Windfalls

Counterpoint Needlepoint

You started with high hopes and visions of beautifully coordinated pillows on the sofa. You worked feverishly day and night. But pretty soon you weren’t working so feverishly night or day and the whole project was relegated to the closet.

Wouldn’t it be great if someone would finish it?

Ann Dowe can and will because other people’s unfinished needlepoint is her business. She’ll complete any stitchery project – bargello, gros point, petit point, you name it – for 25c a square inch.

And you can call it your own. Ann leaves the blocking and backing up to you.

– Judy Schneider

Needlepoint / Ann Dowe / 1225 Laurel Lane / 238-0269

Ahoy

For the careless sailor: If your mast got bent out of shape in an encounter with a tree limb or a shallow bottom, don’t let it bend you out of shape. Better than buying a new one, have the kinks ironed out. For about $30, All Metals will run it through a 60-ton press and set your sails straight again.

All Metals Fabricating & Engineering / 415 N. Bowser, Richardson / 235-5594

Best-dressed Tables

Renting round tables for extra seating at a dinner party is a cinch, but finding good looking round tablecloths is another matter. The rent-a-cloth selections have ranged from dumb colors to faded dumb colors to standard white.

Tablecloths Unlimited came into being when two Dallas women found themselves in this fix and decided to design and sew their own tablecloths and rent them.

The cloths fit standard 48-inch and 60-inch round tables and reach the floor to hide the table legs. Completing the package is a smaller, contrasting square to lay on top for bright accent.

All of this costs $15, including pickup and delivery. If you want to buy and have something special in mind, they will also do custom work.

Tablecloths Unlimited / Dawn Cartwright and Barbara Krausse / 363-8444

Come Frill the Cup

Be it ever so humble, it’s a Dallas phenomenon – the genuine Styro-foam silk-screened one-for-the-road cup. With initials, names, inane sayings, they can be seen in the best-dressed homes keeping company with Baccarat and Val St. Lambert. Children carry them for soft drink road-ies and some people The Grind Find

Take a look at your bar glasses, wine glasses or any other glasswear you keep out of reach of the Kool-Aid brigade. If you find nicks and chips instead of water spots, don’t dispair.

Several people in town can fix them up by grinding those ragged edges. And considering the cost of replacement (if they can be replaced), it’s certainly worth a try.

Charges vary depending on the size of the glass, but the average seems to be about $1.25 a glass.



Glass Grinding / Mr. Fields / 2728 Routh St. / 827-0472

Inwood Glass / 5117 W. Lovers Lane / 351-3553

Malloy Mirror & Art Glass Work / 2635 Floyd / 826-4452

even bring them back home, put them in the dishwasher (successfully, we are told) and reuse them. Sounds like another semi-status symbol in the bud. __ Mary Ella Dewar

Silk-screened cups / Order through Junior League of Dallas, 691-7323. Hamm’s Silk Screen, P.O. Box 7344, Fort Worth, 817/838-9921.

Best Boots

Despite all the mythology, well-priced, quality cowboy boots are probably as hard to come by in Dallas as they are in Newark.

There is a ray of hope in this otherwise gloomy picture. It’s called Mistletoe Boot Co., and it may well have enough boots to make up for the boot shortage by itself. The huge, bargain-priced inventory includes some seconds, some discontinued styles (a pointy-toed, pink and purple pair, for instance) and some close outs.

Mistletoe is completely self-service, so be prepared to try on a lot of boots. But even if you have to climb a ladder to find your size, the selection and prices are so good it is worth the time and the trip.

Mistletoe Boot Co. / 942 E. Jefferson / 946-0049

Lasagna on the Rocks



Everybody knows there are frozen dinners and then there are frozen dinners, most of them yuk. But now comes Lisa Caldwell and her Frozen Feasts, dinner party main courses you wish you could have made.

You do the planning, but Lisa does the cooking. She’ll even bring it steaming hot to your dinner table if you give her some lead time. Or better yet, lay a supply in your freezer and claim all the cool-inary credit yourself.



She Conies and Grows

One day Kay Miner decided she’d rather have a VW bus full of plants than the Jaguar XKE she already owned. So she sold the car, bought the bus and started Caretakers.

Caretakers, as you might have guessed, takes care of plants in the office or home. That means watering, fertilizing, getting rid of bugs – whatever is necessary to keep the green growies green and growie.

Lisa currently has eight specialties, including lasagna (her favorite), a curry and a range of chicken, lamb, veal and beef dishes. Prices range from $12 to $18 for six to eight servings.

And if you want to turn the entire party over to her, Lisa will prepare salads, home-made bread and luscious desserts. It’s the easiest thing since Rodney Allen Rippy – and a lot better.

Lisa Caldwell / Frozen Feasts / 352-4674.

Or, if you plan to start from scratch and want to avoid mistakes, call Kay. She will evaluate the home or office growing potential (light, temperature, etc.) and recommend plants that will thrive. And she’ll furnish the plants too, if you wish.

Minimum fee is $20 a visit.

-Carol Taylor



Caretakers / Kay Miner / 522-8889

Artist as Teacher, Teacher as Artist



If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a million times. Intelligent, sophisticated adults ruefully admitting great paintings “bore them,” and not understanding why. “Am I really an uncultured slob?” a middle-aged man recently asked us.

“I know I should like art. But I don’t. I think it’s because I don’t know anything about it.” The last phrase is the key: The great majority of adults who sheepishly confess a distaste for or a disinterest in art can probably trace their mental blocks back to a lackluster introduction to the subject by an only half-interested art teacher. Or worse, no introduction at all.

The problem, to be sure, involves the traditional emphasis of American primary and secondary education: The three “R’s,” coupled with heavy doses of science – a priority pumped into the schools during the Sputnik era – and little attention paid to the arts and humanities. But it goes even deeper.

It has something to do with the teaching of art not always involving the art of teaching. As educator Jerome Hausman in his article “Teacher as Artist and Artist as Teacher” put it: “. . . the artist [as teacher], so long as he can keep ’eating,’ can afford the luxury of not being understood or ’appreciated’ by his [students ] . . . the skills and insights involved in making paintings, sculptures and prints do not necessarily extend into the realm of the personal skills and insights required for effective teaching.”

Sad but true – a good number of artists turn to teaching merely to survive, not out of any love, dedication, or even interest in teaching art to youngsters. The result is art education which varies from boring to incomprehensible. Too often, a child’s first taste of art is a bad taste that lingers.

This fall, the Southern Methodist University Experimental Arts Program will tackle the problem of effective art education in a unique experiment. Dubbed the “teacher/ artist program,” the experiment will marry the talents and expertises of artists and teachers to attempt to discover what turns kids on to art.

The program will include frequent trips to museums with art historians and curators, lots of painting and drawing and exposure to sketchbooks of some of the masters. Artist/ teachers Don Sanders and Kim Mosely of SMU, and Karen Cro-combe, director of the Experimental Arts Program, and Margie Flora, program designer, have fashioned a curriculum of eight-week classes beginning in September including:

The Pretend Place. Ages 4-5. Thursdays, 1-2:30 p.m. Tuition $50. Creative ways to explore museums.

Listen To You! Ages 6-8. Saturdays, 9:30-11 a.m. Tuition $50. Art media, creative dramatics, art history and museum experiences.

You’re An Artist – I Am, Too! Ages 9-12. Wednesdays 4:30-6. Tuition $50. Artist and student creating together. Lots of paper, paint, drawing, talking, funning and looking.

Collected Feelings. Ages 12-14. Tuesday 6:30-8. Tuition $35. Discovering the personality of Da Vinci and others through their sketchbooks. Students will make a visual diary of their thoughts and reactions to what they see. Introduction to sketchbooks, drawing and watercolor.

Process of Invention. Ages 12-18. Tuesday 7-9. Tuition $35. Exploration of negative and positive space in art.

Art Happens. Ages 15-18. Monday, 7-9. Tuition $35. Learning how art happens. Oils, Watercolors, acrylics and a blank canvas. Students will furnish their own supplies.

A limited number of scholarships are available for students needing partial or full tuition grants. More information may be obtained by writing the Experimental Arts Program, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, 75222.

-Ann McGee & Dewy Swanson