the upholstery project

first, a little background on my family.  my sister and i love to clothes shop, and i'm a big fan of thrift stores for over-enthusiastic furniture remakes.  our parents, the mums specifically, abhor shopping of any kind that has to be done in person; i think internet shopping was invented for them.  my sister also stand at a towering 4'11.75"... or 5' according to her doctor.  but i digress.  needless to say, regular chairs dwarf her, and her little feet dont touch the ground. 

mums, of all people, found the tiniest chair ever at some kind of estate sale where they live, and brought me the chair to reupholster.  and then it sat in my living room from thanksgiving 2014.  over christmas, my sister and i perused fabric.com for the appropriate fabric, i ordered it, aaand it sat in my sewing room for the next 4 months. 

a wall full of secrets

and by secrets, i do mean razors. 

and no i didn't cut my finger on the razors.  more like i black-swan-ed a giant hangnail and it bled everywhere.

whiskey tiiiiiiime

i can't pretend to remember all the history and processes of the new england distillery, but it was by far one of the more informative and entertaining booze tours ive ever done.  i had a 4-person groupon that was on the verge of expiring, so i dragged my sister along for the ride.  we stood in the one room garage with a group of 8 other people, as the guide [and one of 4 employees] gave the story behind the wight family, let us smell [not drink] each level of distilling product, and then poured samples of their rye whiskey, rum, and gin.

adventures in biddeford - peace be with you

...and also with you.  let us pray... that this is the end of my long drawn-out series on biddeford.  hark.  it is.

last but not least, the st joseph's rectory.  home to ... i have no idea how many priests or clergy from when and how.  the high school tour guides had absconded by the time we arrived.  the couple seemingly guarding the house said "isnt this a lovely old house?  we know nothing about it".

ditto.  

adventures in biddeford - brief architectural respite and no words

adventures in biddeford - but you can't turn back time

the original mill clock tower in biddeford is nearly out of time.  [see what i did there?]  so many other puns, but the owner has until september 2nd to move the "eyesore" of the property.  according to our reluctant high school tour guides, the innards and the weather vane were stripped and sold in the 80s.  all that remains a is weathered facade of a somewhat structurally unsound room. 

adventures in biddeford - where theres a mill there's a way

according to some mad googling skills, the biddeford mill was last owned by west point stevens, which still prevails as a global textile producer and was known as west point pepperell or WPP.  vellux blankets were produced in biddeford from 1966 to 2009.  after a considerably rocky progression from hydroelectric power to mechanization, the passage of both world wars, globalization, hence the western [...] lion and the eastern dragon making a modified griffin, and a slight revival of production in 2005, the last mill building closed its doors in 2009.

adventures in biddeford - and behind door number 1

last weekend a coworker and i ventured out to biddeford.  a former mill town, now pretty much back in the great depression [and incredibly depressing], struggling to keep drug dealers out of parks, stopping meth heads from burning down their own houses, and preventing stabbings and shootings.  but a rich and colorful history prevails and the heart of biddeford is trying their damnedest to make it a thriving economic wonder.  best of luck.

what lies beneath

probably the creepiest movie i ever voluntarily watched.  i avoid ghosty/haunting/tub drowning/psychological thrillers at all costs.  but i digress.

what lies beneath layers of painted-over wallpaper?

secret asian forests!