QOTD: "If the Creator had a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely meant us to stick it out." - Arthur Koestler
Reading: Douglas Mawson, The Home of the Blizzard
Listening to: Dougie MacLean, Real Estate
Decluttering accomplishments: threw out more old magazines
I've had a remarkably hectic weekend. I spent a lot of Friday running around town buying some truly peculiar things - a "fun noodle" (which turns out to be a styrofoam pool toy), PVC piping, nylon netting, a window shade, and vinegar. Those were some of the items on the supplies list for a class I was signed up for on Saturday. I already had several of the other needed things - plastic basins, glycerin soap, bubble wrap. And I bought the last supplies on Saturday at Wildfiber. Namely, odds and ends of Merino wool.
The class in question was "Felting for the Fainthearted." The teacher was Ewa Kuniczak, whose work I'd seen at the V&A Museum in London last May. This was an entirely new craft for most of us, but one woman had taken Ewa's class before and another had come down from Sacramento to take several classes. The process is fairly complicated, with laying down Merino fibers, saturating them with soapy water, decorating with other colors of fiber to "paint" a design, rubbing everything with bubble wrap coated with glycerin soap, and then the actual felting. That involves rolling the fibers in the window shade, first in netting, then without netting. Ewa claims it takes just 20 minutes once you've laid out the fibers, but it took longer for us novices. Still, it was a lot of fun and I was happy with the results. I finished two small pieces, one of which is a sort of sunset over the ocean scene, while the other is more a trellis and flower design. I happened to mention the class to my mother when I called her this morning and her reaction was, "you mean you can make felt?" Somehow she seemed to have the idea that felt just happens spontaneously!
Then, in the evening, I went with Penny to see Vicki's show at the Elephant Theater in Hollywood. The show consists of four stories, centered around what Vicki went through to have her daughter. I'd heard the first story before, but just bits and pieces of the rest. It was very interesting and I have to admit that I think she's very brave to tell such intensely personal stories. The only real downside was that the theatre is not very comfortable. The lack of leg room was definitely a distraction.
On the way home, we were driving down Venice Boulevard when we suddenly saw a ferris wheel where there's never been a ferris wheel before. We had to investigate and stumbled across the Saint Augustine fiesta. It was amusing to stop in for 15 minutes or so until they closed for the evening and smile at teenagers screaming on rides and listen to too loud music and generally watch the crowds.
All of which meant that I got a later start on the day today than I'd really planned. I did drag myself down to Fullerton anyway for the Muckenthaler Walkabout, a Volksmarch event. The weather was blessedly cloudy and cool (not at all a given for inland Orange County) and the route had a very nice variety, including residential neighborhoods, downtown Fullerton (which has lots of antique stores, none of which were open on a Sunday morning), Fullerton College (which has a surprising number of animal pens - for pigs, not students), and park trails. After the walk, I went into the museum for a little while. It was truly odd. There were two rooms of art involving dogs - pretty much everything from an African sculpture to an animation cel from one of the "Beethoven" movies. About all they were missing were paintings on velvet of dogs playing poker. The other gallery consisted entirely of photographs of cars. I think that may have been a special exhibit, but it was all rather poorly labeled. The museum was free this weekend, but normally costs $5. It was worth it for free, but I'd have been disappointed had I paid.
Given all the F words in my weekend whirl, perhaps I shouldn't call it merely hectic. How about frenetic?
Copyright 2002 Miriam H. Nadel