Blog Archives

strength training

9/20/2015

I bench-pressed nearly100 pounds last year, riveting my heels into the rubber floor, grunting with each exhale. I craved the ascension into heavier weights until I realized that if I stopped strength training, starting over would be torture. And my body hurt all the time. Plus I was a lousy squatter and my trainer ditched the gym for an IT job.

I don't sweat as much with yoga and Pilates and success isn't measured in numbers.

Photo of my textile piece “Steel Magnolias”

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redecorating

9/16/2015

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Indian textiles, art prints and a few paintings by local artists used to line our walls. Last weekend, I unhooked all of it and started over. This time I hung work I stitched – fabric married to poems.

One series features the imagined soles of my ancestor's shoes. The “sole” of my grandma is planted in a field of tulips, gilded with gold beads and a poem I wrote for her eulogy. Several pieces feature fabric I printed from photographs and then embroidered with words and hundreds of French knots and satin stitches. Two are trimmed with tangled hair I pulled from my brush.

All these pieces used to hang in the back-most rooms of our house and my office. In remote stairwells. In the bathroom. Where the Matisse print and the framed saris now dwell.

Photo: My dad’s worn sole fashioned for my “Sole Series”

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new curtains

9/13/2015

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Our bichon cockapoo owned the living room, our full-size sofa was her personal bed. She curled up on the soft back cushions and watched our neighbors skateboard and shovel snow. No matter the season, she bathed in the sun like a cat.

She died last year.

In her honor, we hung new brick red curtains in the pattern of a twisted teardrop. A gold-flecked paisley.

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about leather

9/7/2015

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My husband bought a used Harley recently so this weekend I went on my first motorcycle ride ever and had a lesson in leather. Here's what I learned.

Wear a windbreaker woven with gabardine rayon into a skid on your motorcycle and you will slide clear across the freeway like a roller derby queen. And the jacket's fabric will melt right into your skin.

Wear leather and you will tumble and stop like bare flesh on pavement. Leather acts like Velcro on concrete.

And I always thought biker leather was just for show.

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strength training

redecorating

new curtains

about leather

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