When I got home tonight, I meant to get right down to sewing. I’m making good progress there but there’s a lot to do. And it was cool and much more pleasant to work and iron in than the last few days.
On the way to the sewing machine though I got distracted by the palette that was waiting on the table and I remembered how the light was hitting the front garden this morning. I thought at the time, ‘oh, hmmm, you’d have to lay in the yellow highlights first and then put in the darker greens.’
Anyway, I gave it my best to see how that might work out and the test was pretty good although the composition needed better planning. These are both pretty small – postcard size – but the principles of big juicy watercolor still applied!
I had played with the idea of going out to a lecture this afternoon but I think I’ll stay home.
Yesterday I got all my little pieces sewn together into rows and managed to sew four rows together into a piece. That’s four of thirty-one. A ways to go but it still is definite progress and I think I’ll continue on. The worry I had about dealing with the seams turned out to be not so bad, although it is important to remind myself – SCANT seam! SCANT seam! frequently. Ironing is not anything more than the normal tedious process.
The pieces look miraculously and suddenly smaller – that magic moment that happens when there are no raw edges sticking out to cloud what it will look like.
So I think I’ll stay home and see how far I can get. Do some laundry. Drink some iced tea.
Last night when I got to the rather arbitrary point I’d had set as a goal, I stood up.
I laughed at myself as I stood up because it was obvious I should have stood up earlier. It wasn’t like I’d not been standing and walking around the rest of the day. But, no denying, I did a lot of:
sew one piece to another, keeping an eye on order
repeat until whole set is done
cut apart thread connecting the pieces
iron the seams open
check order of pieces as they get stacked back up
Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
Later in the evening there was a “stare at the design wall briefly and decide how to proceed with next round of sewing. I went with: take it all down, pinning each of the hunks of stuff to the next so it could be removed and kept in order. That took a little doing but I was standing and stepping up and down while that was going on.
I sewed about one-third of the next step, hit my “maybe I can get to this point” point and realized I was ready to do anything other than sit! So, to be continued.
Sometimes you need to hang a reminder on the wall where you’ll see it every time you look up.
That little sign I hung up a few nights ago. Today I headed up to the mighty Bernina with a few flowers in my hand and a determination to use a lot of thread.
I stopped to wind five bobbins, and cleaned the machine and it’s time again to take everything OFF the wall to sew the hunks together and get it ready to sew horizontally. So I guess it was a good afternoon sewing wise.
I listened to the Democratic filibuster in the Senate and it was good to hear people who agreed that something must be done.
Folks, put the exhibit on your summer to-do list! From the web site’s description:
The works presented in Splendor, Myth, and Vision are among the finest of the Prado’s unparalleled holdings, selected not only for their relationship to the exhibition’s themes, but also for their beauty and historical significance. Included in this sensuous exhibition are major paintings by Titian, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacopo Tintoretto, Diego Velázquez, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Guercino, Nicolas Poussin, Luca Giordano, Guido Reni, Jusepe de Ribera, and others.
We were both blown away by the size of the paintings. What a thrill to see them so close up. Today we were lucky too in that the gallery was not packed as it will be as the summer progresses. There are lots of places to sit and take in all the grandeur. Many of the women were rubenesque, many of the paintings were based in Old Testament or mythology, there were lots of cherubs. The last three paintings depicted St. Sebastian, full of arrows and trusting God would help him. One of these had hung in a convent, the middle one had been touched up at some point to make him less erotically robed and the third was just dreamy looking for a guy who was tied to a tree and pierced with arrows.
The flamenco dance lecture was amazing. People who study flamenco had come from all over (the lady next to me from Boston) because the presenter, Belén Maya, is creme de la creme in that world. She talked about traditional vs contemporary/modern dancing and danced in both styles. It was mind-blowing that she could speak at all after dancing, because the dancing was incredible. After that she showed several videos of different styles of dancing, answered a lot of audience questions and then… and THEN my friends…
She talked at length about the whole traditional vs contemporary dichotomy. Holy mackeral. It doesn’t matter what world you travel in, the battle is the same. The traditionalists say “you can’t do it that way.” The contemporary people say “we don’t want to HAVE to follow your rules”. She stressed that it’s important to learn the rules, internalize it all and then you can move on. “Contemporary really means – having choices” – ain’t that the truth? But you know what? You need to understand what the background (rules) are and what is served by protecting the traditions. I wish I could show you the whole talk. Meanwhile, she was so grateful, and at the end thanked us, for allowing her to come and speak on all of this. Whoa.
We forgot to take our photo in front of the wall leading into the exhibit but we stopped for dinner on the way home. We were extra hungry because we bushwhacked a little through the wilds of Taborton on the way to Williamstown. We took the regular way home and had dinner at the Lakeview.
