everything crooked and wonderful

I have finished painting! Mostly. I mean, I still have to do boring parts like put all the faceplates on and stuff like that, but the part where I'm in danger of backing into a wall of wet paint is OVER. huzzah! It looks really good -- say what you will about painting as a method of cleaning, but it does the job! I was going to compose a list of helpful painting hints, but I find that I don't want to think about it anymore. Maybe sometime soon. (they were really helpful!)

In other project news, I had a visit today from Weird Cousin Bonnie -- she's actually my mom's cousin, and she's not really weird in a pejorative sense. She marches to her own drum; at the time the "weird" was applied to her name, the drum insisted on a pantaloon jumpsuit. (what can I say? I think I was fifteen when I first met her and if I could have taken a pill to be invisible I would have. A pantaloon jumpsuit was faaar from my comfort zone.)

She's just started quilting and brought over what she's been working on. It was very nice -- much nicer than my first quilting projects, which were extremely boring because it hadn't quite occurred to me yet that they didn't have to be. I really liked what she was doing -- she has a great sense of color, but it was fairly rigid and from a pattern (her mother in law is a very precise pattern quilter). I had to make sure that she knew there were other Accepted Methods! (it's a delicate balance between being helpful and supportive and being obnoxiously bossy in craftland.) So I told her to do a google image search on Gee's Bend quilts (source of the photo in this post) -- I did it as I was telling her about it, and I forgot how much I love those quilts. I get the same wobbly legged feeling I get when looking at certain paintings. Everything is crooked and wonderful.

Anyway, a lovely side effect of the visit (beyond the Gee's Bend google) is that she caused me to run all around and assemble my recent(ish) quilting projects. I realized that I have finished more than I thought. This is a rare feeling!

I found one that I had started in the one and only quilting class I ever took. My former employer used to offer remarkable classes until they cancelled their education program, went bankrupt then insane. I continued to work for them for six more years. But I digress! I took one quilting class. Long story short, my quilt was never finished. Looking at it now, I can see that it is the antithesis of my natural quilting style -- lots of fussy little pieces, and HUGE. But today I had an epiphany -- I still really love the fabric and I have a bunch of squares already put together. If I just make 9 more, I'll have enough for a good sized lap/bed quilt (it would lay on top of the bed, but not hang over) and that would be fine with me. I think it's a much more versatile size, not to mention the joy of finishing a project bleepety years old! Updates as warranted.

In the meantime, here's a video I came across via d.Sharp. (I came across d.Sharp via angry chicken, who I came across via Posie Gets Cozy, who I came across because I really liked her shop. What do these three blogs have in common? Well, besides being well written by funny craft goddesses, they are also all from Portland!)

But back to the video! I hadn't heard of this song or Thao and the Get Down Stay Down until this turned up in my feed reader. I love the rambly shambly charms of the song (it turns out I like singing the words "bag of hammers"), but I also really dig the 8 panel photo collage effect in the video. BONUS: there is a claymation video for the same song, if you'd like to see it with brightly colored clay-people with little clay guitars.