And I do mean that literally. Quite literally. Eight bobbins and two large spools of thread equals miles of thread.

We are finished. Well, we’re finished with our part. Now we take it to a long-arm quilter to have the three layers that make it a quilt put together and stitched. But our part is finished and we are happy with it. So happy that we have both agreed that we will likely spend far too much in raffle tickets in our attempts to win the quilt back … because now we LOVE it. How can we give it away to a stranger?

We will if we must … but only after we take plenty of photographs.

So as I may have mentioned in my earlier post, I am somewhat pre-occupied with this quilt lately.  It’s taking up all my time and all of BlazingEwe’s time too.  We are actually ripping our hair out.

This quilt is composed of 81 separate blocks.  There are 49 that measure 12 inches square and the remaining blocks measure 6 inches square.  In January and February we handed out kits for these blocks (complete with directions) and all the fabric needed for each block, pre-cut, at our guild meeting.  We asked for the blocks to be back by the March guild meeting.  Most of them came back.  A few more trickled in at our show a week later.  We had to chase the rest down.

Finally, about ten days ago, we sat down and triaged the blocks.

Here are some things you need to know about quilting.  First … a block that will measure 12 inches square in a quilt, really is 12.5″ square all by itself.  You have to figure for seam allowances (a quarter inch for quilters).  Second, some quilters are slap-dash quilters and others are OCD quilters (I fall into the latter category, btw) … and yes, OCD stands for the same thing here that it does in ordinary life – obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Third, a block sort of indicates that the general shape of the thing should be square, that is, four equal sides with 90 degree angles.   That’s what you’re looking for as an end result because it makes the whole thing go together well.

So, as I said, we triaged the blocks.  Of 81 blocks, 40 were not within tolerances.  That means … they were either not square, or not 12.5″ (or 6.5″) in measurement.  Now we know that everyone is different and sews differently so, that means that very few people are going to have exact blocks.  Well … I do, but I’m OCD about it.  However, in order to make it work, they have to be within about an 1/8″ of an inch on all sides.  That’s what I mean by “within tolerances.”  Several blocks had curved outer edges.  That does not meet the definition of a square to me.

We began making notes on post-its and pinning them to each block.  Notes about what needed to be adjusted, changed or perhaps outright redone.  Sixteen blocks needed to be recut and redone from the get go.  We had to go buy new fabric.  In one case this involved a roundtrip of two hours.  Don’t ask.

There was ranting and cursing involved.

We have about half of the quilt top together.  We put the other half up on our jerry-rigged design wall last night and sighed.  We are both tired and tired of this quilt.

Here’s the thing though.  We’ve seen the quilts that most of these ladies have made.  They are beautiful and wonderful.  How is that possible?  These blocks were/are a mess!  It was a mystery.

Then I realized this … if you make the same block with the same mistake 28 times it doesn’t matter.  Those 28 blocks go together just fine.  Structurally, they work together well.  They fit together and the mistakes and idiosyncrasies disappear into each other.  They are not apparent.  However, when each and every block has a different mistake and idiosyncrasy they do not fit together well.  They bump up against each other and look very ugly indeed.  There are gaps where there should be joints.  Intersections which do not intersect well.  Taken on the whole, a community quilt is a very bumpy, wavy adventure.  It makes the OCD quilter (me) somewhat nuts.

One day as I was sewing along I had a revelation.  Quilt blocks are like people, or maybe people are like quilt blocks.  Structurally we all have mistakes and idiosyncrasies.  We don’t notice them at all when we are alone or in our families because they are unique to us and we make them all the time.  When we’re making our own blocks and quilts, these mistakes and idiosyncrasies just fit right in to whatever we’re doing at the time.  It’s only when we get out into the larger community that our unique bits stand out in contrast to the unique bits of everyone else and the joints don’t fit right.  There are gaps and ugly intersections.  Places where the fabrics just clash and hurt your eyes (or ears).

When you’re making a quilt, you can take apart the offensive blocks and put them back together so that they fit more better.  In real life, there’s not so much you can do with offensive people.  So we have to figure out how to make do with what we have instead of remaking it to suit ourselves.  But that’s the problem, isn’t it?  We each want to remake the other people/blocks to suit us rather than let them be and figure out how to make the community quilt just as it is.  Now wouldn’t that be an adventure?

Last September BlazingEwe and I had a brilliant idea.  There was some fabric involved.  It was speaking to us and telling us what kind of quilt it wanted to be.  So we told our guild that we’d design and execute the guild’s raffle quilt for 2009.  In January we handed out kits and directions for 80 blocks.  In March we got most of those back.  Saturday we triaged those blocks.

Yeah.

Forty of them need work.  Need to be taken apart and resewn.  About 2/3’s of those must be re-cut and resewn.  The photo above is half the quilt.  We’ve been working for a week now.  That photo was taken on Wednesday.  We’ve done a lot more since then.  Many of the holes you see in the photo have been filled.  But there is still a lot to do in this half.  Then we still have another half to put up on our design wall and pick apart, then resew.

I have no life.  I have this quilt.  It has to be done and ready for the quilter by May 7.  We have been to the quilt shop 3 times for fabric.  We drove a two hour round trip to get one piece of fabric because … well … it’s a long story.  It was our favorite piece and we had to have it.

All of this is to say, I am otherwise occupied for the time being.  I am sporadically working on a few posts here and there.  So you’ll hear from me now and again.  But I’m busy making a vision come to life.

In the meantime here’s a great project for the spring.  Get involved counting bees and planting sunflowers … be part of the Great Sunflower Project.   Let’s have a sunflower contest.  Everyone get some seeds and we’ll all plant them on the same day … how about May 1?  Then we’ll see how tall our tallest sunflower is on September 1.  I’ll send a prize to the grower of the tallest sunflower.  Let me know in the comments if you’re in.

Good Friday, 1613.

Riding Westward

John Donne (1572-1631)

1Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
2 The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
3 And as the other Spheares, by being growne
4 Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,
5 And being by others hurried every day,
6 Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
7 Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit
8 For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
9 Hence is’t, that I am carryed towards the West
10 This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
11 There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
12 And by that setting endlesse day beget;
13 But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
14 Sinne had eternally benighted all.
15 Yet dare I’almost be glad, I do not see
16 That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
17 Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
18 What a death were it then to see God dye?
19 It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
20 It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
21 Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
22 And tune all spheares at once peirc’d with those holes?
23 Could I behold that endlesse height which is
24 Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
25 Humbled below us? or that blood which is
26 The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
27 Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
28 By God, for his apparell, rag’d, and torne?
29 If on these things I durst not looke, durst
30 Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
31 Who was Gods partner here, and furnish’d thus
32 Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom’d us?
33 Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
34 They’are present yet unto my memory,
35 For that looks towards them; and thou look’st towards mee,
36 O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree;
37 I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
38 Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
39 O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,
40Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,
41 Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
42 That thou may’st know mee, and I’ll turne my face.

Sheesh … it’s been quiet around here for the last couple of days. Where’ve I been anyway?

I went to the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival last Wednesday with BlazingEwe and didn’t get back til yesterday afternoon. We both had quilts hanging there. This was a first for us and quite exciting. We took classes; one that would help us be less precise and one that would help us be more precise. We’re so conflicted! Both teachers were very good, but we really connected with the second, who is about our age. We had lunch with her. Our teacher from last year remembered us and that was a thrill, too. All of this would be much more wonderful but for the fact that we’re usually the youngest women in these classes by about 20 years! So, we sorta stand out and not for our skill, technique, or talent. Perhaps it’s our charm.

In any case, you’ll see my quilt in next month’s issue of Porpoise Diving Life which is being guest edited in March by John Smulo. Porpoise Diving Life is always wonderful, but this year’s issues are a special treat because a group of us have gathered together to give Bill Dahl a sabbatical at his request. He’s writing a book and asked for some people to step forward so that he could focus his efforts. This month (February) is under the expert care and direction of Pam Hogeweide. In a future post, I’ll give you a list of the upcoming guest editors, so you can keep your eyes open. It promises to be a great year.

I came home from the festival with a renewed sense of how I want to organize and purpose my life. My path is still not clear, but I have a better sense of some of the things that need to be in each day. I know I need to have color and art be part of each day. I know I need to write each day as well. Perhaps doing these things will help the path become clear to me.

While we were in the hotel, BlazingEwe and I watched a fun movie called EdTV. It was an amusing, yet cutting, critique of our culture’s obsession with reality television. During one scene near the end, a friend of the main character was being interviewed on an Oprah Winfrey style show and he commented that, “I feel that Ed is the apotheosis of a prevailing American syndrome. It used to be that someone became famous because they were special. Now people are considered special just for being famous. Fame, itself, is now a moral good in this country. It’s its own virtue.”

That packs quite a punch … “Now people are considered special just for being famous. Fame, itself, is now a moral good in this country.”

Think about that for a while. Think about it in terms of the church in the western/industrialized hemisphere. Who do we follow and consider special? And why? Who floats to the top, and who wallows in the quagmire at the bottom? We like the Horatio Alger stories that it’s bootstraps, hard work, innovation and smarts that get people ahead in this country. It is our mythology that race, gender, poverty or a combination of those will not effect where we end up in this life.

So, why is this important? It is important because we are wired in some way to believe that those who are famous are leaders. They are the ones who have smarts, education, talent, or general chutzpah in some way that we should listen to. But should we? What if they’re just someone that an editor or producer thinks will sell?

I haven’t posted in a while. I think it might be the longest while ever. This is not a good record to break. But I suspect that all will live and probably thrive. I finally gave up and just marked “all as read,” in my Googlereader. Some of you will go unread into the dustbin of history. I feel really badly about that … I really do. But I was overwhelmed. Completely. Still … all will live and probably thrive. Such is the stuff of life.

Some really good things have happened lately. My blog, that would be this very blog that you have cast your eyes up now, was accepted into The Daily Scribe. It happened several weeks ago and you may have noticed the shiny new logo in my sidebar. I try to keep it gleaming and crisp because I’ve still got a shine on too about the whole thing. Wander on over to the village square and check them out … what a bunch of fabulous writers and thinkers are gathered there.

We’ve managed to have a few gatherings in our home to celebrate Advent. This has been wonderful and gentle and most of all expectant. The most amazing thing was being able to pray through Isaiah 35:1-10 using lectio divina with 7 children ranging in age from 8 to 14 last evening … and only 5 adults. And, both children and adults got something out of it. I’m still amazed. The kids are loving it too. This is even more amazing. I love watching God at play among the people.

This weekend was so hectic. Four hockey games, a hockey party (for LightGirl’s team), Advent gathering and yes, we squoze in time to breath and eat. The party for LightGirl’s team was so much fun. We had it here at the house. 11 girls, 2 boys and assorted parents. I planned lunch, a couple of activities and lots of time for talking and giggling. One of the activities was building gingerbread houses with ye olde standby … the trusty graham cracker. I didn’t think the girls would buy into it. But it was their favorite thing. They begged to get started and were completely into it. Much more than I anticipated 12, 13 and 14 yo girls would be. I still have their creations proudly displayed on the breakfast bar. I don’t have the heart to properly dispose of them. They are beautiful. LightBoy and his friend made gingerbread tanks (of course!) … after doing the appropriate research! Hilarious.

LightBoy is feeling the tension of not playing the war games, but is being good. He did, however, get a war movie at Blockbuster the other day. He couldn’t help it he said and swatted his eyelashes at me. Today at lunch I joined in mid-conversation when I overheard his father exclaim, “What are you going to do? Behead them and blow them up?”

“What?! Behead and blow what up?”

“No, Mom … I want to get Barbies at the Dollar Store to make angel Christmas ornaments.”

“Oh … well … you can’t do that either. Barbies … whether they’re at the Dollar Store or elsewhere are made by slave girls in China and we can’t support that. So you can’t get a Barbie. Or a knockoff. You could just Google how to make an angel ornament and make one like that.”

My poor, deprived children. They get great, creative ideas and their deranged socially alert mother shoots ’em down and makes them create out of recycled soda bottles and tissue paper … it was the saddest angel ornament you ever saw. I think Sam the dog might “accidently” eat it. That would be a shame. Maybe I will give him a little bit of guidance tomorrow.

I spent today fighting with my blog to upgrade it. Tomorrow I can do fun things like make cookies and angel ornaments with my children. Today I had to fight with technology. Maybe tomorrow I will be in a better mood. Tomorrah is a bettah day, after all.

As promised yesterday here is my review of It’s A Dance: Moving With The Holy Spirit, by Patrick Oden.

In a nutshell … I want to buy this book for all my friends and sit down and talk about it with them over coffee and Bishop’s Bread (my very favorite coffee cake – homemade). Of course, since they are spread out over four time zones this might be fairly difficult. I’m having a hard time writing a serious review that all of you will pay attention to, because really … the book just makes me grin and laugh and think all at the same time. It makes me want to dance again.

For everyone who needs experience with the Holy Spirit … get It’s A Dance. For those of you who are post-charismatic or charismissional … get It’s A Dance. It’s a must. Seriously (and now I feel slightly like a used car salesman … but … I really mean this).

Here are my favorite things about It’s A Dance …

First, it’s so holistic. It is complete and whole and yet within the warp and woof of the text I found room for my own story to weave in and out; making a new picture amongst the original.

When I was a child my dad used to play a silly game with me. He would put his hands together and put his fingers together in a certain manner and say, “Here is the church.” Then he’d change their position, “Here is the steeple.” Then he’d change the position again, “Open the door,” and he’d flip his hands around and waggle his fingers in the air at me, “and see all the people.”

So many books on theology and the church don’t have any place for the people. There are no people in the church or in theology. They are dry. When you flip them around and open them up, there’s nothing there to waggle. But It’s A Dance has room for people in it’s theology and in the church. I suspect each person reading this book will find a uniquely different story here, because they have a different story to weave in amongst it’s main threads.

Patrick also manages to deal with huge themes fairly thoroughly in a smallish book. He doesn’t do so completely, but he hits the high points and does so gracefully and thoroughly through the venue of conversational story-telling. We read about power, pride, church issues, giving, receiving, marriage, love, creativity, unity, leadership, following, going, staying, sacred and secular … among many other things.

Second, It’s A Dance really is a dance. One of the things I love is finding patterns that reveal further patterns. It’s one of the things I love about history. It’s also one of the things I love about quilting. So many quilts use fabric patterns and block patterns to reveal secondary, larger patterns going on. So you begin making one thing and end up making something entirely different. Patrick used the metaphor of a dance to describe the relationship of the Trinity to one another. He does so beautifully in this piece of conversation:

“Well, I know that God doesn’t seem too concerned if he doesn’t make sense, but I do think God works and exists in a way that can make sense to us, if only on some level. One basic way of understanding God’s interaction with himself is to think of his existence as a dance.”

“A dance?”

“Yeah, a dance. What happens when people are dancing?”

I pause for a moment, not quite sure what he’s asking. “Depends on the style I guess, but people move together following a specific rhythm.”

“Take ballroom dancing,” Nate says.

“I did, and lasted about half the class before falling too far behind.”

“It’s complicated,” he laughs. “Two people have to act in a concerted way to the music. Moving their whole bodies in intricate patterns together, always acting and reacting to what the other person is doing, always moving with each other even if they aren’t doing the same thing.”

“God is a dancer?”

“God is all the dancers, and the music, and everything. Think of the Trinity as interacting in this complicated and amazingly intricate dance. They are all moving as one, together, even as they are not the same person and even if they are doing different things in different ways.”

“God is not line dancing, is He?”

“No,” Nate laughs. “That’s everyone doing the same sort of thing together, all in a row. God is like a ballroom dancer, or even better, a ballet, with the whole show being this gathered collection of intricate steps and interactions. The dancers highlight each other, point to each other. They create this rhythmic flow out of their separate contributions.”

“The Trinity is that sort of dance?”

“That’s basically what the term perichoresis means. It’s a swirling together dance of the Trinitarian persons.” (p. 85-86)

Yet on a deeper level, It’s A Dance is also a dance between textbook, novel and Scripture. Patrick very adeptly uses the dance metaphor as a description and as an organizational tool to form the basis of the conversation that flows throughout this book. The conversation dances along, winding it’s way through scripture and text and story always leaving space for the reader to improvise a few steps of their own and find their own story within the larger story; to say, “Hey, I recognize that,” or “I remember when that happened and I …” or “Wow, that looks something like x in our community and I bet we could …”

Third, the historian in me was oh, so happy to discover that everything old really is new again. When I first read reviews of the book it was revealed that it is a novel written in conversation form. It takes place almost entirely in the form of conversations between Luke, a newspaper reporter, and Nate, a “pastor” (you’ll have to read the book to discover why I put quotes around that 😉 ) and several other people involved in Nate’s church. “Hmmm,” I thought. “Interesting approach.” But then I got to the end of the book and read (as I always do) the notes on the sources. Well, first I read the Bibliography. Before that I have to tell you that there are no footnotes in this book making it a wonderfully refreshing read. The bibliography is diverse and spread out … by which I mean I think there are books in this bibliography from all periods in Christian history. Indeed the final quote in the main body of the book comes from Tertullian … not entirely expected in a book on the Holy Spirit, but in the end, entirely apt. Then I read that the idea of writing the text in the format of a conversation came from, not something new and novel, but from an extremely old and ancient source … The Conferences, written by John Cassian in the 400’s AD. As Patrick writes (in his notes on sources):

The conversation breaks up the difficult considerations and allows for questions to be asked–questions that are often on the readers’ minds. It also makes the theology into a story. This is not a removed set of philosophical statements but instead people living the life God has called them to live. We remember the story, the characters, the conversation much better than we remember details and notes. (p. 266)

He’s right. We do remember stories and characters and conversations. Theology … not so much. But if it’s put into the context of story, we can remember it. More than that, we can embrace it and find it in our own story. And this last is why I think this book is so important. It allows the reader to approach and embrace some really important theology in a way that many other books on the subject do not. It brings lofty subjects down to street level … which is where God might just want them in the first place.

So … if you only get one book in November, let this be it. Or put it on your Christmas list. Just make sure you read it.

We made progress this weekend on the livingroom.  BlazingEwe came to help.  She likes the process of prepping and painting and we make good partners for this.  We’ve done this several times before and have developed a rhythm.  We’ve also developed a box of supplies that we share so that we don’t have to keep purchasing the same things over and over again.

Here’s what the room looked like this morning:

You can see our box of supplies in left side of this photo.  And our fabulous mural in the background.

By the end of the day today we had washed all the walls and baseboards, spackled all the holes, dings and dents, sanded all the spackle, wiped off the dust and taped the whole room.  The room is ready to paint.  Including the ceiling.

I think the rule of thumb is that prep work takes twice as long as painting.  We’ve spent approximately 20 hours in prep work.  Should I include the time it took to clean and rearrange the furniture? I’ll start by priming the walls and painting the ceiling tomorrow.

For those of you who don’t recognize the artist, that’s a Thomas Kinkade.  Just a random Kinkade that I pulled off of his website.

I hate Thomas Kinkade.  Well, I don’t hate the man.  That would be ludicrous, since I’ve never met him and don’t even know what he looks like, never mind have any idea of what his character is like.

I hate his art.  His paintings.  They are ugly.  They look like paint-by-number sets to me.  I can’t understand why they are so popular.  Why do so many people flock after them?  Why are there shrines and altars built in his honor in Christian bookstores?  He has been dubbed the “Painter of Light.”  But, honestly, his use of light is pedestrian and weird.  There is nothing wonderful about it.

Just for the record, I’ve always thought this about his paintings.  I thought this from the first painting I saw of his … way before he got so wildly popular.  I thought it was a cheap knock off of a “real” artist.  Or a paint-by-number kit.

Is it our culture?  I wondered that anew this morning as BlazingEwe and I looked at checks.  She needs to reorder checks.  I think she’s going to get frogs because they are fun and cute.  We were aghast at all the organizations seeking to raise conciousness with checks.  Even NORML has a check now.  But I thought, as we looked, how many articles have I read decrying the lack of reading these days and people think they are going to raise conciousness with a check?  No one will read it.  It’s an idea who’s time came and went back in the ’70s.  So we settle for cheap knock offs and raising conciousness by writing checks.  God knows we wouldn’t want to talk to anyone … we’ll just write a check and let it speak for us.  While we buy ugly art that we know is ugly, but since everyone else is gushing over it, it must be good … right?

My friend, Doug, who peregrines around the land hath tagged me once again. It is the dread 8 random facts meme … but I’m not so into random facts lately. I don’t know what to do here. I want to point people to 8 … somethings. But in the end that’s really pointing to me and what I like and there’s something about these memes that are ultimately very self-centered. Of course, the whole blogging thing is too for that matter.

So I am tasked with coming up with 8 items of note about something, someone, or etc. Soo … here are 8 things I am thankful for today:

1. I am thankful that LightGirl’s temperment is not at all like mine. This is not because I have self-image issues, but because I am enjoying watching someone with an entirely different outlook explore and enter the world. I really love talking with her about different episodes in her life and hearing her perspective on them. She is so completely different from me and I am enjoying that very much.

2. I am thankful for antibiotics. I seem to have inherited my maternal grandfather’s predilection for sinus problems and so I’m thankful for the drugs that cure these ills.

3. I am thankful for coffee. I love coffee. If I could travel back in time, I would go back to the time when people first discovered coffee was good to drink and I would kiss their feet. Well … maybe not their feet. But I would hug them and kiss them and tell them what a wonderful thing they had done!

4. I am thankful for cotton. It’s one of three fabrics that feels good to my allergic skin and the other two are frightfully expensive. So I love cotton. I especially love it when it comes in the form of quilting fabric and I’m working on a quilt for someone I love (yes, GreatPea, your time is coming soon 😉 ).

5. I am thankful for BlazingEwe and TexasBlueBelle. They have kept my feet on the ground and helped me put one foot in front of the other more times than I can count.

6. I am thankful for the gift of creativity. The joy that comes from experimenting, designing, doodling and creating is without words. I love to play with color and words and shapes and make them all come together and “say” something using very few (if any) words.

7. I am also thankful for words, because I love to write. I love giving voice to the stories and ideas that wrestle in my head. I love to study the evolution of language and how words have depth, texture and meaning beyond what we think they do. That our language is not flat and two dimensional, but rich and deep and even four dimensional as it changes with time.

8. I am thankful that as I get older I am more and more able to embrace being an introvert. As a woman it is unacceptable to be an introvert, so I had to interact as an extrovert my whole life. But I’m learning how to balance cultural expectations with my own needs a little better now. Interpreted, yes, this means I’m learning to not care what others think quite so much anymore and I’m thankful for that. I’m thankful that I’m growing more comfortable in the skin God gave me.

Sooo … the rules state that I’m to tag eight more people and they have to do this too.

WHATEVER!

Rules … schmools. Did I also tell you that I’m somewhat rebellious? I’m going to tag a few people … I don’t know how many … for the all new Thankfulness Meme … You have to list 6 – 8 things you’re thankful for and then pass it on to whomever you think might need this little exercise in futility … Here are my victims er friends:
Doug
JJ the Smu
Makuta
Lyn
Mak
Erin