where my mind wanders,

...when I'm doing most anything, is to quilts.

We pulled out the Perler beads before camp today and Alex started working on a circle (he's a perfectionist, already at almost-four, so this process will take a while), and I saw a mulberry bead next to a baby blue one (or was it the petal pink?), and before I knew it...Quick, grab a photo.  A perfect quilty color scheme.
























Alex wanted to add another pink--too peachy--and I asked him to wait until the photo was finished.  Does everyone take pictures while playing with their kids?  I suppose I should compartmentalize things a bit better and unplug from craftiness sometimes, but this is how my mind works.  Maybe I am somehow inspiring him artistically?  Either that or enhancing said perfectionism.  In either case, overthinking, probably. 

Anyway, have you seen this new flickr group?  Fun just to browse, but I like it especially because it lets me know that there are other people out there like me.

more metacognition

of quilting, that is.  I finished my February Bee's Knees blocks last night...
















::  I officially love quilts made only of solids.  There's a flickr group for this, in fact (I think there is a flickr group for every topic conceivable to man).  I'm not sure I'll ever commit to a solids-only quilt, though, because there's some small part of me that would feel disappointed to not be using prints, which makes no sense, but so it is.

::  Even though I didn't love each of these colors individually, or even each pair of geese, I definitely love how they work as a whole (also true of my star--the less I thought about it as I went, the better it looked).  I can't wait to see this quilt finished!

::  I had a theme as I sewed, but you'd never know it to look at the finished blocks.

::  Bees blocks are great for motivating me to try new things.  I don't think I would have chosen this block on my own, but making these certainly got my wheels turning.  Half-square triangles and variations are amazing to me.  So many different design possibilities from such a simple base.

















::  How can the back of a quilt play off the top?  In the tutorial Claire asked us to use for the blocks, Crystal mentions using the triangle scraps for mini-pinwheel blocks...how cool would those be scattered over the back?  I'm sending my scraps back to Claire in case she wants to go that route.

















:: it is extremely satisfying when points match. It is extremely irritating when they are off by a hair.

and finally...

::  For heaven's sake, what do I have to do to get my blocks to lie flat? 

















Happy weekend, all!  Mine will be full of cleaning the kitchen, spider web blocks for Brioni, and pizza!  Oh, and we'll get our basement floor back.

Sunday inspiration

Getting inspired to...
















read actual magazines again (I get a lot of inspiration online, but sometimes it's nice to hold paper in your hand and make that pile of pages to keep);
















keep trying new things (anyone who knows us in real life will be shocked to see Alex coloring on purpose--I had given up hope, but he was all about it today);
















 finish this quilt!














be a more intentional, professional mother--just ordered the book, in fact (we already have a really steady dad around here);





















 and keep my bathroom clean.

Thanks to Jennifer for the lovely inspiration inspiration.

spiderwebs on the brain

I did so much thinking while I was piecing these--call it the metacognition of quilting.

Partly because making them is simple and therefore meditative--right down to peeling the paper while watching Law & Order--

















but also because their scrappiness brings to the forefront of my mind so many parts of the creative process.  I am not particularly "scrappy" by nature--not because I don't like the look of scrappy quilts when they're done well (like this one, or this one), but because I tend to obsess and then become paralyzed by anxiety over fabric (and other design) choices.

I guess, then, that it's encouraging that even my least favorite block looked pretty good once trimmed.

A favorite block developed as I worked, and I only added favorite fabrics to it, as if to preserve it.  I wonder if anyone else could identify it?  I wonder if that person would have to be someone who knew me well, or whether the fabrics would be universally appealing so that it was obvious to anyone?  And no, this is not it.
















Fabric choices.  How and why had Anna chosen these different fabrics?  Some I would have chosen, some not...how do people develop their preferences? Would she like the outcome?  Stressful to make something for someone else.
 
Deliberate randomness--maybe there's a technical term?--is scrappy the same as random?  If I'm supposed to be working randomly, then is it wrong to skip or replace a fabric that's "next in line" because there would be two greens in a row, or because it wasn't a favorite?  Would it have been OK to put two Christmas fabrics in the same block, or would that have made it a Christmas block?  How long did others spend choosing the perfect fabrics, or did they truly work randomly, or did they develop a few rules to guide their choices?  Many designers (Bill Kerr & Weeks Ringle and Denyse Schmidt come to mind) incorporate improvisation and randomness into their piecing; is this a feature of "modern" quilting, or, in a way, a return to the most organic kind of quilting (Gee's Bend, or quilts as the most basic form of reuse)?

Too much thinking, perhaps, about how to sew together some scraps of fabric. 

















For me, though, this is what makes quilting more interesting than knitting.  There is thinking to be done in knitting, for sure, and math, and problem solving...but the effects of changes are more subtle and realizing them is slow (for this turtle knitter, anyway).  In quilting, I can see different designs just by rearranging.  Immediate.

So much to learn.

In the interim, I hope Anna likes her blocks.

glowsticks

That's what I'm thankful for. Hope everyone else's day was as great.

a special kind of solitude

Which for me, actually, comes in a very public place.

I love me a train ride.


Not sure I would really love a train commute, but my once-in-a-while suits me just perfectly.  Maybe because I'm wearing something a little more interesting than usual.  Maybe because I'm guaranteed a little bit of quiet time.  Maybe just because it means I'm going into the city (miss living there, kind of), and am about to do something fun (like this time, which turned out to be a great dinner followed by my best experience in a theater, ever). 

But no matter where I'm headed, I think I might look forward to the train ride the most.

There are train ride rituals: a snack, some (audio and in this case kind of gratuitous) reading, some knitting, and some being alone.  I always bring a notebook, planning to make lists and draw craft ideas, but usually don't get to it...just having it along is what's important.

This trip, I finished (finally!) the first knitting project on my kind-of-long list.  Cast off ten minutes before I got off the train, and thought dropping the stitches would take a couple of minutes (don't stitches seem to drop in an instant when you don't want them to?)--just kidding, took me the whole train ride home too.  No matter, it's delivered now.

 I love it.  I hope my mom loves it too.

a peek into my fridge

Because I love it.  There are a few other inanimate objects around here that I really love, but in the kitchen, it's my fridge.  I love it because it's a really nice fridge, much nicer than any fridge I've ever had before, but also because it's clean.

When we got the fridge a few years ago, I promised myself that I would keep it clean by taking everything out once a month, pitching the junk, and wiping down all the shelves and drawers.  I actually do this process with the entire kitchen on the last Sunday of the month.  We get takeout for dinner so I don't have to mess up my entire kitchen after scrubbing it down, and now I even get some help from Alex, who takes all the condiments and then hands them back to me once I'm ready to replace them.  His price?  A maraschino cherry.

I share this not because I think you'll care so much about the inside of my fridge, but in light of this post by Amy at A Commonplace Life.  Actually, there was another related post this morning at Small Notebook--and I remember reading some others recently (maybe here?)--so the theme is running through the minds of a lot of bloggers (kind of like the field posts from earlier in the fall).  In short, the post discussed perfection (or its appearance)--Amy put it, "posting only the lovely"--in the blog world.

Besides the pressure to share posts (and in great part, the photos that go with them) that show something prettytidy, and extra-interesting, she also mentions that blogging has helped her to become more mindful about her life and her days, about noticing "the lovely"--and I've also experienced this in the short time I've been blogging.  I am more likely to stop and photograph--or at least think about--events that might seem mundane.  But my reality is that though my life never looks like this, which is OK with me (and the author would agree, I'd guess), so I do find myself styling photos I take for the blog.  For every breadboard with a homemade loaf, there were fabric scraps, index cars, and trains--and maybe even some crumbs--to be moved out of the way for the picture.

Yesterday, the fridge really did look like this; I didn't change anything.  But I would certainly hesitate to show you the scene behind me as I shot that photo (my husband is breathing a sigh of relief right now, I'm sure).  Because though we don't want to hold ourselves or our readers to an impossibly-high standard, let's face it, nobody wants to look at a picture of someone's dirty kitchen for its own sake.  And I suppose I could wonder, too, whether the contents of my fridge will be up for scrutiny (our brand of beer?  Store-bought bread?  Pop?  A fast-food product?  Non-organic eggs?).

I'm looking forward to the series Amy is thinking of starting, working title: "less-than-perfect" because I'm hoping it will help me focus some on what I guess my eventual goal is: to have just a couple of pairs of darling shoes on my stairs, and a hall that's clear of stuff when my little guy runs through.  I'm guessing Amy didn't share the photo to inspire any feelings of inadequacy--that'd be counter to her point?  What I mean is that it (and my fridge, clean but imperfect) represents to me the balance I'm trying to find: posting interesting things but showing them the way that they really are, keeping my house organized because I'm more relaxed and we live a better life when I do, dealing with the clutter made by making, putting aside the making and the cleaning to enjoy these wee years with my son, sharing with the outside world without worrying about judgment, and being glad (as Rachel reminds us) that my life is full enough to generate fabric scraps, index cards, and trains.

on food "styling"

I love food photography,--not that I'm so great at it myself, just that I think it's really interesting to see how the same recipe can look so different when made by different people and for different purposes.  There was once a fascinating article in Cooking Light (not in their archives, unfortunately, but this fun post shares a lot of the same info) about what food endures before it can be photographed for publication.  I'm not so much talking about that as I am about how we present food for eating at home.

All that is a leadup to this: Do you choose which dishes to use based on the food you're serving?

Maybe I'm the only one who does this.  It kind of hit me today when I was cutting up some cantaloupe ('loupe around here) for lunch.  I pulled out the bowl on top of the stack and it was--gasp!--orange.  And when I put the cantaloupe in there, it looked kind of pallid and odd.  Which made me realize that I often choose serving pieces especially (but dishes for eating too) based on what the food looks like.  Is this weird?

 

The middle one should probably actually be my favorite considering where we went to school, but the last one turned out to be most appetizing to me.  Yes, I did dirty three bowls do do this "experiment"--but it's OK since I'm the one who does the dishes.

Further proof that this concept is somehow very important to me is this shot, which I took weeks ago for no other reason than that the sight made me smile:

More food display weirdness that I now realize I'm carrying around with me:  I really don't like most patterned serving pieces and most of my collection is plain, I really like food to fill up the plate or bowl (and consequently end up spilling a lot when I over-estimate the size of the piece), and I don't like using two foods of the same color in the same dish (like red tomatoes and red peppers in a salad--one of 'em has to be yellow).

Thank you for letting me get this off my chest.

we don't really have fields around here.

Of course we do.  I actually kind of live at the edge of them--past the gym: the fields.   But most of the time, if we're outside, we're looking at neighborhood or woods. 

In blogland, there are lots of fields-maybe especially lately because of the season, since there's so much to absorb outdoors right now.  The photos are both stunning and understated--they feel calm and common, as if these views are ways of life.  I'm not trying to say that field pictures are some kind of cliche, more that after I'd seen a few, I started to feel a little bit of envy each time I saw another.  A wonderful peek into a different way of life that's really, really different from my own.  My posts end to be sort of urban, or at least indoor--pizza, banana bread, my pantry.  Reading about fields had kind of left me with a hankering to get to a different outside--not to the fields, because that's just not really where we go--but someplace.

Today, we did.  And of course it was tons of fun to see this:

 and this.

But then I saw this.

It was such a blessing, this exact perspective, this exact spot.  My own personal field--except in the woods.  The sun setting and shining--glowing--through the trees, the quiet, the cold!  But it was a neat experience, because it was empirical proof that blog surfing is time well spent.  It's as if seeing all those fields (and quilts, and sweaters, and everything!) got me there, to this view of this moment.

Otherwise: take a minute to read this post.  A lovely story in its own right, especially fun for me to read because Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr live and work in my howntown, where my parents still live, and because it reminds me of this.  Good luck to everyone running tomorrow.  Maybe again someday.

beginning

That's my lunch--seriously good cheddar-jalapeno bread from our farmer's market, via this wonderful place.

I feel like I'm a little late to the party.  I've been reading lots of posts lately focusing on the feelings of burden or pressure that can come from blogging--some of them from bloggers with several-year-deep archives--and here I am just getting started, on my last day of being thirty one.

A difficulty with starting now, in 2009, rather than, say, in 2006, is that there are so many blogs to love--how will I make a niche for myself?  Are there not already a hundred or a thousand blogs from women with small children who like to make, eat, and take pictures? 

The advantage, though, is that I've also had many months to form a vision of what I'd like this spot to be: a place to share things I've made and love, reflective of my voice (without trying too hard to be clever), sleek in its design, a record of things in my days that have made me happy.

It's daunting, but I think I'll give it a go.