A Lot Can Happen in a Month...

...and so it has.  SO much stuff has hit the proverbial fan, that I almost don't know where to begin.  If you're here, though, it means you're either my mom (hi Mom!) or you got here from my website, in which case you may know some of the story already.

Since I last posted, our entire little world here has been turned upside-down.  My husband of almost 30 years has been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.  He started feeling yuck at the end of April, as he does every year, and went to his doctor and got put on antibiotics for "that bronchial thing" as he does every year.  However, this time they did not work and he just got worse and worse, until he went to his pulmonologist, who ordered a CT scan.  And to make a long story with a lot of tests and a 10-day hospital stay short, that resulted in his diagnosis.

I can't say enough about our fantastic family and friends.  You hear catch phrases like "support system" so many times that they sound trite and lose meaning in and of themselves.  But to have one is just such a blessing.  Not only our family and close friends, though; friends we haven't seen for years.  Customers I barely know.  My landlady at the store.  My pharmacist. My mother's pharmacist. The guys at the garage who fix our cars.  The guy at the hardware store.    Just everyone is pulling for him, and of course they all have been through this or something like it or know someone who has.

Our son is here.  It was not in his plans to move back to RI, but circumstances other than his father's illness combined to make the decision for him.  It's funny how things work like that. And his job situation worked out just fine too, enabling him to go right from one coast to the next in the same company without missing any time at all.  My sister came back for a visit too, coincidentally just days before Preston had to go to the hospital.  I literally don't know what I would have done without her.  Sure someone else could have kept Mom company and fed and talked to our dog, but that's thankfully not how it worked out.

So life has been one doctor's visit after another, radiation treatments (which are done now), chemo (which just started), questions to be answered, prescriptions to be filled, dietary needs to be considered, welcome visits from loving friends and family, and a little work in between, when there is time.  I have closed my store, and I'm just fine with that.  Whether or not I will re-open it and when is something I don't need to think about just now.

A Small, Small World

Yes indeed.  Even smaller is my world lately, the one in which I stay home almost all the time for reasons I'll get into maybe next time.  But while I'm here I really, really appreciate the window Preston and I decided to add to the east end of our house last fall while we had it all apart anyway.  Through it comes a great breeze, which in the late spring is much appreciated since the air in the house is so stale after the long winter and chilly early spring.  Also, through it I have lots of things to see, like this guy at my window feeder:

Sparky gave me the feeder earlier this year, but for some reason I've had only this chickadee and a pair of purple finches who stopped by a few times.  Probably because I sit right here and my movement freaks them out.  Also appearing in my backyard:

Bunnyrabbits.  I almost can't walk across the yard without practically tripping over rabbits this year!  Myah doesn't even really bother to chase them, and they know it.  Sometimes she makes a halfhearted attempt, but they are much too fast.
Speaking of small things, I did finish some of the molds I was painting:

I decided to make a set of three in baby colors, so there's a pink, a blue, and a yellow.  The outer ridge that you can't see is sage green.  Then when they were done, maybe because of the years of ceramics I took when I was in my late teens, they seemed to just BEG to be antiqued; blue seemed to be the color to go with, and I'm happy with the result. I sprayed them with acrylic sealer (these were NOT painted with the enamel paints, just regular acrylics), then mixed some blue with some grey and a little white, and thinned it out and voila, antiquing.  I have some started that are sunflowers, which I will antique with brown, and some that are red which I will antique with black; those are part of a larger project I've only just started, more on that later.
I have several large jobs to do which required me to purchase enormous amounts of fabric; while I was shopping, I decided it was time to replenish my stash of fabrics suitable for ribbon shirts so this happened:

Now all I have to do is find the time to actually make shirts.  They've sold really well this year, and I only have two left.  But first things first, got to catch up on the orders!
Nothing to report on the refinishing front, although I did finally finish a project 30 years in the making:

In my defense, it wasn't MY project; when my dad remodeled their bathroom all those years ago this was the last thing, these wood pieces and columns on the half-wall.  I'm not really sure why he never finished it, the spindles were in the closet and the two wood pieces have been sitting loose on top of the half wall ever since.  I guess he just moved on to other things.  I can understand that, that's probably where I got it from.  Anyway, I sanded, stained, and poly-ed, and Sparky was pretty happy to have it done!

The Refinishing Thing

 So I bought this nifty really old handmade sewing cabinet from Karen, who said her great-grandfather made it!  This is what I love to find, things that are handmade SO well that they've stood the test of time but have seen better days, and are just waiting for a little TLC!  My plan is to take the end pieces right down to bare wood and stain them, no small feat as it turns out because Karen's great-grandfather was apparently a man who loved the varnish.  A lot.  This is not something I normally do, it takes a lot of time and elbow grease, even with my trusty orbital sander, but I have a vision. The front and back lids I will paint.  Today I took it apart and sanded the lids and one end, which is all I could do before the mosquitos found me and I packed it in for the night.





After some consideration, I decided to leave the inside of the cabinet untouched (except for the insides of the lids).  It has a nifty little sliding compartment for holding miscellaneous doodads, which is very cool.  And of course the inside has not had the wear and tear that the outside has been subjected to over the years, so other than the fact that it won't go with the outside color-wise, it's in really good condition.  It'll be kind of a tribute to Karen's great-grandfather's craftsmanship, a little piece of history.

The hinges are currently soaking in hot water and OxyClean, which is just magical stuff.  I use it to get years of crud off old buttons, leaving them nice and clean even in the crevices.  I have no idea what color these hinges were originally, but at this point I'm thinking they'll end up flat black.  Maybe.  That's the plan at the moment, but in the immortal lyrics of Velvet Goldmine, Everything is Subject to Change.

Projects on Top of Projects

 Because that's the way I roll.  Seriously, if I could figure out how to roll ANY other way, my life would be so much simpler...and my house would be neater.  But I've tried, and it doesn't work for me at all.  A wide shot of this desk would show no less than 7 other projects in various stages of completion,  and behind me is the shelf I posted about last time which is temporarily stalled because I need paint.
I don't know what possessed me to drag these little molds out at this particular time, but here they are.  I have a bunch of assorted metalware accumulated, and have been pondering its fate in the back of my mind for a long time.  Went on Pinterest the other day to look for ideas, and found a LOT!  And a purpose for the paint I bought in a yard sale last year.  It's Folk Art acrylic, but it's the "Enamels" line; I figured maybe it's just a shiny finish or something; acrylic paint is acrylic paint, right?  WRONG.  When the manufacturer stated that either you bake it in the oven to cure it or wait 21 days for it to dry, they were not messing around.  I found that out when I used it to paint a skate which took literally months to not be tacky.  I don't have that kind of time.  I came really close to just getting rid of it, as most of the little stuff I paint wouldn't be suitable for putting in the oven, but wait!!!  Metal molds are.  So I'm going to bake these, and see what happens.  Stay tuned.











Meanwhile, I finished the lazy susan!  See, I do finish stuff sometimes.  It wasn't exactly the same as I had envisioned, but then very, very few of my projects come out the way I originally intend. Anyway, I was happy with it and someone else was, too, because within a week it was on layaway at the shop.

 Now that warmer weather is here and I no longer have to shell out the big bucks for the heating bill for the back of the building, the gift shop is open and I have designated the other little back room as "the baby room" and have filled it with little quilts, baby outfits, and Donna's adorable little knitted baby hats.  She's been knitting like a fiend, and brought me a bunch of new ones last week.  We had a great conversation about how addicting this all is, not only the making of stuff, but the hoarding of yarn (or fabric, or whatever your vice is) for those of us who are compelled by whatever demon/muse it is that makes us need to create.  I guess if you're going to have an addiction, this is a pretty harmless one.  Although just the other day Preston ventured into the basement where the dead furniture lays waiting to be reborn, and he shook his head sadly and said, "you just....have too many projects".

I can quit any time I want.

Ah Spring, in which we attempt to bring dead things back to life.

I have never in my life been so excited to see robins and daffodils.  And I know a lot of other local people share my relief from the NeverEnding Winter.  You have to  understand, I'm not generally a spring person.  I mean, it's a whole lot better than winter, but it's still cold, it's muddy, it rains a lot...I'm a fall person.  But right now I'm pretty sold on the awesomeness of spring.

And with spring comes the compulsion to paint stuff!  Yard sale season is upon us, and I still have not resurrected all the dead furniture and other treasures I accumulated last year.  Which I will have to get to quickly, before I start hauling stuff home again.  Up first this year is this lazy susan I rescued,

It was the ugly utilitarian mud-brown of whatever material it's made of; not wood although it's kid of wood-ish looking, more like some kid of really dense MDF.  I knew what I was going to do with it the moment I spotted it, which is not always the case. It had to have strawberries on it.  Coincidentally, I am in full strawberry mode at the moment, due to the fact that I acquired a bunch of strawberry-themed fabric in the Great Fabric Haul of 2013 and have been making the most of it.  On deck is a two-tiered shelf I picked up which someone decided should be dark brown, and not in a good way.  I had thought to make it white with some sort of red trim, but have decided to do it green and black with strawberries to match the lazy susan.

As soon as I dig myself out of the huge pile of satin and sequins known as Prom Season!  I have about a dozen gowns in the shop for altering, not counting the ones that have been picked up and those that are done and awaiting pickup.  Business as usual for April!

Hibernation....

....continues to sound like a really good idea.  TRYING to stay positive and active and productive, but the bear in me just wants to eat and sleep.  It's really been a tough winter, even the people I know who usually LOVE winter are like, "enough already".  But spring is in sight, won't be long now.  The other day Pam and AuntiePat and I were walking and most of the snow was gone and it was almost 60 out!!! We saw a whole crew of robins sucking worms out of the ground; two days later, it dropped back down to 20 degrees and it snowed.

I have been productive though.  The tailoring is caught up, and I've been making regalia like nobody's business.  Keeps my mind off the cold outside.  Inside, it's nice and warm.  Also I went to visit Sue, who lives two miles up the road and whom I haven't seen all winter.  She has been making all sorts of beautiful stuff, and I got all inspired looking through it. 

And I've been practicing the piano Preston got me.  After noodling around and pulling parts of songs out of the dusty, unused corners of my brain, I settled on my first actual project, which was the Eagles' "Wasted Time".  Such a beautiful song, sad but hopeful, and although I wouldn't call it "easy" by any means, it's a song I can actually pick apart and learn (because I don't read music, I play everything by ear).  Sometimes the piano gets lost in the background of songs and you can't really tell what's being played, but not this one.  Check it out.  So now that I've got the chords figured out on the piano, all that remains is to get both hands to work independently of each other, which is turning out to be the real challenge.  When you play guitar, not to minimize it, both of your hands are working to make the same note/chord.  On piano, they are both doing completely different things most of the time, so you have to train your brain for that. 

So while I keep going back to that, I've moved on to a new challenge:  Michael Nyman's "The Promise".  go and listen, and laugh all you want at my choices for beginner piano but it's coming along quite nicely thanks to YouTube tutorials.   I should mention, I guess, that I was not a complete stranger to the keyboard.  I took piano lessons when I was a kid, and we had an organ in the house that both of my parents played.  Still, I'm pretty pleased with myself!

Happy New Year....

...resolutions, new beginnings, blah blah blah.  Bah humbug right?  Don't mind me.  I never make new years' resolutions, because I know I won't keep them.  Instead, I am just doing what I do every year after the Christmas hubbub; diving right into what's next, balls to the wall.  And what's next for me is to get ready for what projects need to be done for spring; namely, the regalia (which i have started, isn't this a wild shade of pink?).  Also finishing the orders I have, which if I had any discipline at all would have been finished before I started the 8 ribbon shirts that are currently in progress.  Of course, if I had any discipline at all, I wouldn't have any problems with new years' resolutions.




So what I did on New Years' Day was to finally sand the boards that Preston cut for me several years ago for a display I designed for the store.  Unfortunately, I'm not a carpenter so the design had a couple of flaws, which I never resolved and so it never got finished. Looked ok on paper, but would not have worked in reality as my resident builder pointed out.  But I finally figured it out, and have been trying since last fall to get them sanded, stained, and poly-ed.  The problem is, it has to be a nice day AND I have to have the day off AND I have to not get sucked into someone else's project/have an afternoon of errands.  So that happened today, and even though it was a balmy 33 outside I sucked it up and sanded them.  Didn't get them stained, but that's ok...I can do that on a bad day or at night, whatever.