Showing posts with label South Carolina. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South Carolina. Show all posts

July 2, 2012

The Saint Snidely Quilt


 I finished this quilt for my nephew a few days ago.  It's title is "The Saint Snidely Sidewinder and the Unrepentant Uke Boys."
Saint Snidely is the patron saint of ukuleles, vegetarians, mustaches, and the A-Team.

My nephew plays in a ukulele band, and their logo is the mustache on the lower left in the mustache portion of this photo.

Here's the long shot.  I favor just enough quilting to keep the batting where it belongs.  In the case of the cotton batting I used, that means stitching can be 10 inches apart, which is still a little closer than I like.  Even so - this is a picnic blankie and is sure to turn up in the parks and environs of Spartanburg, SC, when Snidely and the gang hit the stage.

May 26, 2012

The Art of Spotting Monsters


I've never claimed to see Bigfoot
And am sure I'll never see him,
But I can guarantee you now
If I should see, I'd flee him.

I saw a video (since lost in the din of interwebs) of an interview of a member of the American Bigfoot Society,* which I'm proud to know exists, given that I thought all of the Bigfoot sightings were in Canada.  If you want to join the Society, you must first fill out an application that requests name, address, phone number, email address, and an answer to the question "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?"  Within a day or two, a member of the Board of Directors will be in touch to discuss membership with you.

I don't know.  It all sounds a little bit untoward to me.  I prefer memberships where I can mail a check and never talk to anybody; and the whole felony question opens up all sorts of imaginings.

The Big Foot interviewee lives in South Carolina, which allows me to segue to an article in the October 18, 2010, copy of The New Yorker.  Sean Wilentz wrote the piece, titled "Confounding Fathers." :  "In June [2010], the [Fourth District] Congressman Bob Inglis, of South Carolina, a tough conservative who nonetheless backed Bush's financial bailout, lost a vicious** primary fight with a right-wing insurgent named Trey Gowdy. To his amazement, Inglis was confronted on the campaign trail by voters who were convinced that the numbers on their Social Security cards indicated that a secret bank had bought them at birth."

The moral of the story?  Never shade the truth for political gain, because some day those shadows might grow legs and come after you.

**Vicious has extra-special meaning in South Carolina, the state from which Lee Atwater emerged to pollute the political waters for a multitude of generations.

May 6, 2012

The Art of the Bicycle

 Business installation of bicycle art, Spartanburg, South Carolina

 The photos that follow are from Artcycle 2011- a combination of bicycle parts and art -  in downtown Spartanburg. The commissioned artists were Sterling Kenny & CarrĂ© Razzano (Woodruff
SC), Greg Leister (Asheville NC); Cody Roberts (Spartanburg), Jim Weitzel (Forest City NC), and Mark S. Woodward (Greenville SC).
And here's the link to Jim Weitzel's website, where you can see more outdoor sculpture as well as his indoor sculpture, furniture, and paintings.







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