Felt is... felty

I have a love-hate relationship with felt. It's easy to cut out, easy to work with, simple to embroider, doesn't require being seamed... And it's plastic. Yes, even the wool felt is mostly plastic. But I've had a thing for working with it lately, so there it is. I saw these lovely wreaths and garlands constructed with felt leaves, and well... I had to. Frankly I needed something to do during holiday parties, and embroidering felt leaves was it. But then I had to figure out what to DO with them. In the end, I got the best result by gluing the leaves to stems of floral wire and then twisting the wires together into a long garland.

White Christmas...

Since the end of the quarter I've been hyper-focusing on cutting snowflakes. Why? I'm not even sure. I mean, my kiddo wanted a white Christmas, but I don't think this is what she meant. FWIW, I made most of these from readings (for homework) that I downloaded.

Article: Uncomfortable Truths About the ADHD Nervous System

ADHD is tough to live with. I often feel like my brain is constantly running away from me. And when I'm not medicated? The anxiety is crippling. Everything is overwhelming. As I sit here typing this, I have the TV on in the background, and my feet are wiggling and twisting. I should be writing a term paper -- instead, I've looked at Best Buy for a new laptop and what is the difference between an Intel i7 and an AMD a12? Oh and E wanted those markers -- I should add those to her Amazon wish list. And while I'm there I wonder if there's anything D would like for Christmas. He's got a list, too. And R needs new pants. Did I see an email about a sale at Old Navy? I should check that out. Damn it, the cat is trying to hack up a hairball -- not on the carpet, Katy! Shit, I never called that one guy back, I need to remember to do that tomorrow. Well crap, it's time for bed already. This is what it's like inside my head, all day long. My thoughts jump around like -- well, like frogs on crack. And while I was searching for "frogs on crack" I found this compilation of animals making goofy noises. I never knew that hedgehogs squeaked. So yeah, if you are ever wondering why I never got back to you about coffee or that thing I promised to do for you, it's because my meds wore off and my brain wandered off and got lost.

Chronic Fatigue

I wrote this awhile ago about Chronic Fatigue. The funny thing is, I wrote it and then... Forgot. I found it several weeks later on my cloud. Chronic fatigue is not something that you choose. It’s something that happens to you, like a major car accident, or cancer. You can’t wish yourself well — no amount of “manifesting” will make it go away. If you’re lucky, you discover the underlying cause and treat it. But for most of us, we will never know why we suffer. And suffer we do. I am less affected than others — chronic fatigue can be worse than the side effects from chemo — but some days, weeks, months, are worse than others. Chronic fatigue is waking up more tired than you went to sleep. It is grinding exhaustion, a kind of bone-tired that most people never experience. It is calculating whether you have enough energy to climb the stairs more than once a day, it is never going outside the house for days at a time, it is lying down after taking a shower because you’re worn out and can’t get dressed. Chronic fatigue robs you of fun, steals your joy, tramples you under the hooves of a thousand hordes and then asks you to cook dinner and do the dishes as if nothing had happened. There is nothing good about chronic fatigue.

Anon(ymous)

In March, my kiddo's school asked me to take care of the props and costumes for the school play. The play was Anon(ymous) by Naomi Iizuka. I had SO MUCH fun! And the kids were awesome.

Below: meat grinder, in progress. (I don't have a pic of the completed version, but it was quite gory.)

This was the "sausage" that had to be eaten onstage. (It's actually watermelon with brown food coloring. Pretty realistic, no?)

In another scene there's a character who eats super hot chilies. I made these out of white chocolate with red food coloring and a candy mold.

Several scenes take place in a sweatshop. This was a challenge: where would we get six or eight sewing machines? In the end I decided I had to make them. I took my inspiration from this tutorial here. I think they came out pretty well.

This is what they looked like onstage.

The "thread cones" I made to go with the machines. I spray painted disposable plastic cups primer grey, then used spray adhesive and wrapped on the twine. After I took this pic, I made "thread guides" by cutting wire coat hangers and sticking them through the top of the cups. They had a tendency to droop over, so I cut rounds of cardboard to fit in the base of each cup and stabilize the "thread guide".

Multi-Year Project

Two years ago I started working on this table. I can only work on it summers when we head to the house in CA. I don’t think I have any “before” pictures... My grandmother made the original version. She used resin to glue tumbled glass to the plexiglass panels. Over time (a lot of time), the resin became yellow and brittle, and a lot of the glass had fallen off. The table needed an upgrade, but how? Mom and I spent years (literal years) figuring out how to proceed, and decided to start with new plexiglass. The pieces were custom cut for us. Then I worked on scraping the glass off the old panels and ended up with a lot of bandaids on my fingers. Using silicone (clear, for bathroom, tub, and tile) I started gluing down the glass I'd been able to scrape off the old table.

That first year, I only finished one middle and one end piece of the table before I ran out of material. I needed a LOT more glass. But I didn't have a glass tumbler, and I had no luck turning one up from friends and neighbors. So that year went by, and my mother was in a bad car accident in April, so I didn't work on the table at all that next summer.

But after we got home we finally managed to borrow a rock tumbler, and then -- miraculously! -- I managed to acquire a second one. I ran the rock tumblers day and night for months and made a whole shoe box full of "sea" glass. Which still wasn't nearly enough.

But, wait! Where do we get our glass?

Dark blue is Skyy vodka, a certain brand of (terrible) prosecco, a vase I found at the thrift store for $3, and a bottle of mineral water.
Green comes from beer bottles (Clausthaler near-beer) and certain red wine bottles (not the brownish green, the lighter green), and an olive oil bottle. Light blue is Bombay Sapphire gin.
Clear, well, clear glass bottles are found anywhere and everywhere -- white wine, "pink" wine (rose), vodka, gin, sparkling water...

You may be wondering how I'm doing. My liver is just fine, thank you. Yes, we're drinkers, but we've had a lot of help from family and friends. And I can be pretty persuasive about getting people to save bottles for me.

Above: These are the sections I finished the first year.

Above: My process takes over a big section of the table.

My glass

In process -- It's flipped upside down so I can work on it. I use a dry erase marker to sketch out my design on the top before I flip it over and start sticking glass to the bottom.

This is how I left it after this summer. Only one and a half panels to go!

Welp. Here it is.

I've been threatening discussing starting a blog about my random projects and snippets of my life. And here it is! It's going to be every bit as weird and distracted as I am...

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