so this is at the top of the stairs on the north side, looking toward the south wall and gable to the right.

and this is the northeast corner, where the furnace is.  you can see the camping equipment to the left, and in the foreground is the walkway alongside the stairs.

here’s looking in the same direction but from over near the south gable.  what you’re looking at is the open space between the stacks along the south wall and the stairs.  there’s a couch there, and opposite the couch is the passageway to the east gable.

this is the southeast corner, with the stacks of large paintings to the right, and a stack of small paintings on the left.  in the foreground is my work desk.  you can see my ledger which is where all the work will be done from now on – cataloging jim’s work.

this is the south gable.  it has smaller paintings lining the left side, smaller paintings lined up under the window, and then midsized paintings lining the west wall.

this is a tableau of sculptures jim set up to show people.  originally it had a mirrored back, and three sides of one-way glass that reflected the tableau endlessly.

sorry about the quality.  i’m standing in the southeast corner and showing the west gable over to the north wall.  the couch is in the open area in the middle.  behind the couch is the racks of works on paper that i have already cataloged.

this is the northwest corner, where all the household stuff is.  i’ve got collectibles stacked against the chimney behind the painting, then files, then kitchen stuff, then household stuff, then tools, and to the extreme right starts the camping equipment.  you can see the plaster statue of a bird shaman in the foreground.

here’s a closeup of the corner, looking over a table stacked with works on paper that i have yet to catalog.

and here’s the view from the head of the stairs.  on the left is the northwest corner where all the household stuff is.  you can see the table with all the works on paper stacked on top – both on the left and the right of the picture.  in between are the stairs, and all the camping equipment and xmas stuff lining the north wall.

so that’s the attic now.  everything has a place, and there’s plenty of room to stash stuff.  it will last forever, as far as i’m concerned.

this is the one for n.  you can see they’ve faded a bit, but not really that much, and they’ll only get softer with time.

this is the one for o.  the flowers worked out okay.  i tried to make the color of the o lighter than the seashell lip, but it didn’t work out that way.

and here’s the one for e.

all in all i think they came out pretty well.  nothing like anything that would have a label on it, but that’s the point.  completely individualistic.  anyway, they’ll grow right out of them.

i would have made more sodium alginate to dilute the dyes in, and i would have waited until i had the dyes mixed up and then added the thickener.  as it was i used all the thickener up and still had to thin the dyes to use them, by which time they were too thin, and spread out faster than i would have wanted.

again, as a test of sodium alginate as a water-based resist, it works wonderfully, and as a thickener it works just fine, and washes out well, and i don’t have a problem with it.  i made up the alginate weeks ahead of time and kept it in the fridge, and the remaining dyes are still in the fridge, waiting for me to redye the dragon shirts using this method, which is so superior to the ‘paint now and add fixer later’ method i tried with the dragon shirts.

so there you go.  my sister designed the designs, and i executed them, and i’m much happier executing designs because i’m uninspired by the designs i come up with on my own.   i hope everybody enjoys them.

so the day before yesterday i did all three tops and one bottom.  and today i did the other two bottoms.

and now the bottoms are batching and the tops are in the dryer.

you can see how bright the colors are.  with the last piece i did, the dragon shirts, whatever went wrong, they faded all to pieces.  so even tho i’m looking for pink and carolina (faded) blue, i’m looking at primary blue and red and green when i first paint them in, because i’m expecting them to fade right out.

here’s the back, just the simple lettering. you can see where the bleeding from the resist is a little more green than the blue filling the letters.

here’s another one of the front.  we’ll see what happens when i wash them.

on the backs, my sister wanted three different motifs.  this one is flower, the one i did yesterday was thick and thin stripes, and the one below is ladders.

the work on them is extremely loose, you could say sloppy.  i anticipate that my sister isn’t going to like it, but my answer is that she needs to try painting on ribbed jersey knit.

and here’s the notes i took this summer when we were hatching the design.  they’re mainly undecipherable even by my standards (and i invented a code based on illegibility when i was in high school).

and this is what it all looks like when i’ve got it all out and working.  the full strength dyes are on the left, along with a spoon for mixing and a brush for dipping, then there’s a clear bottle of urea in water to thin with (urea keeps things moist), and then there are thinned dyes ready to be painted onto the fabric on the right.

at the moment i’ve got two pants batching on the work table, and the other 4 pieces in the dryer.  i’ll wash them several more times before i send them up to my sister and the nieces, along with xmas gifts for all the adults involved.

i’ll post a last few words when i get pictures of how well the clothing dyed / faded.

welcome to i’m finally getting around to finishing a project!

and boy did it creep up fast.  when my sister and i started this project at the end of august, i figured i had all the time in the world until thanksgiving.  until i was informed this evening that next week is thanksgiving.

so.  the picture below shows the state of the project since september.  that is, piled onto my worktable and full of cat hairs because the cat colonizes everything horizontal and soft.

below are the designs on the front.  these are rompers and pants for toddlers from dharma trading, a dye and stuff retailer i get all of my blanks from.  my sister and i designed the designs for them back in august, and inked them in (using dyed-black sodium alginate resist), and had been left that way since.  there are plastic bags in between the layers, and they’ve been strung up with spring clips and rubber bands on canvas stretchers.  i always do it this way.

a technical note.  there are a bunch of ways to fix mx dyes on cotton.  the one i’ve never used and shudder to think about is the one where you mix the fixative in with the dye.  the one i use most often, in scrunch-dyeing, is where i add the fixative at the end, right before i let it batch, or cure, or set (synonyms). and the one where you put the fixative on first is one i’ve played with but didn’t really consider for this project, mainly because we’d already put the resist on, so it was too late to soak the clothes.

and why would that be?  it all started with the dragon shirts, where i wanted to play with the dye, move it around, do things to it, and then set it.  like i would with silk.  but what i’d figured out from the literature was that when you add the fixative, the shit sets and that’s all you can do.

i hate when this happens in silk, when i add a blue line and then the sucker refuses to bleed all over everything like i want it to.  and of course i have no idea why this will happen one time and not another.  the variables are always wildly different (the humidity and temperature, the phase of the moon, the amount of each ingredient that i mix up, my mood) and i don’t keep notes.  i’d be there all day if i kept notes (but the real reason i don’t keep notes – when i’m in the middle of something i’m not going to stop and write it down, i’m going to say oh i’ll remember and keep on going with the flow.  and then i completely forget whatever i was thinking when i come out of the flow).

anyway, i was planning to spray the fixative (soda ash and water) over the cloth when i was finished painting it, like i did with the dragon shirts.

but then i got the idea that i could still use the soda soak method on them if i applied the soda ash with a brush.

and this is what you see below.  i’ve painted all the white space inside the black lines, and it has gone right thru them (resist on cotton jersey, resulting in microscopic breaks in each loop,  i’m sure).

below is a closeup of the most complicated design, where there will be the most bleeding of the resist.  see, i made the resist up of not only black dye, but enhanced black, meaning some blue and red and a little yellow too.  the black i use tends toward purple when it bleeds, but that’s fine.  the blue you’re seeing is the added stuff.

and this would be a disaster was not my sister determined to have loads of carolina blue in these clothes.  whew.

and below is how the back looks.  you’ll notice in these two pictures that the area around the resist is wet.  that’s where i just painted the soda ash solution.

the pants all got soda ash on both sides, all over down to about an inch above the ruffles at the ankles.  the resisted words on the butts bled just like the resist on the shirts.

and now i’m going to mix up the dyes with sodium alginate resist (to thicken them) and then start painting.  because it has to be batched while it’s still damp, i need to do one top at a time and set them under plastic.

and i’m not sure how much of that i’ll get done today, because we’re having dinner guests and i need to make bread and a squash and green tomato casserole; things like that.  so maybe i’ll just mix up the  paint and thickener today and leave the rest for tomorrow.

Organic electronics on natural cotton fibres

Abstract

Nanoscale modification of natural cotton fibres with conformal coatings of gold nanoparticles, deposition of thin layers of the conductive polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxithiophene) (PEDOT) and a combination of these two processes were employed to increase conductivity of plain cotton yarns. This innovative approach was especially designed to fabricate two classes of devices: passive devices such as resistors obtained from electrically conductive cotton yarns, and two types of active devices, namely organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) and organic field effect transistors (OFETs). The detailed electrical and mechanical analysis we performed on treated cotton yarns revealed that they can be used as conductors still maintaining a good flexibility. This study opens an avenue for real integration between organic electronics and traditional textile technology and materials.

i believe i left you working in the gallery a few days ago, maybe tuesday.  i spent a day on the spare ‘oom, and a day on the gallery, and then i started to get antsy.

all i had left in the middle of the house were the rooms most lived in, and with the least surface cleaning needed.  the main bedroom, the front room, the living room, the kitchen.  only the kitchen gave me the creeps.  the rest of them were basically – declutter horizontal spaces and sweep.

but of course i’ve been piling things up in those various rooms for three weeks now, so each room had its own declutter process to undergo.

but never mind that.  was it wednesday?  we had a party to go to that night, and i was still cleaning the bedroom.  i didn’t want to go; i wanted to stay home and clean.  but that’s a danger sign in itself, so i changed clothes and went.

and had a great time.  the other artists are all normal people, for artists, and none of them had swelled heads or inflated senses of who they were in the world.  quite the contrary.  so i spent the evening wearing my party head.

yesterday i went down to the studio first thing (well, first thing after going to the attic to put a table in its final place so jim could arrange a sculpture tableau on it) and stayed there all day, moving everything from one studio to the next, cleaning the floors and walls, and moving it all back again.

i started at the back, my studio closet, where i have files, blank canvases, finished encaustic paintings, prints and matting supplies, rolls of canvas and piles of stretchers.

everything came out into my studio.  suddenly you couldn’t walk thru my studio.  i moved the big shelves to the other wall, where there’d be more room for the long rolls (it used to cut right into the light of the window), and the other shelves.  and then i repacked everything.  empty frames (and with other peoples’ art in them) went in one stack.  blank canvases (and with ex paintings on them) went in another.  sheets of glass went against the far wall between the shelves and the files.  the really large canvases and the encaustic paintings went in the space between shelves and files.  files and computer parts and paper went on top of the file cabinets.  and then the room was full.

and i went into my studio proper, which is also an office, and a sitting area, and a kitchen, and moved everything out of that.  things were already bad in this area, because i haven’t been doing any art for awhile, and nature abhors a neat studio.  so i had a lot of little things to find places for.  and they ended up being piled on top and in between all the stuff in the closet (that was already full).

sweep the empty floor.  mop the empty floor.  don’t bother rinsing.  the floors are painted dark so the streaks won’t show, and the borax and ammonia mix i use to wash with disinfects and protects against bugs, so rinsing is not called for.  anything is better than ground-in dust.  plus, i’m lazy.

hahahhahahaha.

then i moved all the stuff back in, and it looked lovely.  so then i moved all the stuff out of the middle studio.  the furniture came into my studio, and the rest of the stuff went into the front studio, which had all the stuff i took down out of the attic.  and the living space.  and the porch.

i left it ready to mop.  the dust in the studio is so much thicker and heavier than the dust in the attic.  i was really surprised.  but when i cleaned off and wiped my face with a wet cloth, and ringed my nostrils with a corner, it came away black, not gray.

the mopping isn’t very good for my back.  i bend over and wring the mop out, and then i put my back into it scrubbing the floor, and i do it 30 or 40 times per room, that is per hour.  so when i try to sleep i end up with the most intense tingle in my hips and down my legs.  restless leg syndrome has nothing on this.  being pregnant didn’t cause half the hip pain.  of course, if i were pregnant at 55 godforbid, my back would hurt like hell the whole time, i’m certain.

so after 45 minutes of sleep, i got up and came back down to the studio and finished cleaning.  mopped the middle studio, moved everything back into it, and everything out of the front studio, and mopped it.  wiping the cobwebs off the walls and ceilings and out of the windows was rather a challenge, and moving all the paint cans off the floor of the front studio was another, and it was after 2 when i went back upstairs, but everything was set up and ready for the studio visit.

this afternoon at 3.

i was up before dawn, and put on the coffee, and then went back to sleep until after dawn, when we had a joyless cup of coffee before getting up and getting to it.

now jim’s spent the last couple of days going around pulling out paintings he wants to show, and cleaning all his sculptures, which have been gathering cobwebs on top of the kitchen cabinets, and straightening his parts of the house.

this morning i got up and made bread, because it’s bread day.  jim started the charcoal for a roast, because it’s smoking day.  and it’s also studio visit day, so after kneading the bread, i cleaned the kitchen.  and when i came back to punch it down and put it in the loaf pan, i cleaned the front room, and when i came back to heat the oven and start baking, i cleaned the living room.  and when it came out of the oven the visitors were at the door.

bread.  the rhythm of life.

between rounds with the bread, i was upstairs in the attic, shoving stuff where it went.  first the tools, which had been sitting in the middle of the floor.  then the household stuff, which i had moved into the middle of the floor previously.  and then the knicknacks, which i moved in once the floor was clear again.  and it all went in nicely against the eaves.  which left the middle.  i found some rugs at the last minute, and put them down in the middle of the northwest corner, and then carried the big table in and positioned it right next to the support beam in the middle of the room.

and then i moved all the prints that had been on top of the 4×8 that had shifted off its beam, and then moved all the furniture off the flooring and lifted the rug, and then shifted the flooring sheet and arranged for auxiliary support that will probably fail and i’ll have to redo it (later).  and then jim and i moved the couch onto the floor (the canework couch that (minus cushions) had spent time in a corner of the bedroom being used as a fort by the grandbaby) and stuck the cushions back on it.  then i moved the 10′ woodcut boards behind the couch and put them across file cabinets, and got out the 30′ scrolls and rolled them out for viewing.

all while jim was going thru the many stacks of etchings and prints and pulling out interesting pieces to display on the worktable in the bedroom.

and then they called and said they were coming.  ten minutes.  so i swept the front porch, and went thru the bathroom stuffing things into drawers (i never got to the bathroom), and went back out to sweep the walk free of acorns (one of our visitors had on high heels)

so, never minding the few piles of things that had grown up in the front room since i cleaned it an hour earlier, we dealt with a studio visit.

i let jim greet them and take them thru the studio proper, and then when they came up here, i trailed after them and pointed things out a little and explained my views of jim’s work, and cautioned them to only walk on the carpeted areas in the attic.

and they had some bread, and they hung out on the front porch for a few minutes, and they left for their next studio visit.

and then we leashed up the dogs and went for a leisurely walk, and then jim took a nap while i finished the barbeque in the oven and made rice.  and wrote this blog.

it’s raining outside, and i never have to do this much work in this house again.

and best of all, i am all set up to begin the real job up in the attic – cataloging the thousands of prints and etchings and paintings that are up there, only a small fraction of which are mine.

and it doesn’t matter at all if jim wins the award or gets further notice or if it all comes to nothing, because we achieved a really impressive amount of work to benefit us, and we’ll always notice the results of our efforts.

it’s still like that.

jim decided he would be much less anxious if, 5 days before a studio visit, i were to turn my attention to the rest of the house and come on down out of the damned attic.

so i left it, a mess, and came downstairs to make more messes.  now there are piles on three floors of the house, piles in every room.  that’s ten rooms, thirteen if you count the bathrooms, and an even 14 if you count the porch.  the one room at the top of the house has taken me three weeks so far.  so how fast can i clean the rest?

yesterday i cleared the back bedroom of all the boxes of linens and fabrics i brought down out of the attic.  this means that i reorganized all the boxes so that they contained like objects, and then i freecycled pillows, bedspreads, comforters, sheets, curtains, towels, fabrics, unfinished sewing projects – all mildewed from the attic, and thus useless to me, tho others seemed anxious to get them.  also put on the porch and taken off by willing recipients – louvered window glass, plastic clothes hangers, a tackle box, plus eyeglass holders.  and the trash came today and actually picked up all the stuff i had parked out there for the past two weeks, primarily because i baled it.  if they hadn’t taken it today i was going to have to drag it around the corner so it wouldn’t be so unsightly.  why clean the house if the curb appeal stinks.

as if.

as if i’d clean the house just to impress people.

you don’t know me.

the reason why i’m doing all this cleaning and organizing isn’t because we’re having people poke around the house for less than an hour.  it’s all in preparation for the massive job of cataloging all jim’s works on paper, which number in the thousands, and are all now neatly stacked on tables in the attic.  when all the fuss dies down (45 minutes later on friday) i’ll be able to start cataloging and there’ll be nothing standing in my way.

other than all the excuses i come up with on a yearly basis.  but if i don’t work during the winter, i can’t even go up there during the summer, so it’s a real pressure.

i’m cleaning because i’ve been meaning to do it for seven years, the length of time i’ve lived here.  and now’s my chance.

especially once i got down into the living area of the house.  2 bedrooms, a back hall, a living room, an entrance room, a kitchen, and 1.5 baths.

clearing the back bedroom of all that stuff from the attic took a full day.  i seem to be moving slower every day, especially in the morning.  but since the trick is just to keep moving, it doesn’t matter how fast i move.  first i reboxed everything, then i took it to the porch and labeled everything, then i freecycled it, then i moved it off the porch as people took things, and after 2 days it’s all gone, mostly.

and why did that take all day long?  it just did.  lots of laundry, lots of stacking things in other parts of the house.

then this morning i moved into the gallery.  the beds were cleared off, and the work table in the big bedroom, and then all the stuff from the back hall (gallery) was taken from where it’s been stored and piled on the beds.  this is my fabric stash, mainly.  and it all ended up in plastic grocery bags – jeans, t-shirts, baby clothes, leather, wool, silk, cotton, susie, mom, allison, avery, marie – designating either the contents or who they used to belong to.  these are all clothing bits to be made into quilts and other mementos.

when everything was out of the gallery, i moved all the furniture into the middle and swept and mopped.  the water was so filthy i should have rinsed twice.  then i rearranged the furniture, which is only dressers and tables.  i did this so that one particular painting could be seen to best advantage on top of one of the dressers.  and then we ended up swapping it out for another painting anyway.  but at least it was all done.

and now i have the spare ‘oom and the back gallery finished and repacked.  there was so much fabric to stash that i had to use a huge rolly bin for the overflow, but it fits right in between two dressers.

this took two days.  i have 3 days left, or really 2.5 days.  and in this time i need to clean the front rooms, the kitchen, the bathrooms, and the studio space downstairs, where the formerly clean front room now has a pile of stuff from the attic and another pile from the living space.

and arrange paintings so that they can be seen.  yesterday and today jim walked around the house figuring where he could hang paintings he wanted to show.  and we spent some time up on ladders trying to get them to stick up on the wall.

i’ve been going up in the evenings to sort stuff back into the northwest corner of the attic.  on monday i moved the files into place, and today i put the kitchen supplies next to them, all neat and pretty, and moved the household goods into the middle with the tools.  that leaves packing those things and moving in the knicknacks and the electrical items and the art supplies.  and that should leave me with loads o’floor space in that corner.  i might have time to vacuum in the attic before the visitors come.

this last part is really the easiest.  the living space is mostly clear because we spend a lot of time in it.  so the main bedroom and the two front rooms will be dusting and straightening (but dusting the walls and ceilings, and moving all the stuff off the horizontal spaces).  the kitchen will be hell.

and then there’re the studios.  the main idea behind a studio visit is to visit the studio.  which is all over our house.  but the main studio is just a studio, and they will not be surprised to see things everywhere and dust and disorder.  and jim’s been doing his part down here, and is responsible for how nice the front studio looks.  he’ll be getting the stuff up in the middle studio in the morning, while i’m working upstairs, and except for my studio (and that pile in the front studio), it’s looking pretty good.  i’ll probably just throw stuff into the closet and sweep the floors  (and walls and ceilings).

the difference is between housecleaning and deep cleaning.  housecleaning is where you surface clean.  you clean the surfaces.  with deep cleaning, you move everything out of the room and start by scrubbing the bare floors as well as the other 5 walls.

i’m really fatigued when the sun goes down these days.  i’m achy and sore, my hip clicks painfully when i walk, i stagger when my little dogs pull me along the street.  and then i fall deeply asleep and wake up two hours later.  oh well.

tomorrow’s another day.  we have our art party tomorrow night (can’t clean then) and then another day to work before they come over and interrupt my cleaning on friday.  i’ll let you know.

everything will be ok.

the rule?  it always takes twice the time you planned for it.  if you plan for twice the time, it’ll take four times as long, so don’t get cute.

oh, i’m going to finish redoing the northwest corner in one day, right; an afternoon.  and by late sunday i’ll be down in the studio, cleaning merrily away.  i wrote this on friday.

but no.

it was 11 before i got upstairs on saturday.  this and that.  and all i did all afternoon was to move stuff out of the northwest corner.  and didn’t even get everything out, at that.

this, as you may recall, was the corner with all the tools and house supplies on a table in the middle, with kitchen things and curios already stacked in the corners, and then all the stuff that came out of the rest of the attic got piled there until i could get to it.  until finally you couldn’t throw anything into that corner without dislodging a pile, and you couldn’t go in after it.

the plan was to clear the walkway and have done with it.  that would have taken half a day, and i was anticipating doing a lot of work in the studio.  at least take all the paint cans down and put them under the house.

but when i was in the west gable, stacking all the tools i could find (kitchen supplies went to the south gable, art supplies went in the southwest corner, household items went in the southeast corner, electronic things went in the east gable, and papers and files went in a niche on the south wall.   that’s 6 stacks, when i got thru.

six stacks now completely filling the nice empty floor in the middle.  again.

in fact, when i brought my ex upstairs to have a look on friday, he was impressed (you never cleaned like this when we were married).  and when he saw it today he was bowled over.  it’s in a completely different configuration today than two days ago.  as it has been every couple of days for going on three weeks now.

who does it take three weeks to clean a house?  only obsessive me, when i’m being obsessive.  my actual motto is closer to ‘a clean house is a wasted life.’

anyway, i noticed when i was piling the tools in the west gable, that the northwest corner was empty near the roofline all the way around the room.  there were no boxes stacked there, because there was no flooring from the eaves to four feet in,  enough to fit all the stuff that was crammed into the center.  but i’d have to remove everything before i could put a floor over the open rafters.

so everything had to come out.  and so i created 6 piles.  stacks, actually.  like objects with like objects.  i love this method of organizing, as i might have mentioned.  big piles into small piles and sort those into smaller piles and then put them where they go.

when i was done with this phase, all of the sculptures were stacked on two upturned bookshelves (bonus!) and an elaborate light-box piece with attached sculptures was precariously near getting busted by anything i carried by.  there was a narrow walkway and a small space capable of seating one or two in a pinch, with a tiny cubby for my coffee.

which i did all afternoon.  at around 3 the attic fan came on.  that means the sun came around the side of the tree and heated up the south and west sides.  it got hot in the south gable, where there’s a window.  but in the west and east gables, where there are louvers instead of windows, there was a fresh breeze.  when i first started in the attic, the fan would come on at 11.  but it’s been being fall here lately, and it’s blessedly cool for much of the day now.  unfortunately the studio visit is at 3 on friday, and it’s supposed to be warm enough to bring the fan on, which i would rather not.  but who’s going to complain about the weather?  (only my sister who lives in the damp northwest fringe.)

it took forever to empty the northwest corner.  partly because space is at a premium now that the paintings are all where they go.  partly because i’m getting increasingly bruised and sore from all these days of hauling heavy shit up and down stairs and out of and into tight corners.  80 pound bags of quikcrete.  falling-apart cardboard boxes full of big iron gears and pieces for the etching press.  stacks of roofing tiles.  metal file drawers stuffed full of papers.  cases of gallons of housepaint.  many bruises.  and now both of us really have to use our knees to lift, because both of our backs are shot.

and i really can’t have any help up there.  if jim tries to help me, he makes assumptions, which are dangerous in a place where the wrong foot will send you crashing thru irreplaceable artwork and then thru the ceiling and into the downstairs.  in order to help me, he has to do exactly what i say, and who wants to do that?  plus i find that, like packing the moving truck, if anybody lays a hand to help me, there ends up being space in the packing, and it doesn’t all fit.  it’s an awful obsession, really.

is there an organizer’s anonymous?

i can’t be certain only the next day, but i believe i left the northwest corner only incompletely emptied last night when i went downstairs for my ritual sponge-bath and drink in peace and quiet on the porch.  oh yes, i remember, the floor was mostly pulled up and leaning on the chimney stack, me thinking i could get away with that.

as i recall from this morning (again, after 10 before getting to it), i came upstairs with a bucket of hot borax and ammonia water and the mop, intending to start mopping the floor before the ammonia affected my breathing.  and it was 3 before i actually got the floor wet.

i remember that i was disappointed to realize that i had to wash a complete floor, not just the three sheets of 4×8 in the middle.  and that i had to build a complete floor to do this.

actually i realized this last night, and went out scouring the neighborhood for more boards.  and found them in the person of a couple of ex large unfinished paintings that jim wasn’t going to rework.  because they were in the front closet and got moldy and the paint did strange things all over the surface.  huge big plywood boards that he was using in the early ’80s.  and a couple of boards from the dressers we hammered apart the week before.

as the process of laying a new floor went on, i discovered that i had exactly the wood i needed, even tho that ran to 1/2″x2″ 18″ planks in the end.  laying a floor out of bits and pieces is like a jigsaw puzzle, and like loading a truck in two dimensions.  i guess it’s why i like sudoku (which i never thought i would, having grown out of crosswords).

the tricky part of the northwest corner is the back wall.  the north wall is where the stairs come up, and it splits only 5 feet in from the eaves.  that’s not enough space to walk upright, so you have to crouch along the big 4′ gap in the floor to get past the top of the stairwell.  i stuck a 2×12 over the gap when i first started this venture, and loaded a bunch of camping equipment into the eaves.  and when i cleared the rest of the attic, i filled that whole area with xmas stuff and then the dog cage, and a lot of other stuff.

when i pulled the existing patchwork of floor off the area near the stairwell, i realized that i had to pull it all off, because it was fucking dangerous to walk over the boards i’d laid previously.  they were all 1/4″ plywood, in a place where if the boards shifted you could lose your balance and fall into the stairwell.  no handrails don’t you know.

so it all came up, the flooring all got stacked against the chimney stack (last night), and then had to be moved once i figured out i was going to have to wash a whole floor this morning.

i put 3/4″ plywood 4′ widths along the stairwell in the northwest corner by god.  they spanned the space between the edge and the floor beam, 4′.  it’s amazing how easy building industry sizing is.  it’s all multiples.  so if you have three sheets of 4×8 plywood, they go on the floor in a T, one across and two side by side, and cover a square 12 feet on a side.  and the joists they lay on are exactly underneath when you lay them down, and each joist is 18(?)” wide, and it’s a beautiful thing the way it all fits together.

sort of.  and the differences in measurement and wood treatment over the past 110 years has made it kind of funky.  because back in the day, 2″ rafters and beams were 2″ thick, not 1 1/2″ like today’s lumber.  but the flooring lays approximately in the middle of each beam so the boards are supported at the edges, and everything’s fun and easy.  sort of.

anyway, i got a good floor down, all the way to the eaves.  and it only took until 5 in the evening.  and in the end i was dragging my ass over to the west gable for a stick of wood to fit an odd sized gap, and finding it every time.

my ex wondered if he would be able to start on such a mess if someone held a gun to his head.  he’s fond of violent metaphors.  i told him the way to tackle an attic this full of crap was to do it like an unwilling servant.  move as slow as possible, shuffling and ducking your head, dragging one item at a time all the way across the attic to where it goes, and slump back for another piece.  the pace is agonizing, dawdling.  but you keep moving, and by the end of the day, it’s all done.  the trick is not to stop.  if you stop, you stay down, and it never gets done.  that’s why i don’t eat until jim forces me to.

finally the floor was down.  i swept.  the dust was thick.  i sneezed.  i wiped the edge of my nostrils with the inside of my tshirt and got a ring of black on the fabric.  the wash water got used, stone cold.  the water turned black with the first half 4×8 i scraped the mop across.  i figure the mop picked up as much dust as it smeared around.  and that’s something.  it’s the only floor i can’t put a rug down on (aside from the west gable).

and then, with a nice clear floor drying, i went around and looked at what i had – 6 piles.  and the space i had to put it in – starting where the camping equipment left off and running into the northwest corner, then to the west gable, and then the chimney stack and out into the rest of the room, interrupted by the stairwell.

tools.  kitchen equipment.  art supplies.  files.  household objects.  knicknacks and valuable collectibles i couldn’t care less about.  and electric/electronic stuff.

traditionally, we’ve put the tools against the north wall, because there’s a beam running across it that sticks out enough for the handles of the long objects to go into, so the beam is full of rakes and extension handles and post hold diggers and old mops and brooms.

therefore, the first thing to be relocated were the tools, which had been resting in the west gable.  but i wasn’t sure about how much camping equipment i still had to load in, so i piled the tools in the middle of the floor of the northwest corner.  and then decided to put the files on the west wall near the west gable and the chimney stack.

and was interrupted in all this by the arrival of my ex for dinner.  which i’d forgotten about.  and after amazed comments on the changed state of the attic, we went down and i made dinner from leftovers and we had a good time slandering our daughter.

which leaves stuff still to be organized into the northwest corner of the attic.  a lot of stuff.  and the rugs need vacuuming, and the space needs to be arranged, and paintings have to be set out, and i noticed that the whole area behind the plinths that line the path from the stairs, and that are really there to keep people from tripping on the uneven floor, this whole area that has a table holding a great many works on paper, this area is on a 4×8 that has slipped off its 2″ rafter.  so everything has to come off and i’ve got to fix the flooring, and while i’ve got everything off i’m going to rearrange and change the traffic flow and thus alter the entire attic one more time.

but not tomorrow.  i’m into the last few days of cleaning and organizing before the studio visit on friday, and it’s time i turned my attention to the studio proper.  so i’m coming down here tomorrow and getting in jim’s way until it’s all done here, which i imagine will only take a day, so i’m budgeting for two.  jim’s done a lot of the work in the front studio already, mopping the floor and moving things into their permanent location – i just have to clear the floor near the window in there, and then i can start on the middle studio.

i’ve assured jim that i’ll leave him working like an island in the sea of chaos, but he’s still going to be shocked when everything but his table and his taboret are going to go missing from his main work studio.  this is so i can clean the floors and check for mold, because this is a basement.  everything is going to be moved.

when i say antics, i’m referring to the attic.  the work over the past few days has been interrupted by a series of interesting events, and what work we’ve been able to do has involved climbing stairs and descending stairs and taking large handfuls in every direction each time.  but with our studio visit just over a week away, i’m already starting to work in other parts of the house, so i’m pretty happy with the progress.

but it’s been fitful.  shit has been happening.  too personal to discuss without court orders.  family stuff.  visitor stuff.  crisis stuff.  shit hitting other peoples’ fans, however, which is how i prefer it.  but it’s made the progress halve again – there’s always something.

so, reading the end of the last post, there was no deodorizing in the attic.  not yet.  i was too busy dragging paintings upstairs from the basement studio.  it rained that day, too, so it was a day fraught with careful steps on the wet treads of the studio stairs.

what i ended up doing was spraying vinegar everywhere.  in the morning, jim and i started schlepping the paintings from the walk in closet in the front studio.  this is a place i seldom approach because of all the mold that is there.  crawling up the walls in the corner.  it’s horrifying.  and jim doesn’t have the thing against mold that i do, so he doesn’t understand why everything has to come out of there right now and go in for decontamination.

we moved everything from the front closet into the middle studio, decided what was unfinished, what was trash, and what went up to the attic.  and then we brought everything heading upstairs into the bedroom and sprayed both sides with vinegar.

vinegar + mold = godawful smell.  it gave me a headache and a wheeze even just noticing i could smell it.

but with the doors open and the fans on it was only all day before we could take the paintings upstairs and freshen up the room before going to sleep.  and part of the next.  i’m not sure how many days have actually passed.

then my kid and himself came up to sleep over in the spare room, so i had to move things around in that room.  that’s where all the fabrics from upstairs ended up, boxes everywhere.  and of course i was up all night because of the spare bodies in the house, bodies that wouldn’t stop making noise all night so i didn’t get much sleep.  and then had to drive places and spend time not working in the attic.  that was yesterday.

anyway, we spent this morning moving stuff from the front studio upstairs while jim cleaned the corner of front studio.  the back closet is clear and there’s damp-rid aplenty in there.  the front studio finally lost all of the paintings we could move out of there.  there are several 10′ paintings that just aren’t going around the corner to the attic stairs (not without my moving the desk in the back gallery, which might happen later).

once we’d moved the big paintings ouf of the way and cleaned the floor and wall, and moved them back again, we set up three easels and put a massive sheet of plywood with a painting tray up on it, and then dragged down one of jim’s 8′ triptychs and set it up for viewing.

when we got thru emptying the front studio, there were a pile of unfinished and damaged paintings to be finished / repaired.  so i left him mixing up a fresh batch of egg and oil tempera to varnish the tempera paintings, and went back to the attic with the last (i thought) of the studio paintings.

which were in piled in the formerly open floor of the main part of the attic.  so i spent several hours shuffling among the piles arranging like objects.

which as you know is the cornerstone of my organization method.  like objects, like materials, like sizes.  pile them up somewhere, and then you can make sense of how everything fits.  like organizing the furniture and boxes on the lawn early on moving day.

of course, now the rest of house is starting to pile up as things have to be moved again and again.  the bedroom has been used as a staging (and decontamination) area for the attic, and now is becoming a staging area for things coming from the attic that aren’t fabric.  the front porch has been a staging area for freecycle things for a week now.

the piles in the attic got confused, several times.  they’re supposed to be grouped more by size than anything else, but i have several stacks of, say, 30×40 paintings.  but sometimes i put tall paintings with short paintings because one of the dimensions match, and sometimes i put tall paintings with short paintings because i was tired and didn’t give a rat’s ass at the moment.

but as i say, i spent hours shuffling around up there, my socked feet on the rugs, the floor creaking and popping.  and gradually the piles straightened up.  now the 20x30s are separate from the 22x30s as well as the 20x32s.  for example.

so then, at some point after that, maybe this afternoon, i forget; couldn’t be much later than that, so i guess i’m safe to claim this afternoon – i nailed up two lengths of 1×2 to the vertical support beams and the rafters over the eaves of the southwest side (which sounds really confusing here).  i mean that, running along the west wall and into the south gable, wherever there was a vertical support beam, close to the peak of the gable, i found the roof rafter level with it and nailed up a 6′ length of wood between the two.  to serve as a guide for paintings to lean against.  whew, that was tough.

and then i had to start stacking paintings.  but i didn’t know what sizes to stack first.  the largest paintings are in the main attic where the pitch of the roof is great, and the paintings go back further to the eaves.  but this is only important for paintings that stick out a long way and are very high.  so only for the 5×8 foot paintings and larger.  which there aren’t many thank god.  except for this 5×9 painting of koi.

it doesn’t go anywhere easily.

so i spent some time figuring out which size needed to go where, based on how much main floor space it’s going to take up.  and this involved moving quite a few of the stacks i made the other day when i first started.  so it goes.  i expect i’ll be doing a lot of this tomorrow.

there are two more big paintings in the middle studio that need to go up to the attic in the morning, and something else i forget what, and then i lock myself inside the attic and organize the hell out of it once again.

on saturday, i expect to spend all day organizing the northwest corner, behind the chimney stack, and then i go down to the studio on sunday and monday and maybe part of tuesday, and then i can spend wednesday and thursday in the main part of the house, and friday i can relax and hang out for a 45 minute studio visit.

we were talking about it just a few hours ago – we’re putting in as much effort getting things ready for this as we would for a two week european vacation.  for 45 minutes.  but as with everything we’ve done about art recently, the benefits are never the ones you think, but always something peripheral.

like this competition jim’s entered, that we’re doing all this work for.  having made it to the finalists is honor enough, and neither of us is anticipating seeing a prize.  i’ve already been rejected, okay, but jim supposedly has a shot because he’s a finalist.  neither of us feel there’s a chance in hell of actually being selected, but we’re having the time of our lives preparing to have actual real people in to see his work.

and to us it’s worth it, because even tho we won’t win any prizes, we’ve done in two weeks or so because i’ve lost count, we’ve done more in a couple of weeks to clean and arrange and throw out and declutter the entire house than was done in all the years either of us have been here.  and it feels really good.

the particular program we applied to featured the intangibles in its brochure.  it’s not the money, it’s the networking, for example.  but for us, at this point, it’s the forced activity.  it’s the incidental effort going into preparing for a studio visit.  it’s jim’s delight in seeing paintings he’d forgotten he’d painted, and all the tales he gets to tell me about the circumstances.  it’s the echo in the rooms as they get cleared of paintings stacked upon painting along every length of wall in every room.

spring cleaning the way it was meant to be, where you take everything out of every room and put it in the yard while you scrape down to the floors and clean even the cracks between the floorboards (flea eggs dontyouknow).

so, thanks there, art organization.  even if you don’t like my work.

when last we left our heroine, she was hoping the rolled up carpet didn’t get peed on sitting on the glider on the porch all night.

and if it did, she didn’t stop to check, but dragged it back upstairs in the morning and unrolled it into the far southeast corner, snug up against the eaves.  all 144 sf of it.  a kind of greeny yellow with gray overtones.

that was saturday morning.  then i borrowed a shopvac that turned out to be on its last legs, but before i unplugged it in fear i got three 4×8 squares of plywood vacuumed.  they are a most attractive shade of pale gold when they’re not covered by 30 years of dust.  after that i had to sweep and mop to get the dust up.  and you should have seen the bucket when i was done.  i had to carry the dripping mop thru the house after dumping the bucket (hazardous waste don’t you know), and it left black spots that dried on the floor.  just one more thing i have to take care of.

so the whole day’s work can be summed up like instructions for shampooing.  clear, sweep, mop, repeat.  i moved all the stuff out of the way, swept raising as little dust as possible, mopped with filthy water just to get the dust up, not to actually clean anything, let it dry, and then rolled a rug down over it.  we had two big rugs sitting in the attic, and five or six small ones of various quality and condition.  and now they’re down over the entire cleared space of the attic.  which consists of the east gable thru the southeast wall and all the way to the stairs in the middle.

to do the east gable i had to take up a bunch of old flooring and redistribute it.  it was kind of scary working around the place where all the ducts come up to the furnace, because it’s like a black hole in the middle of the house.

unfortunately, we’re having indian summer at the moment, and the attic fan is coming on around 11 each morning.  which means it’s getting hot in the attic.  so i’m up there, in sweatpants, socks and shoes, and it’ s 90 degrees and climbing.  sweat is running down my nose.  i’m moving very very slowly and taking lots of rests, panting in the heat in my little chair.

i’ve been moving my little chair and the file cabinet with the stereo on it all around the attic in the past days.  it goes to the clear spot.  it keeps migrating.  i really wish i’d put up a camera and taken shots thru this whole thing.  it would show migrating piles of stuff, first piled up here and then there.  chasing itself around and around while only gradually do things begin to stay in one place.

so when i ended the day, i think we’re all the way to sunday night now, so i’m thinking i spent two days cleaning and moving stuff so i could put down the rugs.  even tho i take breaks and do ritualistic things at the end of my work day to separate myself from the process, it’s blending into itself in my memory as if i’d been cleaning the attic forever.

my ritual is to go down to the bathroom, strip off all my clothes and leave them in a pile, dampen a washcloth and wipe down all exposed skin, and dress in clean clothes, in this case a pants wrap i think i might have invented, new socks, and a cardigan.  and then i mix up a medicinal quantity of wine and grape juice with herbs, and sit on the porch swing and read.  it’s wonderful.

but enough of that.  this morning saw me up in the attic finally starting to move paintings back into the stacks where they’re going to stay.  this took nailing some boards up to act as uprights.  i’m telescoping what i actually did here, i notice.  in fact, the floor of the east gable got rearranged today, not yesterday.

in fact, jim nailed a 4′ board to the top step, which has never had one until now.  and i evened out the obstacles you’ve got to go thru before you reach the middle space of the attic – right after you get over the top step, you’ve got to get over a 4″ pvc pipe and a foot later a 1″ copper pipe running over the flooring.  so i put boards in between and now it’s a series of shallow steps down onto the attic floor (the step was high because they were going to have to put a floor on top of the rafters to turn it into living space).

so a lot of stuff got dragged out of the east gable this morning, and stuck somewhere, and the flooring was rearranged, and then the smaller rugs went down over the east end and stuff got put back into the space.

the first thing that went there was a table, a rickety thing that had been leaning against the flat files which are my main workspace.  it leaned against an upright next to the duct black hole, and i piled an enormous amount of works on paper and portfolios on top of, on the crossbars of, and on the floor beneath the table.

then i moved the flat files.  i had to take all the works on paper out of them, and drag it across the rugs, and then straighten out all the rugs and put all the prints back in.  i actually took the time to make the flat files level, so that i won’t have my pencil rolling off when i’m working.

this was starting to make a corridor.  the print table occupies the space to the left just as you get to the top of the steps, and then there’s the opening into the east gable, and then the flatfiles, and you’re into the main part of the attic.  on the right when you get to the top of the stairs, there’s the entrance to the northwest corner, still blocked, then way over by the west gable there’s the futon bedframes set up to hold all the cataloged prints.  and that’s not moving.  it’s set against the chimney stack and i’m happy with it.

i had to clear out all the space around the futon frames, the usual piles somewhere else.  and then i took the other table and put it perpendicular to the bedframes, and stack more prints on top.  in front of this, along a 3″ drop in the floor level, i put a series of three display plinths, and moved the owl to the tallest one.

this makes a corridor, confining a visitor to the 4×8 sheet directly in front of the steps, which is lower than the rest of the floor.  there’s still a rise at the end, but nobody’s going to trip anywhere else (at this point (please god)).

so then i started moving the paintings.  i started with small ones, 18×24, 20×30.  they went into the east wall right behind the flat files, and don’t stick out much from the eaves.  then i went to the largest ones and put them right in the middle of the south wall.  and now the attic has stacks of unfiled paintings, sorted according to size, waiting to find a place.

it’s all piles again, but it’s piles on oriental rugs.

tomorrow i’m making up a solution of baking soda and water, and some essential oils, and i’m going to attempt to dampen some of the dust into the rugs and out of the air.  it still smells like dust and old cat shit up there.  i know where there’s a pile of it slowly molding under some boards, and i’ll get it tomorrow.

let’s see, what’s left?  this is a good point to say, because i haven’t been far enough along to even hazard a guess until now.

tomorrow we can start clearing paintings out of the living space and out of the studio.  this will take all day, because of the sheer effort involved in going up and down three flights of stairs.

once the paintings are all fitted into space, which will take loads of moving and temporary stacks, then i can attempt to redistribute the stuff that’s stacked up in the northwest corner, which is now completely impassable.

once that’s all worked out, it’ll be time to decorate the space, hang a few paintings from the rafters, find some prints to pin up along the steps, make sure the fluorescent lighting works.

and then it’s to the rest of the house.  the studio will only need sweeping and dusting, and i can straighten it all up in a day.  the living space will take days and days of in depth dusting and washing and scrubbing and straightening and stuffing and storing.  and we’re currently having a cat pee problem from all the disruption of the living space and all the boxes from the attic.

but that’s all i want to write for tonight.  the dogs are getting restless and it’s time to go back to bed.  i’ve got to get up early tomorrow and it’s going to be a tiring day.

as if it’s ever otherwise.