Susan Barrett Price's Blog, page 6

Microquilt for my mom

I decided to stitch my mom a little “doodad” for her birthday–a micro-quilt about 4×6 inches. I started with one of her baby photos and printed it on cloth. It’s one of a series of portraits her father approved while he was in the hospital for gall bladder surgery in 1926. Sadly, he died there and this photo was the last he saw of his baby girl. Continued>>>

What Possessed You to Buy That Thing???

For one of my writing projects, I’m trying to delve into the mind of the collector. Collectors of old things are almost never portrayed in a positive light. They are cultural criminals, like Nazis art thieves. Or they are bloated and ultimately lonely egotists as in “Citizen Kane.” Or they are psychopaths, like the dweebish coin collector in Stephen King’s “A Good Marriage.” Or they are pathetic hoarders requiring intervention (see reality TV). Or perhaps they are the stereotypical, obsessive-compulsives portrayed throughout mass media as people who melt down when someone disturbs the alphabetical order of their vinyl collection–small, brittle people….. Continued here>>>

If you’ve already read Part 1, it continues to Part 2 and Part 3.

Work in Progress: “Smugglers’ Road”

Yes, I’m still working on it. The “finished” original 111,879 words is currently a slenderized 109,567 words. I read it once and it was good. I read it twice and found some areas for improvement. Now I’m on my third read-through and finding innumerable passages ripe for polishing. As so many wise writers have said: “All writing is rewriting.” And truth be told, I love the rewriting. First drafts are hell. – Continued here>>>

Work In Progress: “Red Project”

Slow progress. Some silliness. Continued here>>>

Work In Progress: “Red Project”

I thought long winter days would mean speeding through my “Red Project” on to my “Blue Project” but… not so fast, chica. My goal is to cover the white cotton to within a couple inches of the edge with patchwork/embroidered/appliquéd rectangles. First step, create the hand-stitched rectangle. Second, invisibly baste it to the cotton (i.e., tiny stitch on top, long stitch on bottom). (See image above.) Next, I’ll add more stitches where the aesthetics are lacking. Then I’ll cut a backing and quilt it all together. I’m hoping the result will be a magical shawl. – Continued here>>>

“Smugglers’ Road” — It’s Alive!

Strange things happen in January when you wake up before dawn and have entire delicious days without obligation. Last Thursday I was hunting around for a Facebook #tbt [Throwback Thursday] and half-randomly came up with this one of Jim at the amulet market in Bangkok, 1990 – Continued here>>>

The Daily Crossroads

Last post I asked how we manage to live ethical lives in a corrupt world. Life is an Odyssey: every day we navigate between the monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis and resist the seductive song of the evil Sirens. But today I step back from activist answers like joining Greenpeace or picketing the White House. Today I’m going to talk about awareness, maybe what we used to call “consciousness raising.” The first step to improve any situation (I’m thinking) involves acknowledging current and historic reality. Yes, the world is full of corruption and I’m inextricably entangled in it — I pay taxes for misbegotten wars; I own stock in companies that cheat; I keep a wild tropical bird in a cage in my kitchen. And I wonder if the Chinese Foxconn worker who made my smartphone commited suicide due to the working conditions there. – Continued>>>

Painful Origin Stories

A bunch of thoughts are connecting here. Last night we watched Earthlings about the utter cruelty of humans toward our fellow Earth inhabitants — animals (food industry, leather industries, puppy mills, etc.) Between that and my current experiment with a plant-based diet, my thoughts turned to Buddhism. Maybe I should meditate again…

This morning we got news that Jim’s grand-daughter had her baby. Continued>>>

Overdyeing my perky prints

As my Red Project continues, I decided to experiment with some too-bright-white prints that I got at the remnant store. They are at the bottom of the photo at the top. – Continued here>>>

What Spirit Gives Things Their Life?

Is there a lifeforce that inhabits THINGS? I don’t mean the voice of consumer crap that calls out to us, “Buy me!” I mean the subtle spirit of old things and hand-made things — that magical quality of an artifact that tells a story, that moves it along trade routes, that propels it through history, that makes people want to care for it. A subtle but powerful energy that makes some things endure while the others find themselves disintegrating at the bottom of the trash heap. – See more at: http://madinpursuit.com/Journal2015/20150110.html#sthash.3odMztzJ.dpuf