The ABCs of Me

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

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

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

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 11

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

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

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

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

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

and a close-up shot:

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

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

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and the bottom of the column:

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

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

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope everyone has a good week.

Cone Nebula Quilt - Section 8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Actual Artistic Content!!

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

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

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

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

I got a variety of effects.









I'll have more about this in another post.

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

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

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

Open Letter to a Former Supervisor

Dear Former Supervisor:

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

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

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

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

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