Weekly update: lighting the way, onion snow, and catching up in the studio

Travelers in unfamiliar territory need a good lantern to dispel shadows and illuminate the path.
                   
At Tuesday's AAUW meeting  Helena Abushamaa told us about her temporal and spiritual journeys. She grew up in Sweden in a non-religious, culturally Protestant family, and came to the U.S. for graduate school. After intense self-reflection she made the ultimate decision to become a Muslim.  She and her husband moved to the Chicago area and have raised their family here. She is now a religious educator at a local mosque. She shared the tenets of the faith with us and answered our many questions.  [Since the sun set during her program she incorporated her evening prayer into the presentation. She explained what she said (it was Arabic, of course).]

           The 13th annual AAUW Fellows Luncheon was Saturday.  Dr. Jelena Radovic-Fanta told us about her journey and extended stay in Chile.  Jelena is a cultural anthropologist on the faculty at Governors State University. She received an AAUW American Fellowship to support her research on the temporeras, women seasonal workers in Chilean vineyards.  They harvest grapes for export to the U.S. and Canada.  (“Economic growth is one thing,” Jelena said. “Economic development is another.”)  Though health and safety regulations are on the books they are largely unenforced.  There are few other jobs available in the small agricultural towns in central Chile.  An influx of Haitian immigrants brings workers to fill vacancies that the temporeras’  high school- (and often college-) educated children leave in the workforce.

              The names Helena and Jelena have their root in the Greek “ele,” meaning light, bright, torch.  Their lanterns shed light on cultures and economies unfamiliar to us.   Our journeys are all the more satisfying because we are better-informed.

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It started snowing during church service on Palm Sunday!    Stevens was the reader. He and the pastor were at the pulpit for an unplanned duet. :)
The children's play was great fun.

Monday morning 

"Onion snow" is a Pennsylvania Dutch term meaning a snowfall after the onions have sprouted.   Instead of onions here are iris. (The snow covered up the crocuses.)    The temperatures will be above freezing today so we'll back to spring green soon.

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It was so good to get the Churn Dash quilt completed! (See the previous post.) I mailed it and the other two group quilts (Ripples  and  Jeweled Windows) to ALA.  I also sent On Ringo Lake as my own contribution.

Other accomplishments this week:

(a)  Round #4 of the guild round robin.  I added the umbrellas and HSTs.   (I received The Cat in the Hat for my fifth birthday. It was probably a first edition, but I wasn't into the finer points of bibliophily back then.  The story always bothered me. Decades later I realized why:  the Cat and Things One and Two violated Sally and Me's personal space without so much as a by-your-leave. I sided with the apoplectic goldfish.)

(b)  RSC April -- 30 turquoise pinwheels (though I miscounted and made 32 :))  I put all the blocks for January-April up on the design wall just to see the array.












(c)  Twin Sisters blocks (6-1/2" unfin) for the April Block Lotto. I promptly sewed the cutaway triangles into HSTs.











(d)  The April wonky house for the guild BOM.

This is the rough layout (per the project designer). Four months to go.







(e)  One of four tote bags that are part of my April OMG.





I used leftovers for the inner pocket.







I'm auditioning fabric for the next tote bag.

Monday link ups:
Rainbow Scrap Challenge
Design Wall Monday
Monday Making
Oh Scrap!
Moving It Forward