Another Year of Creativity

It's my first post of the Year 2009, and also an anniversary of sorts, so maybe it's time to reflect a little. Don't worry, it won't hurt...

It has been just over a year since I started a leave of absence from my unusually-long high-tech career at Oracle. I've been there since January 15, 1989 (wow, 20 years ago), and I just needed a (long) break.

I've been very busy in the intervening year, and I haven't been a bit bored. Some projects have been very successful, others less so.

Kid Rooms and Craft Room

I spent quite a while rearranging the contents of several rooms in my house so that my two daughters could each have their own bedrooms. My older daughter got the "new" room with a new loft bed and desk combo so she could study uninterrupted by her darling sibling, and my younger daughter got a new desk in her room and free run of both bunks in the existing bed set. Meanwhile, I would take the contents of my two old craft/storage rooms and combine them into one carefully-planned ultra-functional hobby workroom with built-in shelves and workbench (the Broder line from IKEA).

Eight months or so later, the verdict is decidedly mixed. The girls like having their own rooms, but I'm not having much luck getting them to go do their homework there. They'd rather be working with me or their dad at the kitchen table or sprawled across the living room. In fact, if my older daughter disappears into her room, it's usually because she's hiding in there reading her latest non-homework-related book, and I have to go pry it away from her!

As for my sleek new craft room? The Broder shelving on one side is stunning, and no earthquake is knocking it down without bringing down the walls too! I installed lots of other shelves, cabinets, and drawer units as well. But I haven't been able to get past those basic little laws of physics: I really can't get the contents of two full rooms to all fit in the space of one! Not only is that new room FULL, but so are the hallways and other spaces around the house that were meant to serve as staging areas while I moved stuff around. On the good side, we're all getting very good at sliding sideways through the hallways! In the meantime, my stuff has expanded as I've picked up more hobbies...

The Blog

I started this blog just about a year ago as part of my leave-of-absence plans. Since then, I've written about 50 entries (almost one a week) in this blog, plus quite a few entries in my blog on Turkey (I keep meaning to get back and write more about that!) and my random-topic blog.

Writing has been a major part of my Oracle career over the years, and one of my Oracle colleagues noted with amusement that "a writer just has to write" (or something like that) when he heard about my non-work blogging (yes, I even did a little blogging for Oracle some time ago).

I've been using my blog partly as a way to ramble on without boring people around me to tears. "Mom, haven't you talked about recycling blue jeans enough for today?" The nice thing about blog articles is that if they bore you, you can skip to the next one! It's harder to tell your darling wife or best friend that you really don't care all that much about discharge dyeing, and would she please hush up for a while?

The blog is certainly useful as a reference work, both for me and others. If somebody wants to know how I did some project with the elementary school or the middle school, I can give them the URL, and they can come back to me if they have further questions. It helps both sides. For me, it serves as a reminder of how I did something before. It's useful to have a place to "dump my brain" so I don't have to worry about remembering details in my head a couple years later.

I hadn't expected that my dog Lacey would be such an important part of my blog. She's a smart little dog, though, and it didn't take her long to figure that when the camera came out, posing cutely was a good way of getting attention and treats! Yes, yes, you'll get your Lacey pictures at the end of this article...

The Rental House Remodeling Project

I spent pretty much all Summer and Fall remodeling my rental house (with the help of a really good contractor) for my father-in-law. I was pretty happy with how that project came out, including the fireplace cover.

The Jeans Circle Quilt from Some-Very-Warm-Place-Far-Below-My-Feet

I've written about the jeans circle quilt multiple times already, and it looks like I will have to write updates about it a couple more times before it's finished. I'm still working on it, but I stab myself with all those pins so frequently that it provides pretty strong negative reinforcement! I tend to let my fingers heal before I try tackling it again. It's also so big that it takes a lot of physical effort to muscle it through the machine. It's in three long pieces (queen sized), but if I ever do one of these again I'd do it in much smaller blocks.

I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, but I am making one this year: I will finish my jeans circle quilt (at least by the end of 2010). Sometimes it's all in how you word them.

Tie-Dye

Interestingly, I haven't done much tie-dye of my own lately, though I've helped hundreds of other people do tie-dye over the year, and I expect to keep doing that. Beyond individual projects like the couch and the silk scarf dress, there are really only so many tie-dyed t-shirts, socks and such that one family can wear! I'm not into serious production so much as I'm into experimentation, so selling at craft fairs or similar isn't really of interest. Etsy and eBay aren't really good outlets for tie-dye, though perhaps I didn't try hard enough to build a market there.

I was really excited to get my own page on the Featured Artists section of Dharma's website several months ago. That section is a terrific source to both give and receive inspiration for what one can do with textiles and color!

Teaching and running tie-dye events have been great, though. I did tie-dye at an elementary school and a middle school, two summer camps and family camp, some small parties and some private lessons, and a corporate activity for a group at Google. I already have plans for more events this coming year.

Leather Is the Latest Hobby

I wrote recently that I've started doing leather tooling. Besides collecting a multitude of tools and supplies that are joining the tie-dye stuff spilling out of the craft room, I've been making belts since my last post. I'm now working on my third belt (I'll write up the belts when I finish the current belt). My kids are enjoying doing this hobby with me, and my older daughter especially is getting quite good at it. "Quality Time With Family" is a good justification for an expensive new hobby, right?

Lacey Resolves to Keep Appearing in My Blog

Lacey is cute, and she knows it. It's her key to survival, since she gets places she shouldn't and sheds on everything! I'm currently trying to sort all of my white stuff for tie-dye since I'm back to trying to fit everything in my craft room. I made the mistake of putting a big bin of soft, fluffy, clean white towels (that I'm intending to tie-dye eventually) on the couch. I later found her nestled in right on top!


Aaaah, very comfy. She's quite a princess. I wonder if she would notice if I put a pea underneath some of those layers of towels?


"Don't even think about it!"


"Do I really have to get up?"


Oh well, I'll have to wash the towels again anyhow after I dye them.


"Happy New Year, and May It Be Full of Treats!"

Painting Fire

One of my favorite hobbies has nothing to do with textiles, but everything to do with color. In one of my other lives, I'm a scenic artist for a local Gilbert & Sullivan theater company, the Stanford Savoyards. I enjoy painting fantasy worlds for fairies ("Iolanthe"), Venetian gondolas and mythical kingdoms ("Gondoliers"), and so on.

The main drawback to painting theater sets is their impermanence. Once the show is over, set pieces often get dumpstered, or they go back to the shop and usually get painted over for the next show. Even though a piece has had 40 hours of detailed painting work, if it isn't generic enough to use again, out it goes. I once painted a Yosemite scene for the mythical kingdom of Barataria, and I was really proud of it. But the curtain was barely closed before that one got recoated. I painted an eight-foot-high picture of the Hindu deity Ganesha for our "Bollywood Sorcerer", complete with many symbolic details. During the build for the next show, we held a small goodbye ceremony before He was painted over.


Opportunities to paint fun but permanent scenery outside of the theater are limited. Once in a while a mural comes along, but not often, and people pretty much line up for those. As for painting the walls in my house (if I could even find them), their very permanence is paralyzing, and they stay white. Besides, my kids would complain if I painted on the walls and didn't let them do so too! But once in a while, I can make an opportunity.

A Place

My father-in-law will be living in the house I am remodeling, and he doesn't plan to use the fireplace (this is California, after all). The fireplace isn't particularly pretty, and it lets in a wicked draft, even if all the doohickeys are properly closed. So I got somebody to make me a fireplace cover out of plywood to fit snugly over the opening.

What to paint on the fireplace cover? A fireplace with a fire in it, of course! Not terribly original, perhaps, but fun to paint, and that's what I care about.

Painting

"I see a fireplace and I want to paint it black..." This is the plywood cover. It looked a little blah completely unpainted, so I started by painting it black with a little grey highlighting around the edges.

Years of painting in the Stanford Savoyards set crew have made their mark--I love blue masking tape!

Now I'm starting to put the bricks on with a natural sponge. I mix colors right on the sponge. A little water helps to blend the colors more.

Here I've removed the mortar-masking tape, but I save it for covering sections later. Time to tweak the mortar colors bit by bit. At this point a couple people do a doubletake as they wonder why I'm putting blue tape on the fireplace! I'm still having various contractors wandering through finishing up on the remodeling.

Time to light the fire...

A couple hours later, it's looking good enough to call it "done"--of course, now that I'm looking at the photo, I see things I want to go back and fix! ("Sara, step AWAY from the paints!")

Now I've put back the real fireplace screen we've had there for years. The whole thing took me somewhere between 8 and 10 hours. This is for my father-in-law's house, and now I'm thinking my house needs one too. Of course, first I'd have to FIND our fireplace! It's behind some huge shelves full of kids' craft supplies. Maybe another time...


I'd say that fire is a good start on a housewarming!

Just White, Please

I'm deep in the middle of a house remodel. Once again I'm awestruck by the myriad of big and little choices one makes even for a "minor" change.

For example, I'm replacing the handles on the kitchen cabinets. Happily, the size of the handle is fixed, since the existing handles have screw holes 3 inches apart (the centers). Phew, one big decision out of the way! But now, do I want the chrome, bronze, stainless, brushed nickel, wrought iron, or plastic finish? Modern, traditional, funky? What design out of hundreds, even thousands of possibilities? How much do I want to pay? And how many stores do I visit to find just the right ones? And will they have enough of the prized handles of choice in stock, or will I have to order them and wait?

The whole house is ripe with promise and infinite possibilities. We're doing two bathrooms and three bedrooms, along with "minor" changes such as new carpeting throughout the rest of the house. Some of those possibilities can be reined in a bit by a few factors. Money is always the biggest factor, of course. Existing architecture plays a part, since the house is a "Mid-Century Modern" house lovingly known as an "Eichler" (the developer's name was Joseph Eichler). It's got post-and-beam construction and floor-to-ceiling glass. This is the San Francisco Bay area, and the house was built to luxuriate in warm California weather well before the energy crisis. It's got straight clean lines, not suited to Victorian frippery or Colonial whatsits. Let's just say that a Mondrian painting would look right at home here, or maybe a minimalist Zen garden. Anyway, that cuts out a lot of choices right there--unfortunately many of the choices currently in style for bathroom vanities!

But what I've really been thinking about is color. I'm in love with color, and lots of it (yes, the tie-dye obsession is kind of a hint). But when it comes to a house interior, well, I tend to gravitate towards white. White walls, maybe with a darker carpet that won't show so much of the dirt (gotta be practical, after all). White walls make a wonderful backdrop for the adornments of color that I put up on those walls.

I have friends who have a house they have painted all sorts of wonderful rich luscious colors, and I love it, but I can't do it myself. For one thing, while I know it doesn't have to be, I tend to view paint as permanent, rather than something I can change when the whim takes me (mostly because it would be yet another project I'd never finish). For me, paint is a commitment. Also, if I give in to painting different rooms different colors, it opens up an even bigger infinity of choices to make, and I become paralyzed and unable to choose anything. And what if I choose and I'm wrong? I'm committed to that color for life. Actually, my friends painted their livingroom a color that turned out to be more of a butter yellow than they had expected. They decided they hated it, and then they painted it again to a more pleasing gold color. I'm in awe that they could do that--I can't.

So I choose white. The contractor asks what color I want the windows: white. Well, actually it's almond. The sink? White. Well, actually it's biscuit. The bathtub? White. Well, actually it's... oh, Kohler says the tub is white. But their white looks a little more blue than the white of the white vanity top I see. And paint? Kelly-Moore alone has an entire brochure just of their "white" paint colors, and it only includes their "popular" whites! Do I want warm whites? Cool whites? Neutral whites? Bright whites? Dark whites?

Maybe I should head for bed and dream of a world that comes in just black and white. But would that be midnight black? Stormy black? Black hole black? Black black? "We're not kidding, we really mean it, this is black" black?

Ooooh, my head hurts.