Shmata and Boro

  Here's a blog post that maybe didn't get posted back when I wrote it.   I'm going to hit "Publish" and see what happens. I am so un-tech. Sigh...


   Greetings one and all. It occurs to me, as I examine the above photo taken a few minutes ago that without my lovely layers of clothing I only look half as big. But I like my clothes and am unlikely to join the ranks of spandex wearers just to appear slimmer.      This particular pinny is from 'Ember (*waves-Hi Ember!-*) who is apparently rather taller than I, so it was necessary to shorten it. (This is the story of my entire short-legged life.) For several months I have toyed with the idea of dying it purple, to make it a little more smut-hiding, but haven't decided whether or not to go ahead with it, as it is so charming just as it is. I try not to do messy things in it. Most likely I will dye it after I spill something dreadful on it. Until then I can enjoy its sweetness.

  I was thinking the other day that Shmata-Boro is an odd blog name and perhaps I might explain it.

 Shmata is Yiddish for rags.  Boro is Japanese for rags.  Back before I met the Manimal and moved to the middle of the forest I had joined a synagogue and was studying for conversion to Judaism and studying Yiddish at university. I also was doing some freelance work for an artist doing sewing on indigo dyed Japanese style doorway hangings. (Rowland Ricketts and his wife Chinami, Google them, their work is amazing.)  Consequently my head was full of Yiddish and Japanese terms and as my home life and artistic life is pretty much rag oriented I called the blog Shmata Boro.

    My dear Manimal is hard on clothes. That is what is known as an understatement. When we first became "an item" I took it upon myself to mend his tatty jeans. I quickly found we were kindred spirits in this way: we neither one believe a patch shouldn't look like it's there.  So I patched his jeans in an unhidden way.  This kept them out of the rag bag and in active circulation, so they got more and more worn places which each got patched in their turn.

 Over a few months they became less like jeans and more like a little walking art gallery.

 Which is enormous fun for me, but unlikely to make me a fortune as an artist.

 Happily money and I have a comfortable relationship, It arrives when I need it and I am usually not too freaked out if I don't have any. So becoming a rich and famous artist is not my top priority. I think I have one of those art-for-art's sake mentalities. Or perhaps I am just a gifted slacker.

When the Manimal's favorite shirt began to come apart I was called in with my scrap basket to make a rescue attempt.  As I wasn't keen on this particular shirt I didn't bother looking for matching scraps to mend with, which would have been impossible. I patched it with scraps from doll clothes making. I "knew" it was no longer worthy of public display and he'd only be wearing it here in the valley to chop wood and garden in.  Boy oh boy was I ever wrong about that. He quite happily wears it to work.
Also this one, which has bits of cottons from a good forty years of sewing projects:

Now here is a puzzlement. 

 I have been wearing my plain dresses ever since I made them in the summer of 2007.   So far not one of them has needed a single patch. They are less bright in color than they were nearly six years ago, but they have not worn out.  Why is this?  The dresses are made of plaid homespun from India. Good stuff, but not something fancy or expensive. I did not expect them to last this long. 

The Manimal's jeans are denim, which is supposedly very strong, right? The light blue shirt is a denim-like twill, also seemingly very sturdy cloth. All I can think of is the difference in care.

 When I came out to the valley I brought a bag of clothespins a reel of good sturdy clothesline,and began tying clotheslines to the trees and porch posts.  Until then the Manimal's laundry was all tossed in the washer with commercial detergent, then tossed into the dryer. He still does it this way if I'm not around.  It's quick and efficient. 

        I've always washed my dresses with homemade soap and hung my them up to dry. I've even put lines up in the loft to hang my clothes in bad weather, and I've got sturdy wooden clothes racks that  can sit nicely in front of the woodstove for quicker drying.

Are modern detergents and clothes dryers really THAT BAD for clothes? It certainly looks like it.

Lest you think I spend all my time mending, awhile back I made some petticoats, with tucks in the bottom to make my skirts stand out a bit more. Not stand out for "fashion", but rather stand out enough to keep my skirts from wrapping around my legs.

 It was a thrifty project, as I made both from a sheet that was here at the house. The Manimal has no rememberance of where the sheet originated, but it had some paint on it and seemed like something no one would miss so I repurposed it. The paint doesn't bother me or the Manimal, and no one else is likely to be seeing me in my petticoat.

I've done a bit of what I call Extreme Mending the last few weeks. The first full sized quilt I ever made was on its last legs, so the scrap basket was call upon for help.

The blue flowers, upper left corner, are from Grandma Pat's bed comforter. Bright turquoise left center from a smock I made in high school (which caused highly dubous rumors I might be preggers, haha.) Pink and white stripe, doll clothes Grandma made in the 50's. Blue and pink stripes at bottom, grandpa shirt and also some of it became Middle Child's quilt binding.

 Pink plaid, center, another of Grandma Pat's comforters. Black plaids from a skirt I shortened. Beige and goldish odd print with squares in it was from Grandma's square dancing skirt which she wore when I was four years old, and which I adopted and frequently wore in high school. Yes, I wore a mid-calf length very full gathered square dancing skirt whilst my trendy classmates were wearing mini skirts and hot pants. Never have given a flying fig what anyone else thinks of what I wear. Had a wonderful grey cashmere full length coat from the 40's too.

Stitching is my passion, or as close to a passion as I've got (I'm a fairly calm person.) Pehaps amusement is a better word.  Occasionally I even sew something that isn't tattered and isn't from old scraps.

 That Blog header up above of the markers,crayons and drawn fabrics is a bit of my craftsy amusement. I am guilty of being a life-long poppet maker. I began in first grade, drawing paper dollies for my classmates, complete with clothes and wee paper sleepingbags to slide them into.  I've been making and/or dressing dolls of one sort or another ever since. Here's a small rag doll I've drawn and stitched up this week.

She came together nicely I think.

Here she's getting some straps for her pinny.

And of course she must have pockets, a pinny is useless without pockets.

Voila! La Belle du Crayone et Boro.

She is much appreciated by our old freind Tatty Quilt Bear, who gets far too little attention.

Bunny and Little Head are glad of a new friend too. Bunny was drawn and stitched like La Belle. Little Head began his current life as a little china head we dug up in the garden in Vincennes. Or was it Loogootee?

 As we never found any more of him it was necessary to make him a new body from Grandpa Dick's old work shirt. He's quite posh now, and a bit smug. He feels it necessary to frequently point out to the others that he "has a history" (although he doesn't quite remember what that history might be.)

Next on our horizon: Some sort of Bear-Fox-Raccoon hybrid.

And quite possibly an end of season snowman, if I can get the carrot part to come out right.

Well there you have it, an explanation of the odd blog name and more scraps than you thought you'd see in one day.  <3

Thankful Thursday

           Ten Thankfuls

                   -or-

Faaaaarm Livin' Is The Life For Me !

        As I work on various stitchy projects I've been watching Green Acres on Youtube. Hand needlework and high-tech entertainment. Let's call it Rural Life for Primitive Moderns.

     I fearlessly (or heedlessly) left the big city to embrace this down-home life with The Manimal (who assures me the only way he'll ever leave this place is when 'they' come to carry him out feet first). It is only natural that I heartily identify with the perpetually lovely Lisa Douglas.

    (Although  with my age and unerring fashion sense I fear I look a bit more like Mrs. Ziffel).

     At any rate, this feels like a good day to list some thankfuls related to the miriad joys of living in the approximate middle of nowhere.

1-I am thankful that there are seventeen acres here for our dogs to run free. Also the cats, who love to chase small wild critters but usually don't catch them.  I tried to get you a picture of Pandy running free in a countrified manner, but all I got was a blur. Here he is contemplating his freedom in a countrified manner.

2-I am thankful for three creeks we can wade in when it is wet, and also thankful that in the heat of  late summer when the creeks dry up we can collect the geodes that wash down from the hills.

3-I am thankful for a good woodstove to keep us warm and a forest full of good firewood.

Here's about a week's worth of home-grown comfort.  We've almost got enough wood cut and stacked to get us through the winter, and there are enough standing dead trees for several more years that we will cut and split as we need them.

4-I am thankful for clotheslines and clothespins and the fresh-off-the-line smell of sun-dried sheets. But I'm also thankful for the electric dryer which does a great job of removing dog hair. Cat hair. Rabbit hair. Tiny baby chick fluff.  Sawdust. Our lint trap gets a good workout.

5-I am thankful for the forest around us, and that the gravel road to our house is almost impassable, and that the blacktop road is half a mile up the winding and steep gravel road.  I'm thankful the highway is a mile further up the blacktop road, and towns are twelve to fifteen winding and hilly miles further. I'm thankful the only neighbors further down this dead-end road are gone to work in town all day everyday.  All of this creates a level of privacy unknown in town.
Pesky things like rules about proper neckties and matching shoes and handbag do not apply here at all.
 Clothing can be optional here when the weather is good.
 Teeheehee.

                                         (Thank me for not posting a picture here.)

6-I am thankful for bonfires, and that we can have them here any old time we want. I do like burninating the countryside. I need to learn to make vegan marshmallows for our bonfires. Yum.

7-I am thankful the deer, coyotes and wild turkeys drop by often to entertain us. I especially love it when the coyotes (there are at least ten) sing together up on the ridge at night, their voices are hauntingly beautiful.

8-I am thankful that no project is vetoed here on the grounds of "we don't have enough room to do that."  Anything can be done-made-fixed outside, where space is unlimited.  Inside any room can become a workroom as needed. We are not of a nature to fret about sawdust on the kitchen floor or paint splashes on the bathroom sink. A jar of paintbrushes is in permanent residence right next to the kitchen sink and two chainsaws rest just outside the front door, a step away from my big ol' bucket of walnut dye. Creativity Central, that's what.
       I'm extra thankful for my regular studio space in the loft where I can look out the windows at the forest on three sides and down into the livingroom on the fourth side. It's a dandy place to "go to work" each day.

Why two sewing machines in the studio? Because the Viking is in the closet and the treadle machine is downstairs. Of course.

The quilt I promise to finish one of these days. A longstanding work in progress. It is amazing the amount of sewing I get done that is NOT on this quilt.

Comfy craftiness everywhere. The little sewing table in the lower right belonged to Grandma Pat. I lusted after it from childhood onward, but it never occurred to me that someday I would inherit it. 

9-I am thankful for the cheerful white schoolbus in our driveway that will someday be a rolling home.

We got all the seats stripped (very hard on the fingers) and have half of the seat frames out.  The remaining half have bolts so rusted we'll have to cut them out with an angle grinder. This makes a very satisfying display of dangerous looking sparks, which makes us feel like we're DYI superheros.

As you can see to the right, there's a vintage travel trailer we're working on too. I've got the 18 cabinet doors painted in shades of blue and green. There's some water damage inside from  a leak on one edge, so we need to do a bit of  interior wall replacement in that spot before I can continue decorating.

 Someday we'd like to have a fleet of these little trailers as guest cottages, Tres chic, no? I think of them as miniature interior decorating projects and there's nothing I like more than nest building!

10-I am thankful for scraps. Scraps of cloth, of paper, of wood and metal, extra things and leftover things and used up things just waiting to be re-used in some way.  It is said that God created the universe out of chaos.  Occasionally I get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of STUFF we have here. That is a good time to remind myself  that chaos is just material waiting to be used creatively.

Here's a patchwork bottle I'm working on for my future Etsy shop. Water bottles are a modern fact of life, but I hate for my water to taste like plastic, and am not much more keen on having it taste like metal. Water carried in glass tastes best to me. 

 In a vintage household hints book I read that mommies should slip a little sock over baby's bottle (always glass in those days) so that if  (when!) baby drops the bottle  and if it breaks the broken glass will be neatly contained in the sock. Safety first, plus easy clean up. 

 As a grown up artsy version of this handy tip I've started crafting bottles covered in hand-stitched patchwork. If you drop and break your water bottle the glass won't fly everywhere. Of course the patchwork gives a bit of cushioning which makes the glass less likely to break when dropped, and the cloth covering also makes the bottle less slippery so you're less likely to drop it. Win-win-win.

There Ya Go.  Ten Thankfuls on this sunny crips Thursday.  Ze Life She iss Good!