Friday Morning (and into the Afternoooooon...)

Ellie woke up a bit early this morning and was insistent that we go to school to see her friends. I nearly cried. This transition has been rough on the little trooper, and today was the first day she popped out of bed and was like, "Let's go already!!" Rock on, lady!

This meant that I got about 45 extra minutes of morning. I needed them. Everything is taking longer than I thought today.

I found out yesterday that I have been offered a reading at a local gallery here in Davis. My professor and publisher Sandy McPherson made it happen, and I'm so, so grateful. I haven't read in five years, so it's a big deal, and I think it will be the last time I read the Carrier poems as a group. It just feels time to move on from them, and the timing is strangely appropriate. Even though it's perfectly understandable, I don't like that my poems are tied to September 11th, and I can't believe it's been a decade since then. I also think because of what happened two weeks ago, I'd like to read them one more time and not tack on newer poems (not that I have many anyway). Read the greatest hits, so to speak, and then be done. There are plenty of other things to write about or read to people. Those things just happen to be in my head and nowhere else right now.

So, the problem this morning was that the gallery needed a recent author photo and bio. The bio is easy enough, but the photo was a little trickier. Back in Philly, I would have called up Brooke, one of my awesome Mamas from my Mama group, and she would have worked her magic. I was missing her this morning! I do have my new camera, and it has a timer, but getting it to focus properly and then for me to sit in the right place and make a nice face--all that was kind of hard! I don't like smiling for author photos, especially for anything Carrier-related, because the poems are kind of sad and I don't want to smile widely and sell a feeling people aren't really going to get at a reading or in the book. But it's tough to look unsmiley and pleasant. I end up looking confused and sedated. It took a lot of tries.

I got a slightly-out-of-focus picture that will have to work because the camera battery was dying and I was sick of the tripod and at some point it's just time to get on with the day. When I get the details of the reading, I'll post the link.

After that, I got started on the projects for the day: Red Bed and the Blue Comforter.

Red Bed was easy.

Before: black bed. $30 including slats and kiddy mattress, craigslist.

(All the photos today are iPhone ones. The Nikon needed to recharge.)

After: Red Bed!

This took exactly one can of spraypaint.

The Blue Comforter was harder:

Before: old, white Ikea comforter from college:

During:

This is when I started to get nervous:

Shoving the comforter into the blue gave me corpse hands.

Good to know for Halloween.

The dyeing process means three runs of the washing machine:

1) With the dye and the comforter.

2) With detergent and the comforter.

3) With bleach and detergent and nothing.

The comforter is in the dryer now, and it turned out just as the lady in the fabric store said it would: looking like bad tie-dye. I told her it was a what-the-heck kind of project, and I'll cover what I can with fabric paint polka dots (BIG ONES). For a potentially cute-ish bedspread at the cost of a bottle of dye and some paint I already have, we'll just see how it goes. Ellie's potty training right now, and it'll be nice for her to pee all over stuff we're not too invested in. Silver linings!

Anyway, after all those cycles, and one in the dryer, here's the comforter. It's not too bad:

But it does have blotches:

So this is how I did the polka dots. The bucket is just for tracing circles, the top for big circles and the bottom for smaller ones. The pen is a disappearing ink pen I use for tracing sewing patterns onto fabric.

My stash o'paint.

I strategically placed polka dots over blotches.

The ink will disappear on its own, and if it doesn't, I can just steam it out with an iron.

Freehand circles aren't as hard as I thought, and it was easier not to use a stencil. This one was in-process and looks better now. :)

Repeat about 16 times while listening to Brett Dennen radio on Pandora, and done! Four hours in the sun should set everything. Or fade it. That's life, ain't it?

The finished bed in Elo's room will post tomorrow if nothing goes awry. Hooray! I'm gonna go get the Ellicus and take her out for a snack. :)