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An Unpleasant Reality

Watching Impromptu , a movie about the love affair between George Sand and Frédéric Chopin, was rather like attending my first professional writers' conference. You have an opinion of your peers based on their work, and then you meet them in real life and discover they are very different from your idealistic notions. This is not a bad thing, actually -- I don't think anyone should occupy a pedestal -- but it is disconcerting to say the least. So was this movie. The premise: Radical novelist Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin (Judy Davis), who lives in Paris as George Sand, falls in love first with the music of Frédéric Chopin (Hugh Grant), and then pursues the composer like a lovestruck groupie, this despite having a complicated life and string of past and present lovers creating havoc in it. Chopin, the only decent character in the entire production, is in a health decline with tuberculosis, and really just wants to be left alone. Chaos ensues as Sand chases Chopin around P...
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The Great Vera Upcycle, Part II

For my first Vera Bradley upcycle project I'll start with this much loved tote in the retired Minsk Plaid pattern from 2012. It arrived with signs that it was used for quite some time and even repaired by the previous owner, which made me very happy. I like to think that person liked to mend things like me rather than buy new -- or maybe it was a thrifter who found it before me. The solid black fabric on the handle straps was added to cover wear and tears, just as I repaired another Vera bag with the same problem back in April. To prevent the straps from becoming too thick from my planned repair I'll first remove the old repair. That was actually really hard to remove, it was applied so well with hundreds of tiny machine stitches -- took me about an hour with a seam ripper. With that removed, you can see what the person who repaired the bag before me tried to cover up -- a lot of strap wear. I went to my scrap bin in search of a black solid I could use to re...

Lock Me Up

The Chinese drama The Prisoner of Beauty is one of the best long historical/political series I've ever watched, so I was surprised after finishing the last episode to see how polarizing it's been among fans (this is also why I don't read reviews of series and movies before I watch them.) Evidently the male lead is considered ugly, which is absolute crap. I thought he was quite handsome in an unconventional way. Also there are a lot of people saying this series is mediocre, which leads me to believe they didn't watch it. The main story: to broker peace, old enemies arrange a marriage between Xiao Qiao (Song Zu Er), a beautiful and clever young woman, to Lord Wei Shao (Liu Yuning), the cold and apparently ruthless head of the Wei family. Xiao actually takes the place of her cousin (who has fallen in love with a stableman) and is quite resigned to a difficult relationship with her new spouse, as her family turned their backs on his, resulting in the murders of his...

The Great Vera Upcycle, Part I

I thought I'd share my methods for upcycling thrifted Vera Bradley bags so that anyone else who's interested in doing the same can follow my process. A disclaimer: I paid $9.99 for this lot, and I'm only interested in making them useful and pretty again. As always any vintage textile of value (including bags) should be cleaned and repaired by an expert conservator to preserve it. The first step in my project is to clean out the bags and then give them a bath. Unless the bags have never been used I tend to find debris, dirt and random bits in the pockets left behind by the original owner. In this lot I found a tiny claw-type clip in a pocket of a purse, and a key chain with a fabric fish on it attached to the strap hardware on another. After they get a bath I'll reuse those, too. To launder the bags, I secure all the loose straps or elements with safety pins and group them in colors for washing: all reds and pinks, all blues and greens, lights or darks, ...

126 Years Later

The vintage copy of The Sketch Book by Washington Irving that I won at the thrift auction for ten bucks arrived, and it's older than I assumed: the copyright date on the illustration page is 1899. It's a beautiful, fragile little book. I'm having fun imagining who might have bought it 126 years ago. Did you know that Charles Dickens was a huge fan of Washington Irving? Or that Irving was the one who coined the term "Gotham" for New York City? I have never read any of the author's work, so I'm going to save this for Halloween, when I fully expected to be scared witless (again!) by The Legend of Sleepy Hollow , which is in this short story collection.

Vera Rehab Lot

The lot of Vera Bradkey bags that I thrifted to rehab just arrived; let's dig into the box and see what shape they're in, shall we? All the bags fit inside this roomy weekender, which is in very good condition with no tears or stains. These bags, which fit under airplane seats, retail anywhere from $60.00 to over $200.00. This big tote had/has some handle wear, and looked to be much loved by the original owner. Someone covered the worn handles with solid black fabric, just as I would have. :) A very pretty purse with an unusual drawstring type closure, also in very good condition. Three smaller bags -- the one on the left is an insulated lunch bag, and the other two are cosmetic/storage bags (the dark pink one is velvet.) Here's a nice purse in good condition. The original owner left a keychain with a fabric fish on it. Maybe they were a Pices! Finally here's a purse with tons of pockets in a very pretty print. Everything does have wha...

Labor of Love

Sometimes a project you mean to knock out quickly has other ideas. Such was the case with a market bag I decided to make out of blue scraps from my bin way back on May 18th. Once I pieced it I just knew it was going to take longer than a night, which had been the original plan. I began seeing lighthouse spotlights, and wanted to interpret that in embroidery. Since my arthritis has curtailed my hand stitching that created a time management problem for me. I'd have to work on it when my fingers allowed me to. Very often such complicated artistic choices happen out of the blue (forgive the pun) for me. I don't know why. I become obsessed with something and I can't rush the process. I take it on despite my limitations. I cannot be persuaded to abandon such projects, even when I get sick and tired of them. I worked on this for a short time almost every day since I took the fabric scraps out of my bin. It often frustrated me. It really challenged the ab...