In progress...

I've been happily applying clumps of bamboo fiber and long water-weedy trails of dyed ribbon to "Drowned Woman." Now it's time to step back and...ok, first I need to pick out and re-sew that one piece of ribbon that has an angle in it. And then I get to pin up various bits of painted lace that look, I hope, very coral-ish, and stare at the thing, and try to decide if that's too much, and pin up the ombre sheer that's to overlay the whole piece and see how it looks. The thing is, I painted a lot of lace, and I don't think there's room for more than 3 or 4 pieces, and...oh, well. I can see another water-themed quilt in my near future; I've got to do something with all the leftovers from this piece, hand-dyed sparkly ribbon and silk ribbon and gauze and organza and painted lace.

Probably won't make a decision before we leave for the beach, where I plan to spend several days placidly bobbing up and down in salt water, alternating with hand quilting "Shrine Composition II."

For one brief shining moment...

...there was actually something like Cleanliness and Order in my sewing room. I've been clearing out my stash and classifying/putting away the pile of Things I Don't Know What to Do With that had gradually engulfed the cutting table, the little table beside it, and was encroaching upon the sewing machine table beside that. The Elder Spawn is planning a yard sale and was happy to carry away 2 large boxes of fabric and 3 bags of yarn; that helped considerably. Anyway, today I was feeling almost-done... and then I got ambitious. "That quilt I started yonks ago and got stuck on... the pieces and possible trims are filling up two big plastic boxes. I really ought to toss it and put away the fabric and then I'd be able to get, say, the two boxes of silk scraps off the floor and into the closet."

Well, whaddaya know, I'm not "stuck" any more. I've been happily stitching down cheesecloth "hair" on the floating figure.

A bit of background: this piece was inspired by a WWI poster based on the sinking of the Lusitania and a poem by Elinor Wylie. I'll spare you the poem (for now) but here's a scan of the poster:



So, you see, the "hair" has to look as though it's floating. I'm reasonably happy with the result:



And sewing is a LOT more fun than folding fabric and deciding what to do with various odds and ends.

And now my cutting table looks like this:



But there was that moment, earlier today, when the table was actually clear of everything but a cutting mat, a ruler, an iron, and the box for Mistyfuse scraps.

I should have taken a picture.

As the dust clears...

So this week’s excuse for not blogging is that I've been shoveling out the sewing room, which is boring enough to do without writing about it too. Also, I’ve been trying to wait until I wouldn’t be lured seduced tempted to make tasteless puns. It’s really hard difficult to avoid feeling a certain relish satisfaction schadenfreude at seeing how thoroughly Anthony Weiner has cooked destroyed himself with a week of De Nile lies climaxing culminating in today’s arousing exciting surreal press conference. Ok, this is too hard difficult; I need a stiff strong drink.

And the picture has nothing to do with anything, except that with the sewing room in the state of chaos created by a serious cleaning and reorganization, about all I can do is fool around in Photoshop, combining a picture of some arches in Jaipur with a view of water churning behind the Seattle ferry.

Sky Stairs, and a stray flippant thought

I opened up my news browser to a flurry of headlines saying that the Japanese seriously underestimated the tsunami risk when they built Fukushima.

A while ago, there was a story in the New York Times claiming that along the east coast of Japan there are carved stones set into the earth at intervals with inscriptions that translate roughly to "Don't build below this stone for fear of tsunamis." The story was about one village that actually read the manual and followed the instructions. They survived the tsunami.

So maybe the Japanese should go back to those stones and add a footnote: "Especially if you're building something with the potential to glow in the dark for the next ten thousand years."

And no, the picture doesn't have anything to do with all this. I'm just playing around a lot more in Photoshop now that I've got SuperPrinter and can, at least theoretically, print out images large enough to see the details without actually having your nose right up against the quilt. This is a staircase and a planet "built" out of a Hubble space photo.

As for how SuperPrinter and I are getting along...well, let's discuss that some other time. I think we're building a relationship, but it is fraught with frustration.

AutoPrez?

Apparently President Obama didn't actually sign the four-year extension of the Patriot Act. After all, he's in Europe. It would be inconvenient.

Instead, he authorized having it signed by the Autopen, which is used to reproduce his signature on things like letters from the White House.

Making history. Indeed.

Inquiring minds begin to wonder: We've got the TOTUS (Teleprompter Of The United States) and the ASSUS (Automatic Signature Signer of the United States) on this side of the Atlantic.

Maybe Obama could just stay in Europe, and leave TOTUS and ASSUS to run things over here?

President speak with forked tongue

OK, okay. Everybody and his brother, including Mr. Netanyahu, seems convinced that President Obama really truly meant that Israel-Palestine negotiations should start with the indefensible pre-Six-Day-War borders. Has nobody explained to this man (I mean our leader, not Israel's) that you don't start negotiations by announcing what one side has to give up? My grandfather the horse trader could have taught him a thing or two. But then, my grandfather the horse trader could have traded Abbas a blind mule in return for giving up the right of return and recognizing Israel...and he would have made the PA leader think he was getting a good deal. It's really unfair to expect the constitutional law professor from Harvard to dicker as well as a semi-literate poor white man.

But that's not the forked tongue part. That came during his speech to AIPAC.

First: I indicated on Thursday that the recent agreement between Fatah and Hamas poses an enormous obstacle to peace. No country can be expected to negotiate with a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction.

Very next paragraph: And yet, no matter how hard it may be to start meaningful negotiations under current circumstances, we must acknowledge that a failure to try is not an option.

So...Israel can't be expected to negotiate with Hamas/Fatah, except Israel must negotiate with Hamas/Fatah ?!?!?

Oh, well. Every so often I start to get upset about the President's predilection for backing Israel into a corner before peace negotiations even start. Then I remember that it's all froth upon the water, because as even he agrees, you can't negotiate with somebody who will accept nothing less than your total destruction.

But it's poisonous froth. Israel's position is perilous enough without creating the world perception that America no longer supports her.

Yes, but which 1967 borders?

Everybody I know is jumping up and down and screaming about Obama's comment that Israel should return to "the 1967 borders." I'm curious about the ambiguity here. Does he mean the borders of May 1967, when Israel was about 9 miles wide in the middle and had the West Bank and the Golan Heights looking down on them? Or does he mean the borders of July 1967, when Israel had Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and all of the Sinai? See, there was this little war in June 1967. It changed the shape of the map quite a bit.

A purely intellectual question, this. There is no peace process. Israel cannot make peace with people whose avowed object is to destroy Israel. As long as Palestinian kindergartens teach their children hatred and "martyrdom," all this haggling about borders and settlements is like the Federal government going after medical marijuana while an apocalyptic drug war sweeps up from Mexico and across our southern borders....Oh, wait. That's happening too. Um, it's like cutting $53 billion from the budget when we're over 14 trillion in debt?...Oops, another bad analogy.

Where are the grownups when we need them?