Life is Just ...

... a bowl of Queen Anne cherries. Ahhh!! last week my favorite fruit and veggie store had beautiful red Bing cherries and they were SO good. So are the Queen Anne's, though subtler, as always, in flavor. I'm not sure it's green-ly politically correct or not to rejoice in these wonderful treats. You can see not many are left. I suppose they come from some place like Chile, I hope they're grown without taking undo advantage of local people. Frankly at $3.99 a pound, when I'm eating them I don't care -- they're better than chocolate. Really!


This is the Carol Doak paper-pieced star "quartet" that I wrote about some weeks, maybe months, ago that I was uncertain about. Something made me stick to it and finish -- well, it's not finished, not quilted or bound or labeled; but the piecing is done and I used the purple-ish fabrice for a border. I'll probably use the green that is the outermost little triangle in the design for a binding, simply because that's the only color of which I have enough fabric. I think it'll give the whole thing a snap -- good, or maybe bad. Frankly, I wish I hadn't spent my time on this although sometimes from across the room, I kind of like it. I've been constantly conflicted about this because of the background busy-iness and because I feel that the bits of color are too small to have a sufficient impact, exceptt for the yellow which, in effect, is doubled at the "turn" of each design element.

My instinct said, no, it doesn't real work. But I've seen many such busy quilts and such busy designs in other modern art and design, so I thought making it and forcing myself to look at it as I worked and once it could be put into stars, I would learn something ... I did. That my own taste is for more immediately comprehensible patterns and design. That the busy-ness of the background makes me acutely uneasy. So I persevered and I learned I don't want to do it again. Of course I'll finsish this, maybe this coming weekend and then put it away --- to be offered for sale at the upcoming quilt show in March. And I will hope someone likes it much more than I do. I want it done and then out of my life. Saying ta-ta to something that makes you uncomfortable is a form of wisdom.

Another form of wisdom, I would suggest, is being spontaneous enough to see the cherries displayed, stop at the store, although it was not on the day's plan, get them, and unapologetically eat them all with sincere relish. We have to do tha because there are few fruits we can get these days that actually have their full natural flavor and sweetnes wherever they are grown.