SHOW & TELL SATURDAY: Stuck. REALLY Stuck.

Well, then. I almost called this post, "Adventures in Overconfidence." What you see in the photo is the result of my attempts to get the little hide-a-bed loveseat we told Mama we'd bring her up the stairs.

See, when the DH was getting ready to leave for her place the other day, I reminded him of that, and we traipsed downstairs to get the loveseat.

DH expressed some irritation that I hadn't cleared it off already. (It had a basket and some platters on it, as well as a cover. Anything I don't want the dog sleeping on has "stuff" on the seats!) It only took a couple of minutes to remove everything and the cushions, and we tilted it up on end.

DH was later getting out of the house than he wanted to be, and was becoming more and more tense as we wrestled with the piece, enough so that I said, "Leave it! Just leave it, and you can take it up next time!"

So he did. And after he left, I says to myself, says I, "I'll do it. I'll take the mattress out, and have the sofa upstairs when he comes home."

I put the sofa back down, took off the strapping that kept the hide-a-bed from coming out, removed the mattress and carried it upstairs, restrapped the hide-a-bed mechanism, and proceeded to stand the sofa upright again.

I couldn't lift it. (That should have been a red light for me, right?) But I can be pretty ingenious; I stuck the platform of the hand truck under it, and s-l-o-w-l-y pulled back on the handle until the hand truck was lying flat on the floor, with the end of the sofa now raised maybe a foot off the ground.

I'm not sure now quite how I got it the rest of the way vertical, but I did. Then I started pushing it to the basement door. Thank goodness we don't have carpet there! Back and forth, angling left then right, left then right, inch by inch, backing it up because it got stuck between the treadle sewing machine cabinet and the curio cabinet, maneuvering the thing some more, and finally I had it at the door!

It would barely fit through there if the angle were just right and I pushed really hard. At this point there's carpet. Dang! They're carpet squares and they aren't glued down! Why didn't I think to take them up? sigh.

At this point, I'm already doing some serious sweating. Sweating? How unladylike! Uhm...I had a rosy glow? There was a lot more glow to come, let me tell you.

Inch by half inch, push, shove, tug, tilt, angle, pull and THERE! Through the door!

And stuck. I mean, really stuck. And I'm on the wrong side of it, meaning I'd squeezed between the door jam and the sofa at some point, and was now on the stairs. Well, it's a for sure fact I ain't gonna pull that behemoth up the stairs.

I decided that was a good time to go do something else, and trudged up the stairs to the kitchen, where a deceptively difficult ATC was waiting to be finished. That was a struggle, too, but at least I stopped glowing after a while.

So I went back down the stairs. The problem was the shelves at the bottom, specifically one box that poked out about an inch. Should've moved that box to begin with. If I could move it now....

Of course, the box wasn't on the top shelf, and all those shelves were on the other side of the loveseat from where I was standing. I needed to get to the other side. It's not a very tall sofa. I would shimmy over the top.

Up I went. Perched on the end, dropped my left leg over, through the door, crooked my right knee to bring my other leg down, and my foot hit the wall. I hung there, looking at my foot against the wall. Now I'M stuck, and my DH is an hour away, and my cell phone is upstairs. Okay. Wait. Don't panic. I am more flexible than a sofa. All I. Have to. Do. Is bend... Jussssst...YES! Got my foot down, dropped, and I'm standing on the other side. Whew.

Now to move that box. On the third shelf down. And the only way to do that was to empty the two shelves above it, removing a foot-wide shelving board as I went, with each removal of each item requiring a mighty shoulder-shove against the sofa to balance it, tilted, just far enough away from the shelf to wedge myself in and lift a box of books (!) or shelving straight up and out.

When I'd emptied the shelves, I managed to shove the sofa just enough into the closet space to let me squeeze through, and there it stayed until this morning, when the DH and I, working together, managed to drag it up the steps.

I wonder if, next time, I'll realize I do have physical limits. Nah. So I'd better start working now to make sure those limits are a bit further out than they are now!

FRIDAY FENCE POST #58

Today's street is brought to you by the McMenamin brothers, by way of my camera and their excellent gardeners. Theirs are the only pubs and restaurants I've ever seen whose grounds rival most parks. They seem to be as devoted to beauty outside, in the gardens around their businesses, as they do inside.

This fence and wall borders the north side of the Kennedy School McMenamin's. (Yes, it used to be a real school. Now it's a pub/restaurant/theater/spa.) The garden behind the building is quite lovely, but I spotted the fence as I was driving to the one I thought I was going to photograph for today.

I'm sometimes surprised by the beauty of very homely things, in this case the chain link fencing, which has developed a rough sort of patina over time. Of course, the fuchsias draped over it don't hurt, either.






Clicking on the pictures will show them closer to full size, worth the effort on the close-ups, especially.

It is now 11:11. A fitting time to shut this laptop and my eyes. Good night, dear reader.

ATC THURSDAY

ATCs: My newest delightful hobby. Thanks to Swap-bot.com, I'm exploring them more or less regularly, meaning I've signed up for several ATC swaps and have completed two, for a total of four ATCs. That's a start, right?

I did two of them today, and they're nearly identical:



The theme, as you might guess was "Apple". I first found a clipart image of two apples, saved it to my computer, simplified and resized it, and then printed four of them out on a clear acetate sheet. I suspected I'd mess up at least one of them; I was right.

While (I vainly hoped) the ink was drying on the acetate, I took two pages from an old dictionary, one with the word "apple" on it, the other with the word "fruit". I painted an area on each of them a little bigger than the ATCs would be with red, brown, magenta, and green paints on a fairly dry brush, and then stamped APPLE and POMME on both of them. (I have a stamp that you can load with whatever letters you need, and I LOVE it.)

The hardest part was gluing the acetate sheets down. The ink never did dry, and it smeared with the slightest touch. I put a dab of glue on the two places that had no inking, and glued them, image side down, and when the glue was dry I painted on two coats of gel medium.

When that was dry, I took a fine-tip black Sharpie and drew over some of the lines. That was the last step.

They turned out okay, I think, and I learned something valuable: don't try to inkjet print on acetate!

FRIDAY FENCE POST #57

Just two pictures each of two fences today, and I'm late! I'll cheat and tell the computer I posted them yesterday, but here it is, after eight in the morning on Saturday, and I'm just putting the photos up. I tried last night, but was soooo tired.

But with good reason! This weekend is the 18th Annual Parker Ladies' Night Out, and yesterday I drove to Seaside, on the Oregon coast, to be with the thirty-four of my cousins, mom, Aunt Charlotte, and second and third cousins, and first cousins twice removed, etc. who could make it.

There are no children, and no men allowed at the reunions. It's just as many women from my Mom's side of the family as can come. Every year, it seems, there's someone we've never met, or a cousin who wasn't old enough to come before. Last night, we sat in the living room and introduced ourselves, telling our names, where we live, and which of the Parker siblings we sprang from--"I'm Anitra, Lee Parker was my Grandpa, and I live in Portland". "I'm Cordie. Conor Parker was my dad, and I'm named for his Mama, Cordie Bell."

It is so much fun to get together. A little strange, too, to watch us all age. I realized on the way to the coast yesterday that I was no longer one of the young people. How weird is that?! I still feel very young! And then someone said of my mama, "I think Pawnee is the matriarch this year." My mom, the oldest one left standing. Her Aunt Katie is bedridden now, and living sometime in her youth, in her mind. Cousin Melody says sometimes Great-aunt Katie will do something like give a little pleased gasp, say, "O! There he is!" and then wiggle her fingers in a hello wave and almost giggle, "Hellooo!" Melody says it's really cute.

But the fences. I took the bird fence picture on a brief walk after I arrived here. The other fence I spotted last year, loved, but didn't get back to before the hydrangeas had gone.



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Time for breakfast, and then a couple of crafts, and then a shopping contest: Take no more than five dollars, buy a gift, bring it back to the house and wrap and number it. We'll have a gift exchange, and then vote on who's the best bargain hunter. Now doesn't that sound like all kinds of fun? I think so!

DECORATIVE ENVIE: MUSIC

I am so enjoying the Yahoo! group "Decorative Envies". It's a small group, with a simple aim: Make its members' mailboxes happier by sending pretty and/or interesting mail to each other. Real mail. Snail mail, if you will.

Each month a theme is announced for each of two categories, Decorated Envelopes (Envies) and Postcards. You can sign up, or not; there's no requirement to be in all the swaps, just the ones you're interested in and have time for.

This month's theme for the envelope was Music, and included not just the envelope, but a note card and tag. I had a great time creating the set I sent!

The front of the envelope

The back of the envie

The note care

The tag front

First inside tag page

Close up

Second set of pages of tag

These were made for my dear friend Miz Mollye, who has already emailed me to say she loves them! YAY!!!

Now I have to admit I haven't done the postcard yet, which has a book theme. I know what I'm going to do though, I think....

If this sounds like fun to you, too, search the Yahoo! Groups for Decorative Envies. I know they'd welcome you!

SUNDAY RERUN: Portland Pirates, 2009

Time to repost a favorite! (Everyone has favorite blog posts; Click on the button in the lefthand sidebar to join Chari's Sunday Favorites blog party!)

This week I'm posting a slide show of pictures from last year's Portland Pirate Festival. It's what I'm doing this weekend, only we have wet, Wet, WET weather to contend with.

This is the first of two slideshows. In the next one, I'll put face painting shots, and maybe a few other just-looking-at-all-the-fun pictures; this one shows the costumes, the action, the fun, the relaxation of all those adult inhibitions about doing things "they" might think are silly. It's one of the reasons I love the festival: Nobody worries about anything but the moment, and even the growed-ups play!

Gotta run now--it's time to get into pirate wench mode, and go paint, hopefully, a whole lot of little pirate faces and arms!

SHOW & TELL SATURDAY: Rain, rain, rain

Well, I spent a wet day at the Portland Pirates Festival yesterday. It wasn't actually raining when I got there to open my booth, but had rained so much during the night that my skirt was wet six inches up from the hem, and my shoes, socks, and feet were damp all day.

For some of the day, it just poured buckets. Even the ground was so wet that the legs of my stools were sinking into it, even though I had a heavy cloth spread for them to sit on. One man sat down on the stool to have his face painted, and the back legs sank in so deep the stool toppled! He jumped up and didn't fall, but after that, when a child sat down, I'd make sure his/her feet were on the top step (it's one of those with steps that fold out) and then firmly plant one of mine on the bottom, just to be safe.

Still, Portlanders are a hardy lot. It was POURING rain (notice the drips from my tent pennants) and while attendance was down, a lot of people didn't carry umbrellas or even seem to notice they were getting wet. I was soaked just getting from my booth to the car to go home, but we've had so much rain this year, I think people have given up caring.

I took this video later in the day. Before this, the crowds seemed almost as heavy as they have been in other years.

The forecast for the day shows some heavy showers on the way, but scattered, and it looks like maybe it won't be raining when I take down the booth.

Oh, and immediately after the festival, I have another event, a pub sing to benefit Portland Revels. I'll be helping to lead the singing. I don't think I'll have a chance to change out of my Pirate Wench costume. Pray that I'm not too bedraggled when I get there!