"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." This is week one of the Pancakes & French Fries William Morris Project, happening again, every thursday in 2013.
From my spot at the table, looking around the house, there are boxes in every direction. After a year of cleaning out things, and sending bag upon bag to the goodwill, I was sure that packing would be pretty easy. Wrong. Over the last week I have been excited, dejected, overwhelmed, angry, happy....completely insane. How do we end up with all this stuff? I felt like I was being objective, throwing away unfinished projects and broken items. I gave away clothes that didn't fit, things I never used or looked at, and still, it looks like an episode of hoarders in here.
William Morris, did you ever move? Did you ever collect something or have a hard time giving up on a project or idea? Did you ever recycle perfectly good wrapping paper and feel guilty about it? It seems so convenient to imagine other people having it more together, to wear the label of 'the worst ever at______' and assume that someone else is obviously doing it better. This is what happens when you combine gutting your house with images of the outsides of other peoples houses. Oh, and less sleep and more work than usual. Not good bedfellows.
Enough complaining. Here is what I have done to make my home more useful and beautiful: I have thrown away bags of garbage, I have had two donation pickups of over 30 containers of junk. I have drafted an unpacking agreement, that I will make myself sign. And, since I have yet to follow up on moving painting restoration updates to a different day, I'll share with you what I have done this week on my little project.I went to 'I've Been Framed' with some birthday money and found some aluminum pushpins, the kind recommended by this guy for stretching canvases. I also found some canvas stretching pliers there, as well as really cheap paintbrushes and heavily discounted solvents that had only been opened or partially used. I picked up some english Turpentine, since the imitation stuff they sell at Home Depot nearly collapsed my lungs.
Amazon was the only place that carried #4 cut copper tacks, for fixing the canvas to the stretcher, so I ordered a few packages of those too. What did I do for William Morris the last two weeks? I shopped, and threw things away, just like a true consumer.
The painting, frame and all my supplies have been moved to a safe-house during the move, and will move to the new house after I have a work area set up*
In five short days, I will be loading a moving truck, {actually these guys will be doing the loading...}
Until then, I will be packing and cleaning, and painting. Hopefully next week the internet will be working at the new house!
Taking care of business, Alice
*To recap for those of you who just dropped in on my painting restoration posts and wonder, "what are all these boring and almost identical photos of a dirty old picture all about anyway, and what does it have to do with the William Morris Project?", I am documenting the slow restoration of a nearly 100 year old oil painting, frame and all. {you could also read this.}
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