Tuesday, January 16, 2018

kazoo embroidery alcohol

“Cooking is like painting or writing a song, Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors — it’s how you combine them that sets you apart.” (Wolfgang Puck)



Sometimes it pays to be an ostrich


OK, back again from Boston and I escaped just in time!  It was 62 when I got up early in the morning, it was 44 when I got in the cab 4 hours later, and it was 38 as I got out of the cab at the airport.  When I landed at West Palm it was 68.  Still very comfortable and hopefully healing for the damn 4 week cold!  I managed to stay warm and dry by mostly staying inside and not getting wet.  It was great to see the kids and for the most part they were adorable.  Mister has entered somewhat of a naughty stage but hopefully it will work its way through before too much longer.  Glorie is adorable and funny and in constant motion but always happy, no matter what.  A good day and one step closer to a lesser peanut reaction.  

The day I had open was unfortunately rainy all day and everything I tried to accomplish was thwarted, so I went home and played around Netflix.  And loved  sitting there and watching the storm through the big windows on the world.  No fireplace, no marshmallows, but cozy and quiet, something I don't get often.
The slice I took out of my finger before I went to Boston was painful but I took care of it by changing the bandaid a couple of times a day-  BE CAREFUL around your mandolin while slicing a fennel bulb-  I thought I had several inches before I had to pay attention, and how wrong I was!  Today is the first day in over a week it hasn't opened up to bleed.  Hope this is the end but it still really hurts when that finger hits a key-  I'm trying to keep it up and out of the line of fire like a pinky with a teacup, except not the right finger!  

Nothing more to report about the trip.  I kept knitting on the giant fat scarf I started a trip or two-  I love having some hand work when I am able to sit and this was perfect.  Its too thick to wear, too bulky to race through the airport, but as a keeping-hands-busy project it's perfect.  When I finish I can unravel it and reknit with bigger needles to get an airier fabric.  But I still have a way to go.



A very special ARTY PARTY
Last summer when I was in Santa Fe we visited my favorite all time museum ever (excluding the V&A and the PEM but let's say it's in the top three...), the Folk Art Museum.  As usual I made a fool of myself over one exhibit after another , and when I got to the exhibit on Tramp Art I thought it would kill a bit of time.  You, I was right-  it killed about 3 hours!  This was an amazing exhibit with examples covering a wide range of the 20th century.  The reason I like Tramp Art so much is that it so reminds me of my dad and his hours of working at pieces of wood- usually from branches of a tree felled in our yard.  He would find the best branches and season them for awhile in the basement before working therewith his pocket knife.  He would carefully carve out a ring and then another ring that intertwined the first until he had the beginnings of a chain.  It would be added to until a ring split or a cut went too deep-  whatever made it suddenly imperfect.  And he would toss out the little chain to one of us to treasure for a day or two.  They didn't last long.  Next he would fashion a little cage and then work a ball inside the cage so it would rattle.  Sometimes he would get several cages together with different balls in each.  My dad always used his pocket knife and he worked outside in the summer evenings because my mother wouldn't put up with the shavings inside.  

     

   

  


This unending chain is AMAZING!  My dad was good, but he didn't;t have anything like this...  Look carefully at the three pieces in the center-  notice the little balls inside the cages!

To the uninitiated, the phrase “tramp art” probably evokes a stereotypical hobo, train hopping with a cartoonish bindle or drinking moonshine around a fire pit. This was even the case for Laura Addison, curator of North American & European Folk Art at New Mexico’s famed Museum of International Folk Art, who organized No Idle Hands: The Myths and Meanings of Tramp Art, a massive survey of work within this genre.
“It was a learning occasion for me, because I had the idea that it was made by tramps,” said Addison, in an interview with Hyperallergic. “But more and more, it appears that’s not the case.”
“[Tramp art] was made by family men with settled home lives,” writes Addison in an article for the spring 2017 issue of El Palacio. “Signed tramp art pieces and anecdotal evidence demonstrate that is was a working class pursuit characterized by pragmatism and thrift.” Indeed, it is difficult to imagine someone with an itinerant lifestyle having any need for the decorative boxes, picture frames, furniture, and devotional objects, decorated with repetitious and painstaking care that are characteristic of tramp art.


1 comment :

Sandy said...

My dad whittled similar things. He did a round ball with about 2 or 3 inside...also worked out how to make working pliers. (well, not usable, but you could open and close them.) He doesn't do so much now because he cut his thumb with a chainsaw some years back and lost the feeling, making it hard to grip the wood. I told him to use some of those secretary rubber page turners. But I think he also doesn't see very well any more.
Oh, and my mom had to put up with the shavings because he mainly did it in the winter when it was too cold to work outside.
Sandy in the UK