I'm better at crafting...

than I am at blogging, apparently. I really have been working on projects (although finishing them is, as always, the bane of my existence), but because they were all "in-process" rather than what I like to call "done" I figured I would wait until I actually had something to show for all my hard work.

I got lots of great Christmas presents this year. Seriously, my loved ones spoiled me rotten with the types of things they knew I would adore. My sweet son, told I needed new earbuds, bought me ones emblazoned with Kermit the Frog eyes. My manfriend (there has GOT to be a better term for this. No joke.) showered me with coelocanths and new bass string and embroidery patterns and an antique banjolele. And the delightful Ms. S. got me this. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. It need a frame worthy of it, though. S. couldn't find one she thought was suitable, and told me she'd leave it up to me. She mentioned that she thought that a Mexican folkart style one would be perfect.

So I made this one.

I got the frame at the White Elephant on a half-price day, so I think I paid $0.50 for it. I also got Dolly Parton's greatest hits on vinyl that day, but that's neither here nor there. I took the time to sand the frame, which generally I am far to impatient to do. Good thing I had a new Dolly Parton record to get me through! It also took me two Wanda Jackson records, all of Willie Nelson's Red-Headed Stranger, The Stray Cat's Rant 'n' Rave, and the first half of the first side of Kenny Rogers' The Gambler. That is a TERRIBLE album.

It took me a few days to decide what color I wanted the frame itself to be, so in the meantime, I took out my stash of glitter craft foam - an obsession begun when I was turning HRH into a comic book character for Halloween - and began cutting out a sacred heart. Well, first, I spent about seventeen gazillion hours looking at Mexican folkart online and pinning the shit out of it. THEN I cut a sacred heart of glittery craft foam. And then I decided that it looked cheese-tastic and faintly commercial, so I painstakingly drew and cut a Shure-55 style mic head to paste over it.

Once that was done I decided to match the color of the Gocco print in the paint and did the whole damn thing twice over in what my son referred to as TARDIS blue. There are a startling number of items in my house that are precisely this shade of cobalt.

The next conundrum was what to use for embellishment. I had chosen the deep frame specifically because of the possibilities of gluing weird shit on and calling it art. What weird shit, though? I loved the idea of bottlecaps, so I charged Zed with the task of bringing me home some. I found the perfect 45 record clipart on Etsy (from here)but couldn't figure out how to make my ancient and cranky Macbook resize it. So I just used the label portions covered with these awesome epoxy stickers that were made just to fit inside a bottlecap. Then I used fine black glitter glue around the edge and into the ridges. I wish I had flattened the caps first, but I didn't realize I wanted to until they were already glued to the frame. Then I liberally interspersed the bottlecaps with star-shaped and regular tiny sequins. I went back on forth on the idea of adding the flowers, but ultimately decided it seemed more finished with them. Then I hung that bitch on the wall right next to my front door. I can't stop grinning when I look at it.

Bam! Two finished! It only took me five weeks! Oy...

I did a good job working on a great project I'm excited about, though. I decided to send 28 handmade postcards in the month of February - yes, I know this is a leap year, don't judge - but instead of sending them all to one person, I went with seven friend each receiving a postcard from me that I mail every Friday this month. I put the first batch in the mail yesterday. I was too excited to mail them to take pictures, because I'm super lame. I won't count this project finished until the last seven cards reach their destinations, and I hope that the friends I chose like being a part of my year-long adventure.

That's it til next time, mes petites choux. I have a question, though. Would you rather I updated no matter the status of my various projects, or do you prefer seeing the destination rather than the journey? Also, how on EARTH did that Smilodon drag that enormous coelocanth out of the ocean's depths?

Have I mentioned how dearly I adore the man who bought these for me?

A new leaf!

So I've become obsessed with reading all these sewing blogs lately. It's ridiculous - I've starting reading like twenty a week or something! I tell myself it's because I find it inspiring, but the fact is that I'm just super nosey and I love watching other people's creative processes.

The thing is, though, that right when I hit the depths of creation for Christmas this year, I realized that I have stopped documenting my own creative process, and that somehow in my mind I started valuing my own work less. I had few moments of panic in the week before the holiday when I was convinced that my gifts were somehow unworthy, that my effort in their creation devalued them. I ended up buying more presents in an attempt to offset the paltry nature of what I had made. Can you spot the problem with this, dear reader? Can you see where my reasoning went horribly awry? I spent dozens of hours stitching love into every inch of all these different project - a fez for the Cap'n, a sewing kit and new doll clothes for HRH, a bespoke amp cover for Z - and my heart was convinced that that meant less than a $25 videogame. I didn't even bother to take pictures of these things.

New Year's rolled around, and as you probably know, making resolutions is not really in my nature. This year, though, it feels like I need to give myself a chance to treat myself and my work with the respect it is due. In that spirit, I am going to start - and try to finish, though we all know the outcome of that already - a project every week for the whole year, for a total of 52 by December 31, 2012. AND - this is important - I am going to get a picture and write a little blog post so that I can't hide whatever feeble light I have under the proverbial bushel.

I have finished the first one, and I am impatient to post it, even though the person it's intended for hasn't seen it yet. Consider this a warning, La Fabulous: if you look now, you'll ruin one of your Christmas pressies. Also, this is why your package was so damn late going in the mail.

this did not photograph as well as i'd hoped

Project numero uno accomplished, friends. I used some gorgeous yarn I'd been hoarding for a long, long time. It's a Japanese silk and wool blend, originally quite expensive, but I picked it up at the White E for well, White E prices. I only had a single skein of this deep olive color, and so my choices were limited. Scarflette it is, then. I also managed to teach myself a new crochet stitch. So there's that.

I have started my second project already - another crochet scarf because it's freaking cold over here right now, and I can crochet while nestled under all the blankets on the couch while watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy again.

I have lots of things I want to make and do and sew and embroider and so on and so forth. I have a friend who is into lomography, and who wants me to pick up the Holga I've been neglecting for three years. I want to sew a Western shirt to match my sugar skull skirt. I have ideas, and I think I've made good inroads into the motivation. You guys can help by cheering me on.

Here's a not-birth story for you

I consider myself a birth professional, even though I don't work in that capacity very often. The one and only time I went to a convention for birth pros, I was given a test to see what kind of advocate I was: woman centric, baby centric, pair centric.

Guess which one I am?

I chose to pursue alternative woman-led birthing (as opposed to directed, medical birthing) while I was pregnant with my son, my first child. It was my first child but not my first pregnancy. I terminated my first pregnancy in the summer after my first year of college. I was 18 years old.

That summer was a crazy blur of bad choices. I had met my boyfriend, a stage actor from L.A. in the last few weeks of the spring semester. He had come up to fish and discovered he had miserable seasickness. At that point I was woefully inexperienced and painfully self-conscious, enough so that I didn't really believe that this very handsome boy could be interested in me or anything I had to offer. When summer rolled around, I moved into a house with Actor BF and some friends and tried to make ends meet with a (very short) string of ridiculous jobs I wasn't interested in, and whatever money got sent from home. I drank a lot and hung out with some amazing friends who kept me fed and mostly out of trouble. No one thought to remind inexperienced, self-conscious, loudly feminist me that I needed to Take Care Of Business instead of letting Actor BF do it. I never went on birth control, and at some drunken point, our poorly-realized plan of condom usage failed. By the end of summer, I had Urgent Business to Take Care Of.

We ferried to Bellingham, and he gave me $300 before dropping me off at Sea-Tac, where I used $99 of it for a MarkAir flight back to Denver. I was numb and disbelieving the whole time. Apparently we visited the Ketchikan mall and had dinner at a pizza joint. I know that only because of the sentence fragments I jotted in my poetry journal. I made it to Denver with only a borrowed backpack full of dirty clothes and a sense of shame. My sister picked me up and drove me to her house. The next day she helped me call the clinic, and two days later she took me to Glenwood Springs and gave me juice to wash the Valium down with. Then she brought me back again, held my hand while tears poured down my face, and bought me lunch that I couldn't eat. She never said a word that wasn't support or love. She told her husband I had a bad case of the stomach flu, probably from food poisoning. She told our mom I was better off on her couch, where she could bring me soup. She let me cry and cry, and two weeks later, got me back to Denver so I could catch a flight all the way back to Alaska where I could finish what I started. I wrote a few poems about it, cried a little bit more, told Actor BF to fuck off, as he really wasn't good enough for me. And then I moved on.

I mention this all now because I read a blog post this morning on, of all things, a sewing blog. A 60-something hippie type told the author of that blog about her repeat abortions, the first of which was in 1969. The blog author came home and wrote about the harrowing experience of hearing these stories, and expressed her disbelief that the woman who told them could truly be at peace with her decisions. The author spoke of her sadness for this woman's "aborted babies." She wondered how this woman's life would have been different if she'd chosen to birth those children. She honestly believed that woman's life would have been better.

I know how my life would have been different. I could enumerate the ways, but suffice it to say that it would NOT have been for the better. I do not regret not having a baby at the precious age of 18, when obviously I could barely care for MYSELF. I don't regret not having a child with an alcoholic that I didn't love. Not only do I not regret it, I applaud it as one of the few truly sensible decisions I have made in my life. On the rare occasion that I dwell on it for even a moment, I think, "Thank GOD."

I have tried to write this not-birth story before, because I know that the stigma about abortion won't go away if we don't talk about it. I have found again and again that I was embarrassed to write it. But embarrassed about WHAT? I'm not ashamed that I made the choice I did. I'm not ashamed that I chose to go on and birth other children. I'm not ashamed to say I would have more if I weren't worried that this world can't hold them. Choosing to end that pregnancy gave me the strength to make other choices, ones that were crucial for me and my children. I'm not ashamed of that. The shame I mentioned earlier wasn't because of the abortion. The shame was because I prided myself on being too smarter than that. And I'm not ashamed to say that, either.

no regrets here, either

Another letter to a filmmaker who is screwing stuff up

Dear Zack Snyder,

I really believe that you are a fanboy. You are camped out at 9:15 on Wednesday mornings outside your local shop to pick up the week's new issues. You bag and board anything and everything in case it might be of value some day. You know as much about obscure letterers and colorists from the '60's as baseball fanatics know about the Baltimore Orioles leftfieldsmen. I'm not doubting your geek pedigree. I know you too fucking well.

You're the sniveling little shit who disparagingly asks me upon my arrival at said comic book store if I'm "looking for something in particular - a gift for a boyfriend, maybe?" You're the one who points me firmly in the direction of the Buffy comics when I say I want horror pulp (not that there is anything wrong with the Buffy comics, but they're not exactly Hack 'n' Slash, are they?) You follow me not-terribly-covertly around convention floors making comments about the fit of my Star Trek t-shirt. You are the idiot who insists on trying to rolling to seduce my very powerful, not-at-all sexy mage in a one-off D&D adventure.

Here's the thing, Snyder. I don't much care for your movie-making. I think in your eagerness to make movies that are frame for frame reenactments of the comics they come from, you lose any desire to imbue your films with honesty or weight. It's frustrating when you do that to source material like Frank Miller's 300 and downright detrimental when it's something like Alan Moore's Watchmen. I don't know what graphic novel you were reading, but the Watchmen movie you made was NOT the Watchmen comic I read. The book was filled with fully-fleshed, complex characters with realistic motivations and emotional lives. Your movie? Not so much.

And now you bring us Sucker Punch. On the surface, there is nothing about this film that I shouldn't like. It is filled with dragons and mechas and sword-wielding lovelies and Jon Hamm. But why, for the love of Firefly, must you make the female characters look like they fell face-first into a vat of Porn Spackle(tm)? And why must the entire story be predicated on the assault - implied SEXUAL assault - of a teenager? And why do you take incredibly talented actors like Carla Gugino and Jena Malone and force them to emote with their fake eyelashes? You first remove all the power and agency from Queen Gorgo and Silk Spectres I and II, forcing them into roles where the ONLY art they wield is sexual - the sword-wielding and high kicks are merely frames for their ridiculous costumes. Now you are intent on selling us a whole two hours of this disenfranchising nonsense.

NEWSFLASH: We women live in a world that is fucking FULL of disenfranchising nonsense. We don't need it spoonfed to us in the guise of empowerment. Neither do our daughters, and just as importantly, neither do our sons. I want my budding geek son to not be the guy who chases girls out of the comic book shop, either directly with his nasty attitude or indirectly by insulting their intelligence and sensibilities with his complete ignorance of what makes a tough woman tough.

Honestly, Snyder. Your take on female power makes me feel bite-ier than the JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot. That is saying something.

Yours,
stella

P.S. In case you have forgotten what sexy AND capable looks like:

From now on

I will only use this blog to complain about things which I hate. Today, it's Hollywood. Again.

I know that I have already penned long diatribes about how Big Movies seem determined to destroy the things I feel strongly about by making them NEW! and IMPROVED! but I have to rant about it again. See, a couple of years ago, a little Swedish horror film called Let the Right One In made a bit of a splash amongst film buffs for being creepy, atmospheric, and heartbreaking. It is a coming of age story about having no age to come to, and an exploration of loneliness shared. One of my favorite themes that gets explored in storytelling is how we constantly strive for connection and the myriad ways we build bridges between ourselves. It stayed with me for weeks after I watched it, and I recommended it to anyone who would listen to me. Now Hollywood has gone and "remade" it so's Joe Average don't have to read and watch a movie at the same time (so taxing!) and I am wailing in protest.

All you need to know about the changes made to the story - and I have no doubt they will be endless and appallingly hamfisted - is to note the difference in the admonition offered by the original and revamped titles. Let Me In - the American version - is a plea against good sense, and the very thing we are warned against when dealing with vampires. Let the Right One In... well, there are exceptions to every rule.





I don't have to implore you to let the right one in, do I? Chose wisely.

Also, if you have yet to read the book, go ahead and do it. But not if you think every horror movie needs to be scored with angry screaming rock instead of minor key cello.

Dear Facebook,

No. Just no. But thanks anyhow.

Yours,
Stella

Happy anniversary

Ready for more relationship nonsense, kids? Mmkay, here goes.

I already talked about the stuff, how it happened. We met, and it was supposed to be all fling-y and wasn't that a terrific weekend? and then we couldn't stop talking for three hours on the phone and emailing seventeen times a day. A week after I had to ask his last name so I could feel okay about knowing the color of his underwear, he asked me if I wanted to go on An Adventure, to which I said yes, and then when I came back from it, I couldn't stop thinking about how much I didn't feel all the butterflies and woozy palpitations. My lack of crushing on him in the face of my deep seated desire to know him very well indeed concerned me. I wanted him to run like hell from my insane declarations of maybe something kind of like affection, but he refused to. So then the next five months were me pretending he was telling me the truth the whole truth and nothing but the, and him pretending that I couldn't tell the difference. And then we had a very modern kind of break-up, which was really more like a refusal of service.

And then one year ago to this very day, he drove up to the cafe in a fifteen year old car filled to the brim with brightly colored bribes and a crazy puffy blanket which I have since found I can't sleep under. I frankly wasn't sure that I would ever do so much as read a Facebook post from him again at that point, and having him walk hand in hand down the street with me was surreal.

Since then a whole lot has happened. What it all boils down to though, is that I made a bet with myself that I would never make him a birthday cake, and I lost. Last year I half-assedly made him one to share with my mom (sorry, mom. really sorry.) Now this year I have promised him not just cake, but a pie, too, because I like him that much. AND I am rehearsing again, just so's he can have the Rockabilly Birthday Barbeque Bash I promised him last year when I found out he shares his natal day with Carl Perkins. And I bought him a (whisperwhisperwhisper) and a (mumblemumble) and I'm thinking of giving him the THING, you know the one? [Z. - you didn't for a moment think it would be that easy, did you?] So now he's beholden, what with the awesome presents.

I have not woken up one morning out of the last three hundred and sixty five and thought, "This guy's a jerk. What the hell, Perez?" I haven't even thought, "What am I DOING?" (actually this is pretty much how I start every morning regardless of who I wake up next to, but it has never been in reference to my partnership) I just turn over and make sure he's still there, which he always is.

I am holding up an imaginary glass full of something delicious - right now I wish it were Prosecco and St Germain - in a toast to this marvelous year, and to the man who made it possible, and to you, dear reader, for getting this far even when there are no pretty outfits or pictures of my new tattoos to distract you. I'll see you here again, same Bat time, same Bat channel, in 2011.