Archiving and Moving On

I'm archiving this blog. Look for me on "A Twirly Life" (http://twirlyword.wordpress.com/).

Here's a parting photo -- just so you won't worry that I don't still love laundry and post about it incessantly. (I found it at another cool laundry blog: http://mrbrightlaundry.blogspot.com/ but I think it's someone's original work. I should look for that. I found it: Sophie Blackall! who also has a blog: Missed Connections. The internet is so cool.)

Laundry on the Line

Laundry hanging on the line has long been one of my favorite images. Friends take photos of laundry for me from all over the world.

Today, Andrew Sullivan posted a lovely photo as a winner in his "View From Your Window." If you want to know where the photo was taken, read the story on Sullivan's "The Daily Beast."  If you're like me, and you just like looking at other people's laundry, enjoy.

The Laundry Song

The Laundry Song

White Shirts

Are impossible to keep white. I've been thinking about it, and looking up solutions for keeping them white and so will post a couple of links here. Not very poetic, that may come later.

Googling "white shirt" and "poem" came up with some interesting things. Poems with that title, a whole book with that as title (by Laurie MacFayden), and lots of self-published verse.

By far the most moving, beautiful, startling, confusing, and fine is the poem, by June Jordan, called "It's Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean" published on line at The Poetry Foundation, the beginning of which is this:

It’s a sunlit morning

with jasmine blooming

easily

and a drove of robin redbreasts

diving into the ivy covering

a backyard fence

what used to be

or doves shoving aside

the birch tree leaves

when

a young man walks among

the flowers

to my doorway

where he knocks

then stands still

brilliant in a clean white shirt

He lifts a soft fist

to that door

and knocks again

He’s come to say this

was or that

was

not

and what’s

anyone of us to do

about what’s done

what’s past

but prickling salt to sting

our eyes

What’s anyone of us to do

about what’s done

I tried to find a photo of a man in a white shirt, that represented the solemnity and joy of this poem, the grief and softness, but no luck. Too much pornography on the internet, women dressed in men's miliatry whites, nurses popping out of their hooker dresses.

I was resolved to find something beautiful, and switched the search to paintings. Lucky me, I found this astonishing self-portrait, appropriately titled "Man in a White Shirt" by Lucian Freud. White, gold, black, soft and harsh together. Like my hands after a day of trying to get those perspiration stains out of my own laundry.

"Laundry" by Ruth Moose

And because I can't stand not having a poem, here is a nice one that I didn't know before today.

Laundry

All our life

so much laundry;

each day’s doing or not

comes clean,

flows off and away

to blend with other sins

of this world. Each day

begins in new skin,

blessed by the elements

charged to take us

out again to do or undo

what’s been assigned.

From socks to shirts

the selves we shed

lift off the line

as if they own

a life apart

from the one we offer.

There is joy in clean laundry.

All is forgiven in water, sun

and air. We offer our day’s deeds

to the blue-eyed sky, with soap and prayer,

our arms up, then lowered in supplication.

Source: Making the Bed (Main Street Rag Press, 2004)

Laundry by Ruth Moose : The Poetry Foundation

Teaching My College-Bound Daughter to Wash Her Own Clothes

I think I'll write her a poem about doing her own laundry, but in the mean time, here are a collection of blogs advising college kids about doing their own laundry. There is not very much interesting (or worth re-posting) so I'll have to write my own advice.

"Life Is Just A Basket of Laundry" by Mary Marlowe Leverette

"Annie Gives Advice About Doing Laundry On and Off Campus" (in Illinois!)

My Own Advice

1. color (light, dark, or red)

2. temperature (cold or as hot as possible)

3. agitation (your bras or your blue jeans)

4. cloth (natural and not)

Discovering Ethel Romig Fuller

There is much that could be said about her, but I am still learning about this former Oregon Poet Laureate. This poem is a delight.

Today – Ethel Romig Fuller

I have spread wet linen

On lavender bushes,

I have swept rose petals

From a garden walk.

I have labeled jars of raspberry jam,

I have baked a sunshine cake;

I have embroidered a yellow duck

On a small blue frock.

I have polished andirons,

Dusted the highboy,

Cut sweet peas for a black bowl,

Wound the tall clock,

Pleated a lace ruffle…

To-day

I have lived a poem.

Extreme Ironing

What is not to love?

Can't find their website, but apparently there are lots of practitioners of the sport. For, example, in Australia.

Things are Looking Up

Snow. My thesis. Laundry. Art. It's a good life.
I want to blog more, but I am tired.
However, last night was the first night of our Knit Night club. We don't have much of a name yet, and three of our members (who do knit) were not knitting last night.
So, in honor of all that, here is a link to our two favorite Knitting Web Sites Ravelry and Knitty. Sorry that Knitty doesn't have a logo I could re-post here.


Also, a new fantastic poem I discovered by Emily Dickinson, about snow, and filled with laundry images. What is not to love about "It ruffles wrists of posts"?

It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain,—
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.

It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil

On stump and stack and stem,—
The summer’s empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.

It ruffles wrists of posts,
As ankles of a queen,—
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.

(Thanks to Bartleby Great Books Online.)

Laundry Getting Ready to Travel

Friends just went to Guatemala. Before they went, they prepared their clothes with some spray that was supposed to make them insect-proof. I don't know if that part was a success, but I love the photo they took of the clothes all strung out and ready to be processed. Such happy colorful and cooperative clothes! Thanks, Kayte and Jim.

RIP Freyja

Dear little kitty who liked laundry baskets, I'll miss you. Hopefully we'll trap and relocate that nasty raccoon. I hope there are lots of laundry baskets full of warm socks in kitty heaven.

Common Themes, Common Threads

Here are some new blogs I've found. The Laundry Narrative and The Thrifty Poet. Interestingly, the Laundry Narrative blogger doesn't describe laundry as one of the things she's interested in (on her profile) and Thrifty Poet doesn't have any poems on her blog, but they both seem to like clothes, one of them is a mom, and there is a lot of colorful musing going on. I can get behind that. Oh, and Thrifty Poet does list several very important books by poets on her list of books she wants to read. Donald Hall, Louise Bogan, and Eavan Boland -- which is how I found her blog in the first place.

Cassie Premo Steele actually has an entire post about Eavan Boland, and quotes a piece of her prose, one of my favorite bits.

“The more I lifted a child, conscious of nothing but the sweetness of a child’s skin, or the light behind an apple tree, or rain on the slates, the more language and poetry came to my assistance.” ---Eavan Boland

I'm eating my lunch at work and since I don't like to eat at the computer, I'm searching for something new about EB to read while I eat my lunch at my little round office table. I didn't get very far.

But, in other news, I have decided to diary again, and even to try PAD, if I can find the time. Oh, and write my thesis. Remember that?

I've been worried that I needed something 'new' for my thesis, some new spin, and I've been thinking that while so much scholarship about EB focuses on her as a poet, I could focus on her as a mother -- that the role of domestic imagery in her poems is not just political or feminist, but deeply personal. That while she write poems about being a fore-bearer for other women poets (and there is plenty of criticism about that), she's also a fore-bearer for mothers who want to write. She is a fore-mother. Not a forefather. No. It seems that Cassie Premo Steele agrees with me.

"This is why Eavan Boland’s writing is, for mother writers, revolutionary: she asserts that the selfish, interiorly focused mother can be a poet. Not just be a poet, but also somehow a good poet. And a good mother."

Maybe I'll making some progress after all. A photo for good luck.



Found at this new blog, Fiber Fantasies, when searching for a new photo of EB. What luck. So much richness.

Domestic Images Inside Out

Accidental Mysteries does it again. What could be more of a domestic image than this? Woman, high heel shoes, and bones. Strangely unsettling, but beautiful. Too bad her apron doesn't show. I bet a string of pearls would have shown up nicely.

Who Could Resist Super Yarn?

I noticed this company and these beautiful colored skeins in the Facebook adverts this morning. I guess those ads are good for something, then, even something beautiful.

Cascade Superwash Paint. A great name, too, for a lovely thing.

Thank you Apple Yarns of Bellingham WA.

I plan to blog every day, now, about the progress on my thesis. Not about knitting, but sort of about beauty and the work of women's hands.

Wish me luck.

Amazing Finds of the Week

A beautiful site. Just lying in wait. Something I've been waiting for. A beautiful sight.

The Domestic Soundscape is out of Oxford, and I haven't even begun to discover the depths of this woman's ideas and images. But who can argue with a hand knit Sonic Death Monkey?

And who knew there was a Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture?? I shouldn't be surprised that it's in the UK. Thanks for being out there for me to find.

Now back to my thesis (talk about a major distraction!).

Drastically Odor-Free Laundry & Ten Frugal Tips for the Laundry Room

I heard this gorgeous phrase, 'drastically odor-free laundry' on the radio today. Here's the story, from KQED's The California Report, if you want to listen to it yourself. All about Borax and Ronald Regan. Amazing. (The photos are from Wikipedia, thank goodness for them.)



And, if that weren't enough, I also found this website: Old Fashioned Homemaking, Traditional Values for Modern Homes. And this beautiful phrase: 'ten frugal tips for the laundry room' -- who wouldn't love that alliteration? And when I tried to copy a photo from the site, the site politely thanked me for not copying. A polite website, with pink roses, about laundry and home values. I can't decide if I should laugh or cry. What do you think?

We do need a photo, though, to give you the idea. So, here's a similar hat photo (click for attribution).

Patchwork Suit

This is delightful. Thanks for Accidental Mysteries for pointing out Joshua Lowenfels' wonderful collections.

I wonder how happy a person would feel wearing an outfit like this?

Teapot Watching You

Fornasetti Teapot

Germany
1996
Manufactured by Rosenthal.
Printed to underside: marker’s mark and “Fornasetti/Jahres-Teekanne 1996”

A Laundry Folding Robot

Is such a great idea, and this video is so so funny. I'm not sure I understand the point of the exercise, because it doesn't seem that they actually built a robot, only made a movie of an animated one. But what they heck, it's fantastic. The site, Boing Boing, has some cute stuff going on, too.

For the Love of Research and Women

This is a tremendous and long article, published in the Stanford Report today, about Clelia Mosher, a researcher who studied menstruation, women's health, and Victorian women's attitudes about sex. What a delightful find.

‘The skirt, as modified by the vagaries of fashion, has a direct bearing on the health, development and efficiency of the woman. In 1893-96 I made a series of observations on the clothing of ninety-eight young women. The average width of skirt was then 13.5 feet. The weight of the skirt alone was often as much as the entire weight of the clothing worn by the modern girl.’
–Clelia Mosher, Strength of Women (c. 1920)

'She cut an odd figure on campus, Griego says, in her habitual "mannish suit." In her writings, Mosher railed against fashion: Sewing dainty clothing wasted women's study time; a young girl "making tatting to decorate her clothes or knitting or embroidering while her brother is playing ball" would grow feeble and sedentary.'