First Day of Winter

At 6:00 the local newscaster said, "Winter began 21 minutes ago." I listen to these newscasts just before I get out of bed especially for pieces of information like that. I will forget where there was an auto accident and what some town's selectmen decided. But I want to know that winter just started. A few minutes later the other newscaster will tell me the weather (changable but okay through Christmas) the temperature in Boston and three or four other towns on the Cape and finally, "outside our backdoor" --  36 -- which might as well be my backdoor as the broadcasting studio is only about six blocks  away.

The 80+ little woman (with fanastic posture and great energy) who calls her class "Yoga"doesn't teach much yoga and always tells us about the moon phases and season changes. So this morning she told us that in Chinese medicine the emphasis moves from stomach and gut to kidney and liver and that our bodies will want more sleep than previously. The latter seems Darwinian and obivous -we want to conserve our energy and heat even though we are not a hibernating species. Actually I truly enjoy  sleeping -- usually a simple 8 hours but I am aware of enjoying the coziness of lying in bed when the clock radio comes on, snuggling under the covers and against the pillow. But I do not stay in bed, I'm ready to get up. 

So the majority of the class was spent doing a series of qi gong movements which are meditative and peaceful, very little foot movement, mostly arms making graceul gestures repeatedly. This is very much like the tai chi chih that I've had a few lessons in - the major difference being that the tai chi chih emphasises shifting weight from foot to foot while doing the hand gestures which are very similar. It's all from Chinese practices.  We Americans cannot just leave good enough alone, we put our stamp on the Asian exercises thinking it's more appropriate for us. Maybe it is but I doubt it. I look at all those variations of yoga that have popped up all over the US, some even espoused by Indian gurus (they are nto averse to a money making idea). 

The movements are paired with breathing -- obviously an important factor. At the end of  today's class we did some  alternate nostril breathing,which I learned long ago to call pranayama -- a "powerful"breathing exercise -- when done under the direction of a well versed, traditional yoga master.  Peaceful when done as we did, at the end of an hour.

So winter is here.  I'll definitely get my sleep. I'll learn more of the new version of tai chi and am enjoying a week of relative quiet before next week becomes a time of much family busy-ness.  And I have both quilting and writing projects to  work on.

Work to do

I just put this together this morning.  It will not be quilted for a while but I hope I can do it before February 1st.  Yesterday I finished the fall semestet at the Academy for Lifelong Learning.  The next semester (spring which makes me smile as I look out the window at our first snowfall of the winter) begins Feb.1. Meanwhile I have many things I hope to do with quilting high on the to-do list. I finished this quilt top this morning. I think it has a very "modern" look but actually it was designed in 1945, by Laura Wheeler and printed in several newspapers.  It was revived with a paper piecing pattern by Jean Nolte for Fons and Porter's Fat Quarters magazine and printed several months ago.  I love paper piecing and I love quilts where I can use my extensive scrap fabric collection so I have enjoyed making this very much. 

Here are four other quilts I've made in the last eight or twelve months lying on top of the asterisk quilt. They all need quilting. I began hand tieing the checkerboard quilt last winter but have less than a quarter of it done. The strip quilt in the middle is from a design by Karen Griska of The Selvage Blog (see sidebar). It has been sandwiched with batting and a back. I will quilt it probably before the asterisk one, some kind of very, very simple quilting.

The two quilts behind were made just to use up scraps, the one with pink stripping was to use up floral pieces that I don't think I'll use any other way. and the other quilt, a log cabin variation was because I had a collection of pinwheels and wanted to use more scraps.  I really, really adore scrap piecing.  Some things become uninteresting once sewn together and that is the case with the last two.  I may give them away as is and hope they'll find a home that will quilt them.

This final quilt is small, 30x30 and obviously not quilted yet.  This is called "Variations on an Amish theme" and is my contribution to the Uncommon Threads group's challenge for doing something that mixes modern and traditional. So the middle square (a starbusrst, paper pieced, designed by Carol Doak) is all the well known Amish colors.  The rest is "modern" with fabrics in modern prints. The colors are not quite true in the photo. I loved sifting through scraps to find the various fabrics. I will begin quilting this later today or maybe tomorrow. (I really have to write some Christmas cards).  Of the many things I've been doing with scraps this gives me the most pleasure. I like making smallish quilts. I do not like quilting -- especially the busy, busy kind of quilting that is currently so much in fashion (due to long arm machines that make the quilting so much faster and fancier).  I do not have a long am and am sure I never will want one.

How much can I do by February 1?  I'm afraid it won't be all.  Oh, and I have another scrap quilt started ... of course ....

Already?

Each year now Christmas sneaks up on me.  I really thought about it yesterday afternoon driving home around sunset on Rte. 6A, the beautiful, winding, two-lane old Cape road where the towns have agreed that only white lights will be used for Christmas decoration.   They were on, just white lights, at least candle light in most homes' windows and many trees, porches and so on outlined in white.  It was lovely.  I know from past years that it is lovely in the snow also.  Happily, in my opinion, we have no snow yet.  Although today we're experiencing a shocking drop in temperature, down to about 7 degrees with a wind chill of about -8.  But it is supposed to be short lived with perhaps snow tonight but then warming and soon turning to rain.  A strange, uncomfortable blip. 

Returned, we drove down Hyannis Main Street through the shopping center. There the lights were meant to attract attention, many colors, and simply MANY lights of all sorts.  Fine, 'tis the season. Although I have yet to do much about it. Maybe this afternoon I'll write a few cards.  As we discussed, fewer and fewer people are sending cards. Mostly they are members of my generation who still have the habit of once-a-year reaching out to former neighbors, former college classmates, etc, with little letters of facts about the family.  We don't know one another's grandchildren but the fact that they are getting educated, getting married, having their own children is a comfort. This is what happens -- or is "supposed to happen."  In our vastly changing world this Christmas contact remains a steadying comfort.  I have received a few of those cards already and I will post a few before the weekend is over.

Challenges, after about forty years

This is my most recent "art quilt" aside from the cow on the previous post.  I consider the cow fairly traditional as it's all squares. And I followed a photo I had. This (click on image to enlarge) is called "They Shall Inherit..." It's an exaggerated looked at a world where  there are no people. The buildings (these are all NYC landmarks - from a printed panel) remain but dinosaur-size insects of all colors have taken over. I think of it as the way an infestation of cockroaches suddenly appear and scuttle for cover when a kitchen light has been turned on. 

I like this idea but am not entirely happy with how it turned out. I have a poorly developed artistic sense. It's all in my head and very hard for me to realize in fabric.

I went to a meeting of the Uncommon Threads group this week and, once again, am deeply humbled by the creativity o the others. We are making a group quilt for the guild raffle next summer and each had a section to do. I did my section at the last minute -- a design and method that is deceptively simple using a wonderful fabric pallette that we chose as a group. I am okay with my contribution. I was told approximately what to do and did it. The challenge of the group is to be truly creative in design and execution - that's where I  stumble.

Three others had begun on the next challenge that I had only thought about: combine "art" quilt elements with traditional elements. Two had completed pieces that were stunning in color and fabric choice and delightful to look at. A third had begun sewing a brave hodgepodge of fabrics together to be the basis for a design she had on paper. I had nothing.  Not even an idea.  Happily that was a kick in the pants and, as so often happens, about 4:00 a.m. I was awake and an idea came to me. I am so curious about it, I hope to start on it later today.  Ideas come, carrying them out -- ah, that's the rub.

I had had these bugs in mind for a long time, had saved a page from some magazine with similar bugs in black and white so I knew I could give them antennae and the right number of legs and use interesting fabrics.  When I remembered the NYC fabric it was an easy step to cut it apart so the firey sky would surround and show through.  Now we will see what I can do with my new idea.

Look Carefully, you'll see, (I hope) a cow

Well, a little bit like the Pony-in-there-somewhere joke,  with all those squares, if you look long enough you'll see a cow in there somewhere.  What I need is someone to hold the quilt up so I can get a good straight-on photo and then I think the cow would be obviously. I like sublty but this is just too much and the poor dear Bossy seems to have mostly misplaced her legs. Live and learn -- although, as old as I am, you'd think I'd have learned a lot more by now.  Guess not.  It enticed me and I had to do it.

For almost mid-November the weather was surprisingly nice. One must take advantage of days like this, so I walked around Hathaway's pond (photo at the end) and took pictures of the many autumn colors. Autumn here isn't usually so grandly colored.  Everything seems to have changed all in sync so the woods are full of all the mellow colors-- not the really bright ones except for occasional "burning bushes" in lawns which really are ablaze. Whereas spring tends to have the excitement of anticipation, autumn suggests meditation, not necessarily gloomy. It's a time of fulfillment and satisfaction. Those golds and reds were hiding in the leaves all the time but only now are revealing their hidden beauty.  Think on it!  Think about older people, the ones who really come into their own in their 60s and 70s and 80s -- yes they do.  I know many of them, I'm one of them. It's wonderful glowing golden or rosy against the brown background of all the younger people who are trying to "fit in." And drying up as they do it. Many don't even know that a nice hard frost, a change in their life, will reveal new excitements.

Going through files, looking under the beds

A call for star quilts to be hung in our local Tumbleweeds Fabric store in January meant to inspire other Bayberry Quilters to make star quilts for next August's show had me pulling bags of quilt down from upper shelves of closets and out from under beds. I wanted to find this one which dates back to about 12 or 14 years. I don't think it's what is in mind really, as it's got 900 pieces and took a large part of a year. But I was challenged by the pattern in a magazine and set to work. I exhibited it in the Empire Quilt Guild (NYC) show in, I think 2004. 

I resurrected several other star quilts. Much as I love the log cabin pattern and have made quite a few, I believe I've made more stars than anything else.  I will send photos of  simpler quilts to the woman collecting them.  But, frankly, I'd love to see this on a wall again.  Quite a few others came to light -- oh, my!  I have more than I should. a great many are wall quilts, not bed size, so they are not candidates for charity needs.

Muted beauty

I'm mining older photos because I didn't get out and do the photography I thought I might today. Yesterday and today are spectacular. It seems all the trees that could change color waited for some signal so they could all synchronize their costume changes.  This photo isn't really appropriate but I was thinking all day of walking around this pond. I actually didn't do it because I was seaching for the right backing fabric for a quilt (as if I don't have many choices in my stash -- but a coupon was burning a hole in my pocketbook).

I don't remember ever seeing such unbroken aisles of color as I did yesterday and today driving the familiar roads I travel often.  The colors are not as brilliant as they sometimes are but they are blended expertly as only Mother Nature can. Only the evergreens are still green. We had a chilly couple of rainy days and apparently a night when the temperature dropped below freezing and that did it.  Every year is different.  This is a subtly wonderful one.