Ended with finding a big bag of wonderful sweet cherries at the grocery store, along with boxes of inexplicably cheap dried turkish apricots. And now an evening of sewing small squares together. A good day. Goodbye June, til next we meet.
If you want to see how fabulous my mom's purple clematis is doing - go here. I can tell you that even her white double clematis is doing beautifully. Only goes to prove that whole "she could grow tin cans" thing I heard about her....
May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness, May all be free from sorrow and the causes of sorrow; May all beings never be separated from the sacred happiness, which is sorrowless.
What a lovely sentiment. Thanks to Brewed Fresh Daily for bringing it to my attention.
For those of you who wonder about this, and because I wonder about this too sometimes, here's the first post I could find on the "red sky red sky" quilt. So - it all started sometime in late October. I do sort of remember going to part of a work day at East Side and cutting many many strips. And that it was about the time I had my disastrous encounter with the "variable lens" glasses. ick. But look, it all came to a good end -- bifocals and this wonderful quilt. All good. addendum: And because I do keep records in a paper journal as well, I went to note there the completion of quilting. There was not (me bad) a note of the date of the first notes on this quilt. However it was sandwiched between some others. In front of it the blue and yellow quilt that is next up to be quilted, called "Count to Fifty." The one directly after it, the quilt mentioned below, "Life's Memories." I guess it was a pretty productive autumn in 2003. Except that there's a follow up idea to Count to Fifty that is dated 3/03. So all this really started around the beginning of the year. Paper notes are a good thing.
Just finished the quilting on Red Sky Red Sky. It was looking iffy there for awhile as I hit the point where it seems that someone or thing is unquilting the quilt as fast as I'm quilting it. How else to explain the lack of progress? Could it be the amount of thread going into the thing? Perhaps. As I reached the last bit it seemed the bobbins ran out too quickly. eeeks! I stopped to fill another two after running totally out. Good old Mettler 500 in the bobbin. My all time favorite thread and color.
At this point I'd like to thank Glenn Gould and Carly Simon for getting me around that last corner and down the last side and to all the little people who made it possible.... I mean -- I have no idea what I mean. Here's a link to the unquilted top. It looks different now.
Guess tomorrow I'll have to pick out a final binding choice and get to work finishing it. whew.
The quilt that my mother and I made, now officially dubbed "Life's Memories" was accepted to be a part of the special "I Remember Mama" exhibit at the 2004 International Quilt Festival in Houston TX. I got an email this afternoon, actually addressed to Mom and my co-workers stood by while I called Mom and gave her the news. They gave a big round of applause!
Tim Berners-Lee, WWW founder is recognized and rewarded -- how nice is that? And he's a nice guy who says
"Building the Web, I didn't do it all myself. The really exciting thing about it is that it was done by lots and lots of people, connected with this tremendous spirit"
In that spirit, I'll remind visitors that the interaction and community that is possible through the web is really what drew me to it back in 1995. I was making my first web pages about the time that the first web browsers were coming out. Amazing times.
So, when you see the "add your comments" link after this post - it means I hope you will participate in this site. Tell me you dropped by and what you thought about what you saw. Otherwise it's just the sound of the counter clicking as you come and go. Make a statement - be a part of the community that is the world wide web.
Beautiful June day in the shadow of the Berkshires. Crisp dry air. Blue blue sky. Wispy clouds. Warm warm sun. The smell of new mown grass and even some haying going on. Signs promising the first of the month's strawberries, a season almost as precious as the sweet corn season later in the summer. And tonight:
If you want quilting to seem really easy, heavily quilt a fairly large quilt and then immediately start quilting another smaller quilt. It will seem like a piece o'cake. The quilt will fly around on the table as if under its own power. Stop laughing. It WILL.
In other news, I'm quilting Red Sky Red Sky with a most luscious yellow orange thread. Whooooooooosh. And the mighty Bernina 1260 is purring like a top, having recently had a little tuneup at Gloversville Sewing Center.
Remember when I used to be a community manager for an online web hosting company? The concept was great but the goal (making money) was not very reachable. All the ideas we had about bringing people to places online where they could share ideas and information and meet other people with the same interests -- all valid. And the need for people to connect that way is great. Harder and harder to do in these days of commuting workers and families always on the run. People barely know their neighbors let alone go to meetings.
People like myself who pursue something other than the thing which puts bread on the table are a little outside the norm of many workplaces. You know the conversations: what did you do last night - mowed the lawn (or worked out), ate some dinner, had a beer, watched TV, went to bed.
OK, this isn't about that, but rather about what may be the next generation of internet use. It could be said to harken back to the day of bulletin boards. Oh my. Brewed Fresh Daily that bastion of entrepreneurial wifi community development, posts an interesting report about
The question ... whether it's possible to build an online community oriented to a town or neighborhood -- one where citizens share information and make connections that aren't being fostered by metropolitan newspapers or local TV.
So - if we don't always meet face to face, do enough people have internet access in your neighborhood to make information sharing on the web the way to go? OK, could I have couple volunteers please?
I'm still messing around with fabric, but I can't help but mess around near this lovely group of squares. I guess I'm really itching to start the next quilts, but which one, which one. In the photo above you can see one of my trusty notebooks. Hard to lose no matter where it lands.
Written at:
6/03/2004 11:42:00 PM
I had yesterday off my day job and in true karmic fashion, was sick. Turns out several of us who were at the guild getaway got away with the same set of germs apparently. I thought I had just set off a respiratory firestorm what with all the fabric fluffing and folding but felt increasingly bad until yesterday when I finally had to admit it wasn't allergy-based at all. Then I started hearing about the others.
BUT -- despite all that, or in spite of all that -- I ended the day with a board that was covered with stacked squares of 87 different fabrics. Medium to pale blues, pinks and yellows. A few of these were already in square format. Most started the day as strips and ended as squares.
Out of all the stuff I pulled from the stash for what may be two projects, only one fabric is still intact. I have a fat quarter of the world's most wonderful bright yellow with bright pink marbleized fabric. And several urges to the contrary, each time it comes up on the cutting board, it just doesn't get cut. Since it is theoretically ideal for at least one of the two projects ahead, I think I'll audition it more closely this time. I know part of the hesitation is because it is a rather small piece of fabriic but the main problem is that it is just so luscious in the whole.
It's good I don't have too much in the way of "holy" fabric like this -- fabric too good or special etc to cut up. In fact, I bet this is one of less than a handful.
While Designweenie has his own problems about getting a decent cup of tea, I'm still wondering what happened to the notion of "coffee, regular?" That is to say - a cup containing hot coffee, half and half and sugar. Not to be confused with
decaf, regular
coffee, black
coffee, light, sweet
coffee, black, two sugar
double grande mocha half decaf with skim and cinnamon
I think I've said before that the main problem is that the servers of coffee, in regular coffee-serving establishments are too often non-coffee drinkers. And badly educated in their product at that.
All right now, repeat after me - there is coffee and then there is decaf. It is not "regular coffee" and "decaf coffee." And finally, your "regular coffee" notion is not my correct connotation of "coffee, regular." Now go get me a coffee, regular and be quick about it.
