Month: May 2006

Space Race: a necklace

sarah

My new necklace, plus some bananas

I’ve been getting the feeling that turning my entire crafting stash into finished objects is not really going to be about emptying my stash closet. Plunging into the bead portion of my inventory is making this even more clear: this endeavour is about generating masses and masses of treasure.

I suddenly have three necklaces to my name, and the stash has not gotten visibly smaller. It doesn’t take many beads to make a necklace, at least in the context of my 15 pound supply. Either I need to make a lot of necklaces, or I need to reconsider my decision not to make another beaded curtain.

This is copycat jewellery

I copied this necklace

The first necklace to come out of my stash is my attempt at copying something that caught my eye at the Starving Artist Bazaar. The original was fluorescent red and blue, which triggered my spider senses from afar.

I haven’t attempted to make jewellery since I was about 8 years old, so I’m still getting my inspiration really directly and obviously. I like to think of this in the spirit of sketching from masterpieces.

I’m excited to figure out how to make more things up out of my head, though. All those neck bones and cords to work with!

Basic ingredients and method

I used two units of stash:

  • a bag of about 50 pointy, purple, glass beads
  • a collection of 5 aqua blue, glass beads

Then I went and ruined it by buying more crafting supplies!

  • a length of black cord (used half)
  • a spool of silver wire, which has definitely settled into stash status
  • a set of clasps

It took about an hour to make this, mostly spent figuring out how jewelry works.

I settled on twisting the wire around a pencil to make a long spiral and threading beads onto that. Then I threaded the black cord into the spiral (easy), and pulled the wire at both ends to tighten it against the cord. I poked some of the beads around and made an extra loop to create that bump of blue, then clamped on the clasps.

I judge this a success

I’ve been wearing this a lot. The colours and the blue orbs remind me of retro visions of space. Space Race: a Necklace!

Focus on: Space Race necklace

Weird weekend

sarah

Yesterday I spoke on a panel discussing the film Petals, which follows a photographer who creates a collection of vulva portraits. In one of the scenes, a woman who has studied some kind of native southwestern or Mexican sexual tradition is naming different vulva shapes. Deer woman, buffalo woman, dancing woman. OK.

Towards the end of the scene her explanation gets away from her a little and she starts just stringing animal names together, at which point Galen and I both cracked up despite ourselves, and despite having the film’s producer sitting with us. “Sometimes you’ll see a woman who is half deer, half sheep, and that’s called a fox, and…” Stop, stop!

During the post-film discussion, a woman in the audience asked about the vulva names and where she could learn more about deer woman and company. It suddenly sounded a lot like the fabled 100 Inuit words for snow. The panel didn’t go there at all, but I wondered what I would do with 100 words for genitals, how that would help me communicate or think. (Howard Rheingold’s They Have A Word For It is a great book on this theme.) I’m not sure I want to get into categorizing body shapes and types. What it really made me want to know was 100 words for feeling weird, because I was deferring a lot of weirdness at that moment on the panel.

When I showed up for the screening, the film festival director didn’t recognize me when I said hi, even though we’ve met several times and my name was in the program. He still didn’t know who I was when he invited the panel to come up front, and instead of covering with any grace he just sort of squinted at me with his mouth open. The producer I was sitting with piped up with my name, so it sort of worked out. Then the panel turned out to be unmoderated, no one got introduced, and the director wrapped up the discussion by walking in front of the stage and shouting “Is that about it?” like a reluctant teacher interrupting a boring student presentation. Whoa.

So I’m looking for a word, English or otherwise, to explain the general sentiment that “This would embarrass a lesser woman, and I’m sure glad that I know better than to let this ruin my weekend. Where are my usual friends and when can I hug them?”

I’m also in search of a word to express my reaction to a photo shoot I organized on Saturday where somebody invited about 30 extra models (quadrupling the total population of the shoot), and other various things. We went to a barbecue and the address was abandoned? Galen was moved more than once, this weekend, to declare, “At least we still have our dignity.”

What is the word for this kind of weekend, and what language has catalogued silly angst in this level of detail?