Delirium

 

day four of the creeping crud, called in sick to work, twice, and feel like a wimp but I can't breathe,or stand up,

or speak in an audible voice, so I guess this leaves me untenable in the workplace. 

But I am making progress on my knitting while ensconced upon the couch, 

with my two boxes of tissues, my ginger ale, tea, and occasional carton of matzoh ball 

soup from the neighborhood deli.

the pictures are of my noni bag in progress. Actually it is called a carpet bag, I guess due to the size and eventual shape,

after felting. I don't know what kind of straps I will put on it, probably leather, 

equestrian looking if I can find some.

It will be a fine overnight bag for those rare occasions when I need an overnight 

valise of the designer type. If I do say so myself.

I love house blocks and bright fabrics and the blocks perched on the roller shade are evidence of that .

The Lollipop in progress and a delirious assortment of feverishly assembled ( and therefore wonky)

Dear Jane blocks. I plead illness! 

I do love the Dear Jane block so. 

Maybe I should just make a life long commitment to making them 

and forswear all others. At least for today.

Old and new charms

things I miss

Painting

long drives

bike riding

cooking experimental meals

making quilt squares

poems

the library

Lollipops a Bloomin'

I am joining in the Lollipop insanity. I have staked out my sewing room and spent a couple of most enjoyable hours playing with circles. I must say I am releasing my inner perfectionist and I am determined to color outside the lines on this one. There may even be a bird block or a house block added if I am so inclined. This one is simple fun. 

Life gets in the way

Sometimes life does get in the way of quilting, making art, working. I have not made a stitch for a week or so. Finally, yesterday I even stayed home from from work, a stomach virus took me down. And I needed to rest and take fluids. Try to eat. No stitches were made.

The bag I am knitting is so boring I will not post a picture-knit to be felted, nothing but row after row in the round. It will be a fine bag when it is done, but it is nothing to look upon at present.

I have a package or two to mail and I have not even begun to think of what to get the kids for Christmas. I love Christmas and I want us all to enjoy it-but I am uninspired at the moment. So I will let you all gaze upon the masks, whose picture I took last summer, and maybe we will be inspired by them.

Love and peace to all, m

Happy Thanksgiving

I am thankful for my husband and my kids and my job, friends, and the creative spirit that made us and makes us interesting!

I am not cooking, not overeating and I am going to pray for peace and love and healing for the world which surely needs it.

And what about you? What will you be thankful for and what will be in your prayers today?

Beaded Diamonds

I spent a few hours today working on this project, adding some beads, wondering what to add to the alternate diamonds which are photos of our beach. It is a pleasure to spend  a day working on this. It may actually get done! But not today. It is one bead at a time

Works in Progress

Trying to post a picture I took showing my works in progress but Blogger is not cooperating. Ahh there you go! Blogger has some new features which I will try to use! A new OS X Leopard and a new blogger format, hmmmm. Let's see how it all works together on my little macbook.
The quilt blocks on the wall are 'Ping', circles appliqued to the centers, a BOM from pinwheels. I am letting it rest while I decide on a setting. Deviant that I am, I may go with an entirely different setting to compliment the Indigo-which was also not part of the BOM, but sent by a freind and much treasured, and therefore used.
The 'Lollypop' beginnings from gloriouspatchwork.I have cut all of the back rounds and just had to try a couple of circles with my new mylar templates from Karen K. Buckley. They worked pretty well. i just need to be sure to keep the iron temp moderate so as not to melt it! And starch helps to keep the edges nice and smooth. And the Kaffe Fasset fabrics are indeed glorious.
The brown lump on circular needles is a 'nonibag', pattern from nonipatterns. I will add a four inch stripe with natural Lopi lite yarn, which I bought in Vermont in 1997! And I will add leather straps to make it into an overnight bag, or a large knitting carry all, or a bag in which to pack my lunch, a sewing project, a book and a wallet and phone. And possibly a magazine, Burda or Threads, maybe. The brown yarn is Cascade 220 which felts marvelously. I also did a test swatch with the Lopi and it felts into a pelt like density and hairlness, lol, which will be fabulous in the body of the bag.
And finally the book is Swedish Interiors which is a book I bought to satisfy my decorating gene and as a reward to myself for a myriad of good deeds, too long and exhaustive to list. It is a lovely book and I look forward to spending some quality time between its covers.

Keeper

It is hard work
all that forgetting
erasing all the evidence
after getting to the root of it all

saving what is worthy and good
of some use,
and piling what's not in cords
like lumber

empty vessels now incapable of harming
you
but dead ghostly-
you have to keep an eye out
lest one move and reach out and grab you

hard work all of that forgetting
and the vigilance
& the separating & the separating & the separating
hard work guarding all those fissures and renumerations
those piles of bodies like logs like corpses only they are
alive
only just dormant

knowing this is enough to make you sleep light
and dream of coloring in the lines
dream cats and others on the page knowing you are
bartering with your potential
safety equals failure

giving up that vigil
will cost you
consume you
all those fissures filled and
heaving with ghosts
not dead just dormant

lies as widespread as the roots and limbs of of sturdy green ivy
climbing up a wall
finding every fissure
to fill with itself

it is hard work
all of this forgetting
when all of this history is embodied
but not spoken
acknowledged in a dream with a silent nod from a ghost
hard work to be the keeper
ever vigilant
the post is remote
the renumeration is nil

To do list

So many things on my list and only one day off.
I would like to pin baste my DJ project. Knit few inchs on my to be felted bag. Make some blocks for a new DJ. Finish my ping blocks. Finish the machne applique on my Baltimore Elegance. Make another veterans quilt. Paint a closet and hang a painting and a mirror. Hmmm- that should keep me busy for today.
O and I guess I have to take the girls to get jackets for the girls....
Next week on my day off, I have to get a mamo and sono and a follow up with surgeon. So I have not planned any extra stuff for those days. I have some kind of a cyst on the out side of my boob now and have to see if I can get an appt today to get that seen, O the joys of cystic boobs.
And it is holiday season in retail land.

the winner-Saffron

I love this color and I wanted to paint a whole room with it but it looked too orange. How convenient that I received some in the mail to use as setting triangles. Saffronicity?
I have a little more machine applique to do on the middle bottom and the top right and then I can sew the rest of the nine patch together.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX

ALEX WE LOVE YOU! HOPE YOU ARE HAVING A SPECTACULAR BIRTHDAY EVEN THO YOU HAVE TO WORK!
A BILLION HUGS-YOUR MOM (ME) PS MY MAIL IS BROKEN SO I CANNOT WRITE .XOXOX

Road Art

I went to a gallery in Portsmouth, Virginia-the Vincent Hester Gallery, and I bought a painting by this artist, Danny Doughty. In fact, the painting is very much like this one. Imagine my delight when I saw this sign on our drive back to New York. We did stop in at this gallery which was closed. Mike was relieved-I may have bought another painting. He has a web site, click on the artist' name.

choices

Trying different colors. The only way I can do it is to put it up on my wall. I am partial to the lavender one, The green seems to be too busy to me. Any thoughts?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

driving along the coast

We stopped at a farm stand for pumkins and red chili peppers.
On the left of the apple tree, photographed on my iphone, there was a deer, cautiously waiting for me to leave so she could have her dinner. She did not bolt when we stopped or even I got out of the car to take her picture. Later, in the deeper dusk, the bucks will come.
Nice rainy day for a drive to visit the behatted erica, niece of vikings.

Ravelry

Have you heard about the new knitting sensation called Ravelry? An amazing resouce for the knitting community. I just got in yesterday after waiting months for my invitation and I could spend the whole day there. But I won't. Be sure to peep in and see if you want to join.
Day off plans are two DJ blocks, sew binding on doll quilt, knit some on noni bag. Very low key.
I bought this from Kristine Mays. She is donating part of the proceeds from her art to help build wells in places where people cannot get clean drinking water. You can read about it on her blog. We have such an abundant beautiful world. Why do some have so little, when there is enough for everybody? I do admire Kristine's art and I am glad to be able to have a bit of my own.
When I was in Virginia, Mike, bought me a "folk art" painting for my birthday (which is not until November so it will be kept in its wrapper until then). I often wonder about the elitist art world classification system which deigns some work 'fine art' some 'craft' some 'folk', some 'decorative'. Rather than being merely descriptive, there is a value implied. Alot of the 'craft' designaton is attached to art traditionally done by women and infers that it is of less value.. hmmmm...makes me wonder.sumtin to think about.
Anyway, I am finished, for now, with my philosophical toe dipping.

Portsmouth

Pictures from my weekend in Portsmouth, VA

In the hay field on East hill,
above the farmer's house,
we lay on our backs
where in the daylight
if the weather was fortuitous
and the grass was high enough to cut and dry enough for baling,the farmers and their helpers would bale hay:
On the ruts of the road where the tractors wheels had left the grass flattened
so it did not scratch and poke into your exposed skin,
there we lay in the field at night, in September,
when there was no moon and gazed up at the stars .

You could feel the slow silent turning of the earth, relative to them,
as you lay there
cradled in the soft curve of the ancient mountains
formed in a distant glacial meltdown,
feel the turning of the earth, relative to the stars.

We silently watched the stars and felt the rotation of the earth
-and there were so many-
who could have known,
as a child of the city,
where you could not see the stars, living as we did, beneath a halo of city lights,
where you could never lay upon your back in a cold dark beautiful field in Vermont on an autumn night as the temperature dropped
enough to make your toes and fingers numb

Who could have imagined that there were so many of them
and that if you kept your gaze in any quadrant of the September sky in Vermont at night for a period of about fifteen minutes you would see a shooting star

This I kept with me
this and the implicit pact of old souls to remember that night in a field in Vermont-
East hill- where the stars were bright enough to make shadows in the sharp cut grass and we felt our exquisite smallness in the multitudinous rapture of the galaxy

friends and alex

aren't they stunning?
Joy is my friend
Hedy is my friend also
alex is my son
I ate breakfast at one diner, lunch in another
and this is what alex looks like on ichat:)

old love leans this way
over a table
toward its mirror image and sinks comfortably into a familiarly indented nest...
if you have been lucky and found one to last and last
and last
new love bends inward hugging the wildness of its own galloping runaway mount.
bends forward
chasing old love
but cannot see it through the ether of time
strewn with the detritus of unbidden memories
cannot see past its own reflection.
cannot hear beyond the strains of its own riotous joyful cacophonous noise

Quilted for the show!

Quilted by Catherine T. in Canada, facilitated by and bound by Val C., co ordinator of the Quilt Show to Benefit theRankin Rec Center. Click the title for more information. Val asked me if I wanted to have the quilt in her show and whoooa of course how cool is that? She is also selling raffle tickets for a Dear Jane made by Tracy C. of the Dear Jane group. I have bought tickets and I am feeling lucky! If you want to buy raffle tickets for the Dear Jane quilt, contact Val at quiltshow@nrtco.net.
the link for info on the quilt show is
www.rankincentre.ca


This quilt is an international collaboration. Me here in Ny and Tilde in Copenhagen. Val and Catherine in Canada. The border blocks are from Susan McKelvey's Baltimores Country Cousins and the Center blocks are from Dear Jane and Dear Hannah by Brenda Papadakis. I am so happy with it . I will treasure it always.

I am midnight-I like that:)

You Are Midnight

You are more than a little eccentric, and you're apt to keep very unusual habits. Whether you're a nightowl, living in a commune, or taking a vow of silence - you like to experiment with your lifestyle. Expressing your individuality is important to you, and you often lie awake in bed thinking about the world and your place in it. You enjoy staying home, but that doesn't mean you're a hermit. You also appreciate quality time with family and close friends.

What Time Of Day Are You?

Lunch Date/Day off update

I had a lovely lunch date with my husband this week. We shared a delicious platter of Mexican appetizers at a restaurant in Huntington called Pancho Villa's. There was a huge picture of him staring down from the wall at us. I asked Mike, who is a history sponge, if he was a good guy or a bad guy, and he said it depends on who side you were on. Ain't it the truth?
We also stopped into our favorite paper Stationery, also in Huntington and bought treats for ourselves to celebrate my promotion! I bought a beautiful glass tipped pen made of Murano blown glass. I have one made of marblized green glass and I could not remember the color and I bought another green one but this one has clear green glass and is beautiful in a different way.And of couse if you buy a new glass tipped pen you must also buy turquois ink for it. Mike got some fat hardwoord pen, which felt solid and had a hefty feel. Not to my taste at all, but he is happy.

We also found a perfect bithday gift for my sil, who is a Very Hard Person for whom to shop. Anyway, I am hoping she likes her gift cuz I am not telling her where I got it. She is a coupon snipper, so I gave here a pretty embossed-to -look-like alligator leather pouch, with a silver bee clasp for to store her collections of coupons.
Knitting is progressing. I have a huge to be felted bag bottom on my needles. It will be the size of a small valise and I hope to have it finished before I go away but I doubt it will be... and Ping blocks to be finished. I have recieved the border kit from Pinwheels, so I need to get busy on it. I may even finish the shrug I began to knit for Katy last year. Guilt is a good motivator and I did promise it to her last December. The good news is I have not started any new big projects. Can I hold off till after Ping is done?
Here is the Alex Denim Seminole Stripped piece I made for Alex' little boy captain's bed when he was five. He still uses it.It would have been about 1988ish.
Tomorrow I have to get a root canal.
Note to self: Shouldn't bite on pebbles. Not good for the molars.
Happy Holidays to all who are celebrating!

more seminole piecing

A couple more little quilt tops. I have no idea when I will finish but the tops of the series are done. The photos are rather dull but the actual fabrics are vibrant.
I have been making little drawings lately. They are responses to prompts on a blog which does writing prompts but these guys jumped into my head so I let them out.

My nest

As the summer comes to a close I begin to enjoy my nest. I plan to paint, to add some bookshelves, to reinvent my inner sanctum. I will paint warm colors, create a place to read and think and write and maybe even do some water colors. I think I will move my desk into this room also. Presently it sits in my bedroom and it is not being used as a writing desk, but as a storage place for bills. I am not happy about that. I don't like to see the bills in a pile, and it is not its intended purpose. So there you have it. A plan is born.

Me and my shadow

Another lovely ride on the boardwalk. The breeze was pleasant but, the sun was strong and the heat was reflected from the buildings and the boardwalk itself. I consumed plenty of water before, during and after.
Post Labor Day the beach is officially closed. It doesn't stop the sun worshippers, even tho there are no life guards. They are back in school. It doesn't stop the swimmers either, and there is grave danger in swimming with no life guard. The locals always know when someone is in trouble in the water. The rescuers race to the beach at breakneck speed and you had better get out of the way.
The last two pics are taken from the east end of the board walk. We live on the other end. A good ride. Four and a half miles round trip, I try to go twice, on a good day, which is not hard unless there is wind. The bike lane in the middle is great-except when walkers forget to look and you almost run into them:) At least we don't have to dodge the cars in the road.And it is flat!
I am trying to ride as much as I can and still have time to make things. I figure "use it or lose it" applies to bike riding along with most other thing in life. It also gives me energy. I have been riding here since I moved here in '92. I had an old schwinn which I put a baby seat on and I used to put Katy in the back in a helmet, and off we would go. She would drink a bottle of juice and go to sleep. Blissful! Bailey did not like to ride as much. She used to put up a fuss so I did not ride with her as a passenger as much. When I had the two little kids, I bought one of those two seated joggers but they used to fight and squabble so I gave it up and found time to ride by myself. Tried to. Mike and I used to ride alot more and I hope to pick it up again. Cooler weather is great for cruising along the beach.