Good Book, Good Time for the Mountains

With a title like A Journey to the End of the Millennium, A Novel of the Middle Age, by A. B. Yehoshua, one might surmise it could be a bit ponderous. Yes it was, but it deserved all the pondering and perseverance it asked of the reader. It is set in 999 of the Christian calender. The main character is a Moroccan Jewish merchant, his Muslin partner and his nephew, a partner at first and last but not in the middle. It's a picture of the difference between the sunny and very sophisticated civilization of North Africa and the dark, crabbed, restrictive civilzation of Paris and the Rhineland whence the merchant travels with his two beloved wives. The story is too complex to tell in a short note and it gets ever more complex as it progresses. Yehoshua is an honored novelist in Israel. Knowing something about Jewish rituals and history is helpful to appreciate the story. This is not a new book but worth digging up in a library or Amazon for, in fact, it is a masterpiece and finally totally entrancing.

So -- moving on to lighter matters. There will be a hiatus in blog writing while I do one of those things many American families used to do before theme parks became destinations -- my daughters and I are going to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons to look at a few of America's many wonders and with hopes of seeing quite a few of the big wild animals in those regions. We're multiply celebrating birtdays, mine being the most auspicious but theirs being important, too, of course. There will be animal photo before there are more quilt photos, I think. Do stop in at my other blog and, I hope, read some of it; the entries there are longer and more thoughtful.

Info & tomato sandwich

So, no cows and no horses!

Tomatoes first -- these are four kinds marked "exotic heirloom" tomatoes. They are a little better than the usual tasteless things, some are a fair amount better and taste like -- ta-da! -- tomatoes. That is, not like styrofoam. But I must admit it's a bit strange eating a dark skinned tomato, I sort of expect it to taste like a plum.

I said some this and a bit better on my new blog which now has a new name but which hasn't been around long enough nor had enough hits to register on a Google search. The name is now Big 7-0 [ampersand -- which this blog doesn't allow] More. It needs to be reached by clicking on the "complete profile" line opposite and then going to bottom of screen and clicking the new blog. If you like it enough to think you'll come back, you'll save yourself trouble by making it a "favorite" or "bookmark" or whatever your search program calls the one-click function. Anyone who is a afficinando or masochist can go to bottom of the new blog [this one too for that matter] and get new postings as an email. No more salesmanship, it's never been my metier.

Lesson Learned, I hope

This is a confession. In the past I have been an impatient and frequently sloppy quilter. I wanted the finished product and it didn't have to be perfect Well, it's still not perfect but I've been reforming and trying to make myself more of a perfectionist. I now try to really square up my quilts and bind them neatly and see that they hang straight, etc. But old habits are like trying to kill a bat that has got into your house and your only weapon is a broom. [I have had considerably more experience with this than have most people I know]. It's damned hard to beat a bat to death with a broom. Well, it's damned hard to kill a bad habit with good intentions. In both cases it can be done but there are times when you think it's a losing battle.

This the story of this green quilt. It's one of the chopped up nine-patches I've had a spell of doing the past few months. It's okay but far from thrilling. In fact I decided a week ago to finish it and get it out of my sight, somewhere on the highest closet shelf waiting for an opportunity to give it to charity. Some needy person might find it reasonably pretty, if they like green more than I do in these proportions. As I finished quilting it, rather lightly, I tried to talk myself into adding farm animals as I think I wrote a week or so ago. I was growing tired but decided to bind it by turning the backing to the front. Fine, that's easy. Except the backing wasn't even so the amount of turn over visible from the front is uneven. Sloppy! I was tired and grumpy and I just did it. And proceeded to be angry at myself and decided no way do I want to spend any more time on this. No farm animals, no reason to name it the 4-H quilt as I had thought of doing. Because it has some fabric with the 4-H clover logo and because my mother actually started a 4-H club when I was 10 so that someone other than herself would teach me to sew. She knew she was not a good seamstress, she didn't really like sewing. But she was serious about mothering and wanted me to learn the fine points of domesticity. I'm glad she did. I love to sew! [Even if I get sloppy] So I finished off that green schmata Saturday afternoon.

Sunday morning, rested, the Times puzzle finished, I was in a good mood and just couldn't resist looking at the package I purchased maybe 10 years ago of Debora Kochinsky's patterns for farm animals. Did I mention I grew up on a farm? And I did once show a cow as a 4-H project. I like those patterns and I haven't used them in all this time, thought I. Why not add a couple cows? Well, I spent ALL the rest of Sunday adding cows, a pig,a goat and a lamb to the green quilt. As you can see above, especially if you click on the photo and see it enlarged. Don't look too close, I allowed myself a certain amount of sloppiness.

So the lesson I hope to have learned as I look at this less than wonderful quilt? I haven't killed off my old habit but maybe this will be one of the final whacks with the broom. The whole thing was a waste of time. I know better. i like green but not in such quantity on a quilt -- a hillside, but not a bed. I didn't even need another quilt this size. Almost every choice I made was suboptimal. I have several times promised myself not to do it again.

But you know the thing about living in a house where you "think" the bats have been banished from the attic is that they sneak back and if they're in the attic sooner or later a confused little beastie will blunder into the house and won't find his way out and you'll have to kill him ... a life lesson to ponder.

Horses Like Lightening

The Rubin Museum did a reading/book launch yesterday for Horses Like Lightening a new book by Sienna Craig. I really had to go to see and briefly meet Sienna because she edited my book about travelers in Tibet, Phantom Voices in Tibet, but our work was by mail and telephone. She was then in California and I here in NYC. She sent some of her writing about the horse culture in Mustang [in Nepal] that had been a part of her thesis. That interested me in Mustang so I soon went there -- one of the high points of my life. Horses were the only non-shanks-mare transporation at that time in Mustang. I walked and loved everything about being in Mustang.

Sienna had ridden as a high school student and loved horses and then came to love Nepal and Mustang as well. Her book is part memoir and part about the importance of horses, their care and role in a society that is rapidly changing as a road is being built. She had many friends and some relatives there so I only introduced myself. We spoke very briefly. But I she played a bigger role in my life than she knows besides helping me finally understand why Tibetan prayer flag picture a horse and are called "Wind horses."

I didn't stay for the signing part. I had been torn, because I wanted to hear the broadcast of the Met. concert in Prospect Park with Angela Georgieu and Roberto Alanya [I may have mangled spelling], a soprano and tenor, married and wonderful singers. When I got home I rushed to the radio and heard the duet from Lucia De Lamamoor which was magnificent, and the last of the first half of the concert, and then I heard the lovely second half. For the midsummer night concert some 50,000 people had gone to Prospect Park. I was glad to combine two events in one full and beautiful evening.

Horses, glass -- scalped

The Museum of Natrual History's big summer exhibit is about horses. I haven't seen it yet but I'll try to go. Meanwhile they entice people with this wonderful mosaic covered horse at the corner of 81st and Columbus. He's quite a beauty. I had to take a picture partly for daughter, Rachel, who has a couple of pieces of mosaic work on exhibit at a First Annual Glass Exhibit in Cotuit, Mass. [on Cape Cod] Patrick, her husband, does "flat" glass, etched and artistic work. He has several pieces well displayed, I'm told. He has some fantastic stuff and you can see it by clicking
here -- I think. I've been having link trouble lately. His work is called Glass Graphics and can be Googled.
I wish I could see the exhibit but I'm not likely to get there.


Anyway, I saw this beauty as I was on the way to have a hair cut at a walk-in salon across the street. My hair grows fast and I don't really like people doing things to me -- I'm not the spa, pampering type, more the do-it-yourself sort except I learned way back in my teens when I had bangs and sometime tried to cut them that self-barbering is generally a disaster.

I got scalped. But it's my own fault. I told the woman "I want it A LOT shorter." She took me at my word [they usually don't] and my hair is now shorter than it's ever been before. It'll be just right in about three weeks so I'm okay with my present boyish [well, if you can call this whole package "boyish" which is quite a leap!] look and it's certainly easy to take care of.

My "druthers, quilting

So here's how my day goes: I have a free day and I know the building is going to shut down th water for repairs from 9:30 to 4:00, therefore I want to be out of the house some of the middle of the day for the very practical reason that I won't be able to flush the toilet all day. So I think, well, there's a film/talk I am interested in and there's that movie, Mongol that I want to see, not because I like war-like saga, or have an interest in Chengghis Kahn [there are 45 to 10 spellings of his name these days] but because Mongolia is a gorgeous country and so are the Mongolian people.

I spent part of the morning tossing a mental coin, which would I do? But first, clean up accumulation on the desk, and chip away at a long term piecing project [drunkar's path, I need 252 pieces] and then iron the stuff that I washed yesterday. By then it's noon and time to decide on my "fun" afternoon. But I have been contemplating that green quilt in the UFO pile ... I could at least decide and sew on a border and then the backing and then layer on the batting and pin together ... Hmm, I DO need to get a UFO or two out o the pile!

But it's a pleasantly temporate day, although threatening brief storms. And I DO need some exercise. So I decided to compromise. A two mile walk, checking out the abundant flourishing of the community flower garden in Riverside Park, the picture above doesn't being to suggest the exuberance in that garden! then Fairway for some fruit and cheese, then my fav Chinese lunch spot. And home -- and I did get the green quilt ready to quilt, I even thought of a name and decided I have to add animals to it -- it's an abstract picure of farm fields. So I'm giving myself another 6 or 8 hours of work! Fun work! This quilting business is a most peculilar kind of addition, a sort of sweet torture. No picture for some time, certainly. Clearly, given my druthers, both movies and lectures come in second to making an unneeded quilt.

Books

Books! My favorite objects in the whole world. Can't resist! At the quilt show Saturday I purchased two new ones. To my delight there's a new book of Carol Doak paper-pieced stars -- if anything, these 24 stars are more complex than the 50 in her former book. To me the first and hardest challenge is the fabric choice. But that's also a pure delight because it sends me to my stash where I can contemplate tones and shades and hues as well as patterns. I have a lot of small pieces which is fine for many parts of these complex stars. I often make mistakes and after a quarter of a star have to rethink and make other choices. It's an exercise I really enjoy. Then the sewing which may be time consuming and a little challenging since I don't follow her choices and then have to remember what my choices are as I go along. But then I have that moment at the end when it all comes together and, mostly, I'm delighted with the results. So I look forward to these stars ... in the fullness of time. I do have the discipline to finish at lesat some of what's already started before plunging into a new endeavor.

The second book I purchased is Martha Siegleman's [she was editor] hefty but compact book Art Quilt Masters. It's BEUATIFUL! The artists span the world and they are, indeed, all masters, well recognized in the world of art quilters. There are several examples of each artist's work and it is beautifully printed. The text is sparse but there is enough to be helpful and give the viewer/reader a sense of the artist's purpose and personality. I'm going through it slowly, savoring, like a wonderful, many course meal.