Harika

Last night I interrupted the making of roasted pumpkin and carrot soup (with coconut milk, onions and garlic, in case you are interested...) to check my email and found my very first official rejection letter for a story I wrote. These days things happen so quickly that I have little time to actually react before I jump to the next thing, like making sure the navy beans in the pressure cooker didn't explode while Topi and Lina take turns putting tiny balls of play-doh under everything, but I did actually think a few things that came rapidly: oh, okay, and wow, they actually sent a response instead of letting it disappear in the void (or spam). And then, I felt it was official. I've finally joined the ranks of other writers because I've officially been rejected. This is great! Now I only need like ten more rejections and then I'll start to think I'm getting somewhere.

 

Turkish fabric - edgy florals

So far has been a week of some doors closing and others opening (though I'm still kind of waiting for the green light somewhere) in many ways, and just when I think I can get away from some kind of shift in the universe making each and every hour a taxing test of my patience, I find little reminders that it's not over yet. So bodes this week. In the meantime I'm reading French Women Don't Get Fat thanks to Tara who lent it to me after a wonderful Sunday brunch at her house and employing all my best procrastination techniques to avoid doing whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing this week. Getting Things Done was not in the weekly forecast.

Over at IC, I wrote last week about the editing process for artists and designers. While writing it, it gave me an opportunity to see just how I work and why. I'd say I'm in step 8 of my own list, going back to work and examining all the possibilities of what could be new projects. In my opinion, this is the most uncomfortable stage. All the previous projects are done, the clean up is finished and now it's time to focus on something new. Like my toddler's birthday bash in an hour... 20 toddlers and cake, oh my.

*Harika means amazing, fabulous, splendid...

Home

I've recovered two of my very first, badly made stitching projects from my childhood home. One I write about here, or hint at, rather. It's a stitching of a pink rabbit I probably started when I was between 8 to 10 years old that I never finished, and for the fun of it thought I would not only finish now at age 30, but also turn into Lina's birth record. I'm nearly done, but keep finding some reason not to finish it just yet. I wonder if it being 22-years old and sentimental has anything to do with it.


The second is of this little house, still in the aqua blue plastic hoop from when I dropped this project, probably around the same age. I think it must have come before the pink rabbit because my stitching is atrocious. The back-side of it is a maze of sad, confused and knotted yarn, all the strands wrapped around each other in an attempt to get somewhere else. I don't remember who helped me with this piece. I learned from a few different people, including my Grandma Schueller, our lovely elderly neighbor Evelyn Sveum across the ridge (we lived in a valley, and our nearest neighbors were on actual hilly ridges), or my babysitter. I certainly know it wasn't my mother because she had died when I was six. I have a framed "My Sampler of Stitches" that my mom made when she was 10 and it hangs now in my hallway here, after being stuck in a box for four years.

The needle

But whoever is responsible for teaching me let me use an extremely large needle for this small project! No wonder I had anxious decision making about where to put it and how to pull it through the fabric. Or maybe I had picked the needle myself, thinking that the bigger, sharper, and more deadly the needle, the better. Regardless, sadly, I let this one remain unfinished. Unlike the pink bunny, there is no resuscitation for this ugly little house. I'm thinking I'll just take off the hoop, hand-clean it and iron it and then frame it. Why frame it? It's ugly in a cute way, I guess, and I'm going through a phase where I like to frame everything. I've framed a lot of cross-stitching in the last year or so, like this, this, and this, and more. The problem is that our walls are concrete and it is impossible to nail and/or drill through them. So they act as props, or I rotate them. But framing a stitching somehow elevates it, kitsch-ifies it, and gives it more proper attention than stored away, don't you think?

Ruthie clutch

Super adorable Ruthie Clutch from Anna Maria Horner. I always skip to her blog posts in my reader because of the gorgeous photography, and wonderful storytelling about her life and family.