Monday, December 28, 2009

Getting ready for the new year....

Well! We had a holiday weekend a tad more eventful than expected. Christmas day, in the middle of rinsing off the 23-pound turkey (the last one at the grocery store!), the drains in this 100-plus-year-old house decided to stop draining.

Great. Juuuuuuust great.

We wrangled the turkey in to the oven and then spent the next 4 hours doing everything we could think of to clear the line... and doing a lot of cleaning up when nothing worked. The kitchen drain is on the same line with the upstairs bathroom and the laundry room... you can imagine the mess. Thankfully the downstairs bathroom is on a different line, so we weren't completely out of commission. And the turkey turned out great.

Saturday we called in the big guns... and got another mess for our efforts. It took a while to scrub everything down and wrestle everything back in to place, but I am pleased to report that we seem to be functional again.

So how did I celebrate the rest of the weekend? Gutting the file cabinets, of course! And taking a long-neglected walk along the river with my sweetie.

Sum total of studio closet space. It ain't pretty.

This week I'm focusing on making myself more efficient and productive in the new year. I'm lucky to have an entire room dedicated to work space, but in this same 100-plus-year-old house with the dicey plumbing there is a serious shortage of storage space. My tiny studio closet is stuffed to the brim, and every time I want to work on something new or move art around for an exhibition I have to practically empty the entire thing to get to what I need. I also have supplies and art in boxes and bins under tables and on top of tables and on top of cabinets all around the work space. NOT efficient.

It's not a space that leaves me a whole lot of options... it's a big room, but not very flexible. (One long wall is broken up by two doors and a wall heater, for example.) I'm not sure what the solution is, but this week I'm planning to take the time to at least try to reorganize. The hardest part for me about reorganizing is that I don't deal with clutter very well for very long, which is why I purged book cases last week and files this weekend. Make a mess, clean it up in the same day. The closet is a bigger (read: more than one day) matter... but I know I'll feel better when it's over.

I also know I'll feel better because in between the chaos I intend to keep space open to carve on new linocuts. It's been waaaay too long.

6 comments:

  1. I spy gum leaves! (And I bet Robyn will, too!)
    So sorry to hear about your plumbing.And at such a time!

    Good wishes for a wonderful year, Sherrie.

    ReplyDelete
  2. At least you are being productive Sherrie. I'm liking the hints of the new lino cuts. With 100 year old houses it is a love hate relationship. Sorry to hear about the plumbing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yeah, I saw the gum leaves and I fancy I can smell 'em too. It's going to be a beaut year for you Sherrie ('beaut' is an Australian word - look it up) and if you prefer it in Italian, it's going to be a bravo anno, and I'm looking forward to watching it unfold.

    Happy New Year!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh, I meant to say, in a 400 year-old- building our plumbing smells all year - situation normal ;)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh my! What a way to end one year as you head into a new one - with plumbing problems.

    Linocuts: I absolutely love the one that looks like Aspen trees in snow. Will it become a small print some day?

    May your plumbing problems be behind you and may the new year stretch out all rosy and clean smelling in front of you . . . Lindy

    ReplyDelete
  6. Gum leaves... eucalyptus, right? It's a childhood smell for me, too... I realize now that my grandmother's house in southern California was flanked with 'em. I had to resist the urge to bring a jar of "buttons" home with me, but I DID bring a pocketful. The smell is fading, sadly....

    Mmm... could you imagine scented print ink?

    (Obviously I have been sniffing too much ink the last few days..)

    ReplyDelete

Linocut in Progress: The Third Act

Time to wrap up this linocut ! And we are wrapping at warp speed (see what I did there?)... because there are deadlines. Exhibition deadline...