( s e c r e t • l e n t i l )

Imagine my surprise when I clicked on a favorite blog this morning and saw MY ARM. It’s on Worn Through: Apparel from an academic perspective. The sewing machine tattoo on my forearm is the first picture you’ll see.

The post shows sewing tattoos but mostly it’s about the blog author teaching a course on “personal and professional appearance” and it reads as a mildly cautionary tale. I don’t flinch at that, but it is funny if you know me and know how much I ruminate over such decisions.

I got my tattoos when I was forty. When I ran one of my runner-up ideas past a very non-tattooed friend (“Matt, do you think I’ll regret it if I get a ***** tattoo?”) He immediately said “Helen, we’re already the age when you would regret it.” That cleared things right up.

I also got them after being self-employed for a few years. They are a reminder that I am who I am – and I have not ever felt so purely myself (in all the fantastic and tragic ways) since I left the world of working for others. It’s basically been one long Zen retreat – and not the kind where someone serves you miso soup in a raku bowl and you suddenly see everything clearly. I’m talking about the part where you stare at the white wall and every demon you’ve ever built comes to visit and taunt you, and while they are chanting all your fears (Failure! Loser Failure! Loser!) you try to function, and create beautiful things, and keep your books – oh, and make enough money to eat.

My personality is enmeshed with my business. Like my tattoos, my business is me. But I was always taught that being professional included hiding your self. So I’m interested in redefining what it means for me to be professional based on this lack of traditional boundaries. For me professionalism is a direct extension of what it means to be to be moral. I make my business decisions in a humane way and I seek to strike a balance of fairness with everyone, myself included. But I’m also an artist, and a passionate fool with very specific quirks. In my perfect world I’m asking professionalism to becomes specific, flexible, and human – inclusive and not reductive. And I’m trusting that there isn’t too much about me that needs to be hidden!

By design I am part of a very direct process: the things I’ve made with my hands – things that are part of my soul and are built based on every experience I’ve ever had – are traded directly for other people’s hard-earned money. But they are also traded with admiration on both sides, and I know the people I sell to and they send me pictures of themselves wearing what I’ve made and they tell me stories about what my work means to them. They show me things they made with their hands, they share their lives with me. Over and over, we’re building a world together where we are connected. I don’t sell to stores, I don’t hire other people to sew for me – I want to be part of this direct connection, even when it’s hard. And it often is.

Yes, I may have to work for someone else some day, and yes, maybe I’ve doomed myself to working in long-sleeved shirts. But I can’t believe that people who work in the straight world don’t make choices that affect them permanently. I know they do. And while they aren’t engraved in their flesh those choices are often written on their faces. I’ve seen it and it’s not for me. I’m going to keep taking my chances on the choppy high seas of self employment and art-making for as long as I can. And if it fails I’ll probably end up working for some youngster covered with octopus and knitting tattoos. It’s all good.

p.s. here’s the other one, equally as nice, though it lives in the shadow of the colorful one which gets paraded around books and the internet …

Managing my brain’s energy is a full time job – but I do try to fit a bit of sewing into my days too – you know, so I can pay my bills. Every once in a while I pull these disparate goals together and do some work that keeps all neurons tidy and focused … at least for a time.

Such is the case, currently, with knee-length skirts. I’m in love with making them. Each one has its own rhythm and shape that wants to emerge – the design unfolds nicely before me as I cut – a problem emerges and I solve it, an idea wants to come through and I sew this way and that, stitching those panels back together and yes – there is the idea, expressed with economy, like a tidy E.B. White paragraph. I wish it was always this way, this murky art ~ craft ~ brain ~ life work that I do.

In honor of riding the current energy stream I’m doing some custom skirts for people. Well, they’re sort of custom-ish – here are the details. I get to pick the colors, so I don’t know who will be adventurous enough to let me play/work for them. My plan is to make these for a short time, until the curiosity is gone and the mojo fades and I feel like skirts are stupid and I should never make one again! Which could be any day now. So if you want one, take the leap.

The Haoredux Shrug

Any day that includes coining a new word is a good day for me.  (Can you coin a word or just a phrase?) Well anyway, in this case Mr. Lentil gets credit for naming my new design: The Haoredux Shrug. Look, it’s not even in Google yet.  The name is … sort of Japano-French? The shrug is a ruffly cropped jacket, with boxy haori-like sleeves that are elbow length, and of course, also ruffly. If Ikea can make up words why can’t Secret Lentil?

There just aren’t enough knitting action shots in the world.

But Carina just sent some. Here she is knitting in her very green back yard of which I am eternally jealous. She’s wearing her Secret Lentil hand warmers and holding the glompod clutch which is stuffed full of yarn.

Over on my side of the country we’re getting a big wet nonstop dump of snow today. Schools are closed, the trees are covered. I’m inside sipping hot chai but thinking about boots and shovels and getting to the studio.

I spent so many years trying to get out of things I didn’t want to do – going to school, to other jobs – and just waiting waiting for a snow day or even a sick day to get out of the drudgery.  But this morning I saw my niece’s post on facebook – she was looking forward to talking about a novel in class and working on an art project but she’s snowed in. Oh! I guess not everyone hated that, ha ha.

It’s still new to me to like what I’m doing. To like it in the real deep way where I’m not even secretly hoping for the day off. Where I’m not showing up every day but inside the I Want To Quit clock is ticking and I know this gig won’t last long.  I think I’d like a snow day but then I sit here for a few minutes and my brain gets engaged with what needs to happen today – shipping, listing some new pieces, re-arranging the studio, maybe even sewing a bit – and I’m surprised that I’d rather find some socks and see if I can dig out and get there.

I’m building a theory about how the moment we have an imaginary endgame – pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, winning lottery ticket, prince on white horse, hoping someone pulls the fire alarm so we can stand out in the parking lot instead of working for 20 minutes, etc. – that as soon as we have switched to wishing we were somewhere else we lessen our ability to be engaged with what needs to happen right in front of us. We begin to wait for life instead of living it. No i didn’t invent this idea. But the more I think about it the more I think those imaginary fairy tale distractions hurt us. They cause real immediate harm. I’d love to ramble about it more but I have to go to work. Want to go to work.

Things I keep in case I need them some day: old heavy iron, styrofoam heads.

I’m not calling them resolutions, but I did tear a large unruly sheet of kraft paper off my roll and spread it out on the table to do some sprawling, rambling dreaming about the coming year.  Anything that physically resembles a kindergarten craft project is a great way to get my brain focused. I’m taping tabs of paper with subjects or thoughts written on them, then moving them around, unsticking and sticking them, and just trying to think through all the things I’m holding in my head about my frendly little Secret Lentil empire.

It’s an awesome thing to build something from nothing, but then even more of – well I guess – more of a responsibility to nourish and grow it.

Some of the ideas are banal, things that slip through the cracks because, well, because I’m sewing everything I sell by hand, one at a time, and I’m trying to stay alive!  Like gift certificates.  Hello Helen, why don’t you sell those online?

Others are more big and dreamy, like: I want to write a book. I have a folder on my computer that already has an outline and notes I’ve scrawled from time to time. Yes, I’d like to make that happen. I would publish it myself, heck I may even build each one out of kraft paper and packing tape.

But mostly I’m trying to figure out how to embrace every day, keep my work enjoyable, and stay on a path I respect. Go ahead and laugh, I’m laughing.  Oh! That’s it, I’ll just embrace every day! Like I’ve never tried that before.  But really, I think I’m getting there. The truth is that I’m getting used to worrying about starving, not paying my bills, never retiring, and the fear that suddenly, all on the same day of course, everyone on earth will decide they don’t like my work. Those fears get boring after a while. That’s right, I said it, they bore me.

I just watched a documentary about David Lynch and I’m smitten with the way he works – on movies but also on painting, on ceramics, on tinkering around with just about anything. He just states plainly that you really need to enjoy doing the work itself. And that if you don’t enjoy it “you should do something else.” Okay. That sounds good.

Also, I want to learn how to say “Hello” the same way he answers the phone. Hel-LO!

It’s done. Here’s The Red Queen sweater, plus a few other things I made while I’ve got red loaded in the serger.  I haven’t finished the threads yet so you’ll see some dangly strings. I like red and gray together, it’s sort of sporty and sort of sexy at the same time.

In the studio today I’m working on The Red Queen sweater  – a super-lush all red sweater with red thread. It’s cotton and velour and will be very full and maybe ruffly, it’s too soon to tell.  I hope whoever gets this will use their power for good not evil.

“Make a remark,” said the Red Queen; “it’s ridiculous to leave all the conversation to the pudding!”

The Crows of Pearblossom, as a sweater-dress

I had a picture book when I was a kid that has stuck with me, in ethereal ways, for decades. I remembered inky dense speckled eggs on matte paper, a snake and something about a chimney.  And the snake, all logy, with bulges in it from eating those eggs.

Fast forward to these internet times, and it turns out to be “The Crows of Pearblossom” – one of two children’s book written by Aldous Huxley – well, wasn’t I a fancy child?  And the eggs, snake and chimney were Barbara Cooney illustrations.  I am not surprised to hear that it is a morbid tale, and I look forward to reading it again.

In the meantime, here is a dress inspired by those dense speckled eggs.

coaxing coat colors

Today’s dreaming … I got to the studio before sun-up today, did a lot of work and now I get to play. I’m going to see if these colors are willing to become a coat. It’s been a while since I made a “Secret Lentil luxe” piece and I’m getting requests. I hope these will cooperate.

a dress from my f.stop series

I love old cameras. When I was kid my dad gave me an old Agfa. It was wonderfully dense, with ridged black sides and a lens that popped out with the press of a button, suspended by matte black accordian-folds. It used square 120 film that I would take down to Fay’s Drugs to get developed, and I still remember the thrill of discovering I could take double exposures if I didn’t advance the film manually.

I liked that cameras mirror our eye functions, I liked how much sense all the settings made, and I desperately wanted to have something in common with my dad – I was getting weary of skeet shooting …

what does it mean to have enough?

Photography is all about letting enough light in for the right amount of time – finding balance while accounting for all the options we have available to us.

So I’ve been thinking this through – what is enough, what has balance, restraint, and about longing for things we can’t have – as I’m making a series of clothes called f.stop. I’ll be listing them here as they’re done, through the next week or two.