I've been in a "clean it out o' here" sort of mood the last few days and it's best to go with feelings like that. Part of me has been itching to both get on with the current in-progress quilt and get started on the new ideas that are now ready to begin. But alas - I know I really need to put stuff in bags and make them go away. That serves me in the long run. And the projects are like tantalizing things on the horizon.
Beautiful bit of alpenglow tonight as I came home. That gorgeous gold glow in the sky at the horizon that gets transformed by skimming over the hills until it hits the treetops and hilltops where you are with this amazing color and light. Bonus: many many deer out feeding in the fields tonight. They look a bit shaggy which probably means they're starting to lose their dull winter coats.
In other news? Just a note that Saturday's normal programming will be interrupted by the 30th anniversary of Apple.
What a great day to be home! I put away a little more stuff and then went for a walk. It was a bit cooler than I thought but the alternating of sun and shadow and breeze was very pleasant. A few birds, a chipmunk, a pair of mallards (the male all shiny and irridescent), but not much else out and around. Lots of dry leaves chasing around in the fields. A few patches of snow! Lots of wind-broken trees. Some waterbugs. A couple of cheeps from the braver peepers. That unmistakable wet ground, decaying leaves sort of smell and that fresh fresh sunshiny breeze smell. A creeper pretending he was a woodpecker and making a lot of noise. Suddenly, a really big bird that sure looked like an eagle, but that was probably a big hawk (all I could really see was the size and the light-colored head). And a trio of crows yacking it up.
Written at:
3/27/2006 05:19:00 PM
Oh my! Blogger finally came through for me. Holy moly. How interesting (it doesn't take much folks to divert my attention) that instead of springing up from 0 to 25 to 50 to 100%, it went 0, 33, 66, 100%.
I don't care as long as it works. Archives are back!
Had a nice Friday night and Saturday with the ladies from East Side Quilters - this was our Quilt-In weekend. It got shortened to an evening and all day Saturday event but we did an impressive amount of work towards the quilts we give away each fall. I basically hauled everything back into my sewing room last night and put my feet up.
today I'm doing a little shovelling out, filling some bags for trash, some for good-will etc. Maybe it's a sign of spring (saw my first vulture and robins last week). Or maybe it's just a sign that I'm fermenting a couple of new project ideas and I'm not quite ready to start.
I had my new quilt sewn all together, as I say, in one direction. That's half way for those keeping score. But it's enough that I can take it places since there are no longer any loose squares, so I took it to my local guild meeting tonight. It's a little strange looking since the squares aren't currently square but just a little rectangular looking. A closer view.
Ta Da! Tonight I finished sewing on the last few rows of squares for the new quilt. It's hanging in its own, half-sewn-together, strange sort of way. And in a small inspiration, I had a thought about something else. Tried it, found the gadget I needed to really try it properly (an omen in itself), and what do you know - it worked. Worked!
Tried some metallic thread. So did not work. Well that's not exactly true. Worked for about 2 inches before snapping. Don't know how some people sew with metallics but it's not something I'm going to spend my time doing.
Tried the same sort of thing with my most favorite rayon thread. Gorgeous.
So there you have it. Gotta try things to figure them out. Some things work. Some don't. Some won't and some are doomed from the start.
Ah Blogger-guys. I've known you since you were just a few of you. I have the tshirt. I've been sighing of late because of the long publishing delays, but I'm more than familiar with stupid-server issues.
So today I go poking around and lo and behold, you're the same guys that live in my memory. Now this is what tech stuff is all about. You guys rock. Even when your hardware doesn't. And you even managed to keep the limerick clean. Sniff - knew them back when...
Meanwhile if my archives are missing.... the blogger guys are kicking it around the block.
Written at:
3/18/2006 03:20:00 PM
Sad end of the week here as Boopsie died. Many visitors here are familiar with her as the cat frequently seen in the webcam.
She had come to us of her own decision, knocking on the storm door (ok, probably she was head-butting it). Since her mother and siblings were feral it was a little surprising. But when I opened the door, in she walked. She kept her own counsel and observed for a long time. She played up to Bill, the number one cat, such that I thought of her as Mrs. Bill.
For a long time it wasn't clear why she was invisible and terrified of the other cats but it turned out she was diabetic (as was Mr. Bill), and once that was controlled her gentler and friendlier side returned. She lived inside since fall 1991 and the vet's chart had her birth date in May of the same year, so she had a good long run and no doubt out-lived her family by many many years. Deirdre, Gus and I will miss her.
For a better ending of the week: What a nice way to end the week -- coming home to find that two of my journal quilt pages were chosen for use in an upcoming book about the whole journal quilt project. And even better, of the three I submitted, the two chosen are probably my favorite two, and one of them is the favorite of a few people out there! You can see my August 2002 page here and my September 2003 page here
I did a little celebrating of my own last night, some celebratory sewing on the new work. Miles of seams to go before I'm done... but little by little it all gets done. So far I just am crazy about it. I'm just up to the bright yellow-green and what can I say - YES!
This weekend I made a last group of postcards to send to FiberArt For A Cause. I really like how they turned out and hope they'll find good homes among Chicago attendees. Mom's working on some new ones too. Photos coming soon.
After I got done using up a lot of thread on little pieces of fabric, I returned to sewing lots of small squares together. Also with lots of thread... So here's about half of the new quilt, sewn together in one direction. It's the bottom half of the top. Here's the lay out photo for comparison
Looking back, folks, things certainly have changed a bit since then - my Pismo got replaced with the first gen 12" Powerbook. I have a G5 iMac... and a few other changes, too numerous to mention at the moment!
Meanwhile I made a few more postcards for FiberArt for A Cause today - just have to finish the edges tomorrow and get them off to Virginia. Also managed to test the worst case scenario of working with small squares... what happens when you tip over the board they're laid out on. Oh well. It didn't take all that long to re-order them as they were, but I'd put it on my list of things I don't have to do again anytime soon.
Anyone who knows me knows that persistence is my middle name!
But mainly it's all about starting with an idea that you can be passionate about, being persistant (and learning good skills along the way so you can achieve what you want to) so you can end up with something like this, completed in December 2002.
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam that flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his own thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a sort of alienated majesty. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
This quote was mentioned, very briefly, in Creative Authenticity by Ian Roberts. He says:
We are not mere receptacles of this expressive power. Things do not just pile up inside us waiting to be regurgitated. We are conduits of spirit, of the divine. The spirtual flows through us, endlessly. Emerson called it "gleams of light" which flash across the mind. They are seed ideas that need nurturing and developing. They seldom come fully formed. The doing clarifies them. That is what creativity is -- the gleam that passes so quickly through our mind and the catching of it and forming it into something.
I went in searching for the full Emerson quote because I love the image of ideas gleaming across my brain. Doesn't it feel that way sometimes? Those little sparks, those bigger flashes. Sometimes they're hard to capture. Sometimes they're beyond description. Sometimes, as Roberts says, it's only by putting ourselves in action that we are able to create, using these gleamings for fuel.
This week just sort of disappeared. I can't say it flew by because some of it was downright boring and slow. Most of the week was just plain ordinary.
Although it started on such a good note: some of the best beef mushroom barley soup I have ever made in my life. The best soup ever. Some good cheap beef, a big pile of mushrooms, some onions, some carrots, a whole lotta carrots actually, some celery, a good dash of thyme, salt and pepper.... and good shot of a plain red wine. Later, soup fit for the culinary gods.
Unfortunately for them - I didn't invite them to dinner.
I thought about the new quilt. I played with a totally different project. I read some of my favorite books. I listened to a work by Beethoven I wasn't familiar with (you can hear a bit here (requires iTunes). I thought about work and what is important in life. I had a brush with the stupidity and incompetence that is the government.
So here it is Friday again and none too soon.
And a big shout-out to our local Town Clerk who was still at her desk tonight as I drove past and who notarized the form that I needed notarized again. Thanks Rita!
