Again with the Country Home?

Monday, February 23, 2009 at 10:21 am (Cottage Industry)
Tags: , , ,

I know. I already posted my sadness at the demise of two of my favorite magazines practically back-to-back: Cottage Living and Country Home. But my last issue (the last issue) of Country Home just arrived and it made me even sadder.

country-home-april-20091It was thin as I fished it out of the mailbox, and I thought, “Well, they must not have been able to afford much.” But on the contrary, it’s one of the best issues I’ve ever seen — every story interesting and well photographed. Thin because it wasn’t full of ads — just story after story. It was great, and it’s a bummer not to have it to look forward to every month.

 A big paper wrapper over the cover announced my subscription would be filled by…Family Circle? Nothing against Family Circle but it’s not quite the same. My Cottage Living subscription, at least, is being filled by Southern Living, which is another wonderful magazine, so I’m OK with that, even though the garden stuff isn’t much help up here in Zone 5.

I was fortunate to be able to pick up the 3 2005 issues of Cottage Living I was missing on eBay — all 3 in a lot of 5. Plus I managed to resell the 2 I didn’t need. So now I have a nice collection of inspiration to pull out on a rainy day or a daydreamy day or a creative-wannabe day.

Along those lines, Mike and I saw a very basic sewing machine at Big Lots last Friday (reconditioned), and when we got a 20 percent off coupon at check-out good for yesterday only, I knew I would buy it. (I did a quick search of online reviews for that model, and many people said, “I was looking for a basic, first machine for my 8-year-old…” so I knew it would work for me.)

9318simplicityI took sewing in jr. high and high school, with hilarious results. I remember making a gaucho-jumpsuit contraption (picture it — not quite like this but similarly awful) that instead of fitting my size 5 or 7 teenage body fit my mother at about a size 12. Oh, and there was that yellow calico ruffled pillow from 7th grade sewing I used for quite a while in my room. That was OK.

What I’m thinking of is more along the lines of the pillow — we’ll see how it goes. Mike (encouragingly) said, “Oh good, now you’ll be able to make curtains and things…” Oh you poor misguided man. Having grown up with a mother who is an excellent seamstress, he has no idea of the skill required and that I haven’t a clue. (One look at the gaucho-jumpsuit and he’d understand.)

But still, there’s a creative, crafty soul inside me somewhere — why else would I be drawn to the things I’m drawn to? (Or else, there’s a 1950s housewife in there — I’ve always said I’d be perfectly happy in that role.) Even if the results are too embarrassing to reveal, at least I’ll have fun trying. That’s today’s plan anyway.

There is nothing in a caterpillar
that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.
                                 ~ Buckminster Fuller

4 Comments

The house next door

Friday, February 13, 2009 at 4:13 pm (Cottage Industry, Heavy Clay)
Tags: , , , ,

It’s for sale. Sheriff’s sale. Since the owners up and abandoned it last spring, Mike and I have been alternately rejoicing they took their smelly dog enclosure with them (nothing like the scent of dog doo wafting over the shade garden) and worrying what would become of the place.

According to our neighbor, the house was nothing to look at 40 years ago when she was a kid and occasionally played with the kids who lived there then. Surely it’s gone downhill after a series of negligent owners. We fought mosquitoes all last summer because they left their above-ground pool full and water collected in the cover and was a nasty West Nile soup.

It’s an odd little house — yellow stucco — and may have been charming at one time. (Although more appropriate for the neighborhood known as “Spanish Villa” across the highway from us.) Now it’s just scary, complete with dangling icicle lights from Christmases past, plastic wrap on the windows, mold and branches on the roof (surely it leaks), and giant, poison ivy-infested evergreens all around. Not to mention a tumbledown shed, and that pool, wrapped in a large lattice-y deck/fence thing.

Even before it was abandoned, Mike and I made several forays across the property line to clean up fallen branches and prune overgrown trees and shrubs that were spoiling our view. I ruthlessly sprayed heavy-duty Round-Up on all the poison ivy I saw — which was considerable. We never interacted with (or really even saw) the owners, save for a couple encounters with their kids, whom I always felt sorry for. It was from one of the boys that I learned “We might be moving…” and crossed my fingers.

It’s been nice not having such negligent neighbors, but we’re worried about what might happen now that it’s up for sheriff’s sale in a few weeks. We’d love to have the property — our 50-foot-wide lot is so confining — but certainly don’t have the cash to blow on buying it and then having to worry about tearing down the house (I can’t imagine it could/should be saved). Plus the grounds are a disaster — even mowing the giant, sloping front yard (the house sits far back from ours) would be a challenge. Plus there’s no garage, which would have been a real selling point since ours is so inadequate, and only a LONG gravel driveway that washes down on the road all the time.

But, that frivolous right brain of mine can’t help but imagine what could be if we had the money and weren’t totally consumed with all the half-finished DIY projects on this side of the property line. How nice it would be to double the size of our lot — plant trees, fence it in, build a combination potting shed/garage with a studio above (hey, a girl can dream), design our own “secret garden.” A very Western PA version of A Year in Provence or Under the Tuscan Sun. (Yeah, we’d probably fly a Steeler flag somewhere, too.)

I long ago picked out the perfect spot to “connect” the two yards — a grand arbor or something right between these two trees…

thegateway

Instead, we have to wait and see. Hope some good people buy the place and not gypsies, tramps, or thieves. Hope we don’t rue the day we didn’t take out a second mortgage to buy it ourselves. 

Oh, did I mention scenario #173? The one in which she opens a charming B&B that becomes a smashing success and pays for itself and lets her stop having to hack for hire and instead hack write purely for fun?

Right brain is nothing if not imaginative…

the-wreck

There’s a long, long trail a-winding into the land of my dreams. 
                                                                ~ Stoddard King, Jr.

4 Comments

The crafter in my head

Friday, January 23, 2009 at 1:17 pm (Cottage Industry, Writing by Ear)
Tags: , , , ,

For me and most women I know, nothing beats a good craft show, especially if it’s outdoors on a lovely day. Fall is the best, with the food booths pushing hot cider and apple turnovers and the craft booths luring you in with painted gourds, twiggy wreaths, and early Christmas kitsch. It’s the chance to buy something handmade (although some booths do sneak in Made in China imposters) and admire other people’s industriousness and creativity. 

Unlike the sister profiled here, my sisters and I were not born to the craft — any craft. While we each have our talents — one sister crocheted lovely little baby outfits, another sewed and embroidered adorable clothes for her girls when they were young, another did ceramics, and I dabbled in a few things like crochet, embroidery, and mosaics — we’re not ones to sit around the kitchen table with a pile of ribbon, some beads, a little Elmer’s, and a few cinnamon sticks and whip up something worthy of anything but the back side of the Christmas tree.

We are all in awe of my sister-in-law, who is so far to the artistically gifted side we can barely see her. Pottery, watercolors, sewing, reupholstering, wallpapering, jewelry, dolls, the aforementioned painted gourds — you name it and she can do it, beautifully. We all pray she gets our name in our family’s annual Christmas gift exchange and all that talent’s not wasted buying some dull man-gift for one of the brothers. Her four sisters also have the craft gene (one is a professional potter and another makes lovely jewelry “on the side”), and they are the kind to sit around the kitchen table and do projects; thankfully, often sharing the finished products with the four of us, their undeft, creatively challenged, semi-sisters.

But in my head, it’s another story. In my head, I’m talented. I whip up charming little treasures that adorn my home and make perfect gifts. I even sell them on eBay or in a cute little shop, which of course, I’ve already named and outlined a business plan for, even though I’ve never worked a day of retail in my life. I craft in a studio (not a home office) where the worksurfaces are covered not in day planners and dictionaries and reams of source materials and tablets scribbled with conference-call notes, but with fabric and ribbons and colored papers and all manner of creativity-inducing fodder.

I’ve recently caught the “primitive” bug, thanks to a visit to a little shop in Mt. Airy (aka Mayberry, TV home of Andy, Opie, Aunt Bea…) on our vacation. I guess I’d been under a rock before then, because the world of Prim and its language of grubbying-up and ornies and make-do’s and fillers and sitters and tucks was all new to me. Strange for a long-time lover of all things cottage and floral and to be so attracted to grungy simplicity, but it bodes well for when Mike and I win the lottery (miraculously without ever playing it) and build our cabin in the woods.

Until then, I’ll keep building my crafty castles in the air (using chippy old fence pickets and rusty hardware) and doing my part to bolster the flagging economy (and eBay’s slumping sales) by buying little cuties like these, lovingly made by talented women doing what I only dream about for now, but will get around to doing someday, eventually, I swear…

valhearts31  prim-val-hearts

blackhearts

When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked
whether he could do anything for the famed teacher,
Diogenes replied: ‘Only stand out of my light.’
Perhaps someday we shall know how to heighten creativity.
Until then, one of the best things we can do for
creative men and women is to stand out of their light.
                                                    ~ John W. Gardner

 

3 Comments

« Older entries Newer entries »