Just Breathe. Just Jump In.

These two short sentences make up my New Year's resolution. At first glance neither seems lofty, but that - at least for me - is deceiving. I am not a big believer in New Year's resolutions. Experience tells me that making a hard and fast goal, at least one backed up by a litany of shoulds, is bound to backfire. Don't get me wrong, I think goals are sometimes necessary, but it's when they become task-masterish that they often have the opposite effect of the original intention. If your goals don't help you make changes, what's the point?

When I look back at this past year, I am kind of amazed at the amount of things I've done. I'm taken aback. Many accomplishmments I forget to stop and feel good about, because well, I'm just living my life and putting one foot in from of the other, like anyone else. But in reality, there's been some nice accomplishments. But all to say, I've often thought that most of the progress I've made in areas I feel bedevilled by have come by approaching them sideways. By that I mean telling myself to, "Stop!!" thinking about something just makes me think about it more, likewise trying to not eat something I crave cold-turkey, or do more of something I feel I ought to be doing more of...just makes me want to rebel. But when I work at living my life from the side, sneaky-like by just doing other things that make me feel content, I end up feeling more receptive to change in the other areas. It can still be counter-intuitive, because my instinct is to rely on an inner hard-ass voice, which I might add, has never ever helped, nor I might add, led me any closer to where I wanted to go.

So for me - breathe. If it's the only sane thing I can think to do, just for one second, breathe. And when the time is right - but don't over think it! - just jump in. If I can do that even half the time the thought crosses my mind, I'll have done a whole lot. And that's plenty, my peeps!

Top, Gloucester, MA August 2010; bottom, Jacques-Henrie Lartigue, c. 1905.

Thanks to this blog for providing my with my keeper of a New Year's resolution. http://adore-vintage.blogspot.com/2011/06/daily-inspiration-just-breathe-just.html

Not So Deep, but Crisp and Even, Yeah

and cold as a MO-FO! I mean, Jesus Mary and Joseph did the temperature ever turn north, or, south, depending on your perspective.

Yesterday we had snow the better part of the day. A few stray flurries for about an hour or so, at which point the pace picked up and the flakes feel steadily and with great purpose. I decided to use this and the bum knee as an excuse to stay in and de-clutter my digs for a few hours. Between Christmas wrapping paper and paper-paper - magazines, newspapers, loose bills, stacked, three-whole-punched and sorted in binders - I have a knack for collecting paper. I went ahead an recycled some of the Christmas wrap, which made me feel mildly guilty because I feel I should store and use a second time. But who, I ask, has the room to store stuff for 11.5 months in order to use it but once more? Not I, I reason.

I also took some of my fabric stash and having cleared my white wooden bookshelf of old family photo albums (now on my hall closet shelves), placed it there. I have decided that I really could use a small basement storage space for things like paint tins and theses research and summer clothes-filled valises, but I don't have one and so I make do.

So it snowed and it snowed and because I like being out in this kind of weather - it makes me feel hardy, in touch with the elements and not at the mercy of winter, therefor subject to cabin fever - I decided to take a walk. I needed a new special sewing needle and decided to see how far I would get in making my way to the downtown Fabricville store, where this week they are half-off. By the time I made it as far as Westmount, the snow had picked up. I back-tracked a block to pick up an album I had admired a few days prior, still in a bin outside the shop but now covered by a think layer of snow. The sticker I had seen on it must have been the original price, because when I went to pay I learned the cost was, in fact, a dollar! A dollar for dream. Heading west again, I made it as far as Greene Avenue, where I eventually ducked in to the metro and finished the remainder of my walk courtesy of the subway. I spent too much time at the fabric store, and used great restraint only to exit the premises and see a full-blown blizzard had developed! The first of the season.  A 1970s-era whopper of a winter storm.  I trudged northwards to catch the bus on Sherbrooke at Parc, which for all the wind and blowing snow might just have been called Snowlandia. I imagine it was only around 4:30 pm by then, but it was cold and blowing and kind of exciting, too. Came home and made myself some warm milk with a dash of egg nog and Lordy, was it nice! Made me drowsy, too and so I fell asleep on the sofa, far too early, tree lights blinking close by.

One would expect to wake up to many feet of snow after such a storm, but no, there's actually very little. We have, for all intents and purposes, received scant snow this winter of 2010. I don't expect it will last, but the fact that we have made it this far already already shortens the winter substantially, which means a lot when you live in a place where the first tiny blooms are only expected to poke their heads up from the earth come April.

(I guess this was a "neither here, nor there" kind of post, not about this and not about that. A bit about paper and the cold, and yesterday's snowfall and my new-old record album. Should these posts have a focus? Is there a responsibility there? I'm not sure. I am thinking on it, though).

Christmas Eve Project (for Rapid Sense of Accomplishment!)

Cats needed a soft, but not too thick blanket to maximize the impact of their Occupy Radiator  protest. And I needed to start and finish a project, as of late I've been flummoxed by a couple of the ones I've began and...well, they're still pending.

So, win win!

Happy Christmas Eve, my peeps!

Christmas is such a weird time. Can I say that? I mean, I know there are lots of articles and programs out there on the stressors that are triggered this time of year; the family drama, the reverting to childhood of individuals who, otherwise, feel they have 'worked' through the best of their crap. But I don't see much about the longing that oftentimes, at least for me, accompanies Christmas.

I feel I should back up. I am a child of December. December 14th, to be exact. So as a little one, the whole of the month was filled with such anticipation. In school, the likelihood that on my birthday, I would be asked to turn back the small flap on the Advent calendar. The walking up towards my house, a house surrounded by stacks and stacks of snow, to see the Christmas tree had been put up while I was out. And it was a fake tree, too, that to me could not have been more beautiful. The small plastic reindeer were on the window ledge, the illuminated Santa faces hung in the two main windows of our flagstone house.

My childhood was not a perfect time by any means. There were arguments and strife and so many things left unsaid, at least verbally. But my Christmases, my Decembers, remain untouchable. Even the one when I was sick with the chicken pox. (OK, in retrospect, that was lousy). I can recall lying in bed in my room one Christmas Eve and looking out the small window that framed the moon and thinking 'the sooner I fall asleep, the sooner it will be morning..."That we ever feel such a sense of magic, of wonderment is enough for me. I don't need to feel it now. I don't and yet...I long for it. I think I do because I knew it was existed, and because like anything we feel, it is still somewhere inside us. Not necessarily practical, but there nonetheless.

When I was a kid, it was naturally about wanting to tear through my gifts. Hoping that big box left under the tree had my name on it. The enormous (now, not so much) wooden sled with tartan padding that leaned to the left of the tree, the game of Clue, my first watch - a round, plain-faced Timex of course, that I still own - and in later years, the Rumours album. But this year the real moments of joy have come from finding or making just the right gifts. Because more and more I see that for whatever reason, be it stress, loss, longing, illness, want of any kind, Christmas can be hard. Hard with a capital H. So it actually gives me genuine joy to think maybe whatever I've given someone, for just that moment, makes them feel genuinely special and cared for. Don't get me wrong. I still love receiving presents and soft things and the corner piece of the store-bought cake, better still one with being sugar rosettes on it. But the gifts I give and the moments of pure  happiness I like to think that accompanies their opening, is a game-changer. (Again, please don't think this means I don't like opening gifts addressed to me and me alone, because you'd be mistaken!)

Christmas, like aging, or watching a parent age, is not for sissies. It is, or ought to be, for adults only. It is profound, it is life-changing and it is bitter and sweet, but I'd have to say it is more of the former. When it's a kid you are dealing with, or when it's an aged parent, mostly, the change has got to happen with you, in you. And I don't know about you, but sometimes I can only change so much and so fast. So then I rest, if I'm lucky transform a little more, dig a bit deeper and then maybe, 'cause I'm human, I step back. I cut myself a break, perhaps wisely, perhaps not. I muddle and F*ck Up royally and then do more of the same and try not to regret, over-analyze, over-apologize, or over-anything. But being human, I sometimes do. And I hope that it all works out in the end. And sometimes I drink a glass of wine, or better still a gin & tonic with a slice of lime and a maraschino cherry and flip through the latest edition of Vanity Fair.

But the aforementioned sweet, perhaps not belaboured enough but still real, is...real. The peacefulness of a beloved pet sleeping on a radiator, the utter love with which they sometimes take you in, the way a piece of music (see link below) can reach through your breast bone and grab your heart in such a way you didn't think possible, at least not anymore. The smell of a Scotch Pine, the soft twinkling of lights on the boughs of the tree with - at last - snow falling softly behind it, visible through the windows. The quiet of your living room as the setting for all this, while you wear your Dad's beige wool cardigan that still smells like him. To miss that Dad in ways you can't ever put into words and to wonder what he'd think of those fine lines that now appear around your eyes when you smile. A slight man, but one with quiet conviction and the hands of a French-Alps farmer, of his father; wiry and strong and able to steer me from behind my neck either purposefully or lovingly. Or both, in retrospect. The imperfect, but dearly loved ballast of this family. All to say, I am so blessed Dad. So blessed.  Born on the 5th of January and passed on the 7th. I miss you beyond all measure. You'd have loved the cats (and they'd have loved you).

Merry, peaceful Christmas. Let's see what 2012 brings.

Love to all.


Magnum Mysterium; Nordic Chamber Choir.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn5ken3RJBo&feature=share

Shades of Yellow.

"Toad talked big about all he was going to do in the days to come, while stars grew fuller and larger all around them, and a yellow moon, appearing suddenly and silently from nowhere in particular, came to keep them company and listen to their talk." 
                                                                       
                                                                      - Kenneth Grahame.


Up until about two weeks ago, there were still more leaves on the trees than on the ground. But now, enormous piles of raked, sodden maple leaves line the sidewalks and accordingly, the landscape has shifted. The horizon that lay hidden by the buds of spring and the lush green foliage of summer has stepped out from behind the high-noon sun to reveal a neighbourhood grid, church steeples and the lofty dome of St. Joseph's Oratory. The view strikes me as austere - in truth a bit melancholy - when seen from a high point, but it's beautiful, too. Beautiful in its simplicity, how the greyish-brown branches reach out past the cool light of a pale blue sky, how Jupiter pierces the November night sky a little more fiercely than it does in July.


What does this have to do with the colour yellow? Mostly that I have been surrounded by shades of yellow and gold and amber for weeks now and I wanted to write about it before it's all gone. You'll have to wait for spring for the soft pale shade of a daffodil, but for now, there's this.

(My) Room With a View

Didn't I tell you it was nice?

Am I right, or am I right?

(C'mon admit it, I'm SO right!)

Anatomy of a (Re) Covered Chair

I love my tree house of an apartment. From where I sit right this minute, I can look towards my left, past my gold velvet 'Mad Men' (or is it Jetsons?) arm chair, beyond the chipped, blue metal-top table to see yet more gold. Gold leaves on the enormous maple that towers above this house, gold leaves on the smaller tree that stands in its shade and - you guessed it! - a lattice-work of gold across the street. It's beautiful in full sun, when the bluest sky sets off the brilliance of it all, and it's enchanting and peaceful today, when the sky is a paler blue and a weaker sun casts a soft, even light across the whole tableau.

This introduction was a long-winded way of saying that even if I hadn't inherited great pieces of furniture, even if it had only been a great space I'd lucked into, I'd have been happy. But I did indeed luck into some wonderful pieces of furniture and this chair was one of them. When I arrived it was covered by a vinyl yellow-covered seat cushion, the foam inside it so disintegrated that it poured out like crushed honeycomb candy on to my front balcony. Sometime in June I purchased a square foam insert, which kicked around my living room until last week, when it was finally placed atop the chair. (Notice I said placed, not affixed - if you see the last photo, you'll notice it's slightly askew). A couple of weeks ago my sister laboured over an hour to staple the foam and first layer of fabric together, the foam finally cut to approximate the shape of wooden seat. The last step was for me to take the brown printed corduroy fabric I bought and slip an elastic through the casing I'd pinned in place; once slipped, I sewed around the edge. Too, well, lazy to change the thread to a nice matching colour, I used the white thread that was already in my machine, but since this thread can only be seen from the bottom, I have no plans to think any more about it. It adds character, methinks! A bit of dash, right underneath my chair, where you'd least expect it.

Bare bones chair, with baggy of original nuts and bolts taped to the chair back. 

The foam, finally cut and trimmed.

Andrea staples the first layer of fabric, covering the foam, on to the seat.

Cat, easily mistaken for an all-black Daniel Boone coonskin cap, snoozes on chair.

Detail, corduroy. Looks black, but no, it's brown. Milk chocolate brown.

White cat poses on chair, wearing orange necklace to 'make the orange flower pattern pop.' 

(His words, not mine!)

Blue. Bleu. Blau.

"I found I could say things with colours and shapes 

that I couldn't say any other way - things I have no words for." 

(Georgia O'Keefe).

Tartan: Take Two

I bought the skirt pattern I had my eye on with regards to that fabulous tartan fabric - it paid to wait a bit, as lo and behold, it was half-off! Then again, I had gone in to the shop to purchase elastic for another project and ended up spending more money than anticipated, so it remains to be seen if I actually saved in the long run. (Sewing paraphernalia is fast becoming my recreational drug of choice, and Fabricville my go-to connection). Anyway, it so happens I like the pattern very much and it falls under the 'easy' category, which pleases me no end.

As I was thinking more about tartan - and yes, I have been - I have pondered why I've had it on the brain. I think, first of all, it's because I love time-tested, durable fabrics - English woollens, Scotch plaids and Tweeds - I love them in their classic forms, made with integrity by hand and woven in colours that reflect their natural environments. But I'm noticing I also really respond to the work of designers who use these classic fabrics in new ways - who value the history and workmanship that have made it was it is today, but aren't afraid to use it in entirely new ways. I think the first time I encountered this was with the American designer Vera Maxwell, a key figure in the development of American sportswear and the subject of my master's thesis at NYU. Maxwell had a classic sensibility, some would say a bit stodgy at times, but she was not afraid to kick things up a notch. She created a simple evening gown in loden wool, with a matching coat - a nod to her Austrian heritage. In the 1940s - or '50s, I'd have to reread my work - she began travelling to Scotland to work with a small mill, commissioning the company to create classic tweeds in brilliant colours. It's hard to describe why this kind of thing drives me crazy, but it does...

I came late to an appreciation of the late Alexander McQueen's work, really only looking more closely at it when I was asked to write a short profile about him for the Grove Art Online database. I came away from it with a greater appreciation for him and his work, for his desire to stay true to himself and not please everyone, for his dedication to finding beauty in dark and unexpected places, and perhaps most importantly to me, for the fact that he dug history. His Highland Rape collection was a nod to his ancestors, but also to the brutality he felt they'd suffered at the hands of the English.

Vivienne Westwood is a piece of work and one of the most creative, fascinating and seemingly unafraid individuals in any profession (as far as I'm concerned). If I get started on her here in a big way, I won't stop. I only want to say that she takes tweeds and tartans and uses them in the most fabulous, humorous ways. She's fascinated by classic British textiles, British and European history and combines them uses them in the coolest, most kick-ass ways imaginable. I love that woman, I really do.

But because I want to include only images here that I took myself, I am going to show you my favourite designs - and there were a lot of fabulous ones - featured in the recent Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition here in Montreal. Let's take a look at my my current plaid crush, shall we?

Exquisite workmanship, detail, quality, but who the hell has ever seen a bias-cut, one-shoulder tartan evening gown? Punked up with a Whiting & Davis mesh biker jacket that smacks of tough and elegant, all at once?

Oy, Govnah. This is crazy. Crazy good.

There's a cameo on that scary, spiked clutch. This is tough-looking, but fun-loving all at the same time. And garters? Seriously, stop right now.

Plaid mohair waistcoat, high collar approximating the 19th century dandy, equestrian top hat, feathers as mohawk.

The cut of the waistcoat is about the only thing that's traditional here - woah, Nelly. I love that. And the shimmer of the silver blouse and gold mesh jacket is soft and ethereal - dreamy and beautiful, really...

One last look...I shall let you know how my skirt turns out.