Tag Archives: finishing

ADD and Deadlines

One of the reasons I didn’t know I had ADD until my thirties is because I functioned well as a student. I could organize myself around deadlines and wanted to excel and did. Except for freshman year of college, once I left home there were always jobs, too — providing more structure.

Nineteen of the first thirty years of my life were spent attending school.

The free-for-all business of raising two “highly active” boys was another matter altogether. When the younger son was tested for ADD, we checked all the same boxes.

Raising kids is part joy and part guerrilla warfare. Ed Asner

So now I know.

Next Wednesday (five days from now) is the first of my “Last Wednesday” Etsy store updates. It’s an experiment in promotion and setting deadlines. All of a sudden, I have a half dozen quilts to finish!

I probably will, even though my brand of ADD makes finishing things waaaaaay harder than starting them. So stay tuned!

Now if only I could impose a deadline for a first draft. Or rather (since I’ve done so multiple times), if only I could impose one that worked.

Pins and needles

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On pins and needles waiting for the fourth nor’easter (not really — more like ever so grateful Husband is not in Russia or Singapore).

Pins for damp stretching. If only I could be spritzed with water and pinned into shape!

Another kind of pin on my first wearable sigil. This symbol is for protection.

All kinds of clean up requires clear ground. Eventually the insurance adjuster and spring will arrive!

I’m home and warm and writing today.

Playing Card Symmetry

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At last, there’s enough quilting on this piece to consider that step done. Now — how to finish? It’s a little on the big side for me — maybe 18″ wide? Back when I composed this — two years ago — I had considered placing a reverse house below the horizon line, not unlike a playing card — one knave’s head down, the other up. Didn’t stick with that idea, but now I find myself wanting at least a moon below. I can consider the idea with the app PicFrame.

It’s more interesting with two moons, don’t you think?

PS I am under the weather with a cold or flu, so forgive my delay in getting to some of your blogs. My cheeks hurt. My eyes feel furry. My nose is stuffed. This is the first congestion I’ve experienced since I started using a Netti pot about four years ago. A pretty good run, I’d say.

Intentional and unintentional crucifixes

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This one’s intentional. Hand pieced. Seams tacked open. Only frustration? That red, white and blue fabric (which happens to be from Africa) melts under an iron. Almost ruined the piece twice.

Went to BC library this morning again where I photographed another intentional cross. This is the church that K and I were married in (not by a priest). I see crosses everywhere.

rusty-cross

I was thinking about Michael Brown when I took the shot of the telephone pole yesterday (the anniversary of his death). It’s not the first time I’ve viewed the black men being slaughtered in American streets as sacrifices.

These are not casual deaths. These are not unintentional deaths.

african-christ-deemallon Is it possible that if Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin could look down on our streets and read BLM twitter feeds and watch the various federal investigations and reports about police practices coming out (Ferguson’s earlier in the year, Baltimore’s today), they might actually think that their sacrifices were not in vain?

The recurring discovery of crosses in my quilts stems partially and almost accidentally from a tendency to design in thirds. But not exclusively. It also arises out of an enduring resonance with Catholic symbols. It turns out that the rejection of Catholic culture, rites, texts, and even the Savior himself, has not meant a wholesale rejection of its symbols. This confuses me a little but maybe there’s some sort of internal logic there, even if only as evidence of genetic memory.

amor_quilt_slide

That’s me on the left on the day of my First Communion. Nana is probably pinching me. Or maybe she has just scared the shit out of me by announcing that the bees that were floating in and out of the tulips behind us would go right down my throat if I ate any more grape jelly. (This from a woman who said the Rosary at least twice a day and attended Mass every morning in Queens, NY. Imagine what she might have said or done without all that praying). Look at my sister, being such a good girl for the camera. Gawd.

The Spiral of Work — October 2014

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Continuing with a one-year-backward-look as a tool to propel some completion of unfinished work, here’s a shot from last fall. This time last year, I was busy integrating my experience from the Sept. ’14 Sea Island Indigo workshop. I really can’t believe that was only last year! Was it?!!
And, here is a piece that was begun in Jude‘s Considering Weave class. Not sure what I’ll do with it, or even where to find it!

Another incomplete piece:
I’m happy to say that the October 2014 folder includes a few finished things as well: two dolls that I made for my sons and the “LA Circles” quilt that I finished a couple of weeks ago.
The book to finish is a memoir about the descendant of slave owners in Texas — his process of investigation and atonement. It’s called “Tomlinson Hill”. I purchased the book after hearing the author interviewed on the radio, and within a couple of weeks (during The Slave Dwelling Project’s overnight in Medford, Mass., at the Royall House and Slave Quarters), I met two or three people who were descended from slave owners and learned about the group, “Coming to the Table“. The group is “for all who wish to acknowledge and heal wounds from racism rooted in the United States’ history of slavery.” There was a meeting nearby recently, but I don’t seem to be in a phase of life where it is easy, natural, or right (somehow) to join a group or even attend meetings. Too much else pressing, including the need for restorative solitude.
But I can read. The book comes at a good time — I started and then put down “Purity” — Jonathan Franzen’s new novel (I’m a fan!). I was going like gangbusters because it’s a “speedread” from the library (7 days, no renewal), until I realized that the toxic relationships described in the story were just too close to some parts of my current reality to make the read pleasurable. I like books that challenge me and make me uncomfortable (and those that don’t, btw), but this was too much. Control what you can control, right?!