Clothilde loves her apartment. It’s very small, even by NYC standards, but it has a nice window overlooking a side street which is mostly quiet except for disputes involving parking. Clothilde will hear the honking—it starts in one spot and then spreads down the street like a stain—and she will rush to the window so she can watch the finger pointing and impassioned gesticulating.

Clothilde only has one real complaint about her living situation, which is that every day in the very late afternoon one of her neighbors cooks fish. Or at least, that’s what it smells like. The smell doesn’t linger, she doesn’t think, or maybe it does linger and she just can’t tell. Maybe she leaves her apartment and goes out into the world every day smelling like someone else’s dinner and she doesn’t even realize it. This is the sort of low-level anxiety with which apartment-dwellers contend.

It doesn’t linger, she doesn’t think, but for that one daily hour it is kind of awful. Smells are a more difficult issue than noises. Smells pervade. Clothilde once went to an outdoor concert where the music was so loud that it took up residence inside her head and reverberated around her chest cavity. That’s what smells do, only quietly. Also, you can knock on your neighbor’s door and ask them to please stop doing whatever they’re doing that sounds like hurling bricks against your wall, but can you really ask them to stop cooking fish?

Clothilde stops by her landlord’s office every month to drop off her rent check. She decides to mention the fish smell. The guy there says: use an air freshener. He points to a canister on the shelf. Did you know there’s a dog living right next door? You didn’t, right? That’s because of the air freshener.

*****

The stitch faces may be spending more time indoors. This is a challenge for me: when I took them out to real world locations, the other things in the photographs were already there. For interiors, I have to make everything. Which is fun, and uses up lots of materials (!!!) but is also pretty time-consuming. This shift also has implications for their experiences, of course. Anyway, I’m experimenting. Feedback appreciated.

Clothilde is made from an old suit jacket, her pants are a bandana from my mother, her top is a sweater sleeve, her scarf is fabric from Elizabeth V., and her shoes are cut from a worn-out pair of Tieks. The chair is upholstery samples from Madeline and Wendy with a throw pillow made from a scrap from Bernice, the table is fabric trimmed with Mardi Gras beads, the cactus is cut from camo-print flannel pj bottoms, and the basket is made of fabric also from Wendy.

Clothilde’s giant sunflower lives in a whiskey bottle.