The Art of Needle and Thread; of Soap and Water

On the day before Fat Tuesday, I took a ceramic bowl from the stack on the shelf in the caboose's laundry room, the room in winter I call the "Rainbow Room" because in the wide picture window I have hung on fishing line and clear push pins, all the crystals and chandelier  pieces my sons gave me for Christmas when they were boys."Forever Snowflakes" we called them. Only in the winter, in this particular window does the sun rise to just the right meridian and catch the cut glass facets so that the Prism Effect is evoked. Such delicate magic that is added to by gently spinning each piece of cut glass on its line and the room swirls with rainbows...

So I pull a medium size bowl from the white white shelf and go to the table where I hold my soaps and spot removers and bleaches and ironically, my teas of different strengths. Not good drinking tea, but cheap strong and light teas I can use in dying cloth. This time I mix only a small amount of soap, stain remover and just a whisper of bleach and then cold water. I mix it with a whisk.

Then I drop into it a lace collar made long before World War 2 by a woman's grandmother. The length of buttons on this wide collar is too numerous for me to want to count right this moment and I have counted them before. A child's hand could easily button them, my peasant hands are of little value with this delicate work, but I still manage to hook each mother-of-pearl button into its crocheted receptacle. I even have a button hook! I swish it around for a few moments, rubbing silk against silk gently and then I let it sit for two days in the mixture. Today I have rinsed and rinsed it and finally let it sit in clear water until tomorrow when I will rinse it many times again to get out the chemicals that would eat it away. I wish I could afford more organic properties to wash things in, better for the environment, better for my few nice things.

I bought many many pieces of Belgium lace and crocheted work from a woman named Elsa that I knew briefly in Berkeley for $25 in the summer of 1975, right before I moved to the hills outside of Willits in Mendocino County. I had a job at that time washing dishes at, now I have heard closed, Smokey Joe's Cafe.
I made minimum wage and a good meal. And my boss Ned was very kind to me. I have carried these lace and crocheted collars with me all this time, and never have I washed them. I found at a thrift store a beautiful denim jacket made by Lauren's line called Chaps. The background of the jacket is the same color as the lace and then it has faded flowers splashed all over the fabric. It's beautiful, soft to the touch and almost makes me cry to see it hanging face out on a nail in the wall. But then, beauty always makes me cry. I prefer going to art museums alone, so I won't embarrass my date. When the collar is rinsed and hung to drip from my child's clothesline with the old whittled Gypsy pegs into the  sink below, I will spread it on a thick cotton towel and shape it to dry. Then I will use tiny gold safety pins and pin it to the collar on the jacket. I have done this already and that's was when I noticed how dingy with time the collar was. So I had to honor it by washing it.

This is how I make my clothes. Or rather the things that go with the clothes that cover my nakedness. This is the art of my warmth and other things in the summer to promote coolness. I inherited some pieces of mink that are also collars, one quite sumptuous and wide at the middle, tampering down on each side. I have pinned that one to a small jacket, also a very exclusive name, that is taupe with a black pattern of swirls and paisleys on it. The pattern is quite dense so that only a small amount of the taupe shows.

I like to describe things of beauty and things of squalor. It's because the adjectives are so rich in their ability to make another person see what I am holding, or admiring. I have so few clothes that I have been able to hang everything on coat hangers someone made covered with pastel silks of many different colors, some with small round mother-of-pearl buttons sewn onto the edge of each side of the hanger so the garment doesn't fall off. Such attention to detail. Except  for its spareness, my closet looks like it belongs to a rich woman. That makes me laugh. When I return from my train trip to visit my family who I haven't seen in twelve years I will return with some skirts made from beautiful and rich fabrics I have been collecting at thrift stores for years. I have been wearing rags for nearly two years and have grown ashamed. I don't seek much, but what I plan to do is sweet-talk my cousin Lin, into sewing pieces of beautiful  fabric into skirts. I wish she was willing to make some blouses, but it is difficult work and she would rather make quilts. My loss. She is a magnificent seamstress I understand. I have gorgeous fabrics bought at thrift stores for a couple bucks each. Lucky me!

These simple woman tasks occupy my time until the rains and cold stop and I may return to the Other Church, my garden. I love my garden until it borders on adoration. I have to be careful of that, which is why every Lent I try to give up something I clearly love. This year is butter. On Fat Tuesday the last buttered thing I ate was popcorn. Such fun to watch the cat bat a little cloud of corn around the bed and then lick off all its delicious butter. I am so charmed by his health, by his antics of pure joy, that I am filled with well-being, despite this terrible lung disorder I have been carrying around, nearly coughing my head off. If I don't leave the caboose except to sit in the sun for twenty minutes each day bundled up in quilts, I won't infect anyone and I can watch the daffodils push their pale green heads up through the surface and eventually turn yellow and open into an explosion of petals. Today has been a good days despite so many hours in bed.