I was parked on Butler Street in Lawrenceville.
My phone in hand.
A truck pulled up to the red light alongside my car -and stopped. I felt a presence. Looked up and out the driver’s window.
Oh, hello there!
Light turned green. The chef appeared. The truck pulled away into the flow of traffic.
This post is dedicated to my friend V who recently spent a lot of time last week untangling a seriously tangled skein of yarn… I thought of her the whole time I persisted on the following mess.
My granddaughter Maura’s knitting got into the laundry inadvertently.
Went through the washing machine and knotted up the load.
Erika was going to cut it out but I spent time Saturday morning untangling the knotty mess. What satisfaction to detangle the twists and knots. Plain yarn is easier to untangle than fluffy yarn.
Now where is the other needle?
Light through the dining room chandelier in Ohio.
I was folding sheets and towels, fresh from the dryer.
The afternoon sun streamed in, through the window and then the dangling crystal, onto the door jamb and the sweater drying on the laundry room door. The ceiling, too.
Vibrant gallery 2
The colors intense and vibrant.
A do-over. Redo.
Second chance on a single frame telling a story for the
Outside a downtown hotel.
Last week I emptied the dryer at my son and DIL’s. Thought I’d help out, fold a load.
When I cleaned out the lint trap, I found a tri-layered catch of fresh dryer lint. The striation helped out by the load of new white towels.
I put the dryer lint on the counter above the garbage and saw the face of a sock monkey.
“Erika”, I said, “let me save the dryer lint and show the kids in the morning, It’s striped and looks like a sock monkey.”
Hmmmm. I decided to take a pic on the phone instead and throw it in the trash cause I didn’t think she was seeing the face and she hadn’t been to the dryer lint art show at the Duds ‘N Suds Laundromat on Centre Ave here in Pittsburgh, a few years ago. I took some friends and it was a memorable and quirky event. The laundromat had that detergent, steamy scent. The people and scenes were all made from none other than DRYER LINT! You know how different loads offer different colors, frequently gray but sometimes a lovely hue, depending on the clothes or sheets.
My DIL had no idea there was a National Lint Project and that artist Cheryl Capezutti creates art from such a catch. You can go to her website and see her creations.
What I should have done is send the batch of lint to the artist Cheryl Capezutti and she could have created a winged creature or a tiny figure. She finds art in the everyday.
My lint screen here at home in Pittsburgh isn’t as interesting a shape, either. Erika’s is a half moon and mine is a flat, broad screen.
Wondering what year they packaged in this wrapper? Maybe an updated version is available in the grocery store, I will check. You can buy it online. It was heralded as a stress reliever and solution to a woman feeling overwhelmed by her life. “Calgon, take me away!”
Our custodian, Dan, found a case of this product and not sure what year the packaging is from. I meant to look and see if it had a zip code on it as I used to find items in the art room pre 1964 without a zip code. They still sell this stuff when I went to look it up in a search. I guess I am out of touch.
At first I thought this was just for the washing machine but it says “bathtub ring’ .
Here is one vintage commercial touting a similar product that is sure to offend someone with the retro thinking.
Not sure if anyone is still trying to get taken away with Calgon bath but here is one old TV commercial. There is another that is totally non PC that may come to your min and is on YouTube but I won’t link it.
Laundry. It piles up no matter what else is going on in life. One week, years ago, I wrote a tally mark every time I did a load. Total 14. Grateful for washer and dryer at home.
Somedays it’s fun to play. The era is supposed to be c.1936. My mother pinned clothes on a merry-go-round contraption with a center metal pole, stuck in a concrete surrounded hole. The needs-to-be-oiled sounds of a pulley as the clothesline is reeled out with colors, shapes and flags. Whipping around in the breeze, drying in the sun. The smell of a pillowcase on a clean bedsheet that earlier flapped on the line. I bought these at the Hobby Shop. Read about HO scale .
