Ypsilanti Dilettante

What I'm Reading Wednesday - 1/4/12

2012-01-04T07:28:00.001-05:00

Before I get to the books, I need to show you this picture. After posting the picture of the star quilt on the design wall, I got to wondering if that were the best configuration. So, I reversed the direction of the diamonds, and I like this a lot more. What do you think?

I'll have to do some experimenting with setting squares, etc. Now, I have creativity flowing again!!

As for what I've been reading... Well, I did a lot of Christmas knitting, and that cut into reading time. I spent about three weeks reading Jacquelyn Mitchard's Twelve Times Blessed. I gave up about three-quarters of the way through. Now, I LOVE this lady's books, but the main character in this book just kept making really stupid decisions and saying really crazy relationship-destroying things, and I finally just got to a point where reading the book upset me to the point of mild depression. When I start dreading reading a book that is supposed to be relaxing, it's time to pull out the bookmark and put the book aside. If anyone out there has read this book and thinks that I should finish reading it through, please let me know.

For my parish's book club selection in January, we are reading Elizabeth Johnson's The Quest for the Living God. This appears to be a college freshman level introductory theology book that has been strongly criticized by the American bishops. When I get through reading this book, I intend to read the bishops' statements very carefully. I am about halfway through the book, and it is well written and would be easily accessible to anyone who looking for a basic introduction to the great currents of contemporary Christian theology. Her chapter on the post-Holocaust theology that emerged in the 1940s-1960s is a lovely complement to Karen Armstrong's chapter about the development of Jewish theology in the 20th century in her book A History of God.

Finally, I have to show you why I've been typing this all hunched over on a folding chair.

The lines of authority in this house are very clearly delineated.....

Catching Up; Looking Forward

2012-01-02T09:08:00.001-05:00

When last I posted, I was knitting as fast as I could. The last week before Christmas, I discovered that one of the cowls simply had no stretch and was continuing to bleed color. So, this one was not in the present mix:

I do want to make this cowl again, but I'll use a more conventional yarn and hope for better results. Soon after I discovered this problem, one of my intended recipients told me she is allergic to wool. At that point, I decided that she and one other person would get something else. That evening, we walked by Mix in downtown Ypsilanti, and I saw the cutest purse. So, yeah, I was one of the people out on Christmas Eve getting the last few items.

On Christmas Eve morning, I finished the Molly Stark scarf for my sister. Here are a couple of pictures of it blocking. I should have taken my camera to family Christmas, but I forgot.

I ended up using Malabrigo Worsted for this because the colorway was closer to what my sister had requested. I really liked the way this turned out.

I also made a cute little scarf for my great nephew from the Toddle pattern on Knitty. You'll just have to imagine that scarf in the leftover teal yarn from the Every Way Wrap I finished back in the summer. My niece has promised to get a picture to me.

Another project I worked on was this:

This was the entrance to my laundry/craft area. The cat litter boxes contain my dyeing supplies. Now this area looks like this:

The next shelf up has the orange bucket and the laundry baskets. I can't believe it took me living here for four years to finally get around to properly organizing this area. We are looking for a new home for the table (it's particle board with a sturdy laminate on top and metal legs; there's an extra leaf that makes the table big enough to seat 6-8 people). I will probably call Friends in Deed so that this goes to a family needing a nice table.

Finally, I have been working on the Fruit Salad quilt. Here is the result of three days of making a lot of mistakes and fixing them. It has almost seemed as though I have been relearning basic skills with this.

The sections aren't yet sewn together, and I want to think about the setting. I have been thinking right along that I would use the white fabric that is along the edges as the setting blocks, and that would really make the dark cherry pieces stick out. I'm not in love with this quilt, but I think it's not half bad.

Now, for the part I've been dreading: A recap of the year's goals and the progress thereof. Here are the goals I listed for 2011 and the progress made:

Continue reading serious books - there is so much to learn! Yes! I did this.
Read up on and attend some meetings regarding the drain commission and its work.* No, I did none of this.
Get good at spinning with the spindle, smoothing out the yarn and making it thinner. No, I have simply not spent the time with this that I really do want to spend.
Be a gracious volunteer coordinator for the guild's weekend of workshops at the end of July. Yes, I did this and had a lot of fun doing it and have told the powers that be I will not continue as volunteer coordinator after the 2012 guild quilt show.
Do not volunteer to make soul-sucking quilts - if they hurt to make, maybe they shouldn't be made. Yes, I held to this. I did spend a couple of afternoons with annoying projects for door prizes for the guild's weekend of workshops, but that's part of being a community member.
Finish the Cone Nebula quilt. Yes
Play with screen printing and other techniques. Yes, but not as much as I would have liked.
Finish the Every Way Wrap and make other fun-to-knit projects Of course!
Post here at least twice a week - Wednesdays and Saturdays Umm, no. Sorry

Here are my goals for 2012:

Read books that are not "assigned" by book clubs.
Get back to posting here on Wednesdays - What I'm Reading
Pick a community service project and stick with it - will I continue on the condo association board or not? If not, what will I do instead?
Schedule an evening a week at the spinning wheel (and/or with the spindle).
Make the two "art" quilts I have in my brain. They've been locked up there for too long.
Make the socks I've been promising myself since August. I keep letting other projects get in the way.
Make a wonderful quilt for my nephew and his sweet wife.
Have a lot of fun with my volunteer projects for the quilt guild - running the fabric sale and serving as volunteer coordinator for the quilt show.
Finish the rag rug I started in November, 2010....

Oh, the rag rug! My small sewing group gets together during the holiday week, and this is what I worked on during small group day this year.

That's all for now. I need to go read so that I have something to blog about on Wednesday. Thank you for your patience.

Holiday Knitting (cont.)

2011-12-18T18:00:00.002-05:00

Another week, and I have another cowl done. This is the Diversify cowl. The main reasons I picked this pattern were that it was just right for the small skein I had of lettuce green yarn and it looked easy. Well, I was right about one of those. I was an inch into this project before I started feeling as though the pattern made any sense or I could actually see the pattern emerging from the tangle of yarn. Once I figured out what was going on, the pattern became easy, and I like the end result. Here's what it looks like unblocked (it's soaking right now).

Whew! The yarn is the same 50% silk/50% merino blend that I used for the Duet cowls. I LOVE this yarn. Once I get the gift knitting done, I've got a couple of skeins of this yarn in bright pink with which I'm going to knit the Burberry-inspired cowl for myself.

Here is the cute cat (or, gee, why am I not making more progress with my knitting this afternoon) picture of the week.

(He's got my right hand, and my left hand is holding the cellphone somewhat shakily.) What a sweet fellow!

I hope everyone out there has a nice holiday.

Hearing the Holiday Train Roaring Down the Track

2011-12-11T16:48:00.001-05:00

This past week, I had to set aside the crafting and focus on getting ready for this week's book club meetings. Yes. On Tuesday evening, I have book club meetings 5:30-7 and 7-8:30. Of course, just to make things even more interesting, I'm leading the discussion in the second group. Fortunately, the members of the first book club were willing to meet in a restaurant just two blocks from where the second group is meeting.

The first club will be discussing Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map, about the 1854 cholera epidemic in London that helped establish the science of epidemiology. This is a really good 200-page book filled with sociology, biology, politics, geography, etc. Unfortunately, the book is buried inside a 250-page book. I recommend this book with the caveat that one be prepared to simply skip several pages at a time in a couple of places. I am looking forward to seeing what my fellow clubbers have to say about this book.

The second club will be discussing Dorothy Day's 1952 autobiography, The Long Loneliness. This is a woman who lived one of the richest lives of the 20th century. As a teenager, she was jailed as a hunger-striking suffragette during the final years of the women's suffrage movement. She worked as a journalist, getting published in an assortment of Socialist, labor, and Catholic magazines and newspapers. In her long life, she wrote books of reflections, novels, and plays. In her late 20s, upon the birth of her daughter, she left her common-law husband and became a Catholic. A few years later in the mid-1930s, in the depth of the Depression, she co-founded the Catholic Worker movement that, 30 years after her death, is still thriving with more than 230 houses of hospitality located across this country and in many others as well. I have long considered her a challenging voice in the Church and someone who makes me very uneasy. This book very much comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. She sees the world very much as a place that can be fixed and must be fixed now. I read somewhere that someone said to her once, "Someday, you'll be canonized a saint." She is said to have snapped, "I wouldn't want to be dismissed so easily." I could hear that voice crackling through this book, and I am looking forward to reading more by her, I think.....

Having finished that book, I turned my attention back to the Christmas knitting, and this afternoon I finished #5, the Impressionist Cowl, using Malabrigo Rios yarn in the colorway Indiecita (yarn that I purchased at the Busy Hands shop in Ann Arbor). Here it is before blocking.

This morning at the coffee shop after church, I laid out all five of the cowls (this one was still on the needles), and the gals looking at them gasped at this one. "Oh, Liz! This is the one they'll fight over!" I just love the stitch pattern and how it plays with the variegated colors.

Finally, here is the cat picture of the week. Last evening, Hubby said, "Oh, look at the Big Guy!" and we both started taking pictures of our dog-like tomcat. He's 16-and-a-half years old. As far as I'm concerned, he can strike any pose he wants.

Time to go cast on cowl #6! Have a great week!

Fruit Salad Quilt and more

2011-12-04T17:57:00.001-05:00

Part of my morning, easing-into-the-workday routine is reading Melody Johnson's blog, Fibermania. (Gee, I hope my boss looks at context here....) The big danger here is that she frequently has posts that make me crazy all day to just get home and DO something. One of those posts happened on Thursday where she reminded us about this tutorial for dyeing wool in the microwave. It so happened I had some Cascade 220 wool yarn I'd bought from Dharma Trading a few weeks ago. I was going to be home alone that evening, so after making sure I had food coloring in the kitchen, I sent a text message to the sister (who has a fabulous new blog you really should check out) and asked her what color I should do. We agreed on a deep jewel-toned purple. The results that evening were not wonderful (sorry about the blurry photo):

On the way home from work on Friday, we stopped at the grocery store and picked up more food coloring, and I overdyed the yarn:

I did a quick hunt on Ravelry this afternoon and found the perfect pattern. It's elegant, practical, and will look FABulous in this deep color.

Earlier in the week, I finished the Scrunchable cowl.

I love it! I hope the recipient does, too. I then cast on the next cowl using some yarn I had spun. Lots of bright colors, and they're all muddying together, and I think I may just give up on it. Last evening, I cast on another cowl using the leftover dark teal yarn from the sweater I finished in the summer. I promise pictures next week.

This afternoon, I got a good start on the Fruit Salad quilt. Here are the fabrics cut so far:

I was really nervous about how these fabrics would play with each other - whether they were too close together in value, tone, etc. However, as I was selecting fabric, I really focused on the scale of the print and tried to get a range of values. As I look at this picture, I see some darks - the cherries in the strip and the jalapenos in the diamonds, some mediums - most of the rest, and some lights - the white fabric with the red and green splotches. Last week, I thought the leaf fabric in the picture below would be background fabric:

I decided against it because there just would not be enough contrast. I do think there'll be places for all five of these fabrics in this quilt, and I'm looking forward to finding those places as I go along. In case you haven't noticed, I dearly love fabrics with fruits and vegetables. I don't know why, but they make me smile. The top picture has peas in the pod, pineapples, cherries (times two!), citrus fruits, jalapeno peppers, and apples. Also, the selvedge on the edge of the white fabric informs us that name of the fabric is Peas and Carrots! I love it! (The orangey-red fabric in the first picture has turtles on it - not in the theme, but the color is SO right.)

Speaking of SO right, here are a couple of guy pictures. The first one has a ticked-off cat who has just been shoved off a lap (because he'd been biting!) and wanted assert his authority over the woman who had just jilted him.

The next picture is of someone showing excellent taste, lounging on one quilt and in front of another.

Have a good week, folks! Go forth and create!

Fruit Salad Quilt - Part 1

2011-11-27T17:58:00.001-05:00

About a month ago, I introduced you to a jumper from 1984. I thought at first I was going to rework the entire garment into a new one, but when I started pulling it apart, I realized that the green fabric had faded and should be folded into the fabric stash. The pink skirt part had some possibilities. So, I cut a big hunk out of the middle of the front and used that fabric as the waistband.

I also cut up a muslin shirt (one of those projects that seemed like a really good idea at the time but ended up being a one-wearing outfit that then got wadded into the back of the stash). When I trimmed out the front, back, and sleeves, I had enough fabric to serve as a lining.

I figured that the lining didn't have to be as long as the skirt, and this lining is about knee-length. Last weekend, I put elastic in the back part of the waistband. (I have never done anything like this before; I've always put the elastic all around, but I had noticed that the ready-to-wear skirts I like best have the elastic just in the back.) I sewed the ends of the elastic to bits of muslin and pinned the ends into place at the side seams.

Then, I sewed the ends down with several lines of stitching, removed the pins, and folded over and sewed down the waistband all around. Sharp-eyed folks will notice that I didn't do a try-on after I had the elastic pinned into place. Shall we just say that the middle of the back of the waistband has been opened twice, the elastic cut and sewed together twice (because certain people don't learn very quickly....)? Since I didn't tamper with the hemming when I was disassembling the jumper, I could go straight to the buttonholes.

While most people in Washtenaw County were either huddled in front of their televisions or standing in Michigan Stadium living and dying play by play, I was in the sewing room cursing my sewing machine, my inability to read simple directions, the thread I was using, etc. Periodically, I'd dash downstairs to catch the score or watch a replay (because the radio in the sewing room is permanently tuned to the local public radio station, and it's too confusing to be changing stations, that's why) and then dive back into the buttonhole mess. Anyway, I ended up with 14 pretty well spaced buttonholes, and then I attached buttons I had scavenged from a shirt that I had torn up for rags earlier this month. Here's the finished product:

I like it, it fits nicely, and I have another versatile skirt for the spring and summer.

I have finished another cowl; this uses the Braided Vines pattern I found on Ravelry. It was pretty quick and easy (while I was working on this, I also made a Duet hat for a lady at church - no pix, sorry).

With this cowl done, I pulled the next yarn I wanted to work with, a wool/silk blend I got at the Fiber Expo two years ago and decided on the Scrunchable cowl pattern from Ravelry. I was hanging out with friends all day on Friday, knitting my little heart out, and I got home to show my husband that I had made about an inch of cowl - I had trouble pulling enough yarn for the long-tail cast on (three tries with the first needles), then I didn't have the gauge right (which I discovered after knitting for two hours), which meant I had to start over, and it took three tries to get the right sized tail for the second set of needles. Then I realized that I still didn't have quite the right gauge, but I also didn't have the next size of needles. So, I did a few judicious decreases (which took me two hours to figure out - okay, dinner was mixed in there), and finally, I really got going, and here's the cowl about half done:

Isn't that gorgeous? Do you see why I stuck with this yarn and with this pattern? I could totally see myself making this pattern in another color way. There are some gorgeous single-colored cowls showing on Ravelry.

Do you know that I still think of myself as a quilter? This afternoon, I pulled out that pile of fabrics I had pulled a couple of weeks ago and then did something I very seldom do: Opened a book and looked for a quilt pattern. I like to design my own, but sometimes I just have to let someone else do that work. I opened Jan Krentz' Lone Star Quilts and Beyond, found a pattern that I really like - Remembrances - and started sorting fabrics. Here's what I ended up with:

The lighting isn't very good, but trust me, we have oranges, lemons, apples, cherries, pineapples, peas, and jalapeno peppers. More pictures next week, I promise.

Finally, a new cat has been seen in the fabric hutch:

I have not seen a conflict between Little Bit (whose domain this has been) and the Princess interloper, but I am curious about how the timing works. Is it that Little Bit (who doesn't stay in the hutch when I'm in the sewing room) simply cedes the space to Princess when I'm in the room? hmmm

Eleanor Cowl - done!

2011-11-13T18:06:00.001-05:00

Just a quick post here. I finished knitting the Eleanor cowl and blocked it.

Isn't that a beautiful lace pattern? I am so pleased with it, and I hope that the niece who gets it loves it, too. I didn't have much yarn left over, in fact, I actually didn't knit the last four rows of the pattern.

The little red threads on the yarn is where I was measuring half yards to see how much I had left. This morning at the coffee shop with friends after church, I mattress-stitched the sides together and realized in the middle of the process that the top row (the bind-off row) was tight. Ooops. I tried telling myself it didn't matter, but I knew that the tight top row would keep the piece from being comfortable to put on or wear.

When I got home, I poked through my knitting bag and found the Knitty article about the Interlock Bindoff that I had put aside for a day like this. The technique is well explained, beautifully illustrated, and easy to learn. The resulting top row is very stretchy and easy to wear. Here's the finished product:

In another part of my life, I attended a prayer vigil last Friday evening to help show support for a member of my parish who is facing deportation. I would ask anyone reading this to please look at this website and please consider signing the online petition and calling one of the numbers listed, asking that this mother of three American citizens be allowed to stay in this country. The bishop of the Catholic diocese of Lansing has written a letter to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency supporting Lourdes' petition. There are some terrible injustices going on in our society that are ruining the lives of some of our most vulnerable neighbors. Writing this paragraph is such a tiny thing to do, but if enough of us "ordinary" people speak up, maybe we can start fixing these problems.

Vines and Eleanor and Jumper and Duets, Oh My!

2011-11-06T19:15:00.003-05:00

Hello, everyone! This week, I shipped off the Duet hats/cowls to my mother-in-law, but not before I took a picture:

Aren't they pretty? Yeah, I added little tassels to the ends of the I-cord on the pink hat. I thought it added a cute touch. With those done, I was able to turn to the Eleanor cowl and make some serious progress:

The yarn is so soft that I'm not minding the fact that I have to concentrate hard and count constantly - this is NOT company knitting. With that in mind, last evening, I cast on the Braided Vines cowl and was able to keep up my end of the conversation at the coffee shop this morning.

Yes, I am aware that my next yarn purchase should be on the green/yellow/orange side of the color wheel. I so hope that my nieces like these darling little neckwarmers!

This afternoon, as I was ripping apart the jumper that I showed last week, I realized that the skirt of the jumper was in pretty good shape and, with a lining and a waistband, would get me a nice spring/summer skirt. There was so much excess fabric in the skirt that I'll be able to have a button-front skirt and use the excess fabric for the waistband.

I was able to pull out some appropriate lining fabric from the stash, so I'll be working on the rehabbed skirt over the next couple of weeks.

In between the various projects, I have read a couple of books recently. This weekend I finished Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's All Wound Up, which I purchased at my local bookshop (at Stephanie's request on her blog). Just remember, if we don't support them, they'll go away. Back to the book: knitting humor is a pretty narrow part of the humor spectrum, but Stephanie mines it well. There is an incident in the book that had me standing outside Hubby's office (while waiting for him to finish for the day) and chuckling, chortling, giggling, etc. He looked askance when I announced that the drive home would include a dramatic reading. I was less than a page into the story when he let loose with the first chuckle. We were nearly home by the time I finished the story, and we were both laughing so hard that I think it may have counted as distracted driving.

The book I read before that was a book I happened to scoop up on my last dash through the dying Borders Book Store, The English is Coming by Leslie Dunton-Downer. This is an entertaining look at the history of the English language, the current state of it as a global language, and some speculation about its future directions. I find myself hearing the language differently and paying attention to how the folks around me (many of whom speak it as a second or third language) speak it.

Now, for the cute kitty pictures of the week. First, I decided to reorganize my bureau, and a certain Brat Cat got curious about an empty drawer.

In the afternoon, as I was knitting along, a flag floated by

and a few minutes later Baby Boy was looking for attention:

Tell me you would have kept on knitting and not have given some serious cuddles....

Projects, Projects Everywhere!

2011-10-30T18:12:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday, I tried working on the second Christmas cowl while engaged in a round of conversations. That evening, I had to tink (that's knit spelled backwards) the three rows I'd done that morning. So, I wisely started a new project that was suitable for the Tuesday evening book club meeting - the blue hat for my mother-in-law. Here's how far I got:

With all of the baseball later in the week, I got a lot done on the cowl, which is the Eleanor pattern. I even took some time on Saturday while listening to a couple of knitting podcasts (Sticks and String - he's back!! - and the Knitpicks podcast). Here's how far I got:

As I knit, I think. One of the things I think about is all of the things I'm not doing, that I've done, that I want to do soon. Some of that thinking led me to look hard at the top of the pink hat I'd made for MIL, and I had to admit that there is something wrong:

If she is losing her hair, her scalp is probably a bit tender, and that ribbon looks and feels quite rigid. So, last evening, I started knitting an I-cord to replace the ribbon. The story in the instructions I found was that the great Elizabeth Zimmerman said that it's so easy to make that the "I" should stand for "idiot." I worked on this cord for half of the USC-Stanford football game last night and only got this far:

For the sake of sanity, I think I have to turn this into car knitting (while Hubby is driving, of course). I think I have to make it twice as long as it is. I may lose my mind from boredom before this is done. On the other hand, it's going to make a much softer drawstring, and I do love my darling MIL.

Speaking of sports, there is a number that is dear to the hearts of many people in Michigan. That number is 35 and 5; that number conjures up the magical season of 1984 that the Detroit Tigers baseball team had and the win-loss number for the first 40 games of that season. I spent a couple of weeks that spring listening to ball games on the radio and working on a new dress:

Yeah. I actually wore this out in public and was quite proud of it. I have had it in the sewing room for several months with the idea of reworking it into another garment. This afternoon, I measured the green fabric to see just how much I have. Umm..... two-and-a-half yards. So, for a second week in a row, I am knocking another UFO off the list. The fabric has faded a bit, and I will do some seam ripping and reduce this dress to stash fabric.

Finally, I gave myself a real treat this afternoon. I live a few blocks from Highland Cemetery here in Ypsilanti, and local historian James Mann conducts walking tours of the cemetery a couple of times a year. This afternoon, I walked over and took the tour and learned all sorts of cool things about this town and the people who have inhabited it over the years. I did this instead of hanging out in the sewing room, and I consider it time well spent. Here is a view within the cemetery.

Finally, here is the cute kitty picture of the week. Little Bit was sitting up on the landing on Friday afternoon just looking darling (little knowing that a trip to the vet, complete with shots, would be part of her Saturday!).

If you are a new reader, thank you for stopping by. This blog isn't about anything much of importance. If you want politics, I mention the subject generally only in passing. Reading through past posts would probably tell you my basic stance. If you want religion, well, you'll probably be able to figure that out, too. I am who I am, but I don't expect anyone else to be me (one of me is more than enough). If you want intimate family information (including the real names of my cats or family members or friends), well, you won't find it here. This blog is about stuff I do in my spare time, and it's turned into a good record for me of projects I've done and started and mean to do some day. I like to point people toward resources that have worked well for me. Maybe they'll help you, too. Cheers!

UFO Weekend

2011-10-23T18:56:00.000-04:00

Let's start with a finished project. Here is the first hat for my mother in law (I'm going to make the same hat in a cobalt blue):

Now, for the UFOs (that's UnFinished Objects, folks). A year ago in the summer, I cut out the fabric for three blouses from the same pattern. For various reasons at the time, I only finished one of the blouses. Today, I pulled out the other two and made the following observations:

Hospital gown!! (Also known as new additions to the blue fabric shelf!)

Yep! That fabric is awfully sheer! (a.k.a. new additions to the yellow fabric shelf!)

Cool! In about 10 minutes, I cleared two long-term UFOs! With that done, I opened another box of UFOs, and pulled out some fabric and a skirt pattern. I had only half the amount of each fabric for the skirt pattern in question. On the other hand, I liked the way they looked together, so I laid them on the table and started pulling coordinating fabrics. I started with the bright green-leaved fabric and the white fabric with bright red and bright yellow splotches.

I don't know what this will be, but I really like these fabrics together. In looking at this photo, I will need to add in a really dark fabric, and when I return to the sewing room, I'll be looking through my reds. So, this is a brand-new UFO, but a fun one.

Speaking of new UFOs, I went to the Fiber Expo at the Washtenaw County fairgrounds on Saturday. I really debated with myself about whether or not to go. Quite frankly, I've got a pretty deep queue. It is now deeper. Let me show you.

This was my first purchase - please: pink and yellow - me resist? The people in the Via Verde Farm booth were really nice, and they answered my questions about how to spin this. Their advice led me to the Sistermaide booth where I got this tiny lightweight spindle.

That booth was right next to the Cormo24-7 booth where this batt just called my name:

Way out in the farthest building of the expo, I wandered into the (RuLe OuT): fIBer AdDicTiOn, NOS booth where Emily was very charming and gave me some encouragement. Of course, she encouraged me into buying some of her luscious roving.

I have been really stuck in the spinning area for months because I've been trying to learn the spinning wheel by spinning the same uninteresting fiber over and over, and Emily said, "At some point, you'll realize that even if you get the fiber spun up, you won't like it, so why are you doing this." Hmmm.

Speaking of fiber I need to spin, I stopped in the booth run by my wool dyeing teacher from last January, feeling guilty because I haven't yet spun that fiber. So, I bought some yarn from her.

That skein has 435 yards, so we might be looking at a hat and mittens set. My goal is to turn all of these new purchases into projects before next year's Fiber Expo. We'll see.

No cute kitty photo this time, sorry.

Cone Nebula - Leftovers 2

2011-10-17T06:29:00.000-04:00

After a comment from Diana about tumbling blocks and knowing that I did not want to go in that direction (sorry, Diana!), I did some rearranging and worked with the half-square triangles that were also leftover. I will confess that I cut a few more out of leftover fabric because I didn't want this to get too scrappy. Anyway, here was the end of the day:

This will be the headboard for the bed on which the Cone Nebula quilt will reside. This may get bigger.

I wanted to mention three movies that I saw this week, two of which I recommend wholeheartedly. The first was The Way with Martin Sheen. It's about the ancient pilgrimage route through the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela, and a handful of people who decide to walk it. This is a movie that could have devolved into sentimentality, stereotypes, and preaching. Instead, we get a movie full of well-rounded characters (people we meet for only a couple of scenes are richly characterized), gorgeous scenery, and a lot of important questions. Full disclosure: I saw this movie on a free pass, and at the end of the movie, Emilio Estevez, Martin Sheen, and the producer came out on stage and took questions. This was a totally cool evening, but Hubby and I fully intend to see the movie again in the theater. It is that good.

Next up is As it is in Heaven, a 2004 movie out of Sweden. I saw this subtitled movie on a rental from Netflix. It concerns a well-known conductor who falls ill and returns to his hometown, where he takes on directing a small choral group. Again, this is a richly drawn movie full of memorable characters trying to find their way to wholeness. When I finished watching the movie, I say, "Yeah, whatever." The next day, however, the various bits of the story started coming back, and I found myself drawn into the lives of the people and wanting to know more about them. In other words, this is a movie that got into my head. If you want to understand some of it, see the lyrics for the big song that the group sings.

The final movie I'm not sure I can recommend as unreservedly as I can the first two, but it's an interesting character study of a young man struggling with some big issues. The Ides of March concerns a political operative learning his trade. It asks a lot of interesting questions, and it answers them in uncomfortable ways. If you like political movies and movies that leave you feeling a bit unsettled, this would be worth seeing.

Now, to pivot again, I have been knitting. First off, Burning Embers is the first of the cowls I'm making for Christmas presents. The model is a bottle of cleaning liquid covered with an old shirt.

This knit up quickly, and I'm getting really good at reading charts. It's so much easier than worded directions.

When I finished this, I started Duet for my mother-in-law, who is dealing with cancer and losing her hair. I'll be running some ribbon through the top so that she can wear it as a hat.

This is also a well-written pattern with an easy-to-read chart.

Finally, the cute kitty shot is of the Guys, awakened from naps because of some crazy lady with a camera.

That's all for this week!

Cone Nebula - Leftovers

2011-10-10T06:53:00.000-04:00

In the back of my mind, I have been wondering what to do with the leftovers from the Cone Nebula quilt. As you see, I have these triangles that I cut but didn't need:

On Friday, I got one of the periodic updates that Jan Krentz sends out, and as I was poking around in her blog, I saw this entry. Go look at that link. Do you see what I see? Well, what about this? Well, on Sunday, I tried this

and this

and suddenly saw where I wanted to go. I sewed together the isoceles triangles at their bases, pressed them open, and sewed them together side to side.

and ended up with these:

Now, I'm thinking that if I flip these on their side:

(and switch one of the flowered pieces with one of the bright green pieces), I have the start for a headboard for the bed on which the Cone Nebula will lie. Thank you, Jan!!

Reading Roundup

2011-10-02T15:39:00.001-04:00

I think I last wrote about books in April?! Oh, my. When I was in college, one of my professors talked about his goal of reading a book a week. I have probably averaged something close to that over my life - but that includes a lot of junk reading. Rather than talk about all of the books I've read over the last few months, I'll mention the ones that I really want to recommend.

First up is Pat Conroy's South of Broad. I would say this about the guy: you either love his books or you hate them, but either way you're passionate about them. Conroy writes about violence - physical, emotional, verbal - and he writes about it from the perspective of someone who has survived a lot of it. I remember reading The Prince of Tides and thinking that I would never have to write about my father because Conroy already had. Let me clarify that: my father was not as violent or as deeply contorted as the father in that novel, but so much of the basic bent of the father was familiar to me, and the ways in which the various characters in the novel responded to the father showed me different ways of moving forward in my life. Each time I read a Conroy novel, I encounter a different way of coping and understand more about how adults keep from giving in to the darkness within.

South of Broad is very much about adults trying to live integrated lives despite difficult beginnings and tough times. I read the novel in a long caffeine-fueled weekend, and then kept going back to various sections and re-reading for the sheer pleasure of it all. The scene depicting the conclusion of the high school championship game contains one of the most beautifully written paragraphs I have ever read in my life. When my book club got together, I insisted on reading that paragraph out loud just to hear the melodious language. Sigh!!

My parish started a book club this summer, and the first book up was Henri Nouwen's The Return of the Prodigal Son, a meditation on Rembrandt's painting and the biblical parable. This is a little short book that looks as though it would be a quick read. There is so much deep thought on each page that it took me a week to get through its 140 pages. I kept stopping, walking around, and thinking through what I had read. If your spiritual life needs a bump-up, this would not be a bad place to start.

The next book on the parish's book club list is Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain. I read this book the first time in my mid-20s, and it was one of the things that pushed me into really looking into religious life. At our discussion the other evening about the first half of the book (we're reading the second half for the end of October), the discussion leader told us that this book, published in the late 1940s, propelled thousands of young Catholics into seminaries, convents, and monasteries. It is the story of a young man born to a pair of artists, who both died young. He grew up on Long Island, in the south of France, and in England. He was mentored by various relatives and family friends. One is struck by how very ordinary he is, despite the extraordinary circumstances of his life. I am looking forward to reading the rest of this book.

In between these various books, I read Karen Armstrong's A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. A good friend has been urging me for several years to read this book, and, oh, my gosh! What a great book this is! This is not a casual read, even though I ended up putting myself on a 40-page-a-day schedule for 10 days. I decided to treat it as assigned reading for a class. This may have been a mistake, but I'm a pretty monogamous reader - one book at a time - so I dangled a Ruth Rendell mystery novel on a stick at the back of the Armstrong book and kept working toward my reward.

Armstrong's 400-page book is well written, densely packed with information, explanations, and cross-references, and has a powerful narrative structure that sweeps the reader along. She shows us what is going on in the Fertile Crescent, pulling in concurrent events in the Indian subcontinent as appropriate, moving the centers of the various dramas to the north and west as the story goes along. The book is structured along a pretty rigid historical timeline - that is, she treats the issues of the seventh century CE in each of the major traditions within a chapter or two of each other, with none of the three main story lines getting too far ahead.

As far as I can tell, she is scrupulously fair to the traditions and the issues raised. I've done a fair amount of reading and study elsewhere around the issues related to the church councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon; her descriptions of those issues, setting of the historical framework, and demonstrations of the consequences of the various actions rang true with what I have learned elsewhere. This helped me trust the rest of her narrative. The book has been out for nearly 20 years, but it feels fresh and relevant in setting the various traditions within their cultural and historical contexts.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking about the book with one of the priests at my parish and I told him, "There's no way I could have handled this book in my 30s. I needed to get the perspective of my 40s in order to see the broader picture." This is the man to whom I went a year ago in the summer and said, "I'm not sure how much longer I can remain a Catholic." His response was that I should continue to move in the directions that give me life and perhaps give myself some space in which to not know the answers. As I read this book I realized that every question I've had about various doctrines and every odd idea I've ever had has been asked or spoken aloud by other people. Armstrong dissects the various arguments within the traditions, shows the positions held by folks on each side, and shows how the issues played out over time. When I reached the end of the book, I understood that my own tradition is based on a whole series of consensus positions around which people have coalesced. I have long appreciated the fact that in Catholicism there are few black-white / right-wrong positions. There's an endless series of "you may be right" statements. Armstrong's book very much reflects this understanding.

If you are looking for a quick and easy read espousing a particular view of the three great monotheistic traditions, this is not the book for you. If you are looking for a deeply researched, carefully nuanced, well analyzed description of the major movements, thinkers, and doctrines within the traditions, get this book and read it thoroughly.

And, now, the cutie picture of the posting - Hubby Dearest wearing his new scarf - he selected the length, approved the yarn and the pattern, and cheered on the making.

Wallhanging Redo

2011-09-26T06:12:00.003-04:00

For the past three weekends, I've been bogged down in a project that had one problem after another. If I weren't so stubborn, I think I would have given up on it. In mid-August, I "finished" this project:

Every time I looked at it, though, I hated it more. So while trying to figure out what to do, I stumbled across these leftovers:

These should look familiar - see the quilt at the top of the blog. I had always figured I'd find a way to work these leftovers into another project. I started out by slicing the screen print pieces away from each other. Then, I proceeded to quilt the dickens out of each piece. Then, I added a layer of batting and the green backing to the hunk of yellow leftover. Here's a side view of the resulting strips.

I then got to pick out the stitches that were in the way, carefully stitch the top layer of the strips to the top layer of the blocks, giving me this on the back:

I trimmed away excess batting, folded over edges, put thread in the bobbin that would match the front of the piece, and prayed, begged, and cursed my way to this:

Yeah, I see the flecks of batting, but you know, they're going to be against the wall of my office! I added outside borders using the same technique, secured any remote seams and then stepped back and looked at it. The center was sort of odd looking, and, frankly, I was concerned about angle of the blocks. I needed to put something in the middle, and while I was pawing through various odds and ends, a holiday card from 2005 sent by my friend Rita Stark fell off the bulletin board. I took the card apart, added some ribbon trim under the edges of the piece to stabilize it and to help it stand out from the background.

And, here is the final piece. I am pleased with it. It's fun, it's a little wonky, and, best of all, it's done.

(It does have a top corner, unfortunately, I didn't notice the photography error until I was pulling it off the camera.) Now, here's some kitty loving - Baby Boy getting snuggles from his da-da -

I have been doing a lot of reading, and I plan to do a post really soon catching up on that front. The scarf for Hubby is closing in on done, and I am thinking about Christmas knitting. I have this wildly outrageous idea of trying to complete four cowls / neckwarmers between now and Christmas for my nieces. I looked up some patterns yesterday afternoon, and I don't think this is outside the realm of possibility. It'll let me use leftover yarn from other projects and give me an excuse to buy more.

I hope to be back here later this week. Take care.

Cone Nebula - Ready for the Quilter

2011-09-06T21:16:00.000-04:00

After a nearly three-month delay (since piecing the last block), I finally got around to the final steps of the Cone Nebula journey. I started the day by stabilizing the edges with bias tape. I have never seen this described anywhere, but I had been wondering about all of those little seams at the edges of the top. Last May, the quilt guild hosted Betty Ekern Suiter, whose quilts are utterly amazing. She explained her process and talked about how after the top is done she applies cotton twill tape to the edge of her top to stabilize the edges, and a light went on in my head. So, I bought a bunch of the sort of bias tape I use on dress hems, measured the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the quilt through the center, cut pieces of tape to those measurements, and pinned and sewed the tape to the underside of the top.

While I was sewing, though, I had some trouble moving the top around the way I wanted to. Can anyone figure out why the top seemed extra heavy?

(Come on! I am nothing if not consistent, and a picture of the Brat Cat is almost expected here, right?)

After I got the bias tape on, I pulled out the 90"-wide batting, carefully measured and cut a piece 10" longer than the top (the top is 124" x 109"). When I measured the batting I saw that it was really 94" wide. Cool. I needed to make it 10" wider than the quilt. 119" - 94" = 15" No problem. I chopped off a piece that I could cut into six pieces each 15" wide, I sewed them together and then sewed them to one side of the batting. When I measured, I started screeching. Aaaaa!!!! 119" - 94" = 25" Any blithering stupid dunderhead idiot child would have figured that out!! Aaaaa!!!! So, I got to make a second long strip for the other side.

I lightly lapped the pieces of batting and used the broken zig-zag stitch so that there are a lot of small stitches that just sink into the batting and hold it tightly.

With the second strip done, I set everything aside. I have e-mailed the quilter, and we have made arrangements to get together for the hand-off. I have never before sent a personal quilt to a quilter (I've sent a couple of raffle quilts off), so this is an adventure.

When I got downstairs, there was a mop of white fur on the end of the dining room table.

I started taking pictures, hoping to get something cute. I was rewarded.

Isn't she darling? Speaking of darling, I have to show you what I picked up from the school supplies area of my local big box retailer. I have now bought nine of these darlings and have my threads all organized by color family. It is so exciting. (And I only spent 59 cents on each of these!)

Finally, on the theme of darling, a dear friend of mine gave me a sweater's worth of Tahki Donegal Tweed yarn at the beginning of the summer. Hubby dearest had been asking for a new winter scarf. When I finished the Every Way Wrap, I pulled out the tweed yarn and looked for a suitable pattern. I am working off the chart for the center back of the Lough Corrib sweater from the November 2008-January 2009 issue of Cast On magazine. In the pictures below, the blue shows up well in one picture and the cables show up well in the other. The scarf is about half done at this point.

I'm pleased with the scarf, and so is Hubby. The next knitting project will be a pair of socks from the hand-painted yarn I bought last winter.

Thank you for stopping by!

Cone Nebula Quilt - Editing

2011-08-21T19:17:00.000-04:00

When I had the Cone Nebula quilt laid out on the grass last June, I saw this weird polygon:

Today, I put on the ironing board and started auditioning fixes. Here's a close-up of the problem:

Here are several different auditions of possible fixes:

I ended up redoing two blocks and not swapping in the pink/orange piece at the lower right. Here is the final view of the polygon:

I think it looks softer, more organic, and less angular.

Speaking of softer, when I overdyed the backing for the quilt last weekend, I also dyed a jersey dress in the leftover dye. This was a prepared-for-dyeing dress I purchased from Dharma Trading this summer. I spent all week looking at this dress, trying to decide if I liked it:

I had a friend stop over on Saturday, and she talked about how good the color looked with my hair, etc. She did suggest that I dress it up a bit, and after auditioning several different neck treatments, I ended up with this:

Here's a close-up:

I had a piece of pink silk cording that I threaded into a piece of lace. I opened the shoulder seams of the dress and sewed the threaded lace into the seams. I then sewed the lace on to the neckline, right next to the binding. I'm looking forward to wearing this dress.

Finally, the requisite picture of the Brat Cat, this one of her looking cute while requesting cuddles:

This is a creature who would never draw blood from a dearly loved human.... yeah, until the day after this picture got taken!

Cone Nebula Quilt - Back

2011-08-14T18:53:00.001-04:00

A month ago on the big summer dyeing day, I dyed the backing fabric for the Cone Nebula quilt. It came out very bright:

I did a lot of thought experiments, consulted with a friend who is an experienced dyer, and then poked around on a couple of websites before deciding that overdyeing it with a basic blue would fix the brightness without muddying the results too much. My friend suggested Prochem's Mixing Blue, which I did not have on hand. I had Dharma Trading's Strong Navy and Royal Blue on hand. I mixed about a two-to-one ratio of the dyes and diluted quite a bit. Once I poured the dye mixture on, I was terrified it was too dark, but I was too nervous to do anything about it.

Today, I washed out the back, ran it through the dryer, and Hubby and I laid it out on the roof of the shed, and then we both said, "Oh, yeah. That's what we want." Here are a couple of beauty shots:

This toned down the glaring colors, deepened the darker areas, and left a great many bright areas. It is much more in keeping with the front of the Cone Nebula quilt.

Also, today, I cut apart my favorite screenprinting project, auditioned fabrics for the sashing, and put together a small wall hanging for my office.

I picked the dark green (which was one of the fabrics I was given on my retreat in Ohio in June!) after consulting with Hubby. I then did a really crappy job of the quilting, trimming, and binding. Oh well.

Maybe people will be so dazzled by the pretty screenprints, no one will notice the weird edges. If anyone asks, they're artistic touches!

CORRECTION: In the cold light of morning, I came to my senses and realized that I need to take the binding off, fix the weird trimming by adding another border, and otherwise fixing this up. I do like the piece, but it needs some work.

Projects Moving Forward

2011-08-08T17:30:00.000-04:00

In my last post I mentioned that I really enjoyed my three-day weekend of workshops last week. In previous years, I have come home from that weekend with several projects half started. This year, I took a techniques class called Spontaneous Screenprinting. It was taught by Debra Gash, a truly dedicated teacher who puts in many hours of preparation prior to each class. I walked out of the class with color on just four pieces of fabric but a head stuffed with a great deal of information for future projects. Here are some pictures.

The upper picture is fabric paint pushed through a lacy fabric. The lower picture uses thickened dyes and a piece of linoleum pressed onto the same tableau as that used for the next print:

In other words, I made the blue prints, then put a bunch of yellow dye onto a piece of linoleum and pressed it onto the same pieces of foam, etc. I really want to turn those four blue/green screens into a wallhanging, and I'll probably incorporate those three yellow polygons as well.

Before I digressed into pictures, I was going to tell you that my Saturday class, "Design for Me," was also taught by Debra Gash. There were six students, and the seven of us sat around a table and worked through various exercises together looking at lines, shapes, symmetry, colors, values, tones, etc. We looked at what we like, what we don't like, what we'd like to work on. Our homework for the class had been very interesting in that we were supposed to find pictures of quilts we love, quilts we loathe, and quilts we've made. We sat together as a class at lunch and had some wonderful conversation. By the end of the day, when we started pulling out our groups of pictures, we had established a great deal of trust, and we'd learned each other's preferences so well that if we'd had to, I think we could each have picked out the makers of the various quilts. Two of the classmates are good friends of mine, one classmate talked about how I had given her a pep talk a couple of years ago, and I do plan to follow up with yet another classmate who I think will become a friend. You might check in on Ginia's blog in the next few days for other reflections on this class.

The third day of workshops had actual projects involved. I finished the basic project in the fabric collage postcards class and mentioned this last week. In the afternoon class, I got this far on the tablerunner:

See that cool bias strip doing curlicues in the middle of the piece? Deb Grifka showed us a couple of neato shortcuts for that. Her model tablerunner had some basic shapes appliqued to the runner, but I'm not inspired by stars and triangles, so here is what I did this afternoon:

Yeah, what can I say? I'm a hearts and flowers and butterflies kind of gal. I had a flower stamp and a heart stamp that I used all over, and then I filled out the runner with fused-on shapes that I cut free form. (If you cut two hearts freeform and cut them kind of short and then you put the pointy ends together, you get butterflies. I know. Every eight-year-old girl knows this, but I had forgotten.)

The sewing room redo continues apace. This weekend I made new curtains for it and got my rulers up on the wall. I arranged them so that the rulers I use most often are in the handiest position.

The cats have been exploring the space, and I want to apologize for not getting the picture that presented itself just 10 seconds earlier than this one; all I could see of the Brat Cat was her increasingly wide rear end, but I couldn't grab the camera in time. Here she is on the new fabric hutch.

Another new space is the now-mobile table that is sometimes folded up and sometimes out. The Princess is clearly wondering about the monster kitty.

Completed Projects!!

2011-08-03T06:03:00.000-04:00

I just checked on Ravelry, and I cast on the Every Way Wrap on December 31. Last evening, August 2, I put in the final stitch. Here it is:

I took lots of pictures where I was wearing it, but the flash overwhelmed them. I am very pleased with this project. It seemed as though it would take forever, but I stuck to it. I still have to put buttons on, but pish-tosh!

I had some very good workshops during the recent weekend. If you would like to see pictures of actual sewing projects I accomplished, please see Kat's blog (my postcards are the bottom photo) and Deb's blog. It was a long weekend, and I was doing a lot of stuff besides being in classes.

I'll have pictures from the screenprinting class later in the week.

New Sewing Room

2011-07-28T06:33:00.001-04:00

After five days of hard work, we have a cozy new reading room (that at one point last evening held three cats!) and a mostly organized sewing room. Now, when you walk up the stairs in our house, you don't see Liz' messy sewing room, you see a peaceful room filled with books and places to snooze.

When you look off to the side, you see the sewing room.

I have identified the fabrics that will get turned into curtains, but I ran out of steam before I could get them made. The table off to the left holds boxes for each of the workshops I'm taking this weekend. As I sorted and organized fabric (pulling fabric out of all sorts of boxes and bags and shelves), I also pulled together the stuff I need for the workshops. I discovered that I have twice as much green fabric as I do any other color. See those two shelves full of fabric? The shelf below it (behind the pull-down counter) is equally full, as are the top sections of the cabinet next to it.

When Hubby Dearest saw all of this at the end of the day, he asked, "Why didn't we do this four years ago when we moved in? It makes so much more sense!" Of course the answer was that neither of us wanted to do the work of painting over the red room, so we made do.

Ann Art Fair 2011 and Image33 Photography

2011-07-24T18:41:00.000-04:00

We had the Ann Arbor Art Fairs this past week. Since I work in a building half a block from an edge of the fairs, I was able to see some of the fairs despite the really hot weather. On Wednesday evening, the first evening, I made my big purchase of the year - the piece that will always say "Art Fair 2011" to me. I got this from Christine Green. It is about 18" tall and utterly beautiful. This is it:

Okay, it is not really wonky; just the photography is. Oh.... that sounds like a segue!

I have to tell you about a photographer who has recently set up an actual business, and I am utterly blown away by her work. Quick, go take a look at her work. Isn't that amazing? I know that I would think so even if the photographer were not my sister. You know how when you're growing up with siblings, each of you gets a "tag"? Healthy people learn to pull in other aspects of life as they grow, but we each have a strength that keeps us going. Well, in our family, I was the smart sister, our middle sister was the pretty sister, and this sister was the nice one. As I look at Mary's photos, what strikes me is how heart-centered they are. You really see the people in their nicest, happiest, fullest versions of themselves. That's the work of a truly nice person who really likes people and sees them in their best light. The only payment I'm getting from this commercial is yummy veggies and dip at the next family gathering.

Back to the Art Fairs: I loved the papercraft at the Metzgers' booth. I had such a nice conversation with the fellow in that booth even though I couldn't afford any of their pieces. I told him that I saw future quilts in his booth, and he gave me permission to play with his images that way.

I stopped by the Ann Arbor Fiber Arts Guild booth and got some handmade paper and some pretty tangerine roving with Angelina fibers in it. Picture.... hmm.... sorry. I forgot to take some pictures there.

You see, I have another project going. When we totted up the bill for this project, I turned to my husband and said, "think of it, this is our vacation budget, and is this not a cheap vacation?" You see, my sewing room currently looks like this:

and this:

Right next door is a room that is at least half again as big but is red.....

Well, Saturday morning, I packed the books into three stacks: Books I haven't yet read but fully plan to soon, books that should leave the house, and books we are keeping. I filled an entire paperbox (the kind that holds 10 reams of paper) with the first stack (with a few left over), another box plus three paper shopping bags with books for the second stack, and then several boxes with the final category. I hauled the giveaway books to the AAUW book sale sorting place on the west side of Ann Arbor. It felt so good to clear out so many books. It was a little sobering to see how many books are in the to-read list. So many books, so little time!

Anyway, this afternoon, the red room looked like this:

Right now, the first layer of primer is drying. The sewing room looks like this:

Of course, the cats are a bit upset, except for BabyBoy who likes to snooze on the kitties quilt:

Isn't it great that the orange cat snoozes on the blue kitties - how complementary of him! I'll post more pictures of the room switcheroo later in the week.

Bye-Bye, Borders

2011-07-19T07:39:00.000-04:00

There's a death in my family. If family is defined as those to whom you are linked by a special bond, with whom you spend a lot of time, on whom you lavish money, whose mistakes you mutter about, and whose triumphs you cheer, then Borders Books is part of my family.

I grew up in a home that didn't have much money, but there was always money for books. My mother would scrimp on the groceries so that she could stop and buy books. In the eighth grade my Sunday School teacher asked us to list all of the magazines and newspapers we got at our homes - and to note which ones were Catholic (he had a point to this exercise), and I got to 30 publications we regularly received, with about 10 of them Catholic. Of course this was something like three times as many as any of the other kids' lists. We had Newsweek, Life, Popular Mechanics, Our Sunday Visitor, Good Housekeeping, Mad Magazine, Ranger Rick, and on and on. My parents were voracious readers. My father had to drop out of high school after he ran away from an abusive home, and he had educated himself in a variety of fields. When I was in the fourth grade, I walked around with him at the school's open house, and he was able to engage the various teachers in informed conversation about their areas of interest. I knew that when I grew up, I wanted to be able to talk to people that way. We had science fiction novels, biographies, histories, short story collections, books about science and mechanics, art books, etc. My mother loved history, politics, and theology, and she read widely in those fields.

When I moved to Ann Arbor in the early 1980s and discovered the marvelous place called "Borders Books" on State Street, I thought I had found heaven on earth. That store had a couple of levels, narrow aisles, high stacks needing step stools. When I got my first job at the University, making $5 an hour, any cash I had left over after rent, utilities, groceries, and savings, got spent at Borders. I would save up for specific books, and I would haunt the sales tables. Once, a supervisor gave all of the secretaries in my office large bonuses at Christmas. I spent most of that bonus at Borders. That was during the early part of the expansion era when the company turned its focus from being a place to find really cool books to buying large chunks of real estate. The company stopped being my favorite haunt in the odd space near a college campus and started being a big chain. I remember holding my breath and hoping that it would work.

When a department store went out of business a couple of blocks away from the original location and the flagship store moved there and suddenly looked more like a department store, it was lovely having the wide aisles and the easier wayfinding. The computerized catalog was terrific; the fact that I no longer had to check my bag at the door was nice (but I worried about shoplifters). Then, a few years ago, the business started going bad. The changes in the store were subtle at first, but there seemed to be greater and greater emphasis on bestsellers and less emphasis on interesting finds. A friend's husband lost his job a year and a half ago during a downsizing; a neighbor of mine (we are fellow cat moms in the condo complex) still works for the company and has had health issues for months.

Last evening, I took my last coupon into the store and discovered that Maeve Binchy has a new novel out (long-time readers of this blog will know that MB is just about my favorite writer). I also got a short story collection by Susan Vreeland. Then, I shuffled out of there, sad, lonely, knowing that I had just made perhaps a final visit to a dying friend. This friend had provided birthday and Christmas presents over the years - when my nieces and nephews were young, I would go in on an evening and carefully select books for each of them; more recently I bought gift cards there for the kids. For nearly 30 years I have indulged the love of books that I learned in my home. Now, it's time to say good-bye, and I feel as though a part of me is dying. Bye-bye Borders. I miss you already.

Dyeing Day 2011 - pictures!

2011-07-10T20:20:00.000-04:00

Well, dum-dum me forgot to take a camera to dyeing day. That's okay because the day was really full. The temp was in the high 80s/low 90s, but we had awnings to stand under. For lunch we seven piled into two cars and drove up the road a piece to a nice diner where they were kind to a half dozen middle-aged ladies (and a kid in her 20s) who had odd colors on their skin and clothes - thank heavens for vinyl seat covers! When we were mostly done and deep into the clean up, our hostess brought out home made strawberry gelato!! Wow!!

The day started off with me crawling around on the ground (these 50+ year-old knees do not like the ground!) painting dye onto the folded-over backing for the Cone Nebula quilt. Within a few minutes, I was seriously considering just scrunching the whole thing and pouring dyes on to it every which way; but I persisted and ended up with something I'm not terribly wild about.

I think it's a little bright and a little wild - very much primary colors - but when I showed it to Hubby Dearest and said that I was thinking about overdyeing it with aquamarine (figuring that would tone down the yellow a bit and brighten the blue and do who-knows-what to the red), he said he rather liked these colors and that I should keep this as is. Okay!

While I was working on this project, our hostess was giving basic dyeing lessons to the three newbies in our midst - all of whom were also working on their own projects. When I got done with the backing, I set up bowls on a table so that I could do five-step value runs of each of three colors (I go into these days with such specific goals, really, I do!). I pulled a bench over and set on it the tub with the 120 or so bandanas. One by one, each of the newbies got interested in the project.

Basically, we picked up a folded bandana, dipped corners or ends or sides or whatever into one, two, three, or more colors, snipped the binding threads open, unfolded the cloth to see what we had, and laid it on the grass to dry. In some cases where there were large white areas, we consulted with one another about adding color or not. We used paint brushes, plastic syringes, and our gloved hands to apply color. We had some plastic trays on the table that served as wringing areas - one that was for mostly purple, one for mostly green, and one for mostly orange - and when a tray would get enough liquid, someone would put an undyed bandana on the tray and turn it over, making sure that all of the dye had been absorbed. It was SO much fun, and we all enjoyed just playing. Here's what we got from all of our play:

Do you want to see some closeups? Of course you do!

I had each of the gals pick out her favorite piece to take home, and those aren't shown here. I haven't yet picked my favorite - okay, I have, but I'm not telling.

So, there you go, another dyeing day in the books.

Prelude to a Dyeing Day

2011-07-04T14:22:00.000-04:00

I apologize for the long silence on this blog.

Since I last posted, I spent a weekend doing what I call "scut sewing" for the quilt guild. There were some items that will be given away at the guild's biennial weekend of workshops, and I offered to sew some of them. It was boring, tedious, and soul-sucking (yes, I know that I promised that I wouldn't do any more soul-sucking projects, but I felt sorry for the gal who is organizing the giveaways, etc.). I simply could not bring myself to take any pictures that weekend.

The following weekend (last weekend), I spent on retreat at Our Lady of the Pines Retreat Center in Fremont, Ohio. It is a wonderful facility, just south of Fremont, high up on a hill in the midst of a piney woods. The facility has walking paths, a brick labyrinth based on the one in the Chartres cathedral, comfortable rooms, and a pretty decent cafeteria. There were ten of us on an art retreat, and another ten or so in another part of the building on a quilting retreat. Of course, there was a lot of socializing between the two groups, and I came home with a bunch of free fabric (most of which will be donated to the guild's stash of fabric for SAFE House quilts). I had a lot of space in which to reflect and regenerate.

Anyway, this weekend, I did some organizing in preparation for a dyeing day with some friends next weekend. I decided to work off Mark Sherman's instructions in the July issue of American Quilter magazine. Be sure to check out Mark's incredible quilts while you're on his website. I had the privilege of seeing his butterfly quilt "live" at the National Quilting Association show in Columbus, Ohio, last summer, and I was truly amazed at his workmanship.

Here is the backing for the Cone Nebula quilt, scoured, soaked in soda ash solution, and ready for next weekend:

(The orange color is from the lid of the box in which it's resting this week.) Next, we have bandanas that I folded, loosely stitched, soaked, and dried. I figured it's easier to do the fancy folding in the evenings the week before than when I'm standing under an awning on a hot day fighting fatigue and heat exhaustion. The bandanas are thank-you gifts to folks who volunteer during the workshop weekend.

Finally, I soaked and dried some random bits of fabric just in case I get done with the rest of these early and still have energy. (cue maniacal laughter)

So, these are the "before" pictures, and I'll post "after" pictures early next week. I probably won't have anything else about the Cone Nebula quilt until some time in August. My other big July project is that we will be moving my sewing room from the smallest bedroom to the medium-sized bedroom. That room is currently a deep red (which is why the sewing room is not already there). I'll show pictures of that project as I go along.

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 12

2011-06-13T06:24:00.000-04:00

My oldest nephew graduated from high school last weekend, and there was a nice party the day before. He's made a lot of really big decisions already, and we'll be offering our auntly/uncly support at various events this summer. As I said to his mother, "He's plunging headfirst into adulthood." What a nice young man he's become!

In any event, I went into the sewing room about 12:45p on Sunday and at 6:45 I pinned this to the design wall:

It was quite a moment when I was sewing together that last block (which is the upper left block with orange, yellow, purple, and black). I really agonized about the pink diamond in the upper right. At first, I put some bright pink there, then I put the Fossil Fern pink, and finally, I used the back side of the Fossil Fern pink. (Fossil Fern is a line of fabric.)

Here is the third column:

And....... heeeeeere is the whole thing (with the third column lying next to but not sewn to the first two columns:

I dragged my husband outside, and he gasped and pronounced it "beautiful". I know that I learned so much from the process of putting this together. It will be quilted by a friend who has a long-arm quilting business. I will show you the preparation process in coming weeks. For reference, here's the inspiration photo:

There is a part of me that wants to make other quilts, using different techniques, from this picture. I have a couple of ideas, perhaps incorporating those tissues I painted back in April. This may end up being a real journey of discovery.

Within the next month I will have a dyeing day, and I will also be making some small items that will serve as giveaways at the quilt guild's three-day weekend of workshops at the end of July. It's going to be a full summer. I will post pictures as I go along.

The Brat just now reminded me that she helped yesterday. I was getting way too distracted by the peanut butter granola, so she gladly took over the bowl from me.

I had to move it off the mini ironing board so that she wouldn't accidentally burn herself. Just to show you that she's been cute since she was a kitten, here's a photo I have on the bulletin board over the mini ironing board:

(That is drying rack on which she is climbing.)

The ABCs of Me

2011-06-07T21:04:00.001-04:00

I saw this meme on Flying Pigs Knits, and (plagiarism alert!) I'm also hopping on the bandwagon. Follow the links back, and you'll see that a lot of folks have been playing this game:

A. Age: Old enough to have voted in eight presidential and nine gubernatorial elections.
B. Bed size: I'd rather talk about the summer quilt made from kitty blocks that I made and received in the only block swap in which I've successfully participated. Every month for a year, I'd make 12 blocks, send 10, get 10 different ones in the mail. So much fun!
C. Chore that you hate: Cleaning floors - dusting, sweeping, mopping, waxing - all of it.
D. Dogs: Grew up with them but would prefer to not be around them
E. Essential start to your day: Print. If I'm not reading within five minutes of getting up, it's probably because I'm ill.
F. Favorite colour: Pink in any shade
G. Gold or silver: My hair was golden when I was a girl, and now it's mostly silver
H. Height: An inch shorter than when I graduated from high school. Truly appalling
I. Instruments you play: The iPod - I love listening to podcasts
J. Job title: Financial Specialist Associate. I solve other people's problems.
K. Kids: Wanted them very much but there were these barriers called dating and marriage - both happened late, so I've enjoyed watching nieces and nephews and kids from my various circles grow up
L. Live: So that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it. (William Saroyan)
M. Mother’s name: Doris
N. Nicknames: Liz
O. Overnight hospital stays: Never (knock wood!)
P. Pet peeve: People saying "myself" when they mean "me." Come on people, if you are the actor, it's "I"; the acted-upon, "me"; both actor and acted-upon, "myself". Got it? Good. Never screw it up again!
Q. Quote from a movie: Adopted during my first year out of college when funds were very low, and I was barely scraping by: "I will never be hungry again!" (Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone with the Wind")
R. Right or left handed: Right
S. Siblings: One brother (dead), his ex-wife (adopted as a sister since his death), two younger sisters by blood
T. Time you wake up: 4:30a most days
U. Underwear: My business, not yours
V. Vegetable you hate: Brussels sprouts
W. What makes you run late: Thinking of one last thing that needs to be done before I go....
X. X-Rays you’ve had: teeth, knees, chest. I've had a couple of MRIs
Y. Yummy food that you make: Brownies - lots of varieties
Z. Zoo animal: Penguins. The summer of 1973, when the Watergate hearings were going on, we came down from the north country to the Detroit area to visit relatives. My mother's brothers and their families took us to the Detroit Zoo. In the penguinarium, my mother and her brothers proceeded to name the penguins after the various figures in the controversy, and they drew a bit of a crowd. It was truly hilarious watching them riff off each other. I've been fond of penguins ever since.

Before I go, I do have to show you that the Big Guy knows how to totally relax.

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 11

2011-05-31T07:18:00.000-04:00

This is a very quick post - I was going to post yesterday, but there is something about a very hot day and a gossipy silly novel that just militates against work. The closest I came was putting together the second column of the Cone Nebula and sewing together the first and second columns. First, though, here is Section 11 (the bottom section of Column 2):

Please note that there are three pieces of plain pale purple on the right side of this piece. Those are rescued pieces from the end-of-sale culling that we did after the guild's fabric sale last week. They just happened to be the right size and shade. How cool is that?

Here is Column 2. I laid it out on the grass (the air was pretty still) and climbed up on a ladder to get this shot and the next one.

Here are the first two sections next to each other (after taking this picture, I took them inside and sewed them together). The oval and arrow point to an area that needs a little work - I'll be swapping out three pieces of yellow and putting in some dark fabric in the lower part of that area.

I have been working away on the Every Way Wrap as well. Here is a current picture:

and a close-up shot:

Finally, here is the best way to handle hot weather:

At one point yesterday, I looked up, and Hubby was reading in his chair, three of the cats were sprawled in the front hall, one was out on the stoop, and the fifth was up on the dining room table. None of us looked energetic. It was a good afternoon.

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 10

2011-05-16T07:23:00.000-04:00

Before you read my post, please go to the Yarn Harlot's blog and read her post of May 12. Wow. I almost cried as I read this post because there is so much basic truth in there about setting priorities and getting real. I titled my blog very deliberately because it feels sometimes as though I am juggling so many things. Last evening, after a long afternoon of sewing and pressing, my right wrist was hurting. I sat in the living room with Hubby dearest and watched the cartoon programs on Fox ("The Simpsons," "Bob's Burgers," and "Family Guy" for those who watch emotionally engaging programming on Sunday evenings instead) and did no knitting, no spinning, no reading, and no guilt. Sometimes, you just need to turn off.

However, I did have a very productive weekend with the Cone Nebula Quilt, and here we see Section 10 (the last section in the left hand column) being laid out.

What I did was look at the lowest sections of all three columns, and then I projected down from the section right above Section 10 and drew fabrics from that section down into Section 10. I also looked at the lowest done section in the middle column and projected which fabrics would flow into the lowest section of that column and how they should work with the fabrics in Section 10. I didn't have quite enough of either the blue dotted fabric or the black fabric with pink and orange dots to fill both sections; however, when I flowed them together, I have enough. I think that section sparkles.

As I was working along, I did have a helper:

The Brat Cat looks so proud of herself, doesn't she? Anyway, I got the section all sewn together and then noticed this:

I have been trying very hard to fool the viewer's eye. I don't want people looking at this quilt and saying, "Oh, a kaleidoscope quilt! How interesting!" I want people to see the colors and shapes. So, when I see a corner like this, I need to camouflage it. Here's a test:

See how that softens that "blocky" feeling? Here's how it looks in context:

While I was working along on this, Hubby Dearest stopped in to chat with me about some stuff, and he and the Brat Cat had a conversation of their own:

That bureau on which she's sprawled sits just inside the sewing room door, and a cat sitting on it can see into the bedroom and down the stairs. It also holds fabric yardage, but that's clearly less important.

After I finished Section 10, I sewed it to the other three sections in Column 1. I had to get the step ladder and pin it up in the stairwell. Please try to look past the railing (with its chili pepper lights). Here's the top of the column:

and the bottom of the column:

As we stood in the living room, looking up and admiring this, I saw a pretty glaring error, but the error is hidden by the railings in these pictures. There's a small triangle in one of the green areas that is just plain wrong. I'm going to study it and see if judicious use of Prismacolor pencils or a dab of fabric paint might solve the problem - or else I could spend the half hour it would take to remove the one wrong piece, insert another, etc. - or else I could spend a lifetime being irritated at the mistake.

I hope you have a good week of it. I do try to post more often, but I'd rather post something interesting once a week than something blah more regularly.

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 9

2011-05-09T07:24:00.000-04:00

Good morning! We finally got a sunny and warm spring in this neighborhood. Hooray! I have been pulling weeds and grass from the flower garden; and this weekend, I put out the drip hose. What a lovely task to do!

I want to draw your attention to a couple of items, the first one is from Slate.com, and I think it got posted about a month later than it should have.

The second item is for anyone who is a college student, thinking about becoming one, or is a recent one (or anyone who knows someone in this position). It is from the excellent blog, The Tenured Radical. I may not always agree with her, but this advice about finances is very much on target.

The weekend also included laying out and sewing together Section 9 of the Cone Nebula quilt. We are at this section:

I wanted a particular shade of yellow, so I pulled out all of the yellows I could find:

None of these was quite right - either too pale, too yellow, too orange, too variegated, or too brown. I found the perfect color, but there was a problem with the fabric (which is an unknown fabric I bought at the quilt guild's donated fabric sale last spring) - besides it probably not being all cotton, it is very thin:

I went ahead and cut out the pieces and then thought that I should stabilize them and just add a little body to the fabric. From the depths of my supplies, I pulled out some very thin 20-year-old fusible interfacing:

I didn't want to "thicken" the fabric so much as to give it a little help. I figured that between the heavy steaming and the sewing in, this would be a half-way decent plan. (Okay, to answer your question, all of my fingers were crossed during this process.) Here is the front side of a block using this:

Here's the reverse, showing how seams are our friends!

(see the faint web of the interfacing on those pieces on the lower left? Here is the completed Section 9. We have reached the three-quarters point of this project!

I sort of wondered about whether I should intercut the pale yellow and orange fabric (in the long yellow line), but I think it helps that section to "twinkle."

I hope everyone has a good week.

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 8

2011-05-02T07:22:00.000-04:00

NPR is full of news of the death of Osama Bin Laden this morning. I hope this means we can finally get out of both of Stupidhead's dirty little wars. (Sorry, but I have trouble sullying his father's name by referring to 43 by name.)

It's been almost two weeks since I posted. I thought I would post in the middle of last week after the exhaustion of Triduum and Easter. Hubby is the person who coordinates the liturgies for the Triduum, including coaching the priests and lay ministers through the details of these highest of high holy days. He tapped a friend and me to co-coordinate the Easter Vigil, and we arrived home about 1:40a on Easter Sunday. We were back at the church in time for the 8:30a liturgy, and I helped usher the downstairs liturgies at 10 and 12. This is normal for us.

What wasn't normal was that on Thursday morning, Hubby learned that a 12-year-old boy in the parish had died suddenly on Wednesday evening. We have known the boy's father as long as we've known each other (that's 20 years for those keeping track). The funeral was the Tuesday after Easter; it was one of those funerals where people walk in silently, nod to people they know, then sit and stare off vacantly into the distance - each of us knowing that the grief we were experiencing was about a millionth of that being experienced by the parents and older brother. I was so devastated that I was afraid to post anything last week for fear of saying something wrong.

At the end of the week, I got the really fabulous news that my pal, Deb Grifka, won first place in her category at the American Quilting Society show in Paducah!

Then, because I am a 50-something woman who has a lot of balls in the air, I had to work up the list of volunteers needed for the quilt guild's three-day weekend of classes coming up at the end of July. If you are in southeastern Michigan and are interested in fabric arts, please do consider signing up for classes. You can find more information here. Of course, if you want to volunteer to help, I would be very happy to hear from you.

I also spent several hours on Saturday sorting fabric for the guild's sale of donated fabric that we will hold at the May meeting. We sell donated fabric by the pound and we also have books, magazines, patterns, and some quilting supplies - all at really low prices. Proceeds go to SAFE House.

On Sunday afternoon, I went into the sewing room and sewed up Section 8 of the Cone Nebula quilt. To give it some context, the piece right above it is this piece:

And here is the newest section, which will go right below:

I told Hubby yesterday that I am starting to get bored. It feels as though this is turning into a real slog, but then I look at these pictures, and I get excited all over again. Next weekend, I want to get the next section done - the section immediately below this weekend's section. Then, I'll be able to do the final three sections along the bottom of the quilt. Of course, this is assuming that real life allows some space.... (or that I get more aggressive about creating space for creative work.....)

Actual Artistic Content!!

2011-04-20T07:29:00.000-04:00

I have had a special project in the back of my brain for several years, and it's been delayed by various other projects - you know, quilts for SAFE House, baby shower gifts, quilts for raffles, etc. etc. etc. Well, last month at the Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild meeting, our speaker was Judy Coates-Perez, and there was part of her talk that broke a logjam in my brain. So, this past weekend, I pulled out these:

In case you don't recognize this, this is a sanitary napkin cover - one of the local grocery stores has a house brand napkin covered with a nonwoven cloth-like covering. I saved a bunch of these covers last summer for this project. I also saved some used dryer sheets. This weekend, I worked up a variety of shades of brown fabric paint and painted a bunch of these.

Then, I pulled out some glass blocks that I retrieved from a lab that was shutting down at my workplace a few years back (most of these were wrapped in paper - the ones that weren't got washed first) - I like to scavenge, in case you can't tell.

Then, I did a variety of dabbing, dribbling, brushing, swirling, etc. on the blocks and on the fabrics with gold fabric paint, gesso, resist, and water.

I got a variety of effects.

I'll have more about this in another post.

In other news, I had a birthday recently, and Hubby Dearest bought me a spinning wheel! We got it from Heavenly Handspinning, and I have been studiously working at learning to control the wheel and get consistent results. Next week, I hope to put fiber I really care about on to the wheel. I am SO excited. This is something I've wanted to learn for at least 20 years, ever since I saw a wheel in the home of a fellow Habitat for Humanity volunteer. Unfortunately, it was not a close enough acquaintance for me to pursue my curiosity at the time. Here are some beauty shots:

Two notes: the chair is from my mother's old sewing machine - I've been using it as a shelf in the sewing room, but it's just the right height for this purpose and looks nice in the living room. We moved an easy chair from that space (Hubby now has that chair in his study), so we needed a cat lounge. I wrapped a crocheted blanket in an old sheet and put it next to the chair for the Big Guy. Instead, the Big Guy moved downstairs to his favorite chair, and Baby Boy has chosen the new lounge as his new space.

Speaking of Baby Boy, here is the ritual cat picture - Baby Boy on Tuffet.

Open Letter to a Former Supervisor

2011-04-10T13:40:00.000-04:00

Dear Former Supervisor:

Nearly every year for the past nn years, I have written a letter to you on the computer this week in April; I have poured my heart and soul into the letter; I have read it over and acknowledged the truth in the letter; then, I have deleted it and moved on with my life. This year, I am half again as old as I was the day of the Secretarial Meeting from Hell. That was the meeting where you walked in, told the office manager that you had a few things to say, and then proceeded to tell the lot of us that we were a terrible group of people and that you were sick and tired of all of us. You then went around the room and described each person's failings. You saved me for last; you also gave me the worst of it. I sat there taking notes, writing as fast as I could, and willing myself to not show any emotion - least of all crying.

The next four months were some of the hardest in my entire career; I filed a grievance against you, writing each sentence with as much care as I could to ensure that I never devolved into blame or rage. I withdrew the grievance after you went to the office manager's home (where she was taking a doctor-ordered sick leave - the office environment was that toxic) and told her to pass a threat on to me that you would take legal action if I continued with the grievance. I met with the HR manager, the owner of a temporary services firm, and some wise friends; all of whom counseled me to let it go and move on. At the end of those four months, I started another job within the company where the new supervisor was told during the background check that bad things had happened that weren't my fault. That job didn't work out very well, but the next one did and lasted 15 years, ending only with the recent reorganization in which I was told repeatedly that I was valued for my knowledge, work ethic, and friendliness.

There is something I want to say to you right now that I could not have said then or until some time in the last few years: You were right. From my late 20s through my early 30s, I went through a phase where I behaved as though the world was simply set up wrong, that I knew how it should be fixed, and that anyone who didn't agree with me was a horrible human being. I not only behaved this way, I mostly thought this way. Going through the crucible of those years in which several jobs in a row went awry and in which personal relationships went in wrong directions transformed me. The piece of metal that emerged from the fire of those years had been tempered, polished, and its edges rounded.

The person who showed up at my current workplace 15 years ago was a far different person than had shown up in your workplace several years earlier, and the person I have become in the course of this job is more different still. Fifteen years ago, I was still a large, open wound, full of pain and self-doubt; and I was very willing to concede how little I knew. Over the last 15 years, I have grown into a tolerant, kind, and decent human being. I am not sure if the person I was when I worked for you would recognize the current version of me; but I do think she would say something like, "That's who I want to be when I grow up." Nearly losing everything and having to take a hard look at myself, my behavior, and my basic stance toward life was a terrible and difficult experience.

Please know that I wish you well. Perhaps one day, we will bump into each other and we will converse, and the years will be rubbed away and all that will remain is a sense of, "I used to know this person, back in the day." Peace.

Stacey Schiff, Erin McKean, Laura Kasischke, and Connie Willis

2011-04-08T07:27:00.000-04:00

Over the last couple of weeks, I have read four books: Stacey Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life, Erin McKean's The Secret Lives of Dresses, Laura Kasischke's In a Perfect World (link is to a podcast), and Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog.

Quick notes about each of these:

I read Cleopatra solely because it was the book picked by my book club this time around. I had no interest in the period, the people involved, or the general topic. I know this marks me as an uneducated hick, but there you are. The book is carefully researched, written in a lively fashion with careful notes about what is known, what is hinted at, and what is merely speculated. If you are interested in the period, the people, and/or the general topic, this book is very much worth your time. I found it tedious, but I know that much of that feeling probably had more to do with everything that was going on around me in real life, and that this was "assigned" reading.

My "reward" for getting through that book was The Secret Lives of Dresses. As a long-time fan of Erin's "A Dress a Day" blog about dresses, fabrics, and patterns, I was eager to read this novel. It is essentially a coming-of-age novel about a young woman who is figuring out who she is and what really matters in her life. The story is told in the context of her grandmother's collection of vintage dresses, and the stories they hold. The novel moved along at a nice pace, the characters were well developed, and the story line was believable. I will be giving copies of this book to various nieces and friends.

I followed up with something very different. In a Perfect World takes place in the middle of an apocalypse. When I was nine, I sneak-read my father's copy of Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon, and that was the first of many apocalyptic novels I have read. A novel that has been persistent in my brain is Earth Abides, about a measles outbreak. Of course, in high school I read Nevil Shute's On the Beach, and I have read various comet-hitting-the-earth books, etc. (There is a certain strangeness in my character.) So, I came to this book with these big novels with their sprawling casts of characters, some omniscient view of the big picture, and a sense of closure and hope at the end. This is not one of those novels. This is a novel about a new stepmother trying to feel her way into an uncomfortable role at a moment when the world is coming apart. Laura writes sparingly, with a lot of information indicated between the lines. She gives the reader enough information to see the world from the point of view of the main character, but all of the things that character doesn't know, the reader doesn't know either. I loved this book, and I didn't want it to end. I so much wanted to stay with these people and keep on living inside their lives that I actually couldn't sleep after finishing the book because I kept spinning out various scenarios for the next several chapters, and even when I slept I dreamt of this book and its characters. Read this book. Period.

Right now I am near the end of another novel by Connie Willis. I can't believe I didn't hear of her until I was almost 50. If you like reading novels about time travel, just pick up her books. Sigh. If I weren't sitting here right now, I'd have finished the book.

What I'm Watching - Washington Edition - Final Notes

2011-04-08T06:51:00.000-04:00

To wrap up the notes about the trip to Washington, I want to share this picture of a pair of ducks who ignored all of the signs about staying out of the pools. (This was at the Korean War Memorial.)

I kept taking pictures of the Washington Monument, and my sister pointed out that I was getting some great sky pictures. So, here are a couple of sky pictures:

Yes, that's Hubby at the front (he IS dressed casually).

The final picture is of a building the name of which I never learned but that I thought was insanely ugly - total mashup of styles and eras. If anyone knows what this building is, please let me know. I simply forgot to cross the street and find out - okay, two streets with four-to-six lanes of traffic lay between me and this building - simply not worth it.

While on the trip, I packed my bamboo knitting needles, some cotton yarn, and a simple pattern (along with a paperback book) into a small purse - this configuration got me through security areas with no problem. The only time I had a security issue was when my migraine medication (packed in foil) set off an alarm. When the guard saw what it was, I got waved through. (That's your handy tip of the day.) Anyway, I finished off one dishcloth (on metal needles on the road) and made another on bamboo needles. Here they are:

I made NO progress on the EveryWay Wrap. It's almost half done, and I'm bored.

What I'm Watching - Washington Edition

2011-04-07T06:51:00.000-04:00

We were in town during the Cherry Blossom Festival. Dear readers will recall that these trees were thank-you gifts from the Japanese in the early part of the last century. As I walked among these magnificent trees, I thought about how the cherry blossoms are significant to the Japanese because of their ephemeral beauty - such a brief period of pure loveliness - and how that must be playing out in Japan right now.

Then, as I walked along, I started noticing that most of the trees have been pruned, some rather severely.

See all of those bulges on the tree? Those are pruning scars. Then, I started noticing......

and

Do you see the new shoots coming out of the "killed" parts? Life is persistent and will find ways to push itself forward. Even those parts of ourselves that we thought were dead may turn out to be just dormant if we allow ourselves to be open to change and growth. I look at this tree, and I see the beauty of a living organism that has survived.

Finally, I want to share this picture of a tree wearing a lovely plume. This enchanted me.

As I moved along the Tidal Basin, I came across the Franklin Roosevelt memorial, which is set up as a series of "rooms," one room for his pre-presidential life, one room for each of terms as president, and then a summation room. If you follow the link, you'll see a picture of the statue of President Roosevelt, and you'll notice his index finger appears to be gold. Well, the day I was there, children were crawling all over the statue, and most were rubbing his finger and petting his dog (who had a gold patch on top of his head). I think that the president would have been charmed. Two pictures:

My mother was 13-going-on-14 the spring that the president died. Her father was an autoworker, her mother a housewife, and her older brothers were away at war. She was in the house when the radio announced the president's death. She took the news out to the backyard where her mother was hanging laundry. My grandmother slapped her face, screamed, "Don't say such wicked things!" and burst into tears. That's who FDR was, and that's why he still matters and will matter for generations to come.

What I'm Watching Wednesday

2011-04-06T07:26:00.000-04:00

Last week, my husband had a business meeting in Washington, DC, and I tagged along. While he was at work, I went and played. Here are some pictures from my trip.

At the National Gallery of Art, on my way to the Gauguin exhibit, I wandered through the Modernist area, turned a corner, and saw this:

I had seen pictures of Henri Matisse's cutouts, and I hadn't been impressed; however, walking into a room with these massive pieces stretched across huge walls just about blew me off my feet. I kept looking and looking and looking. Here is a close-up of one of the sections:

You can see the brushstrokes where his assistants painted the paper! I wanted to spend the rest of the day in the room, but I also wanted to see the Gauguin exhibit, which I then did. Truth be told, I've never particularly liked Gauguin, and after seeing the exhibit, I still don't; but at least I gave the guy a chance. I did really like the Venice exhibit, which is across the hall from the Gauguin exhibit. (No picture taking was allowed in either exhibit.)

The following day, I went to the African Art Museum, and if you get to Washington any time soon, please be sure to see the Artists in Dialogue exhibit. This was an exhibit where I wanted to just sit down and touch with my eyes all I could. Again, picture taking was not allowed, and I was fighting the urge to touch the pieces. On Saturday, when Hubby was able to play hooky, I took him to this exhibit, and he, not normally one to get excited about conceptual art, kept saying, "Thank you for bringing me here!" and kept looking and looking and looking.

On Saturday, Hubby and I walked up hill about a mile and a half from our hotel to the Washington National Cathedral. It is well worth a visit, but the only pictures we took were on our way out of the grounds (which are shared with St. Albans School - the school Al Gore attended). We had a lot of fun speculating about the backstory behind this:

I think it's safe to say that kids are kids wherever you go. In my next post: cherry blossoms!

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 7

2011-03-20T19:09:00.000-04:00

I went to the quilt guild meeting yesterday, with the first six sections of the Cone Nebula quilt in tow. I laid it out and showed it to a few people, including the person who had taught the kaleidoscope quilt class I took a few years ago. She was very gratified to see a student progress in this way, and she gave me some helpful suggestions. It was very funny that as I was laying out the quilt on the floor, someone came along and gasped, "Whose pattern is this?" I answered, "Umm, mine!" The questioner gave me a funny look and said, "It's just very complex looking." "Thank you!" I am SO not a kit person!

Anyway, here is the seventh section all sewn together.

In case you are wondering how this piece fits in with the rest of the sections, today's piece sits to the right of this piece:

and right below this piece:

I'm going to take a little break from this project. The next few weekends have stuff going on that may preclude serious sewing room time. Also, the speaker at the guild meeting yesterday showed a couple of pictures and said a couple of things that led me to an idea of how to pursue a project I've been noodling around in the back of my brain for about two years. I'll post some pictures as that unfolds.

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted pictures of cats, so this week, I have two. First, I provoked the Brat Cat and got this picture:

Ooohh!! Look at those scary claws!! (I LOVE her SO much!)

Second, here is the Princess on patrol in the front yard on a GORGEOUS spring day:

It's good to have a guard cat!

Thank you for the very kind comments after my most recent post. I think I was in a state of serious freak-out that morning. One of the things I have to keep telling myself is that numbers may be indicators, but, in the end, they're mere things, and they are not the be-all and end-all of life. My husband would totally snort if he read this as I have been obsessed with numbers like this:

Yeah. I wear a pedometer, and I have let it take over my life. I signed up for a first-quarter million-step challenge - that's an average of 11,111 steps per day. I have seriously been going out of my mind trying to meet this goal. I've been on a 10,000-step-per-day program for the last three years, and it's been good for me. I can go out and walk for five and six miles at a time without very much effort; what's doing me in is the focus on a significantly higher goal. As of this minute, I'm within 64,000 steps of the goal. In order to get this far, I've taken to spending a couple of hours a day on the weekends just walking vigorously around the neighborhood. That's fine and wonderful, but there are art projects I'm not doing, dust bunnies I'm not chasing, books I'm not reading. (Okay, this paragraph feels like something out of a support group meeting. "Hi, I'm Liz, and I'm a pedometer checker.") What I think is hilarious (in a sad sort of way) is that I have put on five or six pounds during this challenge! Must remember Liz' Rule Number Three: "Moderation in all things, including moderation." (from James Hilton's Lost Horizon)

In case you were wondering, Rule Number One is "In order to live fully, you must love people and use things, not love things and use people." (John Powell's Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am?) Rule Number Two is "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." (Ralph Waldo Emerson, read in a George F. Will column back in the 1980s) It's amazing how often really complicated-seeming problems become clarified when I stop and ask simple questions, "Which is the person? Which is the thing? Am I focusing on one aspect of the problem and ignoring other parts of it? Am I acting out of habit or in response to the actual situation? Am I getting overly concerned with this?" Usually, by the time I get to the last of those questions, I've come to a decision point. When I've not asked those questions, that's when things have gone very wrong.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #31

2011-03-09T06:08:00.000-05:00

Before I get to my stuff, I want to remind everyone that this is part of a ring that is centered at Tami's blog. Please be sure to check out all of the cool projects over there.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a period of reassessment and revitalization for people in certain segments of Christianity. (Several years ago, a friend who is deeply engaged in another branch of Christianity came to me and asked me where Lent could be found in the Bible. That was an interesting conversation and showed both of us that we were coming from very different points of view within this faith tradition. I so appreciate the fact that there's so much variation and room for so many different kinds of people.)

Anyway, I got on the scale. This is not something I do very often, mainly because I don't like being governed by numbers, etc., etc., etc.; however, there is diabetes in my family, and it usually hits in the decade in which I find myself. So, because of the number I saw, my work in progress for the foreseeable future will have to be making the number smaller. It was a seriously scary number.

Moving along, my house is another work in progress, and this weekend with company coming over, I fixed the bathroom. I had two paintings on the wall: Summer and Winter. So, I painted up Spring and Fall. Here they are individually and as a group:

This is not great art, but it suits the purpose, and I'm pleased with these.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #30

2011-03-02T05:56:00.000-05:00

I am so sorry I missed three weeks of Tami's WIPW! I'll be playing catch up for a while, I see. Everyone has been SO productive. To see what I mean, follow the link above and watch all sorts of interesting projects in process.

I've been working on the Cone Nebula quilt. Here is a numbered map to show you where we are:

I don't do conventional, so the numbers are all over the place. I was afraid of having too much of one thing in one area, and not having it evenly spread through the rest. Anyway, here is Section 5:

and Section 6:

(Yes, I know that I need to get up on a chair and point the camera down - Section 5 - instead of backing up and hoping - Section 6.)

I've also been working on the Every Way Wrap. It's 15 rows bigger now than this picture, but you all have imaginations:

Last week, I got discouraged at how slowly this is coming along that I put myself on a schedule - at least one 16-row repeat every week by Friday. It's Wednesday morning, and I am seriously considering aiming for a second repeat by Friday... I had a really complicated cable row last evening just before I went to bed. This is a row where each cable is a mirror image of the ones on either side of it (hold the first two stitches back instead of front). I was falling asleep, Hubby had a PBS thing on about the battle of Stalingrad, and I simply screwed up. I dropped stitches, lost count, had to rip back the row, had to go to the back side to find my errant stitches. I got it all cleared up, and by then I was wide awake and knew a whole lot about the Eastern Front of the Second World War.

The transition at work is in process. The official date for the changeover is April 4, but a gal in the building retired last week, and some of her duties have come to me. My new supervisor-to-be has me writing procedures for various tasks (this happens to be something I enjoy doing and have done on nearly every job since starting as a very low-ranked clerk nearly 30 years ago). My current supervisor is telling all of us to do whatever we can to make the transition go smoothly, and she's going around to each of us with virtual hugs and pats on the back. I have been SO fortunate to have worked for her for the last 15 years!

Have a good week everyone and check out the other projects at Tami's blog!

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 6

2011-02-28T05:59:00.003-05:00

This is basically the last quiet weekend I have until mid-April, so I took advantage of it. I laid out Section 6 on Saturday and sewed it together on Sunday. When I started laying it out, though, I realized that I had run out of a crucial piece of fabric.

Do you see that pretty leaf-patterned fabric in the earlier section? Basically all I had left of it were the two small triangles at the top of the new section. So, I sighed hard, picked apart some of the earlier section, and integrated the new blue with the leaf blue:

Now, instead of an abrupt transition between the two sections, they're interleaved and look planned. I had just one small triangle's worth of that blue fabric with the musical note, so I was able to use the other small blue leaf triangle some place else, adding to the planned feeling. Here is a picture of the full piece (sorry about the angle, I just wasn't in the mood to stand up on a chair last evening).

In case you're wondering about how these sections fit together, here is the map with the sections numbered.

At this point, I am over half done (most of the sections have three rows, but three of the twelve sections would have to have four rows, and those are done - Sections 3, 4, and 5).

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 5 - sewn down

2011-02-26T11:04:00.000-05:00

Last week, I was looking at the black river by the bright halo on Section 5 of the Cone Nebula quilt, and I didn't like what I saw:

So, last Sunday, I swapped in the blue/purple fabric that I thought might work better:

I think this eases the transition between the blue star and its halo, as well as the river on the other side of the star.

I also debated with myself about which side of the fabric I should use for the halo. Here are a couple of pictures that I took during the decision process:

After looking at this "live" and through the camera, I decided to keep it as I had originally, with the reverse side of the fabric showing. The fabric has a little too much green in it on the front side, and I thought that distracted from the bright blue.

Next, here is a close-up picture of the corner area. The fabric had a cross-hatch pattern woven into it, and I dyed it a bright green before over-dyeing it black. I love how the weave shows through, along with the different layers of color.

Finally, I have been knitting along on the Every Way Wrap, but not very fast. Here is its current state:

There is a 16-row repeat, and I have done 4 of those repeats (of at least 16). This week, I decided that I would set a goal of one repeat per week until this is done, and I won't be allowed to work on dish cloths until I've done my 16 rows for the week. I also want to make another pair of socks.....

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 5

2011-02-19T07:58:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday I got together with some friends for a day of sewing. Our quilt guild makes quilts for the people who pass through the local domestic violence shelter. Each person gets to choose a quilt to use while at the shelter and to take upon departure. I think of these quilts as being tangible signs of the community supporting these folks in their desperate hour. In about six work hours, we were able to complete an entire top and all-but-the-borders of a second top. The gal who organized the day had a plan, she had made all of the fabric choices, and all the rest of us had to do was show up and work. We were SO proud of ourselves. Of course, I forgot to take pictures.

On the other hand, with a design wall at the end of a long room, I was able to pin up the four sections of the Cone Nebula quilt and actually see how it's coming along!

I think I'm in love! Well, after seeing this, I went into the sewing room on Sunday and laid out the next section. This is the section to the right of the top half of the section in this picture.

Do you see what I see? I have that bright star in the corner, butting up against a deep black. You know, I didn't see that until I looked at these pictures. Isn't that funny? That black fabric is so obviously wrong there, but as I was laying it all out, it seemed fine. This morning, after looking at these pictures, I went upstairs and auditioned a lighter fabric. So, here's the current choice:

Here's an alternate choice. (I apologize for not putting the white sheets over the bulk of it.)

Sigh. This means that before I start sewing together blocks, I'll get to cut out a few dozen triangles today or tomorrow. On the other hand, if I sewed this section together with that black fabric there, I would always know that it was wrong, and that I knew it was wrong, etc. The mottled blue-purple is much lighter in value and closer to the black-green (other side of the star) in both value and pattern. The black has little gold stars on it, but these pictures show that it reads deep black. I'll find another place for that fabric in this quilt.

Speaking of color value, I also experimented with different fabrics for the area surrounding the bright blue star. I knew I wanted that bright blue fabric as the focal point, but I didn't really have a plan for its "halo." In my scavenging through my stash, I came across a chunk of fabric that had possibilities, and here it is with the "right" side of the fabric showing:

Here it is with the reverse side showing:

I laid out the star both ways (forgetting to take pictures, grrr), and it was clear that the contrast was greater with the reverse side showing. It might be too much contrast, and the "big picture" pictures tell me that I'm not done thinking about this. I may have to take some more pictures in order to figure this out.

This week, I needed a break from the two big projects I have going - the Cone Nebula and the Every Way Wrap - no picture this week; it's a few rows longer than the last time you saw it. So, noticing that the dishcloths were looking pretty ratty, I had the following exchange with Hubby Dearest:

Me: When we're at [local non-WallyWorld superstore] on Monday, we need to pick up some cotton yarn for dishcloths.
Hubby: You know that [l n-WW ss] sells premade dishcloths don't you?
Me: Yes, but none have been made by me.

I see the logic, don't you? The way I figure it is that for $1.69 and about a dozen hours of meeting and TV time, I get three dishcloths that are unique to my household. Here's the first one:

My rule is that unless the mistake makes it unusable, I don't rip back. It gives me a chance to play with patterns, learn some new techniques, and get something useful in a pretty short time period. This was seriously just two evenings of work. On the other hand, when I was trying to set up those first few rounds (cast on four stitches across four needles....), a certain someone got annoyed that my lap didn't belong to him. Here is a shot of him looking impossibly cute last Sunday (when I was taking multiple pictures of him instead of cuddling him, Hubby said, "Smile pretty for Mommy's blog!"):

This morning, before I came down to work on this, I fed the cats. Now, the Princess Kitty has special dishes (which came with her when she moved into the house), and everyone else has dishes from a set. Soon after we put the food down, though, she and Big Guy trade places; it seems to be a mutual agreement, and we've never seen them argue about it. I think they're darling, in case you couldn't tell.

In the last couple of weeks, I have read novels by Joshilyn Jackson (Between, Georgia) and Ruth Rendell (A Sight for Sore Eyes). These are both very good writers, and if you are looking for well-rounded characters in believable situations, check them out.

Jackson's stories are the sorts of stories one would tell around a dinner table - So, Nonny, how did you get your name? Well, let me tell you about the circumstances of my birth.... When I read her books, I feel as though I am having a long chat with an old friend I haven't seen in years.

Rendell's books, on the other hand, are dark and complicated. As I read her novels, I find my heart in my throat about what might happen to a character (and can envision several different paths for each to take). The stories are carefully plotted but without artifice. These are tales told by a masterful storyteller.

Right now, I'm about a day into a novel by Muriel Spark (A Far Cry from Kensington). This is sort of place-holder reading until I figure out which "big" book I want to tackle next. I do love Spark's novels, but in a backwards sort of way. She doesn't write to make you love her; she seems to toss things off, and you only realize afterward how well she led you along her path.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #27

2011-02-09T06:30:00.000-05:00

Good morning! This is part of a ring that can be found at Tami's blog. Please go check out all of the other great projects there. I didn't post last Wednesday because I was shoveling snow. Southeastern Michigan got far less snow than most of the rest of the country, so I will not complain about the amount we got other than to say that if I had blogged rather than shoveled, we would have stayed home from work or else gotten there very late.

If you read my post on Saturday, you know that I brought some snow into my house and played with dyes.

I think I had too much water versus dye in this project, and on Sunday I ended up squeezing out the two pale pieces, soaking them in soda ash water, and immersing them in the runoff dye. The two pieces with red on them just got more golden yellow. I did love the wonderful colors I got on the darker yellow piece in this picture. Here they are all washed and dried:

The darker yellow piece on the far left is the piece on the lower right in the upper picture. I also had some jar dyes going, looking for some dark fabrics.

Notice the deep purple moiré fabric in the lower left corner. ....

There must be some non-plant-based fiber in that fabric; see the wonderful gray-brown color I got at the end. The three pieces on the far right of the "done" picture are overdyes of the red and blue fabric I did last summer in the infamous flour-paste resist project.

The Cone Nebula quilt is coming right along in its own way. Here is the fourth section:

The arrow indicates a place where I think I should go in and put a deep purple piece. Sigh....
Here are the four sections together (only eight to go!):

Finally, I am still knitting along on the Every Way Wrap. I am so fascinated watching the cables develop.

For your reading pleasure, I would like to direct your attention to this blogpost by a friend of mine. She is a sociology professor at St. Scholastica College in Duluth, Minnesota (I don't even want to think about how much snow they've gotten!), and this post is about how people get on spam e-mail lists.

Have a great week, everyone!

Cone Nebula Quilt, Snow, and Dyeing

2011-02-05T15:02:00.000-05:00

First, I want to start with some good news. A week ago on Friday, I got the official letter offering me a position in the new organization scheme at my workplace. My new supervisor's picture has actually appeared in this blog, but the only connection between that statement and the new position is that we trust and respect each other both personally and professionally. She's got her head screwed on straight, and we have worked well together on projects both in the workplace and in the quilt guild. I feel very hopeful about this.

Next, I did finish reading The Warmth of Other Suns this past week. In case it has not been clear from my earlier comments, I recommend this book to anyone interested in American history, in large-scale human stories, and in following people across their lifetimes. This is well written, well researched, and humanistic journalism at its best. It made me think, ponder, reflect, and, most importantly, see the world around me with fresh eyes.

Now, some art! Last Saturday a friend of mine and I joined another woman in the basement of the home of Happy Fuzzy Yarn. Riin led the three of us through the process of dyeing roving. We got to ask her all sorts of questions about anything at all fiber related. It was a very enjoyable four hours, and at the end, we got to take home some roving we had helped dye.

Isn't that pretty? It was utterly fascinating for my friend and me to see the differences in the process of dyeing animal fibers versus dyeing plant fibers. I'm sure we were annoying our teacher, but our comments about the differences helped each of us to imprint the new knowledge we were gaining.

Now, there did come a lull in the proceedings where each of us students couldn't stand to be surrounded by all of the yarny goodness in that basement (the storage place for the gorgeous materials she has in her Etsy and Artfire shops), and we started creating little piles of things that were going to go home with us. I fell for the sock blanks. Basically, these are a pair of socks' worth of yarn knitted on a knitting machine and then either painted by the seller or left blank to be painted by the buyer. I got one of each:

The way this works is that when you are ready to knit your socks, you remove the waste yarn and start unraveling the blank. You then get all sorts of colors that you know look good together showing up in the socks at random. Because she knits the blanks with two strands of yarn, you get identical yarns on the socks as you go along. Pretty nifty, huh?

You may have heard that some snow fell during the week (this picture is from 5:30a on Wednesday morning looking out my front door).

What you may not have thought as you looked at that snow was, "Cool! I get to try that snow dyeing technique I saw in Quilting Arts magazine last winter!" I did, but I didn't feel like digging out the magazine, so what follows is my version, made up of materials I had on hand this morning.

First, I got the two deepest tubs I had in the house (had to move the yarn and roving stash to a cardboard box for the day to free up the taller tub), then I covered them with some cat-claw-proof screening left over from last summer, then I attached the screen to the tubs with duct tape.

I didn't want to cut the screen, so I made do with what I had. Then, I put my fabrics to soaking in a soda ash and hot water bath (not shown) and mixed up my dyes. I wanted some more yellows and some super dark blues and purples for the Cone Nebula quilt. I decided the yellows would be snow-dyed, and the dark colors would not because I was willing to have less color intensity with the yellows. Then, while the fabrics were spin-drying in the washer, I filled up a bucket with snow (ended up having to lug in two buckets full - not bad!).

Then, using a small dustpan, I dumped a bunch of snow on the screen.

Then, I added the fabric pieces and put snow on top (yes, I am still trying to salvage those pieces from my flour resist experiment from last summer!).

I completely covered the fabric with snow

and started applying the dyes. I had made up small containers full of three different yellow dyes.

Since I doubt any 9-year-old boys read this blog, we will all refrain from the obvious comment at this point.... I went off for a long walk (and got home about an hour after today's snow storm started). About two hours after the dyes were added, the tubs looked like this:

The snow is melting into the tubs, and the dyes have dispersed. I'll show the results in a couple of days. Meanwhile, the dark dyes are doing their thing in some old olive jars. I'll transfer those to an open tub when I finish writing this post. I want the fabric to dry out a bit and soak in more of the dyes.

When I finish fiddling around with the computer and with dyes, I'll head back upstairs to the Cone Nebula quilt. I got all of the fourth section laid out on Sunday afternoon (amazing how, even though I have what seems like a gazillion triangles cut, I never have enough of the right fabric!), and I got the bottom row sewn together. I'm hoping to get the rest of that section sewn together this weekend.

Take a look at the golden yellow fabric in the lower left corner of the second picture (and the lower right corner of the third picture). A few years ago, I took a quilting class through the guild, and at the end of the day as we were packing up, I noticed a hunk of fabric in the garbage can. Well, never one to pass up free fabric, I plucked it out and have used pieces of it in a couple of different projects. The last of that piece was perfect for that part of this project. I was thinking happy, grateful thoughts at whoever discarded that lovely piece of fabric.

Now, I do have to state that my "familiar" was hanging out in the sewing room with me, being sweet and cuddly (which is how she maintains control):

and offering her services as a quilting buddy a little later:

(See her artfully rearranging triangles for me?) This morning, though, when I was playing with chemicals (wearing my dust mask and long latex gloves, of course), she was smart enough to be in the next room, pretending to be an executive.

Okay! That's my catch-up post, and now I have to go attend to dyes and piecing and maybe even try to have dinner ready when Hubby gets home from church in about four hours.

Snowbound - NOT!

2011-02-03T05:43:00.000-05:00

I work for a very large institution in Michigan that prides itself on never closing. While lesser institutions such as the state legislature might close for the day, my employer expected people to show up to work if they possibly could. I am really good with a snow shovel, and after spending close to an hour and a half yesterday morning (between 5:30a and 7a, if anyone is keeping score), I dug us out enough so that we could leave. Mind you, we live in a condo complex where a contractor comes through and plows our main driving areas as well as the public sidewalks. We clear the space from our front door out to the public sidewalks and then around our vehicles. 80 minutes....

Because so many (wiser) people took vacation days in my building, I had very little to do and was able to leave a little early (I claimed an hour of vacation time to keep everything honest) and went on my usual post-work exercise walk around campus. Crossing the "Diag" on Central Campus, I came across this display that summed up the frustrations of the day:

The Warmth of Other Suns - 2

2011-01-29T08:25:00.000-05:00

I have now read about three-fifths of Isabel Wilkerson's incredible book The Warmth of Other Suns, and I am gaining such an important perspective on American history. She describes life in the "black" area of Chicago in the 1930s and 1940s. As I read of the very small area of the city where African Americans were "allowed" to live and how the rents got jacked up because so many people wanted to live in such a small area, I was reminded of the reading I've done about life in the Gaza Strip - a modern small place where a minority is forced to live. In Chicago in the middle of the Twentieth Century (and in most of the other cities in the North and West of the US), there was a color line that was so clearly drawn that, despite the fact it was not enshrined in law, people simply did not violate it. There were some brave people who figured out how to breach the line, and a lot of those people paid with loss of property, money, and, sometimes, their lives.

As I read the stories about life in these areas, I find myself seeing the inner cities of our country in a new way. The explanations I was given as a girl - that "those people" are living like that because they want to - are falling completely away. Wilkerson tells the story of a woman in her mid-20s, married, with three children, a survivor of the cotton fields of Mississippi, capable of long days of hard work; and this woman is at the very bottom of the list of people who could get hired. Jobs available to her and others like her paid the least, had the worst conditions, and were the most likely to have the worker not get paid. Wilkerson tells the story of a factory in Ohio that needed workers and advertised that it wanted to hire 500 white women. When it couldn't find enough white women in Ohio, it recruited workers from Indiana and Illinois; all of this while there were many non-white women eager to work.

The summer I was 13, the summer after my father died, my mother took her four little country kids to Detroit for a couple of weeks. We stayed with her brother (a newly retired police detective) and his family for a week in northwest Detroit and with an old friend in a wealthy enclave near the University of Detroit campus for another week. From those bases, we explored the city and its region. We spent a day a the Detroit Institute of Arts, another at the Detroit Zoo (where my mother and her brothers entertained all of us in the penguin house by naming the penguins after various characters in the ongoing Watergate drama that was tearing apart Richard Nixon's presidency), another at Greenfield Village, etc. Wherever we went that summer, though, we would get to "certain areas" of the city, and the adults would all hiss, "make sure your doors are locked!" We went to the neighborhood in which my mother had grown up, and it was block after block of boarded-up and burnt-out houses (this was just six years after the riots). My uncles explained that when "they" moved in, all of the "decent people" moved out, and this is what happened.

I didn't realize how deeply engrained this racism was in me until the summer of 2002. My husband had a professional society meeting in Atlanta, and we turned it into a mini-vacation. We drove to his folks' place in Durham, North Carolina, then on to Atlanta, and from there we went to central Florida. In Atlanta, while he was in meetings all day, I was out exploring the city via its public transportation system. (I have never adjusted to city driving, despite having lived in southeastern Michigan most of my adult life.) So, I went to the art museum, the Coca-Cola museum, the state capitol, etc. I also went to the Martin Luther King, Jr. center.

To get to the MLK center, I took the Metro train to a certain stop, then walked several blocks through one of "those" areas, and then found myself at the Center. There was an exhibit of photographs about lynching. If you ever get a chance to see one of these exhibits, approach it with trepidation. For me, going in, lynching was just a word with vaguely sinister connotations. The hour I spent with those photographs - most taken by people who were proud to be part of the experience - was one of the most devastating and chilling hours of my life. I walked out of that exhibit a different person, a person who had been confronted with evil beyond all understanding. One photograph showed a little blond girl in a cute little pinafore dress looking up at the dead black man hanging from the tree, and the little girl was smiling. I kept going back to that picture, and each time, I felt as though the ground were giving way under me. The little girl looked like me when I was that age, and I think that's what I found so compelling. How would such an experience warp and change you? Would you ever get over that early imprinting?

I toured the rest of the center and said a prayer at Dr. King's grave. And then I did the thing that stripped off all of the veneers and showed me to myself in a new and ugly light. I took aside one of the staff members and asked if there were some other way to get back to central Atlanta that didn't involve walking back through "that" neighborhood. The look of pity and barely concealed disdain she gave me haunts me to this day. As she gave me directions, I realized what I had just said. You see, when I took her aside, I thought I was saying, "This little country girl from northern Michigan doesn't understand big cities. Please help me." When I saw the look on her face, I realized that what I had just said was, "This middle-aged middle-class woman would prefer to not offend her eyes with how poor people live; and because she feels a certain sense of entitlement because of her skin color and class, she expects that others will ease her way in life." All the way back to the hotel, I tried to tell myself that I had truly meant the first; but I knew that I meant the second. I knew that I had to confront that latent racism and classism and that I had to recognize the sense of privilege I carry with me.

These are not easy admissions to make; this has not been an easy post to write; I spent a lot of time this week agonizing over what to say, what to leave out; and I sit here now looking at these words and wondering if I should say them out loud. I am going to publish this post, and I am going to ask that those who read it understand that until we can look at the faces of those in the crowds of evildoers and see ourselves, we cannot overcome evil. Until we can look in the faces of those we have seen as "others" and see fully formed people, we cannot begin to heal our world. It's funny, as I was writing along, I kept stopping to put in the various museum links; it was my way to keep from getting to the heart of this post.

For the record, when I left the MLK Center and walked to the alternate bus stop the lady had indicated, I saw myself in a new light, and I walked back through "that" neighborhood to the Metro train stop. Like the Magi at the end of T. S. Eliot's Marvelous poem "The Journey of the Magi,"
this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

Work in Progress Wednesday - #25

2011-01-26T06:29:00.000-05:00

Here it is, another Wednesday already! To satisfy your longings for crafty goodness, please check out the other posts connected to Tami's WIPW.

I'm a little loopy this morning because I had to stay up to listen to the President's speech last night. I am avoiding the radio this morning because I get very tired of all of the analysis and the rehash. At the beginning of the speech, I wound a yarn cake from the next skein of the teal Malabrigo for the Every Way Wrap because I am within a couple of inches of finishing the first skein! Yay!

I have learned to not try knitting something complicated when I'm feeling sleepy, so I sat and really listened to the rest of the speech; breaking into song - "Once in love with Barry!" - only when he was talking about health care reform and otherwise confining myself to the occasional burst of applause. My husband, the moderate Republican, was not amused at my antics. Too bad!

We had a pretty cold weekend here, so I spent a lot of time in the sewing room. I got the third section of the Cone Nebula quilt done:

This thing is already HUGE, and I still have nine sections to go. I had to lay out the first three sections on the bedroom floor, and then sort of shoot the picture around the corner:

I am very pleased with how this is coming along; it's as though I'm seeing a picture in my mind coming to life. While I was setting up and taking this picture, I had an observer:

Baby Boy wasn't quite sure what I was doing, but it didn't seem to be threatening him, so he just watched. On the other hand, I did develop technical difficulties with the sewing machine in the course of Sunday afternoon. For some reason, the fabric just wasn't feeding through very well. Can anyone figure out what the problem was?

When I tried addressing the problem, I got some back talk:

My little cat mommy's heart is swelling with love as I look at this picture!

I am about halfway through Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns. This is a work of history written with a journalist's eye for detail. The book tells the story of the Great Migration of African-Americans from the South to the North and West of the U.S. over the middle part of the twentieth century. She follows three people from their childhoods through their lives in the South, their decision to migrate, their migration, and their lives afterward. Along the way, she gives us historical data, sociological studies, and other broader information. I am seeing American history in a new way, and I'm seeing a lot of things in my life and my family's life in a new way - putting into a new context things that were said by my Detroit-area relatives (some of whom were part of the "white flight" from the city in the 1960s).

The Warmth of Other Suns

2011-01-22T09:28:00.000-05:00

First of all, thank you to those who sent good wishes my way regarding my bout of illness last week. I have a good friend who got a liver transplant last week; I have friends who have survived cancer; I have friends and family members who have gone through divorce and the loss of children. When I consider that my only illnesses are depression and migraines, I feel as though I am one of the lucky ones. I occasionally have mildly debilitating episodes; but I haven't been to an emergency room for the first one in over 30 years or the second one ever.

I did spend a day home from work this week with a migraine (one of only about four or five days of work I've missed from migraine in my life), but that gave me the opportunity to get a real start on Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns. I am only about a quarter of the way into this book, but I'm already under its spell. I am a "white" woman from northern Michigan - French Canadian on my mother's side (my mother's was the first generation to speak English only) and English-Scotch-German on my father's side (with my generation the first to send a significant number to college) - and I grew up unaware of the sea of privilege in which I lived. As I have read the books I have over the last year or so about the experiences of various groups, I have been forced to step outside of my own life and to see the world from new perspectives and in new ways.

Wilkerson's book is filled with stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things in the midst of circumstances so beyond my understanding that I'm almost treating it as fiction. Surely people who built bus stations in the 1920s South didn't have to build two separate waiting rooms and four separate restrooms (white men, white women, black men, black women)! Surely police officers didn't stop people at train stations and rip up their tickets so that they couldn't leave for the North! Surely grown adults didn't expect other grown adults to step off the sidewalk into the street just because of the color of their skin! No, these things couldn't have happened in this country! Wilkerson's book shows us segregation in intimate details like this. She gives us statistics and broad sociological theories, but she also puts us in a cotton field picking 7000 pieces of cotton in a single day and helps us to feel the pain in our backs and legs.

When I was a girl my mother told me a story from the summer she was 17. It was 1948, and she and her mother traveled from Detroit to Virginia to visit a cousin. One day, as the three of them approached a store, my mother noticed an older (black) woman also approaching the store. My mother, being the polite young person she was, held the door for the woman, who began trembling and held back. A quarter of a century later, my mother recounted with wonder that the woman would not go through the door. The cousin hissed, "Don't make a scene!" and dragged my mother into the store. This was a defining moment for my mother, who was a staunch political liberal to her dying days. She gave her children a view of the world of race relations that looked far beyond the insular narrowness of rural northern life. That older woman who hung back and refused to walk through the door held by a teenager in Virginia over 50 years ago has informed my life in so many positive ways; as I read Wilkerson's book, I've thought about her and am now finally understanding what her life was probably like.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #24

2011-01-19T06:34:00.000-05:00

It's been a couple of weeks since I participated in the WIPW, so I'm hoping I'm still welcome to play along. Please be sure to check out the other great posts that can be found at Tami's blog.

Last Wednesday, we had four inches of snow. There are serious perks to living in my corner of southeastern Michigan, and one of them is the mild winters so that four inches of snow seems like a big deal. Anyway, I am the snow shoveler in the family, so I was not the blogger last week.

On Saturday, we had quilt guild, but I was staggering under the weight of a bout of depression so intense it was scary. It had been building up for several days and let loose with full fury during the night. I have spent 35 years with this disease and its flare-ups, and I know that the worst thing I can do when I'm under attack is to go along with it. So, I shoved myself out of bed and out of the house and off to a meeting where I had to be social and friendly and cheerful and not drag anyone else down. After the formal meeting, about 60 people gathered in a classroom and, in small groups, made quilt tops for the guild's charity. Here is the top my group produced:

The picture is a little blurry, but you can get the general idea. I spent most of the afternoon hiding behind a sewing machine mindlessly sewing strips together. It was a good therapy. I was with friends, and for most of the afternoon the conversation consisted of "Press seams open or to the sides?" "Do we want more yellow here or more blue?" Anyway, we were pleased with our final product.

Of course, I got home and was weepy much of the evening. I finished reading The Great Stink. This is a novel about a soldier home from the Crimean War. He is battling PTSD (not a term known in the 1850s) and is an engineer on the London sewer project. Let's just say that this book may have been a contributing factor to my depression. It's well written, pretty gross in places (you can almost see and smell the contents of the sewers - 'nuf said!), and the characters are interesting. If you want a view of Victorian London that doesn't involve high society, this is a good book for that.

Here are some actual works in progress:

This is the Every Way Wrap in full and closeup. It's not very far along, but I'm in the cabling area, and I LOVE doing cables. I use the technique that doesn't use a separate needle. (Basically, if you have a four-stitch cable, you slip all four stitches off the left needle onto the right needle; then, if you have to hold the first two stitches in front, you put the left needle across the front, pick up the first two slipped stitches; then, you slide all four stitches off the right needle, pick up the two "live" stitches with the right needle, and slip them back on to the left needle. At that point, you have crossed the stitches and can then knit them in the correct order.) It's awkward as anything the first few times you do it, but then you realize that you will never again drop a cable needle or have to go scrambling for it in the bag.

December in the sewing room was present-making time, and the room had to be cleaned after the holidays:

So, I spent the first non-holiday Sunday of the year cleaning, and then this past Sunday, I was able to work on the Cone Nebula quilt. It seems that no matter how much fabric I cut, I always have to spend a considerable amount of time cutting more fabric because I don't have the right ones cut. So, this was as far as I got this weekend (yes, the table wasn't big enough, and I had to bring the ironing board over):

I love how, in the lower picture, there is that splash of bright blue off to the left. When I bought that fabric, I bought it as a dark; however, when held up against really dark fabrics, it's bright. Color value is all relative!

I have ~~two~~ three cute cat pictures, and then I'll sign off. First up, the Big Guy just looked SO cute here:

Then, the Princess has her favorite fellow treating her right:

Finally, the Brat Cat is on her favorite perch - mainly because it's mobile!

(I love how she's looking at the phone to see what's so interesting!)

Have a good week, everyone!

What I'm Watching, part 2

2011-01-08T17:03:00.000-05:00

After I signed off this morning, I thought about the movies I saw this past year, and I realized that there was one movie I saw twice in the theater and would gladly have paid to see a third time, and that was the new Star Trek movie (at least I think it was this past year). Now, I have lived in the world of Star Trek ever since I was a little kid in the late 1960s, and my mother was adamant that there was to be no kid-initiated disturbances in the house on Thursday evenings. In my teens I read synopses of all of the episodes (there were books with these synopses in short story form). The year I graduated from college, the first movie came out. In my late 20s the first of the new series started. I have never attended a convention, but I have seen at least some of the episodes of all of the series (I don't remember the cartoon series from the 1970s, though), and I have seen all of the movies in the theater (sometimes more than once).

A few years ago, after we'd been to Galaxy Quest, I was describing it to a co-worker as a parody of Star Trek. "I have never seen any of the Star Trek shows or movies," she said. I blurted out, "You have my deepest sympathies." Neither of us knew what to make of the other, but I have never been able to mention such things around her again in all the years we've worked together. What a tragically limited life she's lived!

Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I'm not just about British history in my tastes in literature and movies. I've definitely earned the geek credentials.

What I'm Reading (and Watching)

2011-01-08T09:18:00.000-05:00

If it turns out that I have already read the best books I'm going to read all year, I can live with that. Connie Willis' twinset of Blackout and All Clear are among the most wonderful books I have ever read in my life. Perhaps I exaggerate, perhaps I am still in the spell of these books about time travelers caught in the Battle of Britain, or perhaps these books are full of well-rounded characters, a vivid sense of the time and place, and a palpable overwhelming sense of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. If you have never read a science fiction novel in your life but have thought you might like to read one some time, these two novels are a wonderful gateway - mainly because the science of time travel is kept mostly in the background and is strictly a plot device that gets our well-informed characters into an important and pivotal moment in world history.

One of the points that these books make is that we are timebound creatures who simply do not know how the big picture is going to work out, and we certainly don't know how our individual actions fit into the larger narrative around us. The people in London during the Blitz didn't know if they would survive as individuals, and they didn't know if their country would survive. They did know that if the nation didn't survive, that the world would be a much worse place; they were holding the line against one of the greatest evils in human history. There is a moment during the VE celebration where one of our time travelers comes across a middle-aged man sobbing profusely right after the sounding of the final all-clear siren. She asks him what's wrong, and he says, "That's the most beautiful sound in the world." This set of books shows in exhaustive detail what lies behind that statement.

I have some minor cavils with these books - there are some passages that would have benefited from more editing - when I would start saying, "Okay, dark room, filled with half-seen dangers, got that. Please move along." I also very much wanted the book to last about 10 more pages, but then about what would I have dreamed if the author had done that work? One more note: I finished the first book, screamed, and ran upstairs to grab the second book. Seriously, have both books on hand when you start the first one. I started reading Friday morning, Dec. 31, went off to a wedding, came home and read into the evening. On Saturday, after church and a walk, I read all afternoon (I am the reason that the University of Michigan lost its bowl game - they were winning until I got back from my walk, and then I sat in the same room as the television - sorry!). On Sunday, after church and a walk, I again read all afternoon (and the Detroit Lions won their game - go figure). I read all Monday morning until I went to work, then spent the evening reading. In other words, about a thousand pages over a long weekend; it's fun to do that once in a while!

During the holiday break, we saw The King's Speech, and while it's not the best movie I saw in 2010 - the 2006 movie The Lives of Others probably was - it was deeply engrossing, well written, and expertly acted (but, get real, I would watch Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush on a bare stage reading the phone directory at each other). It was kind of fun watching this movie in midweek and then reading the Connie Willis books a few days later - at one point, one of the children makes a crack about the "K-k-king's st-st-stammer" and is reproved by a nearby adult. Because of the movie, I had a context in which to more fully appreciate the moment. In other words, don't let the Oscar hype prevent you from seeing this lovely movie.

Happy New Year - Work in Progress

2011-01-05T06:41:00.000-05:00

Back last February I posted on my friend's blog some goals for 2010. I thought it would be fun to revisit those and see how close I came.

read at least two serious books a month - I call this accomplished. I read a lot of really good books this year and not just silly books.
finish the sweater for me and make a sweater for my sister - I finished my sweater, but my sister and I have not yet reached closure on what I'm going to make for her. She wants a knitted blanket, and I'd rather make her a quilt if I'm going to go large and flat.
finish my scrap clearing project and get at least three quilts out of it - I got one large quilt, one wallhanging, and a pillow... hmmm
Make the two or three charity quilts that are sitting in the sewing room glaring balefully at me - done
Be a gracious volunteer chair for the guild's show and then not volunteer for the next time - I so enjoyed being the volunteer chair for the show this year that I've already volunteered for next time.
Finish the quilted wall hanging in time for the show - done
Think really hard about making one or two quilts for the raffle at the hospital - The large scrap quilt will be for the next fundraiser at the hospital - done
Get good at spinning with the spindle - err, nope, not even close, but I am getting better at it. Last week, I realized that I'm still spinning very thick yarn, but it is getting more even.
Lose 15 pounds - ha! I haven't even gone near the scale since the summer.
Stop being so goal oriented - Yeah, right!

Before I get to the goals for 2011, some pictures of kitty cats! First off, the Brat Cat LOVES the new footstool (and matching seat cushion):

Since Hubby hasn't yet gotten around to using this as a footstool, I have moved it over next to his chair, and the cats have figured out that when they are on the stool, they are at the perfect height for Daddy-style cuddling. At least three of them have taken advantage of that; of course the Brat thinks its hers, and she's made her displeasure known...

After finishing the baby jacket, I swatched for and cast on the Every Way Wrap from Interweave Knits Fall of 2009. I started it last year around this time, but the yarn I was using was really wrong for the project - the stitches simply got lost in all of the color changes and the fuzziness of the yarn. So, I'm using a crisper yarn with simpler color changes (Malabrigo Rios in Teal, in case you are wondering), and I'm making it on Size 7 (4.5 mm) needles, which means my gauge is way off (21 stitches per 4 inches, instead of the 16 noted in the pattern). Because of the nature of the pattern, though, I feel comfortable just going up to the maximum number of cast-on stitches and winging it from there.

The next picture was taken just this morning when I was feeding the cats. The Princess Kitty gets a bit imperious when I'm not moving fast enough, but in this picture, she's just annoyed that I keep flashing the bright light in her face instead of putting her dish down.

And now, here are my goals for 2011:

Continue reading serious books - there is so much to learn!
Read up on and attend some meetings regarding the drain commission and its work.*
Get good at spinning with the spindle, smoothing out the yarn and making it thinner.
Be a gracious volunteer coordinator for the guild's weekend of workshops at the end of July.
Do not volunteer to make soul-sucking quilts - if they hurt to make, maybe they shouldn't be made.
Finish the Cone Nebula quilt.
Play with screen printing and other techniques.
Finish the Every Way Wrap and make other fun-to-knit projects
Post here at least twice a week - Wednesdays and Saturdays

Of course, there are assumptions here that I'll continue to be a very good employee, continue to try to be a good wife, figure out the whole church thing (do I just keep drifting along because I cannot imagine not being part of that community?), and feed the cats twice a day while cleaning their boxes once a day. These are all things that don't need to be listed, right?

Do you have goals for the coming year? What are they? How do you know when you've accomplished them?

*We went to a funeral home last evening for the husband of a friend of ours. I had never met the man, but he was a landscape architect who was responsible for a lot of the public landscape in our area. After looking at his projects and talking to one of his colleagues for quite a while, I really want to learn more.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #21

2010-12-29T07:09:00.000-05:00

This isn't about a work in progress - although if you want to see works in progress, check out Tami's blog for several cool projects! This is about a work completed.

Yeah!! The baby jacket is done! I have about enough yarn that I could have done one more row on each sleeve.... When I finished the body of the jacket, I realized that I had very little yarn left, so instead of trying to knit two sleeves flat and sewing them in, I weighed the yarn and divided it into two balls, then I picked up stitches around the armscyes, and started knitting out from there. I finished this on Sunday afternoon, December 26, at 4:37p, and we left for my sister's house about 15 minutes later....

Here's a story: Hubby Dearest is both the coordinator of the Mass Coordinators (the people who make sure that all of the key positions are staffed and that the tasks are getting done) and the scheduling coordinator for all of the liturgical ministries in our parish. He had been sending out beg-and-pleads for weeks for people to staff the four Christmas Eve Masses and the one Christmas Day Mass. The Christmas Day Mass and the Midnight Mass schedules got filled quickly. (We were both on the Midnight Mass schedule.) The early evening Masses were not filling, and I was muttering about people who became ex-husbands because they dragged their wives to multiple Christmas Eve Masses. Finally, the 5p and the overflow 5:10p Masses filled out enough so that he could stop worrying. We went to the 7p and got there early enough so that I could train a brand-new altar server (we generally only have one adult filling that role). She wanted to stick around and attend the Midnight because it had been years since she'd been to one.

So, after we cleared up the 7p Mass, the three of us went into the parish lounge. Of course I pulled out the baby jacket and was knitting frantically when our fairly new pastor came through the lounge. "Oh, I need to find a relaxing hobby, and I've been thinking about taking up knitting!" Hubby Dearest snorted, and I looked up from some dropped stitches that I was picking up and counting and muttering at. "Ben, if you want to expand your swear word vocabulary, this is a wonderful hobby," I said in all seriousness. This is not the sort of statement most people would make to a priest, but I've been a church mouse most of my life. He looked sort of startled, and then he grinned, and then the four of us had a real conversation about his job and its stresses.

Oh, and two weeks ago, I mentioned the stuff going on at my job. I am trying really hard to not count my chickens before they hatch, but a high-ranking person in my building came to my office an hour before the big meeting, and we had a really positive conversation about my contributions to the life of the building at present and going forward. I am pretty sure I'll be okay.

Christmas Eve

2010-12-24T15:23:00.000-05:00

First, here is a picture showing the progress on the jacket:

I have been watching the diminishing of the stash of this one-of-a-kind hand-dyed-by-me yarn with growing trepidation. When I finished the front (yay) and seamed the shoulders (with a couple of pieces of the yarn I previously considered "waste" pieces), I was left with very little - between 1.2 and 1.4 ounces. I carefully wound off half the remaining yarn into a separate ball. The jacket's instructions call for flat knitting the sleeves from the cuff up, then seaming them, and then seaming to the jacket. I was really anxious about the amount of yarn, so I figured out how many stitches I needed, picked those up around each armscye, and now I am knitting the two sleeves in the round from the shoulder down. I switched from size 3 to size 2 needles - and I have a metal set and a bamboo set, so I'm really making this up as I go along. I haven't worked on it today because I've been rushing to finish other presents. This isn't "due" until Sunday evening. Can anyone say "down to the wire"?

Next, is an essay I wrote for the multicultural newsletter at my workplace a couple of weeks ago. It was reprinted in my parish's bulletin, and I didn't exactly ask permission to publish it here, but I'm pretty sure it's okay.

I do not like Christmas. I grew up in one of those families that gets referred to as “dysfunctional.” As an adult, going “home” for Christmas was a source of such trauma that I would frequently try to induce illness during the month of December as a way of avoiding the whole thing. My mother’s death several years ago meant that my sisters and I had to learn new ways of celebrating the holiday as a family, and we have since evolved newer, more peaceful traditions.

Over the years, though, there is one tradition with which I was brought up and which I have come to cherish more and more as the years go by, and that is Midnight Mass. It is an utterly illogical thing to gather people in a public building in the middle of the night– and, yet, it is a profoundly human thing to band together on one of the coldest, darkest nights of the year, light some candles, tell old stories, and share a simple meal.

In my parish church, my husband and I arrive before 11 p.m., and it is my task to light bottle candles (bottles with wick and wax – very sturdy and breeze-proof) and put them behind the Stations of the Cross sculptures along the walls of the church. With very subdued lighting from the high ceiling and the candles flickering, the church is quite dim and induces a state of calm. People speak in hushed voices as they arrive and greet family and friends.

At 11:30, with the lights still down, we have a service of lessons and carols in which we hear the marvelous stories about the kingdom that is and will be - about lions and lambs lying down together, about a world in which all people are seen as moving toward their best selves, and about finding joy within the present reality. These words below from Archbishop Oscar Romero are read each year.

(First, some context: In December, 1978, in the midst of civil war the only Christmas Eve Mass in the nation of El Salvador was at the cathedral in San Salvador, and Romero, the nation’s archbishop sent these words out over the radio. As you read them, please recall that the bishop was talking to his people out of the deep well of a particular shared culture. I am not putting these in this newsletter to exclude anyone.)

This is the Christian’s joy: I know that I am a thought in God, no matter how insignificant I may be – the most abandoned of beings, one no one thinks of. Today, when we think of Christmas gifts, how many outcasts no one thinks of! Think to yourselves, you that are outcasts, you that feel you are nothing in history: “I know that I am a thought in God.” Would that my voice might reach the imprisoned like a ray of light, of Christmas hope – might say also to you, the sick, the elderly in the home for the aged, the hospital patients, you that live in shacks and shantytowns, you coffee harvesters trying to garner your only wage for the whole year, you that are tortured: God’s eternal purpose has thought of all of you. He loves you, and, like Mary, incarnates that thought in his womb. http://www.beyondborders.net/Christmas/Romero-Advent.htm (translated from the original Spanish)

These words remind me that I am part of a vast family of humanity that is not bound by time, geography, language, or creed. These words creep into my heart and heal the broken places, and each year, I leave the church in the middle of Christmas Eve night feeling a little more whole, a little more human, a little more free. I am not sure that I will ever love Christmas, but I do love these moments of peace and simple fellowship.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #19

2010-12-15T06:34:00.000-05:00

This post is brought to you by Tami's Amis and Other Crochet. Check out all of the cool projects on Work in Progress Wednesday. Seriously, if it weren't for feeling guilty about missing last week, I wouldn't be here this morning. There is some heavy stuff coming down at work today regarding the staff reorganization that's been in the works for months, and I'm dreading the whole thing. I think most of our jobs are safe, but they're all going to be changed in significant ways. Anyway, on to the lighter stuff.

The baby jacket is around to the front! I was able to get an inch done last night at book club, and I'll be working on this during the big meeting today (because I'm Liz, that's why).

Okay, now the pressure is on. Will I finish this by the time of the family party on December 26? I'd better knit more often (instead of spending my evenings reading books!).

I mentioned the book club, and in my last WIPW post two weeks ago, I mentioned the book Little Bee. A commenter asked about my reactions, and I will just say that I felt completely traumatized by the time I finished it. At book club last night, there were five of us who had read it, and every one of us had simply stopped at various points, put the book down, and walked away for hours or days. If you regularly read Nicholas Kristof's columns, you have read the sort of material that is in this book. I am not recommending it; but I will say that it is very well written with two strong narrators, who each speaks in the first person (they take turns telling the story).

My next book will either be The Great Stink by Clare Clark, about the cholera epidemic in London in the 1850s that led to a modern sanitation system for that city or two new books by Connie Willis. At book club last night, the next picker brought us three very serious books, and then she held up Blackout, and we all swooned. She was annoyed, but we were firm. It was fun.

Happy birthday to my sister! You'll always be younger than me!

The Tuffet by Myra Mitchell

2010-12-05T17:59:00.000-05:00

There is a particular holiday coming in three weeks, and I decided to make a present for my hubby dearest. A year ago in the summer when we were in North Carolina to visit his folks, we stopped at a nice little shop called Thimble Pleasures in Chapel Hill. I had heard about the shop on Annie Smith's podcast. This is a very nice shop, and it's well worth the visit. While there, I looked for a footstool pattern that Annie had mentioned. When I showed it to Hubby, he said that it would be a very nice addition to our home. "The Tuffet" pattern has been hanging over my sewing table ever since, with occasional questions from Hubby about when we would get a new footstool. This past summer, when we were in the Upper Peninsula, he found some nice flannels that he really liked.

This weekend, Hubby was at a church thing all day Saturday, so I took advantage of the time. Now, he is a large man, so I went in a different direction than the directions indicate. I bought a foot stool at Pier One and a piece of round wood at a home improvement store. Look at the nice fit:

Here's a close-up of the stool:

At work on Friday, I had consulted with the building manager and one of her staff members about how to attach the board and the stool. The three of us talked things over and came up with this idea:

I am married to a computer guy, so I knew we had these in the house. I secured the board and the stool to each other, marked the board, and drilled some holes:

Here are two views of the board, newly stained and with the zip ties in.

Then, using a bread knife, I cut the foam, using a circle template. From this point forward, I pretty much stuck with the instructions in the pattern (which you could get from Thimble Pleasures and probably at your local quilt shop as well).

I traced out the foundation pattern on to eight pieces of muslin. You could use up to 64 pieces of fabric in the tuffet, but I had three fabrics. I went for a walk and mulled over how to approach the problem. I realized that I could make my pieces different sizes. I decided that each foundation would have a single-sized piece of light fabric, a double-sized piece of dark fabric, a single-sized piece of light, and a quadruple-sized piece of the bright fabric. 1+2+1+4=8 Here is one of the marked foundation pieces:

Here are the fabrics in the correct proportions:

I did the piecing onto the foundations:

Here is the button for the top of the tuffet. It's from a coconut shell, and I lucked into it at my local big-box fabric store.

I forgot to take pictures of the stuffing and stapling processes. Here is what the end result looks like:

Here is the final product:

I really liked working with this pattern. It is well written and easy to understand. You will want to read the instructions carefully before purchasing your supplies and definitely before beginning the task. I like the finished project, and I hope Hubby Dearest likes it, too.

Finally, because no post on this blog would be complete without a cat picture, here is the Brat Cat scarfing down the remains of the peanut butter granola on which I snacked during the sewing time - because if it's available, it's hers.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #17

2010-12-01T06:23:00.000-05:00

I am hoping this is a quick post. I'm running late this morning, for some reason. This post is part of a ring of posts, the rest of which can be found on Tami's website. Do go and check out all of the cool projects people are working on!

First up, I showed this in my Monday post, but here is the second section of the Cone Nebula quilt, all sewn together. This section fits next to the first section. This coming week, I'll be working on the next section down from the first section. Yes, I need to get a shot of the sections next to each other. I'll do that next week. I promise.

I have been working along on the Haiku baby jacket for my great nephew. This jacket is knit side-to-side, starting at one front lapel, working around the back, and finishing at the other side lapel. In this shot, you'll see that I am on the final third of the back. (The sleeves are knit separately.)

(I pinned the jacket to the design wall in the sewing room. The little yellow dots are the heads of the flat flower pins.) I ran into a situation with the back shoulder where I had an odd number of stitches. Now, a good knitter would have carefully reread the pattern, tinked back to the mistake, and reknit. Nope. Not me. I worked with the odd stitch for a while, decided I had probably doubled up stitches at some point and merrily added another stitch. Then, a couple of days after discovering the error, actually re-read the pattern, etc. At that point, I thought, "Baby jacket, cute design, pretty color, no other knitters in the family," and I just threw in a random decrease in each of the next two rows. So, that shoulder is a little off..... oops!

Last week, I said that I had just started reading The Pillars of the Earth. Judy commented on the soft-porn aspect of the book. I read the entire book over the course of the Thanksgiving Day weekend, finishing late on Saturday afternoon. Here is my summary:

The heart of the book is a description of the challenges of financing and constructing a large building filled with light and air in an era of stonework and with machines powered by muscle and water. Lots of attention is paid to the sources of the materials, the details of how the construction was done, much peering over the shoulder of the master builders as they confronted various problems with load bearing, wind resistance, mortar quality, labor relations, etc.

There are also a lot of pages devoted to discussion of the political scene in England in the 12th century (the century between the Norman Conquest and Magna Carta), with glimpses of the personalities of the major players and the maneuverings of a lot of the minor players. Admittedly, this is fictionalized, but the era and its politics (both secular and religious) are brought to vivid life.

There is a lot of description of how people made money, produced crops, conducted commerce, entertained themselves (with their clothes on), and organized their society. Because one of the characters travels, we see some of French society as well as Spanish society at the height of the Moorish reign.

I should also warn the sensitive reader of the following:
Rapes and/or attempted rapes: 5 (all described in lavish detail)
violent deaths lavishly described: 7-10 immediately come to mind
Non-violent sex scenes, also lavishly described: perhaps a half dozen

Is this one of the best books I've ever read? No, not even close. Is it engaging and interesting and worth reading? I think so, especially if British history and the Middle Ages are of interest to you.

For my book club, I've started reading Little Bee by Chris Cleaves. I'm not very far in. I'll report next week.

Cone Nebula Quilt - Part 3

2010-11-29T07:23:00.000-05:00

I have completed the second section of the quilt, and I thought I would show you how I sew together a block so that I keep all of the pieces in order. This is especially critical in a quilt where there is not a regular pattern to the blocks. In other quilts I've made with the kaleidoscope block, I've only used three colors, and it's been easy to keep track of where I am. With this complicated design, I've had to get very systematic. So, I lay out a section of 15 blocks.

(This is seen from the right end of the section.) I use a specialty ruler to cut out the pieces. (The ruler is two floors away from this computer, and I'm not running upstairs to get the brand name. Any quilt shop or big-box craft store with a selection of rulers will probably offer these rulers.)

I start off by going through and sewing all of the corner triangles onto the long triangles.

Then I lay the solo triangles on top of its neighboring dual triangle.

I stack those in order and take them to the sewing machine.

I sew the pairs together and press the seams open. (I press most of my seams open, not to one side or other. This make for flatter seams, and it's easier for me to line up the seams when sewing units together.)

Then I sew together the pairs of triangles.

When I have two sets of pieces,

I sew the final seam in the block.

Then I start at the upper left of the section and sew together one block at a time, going row by row. I sew the blocks together as I complete them and sew the rows together as I sew them. Here is the second section, all sewn together.

As I was working yesterday afternoon, I was not the only one working in the sewing room. The Brat Cat, when she wasn't walking around on the table, moving my pieces around, was primping.

Meanwhile, Hubby Dearest and Princess Kitty were cuddling.

Here is a shot of the craftwork done by the kitties in the house (note the upper right corner of this picture) as well as the princess getting some extra attention from her favorite fellow.

Finally, this weekend, I made the family's fruitcakes. My mother started making fruitcakes in the mid-1960s, and when she died seven years ago, as the oldest daughter, I picked up the banner and am carrying it forward. Here's a shot of the prep (it took about three hours from the time I walked into the kitchen until the cakes went in the oven).

Here are some of the fruitcakes (if my sister sees this, please note that I used the "atomic" cherries; you and your daughter can stop hyperventilating about whether I'm ruining the family's Christmas).

Really, finally, here's Baby Boy being cute - which is what he does best.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #16

2010-11-24T06:35:00.000-05:00

As I say every Wednesday, this is part of a ring sponsored by Tami, and she has lots of talented people taking part in this weekly check-in of crafty progress.

I want to start off by responding to a very interesting comment I got last week from Urban Exile (and if you haven't discovered her non-crafty blog, please be sure to read it; she has a lot of other interesting things to say).

No, Liz, I could not see you had started on the back. The abstract form I see before my eyes does not say jacket to me at all, and that only increases my admiration of your ability to hold the abstract concept of the jacket in your mind as you slowly construct it, knot-by-knot. Amazing.

After I read this comment, I dashed upstairs, held up the jacket-in-progress, and recited the comment to my non-crafting husband, who said, "She's right. I see you sitting there with a ball of yarn, two sticks, and a set of directions. As you work, I know that you can see a little boy wearing a jacket. I'm also amazed." When I took two steps back from these remarks, I could see the very odd enterprise in which we are engaged. We are challenging the manufactured, mass-produced world around us and going about the business of individualized, customized creation. We are taking pictures in our heads, simple materials, and many hours of our time, and bringing forth items that would not otherwise exist.
Folks, we need to keep crafting not just to produce objects (heck, I could walk into a random big-box store and pick up and pay for a cute jacket for my great-nephew in the time it's taking me to write this blog entry), but to keep these crafts alive. We need to keep this knowledge fresh in the culture in which we live. Those of us who have the need to make things and to learn how to make things perform a valuable service to the culture. We remind the culture of its roots and its possibilities.

I LOVE this commercial. The craft matters.

Here is the current progress on the jacket:

I haven't made a tremendous amount of progress, partly because I have just started reading Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. I have a dear friend who shares my taste in literature, and she thrust the book into my hands a few weeks ago and said, "READ this." So, I'm reading it. I haven't gotten very far in, but I'm hoping to make good progress this weekend. (No, I do not intend to see the mini-series.) Anyway, it's hard to read a big thick book and knit and cuddle kitties (I'm getting good at two out of three at a time).

I spent all of Sunday afternoon (really my only available extended sewing time) working on the Cone Nebula quilt. First up, here is the sewn-together first section!

Next is the long view of the laid-out second section. This seemed to take a very long time because even though I have a lot of fabric cut up, I kept running into the situation of not having the RIGHT piece of fabric. Arrgghh!!

Those bright dark blues in the picture do not look anywhere near that bright in person. Very interesting what the camera does. The little white stickers are the tracking numbers for the blocks. I am easily confused and learned a long time ago to mark as I go. The stickers have letters and numbers indicating placement, and the stickers show which patch is at the top of the block and the orientation of the block.

Have a good week everyone. Those of you in the U.S., I hope you have a nice Thanksgiving.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #15

2010-11-17T06:16:00.000-05:00

This is Wednesday, so be sure to check out all of the fun projects being shown in WIPW on Tami's blog. I check out most of the projects each week and find them interesting, inspirational, and colorful. Thank you, Tami, for hosting this!

I spent a lot of would-be knitting time this past week reading Brick Lane by Monica Ali. I will say that for a middle-aged Michigan woman who has spent most of her life in a mainstream middle American lifestyle, this book was a real stretch. I simply could not understand the passivity, the acceptance of fate, and the obedience the Bangladeshi women in this book exhibited. At some point, around page 100, I had a talk with myself along the lines of "this book isn't about you; it's about someone else; either slip into her life and see the world from her eyes or put the book aside." I really had to let go of huge parts of myself in order to read this book. Once I began to "see the world from her eyes," though, I realized that I was on a wondrous journey into a very different place than I ever could have imagined. I'm glad I read this book, and I know that I need to seek out other books like it. Parts of the book take place in the immigrant community in London, parts in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The characters are well rounded and believable (once you let go of your own cultural assumptions).

Anyway, I did get some knitting done! (And, that's why you came here today, I know.) Here is the jacket so far. You can see that I have started on the back.

There is a small group of women who gather several times a year and have a sewing-talking-eating day together. We are getting together the day after Thanksgiving, and I think I'll work on the jacket that day rather than take a sewing project.

I finished warping the loom this weekend and, yesterday morning while waiting for the dryer to get the towels just a little dryer, I started on the weft. Here is a beauty shot of the warped loom. (Yes, while hanging out near the washer and dryer, I'm adding fabric to the loom - maximizing that waiting time.)

If you peeked in at my Monday post, you saw the progress on the Cone Nebula quilt. If you didn't, here's a big picture of the work so far.

Well, that's all I have this week. I do want to say that it was a little disconcerting to watch the news coverage of the Big Engagement last evening because I remember getting up at some gosh-awful hour like 3a to watch Prince WAPL's* parents get married. It was the summer I graduated from college, and I took the day off from job hunting to sit with my sisters (one had just graduated from high school, and the other was half-way through high school), all of us in our pajamas deep into the morning, utterly fascinated by the whole thing. Diana was our contemporary and someone to whom we could relate. It was fun seeing her son last night. Life is funny, isn't it?

*William Arthur Philip Louis - one of the local newscasters in Detroit gave him this nickname at birth.

Cone Nebula Quilt - Part 2

2010-11-15T07:17:00.000-05:00

I had some extended time this weekend to work on the Cone Nebula Quilt. I have decided to work in chunks of 15 blocks - 5 across and 3 down - mainly because that fits nicely on my worktable and gives me room at one end to cut more pieces. I found that as I worked, I needed to cut additional pieces of some fabrics and go hunting for additional fabrics. As you will see in the pictures below, I have taken to heart the fact that I paid for both sides of the fabric. I have found this trick to be a quick way to get additional shading - pay attention to the green fabric that has leaves on it.

I am making use of commercially printed fabrics, fabrics that I have dyed, and fabrics that I have painted. The dark yellow fabric with squiggly light yellow lines is from a soy-wax batik class I took a year ago in the summer. Once I had laid out the bright fabrics for the 15 blocks, it was time to lay down the dark fabrics. I decided to lay down single-piece-wide "lanes" so that there would be some movement and variation within the darker sections.

I think that adds some subtle changes. Here's the big picture view from the end of the table.

Looking at this picture, the bright orange pieces really stick out, but when I go back to the source picture, there are very bright areas, and I really don't want this to be single-value quilt.

You may wonder why I am laying this out on the table and not on the design wall. The brutal fact is that my design wall doesn't hold individual pieces of fabric very well. It's great when I have blocks that I am arranging and holding up with pins, but when I'm working with small pieces of fabric, the table simply makes more sense to me.

Here are the first three blocks done and sewn together:

I am planning to quilt-as-I-go with these sections - I'll sew together the 15 blocks, then add batting and backing, quilt, then move on to the next section. It's a little nervy - it's assuming that I won't want to change any fabric placement, and I may hold off on the sandwiching and quilting until I have all of the large pieces done. I'm still thinking about that.

I have a practical issue to deal with in that the sewing room is not used as a sewing room every day. Most of the week, it's a cat snooze spot. So, to protect my work, I laid some pieces of cardboard over the layout....

Then, I put a large piece of cloth over that....

Then, I piled the uncut fabrics for the quilt on that....

And, finally, put a blanket over all of that - creating a snuggly cat bed....

In the end, I recognize who is in charge of the "sewing" room....

Have a good day, everyone.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #14

2010-11-10T06:24:00.000-05:00

I skipped last week's WIPW because I am a political geek, and my head was filled with numbers. (Also, except for the governor's race in my state, I was pretty upset about the results. 'nuf said - except that I am THRILLED with our new governor!! He is making all sorts of really great early decisions.) Anyway, this is part of Tami's WIPW ring, and I hope that you go check out the rest of the lovely projects in progress this week.

Here is the progress I made on the Cone Nebula quilt this past week:

Will you trust me that these two piles took several hours to iron and cut? I truly don't know how much I cut, but I figured I could make a good start. After making that first block and analyzing the picture, I decided it would make a lot more sense to do the layout in chunks of several blocks. I have a picture in my head of how I want the colors to interact with each other - and I keep going back to the Spitzer Telescope picture as reference. This coming weekend, I'm hoping to get some actual layout and sewing done.

The Haiku jacket for my great nephew is looking like this:

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I was commenting that the fabric of the jacket wasn't quite right. I was on size 6 (4mm) needles. I swatched on size 5 (3.75 mm) needles, but that wasn't much better. I didn't have a pair of size 4 needles in the right length, so I tried size 3 (3.25 mm) needles, and the fabric has a nice, tight weave (no tiny fingers will be able to poke through!), and the fabric has a better drape. The jacket's lapel is at the bottom of the picture, and that part that is sticking out is the shoulder area of the front (just to give you a reference).

Several months ago, Hubby dearest finally went through his clothes bureau and cleared out ill-fitting and worn-out clothes. This past Saturday, I went through those and sorted into four piles: trash, cleaning rags, rug rags, and St. Vincent's Thrift Shop. The rug rags I tore into strips, and this week, I have started warping a rug on the loom that I bought at the guild's summer show (because working full-time, doing volunteer work, reading good books, and having ~~two~~ three intense hobbies aren't enough). Anyway, I have wanted to weave ever since I was a little kid watching the neighbor lady on her big garage-sized rug loom. I go to places like Colonial Williamsburg and hang out in the weaving shed. Something about turning 50.....

It's a start, and I'm thrilled. I figure if I add a few strips every time I go into the basement, then I'll eventually have a rug.

I've also been reading. I finished the book on Chinese history and picked up Jacquelyn Mitchard's Still Summer. She has a podcast and a blog! Must seek out! I will say that I dearly love this woman's books. Her characters are like the people I encounter in my daily life, the problems they face are real, and the way the issues get resolved make sense. This book is really intense and quite frightening. She builds the suspense nicely and handles the resolution well. It is about a Caribbean cruise taken by four women who have known each other all their lives. Bad stuff happens, and they have to deal with it. I really don't want to spoil the plot beyond that.

This past week I read Barbara Vining's (Ruth Rendell's) Anna's Book. I've mentioned Lady Rendell before. I LOVE LOVE LOVE her writing. I'm not sure if I've mentioned here how I found her. I was in Aunt Agatha's bookshop in Ann Arbor a year or so ago, looking for a novel by P. D. James that I hadn't read. Unfortunately, I had read all of the novels they had, but there was a sign saying, "If you like P. D. James, you might also like Ruth Rendell."

Anna's Book takes place in both London in 1905 and London in the late 1980s. A baby is born in 1905 and dies as an old woman in the late 1980s, but who is this child and how did she come to be in the life she lived? Rendell knows how to set a scene, how to spoon out information, and how to keep you reading until the very end. It was a very engrossing book.

Right now I am reading Monica Ali's Brick Lane about a young Bangladeshi woman in an arranged marriage to a much older man. I'm only about 30 or so pages in, but it's good so far.

What are YOU reading? working on? worrying about? Let me know.

Oh!! Oh!! Oh!! So exciting! This evening, I'm going to a live taping of the Slate Political Gabfest! It's going to be in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan law school. I have been listening to this podcast for about four years, and it is my favorite podcast. I am SO thrilled.

Cone Nebula Quilt - Part 1

2010-11-01T07:24:00.000-04:00

This weekend, I finally cut the first pieces for a quilt I've been mentally planning and dreaming over for at least six or seven years. This is the Cone Nebula quilt, based on a picture I saw on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website several years ago. If you're not already checking this site regularly, you really should add this site to your habit; it has really interesting pictures every day, and you learn some science, too!

I was not able to find the link to this picture this morning, but this is the inspiration. A couple of years ago, I decided that I would do it in kaleidoscope blocks. Here is a test block I did just to remind myself how to make them:

You start by making the corner "ice cream cones," then sew those to the plain triangles until you have it all sewn together. Ideally, you have eight points meeting in the center.

A couple of years ago, I started coloring this version of the quilt, and I finished the coloring yesterday. After I took this picture, I put numbers down the side of the map and letters along the bottom so that I could keep track of the blocks.

Here are the dark fabrics I've been collecting for this quilt. I have them sorted with the darkest darks in the left column, the next darkest darks in the middle, and the medium darks on the right.

I plan to mix these up through the quilt, creating "lanes" of color. This will require some careful placement of fabrics. Here are the light/bright fabrics I selected for the non-dark pieces:

I really want high contrast between the darks and the lights. Here is the first block:

I have a sticker in the upper middle. It has the location code of the block, and the sticker is oriented so that it's readable when it's in the correct orientation. You can see that the points don't match in the center. I sewed the block twice. Looking at this picture, I may take it apart and resew it with different fabrics. I clearly need to do a lot of thinking as I go. I also cut the next few blocks:

Finally, I wanted to show you the true queen of the autumn, sprawled on the sideboard in our dining room.

Giveaway Results

2010-10-30T06:46:00.000-04:00

It's Saturday morning, and I don't want to spend the weekend at the computer, so I'm doing this first thing. Let's purge Liz' stash!

Sarah, the Student Knitter: I'll pop my 6-1/2" squares, the 3" squares, and a couple of fat quarters in the mail to you. I have not kept your address, so please send it to me privately. Thank you.

Lauren at Knitter's Space: I'll send you the 4" and 5" squares and some other larger pieces. Again, I'll need your address, so please send it privately. Thank you.

Faith, the Vampire Slayer: I'll send you the 2-1/2" squares, the 1-1/2" squares (wonderful for learning chain piecing and making 9-patch blocks), and some other larger pieces. I will need your address, sent privately.

If anyone else wants to chime in here, please do so. I'm hoping to go to the post office during my lunch hour on Wednesday with these packages.

Thank you, all, for helping me clear my sewing room!

Liz

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Pink Lemonade

2010-10-29T19:33:00.000-04:00

This post is part of the Blogger's Quilt Festival. The quilt I'm sharing began in a watercolor painting class one evening where I was just playing around, getting to know the paints.

The colors were all swirling around, greens and yellows, and then I slashed some red lines across in a cross-hatch. "Hmm!!" I thought, "That looks like a quilt."

I then knew it would have to be all 2-1/2" squares sewn together. I pulled all of my greens, yellows, reds, and some yellowish oranges out. For someone who likes to have a plan made up ahead, it was a real trick to make this look spontaneous and unplanned. Having to run to a quilt shop in midweek (I did this on a week's sew-cation) to get more red and yellow was an interesting experience. I took the quilt with me to show the folks in the shop. You know how you get SO close to something, you're not sure you see it any more? That's how I felt with this. When I unfolded it, and the gals in the shop gasped in amazement, I knew I had something special.

I made it to donate to our local hospital for a fundraising raffle. The gal in charge of the fundraiser immediately named it "Pink Lemonade." It was queen-sized - about 90" x 110" - and I had it quilted professionally.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #12

2010-10-27T06:20:00.000-04:00

This is part of a ring of posts that you can find on Tami's site. Thank you, Tami!

This will be a pretty quick post. I've been in head cold/migraine land for the last week or so and am only now feeling as though I'm going to be well again. I do want to say that I woke up this morning and realized that a week from now, we in the US will be awaking to airwaves free of political advertising. I am SO sick of Clown One accusing Clown Two of various half-whispered nefarious deeds and vice versa. Ick, ick, ick!

I went to the Fiber Expo at the county fairgrounds on Saturday (because I'd been looking forward to it, head cold be darned!) and here is what I got:

Yep, some Malabrigo yarn in Teal Feather for me to make up into the Every Way Wrap that was in Interweave Knits a year ago. I took a hard look at my sweater collection and realized that I didn't really have a decent blue sweater. While I was purchasing this from the Busy Hands booth, I bumped into a pal of mine, and we wandered around the rest of the expo. She spotted the roving in this picture and said it would make a great addition to the sweater. I agreed.

I have started on the jacket for my great nephew. I'm using size 6/4mm needles right now. I swatched on 5s last night because I think the fabric is a little loose, and that didn't help much. I may yet swatch on 4s and see about that. I know, real knitters swatch first and then start. snarf, snarf, snarf

In response to last week's post, Vivianne suggested that I do a giveaway on this blog of some of the fabrics I'm purging. That's a great idea! I have boxes of squares - 1-1/2", 2", 2-1/2", 3", etc (up to 6") - just really mixes of fabrics I had on hand when I tried taming the scraps into usable pieces. There are different numbers of squares, different color schemes, etc. If you want these, please leave a comment. If more than one person wants a particular size, I'll divide them up. I also have a batch of circles that I think are about 4" and a bag of half-square triangles (originally 2-1/2" squares, I think). Let me know if you want these.

No More Soul-Sucking Projects!

2010-10-21T19:26:00.000-04:00

There is something that happens to people of a certain age: You start noticing that there are fewer sands in the upper half of life's hourglass than in the lower half. There are many ways to respond to this, and my way has been to go read the books I really want to read, to learn skills I've always wanted to acquire, and to hang out with interesting people who have learned a few things.

A few years ago, when a certain person in my life said some truly horrible things to me, I realized that I didn't have to take it any more. It didn't matter how many years she'd been trying to tear me down while I tried to be kind and understanding; she would continue until she succeeded or one of us died. I broke off the relationship. It was hard, as the person means a lot to me; and I have since told her that I would be happy to have a pleasant conversation with her any time she wants to initiate it, but I'm not going to be screamed at and called by ugly names.

This past weekend, I went to the quilting retreat, and when I showed up, I announced that I had an ugly quilt that I was going to quilt and bind before I did anything fun. "Well, that's the way to feed your soul, Liz!" (The "NOT" was implied in the tone of voice.) When I pulled out Mr. Stripey, one of the gals in the group said, "I recognize those blocks." It seems that a now-deceased member of the guild would make batches of blocks in her pattern-of-the-moment and then donate the blocks to the guild for some other poor soul to make into a quilt - never enough blocks for a whole quilt, mind you. My friend said that I had put the blocks to good use (the hexagonal blocks that I divided in half).

As I quilted and bound (finishing up before bed time on Friday evening), I contemplated the comment about "feeding my soul," and I realized that I have a lot of fabrics in my stash that I picked up early on in my quilting career that I no longer like. I also have ugly-to-me fabrics given to me by various good folks. I have been gamely working these into projects over the years, but this weekend, I plan to purge. I plan to move fabrics out of my stash and into a box that will be donated to the quilt guild's charity quilt projects. Maybe someone else will look at these fabrics and say, "Oh, yummy!" Moreover, I am going to go through the boxes of donated fabrics in my basement right now and do some purging there. It's time to stop working with soul-sucking fabrics and on soul-sucking projects.

I also got Peppermint Candy quilted and bound. I would show you pictures, but the pix I have are blurry and not worth the hassle. Trust me. On Saturday morning, we had a field trip to the nearest quilt shop, a delightful shop called Mabelena's in Ortonville. I have lived in Michigan most of my life and in the greater Detroit metropolitan area for most of my adult life, and I would not have been able to make a reasonable guess about the location of this little town. Having spent an hour there, I wouldn't mind going back. The shop was a lot of fun with friendly people. One of the gals who didn't go on the trip needed batteries for her camera, and I was directed to the hardware store an easy two blocks away. The feed store across the street from Mabelena's had locally produced honey and maple syrup. It was a soul-satisfying trip.

I do have to make a confession; I am a sucker for good marketing. How, one might ask, does one get away with selling a fat quarter for $3? When one packages it cleverly. Isn't this cute? I giggled all the way to the register, where I happily handed over nine hard-earned dollars. Utterly darling. (Of course, I am also a sucker for fruit fabrics and have found fun ways of incorporating them into a variety of projects - that's pomegranate on the left, pineapple in the middle, and limes on the right.)

I spent the rest of the retreat playing with some fun scraps I had taken with me, and I actually produced a couple of small projects but only took a picture of one them (about 14 inches on a side).

We had a real variety of projects going, but I'm only showing faces of people who gave me permission to show their faces:

Here's Gayle's labor of love for her daughter (who had picked the fabrics).

Sharon was playing with pretty flowers all weekend.

Deb was working in the theme of red, white, and black.

Sherri was working with some fun colors.

Marge finished her bargello top.

Erika was tickled pink to finish the 10th-anniversary quilt for her son, just in time for his 13th anniversary!

I had a chance to work on my Abby hat, and I finished it this week. Here are a couple of beauty shots (it's awfully hard being your own model, and I ended up letting a CD case stand in for the top-down picture).

Now, see those colors in the hat? See how uplifting and life-affirming those colors are? Why, pray tell, would I EVER again choose to work in another palette? Every time I wear this hat, I will feel happy. (Isn't it great how the colors worked into rounds like that? Totally serendipitous, totally fabulous.)

Work in Progress & What I'm Reading Wednesday - #10

2010-10-13T06:30:00.000-04:00

This is part of a ring that can be found on on Tami's blog here.

First off, I want to start with a finished object. I am so ridiculously pleased with myself about this one. We have a room in our basement that a week ago looked like this:

Last Thursday evening I went out and bought a shelving unit. A couple of hours of putting together the unit, sorting, bagging for the trash, sweeping, and organizing brought this result:

Stuff is organized. Stuff I'm never going to use, ever, is gone. There is not cat food littered all over the floor. Proud, yes I am!

I have been knitting on Abby, and I realized a couple of weeks ago that my yarn (my first spinning) is much chunkier and more uneven than the yarn used in the pattern. A cowl this is not realistically going to be; however, it could be a hat for me (I have always had trouble with hat patterns because my head is HUGE). So, I started strategically decreasing. There are two blocks in the pattern on each row, and so I've been alternating blocks in which to do the decrease. By trying to maintain the lace pattern, I've been letting the pattern tell me when to decrease. No, I haven't taken decent notes. Arrrggghh. Here it is, with about half the stitches decreased out. I had to switch to DPNs last evening:

I'm pleased with the way this is working out.

I have the striped quilt top done except for the final trim off the bottom:

(It's 80" long, but you don't want to see the mess in my sewing room.)

The fabric with the vaguely southwest motifs on it? The selvedge says 1980! Wow! I am hoping to whomp together the backing for this before I leave for my quilting retreat this weekend. That way, I'll have two quilts to quilt and bind on the retreat (and I truly hate the quilting part, so my attitude toward that part of the task is to hope for NO THREAD SNARLS!!)

For my book club, I finished reading over the weekend a lovely book about Korea during the Japanese occupation (that ran 1907-1945). The Calligrapher's Daughter is a haunting, elegiac novel about a young girl born in the early years of the occupation. She grows up in the strictures of an upper class family, becomes friends with a princess, lives in grinding poverty for a time, and keeps on being an independent, thinking person. The novel is based on the life of the author's mother, and you really should check out the gallery of pictures at the link above. I really really really liked this book. Last night, I said to the woman who had suggested we read it, "I feel as though my world is broader and deeper because I spent a week inside this book. Thank you."