Theo of Golden

I'm not much of one for reviewing adult books here.  I like the connection kids' books give me but I can and often get lost in explaining the meaning of adult books.   Especially when they are completely out of my comfort zone.  

I avoided this one because of a preconceived notion it was too sweet. Something along the Mitch Albom genre.  I like thick, meaty, original fiction.  Someone tell me a story.  Escape.

But friends handed this to me last week hoping I'd like it and one of them said her brother said it was the best thing he'd read in a year.   I had just that evening before finished the book I was reading so timing was right.

Well.  Do you do Lent?  I once knew a priest who read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown for his Lenten reading. That's a book that stares you in the face.

If you haven't read Theo of Golden this is a simple synopsis.  A man mysteriously travels to the town of Golden in a southern state and notices in a coffee shop that a local artist  sketches, draws, creating people's portraits - their faces - and they hang on the wall of the coffee shop.  Theo decides to purchase each painting and give them to the subjects as a gift. And listen to their story.  

This simple act transforms people.  They feel seen.  A complete stranger is telling them of their worth, something none of them thought they had. He remains mysterious, offers just the one name, refuses publicity or thanks.  Just take the portrait and feel seen.

Immediately upon reading those first few pages I thought of a Michigan artist who has a studio and gallery in Saugatuck, Michigan.  His name is James Brandess and on the wall of his shop/gallery/studio he has lined the walls with the residents of Saugatuck.  The portraits are small, maybe 5 x 7?  4 x 6? In the winter quiet he paints these people and sometimes their dogs and hangs them on the surrounding walls.  They belong to James.  I'm quite sure while he is painting there are stories being told.  So, in a small way I connected with the book.

In this horrid time of ridiculously dangerous people (I refuse to call them leaders) beating their chests, playing at war, the anxiety in my brain is trying so hard to take over.  As friends march and protest I do not.  I feel it a complete waste of time - who is listening?  Who cares? The more we do the meaner and worse he gets.  I am hiding under a rock, every morning asking PH "Well? are we still here?  Is the world?"  I truly don't know how much more we/I can take.  

Then this little book was put in my hands and after thinking of James Brandess's studio I started thinking Lent.  Someone put a small, tiny, spark of light in my hand.  Hope.  Someone has to have some. Will this change anything?  No. Nothing will tame the dragons, I truly believe that, but I can hope. 
 

Projects

The Thinking Bed is empty. (By the way, that white quilt is keeping the sun off the tops of the other quilts that are piled onto the bed that is next to a window.)

Once the museum classes ended last week I went into hyper drive with the free days and got things moved to the next level.  When working with the kids, which is fun and interesting always, I am standing for four hours and talking for four hours and come home exhausted so not much energy for anything else.

Liberty circles have a binding sewn on but not down, quilting has begun on the green and blue scrappy and I'm doing big stitch quilting so it's going fast, several smaller pieces have been layered, the blue snowballs are layered.

And here they all sit, all piles off the bed and waiting but are at least at THIS stage

This is the emergency insurance two yard piece of fabric I bought last week.  I cut the tissue circles bigger than the end product will be but wanted Adelaide's idea on placement.  By text we moved them around a bit and I told her that it will probably have a framing border to widen it a bit.  But she is happy with this - leaving room for stems and leaves.  Sunflowers have long stems!   

With the Thinking Bed now empty of nagging little projects, getting them to the point of picking one up and quilting it, I will now focus on the flowers.  My plan is to get at least one flower done for a trial - remember, my concern is holding the fabric in my hand without having to cut it up, and then take it to retreat in April.  Might even get the stems and leaves ready.

I think now I am not worried about holding the fabric.  I remember I did it with Charlie's quilt so will make this work.  

I think that circle on the right needs to be moved down a bit. 

Sunflowers Part Two

 I'm getting good tips for the sunflowers.  One emailed and asked how big the flowers are.  At the widest point, after applique they would be about 15 inches across.  Thank goodness they ARE big and I'm not going to have to deal with itsy bitsy.

I don't use glue.  I don't fuse.  I know that's stubborn on my part refusing to use what's so commonly used.  I'm not judging anyone who does glue or fuse. I just personally don't like the idea.  I will baste the little buggers down very well to hold them in place and if a petal veers a little here or there, who's to know?  Has anyone actually ever gone out and measured the space between or around a real sunflower's petals?  I already warned Adelaide she will get what she wants but with MY interpretation. This isn't a photograph, it's a quilt.

Another email response was that I should be able to roll the extra fabric into my palm and hold it that way.  I'm going to measure and baste the circle size onto the dots and try that before I buy that plan. But she might be right.  I tried to remember how I handled Charlie's quilt and remembered I DID gather the extra into my palm to hold it.  If anything, the petals will be one piece of fabric and the stems and leaves another MAYBE being able to hide the seam under some of the leaves.  We'll see. 

There's a lot of measuring to be done, the only parts that are cut are the petals, nothing is final yet. The Thinking Bed will be put to use in placing the flowers because it's about a twin size. I went back to the store and broke my fast on purchasing fabric but I did buy more of the dots.  I have been kicked by THAT mule a few too many times.  I would rather have more than I need. The store still had what I wanted, I bought the last of it (2 yards) and now feel comfortable making a mistake or ending up with a pillow case for her if I have leftover.

Till then I will start prepping these after this week.  Until then, more classes at the museum. 

Sunflowers

 I had a few days off from the museum last week so spent some time organizing my brain around Adelaide's quilt.

She wants a navy polka dot background and I had collected a few yellow/orangey batiks for the sunflower petals.  

I enlarged the style of flowers she chose, labelled each flower and each petal. Then cut out each petal, again labelling everything well. She isn't going to notice the placement of each petal but I do want to remember how they fit together in the picture.  

After tracing them and cutting them out I thought I should get her opinion before proceeding.  Remember, she knows exactly what she wants and I don't want any disappointments at the end of this.

                                       I texted this photo to her and she replied, "Perfect."

                                     So now comes the part that is keeping me awake at night.  

This is an example of the arrangement she wants...not these flowers, not this pattern, not this background but this arrangement of flowers, a spray of three.  I do realize this is a copyrighted pattern and I am not using it, copying it or stealing it.  I'm just showing you an example of an arrangement of a spray of flowers she wants.

OK, that's done.  I needle turn applique by hand.  I don't used fusibles nor glue or machine applique ever.   My conundrum is how to do this without holding yardage in my hand and lap.  Right now I'm leaning toward cutting the background fabric into three large pieces that will accommodate the flowers individually and then putting them back together. But then there are the stems.  

I keep staring at this and thinking "ok, do it."  Or "ok, cut it so two flowers can be done and then a smaller piece."  Or "cut them into three large squares, applique the flowers, put them back together and then do the stems" which will be more straight line-ish stitching than the twisting and turning of the flowers. 

Usually I can fall asleep trying to solve a quilt problem and then a solution will come to me.  But this one keeps giving me options on how to handle it.  I am TERRIBLE with that adage "measure twice, cut once" because I can measure ten times, leave it for days, look at it, decide, cut and dang if it's wrong! 

Opinions? Options I don't see? Thoughts? Ideas?  

Winter

                                                          This is what winter looks like.

Every week I go to an elementary school and read to a class of first graders.  When I turned the corner down the corridor a couple of weeks ago I stopped and laughed and took this picture. 

Kids are required to wear boots, hats, mittens and snowpants.  This class just came in from recess - I think.   

There is no doubt why the lost and found is overflowing! 

We had a very nice respite from the cold this past week.  Yesterday I had a window in every room open for the fresh air and sunshine. Snow is gone, melted away.  Winter isn't through with us yet but we've seen the worst of it. 

Reality

You remember I said I don't take photos ( much) of buildings, but I couldn't resist this bookstore in Winchester.  

Amazingly, we didn't go inside.  For me, bookstores are worse than fabric stores are for you.  Definitely a rabbit hole.  

We should have gone in but we were with Brian and his daughter and SIL and truly, I would have held up the day. We didn't have much time and wanted to keep going. This was a hard pass.

Look at that little sign.  How true!  How needed! One of the things we discussed before this trip was whether or not we would admit to being Americans.  How's that for reality?  We know as soon as we open our mouth people will ask where we are from, it's obvious we aren't British.  We decided if anyone asked we would say we were Canadian. 

Well, first day someone asked if we were American.  I actually hesitated. A long hesitation. Stared at her. Sighed and said, "We aren't admitting to that (being American.)"  She smiled and said it was ok, they loved us.  I said, "uh...no you don't."  Then I assured her WE are NOT like THEM.  

Next day, another one.  By the third time I realized we were like Thomas, denying the third time.  

    As soon as people knew, though, it opened the door to them giving us their opinions and one actually, ACTUALLY asked if "he" was crazy.  "Yes," I said, "he is." 

This trip we didn't do the souvenir thing.  We are old.  We are purging what we have.  But I can't and don't resist books.  We stopped just a couple of times because I knew I'd buy and books are heavy to transport.  But these are the ones I did get.  The top two I brought from home to read on the trip.  If you haven't read Remarkably Bright Creatures, do. It took me a long time to decide to read it because I couldn't understand the premise of the octopus but the recommendation from Friend Laurie made me finally do it.  I read half on the way to London and finished it over Newfoundland on the way home.  There was NO time to read while we were there.  

Like I do when home, when I finish a book immediately after closing it I search out the next one. That was Tilt.  I'm not one for survival stories and this one is certainly How-Would-You-Survive-A-Disaster-Like-This and setting priorities and what IS a priority to you and how far could you extend yourself. We have certainly been racking up natural disasters lately so I thought this was worth the try.  We aren't inclined to earthquakes in Michigan.  This one was really, really good.  A lot of "oh,yeah, didn't think of that, I guess that would be a problem" moments because truly we just don't realize how good we have it when everything works.  And then it's gone.

 

Hampton Court

 When we travel I take photos of not normal things.  I take photos of things I want to remember but am not great on pictures of buildings.  I like the quirky things inside the buildings.  

On Wednesday of our trip we visited Hampton Court. Henry VIII's house. It's not a ruin, it's still a viable building used for events and films like Wolf Hall. As we walked we were well aware we were walking the same paths and on the same stones as Henry VIII and his retinue, beheaded wives, counselors, Elizabeth I.  This isn't the first castle we've ever visited but this one was daunting. 

Don't you sometimes wish you could give your guests a behavioral expectation when they walk in the door?  Especially those vagabonds, rascals or boys? Notice boys is in all capital letters.   It was interesting that there were a few signs of the times that specifically targeted boys. 

The Great Hall was organized for us to see that it was a place of meeting both for court but also feasts.

I thought this was a great idea for visitors.  Each place setting included an expectation of table manners of the time.  These are all true, documented expectations of guests.

Turns out things don't change much.  Must have been a boy.

This was the king's chocolate kitchen. Of course he had a chocolate kitchen.