Turtle Trax Diary. October 30, 1997. Page #4
by Lucky Shie
Oops! I haven't written for almost a month! Happy Halloween!! (Almost didn't get in the mood for Halloween, since our pumpkin crop totally flopped!) Anyway, I have a couple of good excuses for taking so long to write! Number One: I was busy making Jimmy's web site up until the 15th, and then fine tuning it. (You'll notice that it's highly perfect now!) So after that I just had to catch up on some non computer stuff... And Number Two: I got some carpel tunnel problems out of the computer work! It's pretty scary to have your little finger be asleep most of the time! I mean, I need all my fingers a lot, with the crazy sewing I do! So my solution was to back off and do what I really came into this incarnation to do... eat chocolate, you ask? No, the other thing: Make art! I have to admit I really burned out on computer work temporarily, tho I kept up a steady patter of email gossip with important friends. I do love that email!
Lucky for me, my pal Cynthia Litchfield told me the other night that she'd gotten computer induced carpel tunnel, working at a library, and reassured me it's not a stroke or a brain tumor, and gave me info on how to work more nurturantly. So now I have this little hand towel rolled up like when we carried our swimming suits in our towels to the pool. My wrists rest on the towel and it feels so good! Kinda squishy and warm. Kinda like staying in bed and being able to work at Matilda (my Macintosh), all at once! I also put the Goddess Pillow which Bridget O'Connell made for me for Christmas last year on my chair, so my arms are less bent. I still have to bend them more than I should, because of my crummy eyesight. Even with 14 point type and a 19" screen, I'm in there close with my bifocals. I think the arms are happier when I sit back in my chair and type things I can't really see, and then swoop in close for the old typo fixin' extravaganza!
So that means the sooner I finish my typing tutorial, the better! (Yes, I'd let that go in my computer burnout, too. But the truth of the matter is that the tutorial stopped giving me new letters at 26 characters. So it got really boring. Snore! The other evil secret is that I've been cheating and looking at the keys way too much, so I gotta quit that and sit up straight, so my fingers can recover, cos I've got this hot quilt I'm sewing on and I truly miss the sensations in my little finger!)
The said quilt is for a project called "Women of Taste."
It's a national invitational thing with quilt artists paired with women
chefs, and is sponsored by Girls Inc, a group in San Fransisco. We're assigned
to make a quilt based on whatever interaction we and our chef can rig up.
My chef is a friend of mine named Monique Theoret. She and I go way back
to the early 80's, when we were both on the Wooster Food Co-op council,
before I had my six-month adventure managing the place. (Found out I am
not here in this incarnation to run a food co-op, so I got my brother to
work there and he's great at it and the co-op is one of the few that actually
survived and are growing!) Monique was also in my wedding and belongs to
our women's affirmation group, Oasis. (Yea, the one that fell apart and
we're trying to build it up again.) So this is really cool, working with
her. And, check this out: for our artist and chef interaction, she made
a house call no less, and gave me a cooking lesson in making chicken stock
and chicken soup. Even brought me copies of the recipes a few days later!!
We had a blast! This was during the making of Jimmy's web site, so it was
a terrific diversion, besides teaching me a lot and giving me grist for
the old creative mill, for making our quilt.
Right now the piece has most of the appliques pinned onto the padded base, and I'm doing my big fat running stitches to hold the stuff on. I need to get it to the place where I can take it easily off the wall, without having little parts fall off, cos we're leaving to do our Artist in Residence thing at Alfred University this Sunday, and I'm taking it and other projects to work on when we're not teaching. "Chicken Soup," the quilt, has me and Monique kinda hopping around a huge stock pot, with a chef hat on her and a black beret on me and both of us wearing white chef aprons. We're wielding big chopping knives and there's a huge leek floating around in the air. The one Saint Quilta original painting that didn't sell is going on this quilt, I think. After all, I need that blast of saint blessings, too!
That reminds me. Jimmy went on a fishing trip in Pennsylvania Oct. 18 and 19, and our housemate Floyd was gone, too. It was just me and this herd o' pets here at the homestead. So I made four more St. Quilta paintings, only this time it's Saint Q. Blessing the Fish Widows. There are glow in the dark fish flying over St. Q's head, like a fishy halo. You can go see them in the Stuff to Buy/Diary Spinoffs page. As for me, after I make image files for this page and do that Stuff page, it's time to get off the carpel tunnel towel and go pack for Alfred! We'll be home on weekends, as long as the weather holds for our six hour drives through the Snow Belt. We can access our email at Alfred. And they have a WalMart in the next town over, so I feel pretty good about the big adventure, which goes til Dec.11! We're gonna be working with Petra Soesemann's Fine Art students, making art chairs, in a project called "Sit on It." !!! I hope to write here again over Thanksgiving break. We'll talk turkey! Bye!
