Projects

Walked to the Puyallup Fair Friday morning, stood in line for awhile to get in on the free admission, admired the quilts. While I was there, I saw an elderly man leaning against a chair, thought he might lose his balance & said something.

"That's my wife's quilt up there," he said. I said, that's very nice; he said, "she died three years ago. I wanted to see what happened with the quilt. Every night I talk to her, tell her how my day went." I got teary-eyed. Said, maybe you can wrap up in the quilt.

Stood in line for a burger at a place that wasn't quite organized yet, taking far more orders than they could cook up. A lot of us were in line for a long time, then a counter opened up and someone who hadn't even been in line came up. Lady behind me complained, he rounded on her, she tried to apologize but he wouldn't listen. Then when he got his burger before her, more drama. From when I got in line to when I received my sandwich: 50 minutes.

Went to the rodeo for $5, have never gone before. I think they had a rodeo in Albion when I was very small, if that counts. It was a blast. I'd like to go again.

Bought a silk comforter [silk fibers on the inside, not the outside], decided it would be better to be a little mean to silkworms than kill ducks: besides, feathers have a tendency to work out of a feather bed and poke you. So I left the fair resolved to sew a cover for the comforter.

Fortunately I have a pair of Egyptian cotton king-size sheets I bought several months ago at a thrift shop, and decided to use those for the duvet. Decided to doll it up a little bit from plain white by appliqueing butterflies cut from colorful scraps, but I was dreading the applique process, wrestling around an entire king sized sheet on the machine, until I figured out I needed to cut squares/rectangles from the sheet, sew on the appliques, then reassemble.

In twenty four hours I have the applique work done. Except for the fact that, without details, the outlines of butterflies resemble hats. So now I'm adding detailing, and that's as far as I got today. Back to work tomorrow.

Fire and Snow

So I visited Baha'i Views and took a virtual canoe trip through the Willapa Watershed, and my first impression was that most of these photos with beautiful scenery and wildlife would make wonderful inspirations for landscape quilts. My first feeling was intense envy of the time and energy and experience of folks ready to step out and paddle out into the wild in their spare time. I get this with my sister's weekend bicycle rides, also. But the envy is really just the result of my longing for nature, which is awakened by seeing and reading about these journeys. That's the fire.

The "snow", the relief, is the tremendous bounty of seeing the photographs, reading about these experiences. If I can't be there, at least I can see the pictures. Bittersweet.

These are the angels of fire and of snow.

~Baha'u'llah [approximate quotation from memory]

Buttercup Versus Rose

As a child one special experience with my mother was roaming the hills in the spring to pick buttercups, so I always saw them as a rare and lovely wildflower. A few years ago I decided to plant buttercups in my flower bed, only to discover a few months later what a persistent and pernicious pest it can be, sending out runners all over the yard. I don't know if I ever got rid of them. What I thought was simple and innocent turned out to be truly obnoxious.

Little sweet tidbits of gossip can be like a buttercup, rare and enticing when you pick them, but difficult to extricate from the fabric of communal life.

In the garden of thine heart, plant naught but the rose of love.

~ Baha'u'llah