Happy New Year.  I'm going to leave this oversized header picture here for a  few days even though there's not much quilting on it and it's not very good. 

The past year was a gone one for quilting-wise but it's ending with sewing machine problems and many, many non-quilting jobs that are taking a lot of time.  If I started to make a list of the quilts in my mind that I'd like to make it would fill more space than the photo.  First on the agenda is this month's Block of the Month for  the Bayberry guild. Happily that meeting is three weeks away.

For a delightful photo, go to the Selvage Quilt blog in the sidebar to the right and look at the fantastic photo of a quilt up in lights in Times Square.  It caught my eye immediately because the face is familiar and the quilt in the background is one that is much like the one I sent to my grandson for Christmas -- much like it because I used the pattern designed by Karen Griska.  If you read this in a few days, scroll down to her January 31 post.

Introductions to Poets/Poetry

At an annual party yesterday hosted by one of our A.L.L. members, I had been asked to bring my "Marginalized Poets" quilt -- which I had taken to the last poetry class of the semester. Most of the poetry class were not invitees to this particular gathering. Many had not seen the quilt. As people became sated with the abundance of food and before desert and coffee a Shakespeare afficianado proclaimed a monologue from the Bard and then I explained the meaning of my quilt and asked a few women to read the poems I had given them a little earlier -- poems by women pictured on the quilt.  They rose to the occasion, reading very well -- and I think all especially enjoyed the poem with which they were not famliar, Lucille Clifton's "These Hips" -- read with appropriate gusto and pride by Marjorie who bears no obvious resemblence to Ms. Clifton but was woman enough to ptoject the pride in the poem.  I took the moderator's perogative and read two of Wislawa Szymborska's short poems -- introducing that wonderful Polish poet to this American audience.

Thus a highly literate audience who are not particularly poetry readers and most of whom are only familiar with Emily Dickenson and our favorite Cape Cod (sometimes) resident, Mary Oliver, had a chance to learn a little more about other women poems.  I was born with a serious didactic impulse, I always want to tell people about the things I've discovered.  Perhaps I was a missionary in a part life. I was most pleased when one guest said to me that he had never heard people reading serious poetry aloud before.  He liked it.

Time to enjoy quilting

This is the last week of my classes, taking and teaching, in the fall semester at The Academy for Lifelong Learning.   have virtually all of December and January in which to balance my time between writing and quilting. The thought makes me very happy. I have twos quilt started and a third ready to be quilted -- well almost, the top is done and the back which is pieced of a few fabrics that more or less compliment the front is done but I haven't sandwiched and pinned in the batting. That project will wait, probably quite a while. 

A kiddy quilt for Christmas will be the first one finished and possibly in the next week ... or not. But soon. Another one recently started, fascinates me.  It will be a throw with nine ten-inch patches and a fairly wide border. When that is essentially done I think I will want to make the design again in quite different colors -- these are dark as in the quilt I saw in a magazine. I am beginning to imagine it in colors that are more interesting. We'll see -- this is long term planning now. 

Of writing project there is no end.  Another couple of rejections for my big books means more queries to send out. And there are a couple of long short stories that are going to grow a bit longer yet and perhaps finally say what I want them to say. There are poems and flash fiction and short short stories to put into some kind of order and to submit. Often I wish I had a secretary. Ah, well ... two months will flash past and it's not as if I'll be a recluse during that time, already the calendar squares are filing up.