Category: IRL fetish

  • once upon a time…

    Once upon a time, I was engaged to marry. As is the custom in my family, I made a quilt. The design reflected the hopes and ambitions that I had for my life. It was all-white, intricate and symmetrical. It was a vintage pattern to remind me of the ways that my life was connected to my heritage.  It was filled with circles to symbolize the ring I would wear in marriage:

    1455121662_dff1d4cfbf_b

    Over the years, I saved bits and scraps of brightly-colored cotton fabric. Then I let my daughter play around with these (with the help of her Aunt Susan), and she made this, while she was still in grade school:

    crazy quilt

    These two quilts are so heavy with metaphor, that it’s difficult to write about them without sounding trite.*  Perhaps it is enough, for now, to say that once upon a time…I made a quilt.

    *And I have already written some of these stories, here and here.

  • IRL fetish #2: rubber cement

    IRL fetish #2: rubber cement

    I decided that this needed to be a series.

    Perhaps it’s because so many of my waking hours are spent typing at a computer that I find myself craving the oddest of analog tools sometimes.

    Today’s IRL craving is rubber cement.  I want to screw off that metal cap and brush a blob of cold, acetone-smelling gel on a scrap of paper and adhere it into a scrapbook.

    Why?  I have no idea.

    (and of course now that I see that the rubber cement wikipedia article has no references, I’m also craving a few minutes to whip that puppy into shape)

  • short shameful confession #28

    short shameful confession #28

    I have an IRL fetish.  I have a few of them, actually, but the one that’s on my mind right now is my IRL fetish for paper.

    We have boxes full of creamy think white paper leftover from wrapping dishes in our recent move, and I love the texture of it, the color, and its soft wrinkles.  This weekend Catgirl and I used the paper to create a skirt pattern for sewing, and it was an utter delight to use a thick artist pencil on that paper, too.  So much so that I was dreaming about all kinds of ways I might use paper again (digital schmigital).

    That, and I’m also thinking about the book that sits on the edge of my bathtub to entertain me during my evening soaks.  Wet fingers on paper (and the wrinkles that those wet fingers leave on book pages after they dry) are a texture that feels so much more bone-deep satisfying than a swipe of a finger across a screen.

     

    Previous short shameful confessions

     

    Note: featured image is of the old-timey letterbox (and nearby elevator) in the lobby of  the Hotel Allegro in Chicago.  It made me want to mail a few snail-mail letters to friends…