Runs with Scissors ... and a Sword

Hauntingly

2009-10-31T19:22:00.004-04:00

I just realized that my most recent post was on 1 October, and here we are at Halloween. Time flies, I guess, when one is busy. There was much I could have blogged about in terms of my quilt-making to build on the previous Creative Process posts. If I had, though, the quilt in question, "Sibling Revelry," might not now be in a suitcase on board a plane and bound, eventually, for Lund, Sweden. Younger son pointed out to me about the time of my last post here that it would be far cheaper for the quilt to be mailed from Sweden when the husband was at a meeting there than mailed from here. I don't know how much it will cost to mail if from Sweden, but I imagine it will be cheaper than the $53.80 that a flat rate international box from here would cost. Getting it done was a bit of a challenge, but I did, with time to spare and without cutting too many corners. I might have done more elaborate quilting had I had more time, but I am not at all displeased with the quilting I did have time for. While the husband is gone, I will try to post the finishing steps of the process along with photos.

In the meantime, remember the Amazing Thing I was going to felt? It shrank from something that ran the length of my foyer to something that fits nicely on my couch. It actually ended up being too heavy to use to make a bag for my swords. Also, after napping under it, both the husband and older son urged me to leave it as it is. So I am.

And do you remember the very large jacket I planned to felt? It's shown in this post, though I still despair at how old I look in the photo. And here it is, felted, with buttons added, ready to wear. For those of you who might be wondering about the background, that's older son's wall to wall to ceiling bookcase. Here's a closer-up shot of the jacket. I managed to felt it just enough to fit me nicely. It did shrink a bit more on the length dimension than I expected, so if I make it again I will likely knit the body a few inches longer. I've worn it several times and gotten several compliments on it. It also goes quite nicely with a scarf I knitted as a possible Christmas present, so nicely that the scarf became a present to myself.

Now that the quilt is done, I'm moving on to other creative endeavors. I've pulled from the shelf a quilt sandwich (that's the top, batting, and backing together before the quilting is done) that I think I'm finally ready to quilt. I believe I pieced the top maybe eight years ago but didn't feel ready to quilt it then. Unlike almost every other quilt I've made, I made this one for me. The fabric was hand-dyed by a friend to my requested colors and shades. My brother-in-law has hinted strongly that he wants this one, so I guess I'll add a line to the letter that accompanies our will in regard to select personal belongings. That's right; he'll get it over my dead body. I've got a bag about knitted that will be felted into something about the size of a brown paper grocery bag. It's purple and light blue, in a wool-mohair blend. It will fuzz nicely, I think, when it's felted. I made a hat and muff as Christmas presents; I still need to sew the seam on the hat to finish it. Finally, I'm making a bra purse, which is what it sounds like, a purse made out of a bra. Yes, pictures will be forthcoming when I finish the first one, along with pictures of the other things I just mentioned. More immediately, though, I'm going to go fetch the laundry from the basement and curl up on the couch, perhaps even under the Amazing Thing, and nurse the cold that's claimed my voice and been otherwise vexing me for a couple of days.

National Book Festival 2009

2009-10-01T11:50:00.005-04:00

The National Book Festival was last September 26, and the conscientious bloggers (I won't name names) who were there put their posts up the next day. In the "better late than never" vein, here's my post. Last year was my first National Book Festival trip thanks to older son who wanted to hear and have a book signed by Neil Gaiman. This year's trip was with a friend who lives in Northern Virginia, the delightful young lady who walked across the stage at high school graduation immediately in front of older son. There were a number of authors there this year that sounded interesting: David Baldacci, Judy Blume, Ken Burns, Annette Gordon-Reed, John Grisham, Gwen Ifill, John Irving, Steven Kellogg, Sue Monk Kidd, Mark Kurlansky, Lois Lowry, George Pelecanos, Jon Scieszka, and Daniel Silva. As it turns out, I heard only one of the people listed above speak, but discovered several other authors whose books are winging their way to me even as I type or from whose presentation I garnered an idea worth remembering.

After arriving at the festival, we looked in at several tents. John Grisham was standing room only at the Fiction & Fantasy tent. We didn't stop to hear him. Besides the crowd, he lives here in Charlottesville, so it didn't seem all that much of a novelty to hear him speak. We ended up in the Teens & Children tent, listening to Liz Kessler, the author of the middle-grades Emily Windsnap series. Emily is a girl while she is on land but, in the water, turns into a mermaid. The fourth Emily Windsnap book has already come out in Britain (Kessler is English) and will be out here in the States in March. I thought it nice that all the people who asked Kessler questions after her talk were young girls who had read her books. One asked whether Kessler had patterned the Emily character at all after herself. Kessler answered by saying not intentionally but went on to say that Margaret Atwood once noted that "there's always a drop of blood in the cooking." What an interesting way to express that we, without intending to, reflect something of ourselves in everything we write.

We checked out the Borders booktent (if a bookstore is a store that sells book, then a booktent is a tent that does the same), but the line to pay for the book(s) selected was overwhelmingly long. Last year, the booktent was the only place to buy an advance copy of The Graveyard Book (which has now been on the New York Times bestseller list for 52 weeks, which means pie!) The books we would have purchased were already on the market. It honestly looked as though we could have used my friend's iPhone to locate a nearby bookstore, walk there, any buy the books before we could have made it through the line at the booktent. In my case, Borders's loss was Amazon.com's gain.

As you might imagine, the Festival catered to all ages. Here are a couple of examples. This was one of the many activities inside or around one of the children's tents, though it wasn't just children who were contributing to this mural. There were various costumed characters circulating. I would have gotten my photo taken with Curious George if the line had been shorter. There was a free-range penguin, though.
After a quick lunch from the vegetarian food booth, we found ourselves in the Fiction & Fantasy tent listening to Jeanette Walls, another author with whom I was totally unfamiliar. She spoke about her difficulty in writing pure fiction but her ease in writing memoirs that read like novels. I've ordered Walls's The Glass Castle, her memoir of her painful childhood. During the question period, a librarian related the story of how a teacher at his school had, for three years, read The Glass Castle out loud to her classes over the course of the year, commenting how it had touched the lives of the students, most of whom came from disadvantaged backgrounds similar to that of Walls. Walls was teary as she thanked the man for relating the story. We had actually come to hear Walls only because of the speaker who followed in Fiction & Fantasy, but I was very glad that we heard her.

The speaker we had come to Fiction & Fantasy to hear was Sabiha Al Khemir, a Tunisian-born author. According to the Festival program, "her second novel, The Blue Manuscript (2008), focuses on the interaction of Western and Islamic cultures." My friend is a dual US-Saudi citizen but had never heard of this author. In fact, the book we both put back on the table after seeing the line in the booktent was The Blue Manuscript; I've now got it on order from Amazon.com. Al Khemir talked about how her work as an Islamic art historian had influenced her writing. She also touched on the difficulties inherent in translating fiction into another language while retaining the subtleties of the original work. My friend is looking forward to reading The Blue Manuscript in both languages; I'm looking forward to hearing what she has to say about it.

There was no one we really wanted to hear immediately after Al Khemir, and it was raining, so we went across the street to the National Museum of American History for coffee and a bit of indoor sightseeing. In an exhibit case right outside the coffee shop was this interesting item. It's a Torah ark decoration from the late 1800s or early 1900s. Of course, my friend and I, both being a bit geeky, immediately turned to one another, flashed the Vulcan hand sign, and said, "Live long and prosper." Older son did a bit of research after I called him with the news and reported that Leonard Nimoy created the Vulcan hand salute based on a Orthodox Jewish blessing he had seen as a child. You learn something new every day!

We returned to the Festival wanting to hear Ken Burns speak in the History & Biography tent. We arrived in time for the speakers right before Burns, Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson, thinking that we might grab seats in between the speakers. Unfortunately, all the people there to hear Balz and Johnson also wanted to hear Burns and his co-author Dayton Duncan. It didn't matter, though, because even though we could barely see Burns and Duncan, we could hear them just fine. They spoke on their new PBS series on the National Parks. The sound bite I took away from their talk to throw out at cocktail parties or as the need arises concerns their use of music in their documentaries. Burns noted that most films are "locked" or visually finished before any music is recorded for them. For their documentaries, though, Burns and Duncan have all sorts of potentially relevant music recorded ahead of time and often in multiple versions. Later, as they are putting together the visual record, they actively work with the music. If there is a musical piece that merits longer play, then they tailor the visuals around the longer play. Definitely high on the list of neat things to know.

After Burns and Duncan, the Festival was over, so we returned to the car for a rather eventful drive back to the Fairfax area in which my friend lives. By this time, it was raining fairly heavily, making it just the right time for the passenger-side windshield wiper to break free from the arm and dangle, useless, against the windshield. We stopped three times so I could hop out and reset it, after which it held for just a while before it popped loose again. We did make it to Moby Dick's House of Kabob safely, where we had a wonderful chicken dish. (Older son was, I think, a bit disappointed to hear that there was no Call Me Fish Meal at Moby's.) After dinner, and a cup of tea at my friend's apartment, I made the drive home in the dark and rain. It was worth it, though, because it was another wonderful day at the National Book Festival. And now to wait for next year's!

The Creative Process, IX

2009-09-20T20:14:00.004-04:00

The top of the cabin quilt is done. If that's not enough, the quilt has named itself. I usually find that the name of a quilt comes to me without much conscious thought, and that was the case with this one. I just have to hope that the English language skills of the Norwegian brothers to whom the quilt is going are such that they get the humor. What better name for a quilt destined for a mountain cabin owned by brothers than "Sibling Revelry." That said, I still need to pin the layers of the quilt together, which is not an easy task and, then, quilt it and do the binding. It's not done yet, and it won't be for a while. But here's the top, a bit less than six feet by six feet. If I were making this quilt again, I would make the cabin image smaller and more subtle. I'm not about to change it now, though. Somehow, I find it difficult to imagine that the recipients will look at this and say, "Gee, it would have looked a lot better if the cabin image were smaller."

The creative work isn't over yet, because I still have to quilt this. I'm thinking of doing some black lines on the porch to acentuate the diagonal direction of the boards. The original photo had space between the boards, which I did not show here, and the black lines might serve as a reasonable replacement. I may quilt some detail into the grass at the base of the cabin of the trees to each side. We shall see. When it's done, I'll try to post some close-up shots that show what I did. In the meantime, I need to piece the backing and then do the layering and pinning. I've already cut the binding strips though I have yet to sew them together and press them.

Since it also comes under the creative heading, I have finished working in all the loose yarn ends on what I called "the amazing thing" in an earlier post. Here is it, finished and laid out in my foyer. For reference, it is approximately 9.5 feet long and 3.5 feet wide. Next up is felting/fulling it. If you're not familiar with the process, I'll put it in the washer, with detergent, on a hot temperature but low volume setting, with a couple pairs of old blue jeans and let the heat, soap, and agitation shrink it. I'll stop and restart the process until it has shrunk to an acceptable degree, after which I'll let the wash cycle finish. Then, if it's shrunk to appropriate dimensions, I'll see if I can craft a sword bag out of it. If it's too large, I'll see if I can shrink it some more. If it's too small (which I doubt it will be), I'll use it as a rug or throw. Hey, there's always a use for things like that around here.

My newest project is a muff. Remember muffs? They look like a tube. Your hands go inside and stay warm. My friend the artist and art teacher gave me a rather large bag of yarn she spun and dyed years ago but never used. Because I think the yarn should go back to her, I wanted to make her something that showed off all the different kinds of yarn. Here's the pattern I'm using. It's not going to use up all the yarn, so I may try to make three, one for my friend the artist and art teacher and one for each of her lovely daughters. The muffs are knitted on circular needles, and the first one is knitting up fairly quickly.

Finally, coming up in two weeks is the Fall Fiber Festival at Montpelier, home of James Madison. I'll be working there on Saturday, at the booth of Mangham Manor, my friendly neighborhood sheep farm. I'm not a bad salesperson when it comes to a product I believe in, such as Girl Scout cookies or Mangham Manor yarn. I will take various bags, shawls, and a sweater that I have knitted with their yarn, which reminds me that I really need to felt the jacket I mentioned in the last post, since that's also made from their yarn. The best part? I work for fiber, which means that I may well leave with all the yarn I can handle for the next year if I hadn't just discovered New Zealand possum yarn, which I absolutely must have just for the heck of it. I'm going to order some of that right now, as soon as I proofread this post and publish it.

Over the Moat (book review)

2009-09-09T18:53:00.004-04:00

If there's any question about whether a book called Over the Moat can count for the "building" category of Annie's What's in a Name - 2 challenge, the subtitle is Love Among the Ruins of Imperial Vietnam. If "moat" doesn't count as a building, then "ruins" does. I actually read The Two Towers with the intention of using it for the building category but could never get motivated to write the review. It was different with this book.

I found this book by accident while searching for books to read before heading to Vietnam. This one especially intrigued me because it was set in Hue, the city in which we would be living for a month. I got about ten pages into it in the weeks before we left on the trip before, in the chaos that was my life, losing it. I searched high and low but could not find it. I finally figured I must have left it somewhere because I remembered that I had been reading it while waiting for a doctor's appointment. Oh well, I thought, **it happens. We went on the trip, came home, settled back in, and then, about two weeks ago, there the book was, on the bottom shelf of the coffee table in the living room, a place I must have looked in my search. As I said, **it happens.

But guess what? Reading this book before we went on the trip would not have been as magical as reading it after the trip was. Having visited and experienced Hue, I could relate to the book in a much more intimate way than I ever would have before going. Before I go into why, though, let me recap the book. In late 1992, the author, James Sullivan, was bicycling from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi with a friend in order to write about the trip for a cycling magazine. When all his clothes were drenched in a rainstorm in Hue, he happened into a clothing store in search of replacements. He found the clerk there, Thuy (pronounced Twee) attractive, and ended up getting her address so that he could visit her that evening. He and his friend never did find Thuy's house--there was a mixup with the house number--but Thuy and her sister found them after going out looking for them when they did not appear as promised. Jim did resume the cycling trip as scheduled but could not get Thuy out of his mind as he and his friend took the train from Hanoi back to Ho Chi Minh City and, then, home. Hopping off the train in Hue, he decided to see where things might go. He ended up "competing" with other suitors for Thuy's affection before he returned to the States. Thuy had told him that she would never make a life with him until he had lived in Hue for a year so that she could see his real character. He did return to Vietnam and, despite those other suitors, one of whom was a policeman who handled immigration issues, the story had a happy ending.

There were descriptions of Hue that jumped out at me because I had been there. One example: "Hue inspired that kind of poetry in people. Pedaling north on Highway 1, I'd found that the Vietnameses loved Hue unconditionally. It didn't matter whether you were from the north or the south, a truck driver told me ouside Saigon. "Everybody agree about Hue." It wasn't the guidebook stuff he was talking about, not the Imperial Citadel or the Forbidden Purple City or the pagodas as much as it was something else, less easily defined, qualities better communicated by gesture, by the aroma swirling off a bowl of bun bo Hue soup and a limning of moonlight over the Perfume River, by whispers and by secret. An old woman in Danang had told me that on quiet nights gold seeped out of the ground in Hue: Believe it. Back in Hue now, I was prepared to believe that anything was possible."

And: "If Hue was the most regal city in Vietnam, it could also lay claim--perhaps mroe than any other in the country--to the Vietnamese soul. Its landmark pagodas had turned out Vietnam's most renowned Buddhist monks: Thich Quang Duc, who set himself ablaze in a Saigon intersection in 1963, hailed from Thien Mu Pagoda; and Thich Nhat Hanh, the prolific exile who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King in the 1960s, was reared at Tu Hieu Pagoda."

And remember Mr. Cu, the owner of the Mandarin Cafe and the person who developed a walking tour of Hue that the sons and I took one very, very hot day? He was in here, too, mentioned as having just begun the photography we marveled at in his brochure and on the walls of his cafe. Had I read the book before we went, I doubt I would have remembered the brief mention of Mr. Cu; reading it afterwards, I almost shouted with glee when I saw Mr. Cu's name.

My one complaint about the book was that its proofreading or editing was not very carefully done. I corrected more typos than I usually do in a book. Still, I would highly recommend this to anyone who has visited Hue. If you haven't visited, go first, and read the book after. It will mean much more that way.

The Unofficial End of Summer

2009-09-09T16:53:00.006-04:00

Monday was Labor Day, another unofficial end of summer as surely as the start of school is. Labor Day was also when I was supposed to collage a box or two with some of the many random pieces of paper I brought back from the Grand Spring Adventure. Alas, I worked on the proposal for the slightly more certain that it used to be statistics book I'm supposed to be helping to write. With four publishers expecting proposal packets around October 1 and a working title (Methods and Strategies for Sample-Size Analysis: Fables in Statistical Planning), it's all more real than it's been since I was first asked to get involved with it a bit over two years ago.

I am making progress on the cabin quilt as evidenced below. The cabin piece shown most recently has now been surrounded by two rows of blocks, each six inches square. Since the photo above was taken, I've added a 1.5-inch border of black. I've also pieced enough (I hope) sets of 3.5-inch long random strips that, when pieced together will form the final border. I hope to get that added in the next day or two, after which I'll be awaiting the arrival of a new bolt of black cotton from which will spring the quilt back. I also need to check my batting supply and Joann Fabric coupons, because obtaining batting will be the next chore. Will it be done in time to send it across the pond to Norway for Christmas? What's the expression--"God willin' and the creek don't rise"? Yeah, we'll go with that.

And while I'm waiting? Well, at some point, I'll be felting this large brown thing. I almost didn't post this photo because I look like crap in it, old and drawn. It was the end of a long day, and my hair was still pulled back and sweaty from karate. But back to the large brown thing. It's a jacket, knitted incredibly large to be felted or fulled smaller. The pattern came from something called the Twist Collective; you can see what the finished jacket might (if I'm lucky) look like here.

I also have what I'm calling the "amazing thing" to keep me busy. In my downsizing zeal, I decided to use up all sorts of single skeins or leftover bits of wool yarn. I started knitting bits together, with two different colors of yarn doubled together. Some time ago, I knitted a large wool afghan and felted or fulled it, thinking it might end up large enough for me to fashion it into a sword bag. Well, it didn't, so it now serves as a magic carpet on which my four-foot high stuffed orangutan sits each day. The amazing thing was for the same purpose, to be felted or fulled into something out of which I could craft a sword bag. The only problem is that I've gotten a bit carried away, and I'm betting that this one may end up too big. I'm almost out of yarn to be gotten rid of, so I'll be taking a before picture soon. The after picture will come much later since it's going to take me a while to work in all the loose yarn ends. I decided that rather than have large random places of color, I'd have many more smaller areas, so each color gets used for only a couple of rows at most. And I change colors randomly, one at a time rather than changing both colors at the same time.

And that's where things stand on several fronts. There is other news to report. I've been invited to test for my black belt in Myo Sim kendo in November, but I don't want to jinx anything by talking too much about it. I'm going sailing on Saturday. Younger son is back in the dorm and feeling quite at home there. His room here has been declared a disaster area and off limits for now. Life goes on. I need to write a book review now, after which I'll watch Obama's speech on health care, after which I shall take fountain pen in hand and write a letter the old-fashioned way.

Where Has All the Summer Gone?

2009-08-28T10:25:00.004-04:00

Happy New Year! Being the child of teachers, I have always thought more in terms of academic years than calendar ones. The start of the new (school) year means the end of summer, which makes me more than a bit wistful. While I fully accomplished one of my summer goals, getting my yellow belt in Myo Sim karate, I have somewhat failed on the others.

I do have four or five boxes packed with things--mostly clothes--to donate, and older son has done some significant work on the junk room over the garage, but my goal to declutter and downsize a bit remains largely unmet. I tell myself that it may be easier to accomplish this, especially in terms of the garage, when the weather cools off, but that may be just another excuse.

I did do some smashing and shaping of some of the rogue spoons and forks I have laying around, and I actually planned a bit on making a bird out of various and sundry items. I also sorted the masses of paper brought back from the Grand Adventure and purchased boxes on which to create collages of that paper. I tell myself that I shall set aside the upcoming Labor Day as the time in which to complete one or more of these enterprises. If I can manage that, that will take care of that summer goal. If I collage a box, I can even count that toward The Fifty, and consider the remaining summer goal to be at least partially met.

All that considered, I guess it hasn't been that bad a summer, except that it has been. I spent much of June and July in something resembling a state of suspended animation, unmotivated. I would start a single game of Spider Solitaire or regular Solitaire to pass the time while something printed and, hours later, still be playing. It did not help that I had little work-for-pay to occupy the time and that the hard disc on Mr. Mac crashed, meaning that the book proposal I should have been working on was unreachable. I know some of the reasons I felt the crappy way I did, and while those reasons still exist and probably will for a while, I'm doing my best to beat the crappy feelings. I haven't played a computer game since July 26, and I've managed to fill in the time with productive endeavors rather than reading blogs or otherwise killing time on the Interwebs. But what might I have accomplished had June and July not been wasted?

Enough idle speculation. Work continues on the cabin quilt I have been documenting. I shall soon finish the 64 6-inch squares I need to put two "borders" around the image as last shown here. I hope any readers aren't offended that I haven't shown you the process of making those squares. It's exactly the same as the process for making the 4-inch squares that I already described, so you aren't missing anything by not seeing it. I'll post another photo when I've added the 6-inch squares. After that, there will be two more borders. One will be a 3-inch strip of black all around. Outside that, I plan to put another 3-inch border made of random strips of the same batiks and hand-dyes that I've used in the squares.

And now I return to the previously scheduled morning, working on the book proposal and awaiting the arrival of FedEx with Snow Leopard for Mr. Mac. Eighty-five days and counting until the 2009 Myo Sim Black Belt Test, but that's fodder for another post.

Happy Feet

2009-08-10T22:31:00.003-04:00

I just mentioned driving 55 miles (one way) today to shop for shoes. Lest you think me related to Imelda Marcos, I should explain. On Saturday, the husband drove to Lancaster, PA, to retrieve younger son from his summer job. On the way back, they stopped in Harrisonburg, VA so that younger son could look at a kind of shoe he had heard about. He came home wearing a pair and raved about their comfort level. Older son, who claims to have been the one who told younger son about the shoe, wanted to get his own pair, so off we went to Harrisonburg today. Turns out that they didn't have the right color and size combination that older son wanted, so he has to wait a week for them to be ordered and shipped to him. They did, however, have a pair in a not too outlandish color that fit me, and after trying them on, I couldn't resist. Wondering what this is all about? Well, here, take a look. Those are my feet, very happy in a pair of Vibram FiveFingers(R). I admit to being skeptical, thinking it would be uncomfortable to have something between my toes. (Someone reminded me tonight that they actually sell things to separate your toes to help them relax; this is probably very similar.) It took a few minutes to get used to it, but after that I have to say that my feet have rarely been happier. I wore these all afternoon and occasionally actually forgot I had shoes on. I usually remove my shoes when I sew, the better to use the pedal, but I didn't today.

I showed these to a friend, and together we decided that these are the Honda Element of shoes: pretty darn ugly when you first look at them, but extremely comfortable and fun to drive or walk in. Will I be able to wear them to work or when professional attire is required? No, I'll likely have to stick to my Earth shoes then, but for daily wear, I'll be sticking to these for a while. A couple of folks have asked me how long these might last. I told them I'd let them know. I'll let any readers here know, too. In the meantime, I have very, very happy feet, which is making me very, very happy. :-)

The Creative Process, VIII

2009-08-10T22:24:00.004-04:00

I had a bit of time free today in between a shoe shopping trip to Harrisonburg, 55 or so miles away, and kendo, so I ran downstairs and stitched up the row of squares for the bottom of the cabin unit. Here's what it looks like now, graciously held by elder son. The next step is to make enough 6.5 inch squares to go all around this unit, then repeat that step one more time. It was easier to include some of the detail on the cabin by making it large; at the same time, though, I don't want the cabin to be the only thing in the quilt, so I have to make the finished quilt a bit bigger than I might otherwise have done. Will it be done in time to mail it across the pond for Christmas? I hope so!

The Creative Process, VII

2009-08-09T19:13:00.010-04:00

I actually did what I'm about to describe over a week ago, on July 30. I put the photos on my netbook and had good intentions of getting something posted while I was in Washington, DC for the Joint Statistical Meetings August 1-5, but between not being able to access blogspot from the hotel and being on the go every day between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. or so, well, it never got done. Better late (now) than never.

After several seconds of deep thought, I abandoned all notions of measuring my cabin rectangle and then making blocks all the same size so that they would fit evenly. This is liberated quiltmaking, right? I figured that 4.5-inch blocks (which become 4-inch blocks in the finished quilt thanks to what's taken up in the seams) would come close enough. I'd just make one of the end ones a bit wider or narrower as need be, and it would work.

How to make those blocks? If you're not a quilter, pay attention, because I'm only gonna explain this once. This is liberated quiltmaking, so the first thing I did was go through my drawer of batik and hand-dyed fabric and tore strips off each and every kind of fabric contained therein. I tore one strip off some, two off others, basically going by how long the strips were. This is the pile of strips I ended up with, along with the CD case of the morning's soundtrack. It might be enough for the whole quilt; it might not be. I can always tear off more.

The next step was to take two pieces of farbric and sew them together. This would give me the center of a liberated log cabin block. Here are the four I started with. I cut these in half to get two centers from each piece. I took a center, then pulled a random strip out of my pile. My only requirement here is that if I pull out a strip that's already in the block I'm working on, I put it back. Otherwise, that's the one I use. Forced randomosity. To make sewing things together easier, I cut the strip to be the same length as the piece to which I'll be sewing it. Sew the two pieces together and press the seam, and I get something looking like this. I don't have a photo of it, but the next step is to trim the side to which I'll sew the next piece of fabric. You can see that here, with the next fabric. Sew the new piece on, press, (photo above) and trim the proper side (photo below). Then I'm ready to repeat the process and add the next piece. Cool, eh? Just keep adding pieces to the sides until the block is a suitable size.

Of course, even when it gets to be an appropriate size (photo above), it might look better if you add more and re-center how you cut the final block.

Look at the photo above. Before, I didn't have any leeway over where I cut my final block. Now I do; I can move the 4.5-inch template around and cut the block however I want to. Now is probably a good time to mention that I don't make one block at a time. You saw above that I started with eight centers. I chain piece, which means that I add a piece to the side of the first center, then the second, then the third, and so on. I end up with short bits of thread between the connected blocks. I snip these to separate the blocks, then press, trim, and do it all again. I took the photos above to show how I put together one specific block. If I did each block by itself, it would take a long time to make the eight blocks around the bits with which I started. Eight blocks which, when sewn together and laid out, look like this. The carpet might make it hard to see, but the strip of eight blocks needs another in order to come close to matching the cabin unit. After I make that block and sew it onto the end of the strip but before I attach the strip to the cabin unit, it's clear that I'll have to do some trimming. I'm not going to do the trimming, though, until the strip is sewn on. You get a much nicer, neater trim once it's sewn and pressed. Here's what the finished piece looks like. To take this photo, I taped the unit to the back of my sewing room/office door. I don't have a huge area in which to work, which is one of the main reasons I don't do more of this.

The next step, which might not be taken until next weekend, is to do another strip to put below the cabin unit. Then, I'll make slightly larger blocks--six inches or so--to go around the unit with the cabin and top/bottom strips. My plan, which is subject to change at a moment's notice, is to put two sets of blocks around the unit, then a single border strip of fabric, probably black, and then an outer border of random stripes. If I end up doing as I just described, the finished quilt will be about 72 inches square, which I think will be a good size to leave out on a couch for decoration at the same time it's a good size to stretch out under while reading, relaxing, or whatever. I'll take some photos each work session, but since all the other liberated log cabin blocks will be done just as the one I showed here, I'll dispense with the gory detail.

I also took the first step on a new project today by cutting up some fabric I dyed. Sounds sort of normal, right? Not! The fabric was ten terrycloth hand towels, each dyed to a differect color. Terrycloth may turn out to be a real bear to work with, but I have my reasons for wanting to do so. I don't expect to start sewing on that one until I'm done with this one, but having done the dyeing, I figured I should at least get the cutting done.

Doing (County) Fairly Well

2009-07-29T20:15:00.000-04:00

I'm not even sure we had county fairs when I was a kid, probably because the Montana State Fair was held in the city in which I grew up (Great Falls). I remember going to the state fair every year, riding the rides, seeing the animals, playing some games, but I don't recall that either we kids or our parents ever entered anything in the various competitions. Several years ago, I entered a quilted jacket in the Quilted Clothing category at the Albemarle County Fair and won a blue ribbon. It was the only item entered in the Quilted Clothing category, but since the fair rules state that "Classes with only one exhibit will be awarded ribbons at the judges' discretion" I know that I didn't get the blue ribbon by default.

This year being an outstanding one for photography, both sons and I entered various of the Photography categories. Younger son entered 13 photographs; elder son entered seven; and I entered four. We each won about one ribbon for each four photographs entered. Younger son won three red or white ribbons in the Floral-Color, Floral-B&W, and Animals-B&W categories. Elder son won red or white ribbons in the Animals-Color and Human Interest-B&W categories. I only one won ribbon, but it was a blue one, for the photograph below, in the Humor category. I took the photo at Madurodam in the Netherlands, described here for readers who might have missed it on the blog of our Grand Adventure. This photo did not happen accidentally; I suggested that an interesting photo might result if we all shot photos of the reflection at the same time. Success! One interesting and, now, award-winning photograph.

The Creative Process, VI

2009-07-19T20:52:00.007-04:00

Okay, so I didn't make it back to working on this on the "tomorrow" mentioned in my last quilt post. What can I say? An assortment of things came up between then and today. While the bread (shredded wheat bread, a new find in The Secrets if Jesuit Breadmaking) was rising, I went back to work on the mountain cabin. I thought it only appropriate to use Kurt Nilsen's Rise to the Occasion as the soundtrack since I first heard this artist, specifically, his "Lost Highway," a duet with Willie Nelson, while at the mountain cabin.

The first step was to add grass, trees, and sky to the left side of the cabin as I left it last time. The trick would be to match the two seams, that of the grass-trees and the trees-sky, with those on the cabin piece. The first one was easy because I can just trim the bottom to fit. The second one, though, would take some eyeballing. The photo shows the pieces of fabric laid together as I approximated where the seam should be sewn. As it turned out, I came close enough the first time. The next step was to put some borders on. The aim was to give the resulting, bordered piece dimensions that were evenly divisible by the integer of my choice in terms of making squares to surround the cabin block. You may find it surprising that even with my training in psychology and statistics, I'm not big on measuring. I measured. I even measured twice. I cut the side borders, sewed them on, and nailed the final length figure I was shooting for, the magic 36 inches (actually 36.5 inches, but the 0.5 will disappear into the seam). Thirty-six is a nice number, because it divides evenly into squares of 3, 4, 6, 9, or 12 inches or even some combinations of those squares. I was shooting for 27 inches for the height, figuring that I could then put 4.5 inch squares on the top and bottom, resulting in a 36-inch square panel to work out from. The top and bottom borders would be a bit narrower than the side ones, but I figured what the heck. I calculated how wide they should be, cut them, sewed them on, and, what was it they used in the transcripts of the Nixon tapes? "Expletive deleted"? The finished measurement wasn't what I had calculated it would be. I decided that I would just go ahead and make the borders the same width all around and even up the dimension with the first set of surrounding squares. Time for frog-sewing or, as the politically incorrect might say, French-sewing. That little implement in the photo is a seam ripper, as in "Rip it; rip it; rip it." Two seams unsewn, two new strips cut, two more seams sewn, and voila, a finished cabin panel. I debated for a while as to what color or colors to use for the borders here. It may not show up well in the photo, but the borders are grey. I decided on that as being somewhat neutral in terms of either dark or light fabrics working on the outside edges.

Next step is to make some liberated squares for the top and bottom, with the resulting rows of squares getting the height to the desired 36 inches. Yes, I know this will mean more measuring, but I intent to make the squares in such a liberated way that, if necessary, I can simply take a bit off the top or bottom to make it all fit. Then I will need to decide where I go from there. Should the cabin be in the center of a large square? In a corner? At the bottom of a rectangle taller than it is wide? Somewhere on the longer dimension of a rectangle, so you could see it if you had the quilt covering your lap as you sat on a couch? Should the final size fit on a bed or in a lap? The quilt has already told me that it will be too big for a wall hanging, and I honestly wouldn't want it to be that. I want this to be a quilt to be used, to be snuggled under or even sat upon. Does it sound as if I'm making it up as I go along? I am, because the quilts I make with a firm and fixed plan of action are never as delightfully fun as the ones that sort of make themselves as I go along.

One Down and Three To Go

2009-07-12T07:05:00.006-04:00

Back around Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer, I put forth some summer goals. There were only four, some of which were more measurable than others. (I used to work in university planning, and we were very big on measurable goals.) The most measurable of this year's goals was to earn my yellow belt in Myo Sim karate. That's about as measurable as you can get; either I would earn it or I wouldn't. Well, I did.

One starts Myo Sim karate as a white belt. After that come yellow, green, two levels of blue, three levels of brown, and then black, of which there are varying degrees. There are defined requirements for each level. For yellow belt, I had to know four kata or basic forms, one tae ryun (a form done with a partner), five self defenses (responses to various grabs), three one steps (responses to a punch), six kicks (three different styles of kick done with either the front or the back leg), three punching combinations, and two partner exercises (putting together punches and kicks against an opponent). Getting a yellow belt means remembering the moves in each part or technique, doing them in the proper stances, and doing them safely. This last part is really important because not doing something safely can mean that you or the person you're working with gets very hurt very fast.

I have tested for two different belts in kendo, but this was my first rank exam in karate. One thing that is different is that the karate exams are judged by every black belt in attendance, and that the judging involves written comments on all the things demonstrated. While this contributes to your nervousness during the test, it's helpful to go over the comments in detail and learn from them. And comments are as apt to be positive as negative. Although many of the comments I got related to things I can and will change, I also got several comments that my kicking has much improved over the last few weeks. I put in a lot of extra time working on my kicking in between the time I was invited to test and the test itself; it was nice to know that the extra time paid off.

Next up is green belt. This one will be harder. There's not necessarily more material to learn, but the bar gets raised a bit. It will no longer be enough to remember and demonstrate the moves and to do them safely. Besides that, I will need to "make the punches look like punches, and the kicks look like kicks." In other words, my technique has to reach a certain level of quality. I won't make green this summer; it might be a stretch to try to make it in the fall. I will get it at some point; it's just hard to say when that might be. In the meantime, I have three other summer goals to work on during the time I'm not working on karate (or kendo), not to mention job, family, and a few other life priorities.

The Creative Process, V

2009-07-04T16:55:00.024-04:00

I was supposed to be sailing on the Chesapeake Bay this afternoon, but the trip fell through at the last minute leading me to believe I was destined to quilt. In the spirit of the 4th of July and its associated picnicking, I asked Mr. Mac to play me some Laura Nyro to set the appropriate mellow mood.

When last we met here, I had various pieces laid out that I thought might complete my mountain cabin scene. I won't make you go back to find it. Here's what I had laid out. Looking at it this afternoon with fresh eyes, I decided that the porch needed to be made longer, and that the grass should start closer to the bottom of the cabin rather than up along the sides. Maybe something like this. Of course, it would be simpler to just have the grass start at the very bottom of the cabin, so that's what I decided to do.

The first step was to make a new porch. The short porch I had been using was a piece left over from when I made the big part of the cabin. I had to make a new piece to start from, so I cut 10 strips, sewed them together, rotated the resulting rectangle, and cut out a piece with the slats going in the appropriate direction. I also had to cut a larger piece of black and make a longer white strip, but here's what I ended up with. Here's what it looked like after I sewed the red and black pieces together and was deciding on the angle the white would take. At this point, I realized that it was quite possible that I would get the side unit pieced only to figure out that I should have added the grass and sky to the center, cabin unit first. That's how things happen when there's no real method to one's madness. Here's the grass going on, and now the sky is on as well. Now to finish the side unit. First, the grass under the porch. This was the easy part, because as long as I made the grass piece below that porch long enough, it will work. In putting on all the other pieces, I would need to worry about matching the seams between the side piece and the center one.

Before I worried about matching those seams, however, I needed to get that diagonal white piece sewed onto the background in the right place. Sewing it onto the porch unit was easy; any angle would work. Now, though, I would need to get the top angle done so as to keep the side straight. First, play around a bit...
and then start to figure out the angle. Here it is done,
and if you think I hit it right on the first time, well, I you'd be wrong. That's what the baste setting is for on a sewing machine.

The next step was the white edges to the roof. They were diagonal on the original photo of the cabin, but I was going to make them straight here. Of course, that either meant setting them in on three sides or sewing them on the top of the pine tree fabric, which is what I decided to do.

Once the white was in, then I had to put the sky on, matching the seam in the process.
I actually got that done fairly easily, but then you know what? Yeah, I didn't like the way the white stood out; I didn't like it at all. What to do? Time for frog-sewing, so called because of its "rip it, rip it" nature. How was I doing? Not too badly given that I wasn't aiming for total accuracy. I must admit that at this point I considered quitting for the day, but I decided I should go ahead and do the other, simpler side. It ended up looking pretty good, if I do say so myself. As I was taking this photograph, I was thinking that I should probably add some more grass, pine trees, and sky to the left, porch side so that the cabin is more centered. At the same time, older son looked down from upstairs to where I had the piece set out on the hardwood floor and said he thought it would look better if the blue sky fabric went down a bit into the tree fabric and didn't line up precisely with the top of the roof. He may be right; it might look better that way. Does that mean I'm going to do more frog-sewing and change it? Probably not, because I don't think it looks bad this way. I'll look at it again next time (tomorrow?), but I'm pretty sure I won't change the sky but will add a bit more to the left to center the cabin. And at that point, some borders will finish the cabin unit, the soundtrack will get livelier, and I'll put the pedal to the metal doing some liberated blocks to go around the outside. I do love it when things start to come together!

Acting My Age

2009-06-26T15:15:00.004-04:00

With a birthday fast approaching, I find myself reflecting on my age and whether I should act it. There are more than a few people who don't understand why someone my age would take up martial arts more easily done and mastered by the younger. There are times I even wonder about it myself, as when I'm explaining to the nurses prepping me for my colonoscopy that no, the defensive bruises on my forearms are not from fighting off my husband--they're from taking a sword away from someone over and over and over. Or when my boss looks across his desk and asks where the large bruise on my elbow came from. At least I didn't have to go into work this week and explain the latest. The left side of my face took a rather hard hit from a shinai, which is the bamboo sword we use in kendo for partner work. The young man who hit me (he was not supposed to be striking my head which is why I was not prepared to block my temple) was the same young man who cracked the scalp on the back of my head open a month ago. That one bled, but you couldn't see any evidence of the injury once the bleeding stopped. This one didn't bleed, but a week later people are still asking me what happened. The young man was very apologetic, though we all know that accidents do happen. I told him last night, however, that I would not be working with him at the kendo open workout tonight or even next Friday. No, it's nothing to do with the injuries. It's because I've been invited to test for my yellow belt in karate in two weeks, so I'll be working on karate rather than kendo until the test. There may be time to act my age later, but for now I have other things to worry about.

The Creative Process, IV

2009-06-26T14:15:00.013-04:00

I actually did what is described here on Monday, but it's been a busy week, with several days on which my list of things to try to do included "blog post(s)." Note that I said "things to try to do," not "things to do." If I didn't recognize the difference, I'd be even crazier than I am.

Having introduced the sons to the classic movie Harold and Maude the night before, I set Mr. Mac to shuffle on the music of Cat Stevens. (Note: I also have the CD he did as Yusef Islam, but I was in a mood for the music of his past life.) It set an apt atmosphere for what proved to be an up-and-down session at the sewing machine.

Here's the second story unit I'd finished when last we met here. In the time since then, I'd decided that I really should extend the white roof edges out beyond the sides of the walls, as they appeared in the original photograph. So I started to play around with how to do that. First, the white roof edges. Then, the black of the roof itself.
Then the blue of the sky. Both the black and the blue will need to line up with the black and blue in the main piece; it looks here as if I've done that. The trick will be sewing the two units together keeping both the diagonal and straight lines lined up. If you're at all prescient, you see where this is going. I tried once. I tried twice. I tried a third time. I thought about it logically, and I just tried winging it. I was unable to get a seam sewn that lined all the lines up in a visually pleasing manner. But remember! This is liberated quiltmaking. Would I rather liberate myself from lines that match or from fancy roof edges? I decided on the latter.

First, since the second story unit sits on a background of roof, I had to add a strip of the black roof fabric to the cabin side I'd already made. Then I did the roof and sky to the right of the second story unit. Then I did the roof and sky on the other side, remembering to add the chimney even if I did make it a good bit narrower than it really was.
Finally, I started to play around with what to do on the sides of the cabin, whether to put the red railing in, what sort of trees to add, etc. You may have caught on that this goes much more easily if one can think in rectangles that get added to one side or the other, and the more things that must match up, the more swear words you might hear me muttering under or over the musical accompaniment. Here's the first thing I looked at. And the second. As you can see, this one has the white sides to the main cabin roof, the red railing to the left of the cabin wall, and the white roof edge on the sauna that sits behind the cabin. It also has some grass in front and a different colorway on the pine trees to the sides. At this point, I thought I was getting somewhere. It just needed a bit more sky. This is how it's all sitting, on the sewing table, even as I type. If I still like it when I start working on it again (which I hope will be over this weekend), then I'll start piecing a rectangle for each side. Once those are on, I'll probably put strips on each side of whatever width(s) might be needed to get each side of the cabin unit to a number of inches that's easily divisible. Since the plan is to do liberated log cabins and/or stars around the cabin unit, I need to know what size to make those blocks. Something evenly divisible by 3, I think, or, failing that, then 4.

The Creative Process, III

2009-06-17T22:32:00.007-04:00

I let the quilt of the Norwegian mountain house sit for a while. I worked some on a jacket I'm knitting that will then be felted/fulled, but that deserves a post of its own. I've also been working a bit on a big project at work. And we had a state primary here last week which meant a very long day at the polls plus the day I took to recover. Finally, there's been the little matter of younger son's wrecking my car on election day. He's okay, and it was a single car accident. I'm still waiting to hear the verdict on the car; preliminary word was "borderline totaled." Yeah, that's another potential post.

Anyway, you can see the photo of the house I'm doing in fabric here. You can also see where I left off last time. Today's goal was to get the top little red part of the second story done. Last time, I did the bottom and sides, up to the top of the window unit. If I actually planned these things, I might have done this differently and ended up with something that looked a bit more realistic. But in the vein of liberated quiltmaking, I am not doing a perfect replica of the cabin, just something recognizable. Here's where I started today. The two pieces of red strips at the top will be the sides of the roof unit. The white strip will be the white roof edge. I sewed a diagonal seam and then trimmed it. If you're not a quilter, the item on the right that looks something like a pizza cutter is a rotary cutter. It's wickedly sharp but can precisely cut through multiple layers of fabric, using the ruler that's shown as a guide.

The next challenge was to get the blue sky and black roof section on each side with the lines of the roof lining up on each side. I don't have any photos because I sort of winged this. I sewed a strip of the sky to a strip of the roof and then laid the first red and white unit down in a position I thought would work. I basted the seam and checked. It looked good, so I sewed the seam tightly. Then I repeated the procedure on the other side and hoped for the best. I must have done something right, because it looked okay when I sewed the two halves together and then sewed the top to the bottom, window piece. Not bad, if I do say so myself. Of course, this shot shows how I could or should have done things differently. Note that I didn't take the white out far enough on the left side to match the right. And even if I had, I would have had to add the black roof unit by sort of insetting it, not necessarily an easy thing. The alternative? Slice off the roof edges to make the piece into a nice rectangle. Here's what it looks like sitting on top of the black batik I'm using for the roof. I'll figure out in my next session whether to extend the white trim edges and how to add the chimney to one side. Looking at it here, I'm thinking that I should extend the white edges; the trick will be matching things on each side, though if they're only off a little it might actually add to the character of the representation.

If you've been keeping track of the music I've cited in each of my other posts about this quilt, today's soundtrack was three Josh Groban CDs set on shuffle on my Mac. I'm saving raucous, more lively music for when the cabin unit is done, and I'm doing the more free-form blocks that will go around it. Depending on the status of the work project, I may do some more work on this tomorrow. Whether I'll get a report posted here would be another matter. I'm only still up tonight because I'm watching UVa play Arkansas in the College World Series. It's the bottom of the 12th inning right now, and if UVa doesn't stop squandering chances to win, I may have to abandon them. My school spirit (I went to grad school at UVa) only goes so far (and extends only to the non-marquee sports). Of course, since Arkansas just went ahead by one run, UVa, which hasn't been able to score one run in several innings, now has to score two. Oh well.

As if I needed another hobby ...

2009-06-12T15:09:00.003-04:00

Look3, the third annual Festival of the Photograph, is going on here right now. It's a pretty amazing event that I haven't really taken part in before. Actually, I'm not really taking part in it in a big way this year, but if there's a Look4 next year, I just might. Today I took in one exhibit, World Press Photo '09. World Press Photo is an independent nonprofit supporting and promoting the work of professional press photographers. For 2009, 5,508 photographers from 124 countries entered a total of 96,268 images. The exhibit is of the 200 winning pictures in 10 theme categories such as nature photography, sports news, etc. I was blown away by the exhibit. There were several images, one in particular of a soldier with the most penetrating stare, that kept calling me back for one more look.

There is another exhibit called YourSpace to which anyone can submit a photo to be professionally printed by Canon and then put on exhibit. You don't need to be registered for the festival to take advantage of this, so I took a photo in today. Had I known that the limit for non-festival folks was one photo per day rather than one for the whole festival, I'd have taken another one in yesterday. As it is, I'll try to get another one printed tomorrow. The range of works displayed in the YourSpace exhibit is pretty amazing. Some are by professional photographers. Others are by very serious amateurs. A few are by people like me. I must admit that I got a bit of a rush seeing my photo hanging up there with the others. It almost looked as if it belonged.

So what photo did I take in? Readers of my Sail A-Hue, my trip blog, might think it was the photo that I said blew me away when I first saw it. It wasn't because there was a photo I took later that, like the one of the soldier I mentioned above, has continued to call me back to it. Interestingly, it was not one I put up on Sail A-Hue since the posts at the end were sort of rushed. It was one of the first shots I took early one morning in Trondheim, Norway, as we walked around the harbor area. Seeing the photo last night, the husband commented that it showed the color of Norway (many of the houses are the shade of red shown in the photo) as well as the darkness. That's an interesting interpretation, but I don't know if that's why I keep going back to the photo. You tell me. As for the title of this post, I must admit to several moments of thinking that I really should get back to taking photography seriously, working at the shots I take both before, in terms of conscious thought about the composition, lighting, etc., and after, in terms of touching up things like the slight angle the photo above is off by. But do I really need another hobby that can require nontrivial amounts of time and money? Probably not, but then that hasn't necessarily stopped me in the past. I'll just have to wait and see if the urge passes or persists, and then take it from there.

Primarily Politics

2009-05-29T22:44:00.003-04:00

We have a primary election here in a little over a week. I'll be working as an election official again. It promises to be a long day; the primary is only for one party - the Democrats - and as far as I know it's only for two offices - governor and lieutenant governor. If we're lucky, we might exceed the 65 total voters we had in an earlier primary. Since the polls are open for 13 hours (6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.), that's five voters per hour. I may take a couple of books, or at least a book and some knitting.

I will admit to knowing little about the candidates for lieutenant governor, not even their names. I should attempt to find out before the election, don't you think? In terms of the gubernatorial primary, I've been going back and forth between the three candidates for some time, but I think I've finally come to a decision. It's been an interesting process. I've been thinking almost as much about how I came to the decision as I did about the decision itself, but perhaps that's some of the baggage that comes with having a PhD in psychology.

One of the candidates, Brian Moran, was a total unknown to me until he announced his candidacy. Another, Terry McAuliffe, I knew of from his involvement in Hillary Clinton's campaign. The third, Creigh Deeds, has been my State Senator since 2001. He ran for Attorney General four years ago and lost by a mere 320 or so votes out of over a million cast. I've liked the way he's voted in the State Senate and have voted for him every time. My first reaction was that I'd back Deeds, but as time has passed I've considered and reconsidered. I just wasn't sure. I've given money to two of the candidates, Deeds and McAuliffe. Moran hasn't asked me for money, so I haven't given him any.

I've had each candidate's website bookmarked for some months, looking at various bits and pieces of each from time to time. A few days ago, I took one issue, education, and read what was on each website. Those of Moran and Deeds had a bit more detail to my mind than that of McAuliffe, and detail is good. I obviously want a Democratic candidate who can beat the Republican one. Terry McAuliffe brings with him a well-oiled political machine and lots of campaign donations. That may or may not serve him well in parts of the state, though, and his connection with Hillary will be used against him, I am sure, if he emerges as the candidate. Brian Moran hails from Northern Virginia, giving him strength in numbers, but that NoVa connection probably won't be seen as a positive in the more rural reaches of the state. Creigh Deeds will, I think, have a better chance in those rural areas, but will have to work to get known in NoVa and in Tidewater. And there's that statewide race he lost four years ago ... to Bob McDonnell, the person who will be the Republican nominee.

After many hours of pondering this--not obsessing over it but thinking about it while running or working out or doing mundane chores such as washing dishes--my decision came down to a very little thing that just sort of popped into my mind yesterday. Terry McAuliffe has pretty much done nothing since the start of the year but run for the Democratic nomination. Brian Moran resigned his seat in the General Assembly because he was prohibited from raising money while the Assembly was in session. (The Republican nominee also resigned from his post as Attorney General in order to concentrate on his campaign.) And Creigh Deeds? He kept his seat in the State Senate and worked through some hard budget issues in the legislative session. Did it hurt his campaign for the Democratic nomination? Probably, but it's what tipped the scale in his favor for me. Yes, he wants to be governor, but he also had a job to do as my representative, and he kept doing it. I like that; it speaks to his character. That's why I'll be voting for him when it's my turn to vote. When it came right down to it, Creigh Deeds cared about more than being governor; he cared about representing his constituents. And that's why I want him as my governor.

Forgotten, But Not Gone

2009-05-28T09:22:00.003-04:00

One of the good things about decluttering is what you might find along the way. Yesterday, I found a 3 x 5 inch top-bound spiral notebook into which I jotted observations during one of our family trips to visit the husband's mother when she lived in inland British Columbia, in a town called Kamloops. On this particular trip, which took place in late June and early July 1999, we flex into Seattle then drove to Kamloops, visiting Vancouver along the way. Here, without editing, are those observations.

Elderly man - grizzled - homeless? - sitting in a McDonalds with a no-loitering, 30-minute limit to stay while you eat - doing elaborate counted cross-stitch.

Spider monkeys are the devil's work! (This appears to be in the handwriting of older son.)

Sign in downtown Seattle: 100s of beautiful girls and 3 ugly ones.

Some adults need to be sentenced to play. They say they play, but their play usually has an end in mind - something done on a computer, a game won. We need adult-sized McDonalds ball pits and play structures in which adults can be sentenced to spend time - to have fun for the sake of having it.

Wash the Works (Smithers, BC): combination car, truck, RV wash; laundromat; and public showers.

From the Interior News, a weekly paper in Smithers, BC. Under a wedding portrait: Gino & Val Mangone and Randy & Mickey Brandvold would like to announce the marriage of their children Trish Mangone and Trent Brandvold May 1, 1999 in Fornie, BC. On Sunday, July 11 at 2 pm we will be having a bar-be-que and ball game for friends and family at Bev & Don Lubbers. Come and meet Trish. Please bring your lawn chairs, ball gloves, and beverages. RSVP to 847-3393 or 847-3943.

Paraphrase of headline in a Western Canada farm paper: The Gophinator Meets the SPCA.

The Full Vancouver: skiing/snowboarding, etc. and golf, tennis, etc. in the same day. Done on Canada Day 1999 - 6 meter base at Cypress Mtn. ski resort north of Vancouver. (I should make it clear here that I did not personally do the Full Vancouver; I only read about it in the paper.)

The shorter the missed putt, the longer the obscenity. Newspaper ad on side of a bus in Seattle.

The Path to Totality

Jesus loves you. Everyone else thinks you're an asshole.

Please don't take that last one personally. I really wish I'd written down where I saw that or what prompted it, but I didn't. At least I recorded it for rediscovery almost ten years later. Indoor archaeology at its best!

The Creative Process, II

2009-05-26T14:50:00.010-04:00

I managed to get more done on the side of the cabin this morning. So you don't have to hop back to my original post, here's the cabin I'm trying to duplicate albeit in a liberated manner ala Gwen Marston. I got the three window units done last time, so today was all about the side wall of the cabin. First, though, here are a couple more fabrics I bought thinking they might have a place in this quilt. I thought that the middle one might work for the front yard. It was covered with snow when we were there, but I'm thinking of doing it as grass in the quilt. The pine trees on the other three are pretty cool, and there's the cool clouds on those fabrics as well.

The first step this morning was figuring out how big to make the house. That was pretty simple. I measured the window units in the photo along with the fabric ones and figured that I'd multiply all the photo dimensions by approximately 6. I actually looked for red fabric with some thin black lines running through it, thinking that the lines would work for the faint lines between the blanks of siding in the photo. Thinking about how to do those lines again convinced me that the best was was to cut the red fabric into strips, sew the strips back together, and let the seam line act as the faint line between planks. Here's half of my piece of red fabric cut into strips 1.25 inches wide. This will make the planks in the cabin 0.75 inches wide. So I sewed the strips together into units of four strips, since that gave me the width I needed to put above and below the window units. I also made one unit of six strips since that gave me the width I'd decided to put between the windows. Here's a shot with the second window unit about to be added to the first. And here's a shot of the finished side unit. I put the top window in just to show where it will go when I add the second story. I took the leftover units of red strips and cut them up a bit more, and sewed them to the second story window. I also did a strip of white to be the edge of the roof. Before I can put the second story unit together, though, I need to decide on a fabric for the sky. I pulled two blue batiks out of one of my drawers full of batiks (I know; I said "one of") and laid each out with the red side unit and the photograph I'm working from.
As you might have guessed, I'm going with the second blue, which seems almost a perfect match for the blue in the printed photo. I think it will contrast very nicely with the red of the cabin.

I might have kept going, but it was approaching lunchtime and I'd been through Harry Chapin's Portrait Gallery almost twice. The next step will be to figure out what to use for the chimney and the roof so that I can finish the second story unit. Then I'll start thinking about the deck and fence on the left side of the cabin and whether to include the basement windows and wall at the bottom of the side unit.

What I Might Do this Summer (Second Time Around)

2009-05-23T14:34:00.005-04:00

For some known reason that I don't feel like divulging - okay, it was to avoid doing something else - I just put at least one label on all my previous posts. In doing so, I noticed that I set forth some goals for last summer with a follow-up in the fall as to how I did on them. As the radio announcer reminded me this morning, Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer, so I might as well try to come up with a list this weekend.

(1) The last shall be first, eh? My final goal for last summer was to try to get the house a bit more kempt, as in the opposite of unkempt. Didn't make it and may never, but I might as well try again. One of the topics on my list of possible posts is how our big trip has really left me with the urge to downsize a bit around here. After living for two months in the same one pair of jeans and three pairs of cargo pants, and feeling as if I could have done with less, do I really need the dozen or more pairs of pants in my closet that I haven't worn in over a year? Or the suits I got back when I had a job that demanded my presence in an office or at meetings looking quite professional? I certainly don't need all of them. So my first goal is to follow through with this. I've got a pile of clothes to be donated going in the closet, after which there's lots more to tackle. Some people have junk drawers. I have one, plus the upstairs of the garage. You get the idea.

(2) Make at least one something out of the found objects and pieces of paper I brought back from the trip. Hopefully, I'll make more than one, but one is a good place to start. Perhaps I'll start with the spoons. There may be a strange cosmic cause, but I found a spoon or part of a spoon on the street in almost every major city we were in. It got to be something of a joke. "Find another spoon, Mom?" Or maybe I'll start with the flat eyeglass frame since I have several ideas about what I could do with that.

(3) Get my yellow belt in Myo Sim karate. I started going to karate classes in December, figuring that it could only help my kendo, which it has. I'm now at the point, though, where I've been taught everything I need to know for my yellow belt. Lots of things need work, but assuming I can put that work in, it would be nice to have the belt to show for it. My kicks probably need the most work, and I could be a lot more comfortable with falls. I would also like to be able to do the self-defenses without taking so long to think of what the next move is.

(4) And the first shall be last, in the vein of (1) above. I think my first goal last summer was to knock more items off The Fifty. Since I still have a few to go, I'll add that to the list for this summer, too. I got a start on the second Harry Potter book in Spanish, so perhaps I'll finish that. And perhaps I could do the collage item on The Fifty with some of my trip paraphernalia. Since I'll soon be halfway through the decade of my fifties, I'd better get that list done so I can rest up for The Sixty.

Okay, that's four items, the same as I had last summer. Some will be easier to do than others, and some will be more fun. They will at least keep me from getting bored. And if I go work on one of them now, I can keep avoiding that other thing I don't want to do.

The Creative Process, I

2009-05-22T13:19:00.009-04:00

I don't usually think to photograph things before I've made them, but it hit me today as I was starting to work on a new quilt that I should document this one. Since the intended recipients of the new work don't know about this blog, I should be safe posting about it here.

The quilt is for the husband's Norwegian cousins, two brothers who were so wonderful to us during our recent visit there. How do you give one quilt to two people who don't live together? You make it for the mountain house they own together. The quilt itself will have a representation of the house done in the style of Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking, a style I wholeheartedly embrace because it largely frees me from the tyranny of matching corners.

The first step is to make the house. Once it's made, I can decide what to put around it and how big the whole thing should be. Here's the photo of the house that I'm using to work from. In the liberated tradition, the house on the quilt will not look nearly as neat and precise as in the photograph; however, I want it to be recognizable as the mountain house.

Yesterday, I purchased some a few fabrics that I thought would work for components of the house. This morning, I pieced the three window units. I started with this fabric. Here's a closer look at it.

Today was window day, so here's how I did the upstairs one. First, I'm going to show it as closed because it's easier that way. As you can see in the photo, it's two panels of two panes by two panes, with a wider strip of white between the panels than there is between the individual panes. So here's the piece of fabric I started with. I could have gotten all anal and cut out individual panes to sew together, but that's far too time-consuming and not nearly liberated enough. So I simply folded this over in the right places and stitched the fabric together to leave a thin strip of white in between the panes and a wider strip of white in between the two panels. Here's the finished piece, along with the two lower window units. They're sitting on the red that I may use for the side of the house. And there you have it. A wee bit of piecing on a Friday morning, done with Josh Groban's Awake on the CD player. The next step will likely be surrounding the windows with red fabric for the sides of the house. I haven't decided yet whether to use the solid red. I may hit the Memorial Day sale at the local quilt store after my workout tomorrow morning and see if they have a red with some sort of black lines running through it. Or maybe I won't. In other words, I'm making no promises about when the next post on this quilt will go up. In terms of my time, making this is competing with working on a project for my job (money is always nice) and learning a new statistical computing package or language (challenge is always nice, too). We'll just have to see how the long weekend goes.

Every Quilt Has a Story

2009-05-15T07:46:00.009-04:00

I actually finished my latest quilt, Cattitude, in February, during the storm of preparations to leave for two months. As a result, I didn't get anything posted about it. That's a good thing, because a lot can happen in two months. Every quilt has a story, and the story for this one had a plot twist right after the trip. I designed Cattitude for younger son's then-girlfriend with the intention of giving it to her for Christmas. Note the "then." He broke up with her right before Christmas, during final exams at the university they both attend. (No, I don't condone such behavior.) After the shock wore off, I e-mailed the young lady and confessed that I was about done with the quilt I had intended to give her for Christmas but was now worried about its connection with younger son. She expressed gratitude for my making her a quilt; her mother quilts, so she knows what goes into a quilt. She suggested that I give it to her for her birthday in February instead. In February, she suggested I wait until after the trip. After the trip, she said she couldn't really take it since she would always connect it with the painful breakup.

What to do? First, I often finish quilts right before they need to be given, meaning that I'm forever thinking "I could have ..." or "If only I had had the time to ..." in terms of the quilting. Because of the Christmas to February delay on this one, I pretty much got to quilt it as I wanted to not as I had time to. I really, really like how I did this one. I quilted in a bunch of detail on the cat, and then echo-quilted around it in the center panel. It doesn't really show up in the photographs, but the quilting is pretty awesome. I don't usually confess to being proud of my little creations, but I'm proud of this one.

Partly because of the pride I felt in Cattitude, I could not just replace the label saying for whom I designed and made the quilt, put on a new label, and then give the qult to someone else. It was designed and made for one particular person; that was part of its story. It would be dishonest to tell someone else I made it for them. I wrestled with this for a while, until a solution presented itself. One reason I designed Cattitude was that the young lady loves animals but could not have a pet in the dorm. The label subtext on Cattitude is that "because everyone who wants a cat should have one." Because of that, Cattitude will be going to a dear friend's son, who is graduating from high school and heading off to college, and who will undoubtedly miss the family cat when he goes. He'll understand that the label, with his name added to that of the originally intended recipient, is part of the quilt's story. Yes, every quilt has a story, and every quilt needs a good home. I'm betting that Cattitude will have one with its new recipient.

Personal Trip Planning

2009-05-14T06:58:00.004-04:00

When we visited Angkor Wat, we stayed at a place called the Golden Banana Bed and Breakfast. It was all we could have wanted: cheap (very), clean, free breakfast, free wireless, and an owner who insisted I really should stop at the hospital on my way to the airport after being bitten by a dog. The husband didn't think the skin had been broken, but it had, so the stop at the hospital could have been a lifesaver in that I was able to start the treatment to prevent rabies immediately, with no interruption to our trip.

I probably never would have found the Golden Banana on my own. I found it thanks to the nurse practitioner I saw for a ring finger that kept locking up when I bent it. In the course of the exam, the subject of our plan to visit Angkor came up, and she said she'd stayed at a very nice bed and breakfast there. One personal recommendation and a look at the website were enough to convince me that was where we should stay.

The husband and I found our favorite Caribbean dive resort, Small Hope Bay Lodge, where we honeymooned and to which we returned four other times, in much the same way. As we were planning our wedding, I was chatting with some colleagues about possible honeymoon locations with sun and water for diving. Henry, a somewhat portly, quiet man with a very dry sense of humor, who worked in the budget office across the hall, said that he knew where he'd go for that, and suggested Small Hope. I asked him for more details, and it came up that he had never actually been there himself. Rather, he read travel guides thinking about where he would like to go if he could. He had decided that if he ever went to the Caribbean, he'd like to go to Small Hope. This being before the days of the Internet, I did some travel guide reading of my own, and the rest was family history. We went there a total of five times, and each time I would come back and thank Henry as I told him how much we had enjoyed it.

Not too long after our last trip to Small Hope, I quit working to go on sabbatical with the husband, have younger son, and become the full-time mother-at-home I had wanted to be since older son had been born. I lost touch with Henry, though I heard a few years later that he had retired. A few years after that, I read his obituary in the local paper. I pictured him, sitting at night reading travel guides, and wondered if he ever got to some of the places he'd read about. I don't know if he ever made it to Small Hope Bay Lodge, but I hope so, because we never would have made it there without him. Thanks, Henry. Many, many thanks.

For Me? A Blog Award!

2009-05-10T16:10:00.007-04:00

While I was away for two months and not blogging here, this blog was the recipient of a "One Lovely Blog" award from Sherrie at Just Books. According to the award guidelines Sherrie posted, I'm supposed to pass this along to 15 other "newly discovered" blogs. The only problem is that I haven't really discovered 15 other blogs recently. I'm not even sure I read 15 blogs regularly. I try to read Debi's regularly. Neil Gaiman's, too. I haven't been as good as I would like about reading Annie's blog regularly. I'd like to read Kara's blog more often. For the next two weeks, the two blogs I'll be checking more than daily are the ones my younger son is keeping as he and his older brother tour Europe. One is a photographic journal of their travels; the other is a self-portrait he takes each day. This is how I know where they are or have been since they don't really have a set itinerary to follow.

It's interesting to have this blog win an award from someone I don't even know. Obviously, someone who posts a blog to the Internet should consider that anyone who happens across it might start to read it. For that reason, I try to post things that I think people other than my immediate family might be interested in. This has included book reviews, reflections on one thing or another, a tribute to my father on his last birthday (since he's got another one coming up this week, Happy Birthday, Dad! You make 80 look like the new 55!). I invited a large number of people to follow my blog of the trip. I've never really invited anyone outside my family and a few close friends to this blog, though I do have the URL posted on my Facebook page, access to which is limited to my Facebook friends. I'm flattered and a bit proud that someone thought this little corner of my world worthy of mention. So thanks, Sherrie, and I'll try to keep up the good work. There will be another book review coming, maybe even later tonight. First, though, it's back to making my mom a special Mother's Day dinner. The pie (from my good friend Mrs. Smith) is cooling on the table, the potato salad is chilling in the refrigerator, the meat loaf is cooking in the oven, and I'm about to start on the ginger candied carrots. I'm getting hungrier just seeing, smelling, and writing about it all.