We used to live in Atlanta and now we don't. I think of that on days when it gets over 80 degrees and I feel unable to do anything outdoors or in. Tonight it isn't even that hot, just, slow and summer stalled.

I was eating strawberries when I realised they would make prints. I ate more strawberries.

There are other things I oughtta be doing, I suppose. Writing the stories in my head. Reading works of major or minor literary import. Mourning pop stars. Making pop corn. I don't know.
I'll just make another strawberry print.


If I had greater ambitions I would make a dress form using the paper tape I have up in my studio but have never used. I would apply to the Artists Market at the public market.

I really should say more about the public art project planning meeting I went to the other day. Ok I will, but not tonight.

Rachael

(cue the Ramones to play Needles and Pins)

I'm pretty sure I've called a dozen of these blog entries "needles and pins" but then again, my today-off was about acupunture and sewing and so it seems fitting (unlike the garments I've made recently which seem un-fitting, but close).

My acupuncture treatments and my obsessive straight stitching of ill-fitting tops and bottoms are helping. Each needle, each thread, each relaxed moment of pre-occupation has me not thinking about all the stuff we cannot control in this world-- from the safety of our loved ones to the longevity of the planet. Sure, sure, we can try but...

Better, for me, at least, is to trust the needles and continue to explore the every expanding world-o-sewing... my two favorites today.

There are the sewing divas and their layers of knowledge, ideas and couture-tricks. Prompts me to think I could maybe even make something that fits!

And if I do, I will endlessly walk down the street and hope someone takes my picture. But for all the photographers in Rochester, it isn't the same as watching fashionable strangers walk by on The Sartorialist. Lovely.

take care, troublemakers,
Rachael

In Montreal they've just opened a show of the work of Frederic Back, whose life of images, stories and activism inspire. Explore more here and should I succeed in getting myself to Montreal to see this show, I will tell more.

Even so, I'm inspired right here and now. More so, because I realize that this drawing thing is also a connecting thing.

Last night we had an Open House at work where about 90 fantastic people came around to find out more about our art classes. They included a bunch of recent retirees wondering how to begin or begin again at drawing. It's pretty thrilling to tell people the truth as I've seen it; those who begin to draw later in life come to the lines they make with so much life experience, so much honesty and history, that once they get past the stumbles they break quickly to a stride. One thing to know how to draw as a mazillion recent art school grads do, but it's quite another to have something to say.

I'm off to draw...
take care,
Rachael

Somewhere in the middle of the night last night as I was reading random women's blogs about sewing (see the feed dog or angry chicken), I stopped with a shock and realized that I used to keep a blog. The effect was somewhat like what happened when I tried to document my new skirt but slipped.




Slippery thoughts about what and why I write when and where and what I have not been telling started to overwhelm me. Somewhere in the past few months, I got myself obsessed with sewing. My bobbin ran out of thread just now and instead of re-loading, I paused, looked around and decided that it is indeed worth a few words and pictures in semi-coherent order. I oughta reflect on how sewing in saving my sanity, how learning to follow directions has been good for me, how it feels important somehow to be wrapped up in a global movement to re-learn how to make clothing and community.



It's a day later and I'm a little more resolved even. First, to show off the skirt (pictures don't show the awkward way it drapes or the wonky back zipper but that's alright by me). And secondly to claim that I will not stop blogging. Or at least I'll try not to. Who am I to suddenly stop blogging while the rest of the planet continues to twitter themselves into a frenzy?



Oh yea, and thirdly, to finish some of my projects and use this fabulous fabric for something other than decorating my bookshelf.


thanks for listening!
Rachael

Yesterday we went to a state park to walk around and watch about fifteen balloons lift into the air. I can't tell you what was more magical, the color and scale, effortlessness of these big graceful balloons or the calm, comfortable, crowd that watched and cheered.

When I was kid we would go every year to the balloon festival in my town, walk around in the early morning cold of the airfield and watch as they floated away. They floated around that sleepy little town as we chased them on our bikes.



I snapped a couple of quick pictures of the balloons as they were being filled with air. The photos may not inspire anyone but me. But now, again, I'm ten years old, looking up into the bright blue sky and peddling as fast as I can to chase down those huge, wonderful things.

That's all really.
Take care,
Rachael