Two weeks ago, I upgraded my phone. It had been years. It wasn’t holding a charge anymore and I got sick of walking around in the red zone all the time. Wasn’t gonna spring for another battery.
Meanwhile, the computer that has recorded our tv programs for two decades crapped out. Gonzo. It’s the only way I can see cable, whether recording it or not. Therefore, there was no Maddow or Nicolle Wallace on this historic day.
I watched a four minute clip of Nadler announcing the two articles of impeachment while sitting in the car, in the rain, before going into the office building perched on the Wellesley side of the Charles River where I get my eyes checked. New glasses are in order.
After dinner, K announced that the Christmas tree light cord overheated and needs replacing.
I’m sensing a theme here.
At least the mice are getting dressed for the holidays! Two are chatting away in the dark of a postal box right now, making their way down the coast of the Atlantic.
As many of you know, awhile back I was commissioned to make a quilt for Wendy Golden-Levitt, a Jungian therapist in Canada who uses cloth in her work with children.
Wendy sent the fiber artists whose work she employs a beautiful book as a thank you. It is filled with the most moving testimony from the children, including wonderfully wise and curious speculations about the cloth makers.
Here are just a few gems:
“I am getting better working with the cloths. I can feel the people who made them. I think they understand what it is like to wait…”
“You step towards it [the cloth] and it whispers something. By the time you are holding it, you got a real relationship going. You can trust it completely.”
“Were they sad or stitching themselves into serious happiness? Do they have days when they are not feeling good in the heart? Do they listen to their dogs or cats? Do they eat waffles while they are sewing?”
I was so moved to see a young woman using “my” quilt as a prayer rug.
(and, by the way, check out how completely color-coordinate she is with the quilt — right down to her fingernails!!)
I blogged about genesis of the idea of a “Treasure Island” theme here and about it being in progress here, but apparently never blogged about its completion. So here are some pix. Fabric depicting a treasure map got me going with the idea of healing being like a sailor looking for gold. I wanted there to be lots of animals in the cloth, too — both as guides to the children, and as characters in whatever stories they were busy telling. I bound it with ‘baby-blanket satin’ to make it as touchable and inviting as possible.
Receiving the book was so moving, that it inspired me to send another piece — that Crow I’d been working on. I’ve heard from Wendy and the Crow has landed!!
I took a gazillion pictures of The Crow for some reason, so I plan to dedicate a post to it. But for now let me say that once I knew I was sending it to Wendy, I mounted it on velvet and added satin binding to the lower section… soft textures that will be inviting to the touch!
The snow started in a light flurry. Big flakes, so it must have been warm. I ran to the store because although I don’t get into that pre-storm shopping frenzy that empties shelves and renders lots a tangle, it seemed like a good idea. Everybody must have shopped yesterday, because it was a ghost town. The snow has come down steadily all day, but only a few inches have accumulated. Our local schools were closed. My husband’s office was closed. And the T stopped running two hours ago. It seems a little over-reactive, but then, you just don’t know with these big storms anymore. And anyway, I understand the bulk of the storm is due to arrive tonight. Here are my plaster friends before I went to the market.Here they are midday. I could see them from where I was pressing seams.And here they are in the gloaming.
Progress is being made (that is, “I am making progress”) on the second barn quilt.
The rooflines have been tricky. And scale matters so much.
The FIRST barn, dubbed, finally, “Blue Hills Barn”, is hanging at the B.J. Spoke Gallery in Huntington, NY, thanks to my cousin, Ginny.
I had to scurry on Monday to get it trued, bound, signed, sleeved, and photographed.
I include the above picture for scale, and also to note that if it doesn’t sell, I won’t mind having it back to hang exactly here.
And finally, what a good day it was for homemade chicken soup (is there EVER a day that is not good for homemade chicken soup?!)
Stay warm all you readers under the same Arctic air!
My thoughts and prayers are with the folks in NYC and NJ and elsewhere, suffering with clean up, destruction, and deprivation. I hope temperatures stay mild. It’s gotten a little cold here (outside of Boston) in the last couple of hours. Here is one of the Berkshire barns, as of this morning. It is a completed quilt top.
I’m not sure why it turned out to be such a struggle to assemble, but it was. It’s about 32″ wide and incorporates some of the more successful indigo cloths from this summer. The indigo worked particularly well for the mountains. I’m calling it, “Waiting for Snow”.
I created a ‘side bar’ quilt on the work table, taking little breaks from the Barn. It has a totally different feel, and therefore constituted a visual contrast. This was refreshing for some reason. In this one, the structure is merely hinted at, and the landscape has been granted license to be wild and dominant. Not a surprising choice, given the rampaging punches that Sandy delivered over the weekend, while I was safely working down in my cellar studio. This composition features some more of my indigo dips, as well as silk from my upholstery-design-contact, quilting cottons, batiks, and that Lonni Rossi broccoli/tree fabric that I so love. I am hand quilting this little composition today, as the sky greys and a cold rain starts to fall. Its working title is: “Long Island Blues” (Jude Hill online class project). In this case, the usual horizon line has been broken up (submerged?!!) by the wandering watery lines of shibori.
