Be*mused

Coming up for air

Indeed.  I found this card from Molly among some saved birthday greetings.  How ironic.  I think I need to copy it and post it in every room.  Carry it in my wallet.  Stick it to the computer screen.  All of you who commented that you, too, need to do some spring cleaning...life cleaning?  Don't wait until you have to do it.  It does feel good to pare down, despite the difficulty of discarding, but it's tough to do it all at once.  After 5 days, I'm about half done, but I'm already on a first name basis with the girl at the Goodwill drop-off site.

I told you I've unearthed some forgotten gems and this is one of them.  My first wall quilt...designed to be displayed...a prizewinner in a Syracuse craft show in 1978.  After the show, I stored it away because the colors were garish and new cottons (Jinny Beyer's, Jeff Gutcheon's) were finally being introduced for quilters.  To me, this quilt reeked of *what was available in the 1970s* which, to us at the time, was pitiful.  I loved making this piece and couldn't wait to work on more *art quilts*, though that phrase wasn't yet in the vernacular.  I subscribed to Fiberarts, which was then a black & white (!) newspaper (got rid of those during the last move) and couldn't wait to hear more about the new show that Nancy Crow and her pals in Ohio were planning...Quilt National.

First QN catalog (from my bookshelf)

As you can see from the first catalog cover, I may have been in the running in those first few years, but life got hectic (kids arrived, ETC.) and I lost all competitive urges.  Anyhow, back to the quilt.  I had forgotten about it until I pulled it off of a closet shelf, folded up with a very faded log cabin from the 1980s.  *Shudder*  Those 80s' prints turned positively gray after any time in the light and despite narrow logs and heavy, fine handquilting, that one was deposited in the trash....where I briefly considered putting this one.

The calicoes!

I paused.  It did have a certain life to it.  Despite the 70s' prints (or maybe because of them), it sparkled.  I could actually recall finding some of those prints, in dress fabric shops, in JCPenney's.  Always on the hunt, just as quilt shops, a novel new idea, were starting to appear on the scene.  Yikes, the large quilting stitches...

Click

Long story short (too late for that?), I quickly flipped from disdain to really liking this quilt!  It is so *of its time*...a real snapshot of 1978.  The fabrics, the tentative colorplay in a traditional block pattern, the new, novel idea of designing a quilt to hang on a wall.  I am so happy now that I never used it, it's so fresh and bright.  It's like a museum piece to me...a little jewel, a snapshot of my beginning as a quilter and, in some small way, part of the initial little ripple that grew into a textile arts tidal wave.

Kaleidoscope  48" x 48"  (8" blocks)

My discovery couldn't be more timely.  It's caused me to seriously rethink my stash.  Ironically, the whole *stash mentality* started with some of us early quilters because we were always scrounging for particular colors which only showed up as fashion trends dictated.  Clearly that's no longer the case.  And though my preference has always been for a jumble of color, pattern and scale when I'm piecing, previously only possible by amassing a stash, recently I've found myself grabbing newer prints almost exclusively.  As I said before, this quilt is so *of its time*.  I like that.  I think I'll be making another big haul of donation fabric to Project Linus this week.

Swamped

I'm still here.

M's Chicago apartment view, overlooking Navy Pier.

Here at home, not Chicago, at least this week.  Last week, I spent a busy 4 days there, getting the lay of the land and starting to check out surrounding areas.  So exciting, but so much to absorb.  What should have started as a routine 3-hour drive morphed into one of those twilight zone trips, stretched into 6 hours because of a terrible highway accident ahead of us, en route.  The day was redeemed by a lunch date with none other than Ms.Girl Reaction, who briefed me on the transit system and gave me a little tour of the city before heading to work.  A most delightful (and helpful!) beginning to my short stay.

But now I'm back in the heartland and, frankly, swamped.  Remember all of those posts I've written about *weeding out*?  What the heck was I thinking/doing?  Nibbling around the edges, at best.  M is away all of this week and I have to get the house ready to put on the market.  I thought I pared down when I moved here from Cleveland but I can see that I barely scratched the surface.  When we came to Indy, we ended up with a larger home than we expected, because of the area's affordabilty and available stock at the time.  Closets galore.  Now we're considering suburban houses as well as city condos and apartments, and whatever the final choice, it will definitely be more pared down, space wise. 

So, alone here this week, it's all hitting the fan (and the shredder.)  Old Christmas cards, high school & college ephemera, mountains of magazines, books and craft supplies.  A lifetime of holiday decorations, Halloween costumes, children's cassette tapes, games and puzzles.  Painfully faded quilts, unfinished projects, wedding gifts still unused after 30+ years.  Oy.  Tonight I read through cards we received when K was born (28 years ago.)  He wouldn't even know many of the senders...I doubt M would remember half of them!  But for me, it's a little bittersweet.  I love all of this family history, yet am weighed down by it.  While K was recently in graduate school, I'd drive up to NYC and sit in his apartment, wishing I could realize my dream of such an existence.  Now I have the opportunity.  Can I walk the walk?

I thought I'd be able to grab a little creative time this week, but at some point, procrastination becomes more stressful than the avoided task itself, so I am drilling through my self-assignment.  Today I filled the station wagon with Goodwill bags, made a stop at Half Price Books and dropped off many bags at Project Linus.  Trash bags are multiplying like rabbits in the garage.  I considered posting some photos, but decided against revealing to my absent family (and you) what I have chosen to divest, lest there be much weeping and wailing across the land.  (And, maybe, here, a little...out of sight, out of mind.)

I haven't gotten rid of everything.  I found some cherished items of interest (buried among *everything else*) that I'll post about once the sun comes out and I can get some decent shots.  In the meantime, it's back to the shredder.  Thanks for bearing with me.

Q&A

Eeek!  Knitting!  I'm getting ready to head north for a few days so I thought I'd pack some projects for my evenings at M's apartment.  When I dusted off the knitting bag, I found my Christmas Lights socks, almost finished, so I'm bringing them along with a few other in-progress items.  Emily's yarn is so luscious.  (She's having an Etsy update tonight at 7:00 central. Go treat yourself!) 

I'm in a hurry here because I spent most of the day in my pajamas, trolling Realtor.com.  However, a few things before I go.  Questions. 

• I've been thinking about Tonya and wondering why she hadn't posted in so long.  I decided to email and ask her myself, but first thought I'd check her blog to see how long it had actually been.  When I went to click on Lazy Gal Quilting in my Bloglines...surprise!...it wasn't there.  I know I hadn't deleted it, so I looked closer at my list and realized that several of my usuals had dropped off.  Anyone else experience this?
• Do you need a special account to accept payments through Paypal or do I understand correctly that if you are registered there, you may receive a limited amount of money per month?
• If you were househunting, would you rather see freshly painted blank walls (which you wouldn't have to patch and repaint if you purchased the home) or would you rather see a more styled version of the house, with paintings and prints hung on the (neutral, freshly painted) walls?  A little disagreement going on here.  All points of view most welcome.

Notes and links.

• A number of people commented on the Japanese appliques in my recent post.  I went back and rescanned the photos so now you may click on them for more detailed views.
• Jessica at littleshika recently had a interesting post about sashiko.
• Despite my lack of recent knitting progress, I can't stop thinking about this simple, perfect sweater that I saw last week at Poshyarns.
• I've been reading What Katie Did for a while and am captivated by her version of an Anna Williams quilt which she posts about here and here.
• There's a granny square explosion online recently but the nicest versions that I've seen so far are here at The Garden of Pink Shadows. Yum.

And finally, lookie here!

 

Not only did I find the replacement part locally, but armed with file, hammer and my trusty array of screwdrivers, I managed to install the new window mechanism myself.  The experience from my college woodblock carving class came in handy when the windowsill wouldn't fit back over the assembly (I ask, why would a company change the design of a replacement part?) but I chipped away and finally was able to open & shut (and open & shut) the previously faulty window, much to the amusement (or maybe relief) of M, fertilizing the lawn below. 

Off to pack and then catch up on what Tonya's been up to.  Back in a few!

This is the truth

The day started with so much promise.  The painters finished up yesterday so last night when M finally pulled in from several days in Chicago, the smell of paint was heavy in the air and furniture was here, there & everywhere.  Though they initially told me they would paint the rooms sequentially, it turned out to be more efficient to work in separate locations at different stages of the work...which meant that at any time over the last few days, one might be rolling paint in my living room, entryway or stairway while the other was in my kitchen, dining room or master bath.  I had big plans for this confined time but ended up changing my blog colors a dozen times and figuring out how to use Flickr.  So productive. 

The girls

Back to today.  Well, no, first you have to know that when M arrived it was with the news that we are, in fact, moving to Chicago, it's final, Windy City, here we come!  And then he offered to help me move the furniture back in place.  Oh, no, I replied...I'm only going to move things back that I want in the room when we are showing the house, so I'll do it tomorrow.  OMG, we're really going.  (Why is this such a shock?  I told you all last week, didn't I?  Still, as I had said, it wasn't final then.  But now it is.  We're going!!)

Ok, really, back to today.  It was a nice sunshiney day so I brought the vacuum into the living room to start tidying up.  The upholstered furniture got a good once-over and I even Orange Glo-ed the woodwork. (I love that stuff!)  I brought the girls back in and while I was polishing and replacing them on the shelf, I started to think about the antique maple table with the wobbly leg where they used to reside in the last house.  Hmm...I should look at that leg again.  Before we move it.  Because we are moving, it is final!  Before the girls were back in place, I had brought the maple table in from the porch and flipped it over to inspect the problem.  Could I fix this myself?  Out came the screwdrivers, much fiddling & flipping & testing and...I actually think I made it worse.  So I left it there, in the middle of the living room floor, while I considered the situation.  Back to the girls.

Zao and Togatta kokeshi, my favorites.

So I'm lovingly polishing away...gosh, I love my kokeshi.  Neither of my kids lived in northern Japan (where they're from,) so most of these were actually purchased on eBay.  I have very particular taste in styles...red & green, straight bodies.  But I digress.  I'm polishing away and considering the table leg and thinking about other niggling problems I'll have to take care of here before we can sell the house...because we're moving! It's final!  First thing that comes to mind is that faulty crank on the casement window in my sewing room.  Off I go to give it a fresh look.  While I'm thinking about it.

I decide to tempt fate and gingerly open the window.  (The problem is closing it...)  THUD...something falls on my head...part of a wasp nest.  Ack!  Smallish and mudlike, I could see it had been wedged in a small space at the top of the window frame.  Quick look...nothing moving.  In my haste to assess the crank problem anew, I hadn't moved anything away from the window area, so papery bits of wasp nest flutter all over the floor (and several projects.)  No time to stop now...the window's open, no screen.  I examine the crank and unscrew the handle for closer examination.  It's all gunky so I try to clean it with some paper towels, forgetting to protect the light carpeting (that is already littered with wasp nest confetti.)  SOMEHOW the handle mechanism falls out of the second story window.

At this point, I rig up something to cover the open window while I do some internet research.  And check to see if Superbuzzy has been updated.  (It hadn't. Now it has.)  Really, what did we do before the internet?  Anyhow, I find that others have had problems with these very windows, which, coincidentally, are no longer made.  However, on one forum, I read that the actual crank mechanism is made by different company and a replacement may be available.  I decide to retrieve the part that fell out the window and look for the part number on the stripped out gears.  Which turns out only to be accessible by removing the windowsill.  Which I do, because I am on a mission. (And we are moving!!)  But first I have to kill THE LIVE WASP that's crawling along the edge of my sewing table.

By this time, the day's about shot.  The girls are patiently waiting to be returned to the shelf, my antique table is upended on the living room floor among an array of screwdrivers, the window crank is in pieces, my sewing room is littered with a wasp nest and not one room has yet been returned to its pre-painted order.  But I did find a possible internet source to complete the window repair...I'll need a crank mechanism made by the Truth Company, part # 30710.

This is the Truth.  (Did I tell you that it's final?  We're moving to Chicago!)

It's a snap!

Today you get a little info-mercial for my new tripod...isn't it cute?  I forget where I read about them (a blog might be a safe guess) but after the stellar results of my tripod experiment last week, I decided to order one of these gorrilapods for quicker setup.  It's inexpensive, small and portable, but the feature that sold me was the bendable legs which remind me of those Dr. Seuss mix-and-match character sets of the '60s.  Here's why they're such a great idea.

         

The flexible legs can be bent to accommodate a slanted surface or mounted on almost anything...very adaptable!  The model I linked to was the one I purchased, for digital cameras under 12.5 oz., but there are versions for larger cameras, as well.  (Check your camera manual to determine its weight.)  Of course, that's a cardboard camera mock-up in the photo...or I wouldn't have been able to...well, you get it.  So far, I'm happy with it.  And I think it'd be easy to tuck in a pocket on a trip.  No more asking the waiter to take that group shot!

The painters have been here today.  This is a first for us, necessitated by a two story entryway and a soaring ceiling in the living room.  (Note to self: next house, think cottage.)  As long as they were coming, we started adding on other small jobs...ceilings mostly, which are perfectly fine except for some small (tiny...minuscule!) edge stains from previous, since-resolved, roof woes.  The type of stains you'd have to strain to find, but which might plant a seed of discomfort in the mind of a prospective buyer.  The kind who comes through with a magnifying glass.  Like me.

The result is that today all of the furniture, plants, wall items and kokeshi...aka *the bowling pin girls*...that were in the way are stacked and scattered in various rooms, blocking access to all sorts of things that I probably haven't used in a month but, of course, need right now! This will continue for several days, as painting progresses, furniture is replaced and new rooms are emptied.  Tomorrow I need a plan that won't have me sequestered away from my sewing and computer rooms.  (Without a snack.)

Stream of (un)consciousness

I'll be bouncing around here a bit today, because, frankly, I'm bouncing around a bit in real life lately, so why should this be any different?  First, I want to thank you, thank you, thank you all for the comments left at my last post.  I thought I'd probably hear from 4 or 5 Chicagoans, but the response in comments (and emails) from residents and ex-pats has been overwhelming.  I'm still trying to answer them all, while maintaining ongoing correspondence with those I've gotten back to already.  Both M and I are so touched by your offers, as well as your concern about our marriage.  (Sorry about that...I couldn't resist having some fun with the news.)  Honestly, Tuesday morning I woke up feeling like I had a hangover.  Sort of, 'Huh. I read it on the blog so I guess we must really be doing this!'

Original magazine photo of whirling star quilt  (Click)

I've had lots of inquiries about the whirling star block so I scanned in the magazine shot of the antique quilt from which I got the block idea.  Here's the original pattern page.  Some scoffed when I said I was looking for a quicker way to piece this and although it is a little fussy (requires templates,) my solution was to add an extra 1/4" along the outer edge of the background pieces and a bit extra to the inside edge of the fanblade template so that I wouldn't need to be too matchy when sewing, especially since these all have a bias edge somewhere. 

Here's the basic breakdown of the block pieces.  The templates all have the seam allowances added plus the extra 1/4" outer edge noted by the broken lines.

The resulting blocks have some edge unevenness which I'm not worrying about because of that added 1/4".  When I'm ready to assemble the top, I'll square them up, saving me lots of fiddling now during block piecing.

I know there are still knitters around so I have a question for you...how's Sandy these days?  (Dare I try to insert a link?)  Recently, when I click the Blogline version of Sandy's Knitting post to bring up her webpage, my computer goes bonkers!  It repeatedly loads the page, ad finitum, until I stop and reboot the computer.  At first I thought, Wow, I'm a winner! but I had to face reality when no check arrived.  Sandy, I love you, but this is getting tiresome.  Anyone know what's going on here? 

I had more to write today, but keep getting interrupted so it will have to wait.  I think my lazy days of drifting from whim to whim are behind me for a while, but the excitement of change will be worth it.  I've been living in black and white the last few months but I feel the color coming back.  We're heading to the city for a few days so I got a good haircut yesterday because I was starting to look the hermit of the heartland.  Well, I think it's good...with curly hair, it always takes a few days to render a final verdict.  Let's say, 'improved.'

And am I the only one who didn't realize we're starting daylight savings time three weeks earlier this year?  As in *this weekend*?  I have to get up at 4:30 tomorrow morning for the drive north with M.  I sure hate the thought of losing that extra hour of sleep Saturday.

Where I've been

I didn't mean to be away so long.  In fact, I've been here all the time.  M needed to use some vacation days left from last year so he decided to take a week off this month for some relaxation and to catch up on some household repairs.  In addition to his highly demanding job, M is conscientious to the extreme, which usually translates into 12+ hour work days (and always some office time on the weekend.)  I really wasn't sure how 9 days at home was going to work for either of us and so I threw that little bit in at the end of my last post...*I'll be away for a few days*...not knowing how it was going to shake out. 

As it turned out, our situation had changed quite a bit since he made his vacation plans.  After many long discussions while he was home, last night he packed his bags and left this morning for his new apartment.  I am so relieved.  And, admittedly, a little stressed out.  It's been in the wind for months and has been a great source of anxiety for me, to which I attribute my recent inability to focus on anything for any length of time.  Are we?  Aren't we?  And now it seems we are, though it is not final.  A few details remain to be worked out, but we seem to be on a fast track to change.

Ok, I am teasing you a little, though it's all true.  M's been assigned to a job in another city.  He's still involved with his project here, part time for a good several months, but if things unfold as we expect, it looks like we'll be moving to his new location.  So this past week's activities suddenly turned from relaxing and puttering to a marathon list of assessing every inch of our house, painting, re-grouting and interviewing people to take care of a few larger jobs that need attending.  While M's tools were flying, I spent much of the week on my (seemingly) perennial favorites, *weeding out* and *organizing*.  There's no motivation like the prospect of hauling all of this stuff to a new place!

This morning dawned bright and springlike and I'm happy to be back in my own routine for a few days.  Though I have a list of to-do's a mile long, I can't tell you how relieved I am that things are falling into place here after months of uncertainty.  I'm craving some sewing time and tonight I'm planning to pull out my poor, long-neglected knitting.  I may even be able to get some decent photos taken with the sun out today.  (The first thing on the new house must-have list?  Light!!)

Speaking of which, I have a lot of research to do on our intended destination.  Maybe some of you Chicago peeps can help me out?