November Poems

Very late in October, the 29th or so, Rachel emailed that Patrick had proposed writing a poem a day all through November, did I want to do the same? Sure, said I. November is half over and I've written 14 poems. I don't think they've managed that many -- but have a major advantage: I've had the daily writing habit for many years. I know that given a challenge, I can always meet it -- maybe not with quality but with some quantity. Regular writing is not very different from daily tooth brushing or exercising -- it's an exercise of the verbal part of the mind ... and more, of course, of noticing. Sometimes it's noticing things outside yourself and sometimes noticing the world around, even the items on the news. I can certainly say that in fourteen poems I haven't written anything wonderful, in fact, nothing even very inspired. But it's a good exercise ... definitely not for everyone. I think all my poems need some thought. I have none in hard copy for my other computer was giving up the ghost. As soon as I get Word installed here I'll enter the month of poems and work on them and then probably add one or two. So far, Rachel has written on that I think is quite wonderful -- about motherhood on the occasion of her oldest's turning 21. I don't have permission to print that yet -- have to ask Anyway this is just to say that creativity is -- or can be -- a habit like almost any other habit.

Back in Business, sort of

So I'm entering this post from my new Mac ibook that I've just fired up. There's a lot I have to learn yet and more to install but I think maybe I've gone from a toddler to a walker ... or maybe not. I'm not ready to do photos today, but soon. I do want to direct my regular readers to the empirequitlers.net -- which at this point I can't make a click and go address -- that takes me some research and time. But go to show and tell on the menu and the open November and scroll down a bit and there's me in my jacket of which I'm very proud. It doesn't show the details of the embellishments but it shows three view -- the photographer was very kind.

The photographer, Cindy Russell and her husband, who do web work professionally -- and Cindy is the genius behind the fine website -- have just offered a book of the quilts from our guild show in March. It's expensive but I'll get it since it's the first time a couple of quilts of mine have been in print. It WAS a beautiful quilt show -- as befits a NYC guild of course -- and the book is a wonderful memory of it. If any reader is interested, leave a message and I'll tell you how to get it or a CD of the show which Cindy and her husband have also published.

I can't say how glad I am to be sitting at my own computer writing this.

Botheration!!!

A brief note: blog entries will be short and pictureless for some time -- not too long, I hope. My hard drive crashed -- that is bad enough although I've adjusted to the notion that I am not mortally wounded with the loss of data ... which may be retrievable ... for a price, of course. What rankled is that I had a three year warrantee for my Ibook - and it expired 9-26-07. And the real slow down that was a warning signal started toward the middle of October. Yes, that's just the kind of that happens and inspires conspiracy theories. I won't go there.

Venting about technology

I'm having a hard time with my internect connection -- somehow Safari, the apple connection works, for this blog, but my AOL is very uncooperative. I spent most of Sunday morning on the phone with the DSL provider only to finally hang up after being terminally on hold. I think I'll have to take the poor little machine down to the Apple store and spend a lot of time there probably finding out something simple that will cost a fair amount of money. How one comes to depend on something like internet. I can use my computer at work of course, but I like the pleasure of doing it at home on my own time when I feel like it.... spoiled.
If I can [and the first attempt failed] I will show a picture of the ideal appliances ... one very low tech, the other only a little bit more complex. To me the ideal appliance is an iron. When I left home for college I was given a new iron. I used that iron for about 30 years. It was fine when i replaced it -- it didn't have a steam capability and I was ready to move up in the world. The one I hvae new was its replacement and is in fine fettle 25 or so years later. Dependable! And believe me, these were not lazy irons. I LIKE to iron, I iron things many people don't, like sheets and tee-shirts. But NO, I do not iron underwear, but I do iron some pajamas.
My second choice for great appliance is my sewing machine. It is now 45 years old, or so and it's tension isn't right any more and that's a major problem. But it's sewn literally, I think, millions of miles of seams. It has had two broke parts, minor ones, in all that time. It has had tune ups and needs one now but I have been able to depend on it.
In contrast this little comptuer is only 3 years old. I haven't -- by far -- mastered all it can do. But it, has not been totally kind to me ...certainly not the last few days. I have no warm fuzzies toward it. In fact, I'm downright frustrated. Yes, it's a great deal more complex than iron or sewing machine, but ... Well, it's a battle I might as well throw up my hands for bow in resignation about. I have found myself addicted to having easy internet access and I'm upset that it's no easy right now.

On a roll

Something about all the different ways one can arrange blocks... I don't remember having blocks as a kid but I suppose I might have. Arranging blocks in varioiuis orders must be a very basic pleasure, blocks or sticks or stones or whatever one has to play with. I've had these 2x2 inch squares. Once I began it's been impossible to stop until I've used up most of them -- three more quilt tops in the last two days. The one above with lots of red is the most dramatic and probably most successful as a design.

The other one is also relatively successful -- both in a traditional sense. it gives me a kind of convenetional warm fuzzy feeling. The fifth, when I had used up so many of the sets of blocks that I could not get a consistent design, is not very successful and I probably won't show it. [We can all hide our less than successful attempts if we want.] So now I must either quilt them or tie them -- in a way tieing, the old fashioned, simple method seems most appropriate. So that is the end of this momentary madness. I'll go back to more contemporary designs -- not "when" these are done, but immediately and finish these as I can. They are not really appropriate to give to babies [for the charity project] but might be quite appropriate to give to older people, they can cover knees and legs for the wheelchair bound very conveniently and may be more satisfying to older people who expect conventional quilts. I hope that doesn't sound arrogant. I read on someone's blog today that at a fair she found her art quilts earned a "clever" comment but that people at that particular fair were drawn to conventional quilts. The non-quilting world still needs educating and familiarizing with the contemporary quilt world.

Gramma quilts - new vintage

I am making tops out of these 2x2 squares as I wrote yesreday. Actuallly if you look carefully you can see it's a double four patch, Thus I can add the larger squares of calicos I have -- and I'm discovering I have more than I thought. The red looks particularly haphazard and unplanned, but, in fact it was somewhat planned. Since I have no design wall, i just put them together by instinct. If I had them on a design wall they'd be more structured .. which might be good, or it might be too prissy.
This uses blue which is not as evident as I'd like plus dusty green calicos. It's essentially the same four patch design. I've been thinking of these as "gramma quilts" because they are so old fashioned. I notice these days in fashion any time an actress doesn't have on a brand new dress the old one is called "vintage." That seems a good name too. Maybe I should call them "vintage gramma quilts"

I'm going to do at least one more. But with my penchant for doiing series, I feel myself on the edge of doing maybe four more which would leave very little of the 2x2 squares. So far it's just tops, of course, qulting them will be done in the simplest way. Some very simple minded part of me gets great pleasure out of these simple old fashioned designs and fabrics. They'll all be given away.

A third project

A couple days ago i said that one project wasn't enough. It seems two projects aren't enough -- partly because I haven't actually started on the second [the hand piecing]. Since a meeting isn't upcoming for a couple weeks, I've distracted myself with a small series of charity quilts. Last spring I purchased from the guild's share table a batch of 2x2 pieces -- such as I remember purchasing about 15 years ago. These, by their calico design, were at least that old. But I have a really deep love of scrappy and, yes, even calico "gramma" style quilts. What the heck. I am a gramma! Why not? So yesterday I put together the top for one child size quilt. Today I had less time but did sew a bunch of the 2x2s together. There will be a couple of photos tomorrow.

I feel especially inspired to get charity quilts made as soon as possible because a couple of years ago, at the January meeting the charity quilt chairman distributed Xeroxes of a letter from a woman who had distributed quilts at a family shelter at Christmas time. She said that for several of the children the quilt was their only Christmas present. It was a stab in the heart. In this obscenely wealthy city where most children have more junky toys than their parents can count, it is a tragedy for any child to have nothing on Christmas. So I want to make what I can and have them ready for distribution by Christmas.