I am still reading my way through my Nero Wolfe collection. All but two of the books are paperbacks and I bought most of them at used book stores but I found my first few copies under my mother in law’s bed. A couple of them are from the era when paperbacks had illustrated rather than photographed covers and when I started reading “The Second Confession” I kept turning it back to look at the cover which was practically detached. I was ready to begin cross stitching another piece and I realized I could recreate the cover.
Transferring it to a cross stitch pattern was challenging and I couldn’t quite get the typeface of the title but I’m pretty proud of the result.
I had already begun embroidering it without solving the problem of the small type at the top. Of course I couldn’t actually cross stitch the words but I knew if I left it blank the design would be unbalanced. I had been working from the top and had just gotten to that area of the piece when I got the Mr. X Stitch newsletter email from Mr. X Stitch touting the latest issue of their magazine which features 15 noir designs. Not only did this prove just how on trend I can be, it solved my design problem. The cover of the magazine had an image of a hand holding a cigarette with what looked to me like lines of type. AhHa, problem solved.
At the beginning of the Stay at Home order I pulled out some of my craft books including an embroidery book called “Hoopla: The Art of Unexpected Embroidery” which featured the work of many artists including Mr. X Stitch. I was interested in seeing more of him so I googled him and signed up for his newsletter and here he was at just the right time!
Speaking of googling I tried to find out some information on the artist of my Nero Wolfe cover and while I found no information on him I did find another cover by him that I love. So it looks like I’ve got a new series going.
The colors of these covers are just right for my bedroom and perfect for the bookcase that holds my Nero Wolfe collection.
It seems that the boarded up windows are going to stay for awhile so businesses have started painting them. I ventured to the craft store the other day and saw a variety from business to art to Black Lives Matter affirmations and a tribute to Breonna Taylor.
I published a post on coronavirus language in television commercials that I had been working on for a few days earlier today (Monday June 1). I just sat down and read the latest news and I don’t even have words for the times we find ourselves in now. I just wanted to acknowledge that my previous post seems tone deaf now.
We usually watch two shows a day – a House Hunters at around 4:00 and a network show after dinner. At first television was a welcome respite from our fears of the coronavirus and its effect on the economy but then the commercials for these “unprecedented times” began airing. Not only did they interrupt the escapist aspect of the shows their fuzzy electronic music and their euphemistic language made watching them quite unpleasant. But since I was unwilling to stop our daily viewing I needed a coping mechanism. Not surprisingly this turned out to be a collection – a collection of the euphemistic phrases used instead of accurate and scary language like “deadly viral pandemic”.
So here goes:
Unprecedented times
Uncertain times or Time of uncertainty or Time of tremendous uncertainty
Times like these, These times, This time, or All this
Tough times
Troubled times
Difficult times
Turbulent times
Challenging time or times
Unusual of times
Extraordinary times
Unsettling times
Strange new times
Current situation
It got even worse when the shows started ending either because they had reached the final episode or because they were unable to make more due to these (pick your favorite phrase). So we were very happy to find out that we could watch Amazon Prime shows on our TV through our cable box. So far we’ve watched one season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, two episodes of The Boys, and one episode of Bosch. Now we’re adjusting to shows with no commercials at all!
For her birthday in the beginning of April my oldest granddaughter was going to have a really special birthday treat and go with her “little family” and her best friend’s family to Great Wolf Lodge and enjoy lots of water slide play. Obviously that didn’t happen but her birthday was not forgotten and she had surprise visits throughout the day as friends and family came to serenade her from six feet away.
My niece was one of those who came by and a couple of weeks later she invited friends to stop by her porch window and wish her son a happy second birthday. We brought his present to the door and walked back 6 feet.
The walk or drive by birthday became the standard in my daughter’s neighborhood and when one of the parents had a birthday they kicked it up a notch. All her mom friends gathered on the sidewalk grass strip in front of her house for a birthday toast.
My youngest granddaughter’s birthday is coming up in June. She has been talking about a pool party since last year and while that’s still the plan it will probably just be a family party because while socially distanced birthday celebrations might work for adults they sound pretty impossible for children!
Both of our daughter’s danced and end of the year dance recitals were major life events in our lives for many years. So it wasn’t a surprise that one of our condolence cards referenced the fact. My husband’s coworker wrote, “I can clearly remember (your) pictures of (her) in what seemed to be the 100’s of costumes she wore for her dance recitals and how (you were) so proud of all her accomplishments…”
Now that our grandchildren dance we are attending recitals again. This year was to be the first year for our younger granddaughter but of course recitals like everything else have been canceled this year. Their studio continued to have classes via Zoom and since they already had their costumes they continued to work on their recital dances. The idea was that they would do their dances at home via Zoom on the last day of classes dressed in their costumes and that the link could be shared with others. Since we became “a part of their pod” after 4 weeks of isolation, we purchased flowers for them and arrived at their house bright and early Sunday morning to find two very excited girls ready to dance.
It was not really a success to say the least. For one thing there was confusion about whether or not this was the day they were supposed to be wearing their costumes and inviting people to watch. The link hadn’t worked the week before and it was announced that there would be a make up day and the teacher thought the make up day would be the performance day but the director had communicated that the original last day was still the performance day so all the children were wearing their costumes and we weren’t the only family present in real life or online. Unfortunately the teacher insisted on a regular class and it became clear that it wasn’t really working when our youngest granddaughter spent most of the time looking at a book. But in the end she danced a bit of her recital dance and was very proud to show her flower to the class.
Our older granddaughter who also has to attend school every day via Zoom was ready to go and did her dance several times. While it was a poor substitute for an actual recital they did get to put on their costumes and get their hair and make up done and do their dances and get flowers. My daughter also got some wonderful posed pictures of them in their costumes so this year’s Zoom “recital” will probably become just another “amusing” recital story like the year our daughters’ recital was 5 hours long!
This blog about stuff and pastimes has never been about my feelings or emotions but today I want to start by writing about my oldest daughter who died last week after living with Stage 4 colon cancer for almost three years. We will miss her so much especially her quick wit and her easy going temperament. I am so glad I got to be her Mom.
No one who know me will be surprised that I want to share a quote from a TV show. “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” features this conversation between Zoey and her father’s caretaker on the day her father dies of progressive supranuclear palsy. “Is this when we have the talk about what death is like?” she asks him. “Death is hideous and ugly and grotesque and wildly, wildly unfair,” he says. “Or maybe death is beautiful and spiritual and transcendent and sometimes a very necessary and very freeing escape from our physical bodies when they are no longer habitable.” Exactly.
My younger daughter had another quote to relate. She said she kept thinking of a quote from the movie “Love Actually”. “Listen, it was always going to be a totally shit time” the character played by Emma Thompson says to the character played by Liam Neeson when they are talking about the behavior of his stepson after his mother dies.
So let’s talk about stuff in this totally shit time. My older daughter lived alone so my younger daughter, my husband, and I had to begin by packing up her apartment. We reminisced as we sorted and packed and we realized there were several categories of stuff. There were things we wanted to keep for sentimental reasons like her first stuffed animal, there were things we wanted to keep because we or other family members gave them to her, there were things we wanted to keep just because we liked them or because we didn’t have one of them or because hers was better than ours, there were things we didn’t need but we thought other family members might, there were some things that we couldn’t keep at all because we couldn’t imagine anyone else having or using them even us, and there were things we wanted to donate.
And then we realized that this totally shit time is even shittier than usual in the time of Corona because all the donation places are closed and we have furniture, bags of clothing, and boxes of books, records, and appliances and more sitting in her apartment with no place to go.
I have wanted to make a wet felted play mat – an environment for play animals, people, and fairies to frolic on – for awhile. But it’s been a long time since I’ve done any wet felting so I wasn’t quite sure how to do it. I had taken a few felting classes with a friend starting with a Making Hats workshop using two different wet felting methods with Beth Beede at Snow Farm in 2003. Then we took two wet felting jewelry classes at the New England Felting Company where I also took Needle Felting Animals with Sharon Costello of Black Sheep Designs. I created some beautiful items in these classes and continued to felt but I never really learned about the different types of fibers. In fact, I used to drive my felting friend crazy because I called it all fluff. I knew that different types of fiber were recommended for wet versus needle felting but I was pretty confused especially because the fiber that was recommended when I wet felted a ball for my youngest granddaughter looked nothing like the fiber that I had left from the wet felting hat workshop. That fiber seemed more like the fiber I had leftover from needlefelting projects.
The directions I found for wet felted play mats on Pinterest seemed to be calling for fiber like that left over from the ball but that was the wrong color and not the type of fiber I had a lot of in the right colors for a play mat. After some more research I found that there is a type of fiber called roving which is fiber which has been combed until it all goes in the same direction. That was the type I had for the ball and I realized that was why the play mat directions I was finding called for making layers going in different directions. The kind of fiber I had a lot of was batting with the fibers going every which way so no alternate layers were needed. I still don’t know about the different types of fiber (like merino) and why some are recommended for wet felting and some for dry but I decided to mix mine all together and go for it. I had a lot of different browns from when I needle felted pancakes for my older granddaughter so I carded (blending using pet brushes!) those together. I did the same with a bunch of different greens some from needlefelting projects and some from wet felting ones. And then I layered two different greys – one from the needlefelted cat, based on a picture of Elwood, I made in the Needle Felting animals class and one from the beads I made in a wet felting jewelry class. The blue I used was from the basket I made using the ball method in the hat felting class (I thought I’d rather have a basket than a hat).
After making three layers of each color I decided to just go for it in terms of the actual wet felting as well since I didn’t quite remember how to do it and a lot of the directions I read were conflicting and confusing. I used a combination of rolling it in bubble wrap and a rolled up bamboo mat, patting it with my hands, and rubbing it with a small bamboo mat and it worked! I am so pleased with how it turned out. I needle felted some rocks to it after it dried.
The little black bears I had out as part of our Spring decorating immediately gravitated to the play mat and they look so good on it that they are going to accompany it to its new home. I am giving it to my Chicago grandnephew for his birthday (he is having a coronavirus – guests on the sidewalk- social distancing birthday celebration tomorrow). I needle felted a cave for the little bears and I have a bunch of ideas (Thanks Pinterest) for future things to needle felt or make out of commercial felt to go with it for future gifts.
When I realized I was going to have lot of time on my hands I thought about whether there was anything I had been wanting to make but hadn’t gotten around to and remembered a pom pom cherry garland I had seen in a store. It became the first thing I crafted in the time of corona.
And then I remembered I had been wanting to try making some yarn dollies for awhile so I made two.
I liked the way they turned out and plan on hanging them on the Christmas tree but I didn’t like them well enough to make multiples (or maybe it was just the wrong time of year) so I had to come up with another idea.
I used to do a lot of cross stitch embroidery so I looked to see if I had any linen (I did!) and then I looked at my saved patterns to see if anything appealed to me and while I found two possibilities they didn’t really seem right (that Christmas thing again). Then I remembered that I had told my Step class teacher Amy that my new favorite saying was what she often said at the end of a number; “Over and back to the finish line!” and that I had thought to myself that it sounded like a embroidery motto. So I decided to make Amy a present for when I get to go back to the gym. I googled some images and designed a silhouette pattern.
It came out so well I decided to make a yoga one too. I didn’t have a phrase in mind but after a few days of thinking about it came up with “Ground Down” the words Ken uses to indicate that he is finished sharing yoga philosophy with us and is ready to begin the practice.
There was a small piece of linen left so I decided to make two Zumba ones. I couldn’t think of phrases that Angel or Alberto use regularly so I decided to use song lyrics. It took a while to find them since I googled what the songs sounded like to me. What I thought was “Puerta Rico” turned out to be “Esta Rico” which means “It’s Good” or “It’s Rich” which worked. And googling the partial lyrics from a song both teachers use “Uno, dos, tres, cuatro yeah yeah yeah” led me to the right song which included the line “Todos se mueven” which means “Everybody moves” which seemed perfect.
After I finished these I decided it was time to switch to something else and I remembered that I had been wanting to try wet felting a playmat for awhile and since I hadn’t done any wet felting in a long time I undertook some research…
We have had restaurant pizza, either take out or in house, every Friday night as long as I can remember. But the only time, except for when runners blithely pass me on a walk, that I feel like I have not observed social distancing was when I went to pick up a pizza at the beginning of the stay at home order. While we are being encouraged to patronize restaurants for take out during these “unprecedented times”* it actually makes us uncomfortable so we have started making our own pizza. So far we have had white pizzas with different toppings – ricotta, pesto and artichoke heart, and a Greek version (spinach, feta, and kalamata olives). We also had a red one which when I bit into it immediately sent me back to my high school years and the pizza place near Tappan Zee High School. The pizzas are definitely “a work in progress” but it seems like making our own might be one of the lasting changes in our lives from the time of corona.
* I’m collecting euphemisms for how these times are referred to.
