small hands

I filled out my absentee ballot last Thursday and mailed it in with one of my Gee's Bend quilt stamps. I'm glad that's done.



My son placed this little Halloween momento where he knew I'd find it. Luckily, I'm already familiar with his rubber rat. Otherwise, we might be packing our things because I don't intend to live in the same house as a (real live) rodent.

This weekend was surprisingly restful. My kids decided they wanted to have a Halloween party for their school friends. My daughter actually wanted one last year, but I was not up to it then. She's a powerful brow beater, that girl, so this year we decorated the house, invited 20+ of her girlfriends and allowed her brother to invited his two best buddies. Costumes, games, candy; it was fun and not completely exhausting.

Yesterday, I cleaned up most of the day, did laundry and quilted. I'm almost done with it; I only have to quilt the border, sew on the binding, resew the errant strands, and wash it.

[Check out Lucy's outstanding quilt, composed of unfinished objects. She did such a great job.

And look at Cassi's Halloween House. It is amazing!]

After dropping the kids off at their dad's house, I considered taking myself to the movies, but the cool weather [and the party detritus] made me want to get back home and stay indoors.

We're back to Standard Time, which helped us get an early start this morning. I like when I can feel on top of things, lunches made, back packs ready, car loaded. I even had time to escort my son into the school and hang around with him for a few minutes before he headed for the play structure. I like that better than just dropping him off and dashing to work, but it's not always possible.

I hope this is a good week; not just for me.

Work in Progress Friday



There's something about this photo that makes the quilting seem endless, but I'm actually more than two thirds of the way done. I feel pretty groovy about that.

Check out this combination of chartreuse, orange and grey. Neat, huh?

I really love piecing quilts. It's so much easier than quilting. So I'm quilting the Dolley Madison Star quilt and it's going well, though it's hard on my hands and wrists and forearms. Then my mind drifts to piecing. But I have two other tops in the queue that I will quilt before the end of the year.

In order to deal with my yearning to piece just a little something, I've been folding and reorganizing my stash, documenting some new additions. I must say, I love Portsmouth Fabric Company. They have tons of Kaffe Fasset and Martha Negley prints that are sold out at other fabric companies, so I've been replenishing a few of my favorite prints. And they ship lightning fast, unlike equilter, which takes an age. No, I don't need more fabric, but that's neither here nor there.

Work is hard. My kids are a lot of fun. The weather is changing. I have a cold.

This picture is in the most recent issue of Country Home magazine. I love these cups, but they're made by Calvin Klein and each place setting costs $100, so I'm unlikely to possess them.

I'm am surprised by how drawn I am to this Metropolitan Home cover, the presence of the orange and chartreuse.



I think it's the combination of orange, chartreuse and gray, and the fact that there's a pug in the photograph. I've always admired pugs. My admiration for orange and chartreuse is more recent.

Man, I can't get these colors right. Depending on the program I use to make the pictures look decent, they come out very differently.

See?



Anyway, I finished this baby quilt for a lovely, lovely woman in Germany. I was inspired by this quilt, from Martha Stewart Living magazine:



I bought the Japanese bunnies print from equilter



and I also used Japanese fabric from kitty-craft (which really needs to get back to business), German fabric from equilter, and some favorites from my stash.





The weather is amazing today; so warm and soft. I had to work flat out all week, today included, but I don't have to work this weekend, so that's something.

I was just minding my own business, going to Poppy fabric to get a lightbulb for my sewing machine, when I saw this fabric. It's Alexander Henry's apples + pears. Pretty, huh? I think I may use it to make end of the year bags for my boy's teachers. Planning way ahead.

Thank you for your comments on my last post. My feelings, I think, can be summarized as follows: I think the women should have been afforded more dignity than they were in the filming and editing of the documentary. One of the last shots is of the mother, Big Edie, falling asleep on a filthy (cat poop stained) mattress.

I felt that they were abandoned by people who could have helped them care for themselves. We have this notion/ethos of American independence, but vulnerable people should be cared for, cleaned up after, their privacy protected. And one form of vulnerability is starving for attention. It's amazing that Grey Gardens fits in perfectly with the genre of reality shows and yet it is very different in that it doesn't show affluence and a sanitized, packaged version of reality.

Now I'm rambling and I have a brief to write.

I got lured and here's how it happened.

I was working a lot and thus spending a lot of time on my computer. Since this activity is rather solitary and boring, I like to listen to radio programs while I work. I find it helps to have a different part of my braining working when I'm concentrating on something like legal research and writing.

So I was listening to NPR and heard this story [which has such excellent photographs attached to it]. Because of the convenience of Netflix, I decided to check out the documentary, thinking, Heck, I like fashion, this will be right up my alley.



I watched it over the weekend. It scared the hell out of me. I was deeply, deeply disturbed by it.

I was an English major, so I was readily familiar with Tennessee Williams and Southern Gothic, but here it is, Blanche from Streetcar Named Desire and Amanda and Laura Wingfield from the Glass Menagerie, for real, in a decaying house, bickering and clawing at each other, while raccoons tear down the plaster and lathe to access the Wonder Bread the daughter leaves for them.

It made me really uncomfortable to see the women so exposed, so neglected, and it felt voyeuristic and exploitative. Because I live in a 100 year old house, I also thought, Lord, I gotta call V. and repair some stuff. The raccoons are coming.

And those crazy women's voices got stuck in my head.

It bothers me when someone trashes something I love, so I don't want to trash a documentary that has a cult following. But what do people get out of this movie?

Work In Progress Friday



I need to remind myself at this stage of the quilting that I will finish it. Keep working.

Today was wild--a lot of stressful work, but then it's done. Reading e-mails from my secretary at 7AM that she wrote at 6AM shows that something is not quite right.

I'm working this weekend to get ready for an oral argument on Monday in federal court. Oy.

Balance?

Well, I'm going to St. Helena on Saturday, for dinner at the Martini House, and I hope to schedule a massage next week.

Have a great weekend.

I had misplaced my crafting notebook for about a week. That was a long, desperate week.

Because I've been working so much/hard, I haven't had time to write in my journals and it is an important outlet for me. I need my crafting notebook to write To Do lists, to record what I've done and what I've learned from each project, to put my inspirations in a central location, to jot down an idea, no matter how fleeting, for future reference.



It was buried under a bunch of stuff on my desk. I'm going to be more careful with it from now on.

I imagine I could reconfigure my notebook on the computer, using flickr or something. But I carry my notebook into boring ass meetings and peek at it to keep me from going crazy.

I finally got these beautiful stamps, as I went to the post office to mail the baby quilt to Germany. Two things done.

Yesterday, my kids had school but I didn't have to work. I stood in front of the house in the morning waiting for them, just as my neighbor was bringing his dog out to go to the bathroom on my lawn and not pick it up. (This has been going on for weeks.) He had to change course and walk his dog around the block. What is up with that?

I dropped my kids off and returned home to wait for the repair person. He fixed the door on my ice maker (busted solenoid on the closing mechanism of the chute, causing frost build up) and serviced my furnace (cleaning, checking, changing filter). I was able to quilt and watch some daytime television (ER and channel surfing, mostly). I've railed against daytime television before and after another cursory dose of it yesterday, I firmly believe it is contributing to the downfall of society.

In the evening, I worked with my son on his homework. Every time he felt silly and didn't want to do the work, I excused myself to wash dishes and clean the kitchen. I didn't want to get too frustrated with his high spirits, but I also didn't want my time to be wasted while he giggled and farted around. Plus, there was lots of cleaning and washing up to do.

I rested a lot this weekend, though we also went to the school's picnic, which was excellent this year. The weather was perfect, sunny, in the mid-70s. The kids ditched me as soon as they spied their friends and I strolled around talking to people I knew. Three hours later we went home and I took a nap.

Per my son's request, we made Lisa's cinnamon rolls on Sunday afternoon and I made some arroz con pollo in an attempt to revisit my Costa Rican vacation. They both turned out well.

On the way into work, I bought the secretaries flowers to thank them for all of their hard work last week. This week should be better.

Well, that's done. I had a brief due yesterday, so I pulled an all nighter on Thursday night/Friday morning and then worked for nine hours on Friday to complete it. We actually had to do some revisions and refiling until 11:00 last night, but it's done and on time.

I haven't had to work all night since law school and this time (the last, I tell you) I had to do the bath/brush/bedtime routine with my kids as well. It was actually nice to be able to take a break from work to tend to my kids. Sitting that long is hard on the body. I had forgotten.

Yesterday evening my son was very affectionate and I realize that he was probably feeling a little abandoned by my focus on work at home.

More balance.

Professionally, September was really bad and the first week of October was punishing. I've decided to spend the next few months replenishing my mind and spirit.

Working in my garden
Trying new recipes
Getting massages
Reading books
Practicing yoga
Spending time with loved ones

The next order of crafty business is to start quilting this top:



I finished the quilt at the top of the post and now I just have to mail it to Germany.

I intend to get back into posting more regularly, too.

Thank you for your encouraging comments. You are all beautiful creatures.

The wedding was very nice. It took place on Inspiration Point on the Presidio, but it was not freezing or blowing too much. The food at the reception was delicious--grilled salmon, pork roast with fennel, penne with butternut squash, mixed greens with plums and shaved parmasean, asparagus with balsamic vinagrette--and it was great to hang out with my family.

* * *

Alicia's Sour Cream Apple (and Pear) pie was delicious.

One More Row

Please excuse the inadequately ironed quilt top.



I added another row of 10 on the right side and now I really like it. I also moved one block around:

Before:



I thought there was not enough color in the combination of the four lighter blocks.

After:



How did you chose the colours, what was the plan for this quilt? Did you just go with fabric you liked in light & dark or did you plan the colours and sequences to achieve the effect.


It was completely random, but I thought I would emphasize blue and purple/magenta, because I have plenty of it in my fabric stash and I was in the mood for it.

The sequence of the blocks was also random/improvised. I arranged the blocks in rows of 9 on my dining room table and could only keep three rows at a time in view. It was just a matter of feel. For the last two rows, there were some blocks that I didn't want to use, so I pulled them and pieced together replacement blocks.

I wanted to make sure to have the darker blocks to provide punctuation in the overall look.

* * *

Thank you for the words of encouragement; I really appreciate them. I rested as much as I could this weekend. I expect to pass through this phase, I just don't know how.