A relaxing Sunday

For the one person I know is checking this blog: I'm back!

I really haven't had time to blog, but now that summer is here and my house is finally at some level of being unpacked and a real home, I think I'm ready to go. I have many home dec projects that I figured I could display in all their glory here. I hosted a year-end party at my house this past week with the intention that it would force me to unpack the last of my things that had been languishing in boxes all year. This mostly concerned my office, where all my sewing junk, art supplies, and residue of the past fifteen years of moving around like a drifter were stored. In the course of unpacking that stuff, I uncovered the cord to my camera, so now I can download pictures to post here. Unfortunately, my camera is missing at the moment, so it's going to be a little while longer before I add pictures. The camera is in my gym bag, which I have misplaced. I'm not known for my organizational acuity. But I know it's here somewhere. I've had it in the last couple of weeks. This is the story of my life. I'll find it soon.

I made a new acquisition last night. I've been unhappy with the little porch on the front of my house. The people who lived here before kept two plastic chairs and a little plastic table on it, and my landlord left it here for me. I hate plastic furniture, though, so I've been searching for something better to put there, because it looks stark and empty with nothing on it. The eternal dilemma, however, is what can I get that looks nice and costs no money. My budget for decorating is essentially $0. But last night I scored! It just may be a new project to chronicle in the book that I will someday write: Decorating with Garbage: Home Decorating Tips for Poor People. Some of my most treasured possessions came from the side of the road; it just takes a discerning eye. I've thought that a plain wooden bench that I could paint and put plants on would look nice on the porch. (This, of course, would require me to keep the plants alive. I have a sadistic streak when it comes to plants and in the middle of winter I get tired of watering them and they all die. This will have to change, obviously.) So, last night I was leaving my friend Laura's house and, as I driving down her street, I saw a wooden bench on the side of the road that someone had put out for the garbage truck. Exactly the kind of bench I was looking for. I squealed to a stop, backed up, and looked at it in my headlights to decide if it was something worth hauling off. It was about 10:30 at night, so I didn't have to worry about the humiliation of someone seeing me forking through someone else's trash. The bench is blue, which is not the color I would have chosen, but it's okay. I wanted something that looked a little weathered, and this bench is indeed weathered. Technically, it's a little more "rotted" than "weathered." But I decided I could work with that and stashed it in the back of my car and drove home. It's only the seat part of the bench that's rotted around the edges; the rest of it is structurally sound. I'm planning on putting plants on it, so I don't have to worry about someone getting splinters and wood chunks in his/her ass. I'm already scheming about a way to cover the yucky sections. I'm thinking about a piece of burlap finished with some traditional sewing techniques. It needs to look rough, like the bench, and I've been wanting to do something with burlap for a while. I have ideas. And if it doesn't work, though, I can always scrap it and just throw the bench out. We'll see. I'll keep you posted.

Blog 2.0

I'm giving the blog thing a second shot. I did it a couple of years ago, got annoyed with it, and deleted the whole thing. I kind of regret doing that, but it had become one more thing for which I felt a sense of obligation, so trashing it it made sense at the time. After I deleted it, all these people came out of the woodwork and told me they missed reading it. I had no idea that people were actually reading it, however, so sorry about that.

I wasn't planning on keeping the same name for the second incarnation, but every name i could think of was already taken, and my old blog name was available. Plus, I like the name. Dainty Work for Pleasure and Profit is the name of a book about needlework that was published in the late 1800s--kind of an early homemaker's book--that I used when I was writing the book that hellish summer before last. But I always liked the name because it sounds like a really delicate euphemism for prostitution. So, "Dainty Work for Pleasure and Profit" it stays.

I'm not getting to do too much writing these days, so hopefully this will give me an outlet for that. I miss it. That said, I must go for now. It's Sunday afternoon and I've got an editorial deadline tomorrow and a bunch of stuff I have to get ready. And I need to vacuum. And clean up a couple of places where the cats vomited. I could have done that earlier, but I was busy gluing buttons onto my bedside tables.