Adventures are never smooth. That’s why they’re called adventures, though this was not what I was thinking during some of the more challenging moments yesterday as we embarked on our trip west. It began with a shock to the system when we arrived at the airport expecting curbside checkin only to find there wasn’t any and then we saw how many other people were also traveling. No more stories of planes half-full, breezing through security because everyone was staying home, no this was more like “Christmas came early”.
We walked over a mile through the maze that now constitutes a TSA line. Luckily we had left our house earlier than we’d planned, because it took us over an hour just to get through security. Our plane was boarding by the time we found the gate. Grateful to have made our flight we took our seats. The flight was packed, the airline personnel seemed particularly stressed or maybe it was just that we hadn’t flown in over a year, so the whole experience was like being punched repeatedly in the face.
I was determined to drink tons of water with the hope that I’d stave off any headaches, however this plan failed miserably. So there we were sequestered in airplane seats that I swear were even narrower than when I last flew just a year and a half ago, wearing masks that steamed up our glasses and added to the feeling of claustrophobia and general discomfort. Am I complaining? Yes. Yes, I am. This was supposed to be a funny bit about the perils of traveling. Well, let’s see if I can recalibrate… Nope. It was basically like signing up and paying quite a bit of money to be tortured for 4 hours. In addition my plan to avoid getting a headache by drinking gallons of water failed miserably and so in addition to having to pee every 15 minutes I also felt as though my head was going to explode and I began to feel nauseous.
I could go on and on, the car rental turned into another “adventure” and I put that in quotes because the whole idea of an adventure is that it’s supposed to have elements of fun. No? Okay, whatever. Suffice it to say, there were shuttle busses involved, more long, long, long lines, endless waiting, waiting, waiting, lack of staff everywhere to accommodate the hordes of people all of whom had the same, increasingly seeming bad idea as we did. “Let’s go have an adventure!” Well, not so fast bucko. Maybe we should rethink this whole “vacation” idea.
And then we finally got to the car lot and things became downright comical. First of all we couldn’t find the car, nor could we read the woman’s hand writing who’d written or told us or both (who can remember at this point?!) where the car was. Finally we found it, got in and then couldn’t figure out where the gear shift was. Oh, right it’s that little row of buttons under the radio. What?! Oh and the window wipers? They’re touch sensitive so every time my husband went to push one of the buttons to make the car move the wipers would start. How does one turn the wipers off, one might reasonably ask? Who knows. Eventually I roped some poor unsuspecting employee, the only one on the lot, in to give us a tutorial on the basics of our vehicle and finally, finally off we went. Still it was touch and go. I found a power cord for my phone, plugged it in and now the car was paired with my phone, which set off a whole new set of absurd conversations such as this one:
Me: where are we headed?
Hubs: Pastel Canyon
Me: ? Type in Pastel Canyon and get 20 different locations none of which are in the state we are currently in. There isn’t a Pastel Canyon.
Hubs: Hmm… did you type pastel, as in you know, pastel?
Me: slightly exasperated. Yes. I know how to spell pastel.
Car Voice: In 3 miles, turn right.
Hubs: That can’t be right?
Me: Where is she taking us? I haven’t been able to find the right place!
Hubs: Well I have it on my computer. It’s in the bag in the backseat.
Me: rummage around, find bag with computer, open computer, but we have no wifi… We have no wifi.
Car Voice: Turn right.
Hubs: I printed out a sheet with directions. It’s in the front.
Me: desperately look around, but cannot find sheet. Where is the sheet?
Car Voice: now quite determined and insistent Turn right.
Hubs: It’s right there in the pocket.
Me: It’s NOT right there in the pocket or I would have already found it and we wouldn’t be having this conversation!
Hubs: It’s right there in the pocket.
Car Voice: Recalibrating
Me: NO! It isn’t. Oh, wait. Right. Here it is.
Hubs: ___________
Me: This must be the wrong sheet. It doesn’t say Pastel Canyon.
Car Voice: Continue for 81 miles…
Hubs: Can’t you turn that thing off. She’s nagging me.
Valley of Fire
I could go on and on, but we did eventually make it, despite the fact that our rental car is making bizarre noises any time you accelerate, causing my husband to say, “This is the worst rental car EVER!” And then a little later he added, “I hate everything about this car.” Which has now become a running joke.
and finally we made it here, which is just on the other side of Zion and where we spent our first night.
Oh and not a single bison sighting… unless you count the bison who gave up his life for the bison burger my husband ate last night for dinner.
It’s 4am. That seems important. I should be asleep, but here’s the thing, tomorrow we have to get up at 5am because we have an early flight, so I figure I may as well get up now since I have the option of going back to sleep whereas tomorrow I won’t. This is the kind of thinking that defies logic; welcome to my mind.
My husband told me there are herds of buffalo roaming about where we’re headed, which has me restless with anticipation. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a herd of buffalo in real life, although I think I must have when I was a young girl as we went on a great many road trips out west. Regardless, I am planning to take lots of photographs and will be shooting some video of them. And I intend to shoot some video while we’re hiking too. As I have rarely ventured out of our home in over a year, let alone wandered about amongst large beasts (fellow New Yorkers don’t count) my excitement level is extremely high. I can hardly wait. This is the first trip my husband and I will have taken since we went to Iceland three years ago! Was it really three years? Also I have to interject, when Richard and I got married, we had this crazy idea that we would travel around the world for a few years, but those plans were thwarted early on by work commitments, the realities of having small children, etc.
As I was packing yesterday I came face to face with a major dilemma. What sort of stitching do I take? This will be the topic of another video, no doubt. So far I’ve pulled way too many threads and although I’ve chosen a piece of hand dyed linen that I dyed last week or was it the week before, who can remember anymore? The threads are another issue altogether.
See? It’s a problem. And I haven’t even dipped into my Stef Francis stash yet.
So I have my work cut out for me today. Oh and I have workshop kits to mail. By the way, if you haven’t signed up for my The Basics Workshop, which I made such lovely kits for, there’s still time!
I even made a video about the workshop, the kits I made for the workshop and other random musings… Here you go!
If any of you are around in another few hours, don’t forget to tune in to today’s video, which premieres in a few hours, that’s 8am EDT. We can chat together, share some laughter and I’ll show you how I wind and organize my threads. Spoiler alert: it’s probably not what you think!
The next time you hear from me, I’ll be posting among buffalo!
And don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter; the signup is just to the right of this blog posting.
I just can’t tell you how thrilling it is to go to my website and write a new blog post! For those who may be confused, last week I was still posting on my old site, which now is housed under the umbrella of my new website! I know, I know, I’ve already talked about all of this at length and I’m not going to do another post all on the fabulousness of my new website, however I just have to say that as I sit here typing this I’m silently bouncing up and down and squealing with joy. Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! It’s been such a long time in the making!!
So. Now that I got that out of the way, what are we going to talk about?
Oh! Before it slips from my mind, don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter. It’s just to the right of this post. ❤️
The other thing that leaps to mind is that I just released a new video on my YouTube channel.
The title of this video sums it up.
This video begins with an 8 minute riff on life, aging, Merlin, facial recognition, the results of my MRI and whatever else flew into my mind as I was recording. So yeah, there’s that. However don’t despair, I did some stitching too.
In other news… okay there IS no other news. This is my life in a nutshell. It’s evidently a very, very tiny nutshell. 😂 So I will add a few videos of other people’s lives that came up when I went to schedule this video. The first is my favorite Golden Retriever, Bailey and his new best friend.
And then I had to share this one, because going to Africa to see the gorillas has been on my bucket list for decades now.
I wasn’t familiar with Keith Urban and his music until I saw this pop up and hit play while waiting for my video to finish uploading. How great is he? And Nicole Kidman? Love them both.
Enjoy the weekend everyone and don’t forget to check out my upcoming workshops!
Yesterday I had to have an MRI because I’ve been getting headaches that often wake me in the middle of the night. I was quite sure I was fine, but it’s a precaution and being an adult and all, it seemed the responsible thing to do. So off I went feeling I’d prepared myself adequately. I don’t care for small, enclosed spaces, so I knew I was going to need to practice breathing and asked for something to put under my knees so my back didn’t begin to hurt. I believed I was on top of the situation and lay down, dutifully putting the ear plugs in and began counting my breath. Except once I was in the machine, I could feel my jaw shaking. As in uncontrollably and I was so freaked out that my jaw was doing this weird thing that I seemed to have no control over, I became convinced that it was so bad it would make my head move and ruin the imaging, which only made it worse. It took everything in me to breathe in and out, count my breath and eventually my jaw calmed down.
The upshot of the whole thing is that I’m fine. Perfectly fine. My neurologist called yesterday evening to tell me all looks well, “for someone your age” which of course gave me pause. “What does that mean?” I asked a bit defensively. He explained that you expect to see a few tiny white dots in “someone my age” and that this is also common in those who experience migraines. Evidently I have a couple of those white dots and also a tiny cyst, which is not in my brain at all, and is about 4mm. So another MRI in about a year to make sure that doesn’t grow. All in all the news is excellent and blood work is all good too. Whew. I knew I was as healthy as a horse.
After I returned home the skies opened up and the rain came down like some sort of end of the world scenario. That was when I decided to do a livestream, which you can see here if you care to.
And then I had to do a lot of work on my website, so I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening writing copy, learning how to input new workshops into my workshop schedule and create images for the workshops.
Every now and then when I needed a break I’d work on the piece below, which I’ve fallen in love with and that is inspired by plant and human cells. Pinterest is great for finding amazing images of organisms, cells and plant life that have been put under a microscope. I have a whole board where I’m saving such images.
This piece I’ve added some of my hand dyed t-shirting to and then stitched on top of it. It’s very relaxing.
My mother and two of my brothers are scientists: a chemist, an astro physicist and a bio-chemist. I was never very good at science, but I do love looking at the microscopic images of organisms and cells. They are things of such exquisite beauty.
The photograph below is of a coronary blood clot, horrible, but if you remove what it IS and just view it as an image, it is incredible.
Coronary blood clot. Coloured scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of a blood clot (thrombus) in the coronary artery, showing red blood cells (purple) in a fibrin mesh (threads). Magnification: x2500, when printed 10cm wide.This is a microscopic image of a cactus (I think). Amazing.
Which took me to viewing images of brain cells. Talk about inspiration!
Microscopic image of neuronsAmazing, right?!
There is beauty in just about anything if looked at through a different lens. ❤️
I’m knee deep in writing instructions to various projects that I’ll be doing workshops on. I have to admit I don’t love writing instructions. It’s kind of tedious, exacting work, but it has to be done. Also it’s been kind of grey and rainy out, so one must grab the sunny moments to venture out when one can. I’ve decided to break up the monotony of instruction writing with a little walk. Spring is in the air, and though it’s still a little chilly out there, the flowers are beginning to bloom.
I thought a little stroll in the West Village would be fun. There are still a few cobble stone streets left in New York City and the West Village is one of the places where you can still see them. So off I go, and while I’m at it I’ll get the blood work done that my migraine doctor asked me to get. It’ll be an adventure!
This Thursday I’m hoping to be able to share some exciting news, but until then I thought I’d share this video and besides there’s zero chance I’ll get any footage of bear cubs while out and about in the West Village! For those of you who might be wondering, my mother did not send this to me, but I think she’ll enjoy watching it.
My father’s father, Maximilian Oscar Zürcher, my grandfather, imported Swiss lace to all the Couture Houses in Paris. Originally from Teufen, Switzerland, he moved to Paris where he and his wife raised my father, who was born in 1919 and my Aunt Jeanne. This was the extent of my knowledge regarding my grandfather. And then one of my patrons on Patreon asked if I’d demonstrate working with vintage lace for our monthly livestream. As my eldest brother had sent me some of my grandpère’s lace years ago, I pulled some out and along with it, came upon a sketch book that I’d not spent much time looking at.
And inside was a treasure trove of beautiful sketches that he had done.
When I realized that these sketches were my grandfather’s I was both proud and astonished. How was it that this book had been sitting on a shelf along with dozens of samples of the beautiful Swiss Lace he imported and yet I never realized he also designed and was an artist?!
A few samples of the Swiss Lace he imported.
And then I remembered that my Aunt Jeanne, my father’s only sibling who lived in Paris until her death, had given me a photo album filled with photos of Grandfather’s lace used by the fashion houses in Paris, where he also lived and where my father and his sister grew up.
Grandfather’s lace used by Christian DiorNina Ricci – Spring 1957SchiaparelliSchiaparelliRobert Pignet
Almost all the photographs were marked on the back with the designer. A few even had other notations in French: the year, the model and where they were. And then I came upon this watercolor drawing.
Lanvin Watercolor Sketch
As I looked through the photographs it was like stepping back in time…
Mme de Salis: 195219321929192419101904
I haven’t tried to translate all the writing, most of it is in either French or German or maybe even Swiss German, I can’t tell, and the handwritten script is difficult for me to decipher, still it’s something I’d love to do so that I could read what he wrote.
I cannot describe the feelings that are coming up after seeing all of this. When I was at Parsons, I knew fairly quickly that fashion design was not for me. At the time I felt that I had somehow failed. Here we had spent a small fortune getting me through college, and yet I knew I didn’t have it in me to devote the rest of my life to fashion design. But there was something about fabric, threads, fiber that continued to call to me. I began designing hand knits, I ventured off into designing fine jewelry, but I always felt the pull to return to fiber of some kind. Finding all of these things from my grandfather, a man I never knew as he died before I was born, has been nothing short of astonishing. It feels as though things make more sense. Could it be that this man whom I knew nothing about, my father rarely spoke of him, had never-the-less influenced me? Is there some genetic component to what one feels drawn to? Who knows? Regardless, I am incredibly grateful to have these small treasures that were once his.
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