5th ave

Was in midtown yesterday for a haircut. Had to check out Bergdorf's windows while I was there. It's the law.

Too much stuff

Not the worst, by any means.

Do you ever feel like there's just too much stuff in the world? I've been feeling that way lately. The disgusting NYC snow piles have begun to melt, exposing all the detritus frozen beneath them these past few months. Chicken bones, dog shit, crushed water bottles, dirty diapers, fast food wrappers—all scattered across the street, sidewalk and curb. I love Brooklyn, but it is seriously the filthiest place I've ever lived.

Because NYC is small and dense (landmass-wise) garbage days are epic. The piles of black bags on the city streets can reach mountainous proportions. It is stunning to walk through/by SO MUCH garbage. It makes me reaffirm my commitment to living smaller, making do, mending and repairing instead of buying and disposing.

I've also been reading a lot about "fast fashion" and the politics and problems surrounding that. I can't help but consider how quilt fabric production is a part of that problematic cycle (though less egregious, perhaps, than clothing production). Huge amounts of energy and water are required just to grow the cotton. Plus you have fertilizer and pesticide run-off (not to mention the heavy hand of Monsanto and their appalling exploitation of small farmers), and then the dyeing of textiles which requires huge amounts of water and uses terrible chemicals, etc. It's not good.

This presents some problems for me as a quilter. Also as someone who hopes to make a living at some point as a textile designer. I know there are companies that use organic cotton, and that's great, and something I will explore. But knowing just how much clothing and textile waste clogs landfills, I wonder if I shouldn't be using more reclaimed fabrics. Upcycling stuff from thrift stores. That has almost no appeal to me aesthetically, however. Is it a matter of rethinking my process? Reimagining what my quilts would look like made from shirts instead of yardage? I love the quilts Sherri Lynn Wood makes. But I don't know if I want to work that way. I don't really like thrifting. Or am I just being lazy? I don't know.

sunny days quilt

Pulled another quilt out of the limbo pile. I had started this one over a year ago (gah). Still thinking about that bottom border area. Needs a little finessing. Am thinking I'll finish this one up and gift it to my Aunt and Uncle in Ibiza. The ones with 25 house cats. I think this patchwork should be able to camouflage any color of cat hair.

flâneur

Yesterday I was going through the photos on my hard drive, sifting through the many pictures I've taken during my walks around Manhattan. I haven't been walking lately—not since the weather got so miserable. I miss it. I could still be doing it, snow in Central Park is always photogenic, but in addition to the cold and slush, my little camera seems to be in its death throes.

If you google "digital camera gone bad" the internets will tell you that that's impossible. But if you dig a bit further, those experts will eventually concede that image quality can, in fact, begin to suffer for various reasons. I've never been particularly careful with my camera, throwing it loose into a bag or pocket, never using the lens cap. Now the focus is no longer sharp, even in bright sunlight. It's not an expensive camera but I'm currently in a philosophical mindset of repair, not replace. Not sure it's even possible to repair it, but I find I am less inclined to go walking without it. So I will investigate and hopefully mend it. Anyway, that's not really what this silly post is even about.

Nope, it's about the small but growing collection of images I've taken of stranger's backs. It occurs to me that this could be viewed as a little creepy/stalkery. And maybe it is. But I first found myself doing it after reading Maira Kalman's book, "The Principles of Uncertainty." Maira, too, is a great walker of cities. I love Maira Kalman.

Mustard corduroy!

So! Much! Awesome! Fake! Fur!

Her tatt reads: You must believe in Spring

Gorgeous fishtail braid!

The girls in their vintage summer dresses!

The color of those pants! Holy Cow!

That coat! Those tights!

That dress: so weirdly complicated.

Unlike Maira, however, who follows and photographs individuals who pique her curiosity and move her with their individuality and humanity, I mostly photograph people whose sense of style is interesting to me. So, though we come at it by different routes (hers poetic, mine superficial), we arrive at the same fundamental place. Or so I like to think.

Online learning

I've been watching a lot of online tutorial workshop things the past few weeks. Mostly I've been making my way through the Skillshare library that is available to me during a month-long free trial. I am finding it surprisingly delightful for a few different reasons.

I've been pretty randomly watching the classes that catch my fancy. I haven't actually done any of the coursework or contributed anything to the discussions, so far. I don't know that I will. I'm pretty content just watching and listening. And thinking, of course. I have no doubt that I am absorbing stuff that will find its way into my work at some point.

One thing I'm struck by is the wide range of video quality—some of it is pretty janky. The lighting and sound quality is not always very good, and even in the best of them, there is frequently a weird camera wobble, like whoever was filming suddenly needed to scratch their nose or something.

With the presenters, there are typically a lot of "umms" and "uhhs" and "oh wait, no, let's try that again?". Which surprised me a little. No doubt at some point (when they've proved to be profitable?) people will polish these sorts of things up—spend the time and money to script and edit. Make it seamless and TED talk formulaic. But for right now it's early days and there is a lot to like about the sort of shoelace and gum production values. At least when the teachers are at the level of Chip Kidd and Peter Mendelsund. It's sort of refreshing to watch them share their knowledge in an "uncanned" format—the artlessness of the production creates a sort of intimacy that I think is kinda great.

Anni Albers

Anni Albers. Yep, this one.

So I was hit by this urge the other night to try to salvage an abandoned quilt I had folded up and stuck in my limbo pile. It had started life as an homage to an Anni Albers print (you know the one). I started out following it faithfully, intending to duplicate the sequence of half-square triangles exactly, but eventually gave that up as my eyes kept doing some weird eyeball dyslexia, inverting the pattern and flipping the triangles and making it surprisingly hard and ultimately too fussy and frustrating to continue.

I decided instead to just randomly sew the HSTs together. I also added in some indigo patterns and polka dot whites with the solids, thinking they would add a little bit of visual depth. At a still fairly early point I began to feel like it really wasn't working, but powered forward anyway, because sometimes that can work. Eventually, however, there was no denying it. I didn't like the way the solids and prints interacted in such close proximity, and my (ahem) casual commitment to aligning corners was just not working out. Blech. Hated it. Fuckkkkkk.

Before the frogging.

That is always a sad moment—when you reach that point of finally acknowledging that something isn't worth finishing. You weigh the amount of time, and the physical and emotional energy spent, and you feel sad. I try to resist this, because I know that no effort is ever truly wasted—I always learn something that will inform the next project—but still.

I find lately that I spend that quiet time before falling asleep thinking about patterns. I am still flogging away toward my end goal of becoming a surface designer but it's a steep learning curve. The last thing I do before shutting down my laptop for the night is spend some time browsing Pinterest,  looking at all the beautiful vintage patterns. I also like looking at the many, many images of beautiful minimalist interiors that proliferate there. I find it weirdly relaxing. I was contemplating white-walled, well-ordered, uncluttered home interiors when I was seized by the desire to grab my seam ripper and put it to work on the failed Albers quilt. I didn't actually get out of bed and do it right then and there, but made a mental note to attack it first thing in the morning.

It took a couple hours (while listening to this: www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia—so good!) but I ripped it all apart and refashioned it, lining up the HSTs in vertical rows and inserting white panels in between.

Much better. Deep, satisfying breath. I still plan to add a white panel to the top and bottom once I get some more white kona, but I am already pleased with how it looks on my wall. I don't think it's the most interesting quilt I've ever made, but I'm okay with that. It makes me happy to have arrived at this solution for those HSTs. Relieved even. And happy to now have one less orphan in the limbo pile. Yeehaw!

spiderwebs

Playing around with some new spiderwebs. Thinking about scale and color relationships. Not sure where I'm going with these yet.