really don't like the word Hobby. It just sounds too side dish to me. But there's another question: how did the meat become so much more important than the potatoes?

 

Gotta go because the baby really did just put a beaded bracelet in her mouth. (See Answer #2 above.)

Why Adult Ed Rhymes With Sliced Bread, Grasshopper.

So what I really wanted to post today was this amazing step-by-step picture tutorial of how to make a scarf out of an old t-shirt. I mean: it would really just be picture of me cutting something up and then sewing straight lines, but I still thought it might be worth it for somebody that couldn't see the steps in their head.

But then I read this about using only natural light in your photos on your blog (which explains why my children and my made-goods always look so WASHED OUT) and so now I've been waiting to actually get up to my sewing room during hours with natural light. I tend to be sort of a night hog. (That's the offspring of a night owl and a ground hog). So, no pictures.

 

But I've had a couple of things on my mind: the first is that I talked with a mom's group this week about the worth of maintaining your Creative Life while you're up to your neck in your Mom Life. They all nodded, but I could tell they thought I was batty. They all had that You have no idea look in their eye. And then I asked them to share about the state of their creative lives. And this one woman said I have so many unfinished projects. But she said it like she was saying I have so many moles on my A or I have so many unplucked whiskers on my chin. You know--with some sort of Lady Shame.

 

And it led into this discussion (well, that's not true because it was just me jumping up and down and talking excitedly) about how a creative life worth having isn't measured by final products. The goal of a life Making isn't supposed to be about what we make--it's supposed to be about making something. And that the life spent Making is a good life--it's a life where we learn about how screwing things up is inevitable. And that seeing pieces and turning them into whole things is incredibly gratifying. And that any life that includes doing something that we lose time to is a good life. Our souls sort of slow down when we do something that is engaging enough that we stop hovering above ourselves and analyzing our worth (or the size of our butt) while we're doing it and just be able to Do It.

 

Some of them got what I was talking about. Others of them looked at me like they thought I was a really friendly nut job.

 

So that's what's on my mind today since I can't take pictures of my handy dandy turn-a-t-shirt-into-a-scarf project. 

 

Oh--and I also love Adult Ed. It's this wonderful Monday night already negotiated for that means I will be sewing at least once a week. I can't say enough about it. You probably already know Adult Ed is amazing and you're bored reading this. But what if you DIDN'T? Oh my gosh, how sad. What if you thought that Adult Ed was just for people trying to finish high school. It's not. It's full of classes where you make things. And that's a big deal for living a life worth living in my book.

 

It's an appointment with your creative destiny for the gods sakes. Book it.