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.

Dare to Do

 Have you ever done something you swore you would never do?  Something you couldn't even imagine yourself doing?  No matter how hard you tried?  Ever?  I have.  And I'm putting more and more of those things on the list of dares accomplished.  

I now sit up when we drive across the Mackinac Bridge.

I went to the top of what was formerly called the Sears Building in Chicago...the one with the acrylic floor that extends out from the side of the building that you walk out onto and you are "floating" over the streets of Chicago and if you dare look down the people are the size of ants.  That one was hard.  PH wouldn't even go inside the building but waited for me on the sidewalk. That platform was so high up you couldn't see it from the street.  I told the worker in the gift shop that they should be selling clean under pants.

 I ate a roasted brussels sprout.

And in London last weekend on Robert Burns Night I ate haggis.  This one is almost on par with sitting up while driving over the Mackinac Bridge.  No, I think this is a category of its own.

All of it.  I ate all of it.  

If you know what's IN haggis you probably wouldn't eat it, either. Sometimes it's better not to read the ingredients label. But we had just arrived, were checking into the hotel and they were advertising their Burns Night dinner special.  And being in a sleep deprived travel weary jet lag fog I said, "I have to!"  So PH made reservations for that evening, Brian walked over (his building is across the street from the hotel) and we had dinner.  I ordered the four course Burns Night special and the second course was haggis. Each course had choices very Scottish but the second course was fixed. Haggis.  It tasted like the end piece of a meatloaf. It was quite good, actually. Brian and PH just kept drinking their wine and beer and shaking their heads and enjoying the fact they were NOT eating haggis. 

That list of Daring Things to Finally Do can now be wadded up and thrown away.  I've reached the top.

Liberty

Mecca.  That's what this is to a quilter.  This is the front door of Liberty of London. It was built in 1875 and that Tudor look is a standout in the neighborhood.  It's a huge place, walk down that street in front of you and it goes all the way to the next corner.  The store takes up a city block.  

This was the department I was interested in.  This is the fabric department, the fabric is iconic, the Tana Lawn feel is like running your hands through whipped cream.  They DO have 'quilting cotton' that has the more woven feel but this is beautiful.  And the prints are quite iconic.  There is variety but Liberty fabric has a 'look.'  

The floor above was featuring their Bridgerton line and to be honest I've never watched Bridgerton and wasn't interested in it so I stayed on this, their main floor for fabrics.

This isn't just for quilters, of course.  There are people out there who actually sew garments - who knew!  

I know I've been saying for months I'm done buying fabric unless it's a very special and specific project (like the kids' graduation quilts) but you don't go to London and not go to Liberty and you don't go to Liberty without buying fabric.  Not if you are a quilter, that is.  

This was my cutting table spot.  I know what I'm going to do with this and the Liberty I have at home, something very simple that lets the fabric be what it is.  And two pin cushions and a tote bag.  I'm a sucker for tote bags and this was one I wasn't going to leave behind.  Happy Birthday to me!!

No, the fabric is no less expensive there.  It's the same price as anywhere you might find it so I got some but not yardage. There might be enough here for two quilts.  We'll see!  

I can't tell you much about the rest of the store other than it is very expensive.  We walked in the door and there was a striking display of scarves that I went right to.  They were on sale for 50% off so hey, why not?  Well, at 50% off they were $225 pounds.  I ran my hand through them and took the elevator upstairs to the fabric.

Our Brian

 We just arrived home from a trip to London last night.  Over the next few days I'll elaborate a little on things but for now, the reason we went.  It's a long and special story.

In 1903 my grandpa was born here in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  When he was two years old his parents took his older brother with them when they returned to England, but left Grandpa here at a county poor farm.  They abandoned him, no sugar coating that. When he was 4 years old he was adopted and given a new name.  

When Grandpa was in his 30's he tried to find out what happened to his parents and find his brother.  He knew his birth name, his parents' names, his brother's name which is a lot of information especially before computers and the internet.

In the very early 1980's I tried to help him.  I wrote letters, made phone calls, asked any professional in the field: historians, judges, the British government, found people with his sir name who ripped pages from phone books in the London area with his sir name and mailed them to me.  When he came here for his yearly visit from California, I took him to county clerk offices, libraries near here.  We usually came up short but we did find out one thing.  I took each "no" answer as a backward "yes."  It told me, "don't look here, look somewhere else." And I'd ask more people more questions.  I even went to a psychic.

Eventually I found his brother's London birth certificate and obtained a copy.  I found his brother's school records from here in Michigan and obtained a copy.  Grandpa thought I'd found the Holy Grail.  But we couldn't find his family.

Many years later the internet had taken genealogy and simplified it.  And we who search must thank the Mormon church for sending their people out into the world to search for information and record it for the rest of us to use.   

One day maybe 15 years ago (give or take) I signed up for a two week trial of Ancestry.com. Grandpa's brother had a very distinctive middle name and if you found that, you found him.  And one day, I did.  I remember jumping up from the chair and my heart missing that beat.  There was someone out there searching, too, and our paths crossed. Finally.

That person was Brian.  

Brian's father was one of the brothers Grandpa didn't know about.  Grandpa thought he was looking for one brother.  Turned out, as time went on, there were more.  Brian is grandpa's nephew.  He figured out  we are half first cousins once removed.

Brian and I started sharing family information, sent pictures, I introduced him via email to Grandpa's son.  We shared the very extensive genealogy information he had uncovered. I found newspaper articles that confirmed family lore on his side.  He filled holes Grandpa only dreamed about.

Then one day, maybe about 8 years ago PH and I went to visit, to meet him. We immediately fell in love with Brian.  And like a bad penny we keep going back.  We immediately fell in love with him and simply want to spend time with him. 

I like to think Grandpa knows we found his family.  I'm sure of it.  We refer to him as "Our Brian" because, finally, he is.