Is 650 Miles too Far to Go for Fabric?

My brother picked me up at the Arcata Airport this morning and took me directly to Eureka Fabrics--well, ok, directly to lunch and then a walk along the edge of Humboldt Bay, but before we got back in the car--where I picked up this one yard linen remnant which I plan to put in a frame and hang earrings from. After I eat the chocolate.


Here is a picture of my hosts:



And here is the edge of the tablecloth where I am currently sitting:



Which is of interest because only yesterday I was admiring Susan's beautiful vintage hemstitcher attachment as part of her fascinating catalog of vintage sewing machine attachments at Spare Time. And there it is in front of me--hemstitching! My brother was surprisingly unimpressed when I told him I knew how it was done.

Eureka!

I'm off to Eureka, California (Ferndale, to be precise) for a week to visit my brother who's up there hiding from the 21st (and maybe the 20th) Century. I had no idea there was so much California north of San Francisco! It is necessary to abandon my new space because my DS has invited who knows how many of his friends to crash at my house while they attend Anime Expo 2010 down at the Convention Center, and technically My Workroom is also The Guestroom. It is also DD's pied-a-terre when she deigns to visit.

I gave up on completing a draft by July 2, not because it was impossible (which it was) but because repackaging my research to fit that particular call for papers would suck all the interest out of it for me.

Meanwhile my proposal to present a paper at a conference in Utrecht in September has been accepted! I've also registered for a conference in Pecs, Hungary, two weeks after the one in Utrecht. I won't be presenting at that one but the topic, a comparative examination of Electronic Justice, interests me greatly and is important for my role as a law teacher. Now all I have to do is 1. scrub up some funding; 2. write the Utrecht paper; 3. make up some all-purpose clothing to get me through this adventure; and 4. figure out where to get my hands on a bicycle in Europe.

I wonder if I'll really pull this off.

Setting Up Still

I mean, still setting up my workroom. I'm reasonably proud of these curtains, which I bought at Goodwill then cut in half. I turned one half up-side down and ran the rod through the curtain pocket of one half and the hem of the other. To conceal the fact that the hem was two inches while the curtain pocket was only one, I top stitched both pieces at the curtain pocket then ran a line of decorative stitching two inches from what is now the top of both sides. Like this:


My assistant William is not impressed either.


OK, now I have my room, my curtains, my familiar, my proposal and my machines:


(including the two printers under the desk, both out of ink!) What shall I do?
My goals for the summer:
1. Write at least two important (or, at least, recognizable) theoretical and doctrinal works to present at conferences and point to as the justification for my fall semester sabbatical.
2. Sew a wardrobe of pretty skirts and tops I can pull on over my lycra bicycle knickers (knee pants, not undies) when I bike to campus or any other civilized location.
3. Related to number 2 but a hair more ambitious, find a style that suits my middle-aged hobbity body and fill my closet with it. If I'm really successful at that maybe I'll start my own fashion line. I already know what I'll call it: Oxymoron. I'll carry only size Petite-Extra Large.

But first, a draft by July 2.

Lights! Camera!

Well, camera anyway. Yesterday I completed and submitted a proposal to present an Important Theoretical Work at a conference in Europe at the end of the summer. Today I'd like to get back to sorting things out in what I've decided to call My Workroom. After I watch USA v. Ghana. Yes, I'm one of those irritating Americans who forget soccer/football for 3.5 years at a time and then become devoted fans of the World Cup. According to Stuff White People Like, I do this because I like to pretend I'm a European. That's not quite it, though. I like to feel that I live in a world with many different countries of which the US is only one and by no means the most important or dangerous. Plus Landon Donovan is very cute.

Anyway, the camera. Here is the view out My Workroom window where there is a magnificent cedar. It has probably been there since the house was built (along with all of its little neighbors in the San Fernando Valley in 1949) but this is my first opportunity to enjoy the view. It makes me happy.

Curtains up!

Welcome to my blog. I'm a law professor who should be writing important theoretical and doctrinal works. I finally have a room of my own, having booted my twenty-something children out of it. That's "twenty-something" years old--not the number of children!

Will it be an office or a sewing room? Can it be both? We'll see.