Saturday, April 29, 2006

Laura and Dean at the Tongue Oil Store (aka Home Depot):

L: Which would you rather have as a snack, Ready Mixed Baitbits or Critter Ridder??
D: What was the first one again?
L: Ready Mixed Baitbits.
D: That one.

Posted at 3:34:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Friday, April 28, 2006

I have fed the jaded tiger, and every tiger knows my name / Bacon Lane / snake-in-the-road / Invisible Fence

I did a photo shoot, but I don't know which pictures to choose! Will post later.

[Edit, 11:58: Okay, sorted through the photos, but it was still difficult to narrow. This bag is very photogenic, I think. Of course, the colors aren't exactly true in any of them, but that's what happens in photos, I suppose. The real colors are: RED zipper; very intense pink-almost-red, warm coral pink, shell pink; white; matcha green/apple green/early spring leaf green, summer leaf green; warm coral pink again (top zipper); and alaea sea salt skins & hides lining (color of sea salt in linked photo is true-to-life exact color).

Here are the photos: 1) Bag on my front door (all the colors are very good in this one, except the intense pink looks too red and the zipper looks too dark) (check out the cool lining-up of the pattern between the top of the bag and the strap), 2) Top view of bag, showing top zipper and underside of strap, 3) Same thing but with the zipper unzipped, showing skins & hides lining and inside pocket.

The mauve velvet couch (looks purple-r than it really is) photos above have larger versions if you click on them. They illustrate the allure of the lining. Oh, and here's what the back looks like.]

[Edit: Oh, that first line (the one that makes no sense) was my thoughts driving back from Starbucks, in the middle of the photo shoot/bag test run. What is the jaded tiger?? I need to know!]

Posted at 5:02:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Tremolo guitar part. Dreamy underwater sound. Guess what colour my Pink toothpaste is? (It's not pink.) I think part of what intrigued me so much is that it was a book about a word.

Posted at 2:34:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.

When I was at university, I was obsessed with a book called Decadence. It was an old book, a slim, brittle, neglected volume, and it was the color of decadence, mauve. (I think the book specifically stated that mauve = decadence.) The book itself felt decadent, looked decadent: sumptuous but crumbling, faded, worn on the edges like a threadbare velvet chaise. I borrowed it from the university library numerous times, and was always certain I was the only person who had touched it in years. I would really love to have that book in my hands again, but I don't know the complete title (if there is more to it), or the author, or if it's in print (I doubt it). It gnaws at me.

[Edit: I tried to look it up on the university library database just now, and I think it's this book: Decadence: the Strange Life of an Epithet by Richard Gilman. Subject: Decadence (The English word)!] [It's out of print, but used paperback copies are for sale online. I would not want to touch or even see a paperback version. That would be all wrong.]

The book was in fact rather boring; I never actually read it. Not the whole thing, anyway. But it inflamed my imagination and still does.

Posted at 1:25:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

The bag is officially complete! Just finished all the hand-ing, on my chaise, listening to my Deadwood playlist (which contains only one song that is actually from Deadwood). I was able to sew most of the lining in by machine (yesterday), fortunately, because it was extremely difficult to sew through the skins & hides by hand. I had to use a thimble (which I kept losing) and push really hard. I thought the needle would break a few times, and was living in constant fear of stabbing myself, but I escaped unscathed. Luckily I only had to do a few sections--a total of two or three inches at most. The zipper still works nice and smoothly even with the lining in, so I am highly pleased. The bag looks great (well, a little hand-ish along the top, but that probably doesn't show from a distance). I'll take a picture in the daylight tomorrow. And tomorrow I'll test it in action. I am pretty in love with the beet bag. The Valentine bag. The when hearts are trumps bag. "Trumps" make me think of Grandmother Whaples and her cutthroat bridge games, which I never understood. A suit that outranks all other suits for the duration of a hand. An alteration of the word triumph used in special senses that are now obsolete. Obsolete triumph = this bag all over. Did I mention how insanely, dangerously, decadently, achingly soft and touchable it is? But only on the inside. The outside's cold and toothy.

Posted at 11:34:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

It's not actually Thursday until tomorrow, but here's a Thursday self portrait. I have a gigantic headache. This is my new top I got yesterday for a couple dollars at the consignment store. According to the receipt, it's mauve. Which is sort of true, I guess. The fabric is kind of ugly, but it fits me, so I like it.

Posted at 5:37:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

I spent my Where's George? dollar already, at Super Foodmart/A&P in Berlin. Not intentionally; I just had to, because I owed six dollars and that's exactly how many dollars I had. I bet the slacker who gets it won't log it. I already know he/she will be a slacker. :-) Today I bought a "Salt Craving" bath product. Mostly because of the name and because the container is very orange. Also, I think I'll like it. But the name and the color were the clinchers.

Posted at 4:15:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Just noticed I got a Where's George? bill as change today! Either at Scuba Shack or Uptown Consignment; not sure which. I'm the first person to log it since the initial entry, even though it's been in circulation for a month.

Posted at 1:31:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Lots of great insults (insights?) today! Oh, well, first I went to my Rocco followup, and I was sitting in the waiting room and the Mademoiselle lady was leaving for lunch. She recognised me right away and called me "the model." So silly. But sweet. But then I was telling Rocco about my permanent small-of-back injury (he looked at his records and said it was the exact same spot--he had some technical name for the specific two notches in the spine or something--that was originally injured in the accident, even though neither of us remembered that it was!) and my knee injury and how my back always gets murdered from doing weights, and he said something about how I can't expect to be super-strong and not be all strained by working out or to recover from things quickly because, "I mean, look at you." Ha. Well, yeah, I guess that's true. I was wearing a sleeveless top at the time, and the way he said it was just so funny because I don't really perceive myself as being scrawny; I mean, I'm inside my body, and it feels normal to me. But to other people it's kind of self-evident. Then when I was at NEAC I confessed to the trainer I was feeling a little dizzy and she immediately said, "Did you eat?" "Yes! Of course!" "Are you anemic?" "Actually, I am..." I had never made the connection between my lack of stamina and tendency to get lightheaded sometimes with the fact that I'm anemic. So we were like, Wow, that makes total sense...

Posted at 7:28:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Finished everything except sewing in the skins & hides lining. How difficult that will be is entirely Unknown. I'll almost definitely have to do it by hand. I made the entire lining (including a pocket), and sewed in the zipper at the top of the bag (by hand), which works great. (Realised it needed to go in before the lining.) This is a very toothy bag. I love how it looks. So far. It reminds me of something, but I don't know what. Something to do with leaves and valentines. Hearts and spades. When hearts are trumps. Alice. Will Bradley. I don't know.

Posted at 1:26:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Check it out: Dean's Pickle Polaroid from his first solo flight! I love that airplane--what a fantastic 1970s color scheme. (I have never seen in it person.) V.v.v. cool. But I already said that.

Posted at 10:48:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

The solution is paper! Simple paper.

Posted at 7:06:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

I got some "Salt Toothpaste" at Oats. And also some "Pink Toothpaste." Those are both the actual names of the toothpaste. How could I possibly resist? The Salt is salt, and the Pink is a fantastic shade. (It matches my new bath rug.) I am still listening to DS&T nonstop. In the car now. I did play Blonde On Blonde in the car yesterday, though. Dean has a Bored meeting tonight, so I'm going to try to get lots done on the bag. Dean soloed this morning! V.v.v.v.v. cool.

Posted at 5:46:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

If disaster doesn't strike, I think this will be my coolest looking bag. Most likely not my most useable bag (impossible to tell about that, ahead), but very striking. Tired tonight, so I'm not working on it. But I did figure some things out: the strap (just now cut out & folded/ironed it) and that it will have a zipper at the top (that's the plan anyway). I pinned it on to see how it would look, but the strap and lining need to go in first.

I tried sewing on the skins & hides to see what would happen, and it didn't work (none of the stitches stayed in), so I asked the advice of the fabric store expert lady and she told me to buy some special extra-sharp German needles. They are useless. The exact same thing happened. The stitches work just fine if I sew on the parts that have this webby stuff on them (near the pre-existing seams), which I pointed out to her, so I don't know why she didn't recommend using that stuff. Anyway, I pulled out some of the webby stuff, so I think I'll be able to recycle it and get the stitches to work. Hope so. Holes with no thread in them are kind of silly.

My shoulders hurt because I was so cold today. Being cold makes me exceedingly tense.

I am addicted to dreams, schemes and themes. Episode one, at least.

Posted at 12:59:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

No!! Too short!

[Edit, 11:16: Just long enough to finish the rest of the outside, though. (Measuring back, cutting out, lining up, sewing to front, etc.) I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do strap-wise, and I'm too tired to start on the skins & hides lining (potentially frustrating, depending on how my sewing machine likes the s&h) so I think I'll stop for now.

I'm listening to DS&T again already. Yeah, I liked it a lot.]

Posted at 10:22:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

"Never feel an eel without rubber gloves." I love it. Even though it only makes sense when applied to electric eels.

I'm super-exhausted tonight, partly because my shoulders and back are murdered again. Very draining. And also from lots of driving (and twitching) in the rain, rain, rain. It was nice and fast driving, though. Only slow enough to not outrun my visibility.

Anyway, Did lots of work on my new beet bag yesterday. I mean, not lots of work, really, as in lots of progress, but lots of work in that I worked on it a lot. I installed my RED zipper on the frontpiece, and connected it to an inside pocket, which I made out of the former lining from the former skins & hides top. I had no idea of the proper way to do what I wanted, so I invented it from scratch. It's probably very very improper (as in, someone who actually knows how to sew would think I'm insane), but it looks the way I wanted it to, and it works. The whole thing required much Thinking. At first the zipper got stuck, but I fixed it and now it's nice and smooth. Lots of re-doing of things, but very calmly. Fortunately, both the zipper and the bag fabric are very easy to remove stitches from. So, the front of the bag is done, which is just one piece, but it was hard and I am pleased with how it looks. Red and metallic-toothy.

Time for "Dreams, Schemes and Themes"...! If I have the nerve.

Posted at 9:18:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

I still can't find my Gleim postcard. Where is it???

Did lots of work on my

Dean found my Gleim postcard!!!!!!!!!!!

Dean: "You! You're such a Gleim!"

It fell was hiding between my CPU and my desk.

Will finish the rest of that "Did lots of work on..." part when I get back; time for a rainy silvery drive to the Gs.

Posted at 2:26:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.