Wayward blogger

I am a few months away from the 6th anniversary of my blog.

I began my blog at the suggestion of my young friend, Bryanna. Back then, everyone & their pet hog had a blog, so I wanted one, too. A place to show what I was stitching on, share thoughts, get advice -- it sounded fun. And it was fun. I was brand new to social media & I immediately loved blogging. I have always been a shy, square-peg with self esteem issues, a combination that makes it very hard for me to make connections with people in real life. The semi-anonymity of writing & sharing under an assumed name was freeing.

What I did expect from my blog? I don't remember. It seemed many of the young quilting bloggers were managing to turn their blogs into book deals, fabric lines, fame, fortune. I suspect I wanted that. But, really, what a shy, square-peg with self esteem issues was going to do with fame & fortune, I don't know. Luckily, it never happened. Blogging through those hard years of my Mother's decline, death, was a real lifesaver. Then there was the sharing of things I was making -- somehow, in the whole Worldwide Web, I found similar thinking quilt-makers. I have gotten the kind of encouragement & support I never got at any guild. It has been a joy, because, better than fame & fortune, I found friends.

Now years have passed. My friend, Bry, has moved away, no longer quilts, no longer blogs, but I continue on. Well, sort of. My life is much simpler now, but I've gotten quite lazy, my posts are pretty rare. But I want to do better. I want to maintain the connections with friends-I've-never-met. So I am promising to check in more often, maybe just some pictures, a line or two. Enough to say "hi" & "thank you" to my friends.

Rain, rain, go away

Thank you for your very kind emails about Shug's & my safety.
Yes, we are safe & dry -- unlike others in our area -- property lost &, much worse, lives lost.

Regarding the weather, Enough!!!

Shug & I grew up in Tornado Alley, saw our share of brutal weather: blistering heat, softball-sized hail, towering clouds with that sickly greenish light, blizzards, ice storms, sub-zero temperatures, etc, etc, etc. But I had never seen rain like it rains down here on the Gulf Coast. It doesn't seem physically possible to rain as hard as it does here. They say that at one point on the night of the News-making Rains, it was coming down at a rate of 1 inch in 5 minutes (2.5 cm/5 minutes). They say that this May was the wettest month for Texas since they've been keeping records -- for our county alone, official measurements from 10 to 20 inches. They say that approximately 35 trillion gallons fell on the state this month.
And -- now is the beginning of the 2015 hurricane season. {sigh} Please wish us good luck.

Thank you again for your kind questions & comments. I see I've not just made virtual friends with my little blog, but really real friends.
Thanks & hugs to you!

Resolutions and Aspirations

I'm old enough to know that making New Year's Resolutions is not always helpful, can be downright hurtful. You know, you resolve to do or don't do a long list of things. You write down your list, then at the end of the year (or in September or July or April) you check over your list to see how well -- or poorly -- you are doing. If you aren't doing or not doing what you resolved, then you feel like a failure when actually your Resolutions might have been a little unreasonable, maybe even unattainable.
So I'm only making a few Resolutions & a longer list of Aspirations.

1. I resolve to get healthy; I aspire to loose weight.
The years my Mom was in nursing care took their toll on me: I was away from home 2 to 3 months of each of those years; when I wasn't with her, I was trying to catch at work & at home; I self-medicated with over eating, drinking & shopping. So, I want to try to put myself at the top of my to-do list: exercise, eat healthfully, meditate, nap, laugh, read. If I lose a few pounds in the process, all the better!

2. I resolve to sew my stash & scraps; I aspire to buy less fabric.
During my puttering days last year, I was poking into the corners of my sewing room & discovered fabric & more fabric that I had forgotten I had; beautiful fabric, fabric I loved, or once loved, that deserved to be made into something. So fewer e-carts, fewer trips to quilt shops -- not none at all, mind you, just fewer.

3. I resolve to make at least 3 -- maybe 4 -- quilts using the shirts of my parents; I aspire to make many, many more quilts.
I want to make quilts for my brother & 2 nieces -- & maybe for myself -- with Mom & Dad's shirts. I think I've come up with a plan to make them all at once, they'll be similar but not alike & I'm really eager to get started on them! I always keep a long & growing list of quilts I would like to make: more HSTs, coin-stack strippy-s, maple leaves, text-y/letters, houndstooth, sailboats, bow ties, 16-patch, etc, etc, etc.

4. I aspire to make 2014 my Year of the Pompom!
I read the most charming quote by Maira Kalman:

I think it's nice to say the word "pompom" as often as you can.

At about the same time, one of my favorite quilters, Rachaeldaisy, was showing us a few of her pompom quilts. So Besides saying "pompom" (which *is* very nice!), I want to make add pompoms to my quilts, ala Rachaeldaisy!

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

I suppose that by their very definition, there is no such thing as a "good" disease. They are all debilitating and wasting to some degree, lesser or greater. They all cause the sufferer some sort of pain and cause the loved ones of the sufferer some sort of anguish. I am not trying to say that what I am going through is any worse than what people all over the world are going through every single day, I just want to say that Alzheimer's Disease SUCKS!

I am 800 miles away from my Mom, so there are as many as 5 to 8 weeks between my visits to her. With each of my last several visits, I saw a dramatic decline in her condition, less of HER there: sleeping more, increased confusion, increased difficulty expressing herself, decreased physical ability. One of the really crappy things about AD is that, because of the sufferer's difficulty understanding what is going on around them, they tend to be fretful, depressed and, sometimes, hostile. We are lucky that, by and large, my Mom is fairly content. She loves her room, she has a nice view of the pretty backyard of her facility, she likes most of the people that care for her, she likes many of her 'neighbors' -- though she says that many of them are "not all there". She likes listening to music, especially the soundtrack to The Sound of Music. We listen to it over and over and over again -- always new to her, but it has become etched in my brain. The bitter irony of 'remembering your favorite things' when you are 'feeling sad' is that it is not such good advise when not only can you not recall things you like, you can't even remember what you had for breakfast.

The car trips north and south back home were beautiful. Spring was bursting out the whole way: bluebonnets and paintbrush in Texas; redbud and fruit trees in bloom all along the way; wheat fields covered in that new, neon green; spindly-legged calves and colts among the herds of cattle and horses. Life renewing itself.

For some reason, a factoid I remember learning in paleontology popped into my head. If you take a sponge -- not the bright blue rectangle by the kitchen sink, but the simple sea animal -- and push it through a fine mesh screen, its cells, disassembled by passing through the screen, will re-assemble on the other side.
I am hoping my heart has the same ability as the sponge and will become whole again after all of this is over.

Pimp my blog

My blog-iversary came and went in early December. I was away from my computer at the time and by the time I came back, holiday preparations were in full swing. So it went un-remarked.

But I've been wanting to change my look for the second year. A while back, my awesome e-friend elegantitus gave me a very sweet surprise gift of my blog name with my Habitat challenge quilt as the background and I've been wanting to use it. So please stay tuned and please be patient as I work out the bugs and get the blog looking the way I want it.

Everyone have a fun and safe New Year's celebration and I wish for you a Happy, Healthy and Blessed 2012!
Talk to you next year!

You're Invited

Oh my gosh! The Quilt Festival is less than one month away!

This year, after trying for the last three years, I finally got into Hollis Chatelain's class, "Quilt Line as a Third Design Aspect". I am very excited, and perhaps a bit apprehensive, about it. (I had a dream/nightmare that I was very late and didn't have any of the right materials for the class.)

I can't believe that this will be my 20th Festival! In 1991, I flew down to Houston for the very first time. This was when I bought my Bernina; I guess she has an anniversary too! While in town, I called up an old friend from college who I knew had recently moved here for a job. Fourteen months later, Shug and I got married and I became a permanent Houstonian! It is not quite as special going to the Festival as a "townie" -- no plane trip, just a drive into town; no hotels or restaurants, dinner and chores await when I get home -- but it is a lot cheaper. My discretionary spending can all be on fabric, books and bright shiny things!

In case you don't know, there will be a couple of meet-ups of all the branches of the Modern Quilt Guild and the Houston Modern Quilt Guild is hosting them. One is during Market and one is during Festival. (Check the link for locations and times.) I'm looking forward to putting faces to the funny blog and flickr names that I know so well and for internet friends to become IRL friends!

And to my blog friends who are not in the Modern Quilt Guild and are planning to go to the Festival, please let me know! I would dearly love to make plans to meet you and put a face to the kind comments I receive on my blog.

I can't get rid of it!!!

I am nearly ready to sandwich my wonky stars and begin experimenting with a new way of quilting.
Because there is so much white in this quilt, I didn't do as I often do and just go through my stash and use any old thing that I have enough of for the back. I was afraid that any--even the least amount--of print would show through to the front. So I went out and bought something. Because of the stellar-ness of the top, I chose a solid white with an overall, silvery, glittery shimmer. Very pretty.
Today I pre-washed the yardage, tossing it in the light-colored, gentle wash load.
And there was glitter all over EVERYTHING!
It made me think of the one-liner from comedian, Demetri Martin: Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies.

Pictureless Tuesday

I am visiting my Mom, so away from the home computer & unable (read, don't know how) to upload images from my iPad--so no pictures today.

I am uncomfortable when conversations linger too long on me. I am not good at receiving compliments. So I am VERY ill-at-ease with the attention I am getting for Skirting the Circle. I am completely humbled & staggered by the very, very nice things people are saying about it. Thank you all so much. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I am not resting on my laurels though. I am thinking about my next finishes. When I got to the quilting of the last quilt, I posted requests for help and suggestions. I got some excellent advice and support.

But one suggestion kind of stung.
Bobbidink suggested that I take some classes, add to my tool box. In my reply to her, with my pouty lower lip implied, I said I've been quilting for years, taken free-motion classes, walking foot classes. I know HOW to quilt, I just didn't know WHAT to quilt. But the more I thought about her kindly meant comment, the more I wondered if I have a tool in my toolbox that I don't use, can I really say I "have" that tool? Perhaps not.

I have three finished tops, four more near completion. With these nascent quilts I am going to experiment--free-motion, walking foot, hand quilting. I am going to do something new! (Well, new to me.)

Thank you Bobbidink for your valuable comment. It hit home and, I hope, will make me a better quilt maker.


Addendum: I don't want anyone to misunderstand. I was a little hurt by Bobbidink's constructive criticism--at first. But she said to me exactly what I needed to hear! I did a lot of self-examination and saw that I was being a bit lazy, doing the same things over & over again. I am nervous, but I am now ready to push my boundaries. There may be some dismal failures but I know I will grow as a quilt-maker.
Again, my sincere thanks Bobbidink!