Beret Happy Holidays!

Well our trip to Texas this year was an adventure to say the least and I hope to put up a few blogs over the next week or so that describe the event. First I have to admit that spousal unit Chessguy BEGGED me to let us rent a car for the drive south this year, but did I listen? (Ahh, but more on that in another post.)

Today I want to show the berets I made for holiday gifts.)

As always, I waited for the last moment to do everything, so when things went wrong, (and of course they went very wrong) I had no recourse but to ride the waves onto the beach and hope that my board didn't splinter on the way!

I ordered the berets on ebay from China and of course they arrived in plenty of time, (really!) so I couldn't follow typical American practices of blaming the Chinese when things didn't go as planned. Maybe I could pin this on the Russians?

It turned out for some reason that all the black berets were smaller than the others and of course I ordered black and brown for the more conservative members of my family (read that as "the guys") and that meant they were all going to get hats that were way too small for them (but since they were knit and could stretch if needed, I didn't worry  - Plus I am relatively sure that none of them will EVER wear the darned things anyway!) I might as well have made them yarmulka's or wedding veils or headdresses like you see on the Las Vegas show girls (Come to think of it - that is what some of these resembled!)

The first one as prototype was for Spousal Unit Chessguy and it had (what else?) chess figures on it. I have no photo of it, even though it lives one little room away from where I am typing. I put a queen and some knights on a brown beret. First I tried gluing the figures on and then realized they probably wouldn't stick that way - so out came the sewing machine, the breaking of needles, the badly cut and rcut figures, and the messing with the tension knob. (NEVER EVER touch that knob!!! - It's like the red button in the white house! Once you touch it everyone is doomed!)

After finishing the chess beret, it was time to work on the caps for the rest of the family. The first of these was supposed to be rather simple. I would use the Star Trek badge and put it on a beret for my sister " I.Heart.Spock.and think.Kirk.is.a.lovable.Goofball"! I knew it would be beautiful. It was simple and stylish and perfect for this elegant sister. There was a circle with the inverted Federation V on top of it and it would be absolutely perfect!

I started cutting my felt. (Okay, so I was cheap - rather than buy a whole bunch of 12" square pieces that would cost dozens of dollars, I bought  a few squares in colors I knew I would need (white, pink and black - what was I thinking?!!) and then the sample smaller pieces (which had 8 colors each). This meant I had limited opportunities to mess up! (And by the way, I used them all!)

Well, after I had cut (and recut and then recut) my felt, I realized (Star-Trek connoisseur that I am) that when I looked at pictures of Kirk on the web - he didn't have that lovely elegant logo - in fact there was no circle inextricably glued to the inverted Federation V. There was only the V. That circle had been added for the Picard generation and Trekkies are nothing if not picky about keeping their facts straight, so I recut my emblem.  Then I sewed it (in a less than perfect fashion, alas) to the brown beret for sister "IHeartSpock".

I have to say in all honesty, that it looked pathetic: an irregularly sewn upside down V in white on a brown beret. So I painted it gold with water color pencils - it turned mustard color. Yuck! Then came the ink tints I had bought at the knitting conference. (They had been out of gold - so I had to use silver over the mustard/gold.) Okay - so now it looked grey, but that was the best I could do!

I had an idea!!!! - I could use silver beads to represent stars and give it a little razzle dazzle. I ran to the art room and pulled out the 6 drawers of beads and 3 unsorted shoe boxes. NO SILVER BEADS!!!

Agggggggh! 

Okay, okay - calming myself!! I knew that in one of the shoe boxes was a huge jar of mixed beads - yanking it open (and of course spilling loose beads all over the floor) I discovered there were a few silver seed beads mixed in with the hundreds of other stray colors that came in the "Jumbo Seed Bead Collection for only $6.95". After an edifying afternoon of picking through beads, I still didn't have enough, so I grabbed some brown sparkly beads from another jar and a few gold ones. (Stars ARE different colors after all!) and began the laborious effort of sewing them onto the hat by hand. Three days later (and two days before we were to get into the car to leave for Texas) I had finished the first of the 7 remaining hats!

Yay?

Here is that one:

So, I moved on to the project for my Mom. I had such visions of dashing cockades and abstract turquoise squiggles, but of course my felt samples had no turquoise, no bright blue, not even a respectable aquamarine for the blue beret I had chosen for my Mother.  I had bought a package of feathers at a craft store, (envisioning long arching pheasant tails and swaying ostrich feathers - but of course what I ended up with was more of a sort of cross between military chic and Salvation army donation reject (Yes, there are some things that are even too ugly for charity!) You can see "IHeartSpock" wearing her Star Trek model in the background. Doesn't she look thrilled?!:

(To be fair, my sister is not reacting to the beret, (I think) but to the long process of getting the photo taken, but that is a whole other tale of tribulation and misery!)

Okay, 2 down and 5 to go! Even though I was 0 for 2 in terms of executing my ambitious plans, I had this vision of a cute little purple hat with pink flowers for my other sister, "A Day Without a Hat is a Day without Meaning."  Sister DWAH makes her own hats and does an absolutely gorgeous job! I was really deluded to think I could come up with something attractive that she couldn't have knocked out herself in a couple of hours!  I started with the pink flowers (I did still have the pink felt even though supplies of everything else were dwindling). I plopped them onto the hat and brother was it boring, boring, boring!

Okay so I had a good 24 hours left before we were to leave - I could just whip out some crochet flowers to glue on top and that would give the objet a bit more interest! Oh yeah, I had to learn to crochet first!! Well, I did have some books, but of course I had no idea what all those squiggly lines in the instructions meant, so despite the fact that I followed four different patterns, the (sort of) medallions all came out the same: lopsided, identical and crude. That's all right, I could probably make them round with the way I glued them onto the hat, right?

So I stuck on some stems and the flowers (I was going for a repeat of simple and elegant) and then put the medallions on and know what? The thing was still sleep inducing!  It needed excitement. What could that be?  yeah, grass blades! So I glued them on - nope still uninteresting! When frantic it is time to turn to bling, right? So out came the beads! Now the thing looked like a K-mart blue-light special! The kind of thing you would only buy during a shopping frenzy, but at least it was done!

Well, time was pressing and I had to get on to "Avant garde Not Nerdy Niece Artist" (Annna). I wanted to do something real cutting edge with her beret. I had chosen red and I decided to cut out pieces of the beret and put felt behind the holes in order to make it look ultra hyper-post-modern punky. Of course after I cut the first hole, I realized these berets were knit! Yes, KNIT!!  Time for camomile tea and percocet. (Indeed, I was in medically verifiable panic and pain!)

HOWEVER, knitting classes to the rescue!!  Had it not been just a few months before that IHeartSpock and I had sat in on a course on "Steeking"?  Indeed, once in class, we had dismissed the whole idea when we learned you actually had to ccccccuuuttttt a hole in your knitting. To heck with that!! We knew what happened when you got even the tiniest hole in your panty-hose and a big hole right across your knitting!!  But desperate times called for desperate measures - so it was off to the sewing machine to steek (and of course I cheated by adding lots of fabric glue and it worked, mostly.) I also made the most funky tassel I could imagine and once again the thing I had an unusual object. This one looked like road kill that was way past its prime. The answer was of course beads!! I left Annna's beret drying and moved onto Annna's fiancé, it was after all one of a kind!

Annna's Fiancé (Sebastian) is a writer interested in Latin American culture, so I wanted this one to be cool and politically salient. I decided to do something with Aztec gods, since I had also purchased a variety of books on Aztec culture for his holiday gift and thought a theme might be brilliant way to make him like me! But have you looked at those Aztec gods? They're COMPLICATED with multiple colors and lots of tiny details!!

Nope, that wasn't going to happen! I cancelled my Amazon.com order immediately and decided he should change his interests over to the Mayans! Now there is a visually sensible culture!  I quickly settled on a Mayan god of death. I figured with that generation that if it has to do with Death then it's cool and I cut him out of felt, gave him some outlines with my Sharpie and glued him onto the hat with a few matching feathers. (Never mind that the Mayan god of death didn't have feathers!) It looked good! I liked it (and Sebastian wasn't going to wear it anyway, so I considered it done.) This one, by the way, is my favorite of all the hats I did and the one that I personally would wear myself:

The hard ones were left: Rabbi Uncle Bob and my nephew "Just Playing Electric Guitar" (JPEG).  Since Rabbi Uncle Bob is a mathematician, I spent several hours looking for a simple, but obscure formula appropriate for a topologist.

(You know what? Math formulas for the most part just aren't simple! I had pretty much learned that in the calculus class I sat in on a year ago, but I guess I forgot!).

Since I had a do-nut hole as far as ideas go, I decided to run with it and I took the formula for a Torus, wrote it out and then used sharpie pens to draw a sort of a torus-like shape to glue on the hat. It took me hours to cut out all the math symbols, but at long last it was done and I only had JPEG to worry about.

JPEG loves to play guitar and wants to be a musician. It was midnight now and  I knew that I had to do a famous guitar and put it on his cap! But what guitar is famous and the most recognizable (and belongs to a credible musician) ?  Well there was only one I could think of, so I set to work trying to do a psychedelic flying V guitar. I couldn't cut all those colors out of felt and still have the image be small enough to be worn by a guy, so I knew I had to paint it. I got out my acrylic paints and painted the white part of the guitar. The felt just sucked all the color in and you couldn't even see where I had put the color. I thought, well that would dry and then I could paint a second coat and it would work fine! WRONG! The second coat got sucked in too (and so did the third and the fourth!)

Not to panic! I had gel pens, maybe they would work! .......WRONG!! The felt sucked the gel pen ink in right along with the acrylic. It was like some kind of black hole! Okay, maybe white out would do it? Nope! Gesso? I couldn't find it, so I grabbed this other tube of acrylic paint. It WORKED! (Only it turned out it wasn't acrylic paint - it was water-mixable oil paint - which meant it would dry some time after next Independence Day! )

I had to start over. I managed to get enough layers of acrylic on for fret board to be visible and then it was time for the psychedelic paisley! You guessed it - the only possible answer was embroidery and beads! I spent the night sewing beads onto the guitar in the geometric shapes characteristic of this famous Gibson guitar. Here is the original

  ......and here is what I came up with (And yeah - Hendrix played it upside down, I know!)

I wrapped everything quickly and climbed into bed - we had a long drive ahead of us and I slept the sleep of the unawakened dead - exhausted, but relieved I would have gifts for everyone this January when we met for our gathering.

Here we all are in our finery (except Sebastian who had to leave for school).

Now I'm wishing I'd made myself one. I feel like the black sheep.
 
Oh yeah, .... never mind!

Drawing update

The draft of my drawing is now finished. Ineed to do some tweaking, but this is more or less what I am thinking about for the final piece.

 

The upper right corner still needs some work, and I want to work on some of the background space, but now it is thinking time.

Update on the Drawing of My Female Relatives

So today I worked on the images of my sister and added my great grandmother on my Father's side.  I just can't get the face of one of my sister's right. It's probably because of the photo I am using. The newer part of the other sister is pretty close to what she looks like. Now I need to put in my aunt on my father's side, fix the bottom left figure and then start adjusting the values. I guess there is still a lot to do!

Thanksgiving Meal

It's funny. I talked to my sister before Thanksgiving and although we had to spend the holiday apart we both decided to have our traditional Thanksgiving meal.  So we both cooked all day and then we had our long distance family phone call.  So we started to compare notes, since we obviously would have made the same things. It turns out we had not one single item in common! She had turkey. We made leg of lamb. They had stuffing of course and we did not, but we had lamb gravy. They had mashed potatoes and we had mashed sweet potatoes. They had corn pudding and we had corn bread muffins. They had broccoli and cheese casserole and we went the green bean route. For dessert pumpkin pie here and mince meat there. Both meals sound pretty good, but funny how our childhood traditions seem to have been so different.

So here is a picture of our feast. (I chose this picture because I thought maybe it would look like the dogs were on the table, but it doesn't really. They are at the edge of the room enjoying their own feast of the cooking pots. You can see Copper licking his lips!)

Update on Drawing

Well, I've slowly been working on my drawing of the women in the family, but it is going very slowly. Here is the current state of the drawing:

 

I got my grandfather's sisters done today and reworked some of the prior figures. I'm still not happy, but it is really about the composition in this picture so, accuracy isn't actually all that important.

New Drawing

Well, During the first part of the year I was working on a drawing of my male ancestors, and now it is time to work on the women.  I have begun the first draft.

I'm working on the composition right now and not accuracy really, but I love the image of my great grandmother on the upper right side.

Today I worked on the second draft (Nov 1).

I experimented a bit with different styles  which will either need to be used more consistently in the drawing or else I will nee to take them out, but until I get all the relatives filled in I won't be able to tell what I want to change.

Is anyone else as sick of political ads as I am!?

Finally a Star Worthy of the Title!

I'm not the type to drool over Hollywood notables, but of course there are a few people of the movie persuasion for whom I have admiration. Some of this admiration I confess is visceral, James Spader and Val Kilmer I adore because of their roles, and talent, but also because there is something about them physically that probably connects to my female heterosexuality. When it comes to women actors however, for me there is one head and shoulders above the rest (metaphorically and not physically as she is quite petite)  and that person is Lili Taylor.  Many people don't recognize the name, but few have forgotten her as Lisa in Six Feet Under or as the memorable character in Say Anything who sings the immortal song about her ex-boyfriend "Joe Lies!"

Last night I had the opportunity to meet this amazing person. This is not the first time I've had brushes with greatness and without giving details I will simply say I have been sorely disappointed. For once however this was not the case.

Last night my small local liberal arts college held a showing of Being Flynn with writer Nick Flynn and his wife Lili Taylor in attendance. It was sponsored by the Literary Arts Institute, an organization that helps promote creative writing and the liberal arts. If you haven't seen the film, it is one I can recommend highly. The story tells of a young man who is a little lost and who gets a job in a homeless shelter only to have his estranged father turn up in need of assistance.



Robert De Niro does an impressive job of playing the alcoholic father, who has aspirations of being a great writer. (Or more properly who knows he is a great writer, despite the fact that no one has ever seen his infamous and ever worked -upon manuscript The Butt Man). This is the kind of deeply nuanced character role that De Niro was born to play and he does so masterfully and with no holds barred.

In the film, young Flynn played by Paul Dano must learn to cope with what he learns (and doesn't learn) about his father and learn also about dealing with people who live on the street.

The supporting cast is marvelous (more of an ensemble cast really) with Lili Taylor playing a co-worker at the shelter and Julianne Moore playing young Flynn's put upon mother.

It is a realistic portrayal of those who live on the street (for the most part)  unsugared by Hollywood plot devices and saccharine escapism. The film is dark, gritty and in general true - based on Nick Flynn's memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. See it if you have the stomach for a little reality in your movies! See it even if you don't!

Afterwards we were treated to a question and answer session with the two-time PEN award winning poet. And treat is the operative word. Flynn answered questions about changes in the film from his book. (Time was sometimes collapsed and there was no meeting with his father in Flynn's apartment) and about his feelings about working on the memoir (difficult and needing distance on a regular basis - but that is a part of the writing process.) He said he doesn't feel he knows his father even after spending time with him - one of the legacies of the father's extravagant tales and alcoholism. He therefore advised the children of the homeless, if they were seeking advice to listen and pay attention. Of course that is good advice no matter what.

Nick Flynn talked fondly of watching the film with his father in his Living Community and having to repeat the lines of the film as they watched on a laptop, because the big community TV was being used for sing-along time. Best of all he read a poem and spoke of art, describing it as providing a scrim for the audience to project their views upon, an idea he credits to his wife Lili Taylor.

Lili sat nearby and listened and refused to steal the spotlight from her deserving husband.

The lighting in the room was absolutely horrific (brutal overhead lights that created a reverse Frankenstein effect) so I could not get a decent photo, but fortunately my friends saw to it that I got a chance to converse with the actress after the discussion.

So what was she really like? She was gentle and down to earth and oh so kind. She listened patiently to praise I'm sure she has heard a thousand times and was gracious and warm.  We talked about the Midwest, the horror films she has been in  and her roles in The Addiction, I Shot Andy Warhol and The Haunting. There were so many specific things I would have loved to ask, but we kept it light and at the end she gave me an autograph and I got to have my picture taken with her.  She told me she will be in a film coming out next year called The Conjuring. She says it will be really scary and since it is directed by James Wan (who did Saw) I believe her. Look forward to ghosts in a New England setting (but filmed in North Carolina)!

And while you are waiting for The Conjuring go see Being Flynn and while you are at it read a poem. It is important to take time out for the arts and you don't need to wait for a poem to come to a theater (or red box) near you!