A Very Good Jar

I made a very interesting discovery – an illuminating discovery – but it came about from a whole other direction, which is often how discoveries come about. It started with this cartoon.

I think it's time to consider the possibility that you might never reuse your old jars.

Which started a typical Third Third conversation about getting rid of things, decluttering, needing things some day, not being able to part with things. You know the drill. Ultimately, the group concluded: No More Jars!

But I replied, “Just yesterday, I used Goo Gone to get the adhesive off a Very Good Jar. I did something creative with the lid.”

Which led to the other question: What constitutes a Very Good Jar? Do you have your own definition of a Very Good Jar? (And, by the way, do you have a definition of a Very Good Box, too?) And if you have a Very Good Jar, do you debate and reconsider and ultimately decide to … keep it?

My Very Good Jar has clear glass, straight sides with no narrowing for the mouth, and a snug but easily rotatable lid that ideally doesn’t have a label on top. It needs to feel sturdy in the hand. This is a nearly perfect jar:

The only problem with this jar is that the label adheres too well. When you soak it and then peel it off, it leaves adhesive behind. It’s a sticky mess. That’s why you need Goo Gone.

Meanwhile, in a totally unrelated foray into my closet (Art Supply Storage), I came across Sophie’s Fun with Beads – Ancient Egypt kit from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Back in third grade, she’d meticulously beaded the “Lotus Bud Garland Necklace for Ipuy or his wife.” The kit was short one color of bead for that project, so I wrote the Museum. Next thing we knew, we were inundated with multiple sets of more and more beads. All of them now reside in Art Supply Storage.

These are eensy beensy little ceramic beads, not suitable for my Third Third hands to do anything involving stringing, but I could glue them. Looking around for a glue destination, I spied a Very Good Jar. And since the Very Good Jar does have a label on top, I could cover that up with beads and improve it further. I glued and sprinkled.

Ta-dah! Something from nothing! Jars rescued from mediocrity. I could give jars with beaded lids as gifts. An Even Better Jar!

But that’s not even the illuminating discovery. In the process of admiring the Very Good Jar, of painting it for this blog, I had to look very carefully at the label. Do you see it?

I am a major spelling advocate. I have taught courses on spelling, I have conducted spelling bees, and I am the Pronouncer for the Alaska Literacy Program’s BizBee, the adult spelling bee. I am the Werd Nerd.

And if you’d ever asked me how to spell bouillon (the soup, not the gold bar), I would have ended it with –ion. There is no second I in bouillon! Apparently, the LL in French comes with its own Y sound. Isn’t that amazing! There’s only one I in bouillon, and I never knew that.

What a day: two New Things. I’ll be talking about that I in bouillon for days weeks.

Collateral Damage

My inanimate objects are suffering from Covid-19, and it’s not just my car. The latest victim: my beanbag chairs.

Yes, yes, I know: nobody has beanbag chairs anymore. Nobody in their Third Third. Nobody who has trouble getting up once they’ve gotten down. I have that trouble, too. But when the TV proved too hard to see all the way from the couch, it was easier to drag the beanbags out into the middle of the floor, closer to the TV. 

(Why do they insist on using text messages on detective shows? You have to race for the pause button and get right up to the TV to see what crucial bit of information the detective has just received.) 

But now – compliments of Netflix and Prime and Hulu, Disney+ and HBO Max and PBS Passport – the beanbags are pretty squashed and flattened. I’m not sitting on beans anymore; I’m sitting on floor.

I sewed my first giant-size beanbag chairs back when I had my first apartment. They have a muslin lining so I can wash the outside, and there have been many iterations of the outside as they wore out, were faded by the sun, or just got tired. Now the outsides are fine; it’s the insides that have Covid.

The issue is the filling: Styrofoam pellets. They start out round and roly-poly, but they flatten. Then you have to add more. That was easier in the ’70s. Since then, it’s been a challenge.

I filled my first beanbag chair in Berkeley, California. I’d driven there in my little Datsun and stuffed it full, really FULL. It was like an early version of air bags, I guess, but as if they’d already exploded. I ended up spending the night, and when my friend Jenny saw the car the next morning, she marveled that no junkies had broken in thinking it was some incredible bounty of drugs.

When I lived in San Francisco and my brother worked the early a.m. shift as a trolley coach driver, he used to show up at my place, settle in the beanbag chair in the sun, and fall asleep. So when he turned 50, I made him a beanbag chair and flew down to San Francisco in September 2001 with a bag and liner. I called all around and discovered a plastics place for the pellets.

The thing about filling beanbag chairs is that Styrofoam pellets have static. They stick to the plastic bag you’re emptying, to your hair, your clothes, to the bag you’re putting them in. We looked like a popcorn popper had run amuck with us inside it.

Once the bag was filled, planes flew into the World Trade Centers and my sister-in-law buried herself in the beanbag chair in front of the television. It was comforting: beanbag chairs hug back. She liked it. She said, “This is nice. You’ll have to make one for your brother some day.”

But now I have Netflix-flattened beanbag chairs, which means a Quest, a Quest for Pellets. I’ve been led on wild goose chases to Fred Meyer, Walmart, a bigger Walmart, a different Fred Meyer. Salespeople say, “Oh, yes, that’s in Crafts.” Crafts say, “We haven’t had them in years.” Salespeople in the front of the store have seen the pellets in the back of the store, but that is only a figment of their imagination. This happens in every store.

The Quest moves online, where – no, no, no! I’ve done this before! – I lose myself in the customer reviews of pellets.

This is too much complexity for my Covid brain. The floor is just fine.

The Challenges of Art

This is a gratitude blog. Two weeks ago, I was abysmally [my word] grieving Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and the potential end of the world. I was a blob of despair…, yet hours later, I managed to sit at my computer with a burst of creative energy. What sparked it?

My Bricolage art challenge group. Bricolage means “something created from a variety of available things.” Five of us meet regularly to draw another creative challenge from our Ziploc bag of challenges.

Jinnie convened us and then moved to Idaho, but we’re still here. So first, I’m grateful to Jinnie for getting us together, for reintroducing me to Art as Play.

We used to meet indoors, but when Covid-19 happened, we had to come up with something else. We brought our chairs to the huge lawn in front of the closed universities and spread ourselves out very far apart. We were so happy! It was our first chance to see faces and bodies in real life.

We’ve become a little nervous about the weather going bad on us, but last week, it didn’t rain, and we’re determined. We’re checking out overhangs.

The challenge this time was “weaving.” Jane (who shared her art with photographs) wove gold-flecked paper and embroidery thread through paper. Pam wove yarn into the Y of a branch and covered the branch in yarn. Betty made a frame of four branches with jute and wove in natural items – feathers, flowers, even a wasp’s nest. I made two branch pieces; the big one is now on the living room wall. This is the little one.

Usually, Cathy is there, but she couldn’t make it this time. Both Cathy and Betty know about materials. I may have ideas, but I don’t know what kind of paint, what kind of coating, what kind of ink, etc etc. They are my go-to resources. But hints come from everyone. Pam kept her weaving tight by using a fork to squeeze her rows together – a fork! That would have made my weaving much easier! Now I know.

In my very first blog post, I asked myself, “How do I re-insert creativity into my life?” I’ve taken art classes, but it’s been the Bricolage group that has consistently kept me thinking and percolating over my creative choices. The challenges stew in my head till they take shape.

When confronted with the “playing cards” challenge, I turned it into painting a card on a rock and a whole book of face card characters and their royal scandals. When the challenge was “postcard,” it turned into a transparent, multi-layered postcard to the poet, Billy Collins. “Tea bags” became Happy Uterus Tea. “Paper dolls” is a continuing project as my protesting Barbara still has lots and lots to protest.

Jinnie reintroduced me to Art as Play, but I still cling to Art as Project: I visualize an idea or concept before I create something. And then I have to figure out how to make it difficult challenging.

So when the challenge was “envelopes,” I decided I would learn how to do curved piece quilting.

There have been a few duds. “Upcycling” occurred when our house was overflowing with brown paper bags from curbside grocery pickups. I happened to be at the Recycling Center when two guys were unloading cartons. They discovered the cartons were filled with packing material they didn’t know what to do with. “I’ll take it,” I said, “for an art project.”

So now I had brown paper bags and packing material. I read that you could make faux leather by wetting the bags, crumpling them up, then ironing them and varnishing them. If I stuffed them with packing material, I’d have trivets! Or, as the group dubbed them, “cow pies.” Fortunately, I got rid of all that packing material by standing outside the UPS Store and offering it for free. I’m still loaded with paper bags….

I really like the cards I made for “ravens,” but “leaves” is a project I haven’t let go. I keep making pressed, dried leaf notecards. Now’s the perfect time to collect more leaves.

“Plastic” meant a stained glass window for our bathroom. It’s colored plastic bags glue-sticked onto clear plastic. I’d wanted to do that ever since I took a workshop during one of my months in New York City, but it would have sat in the “someday” pile of ideas if it weren’t for my Bricolage group.

I often suffer from some creative paralysis, creative lethargy. I’m an in-the-mood creator, not a disciplined one. But if any creative juices flow, it’s usually sparked by a current challenge picked out of a Ziploc bag. The new one: “wire or metal.” I’ve had an unrealized metal idea since high school. Maybe now?

I am so very thankful that I am part of a warm, supportive circle of artists who inspire, challenge, and educate me. That’s why this is a gratitude blog.

Go Signs

A few days ago, my sister and I were on Long Island at longtime family friend (my mother’s best friend) Gloria’s for dinner. Her daughter, Linda, described how she took a particular course of action because she’d had three signs. You know, SIGNS. Like the universe telling you this is what you should be doing.

So let me tell you about my Signs.

#1
Several years ago, I became enthralled with the notion of transparent art. Something on transparent pages that would say different things depending on what you could or couldn’t see. I couldn’t figure it out. It’s very complicated because, of course, you can see through the pages.

#2
I read Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. A young man commits suicide in the bookstore and leaves his suicide note in clues in a series of books. He cuts out the words in one book, leaving windows. When placed up against the pages of a companion book, the windows expose the words which become his suicide note.

#3
My Bricolage group challenge for last month was “Postcard.” Do anything with postcards: make one, collage one, send one, whatever. That’s how our art challenges work. I look at the postcards I’d sent my mother over the years – which I now have after her death – and they seem to me messages from not only place, but time.

#4
The next email I receive is from the New York Public Library about their 2018 series, NYPL LIVE. Billy Collins, the poet, is a speaker when I’ll be in Manhattan. I buy a ticket.

#5
Suddenly, Billy Collins’ poem, “Forgetfulness,” rises to my consciousness yet again. I’ve mentioned it a few times here because it’s so age-appropriate for us, but now you need to see these first verses:

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

And they seem to me to be messages from another time, from other places – postcards to ourselves in the present.

#6
So I take the poem and cut it up. I buy some clear, plastic envelopes and cut them into postcard sizes. I glue the words down to send these messages from the past, from someone who’s gone and retired far away. This is the first postcard I’d send:

And then this:

And then this:

And after eight postcards – all with messages like this – you would have this:

#7
Isn’t that exciting! All the Signs led me to this art project and it worked, so of course I have to show it to Billy Collins. I get to the library very early; I am the first in line. I get a good seat.

Billy Collins is a relaxed, humorous, self-deprecating sort of conversationalist. I thoroughly enjoy myself. Afterwards, I am right in front on his signing line, and I show him my creation. He looks at me, thanks me, is glad to inspire, and then he looks at the 75 people waiting in line and has to usher me away.

I leave happily. The universe told me this was the project for me – all the Signs said so – and they were right. In a world where things go wrong, sometimes they just line up and go right.

The Acquisition Exception

The rule in this Third Third household – this household committed to decluttering – is No New Acquisition Unless Something Goes Out. Nothing In unless Something Out. This applies to the upcoming holidays, too.

Mostly, the rule was created to apply to pottery. Pottery is so beautiful and so irresistible, but pottery impacts kitchen cabinet space. It demands limits.

Sometimes the rule is really easy, like with clothes. Mostly, clothes don’t enter my closet until something is hopelessly worn out or out of date, so that’s not really an issue. Art supplies was a tough one, but since I seem to have less and less time for art-play as opposed to art-production (which I guess is a whole story there), I don’t need to be surrounded by art supplies I’m not using. They haunt me.

And containers are tough, too. It’s hard for me to turn down a good box. Recently, I recycled a perfectly wonderful reams-of-paper box with a lid, and it nearly killed me. Then, at a meeting, someone randomly mentioned they were moving and needed boxes, and I was unable to help (which, of course, is one of the prime reasons for acquisition to begin with: the lure of eventual helpfulness).

So what’s the Acquisition Exception? Rocks.

Rocks like you walk along the beach and there’s a perfectly round, smooth, beach rock. Do you just leave it there? Or rocks like you’re at the Kennecott Mines historic site and the ground is littered with rocks of bright turquoise-green. Or you’re in the Badlands of South Dakota and the red earth is so astounding in color, how can you not bring home a sample?

I’m not talking about the big boulders from the backyard that I get to leave out at the curb with a big sign saying, “Free.” And I admit, my disposal-to-acquisition ratio gave me lots of leeway after our house was robbed and they took my decorative boxes filled with … rocks.

I am talking about the twelve rocks that came home with me from the beach in Homer last weekend.

It always starts with perfectly smooth rocks that just feel good in my hand.

But this time, I also found a rectangular rock. I noticed it because it was smooth but had sharp edges, rare in a beach rock. It looked like a rectangle of a flag, so I had an idea. I would paint it to look like the Alaska flag, and when I visited my parents’ grave in New York, I would leave it on the headstone. My bit of Alaska paying respect.

Once the rock-painting idea was planted in my brain, I was reminded of the latest art challenge of my Bricolage group: playing cards. Those challenges mean “do whatever you want having something to do with playing cards.” Amazingly, rocks turned up on the beach in the shape of playing cards! After the first one, I admit I was scouring the beach for playing-card-shaped rocks (which are very hard to come by and require great stretches of the imagination to resemble playing cards). I’m not sure how I’ll paint them. Will their kings and queens become Fred, Barney, Wilma, and Betty?

I’ve seen quilts with rocks embedded in them that were gorgeous, and when I discovered Syrian artist Nizar Ali Badr, who makes whole art of differently-shaped rocks, I was enthralled. I can’t do justice to his works, but here’s a sample and there’s more about him here.

Nuts! I should have looked at his work again before we left for Homer. I’d have spent the whole time combing the beach for … More Rocks!

The Quest for New-ness #4

The quest for New Things is always a win – for variety, for newness – but the exact result of the quest sometimes yields a few duds. Recently, I’ve scored two clear wins, but the jury is still out on the dud.

They all came from classes at Anchorage Community House, my new go-to place of learning and doing New Things. The other things I’ve made there have been wood projects, but the class description for Indigo Dyeing said, “Create beautiful indigo creations using the shibori dyeing technique.”

In class, we took our fabric and folded it, tied it, clothes-pinned it. Basically, we made a tight little wad so that when it sat in the indigo dye bath, we’d leave the marks of where dye absorbed and where it didn’t. Yes – shades of tie-dying! – that’s shibori.

This was a clear success. I think I’ll cut my bluish indigo-ish fabric into squares and make a quilt, but that’s a project for another day … or year.

While we were busy dyeing indigo, Meg told us of another Community House offering: Bundle Dyed Scarves. What I got out of this one was that we’d roll flowers and vegetables up in cloth and make patterns. This sounded sufficiently goofy and fun and useful – right up my alley.

Yup, we rolled rose petals and leaves and eucalyptus and flowers and bugs in silk. (The bugs are from cochineal insects which produce the crimson color. I first met them when visiting weavers in Peru.) Then we wound the silk around tin cans or sticks and tied it on really, really tightly. Then we stuck the bundle in boiling cabbage water.

Finally, our dye bath was over, and this one, too, was a great success. An artistic, silk, loop scarf will challenge my usual schtunk attire, but it’s soft and pretty … and can always make a nice gift.

So now we get to my last New Thing class:

“Learn to make bags out of plastic grocery bags. These bags are EXTRA sturdy and hold lots of weight. It’s easy. Just bring a scissors, a crochet hook the size of your pinky, and patience.”

What really amazed me was that everyone in the class brought their own Bags of Bags. We all have Bags of Bags … along with Boxes of Boxes and Containers of Containers. Even using cloth shopping bags, plastic bags accumulate. We were supposed to slice our plastic bags into strips, loop them together, and make “plarn,” plastic yarn. This class was a decluttering/recycling opportunity!

My only experience with crocheting was a Brownie project when I was little. I would ride my bike to Mrs. Goodhartz’s house for help crocheting Pierre the Poodle. Every trip, Mrs. Goodhartz would say, “My, my, these stitches are so very tight.” They were SO TIGHT they were impenetrable. If Pierre had ever been finished, he would have been airtight.

But this time, I was armed with a crochet hook the size of my thumb!

A crochet hook the size of one’s thumb is no protection against tight stitches. My thumb nail hurts from trying to pull stitches off the crochet hook. When I come around a row, things are so tight and jam-packed that it’s hard to tell what exactly qualifies as a stitch. Peggy, who took the class with me, said I must be adding stitches: instead of going up, my shopping bag is going out. I am making a plastic rug.

Mimi, who also took the class, said this sort of project would drive her mother crazy. Her mother doesn’t get quilting (“Why cut fabric up only to sew it together?”) so the idea of slicing plastic bags in order to crochet them together to make another plastic bag would strike her as ludicrous. I’m starting to agree.

I had to take a break for my thumb nail, cuticle, and spirit to recover, but then I cut my thumb slicing an onion. After bleeding on my plastic bag, things have ground to a halt.

In my Third Third, I get to abandon projects that aggravate more than they please. Maybe I’ll recycle my crocheted plastic and call it a draw. Then I’ll sit and re-admire my indigo-dyed fabric and flower-dyed silk.

How happy is your uterus?

I’ve said before that what I lack in artistic execution I have to make up for with imagination. So that’s why, when the rest of my Bricolage Group deals with the monthly challenge of “tea bags,” they make beautiful art out of the tea bag paper. The thinness of the paper, the way it absorbs brewed tea and various inks, and their experiments with the translucence yields gorgeous, colorful art.

I made tea.

Happy Uterus Tea, to be specific. This week’s New Thing.

It all started with the unruly Lady’s Mantle growing in the backyard and whether or not I was going to uproot it for the new deck going in. So I Googled Lady’s Mantle to see what it was good for (other than making the dew that collects in the leaves look like jewels).

Lady’s Mantle is good for Happy Uterus Tea: “Lady’s mantle is a powerful female herb for anytime during a woman’s reproductive life.” So, in our Third Thirds, that would mean it “reduces or eliminates hot flashes/night sweats, … frayed nerves, insomnia, sadness.” What’s not to like?

The recipe was pretty simple: I had the Lady’s Mantle, both leaves and flowers. I even had the raspberry leaves. On a trip to Fairbanks and the Farmers’ Market, I landed the lemon balm. I had to dry out all these cuttings, but that was pretty simple once I discovered that leaving them in a hot car on a sunny day works. Then I just occupied myself crumbling leaves into jars. And as long as I was crumbling leaves, I threw in some mint from my garden, too.

Once before I’d made tea bags out of coffee filters – that was another project for a different crazy idea – which I sewed into the right rectangular shape. But this was supposed to be Art. I needed some kind of Happy Uterus shape.

Uteruses (uteri?) are pretty unrecognizable as shapes. In fact, they look suspiciously like something else which I dare not mention after my previous scary experience of this blog becoming an Asian porn attraction.

So I tried several different shapes. Since they’d be soaking in hot water, I thought I could decorate them by sewing designs on them rather than painting.

I filled them with the dried leaves and sewed them shut. I made little tags and attached them with thread.

Is this Art? Or, the bigger question: Is my uterus happy?

Something Old, Something New

My latest New Thing is transforming. Literally. Last year, a friend invited me to Transformed Treasures, a luncheon and auction to benefit Salvation Army’s shelter and treatment programs. But it wasn’t just any old auction.

Artists sign up to be admitted to Salvation Army thrift shops with vouchers to purchase items, items that they’ll transform into treasures. Oh, the imagination on display at that auction! I saw a dog kennel transformed into a child’s reading nook, everything in the world transformed into beautiful lamps. You’d marvel at the artistry evident in an item – and then look at the “before” photos and be amazed.

Yes, I’ve fixed up an old chest of drawers with a great paint job, but these things at the auction were now Art. Useful art or decorative art, but really spectacular. So, of course, I wanted to try my hand at it.

On the appointed day, we all descended on the Salvation Army thrift shop with our vouchers. Some people picked up items to bring home and wait for inspiration, but my creativity needed some focus; I didn’t want to RE-clutter my house. Other people had discarded their clutter, and I was going to bring it home?

Then I discovered a batch of brown, metal, alphabet letters with broken light bulbs. I’d seen them at Michaels; they look sort of rusty even when new, and I’m not quite sure what people do with them. Ah, but the ampersand! If I weren’t looking at a tiny toy motorcycle, would it have occurred to me to think “racetrack”? That ampersand just shouted, “I could be a racetrack.”

And the rainbow-striped strap – wouldn’t that make the rusty brown prettier? Could it all be mounted on that cutting board over there? What about the little desktop toy aquarium with the magnetic wand for swishing the fish around – could that magnetic wand be a light pole? I was on my way.

With coupons in hand, I haunted Michaels for supplies for the transformation. I’d need metal paint. Oh, a black foam sheet could cover the bottom, making it smooth for the track surface. How about some little trees for landscaping?

As things took shape, I checked out NASCAR sites, painted signs for the track. The magnetic wand became the checkered flag post. When Tim and I discovered cart racing in the Valley, we managed to win points in the arcade; those were redeemed for race cars. The result:

I’m so excited! The Transformed Treasures luncheon and auction isn’t until May 6, but tickets are already on sale. I’ll be glad if someone decides a transformed racetrack is just what they need, but now that I understand the process, I want to see the other re-creations. For a recycling fanatic like myself, it’s inspirational (not to mention, a creative solution to clutter).

But then a bigger thought occurs: If an old, rusty ampersand can find new life as a rainbow racetrack, what else is awaiting “new life”? What else is possible?

A Happy Yarn Bomber

I’m knitting again. (Still knitting, no purling. I haven’t progressed that far.) I’m still using very big needles and very fat yarn so I can see very fast progress.

Knitting was one of my first New Things in my Third Third, and it was part of one of my happiest discoveries: yarn bombing. We covered the trees in front of the Anchorage Museum with knitted art. You can read all about it here, but the big thing was that we made Art! It was spectacular and fun and … joyful.

So now, I’m knitting again. I still can’t do anything fancy, but I can make rectangles, and that’s all that’s needed. Then the rectangles get stitched onto the trees. And this time – next Friday – we’re decorating the trees at Westchester Lagoon and the nearby Coastal Trail. You can, too.

This is the amazing thing: Even my dopey, non-fancy rectangles with bizarre yarn combinations make Art. When all the knitters bring out all their rectangles, and all the trees get sweaters, it becomes Public Art. All those decorated trees! It makes people smile to see something unexpected, something colorful, something happy.

I’m thinking back over my recent year, and I have often been happy. I’ve even made people laugh when I tell a good story. But I don’t think I added as much happiness to the world as when I helped knit the trees at the Museum. And it mattered that it took many of us to make all that happiness.

So yes, I’m knitting again. I had to go back on YouTube to learn how to cast on and bind off. I still can’t do anything but knit while I knit because I have to concentrate. But there’s something meditative about moving needles, finishing rows, starting new rows, seeing progress. The transformation from ball of yarn to knitted rectangle is so concrete, it satisfies. I’d forgotten this. I even forgot that when I knit, I don’t snack.

I’m a confirmed beginner, a nincompoop knitter. I don’t want to get fancy about it. I’m just going to knit rectangles because that’s all I have to do to add to world happiness with my knitting. I don’t have to follow a pattern, count rows, worry about dropped stitches. I can just click my big needles, throw my fat yarn around, and it turns into Art. What a discovery!

If you’re a knitter, make some rectangles. If you’re not, help us dress the trees. Otherwise, just take a look and smile. That’s why we’re doing it.

(More details and updates on Facebook)

Need any fingerless gloves?

The blogger Jesse Kornbluth wrote about something a few days ago and said, “I realized that, for the first time since That Thing happened, I was in a good mood.” Reading that, I laughed. We all know what That Thing is. Laughter is still a premium in my days.

So there I was at a goodbye party and I headed to the dessert table. On it was a tray of dozens of little snowmen wrapped around bite-size chocolate bars. If this were a picture dictionary and the word was “adorable,” those snowmen would be it.

And here’s what a tray of them looks like.

I looked closely. “How did she make the little hats?”

“She must have ordered them from the Oriental Trading catalog,” someone said.

No, I thought, I think she cut out strips of cloth and sewed the little hats. But how? So, of course I had to find the craftsperson, Sharon. I hunted her down and introduced myself.

Sharon said her sister sent her the instructions, even sent her the rubber stamp to make the faces.

“But how did you make the little hats?” I asked.

“I buy lots of little kids knit gloves and I cut the fingers off.” Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! This is more than a light bulb; this is a blast of cleverness. When I encounter something clever and creative and … adorable, I just feel admiration flood through me. I forgot That Thing and just enjoyed this New Thing.

Sharon said she learned this from her sister. And my guess is her sister learned it from, who learned it from, who learned it from … and so on in the way of crafters. So I actually found it here, too.

“Now,” Sharon said, “I just have to find a lot of kids who want fingerless gloves.”

A line connects two dots, right?

A couple in Anchorage – Meg and Zach – gave an incredible gift to the community. They bought the house across the street from theirs and turned it into Anchorage Community House. There are classes there, an art room, a tool check-out library – it’s a great idea.

My brain needed a rest from political ads, conversations, and coverage; so a couple of weeks ago, I took a class to make a plant stand. Not only would I learn how to make a plant stand, but I’d actually end up with one. It could lift the schefflera off the new carpet and be USEFUL.

Zach had the wood and tools, and my job was to cut the pieces and screw them together. We measured and marked the wood with pencil. Then I used the circular saw to cut along the lines. I learned the word kerf, which is the cut the saw makes.

The thing is, it’s hard to keep the saw exactly on target. Even harder when you have Third Third eyes and you’re not exactly sure – once you have the safety goggles on – where the line is anymore. The cut – the kerf – has its own dimension. So every now and then, Zach would say something like, “You’re missing it” when I guessed I was in the right spot. Zach compared all the post lengths and worried they weren’t exactly even. And I would tell him not to worry, that the plant stand was going to stand on carpet after all.

A couple days later, I read the book A Tenth of a Second about how measurement had to develop if science was going to develop. The author, Jimena Canales, starts with astronomy and how different astronomers got different measurements for when a star was in position in the sky. This caused lots of problems for mapmaking, even for determining the exact length of the meter (which is based on the earth’s circumference). It all comes down – among other things – to reaction time, how long it takes a person to see, process, and note a star’s transit across the sky. It was a huge international mess in the 1800s.

In 1835, an astronomer named Francis Baily showed that even normal, everyday measurements fell victim to the problem. Some people measured from the middle of a line, some from the top edge, some from the bottom. Even if you just have to connect two dots, it matters whether you’re starting from the inside edge of the dot or the outside edge, from the middle or the side.

The dictionary calls it the “personal equation,” and it affects just about everything humans try to measure.

Why am I telling you all this? Because there I was trying to escape all the election coverage: this opinion piece, that editorial; this article from one newspaper, that article from another; NPR vs Fox News; one pollster vs another … a million different viewpoints. And there’s no way Zach and I could have agreed on where a pencil line “began.”

It puts a lot of things in perspective when you realize there’s inherent bias in even using a ruler.

But even with all that, my plant stand still holds my plant up just fine.

Profiles in Third Thirds: Sharon

Let me tell you about Sharon. Sharon is my hero (and role model). For all the time I’ve known her, she has put her energy into improving the world. She just reminded me that we first met when she was teaching workshops on training nonprofit boards and I was in one of her classes. But after that, Sharon went on to start the YWCA in Anchorage. She took it from a tiny, little one-person operation to a major force that owns its own building, positively impacts thousands of women’s lives, and is thoroughly sustainable even when Sharon left after many years.

During all this, she served on the School Board for 7½ years and, not to go unmentioned, was a BizBee judge for TEN YEARS. (We both love spelling and grammar.)

So now Sharon is 75 and retired. Her Third Third? Pursuing her domestic hobbies: mostly wool appliqué and cooking. She has a sewing room dense with projects and hundreds of cookbooks (a thing which totally mystifies me – I can’t even imagine how one would begin to peruse that many cookbooks. Sharon says looking through a cookbook at the end of a day is her reward for getting some of her to-do list done.) Sharon even batches all her out-of-house appointments and errands so she can stay home most days with her projects.

As Sharon puts it, “I gave up trying to save the world and being personally responsible for ‘empowering women and girls and eliminating racism’ and am content to play a very small part.” But she still registers new voters at citizenship ceremonies and donates her sewing work for nonprofit auctions. Friends receive her gifts, and I love her rhubarb chutney on salmon.

During her professional life, I tried to learn how Sharon balanced it all. Now, in our Third Thirds, I’m trying to learn about contentment from her. She says it took her seven years to “come down” after retiring and give herself permission to enjoy it. She tells me wise things like:

“What is the rush? Have you taken some days to just do nothing since being employed? Taking a day with no goal in mind usually ends up being a day where you end up doing something that you like to do….”

“I’m learning to accept that there are only so many hours in a day and what doesn’t get done today, bar some catastrophe, will get done tomorrow.”

“We realize that we gave it a shot but we can’t save the world so it’s now OK to focus on what makes us happy….”

This is what I’m trying to learn from Sharon even though I still hear a nervous calendar clock ticking away in me: I still don’t know what my next Big Thing will be. What passion will drive me? Do I even know what makes me happy? And besides, is that too selfish to pursue? What makes for contentment?

But Sharon knows – and now has the time for – her passion. Her passion is sewing. She calls it her dessert. In the fall, she’s teaching her first class on wool appliqué at a local quilt shop, but she’s always experimenting with new techniques and tools. She couldn’t show me any of her work – she gives it all away – but we went through photos together.

Sharon made this purse out of ties for her husband’s daughter. She said, “It’s made from his old ties (since he doesn’t wear ties anymore). She loved it and I cried when she told me that she could smell his closet on them when she opened the present.”

Her sewing connects Sharon to the women who came before: “My grandmother had her own little sewing shop and my mother at one time did sewing to bring in extra money.” She’s made pincushions that fit in vintage teacups, folk art designs, and wall hangings. She’s made table runners, placemats, and many, many pillows. She’s even made a crown for a princess. They’re all given away as gifts.

Yes, Sharon finds that her time often just dribbles away with projects getting deferred by the “shoulds,” by errands and appointments and watering the garden. And now, her time is getting squeezed because two big tasks have been added to her to-do lists: cleaning up her sewing room jumble of projects and purging her cookbook collection. It’s the de-cluttering albatross. As she puts it, “I don’t want to leave a mess.”

Sharon tackled the big jobs in her Second Third and is now devoting her Third Third to more personal pleasures. Is it so different? Sharon thinks she’s run out of steam, but she’s still giving of herself. Maybe before she used her talents to empower, to fight racism, to save the world. Now she’s using them to add affection and kindness to those around her. The world is still a better place for having her in it.