two kitties

Writing With Thread: Miao Embroidery

I found this fascinating video during a random search on YouTube for clips on 'textile history.' There is so much to know.

The exhibit is traveling in 2009. You can see it:

Jan 31-Apr 12, 2009
Madison, WI
Chazen Museum

May 15-Aug 16, 2009
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Museum of International Folk Art

Chanel Two-Tone Raincoat and Tights.

I'm thinking of Spring, how about you?

Mummified Barbies of Yves Saint Laurent and E. V. Day

Last month, I went to see the Yves Saint Laurent retrospective at San Francisco's De Young Museum. Like these "tribute" shoes, the YSL exhibit seemed hastily organized. The clothing on display was pulled from the Fondation Pierre Berge, an organization dedicated to the collection and preservation of exceptional haute couture. I might have taken another year to negotiate with the ladies; mixing the Fondation's holdings with borrowed pieces from YSL's clientele. 

I did love this wedding dress, knit by Yves Saint Laurent dressmakers in 1965. Here we have a white wool mummy on the cusp of the sexual revolution. Consider the simple, phallic shape of the thing. The way it covers every part of her body and keeps the alluring - hair, breasts, waist, legs - from view though her hands and mouth are exposed.  The dress is probably very, very hot and heavy to wear. She is wrapped and tied with ribbons, forcing her groom to have patience in his steady, slow progress to unwrap her cocoon.

The dress is knit in a variation of the Aran style fisherman's sweater. The stitches knit into the dress have significance to me. In Aran patterns, the honeycomb is a symbol of the hard-working bee. In the Hebrew Bible, honey is a spiritual food. In the case of the the knitted wedding dress, it is also, most certainly, a reference to the wearer's sexuality. She is a flower, awaiting pollination.

The basket weave stitch is said to represent the fisherman's basket, and hopes for a plentiful catch. Aran sweaters are traditionally made of untreated wool which retains natural lanolin. The lanolin gives the sweater a degree of water resistance. This wedding dress is a form of protection.

Not on the museum label - just my own observations about the dress.  And maybe that's what was missing from the DeYoung show for me - some kind of acknowledgment of the depth and complexity behind the couture of Yves Saint Laurent. These are not just pretty clothes. 

A series of Mummified Barbies by the artist E. V. Day recalls the power of the bee and the potent sexuality of this troubled icon of femininity. Day wraps Barbie in twine and dips her in hot beeswax, leaving only the eyes and, occasionally, the feet, as a conduit for experience. 

What did your wedding dress look like?

No-Name Women: by Lee Chunghie

Lee Chunghie's No-Name Women (2002) is an play on a centuries-old Korean patchwork technique called jogakpo. These patches are often sewn together to create traditional wrapping cloths called bojagi. 

Korean wrapping cloths are usually square. Those made of silk are called subo and are skillfully embroidered and presented on important occasions. Here, Lee Chunghie unravels the mystery of traditional Korean needlework.  So much of women's time is spent creating things for others. The woman disappears, the complex beauty of the object assumes her transient value.

For No-Name Women (2002), Lee Chunghie patchworked transparent layers of embroidered and screenprinted silk.

Chunghie says, "I see jogakpo as a metaphor for human life. We may feel ourselves to be as random pieces of fabric, alone and without meaning, but God's hand places us together in beautiful composition that has great harmony and meaning."

The piece is currently on view at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

Easy Bake.

When I was younger, Christmas always seemed a time of possibility. I kept a seed store of secret dreams buried deep. As a teenager and even when I was home from college, I loved to walk outside at night, smelling wood smoke and picking out my favorite light displays in the neighborhood. I'd think that maybe this was the year that some boy would think I was pretty and fall in love with me. I'd imagine we'd set up a small house somewhere and it would be capital "H" happy.

Christmas memories from my childhood survive only if they were extreme. Every once in awhile, my sister will ask, "Do you remember the sleds?", referring to the year my parents divorced. They bought us so much that the gift opening seemed to go on for hours. All the gifts were stacked up in big sleds for us to play with in the snow. We used them, first, to cart our haul back to our rooms. I know our parents meant for us to remember it as a wonderful Christmas. I remember it as a BIG Christmas.

 

If my grandma was there, she always arrived from Iowa with grocery bags full of home baking. Cans of beans, tomatoes, frozen strawberries and apple butter - all made with things from her garden. She usually brought handmade quilts for my sister and I or little things from Avon. It wasn't "big city", but I realize - now too late - how much she thought about me and what I might like.

 

There was the year my mother was so depressed that my gift was a free coffee mug she had gotten from work, all balled up in newspaper with a post-it note for a gift-tag. My grandma died and decorating stopped, cooking stopped, lots of things stopped. We stopped dressing up, we stopped going to candlelight services, we just stopped.

Ten years later, in a fit of optimism, I got married for the second time - on Christmas Day in 2004. It was a good thing. I became part of a much bigger family and they make me happy. I'm still adjusting to the time challenge of shopping for fifteen people instead of three. It takes a lot to negotiate everyone's expectations about what the holidays should, or should not, be. And my expectations are the highest in the bunch. All those teenage imaginings about what a happy family would do during the holidays rise up and attack me.

The first year I hosted Christmas dinner, I stood in front of my holiday table and realized why my grandma always insisted on taking a photo before we ate. It was hours of work and love - and would be gone in a flash. Though I loved what my grandma did for us, I don't think I really understand the nature of that gift until I took it on myself. And I don't do in a year for others what my grandma did in one week. Some of the more cynical people in my family have said that my grandma wasted her life, always putting others first.

This family has so much. I was really down last week after a conversation I had over gifts. I try to put the heart-give back in Christmas, buying handmade or making something personal. I spend about $50 on a gift card and then I take time to choose something personal - something I'm pretty sure they'll want and like. But different family - different expectations. I don't spend enough compared to what they are used to. It's not the first time I've been told, I'm just a slow learner.  It hurt. A lot.

I guess when I think of a good Christmas, I think of my grandma and the things she made. That's who I want to be. So I thought of three people I love - but never get to see - and then baked them each a box of homemade cookies. They are seeds of love wrapped in plastic.

Thanks for listening.  And here's the recipe for Chocolate Chip Peppermint Crunch Crackles.

*By the way, if you want to watch a good movie about baking for people you love, not being understood, and running away with your sweetheart, check out "Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi".

Share Some Candy

Are these photoshopped? I don't know, but who cares? I like them. The image creates an overwhelming feeling of tension. A wish that you might have happened upon this scene about two seconds later.

 From the very, very cool website Share Some Candy. SSC found the image at A Nice Idea Every Day.

Without Power - Without Heat - With Cookies.

We woke up this morning to huge gusts of wind coming down the mountain. You can see how the air is hitting the water close to the shore, and blowing ripples further out.

This was big wind - our trees are still spinning like tops. Mike's perfectly manicured lawn was littered with branches and pine cones.

We lost power, but we lose power all of the time. We weren't worried until we went to town and learned that most of our highway was closed because of broken power lines.

We had a nice breakfast, checked out the damage from a recent fire at Echo Lake gas station, picked up my snow tires from storage, and then headed home. We noticed that we were the only people driving on the highway, but...it was pretty cold out.

What we didn't know is that after we'd left home, several big trees had fallen across the highway between town and our house.That meant we had to park and WALK HOME. It was only about a quarter mile, but in 80 degree gusts of wind at 17 below it really sucked. And I'm from Minnesota and I can deal with cold.

Not all of the trees on our property made it.

We lost this one sometime in the night, and by the time we returned from breakfast, the one just to the front right of it had fallen as well. It's still very, very steely-grey cold, and steam is rising off the lake, making it look pretty dramatic.

 

You gotta be here to get the full effect - the noise from these trees blowing around and the freezing cold air coming in through our big windows. I'm snuggled up by the fire, with the two kitties on my lap. We're all really thankful for the guys who worked in the freezing cold all day - sawing up trees and fixing our power lines. Wow!

Felted Sweater Deer

I love this guy! He's made from a Gap sweater I found at thrift. I modified a vintage McCalls pattern I had in my files and I'm so happy with the results!

Pierre Cardin: "Satellite", 1965

This vintage Pierre Cardin recently sold at Christie's (London) Avant-Vintage fashion auction for $8300.  It's called the "Satellite" coat, and it's made of glossy vinyl and lined with synthetic fleece.*

Believe it or not, this coat is considered "important" in the history of design. It is a well-preserved example of the work Cardin was most famous for - his "space age" clothing designs of the mid-1960's.   

I didn't know much about Pierre Cardin  before I flipped through the auction listings. I knew that he made a drugstore cologne that my Dad wore in the 70's. I had no idea that before he went off on his own, he worked for Dior and helped him create Dior's famous "New Look".

What's in your closet? And is it worth anything? Check out the Vintage Fashion Guild's resource list for more information about your labels.

*It's hard not to think of Target when you look at it, right?

Rachel Denny's Domestic Trophies

I love Rachel Denny's felted sweater deer.

 

Winter Morning.

There's just enough snow here. I think I'll take Buddy the Dog for a long walk today - eating snow is one of his favorite things.

Careers in the Arts.

I just returned from Miami, where I spent a few days meeting with my client, The PlayGround Theatre. 

Flip Books with Kraak & Smaak

D. and I always talk about (but never make) old school flip books. A flip book of our lake view as it changes throughout the day has been on the project list for, like, ever.

I imagined myself down on the beach in a lawn chair, reading and snapping shots of the horizon every fifteen minutes. Never happened. Or, once the weather turned, I could have used my wildlife camera instead.

And there are plenty of resources out there. The Flip and Photoshop Elements websites both have easy "how to's" to help you make a flip book. So basically, the lake flip book project isn't looking good for 2008.

This video from Kraak & Smaak is pretty inspiring though. I found it via Magpie and Cake. Maybe in 2009?