19 posts tagged “who i am”
An Andrea, by definition, does not whine. So I don't know exactly what to call the terse email that showed up in my inbox suggesting that I write a post. More than one, actually.
Okay. So the blog and I have been having time apart like nobody's business, and that's not quite the way that I want it to be. I want to be taking beautiful and amazing pictures of my life to post up here and share with loved ones who are still learning just how crazy I can be.
Oh. Right. Beautiful & amazing. I want to say that the problem is that my life isn't living up to that vision. And that's true, in part - the house is an absolute mess - not a joyfilled crafty mess nor an in-progress-growing kind of mess, just a pile of stuff on the floor I don't really like to look at, ugly space in my house, and, yes, my head.
I have been trying to clear out the debris -both physical and mental, and it's working, but the thing I kind of forgot to do was replace that mess with a vision of what I do want - so it lurks in corners of my mind, in pages of magazine spreads I've saved, not really willing to reveal the bigger plan or even let me know where the next step is.
And I do want to create that coherent vision, want to be one of those people whose house becomes a lovely vision of how they want their spaces to be, and is able to execute - this being one example that I envy - especially given the circumstances under which it occurred.
I don't even want to think about the idea that a cohesive vision won't just present itself - that I'm going to have to work and dream one up. I'm applying for school and trying to get a certain certification under my belt at the same time - how many ways are there to suggest that it's not going to happen just yet. (Oh, but the promis of February makes me want to reneg!).
I am thinking about the things that make Christmas the season it should be for me. When I was younger, I had the great joy of seeing the best Christmas play that exists - at least as far as my experience goes. And one of the things that always felt very much like Christmas was The Butterfingers Angel, Mary & Joseph, Herod the Nut, & The Slaughter of 12 Hit Carols in a Pear Tree aka The Butterfingers Angel. It was a play that spoke very much to my understanding of how stuff might really have happened. The way I saw it done Mary's brothers want to eat the baby, Joseph doesn't understand who the father (Father?) is, and everything is almost messy. Until a beautiful baby is born who changes everyone's minds.
The power to do that, to bring a stop to fighting, a moment of quiet, a reminder of life and death and sacrifice - I don't believe in those gods, that God, but I believe with all my heart in Christmas and the power it should have.
My roommate and I were singing - okay, shouting - carols tonight as we trooped across the field for cat food in the not-very-cold winter night. Tomorrow we turn worlds upside down, but tonight there were songs of both joy and peace shouted at the top of our lungs.
Maybe I think that's what Christmas is missing - being together, being joyful, loving. I love getting presents, believe me. But I also love watching movies with my families, making a mess of the kitchen, sewing and knitting and gluing a storm. I love watching a friend at work as he makes me a pink reindeer from a martha stewart tutorial, and half-assing a little sheep from pipe cleaner and wool to give back. I don't want to forget that stuff when I'm shopping - I want to hum along to the canned music and remember.
About 9 times of 10, when change comes, I hold out my arms for it, I've been waiting for it, I embrace and leap to it and move to the next thing with joy and hope. But the tenth time. I huddle in a corner and close my eyes and hope and hope and hope that change didn't really mean to darken my doorstep. Oftentimes, the latter reaction is to a change I, personally, have been working for.
It was, in actual fact, less than a month ago when I figured (and was chatty about) changes coming. I had this feeling of holding my breath of waiting to move. Suffice it to say that in the ensuing month, changes jumped out of the woodwork and into my life like nobody's business. For the most part it was the lives around me that are altering so very quickly. Mine has stayed, for the moment, static. Tomorrow, later this week, that may seem a laughable statement, but it's one that I'll stand by: my life has not moved as have the lives that surround me.
At this time, I am hoping that my life will not remain so, that it too will take steps and jumps and leaps into the future, rather than meandering aimlessly. I hope that big scary (but good) life-changing changes make their way down the pipe and that I am able to open my arms to them. Yes, I hope this because I persist in believing they're coming, but too, because I know they must.
It does seem to happen rather often that either my roommate or his girlfriend are in the kitchen cooking something up for the other.
Yesterday was Courtney's birthday so it was James' turn to take to the oven. Sadly, I was not there this time for the making of the cake - cake mix, I admit, but was there to watch James put together the icing.
I'm always vaguely fearful of James in the kitchen - he worked in a restaurant and so he'll just go to it with abandon and ice cakes and whip up tomato salads that are, as my dad would say, birdie num-nums.
So I trusted in James, and watched. He claimed it wasn't easy so once he was all done, I had a go with the leftovers. Because we've got to amuse ourselves somehow, right?
Or (shamefully) the Mall - the biggie - where Sephora lives and H&M and that other store I talked about.
Or Marshall's. The place where good fabric goes to die - or at least rest up a little until someone who loves it claims it. The place where you can find little cards of mushroom-shaped plastic buttons, and fabric printed with large radishes - for cheap too.
One of the things that I love about fabric stores, and quilt stores that I've yet to notice in yarn stores is that they assume that if you're there, and you're young, that that's where you should be.
I'm a 6' girl with blue hair, sometimes purple hair, or maybe red, and a nose stud and even in this post-stitch 'n bitch world, I've been almost accosted in the yarn stores by the women working there who cannot understand that my cons-wearing, backpack-toting self might want to buy some lovely soft alpaca to make a wee stitched bear or bunny.
But in a fabric store? I fit. Part of this might be my much-longer love affair with fabric than with yarn (though I admit that I'm a lapsed seamstress) - I don't remember a time when needle and thread didn't fascinate me, when I wasn't stitching. I buy fabric helplessly - sometimes just a pack of fat quarters to tide me over, sometimes by the yard.
Or, what called my name this time, a lovely selection of pinks (I *swear* I wasn't looking for pinks...) that want to be a quilt:
Glowing like a secret
Eyes bright
Can't quite look away
Pain/joy barely contained
A thousand thousand pinpricks
Of
Light
Such a small vessel,
Overflowing overfilled
I want to be finished
Complete
Me
Last night I took to a box
of blue-black dye that had been hanging around the bathroom for a few months. I'd never dyed my own hair before and I was alone in the apartment sitting on the edge of the couch humming and watching the time and, I think, Will and Grace, and waiting for things to develop.
The photos that follow (dear me that's some dark hair) are what happen when I have to get up to go into work at 8:45 on a Saturday - I'm not cheerful and I take emo-type pictures of my shoes (noting, though, that those are huge-ass wide-legged jeans from 2004 when I still wasn't cool.
I think.
Having mentioned briefly that I was dreaming of the small quilts, I'm going to continue on the tack:
I don't think quilting will ever approach knitting or even other sewing in the "hip" category. It's not cool or quick, it's fairly hard to tote along. It's fairly rare that we see a really functional piece of quilted clothing (they're there, don't get me wrong, but the quilt is still pretty much uniquely the longer-term project, not something you can do in a dark bar with some wine and friends along for the ride.
Yet. I have loved pieced patchwork since I could say "boo" to a llama. Part of it has to do with my long and well-documented love affair with a good piece of cotton - It's okay that fabric makes me swoon-y, isn't it?!
Part of it has to do with symbolism: quilts are passed down and loved through generations. They're brought out in the winter (hello canada!), they're wrapped around new babies, they cover you up when you're sick or sad.
On top of all that, they're beautiful and functional - patchwork quilts were designed to use every little bit of fabric to make one warm cover.
Can you tell that I'm planning something?!
I want to stitch.
I want to embroider tiny stitches, hand-quilt random designs, put together blankets to keep me warm (the girl who is currently enamoured of the idea of lofty wool felt and wool batting for lovely quilts).
I want to make quilts that look a little like these.
So I might have purchased this book, in the hope that it would help me get there (no one in blogland is really gloating about exchange rates and I shall not either, but, uh, *bounce*).
Wish me quilting goodness luck.
I do and don't get starstruck. Hee hee hee. Starstruck.
I pretty much want musicians to go about their business and me to go about mine and when our paths cross it doesn't bother me particularly if there's no recognition on either side. Hells, I lived in Montreal - and the fact that my friend and I crossed paths (literally) with the guy from Knocked Up (Jay), (we think), the fact that Katie Holmes' Perrier was once mistaken for mine at an organic food store? Meh. Though these are stories that I'll drag out once in a while, I totally failed to be a fangirl on either occasion.
So put me in a room with about 30 other people - some of whom just happen to be Montreal's Stars (the BAND people) whose instruments happen to also be there? Well, the major thrill is hearing them play live. There's this thing here called the Glee Club at Radio Sonic. That's the extent of my knowledge. I will try to link up in the a.m. if I can find it. And Angel - called Fred - is the one who got me there and who I will be worshiping of until someone tells me to stop.
It was very very amazing to see a band you are rather deeply in love with up-this-close. I learned that Amy Millan is not in the least intimidating, that if you love your music it shows even if you're kind of quiet about it, and that drummers really are that cool.
Then, as if that weren't enough, we braved the 14-year-old emo kids to see them live tonight. The Stars make me want to cry in the very very best way. Listen here, and do it now.
