Another Poem

Yesterday's poems were serious and beautiful. Today's poem has been around for a while and seems to have been written by that prolific versifier, Anonymous. I came across it today and chuckled again as I did a few other times in the almost forgotten past.

In the dim and distant past
When life's tempo wasn't so fast,
Gramma used to rock and knit,
Crochet, tat and baby sit.

When the kids were in a jam
They could always count on Gram.
But today she's in the gym
Exercising to keep slim.

She's checking the web or surfing the net,
Sending some emails or placing a bet.
Nothing seems to stop or block her
Now that Gramma's of her rocker.

April is National Poetry Month

Another April, another National Poetry Month when I get an email every day from Knopf with a poem and some additional info, maybe another poem or two. I've meant to add poems to this blog and have been thinking of other things. So today two Japanese poems and one fragment. Fragment first, the last section of Wallace Stevens'"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird
sat in the cedar-limbs.

From Dogen's "Poems on the Treasury of the Clear Seeing Eye"

Unmoored
In midnight water,
no wave, no wind,
the empty boat
is flooded with moonlight.

And by Li Po, "I Make My Home in the Mountains"

You ask why I live in the mountain forest,
and I smile, and am silent,
and even my soul remains quiet;
it lives in the other world
which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom,
The water flows.

I am reading a book of essays by Jane Hirshfield [from 1997] called Nine Gates, Entering the Mind of Poetry. I'm sure she chose to say "poetry" and not "the poet" although I believe she enters the mind of both. It is very insightful and enlightening, perfect to read this month. It is one of my many serendipitous finds at the Housing Works Thrift Store, apparently once read with occasional little check marks in the margin but no commentary and in pristine condition as if it hadn't been read. For so much satisfaction I paid $3.00 I often find that books come into my hands or to my attention just at the right time.

UFO, had to go

Some UFOs are never going to be finished -- at least by me. These segments for a double wedding ring with paper pieced quarter circles has been in the bottom of a big wicker hamper for at least five years. I like hte pattern, I like the colors but I am not going to put it together; piecing the curved seams is something I don't want to struggle with. So this UFO is going out to a share table and if someone wants to go on from where I left off -- good for them. I have some of that old WASP guild about not finishing what you start, but I'm ignoring it at this point. If that's maturity, I'v finally grown up. If it's laziness, sobeit.

On the other hand, this UFO which was a bed fellow of the above pieces, and which is at least as old, or perhaps older, IS going to become a quilt and quickly, too. It was there because I did all the quilting by hand and thought I'd put the squares together by hand also -- like while riding on a bus or something. But to hell with that! I'm zigzagging the square together which is quick and easy if not at all elegant. The quilt will get finished, will have that faddish "vintage" look and will be given away, unless I find I can sell it for some pittance.

Thus I am cleaning up the odds and ends I am uncovering as I sort and pack. I cannot believe I found I had three editions of the complete piano sonatas -- the scores, not recordings -- of Beethoven. I love them, but can't play most of them and definitely am thrift-storing two versions. I suppose other such things will appear. Nice to get rid of some of the clutter without a shred of regret.

Another Quilt Gets a New Home

Bethany Reynold's "Stack and Whack" technique of making fascinating quilts with swirling patterns -- all of them different -- has delighted me ever since I learned it from her first book, which was given to me by a dear friend, Lynn. It looks like painstaking fancy cutting. It's not. It's painstaking layering of the fabric before cutting and then whack-whack, well, really cut carefully to make sure the layers don't shift. The sewing is what delights me because I can never foresee what a block is going to look like until it is complete -- not entirely a failure of my imagination but mostly the wonder of using a fairly complex textile design and rearranging the parts.

This was my second "stack and whack" and I thought I'd love a sunny yellow background on my bed because I do love sunny yellow in the house -- like so much sunshine. But it didn't work in my crowded and too busy apartment so I've never used this quilt. Now it is being sent to a new owner, a co-worker of my daughter. who has seen the pictures and wants to buy it. Hurray! It'll have a new home, a happy new owner. And I have a reason -- as if I needed one -- to make another "stack and whack" in the next few months ... in fact I have just the fabric which was purchased for this very purpose two or three years ago. So it's time! Soon.

As Done As It's Going to be For a While

This UFO now has a border and a piece back, all it needs is batting and to be quilted -- and that's as done as it's going to be for a while. It feels good to have that much done. I felt this particular quilt pattern, which I do not consider a very good ideas at all, has fought me at every step just to become coherent. But it is. It will be useful but quite possibly not used by me. One of the sell, or eventually, if there is a charitable opportunity, given away.

It happens that now and then some pattern will catch my eye, or my fancy, or both -- unless they're the same thing -- and I jump in quickly and start making it. If it's a lucky time I finish the whole thing at once and even if I don't like it at the end, it's done and that makes it useful. If it's unlucky it gets UFO-ed for weeks, months or sometimes years, and then when I come back to it the originall impetus has faded. In this case I didn't even remember starting it and it became very different from the original inspiration. Ah, well, it's done and finishing a project always gives me a pious feeling.

Empire Quilt Guild Meeting

This is the show and tell photo Cindy Russell took [and is now on the Empire Quilter's Guild website -- along with all the other show and tells -- including an amazing quilted Obama picture that is worth going to look at]

I decided, instead of being sad that yesterday could be my last Empire Quilters Guild meeting, I would maintain my membership and do a six hour trip [each way] two or three or four times next year to come to a meeting. There is so much I like about this group, from the many women who are friendly and competent to the excellent speakers to the share table and occasional members flea markets when I buy lots of great fabric at incredible prices, to the show and tell which is always interesting to the quilter of the month -- yesterday a woman who made dolls as well as quilting and who was a very humorous speaker, plus the wonderful biannual shows.

The quilts from the show have been beautifully photographed by our photographer/ webmaster, Cindy Russell and her husband/partner and can be seen in all their glory by clicking here. It's a fantastic show -- almost a survey of the kinds of quilts being made today, although there are not many truly traditional ones.

The quild gained twenty new members at this meeting, one of the most unexpected was a young man, Nick Aker, thirteen years old -- but going to be fourteen the first of May, as he emphasized. [A cute picture of him on the show and tell page too]. A very poised boy who showed us a complex baby dress he had made and a crib quilt. We have always had a few men in our membership, a couple are quite active. I doubt Nick represents a trend but it was delightful to meet him.

I "showed and told" about the shirting quilt and found people were more interested than I expected. I did mention that I was hoping to get more buttons for embellishment. When I got home, lo and behold! In my mail was a package from a swap partner with a 4x6 baggie full of buttons, many were the blue shirt buttons I especially wanted. So today I'll put them on the quilt and tomorrow I can probably get it in the mail to daughter Leslie to whom it is promised.

Spring, on again, off again

Too beautiful today to stay in and struggle with the "Christmas Cactus" UFO that seems to fight me at every turn. I changed the border entirely and have changed my mind three times already about the backing which I'm not ready for yet -- but, soon I hope. Anyway, the sun managed to beam down on my sewing table for a wonderful half hour as it found it's way to a different point in the sky than it had attained all winter. And I could not stay inside, especially while the radio announcer was saying it will rain all day tomorrow and not be very nice on Saturday either.

There are crocuses in Riverside Park - as above -- looking fresh and humble and a little afraid of the days when the sun isn't shining. And in Central Park the forsythia has become great clumps of sunshine yellow. The daffodils near the rowboat lake are perky -- and the rowboats -- one with rather amorous occupants -- are out and so are sunners on the rocks beside the lake -- but no bikinis yet. School kids are shouting to one another and galloping along the paths and grammas are buying toddlers ice cream on sticks.

Yes, I've seen a lot of springs come but some things are too wonderful to ever become blase about. On a lovely day, one simply has to feel the sun and rejoice.