Weekly update: various encounters and works in progress + good books

 Early in the week it was blisteringly hot.  A thunderstorm rolled in and rolled out (lightning and thunder at 1 a.m.) and dropped about 1-1/2" of welcome rain.  The weekend was much cooler.  

Left: purplestem angelica.  Right:  Ohio spiderwort (beautiful blue!), Carolina puccoon.  Bottom: downy phlox, yellow star grass, coreopsis. 

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Stevens' annual wellness checkup was Wednesday. His chronic conditions are no worse, no better.  Heart, lungs, blood are all fine.  We followed appointment up with lunch at our favorite local Mexican restaurant and then casting our ballots in the Illinois primary (early voting). 

On Thursday evening I went to an interesting program hosted by a nearby library:   "Pre-Civil War Quilts: Secret Codes on the Underground Railroad"  (read the description here).  I was conflicted about going because I am in the camp that the quilt code is a myth.  The presenter did not convince me otherwise.  She is not a quilter or a quilt historian. She is a retired teacher.  In the program she emphasized her family history (enslaved on a tobacco farm in Kentucky) and her great-great grandmother's tales about helping other slaves escape. The "code" quilts were stored in her grandmother's attic. The presenter said her mother had the quilts "authenticated at great expense" and then replicated them for the presentation she developed and gave for 20-some years. The daughter has taken over the program and used the replicas. I understand not taking the originals on tour, but it would have been nice to see pictures of them in the Power Point. If the original quilts are that significant it's interesting that they have not been exhibited (Paducah? IQSC in Lincoln? or a Civil War or Black history museum). The book her mother wrote about the family lore has been optioned for a movie.

IN THE END I did not ask how she counters her story and presentation with historians who question the veracity of the quilt code. Asking that would have been confrontational and that was not the atmosphere of the gathering. It's her family story and her choice to present it that way.

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I went to a couple of garage sales on Saturday. One is held every year and I know to ask, "Any fabric?" And there was -- 10 yards for $10. The other one was actually a booth at a community lawn sale on the boulevard in Zion. The seller had placemats and other sewn items. I recognized her but couldn't remember her name. We chatted and then I did a double take. There was a ceramic brooch and earring set that were mine! I got them at a craft fair in Maine in the 1980's and sold them at my garage sale in 2019. (The clincher was that the items were in a box with an Ephrata Cloister sticker. We visited there in 2014.) No, I did not buy the jewelry back!

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In the studio: here are the batik churn dash blocks. I may fuss with color placement some more.

I haven't assembled the churn dashes yet because I'd like to finish the  daisy mug rug commission.  All of them are quilted and 1/3 of them are bound.  

What I *need* to work on this week is the July basket block for the guild BOM. I have narrowed down the design but I have to make a prototype and write up the pattern.  The guild meeting is July 6 so I have some time.

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This short 77-page account is a gem. Montgomery combines a heartfelt tribute to master falconer Nancy Cowan with her account of learning the art / sport of falconry. There's so much to learn and even more to appreciate and admire. And, as Cowan reminds her, bird and human are hunting partners. Neither is master over the other.

Susan Hill's life has been filled with and shaped by books.   She grew up in a family of readers, studied literature at university. and became a novelist, critic, and publisher.  Her memoir was sparked by her resolution to spend a year rediscovering and rereading books she accumulated over the decades, working through their idiosyncratic arrangement all over the house (hence the book's title).  She writes about the authors we "ought" to like (she's not a Jane Austen fan but she loves Virginia Woolf), formative books from childhood (for her, Enid  Blyton), the value of picture books ("one of the pleasures of reading aloud to a small child  is that you're also reading to yourself"),  the importance of dust jackets, the joy of discovering inscriptions to previous owners ("Merry Christmas to George from Aunt Frances").   She writes about meeting other writers (Ian Fleming, Grace Paley, Iris Murdoch).   

Hill describes but does not prescribe -- her memoir will resonate with other readers whose life-in-books may be very similar but not identical to hers, and that's just fine. The point is that we've read, we are reading, and we will continue to read!

Linking up with  Monday Making, Design Wall Monday, and  Oh Scrap!

P.S.  David Blaine, new dad, 70 years ago.  Back then mothers and newborns stayed in the hospital for a week so the picture was taken about July 1.  I don't recall the South Shore apartment but the armchair and the straight-backed chair (background0 were in our basement family room for years.