‘Spearments and Such
Perhaps it is Wisconsin vernacular that the ‘ex’ was always dropped from the word ‘experiment. Adults and school-aged students and even the teachers used this pronunciation. I have tried to erase some of the short-cuts and mispronunciations in my speech patterns but occasionally something will creep in that gives my origin away.
However, that does not imply I do not continue to ‘spearment with various techniques. Instead of throwing them into a box for my descendants to sort through and wonder what I was thinking, I transform them into note-book covers.
One of my sons, I was going to say the engineer—but all three are engineers–one chemical and two mechanical—kept notes and drawings of his inventions in a marble notebook. Then at a party I ended up with a door prize of a fiber covered notebook—and thus began my journey of covering marble notebooks with bits left over from projects, or a workshop piece supposed to be a full quilt–but I was quickly sure I did not want to continue work on that project.
Here are my three latest completed notebooks. One is a wool applique on linen project, the other two are left over bits from a full size quilt with a chickadee on one and a brown creeper on the other.
I have more bits and pieces to transform into covers; they are a good project for those days in which I really don’t want to start something new but want to play around with fabric and thread and color.
Sylvia Weir Art 