Friday check in: wrapping up May

 This was another "where did the days go?" kind of week.  

I had a good two-mile walk at Pine Dunes Forest Preserve.  At the end, when I saw the car in the parking lot, I had a startlingly clear vision of Stevens half-opening the car door and waving his cane to greet me, with a big smile on his face.  (I hope those clear visions will continue for a long time.)

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I made 15 potholders.  I'll take them to the silent auction at the AAUW luncheon next week.  

My OMG for May was to "figure out what to do with the guild mystery blocks" and to sort and file recent fabric acquisitions.

I completed the former by mid-month. Photo at left.  I have only scratched the surface with the latter -- mostly because I acquired MORE fabric.

That leads to the May stash report.

Fabric out:  78-7/8 yards.    Fabric in:  215 yards, $169, average .78/yard.  (Gee, 78 three times. Is that a sign?) The big bargain came from the church rummage sale where I bought someone's scrap bags--169 yards by weight for $45.00.  

Fabric out, YTD: 545 yards.  Fabric in, YTD:  632 yards, $249, .40 per yard.   

This weekend I'll be at the P.E.O. state convention in west suburban Lombard.  If I have time to think about quilting I'll contemplate my goals for June.

Linking up with Finished or Not Friday and OMG at Stories from the Sewing Room 

Weekly update: wildflowers, a finish, and other doings + reading

 

Finally some sunshine!   It will get into the high 60's today, Memorial Day.   

I enjoyed a walk at Lyons Woods on Friday afternoon.  Clockwise from upper left: red trillium, golden ragwort, bristly buttercup, white trillium, forget-me-not, mayapple, jack-in-the-pulpit.

On Saturday I went to the spring tea (actually a luncheon) given by Grandparents and Kin Raising Children, an agency founded and run by our Rotary friend Harriet.  It was very nice (and good for me to get rather dressed up and out).   Due to privacy concerns only the event photographer could take photos of the attendees, and I didn't take any at all.   

Yesterday I had lunch with my sister and brother-in-law. The other guests were my brother-in-law's sister and her husband, whom I did not know.  Nice conversation with family stories all around.  

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I finished the bright nine-patch quilt. The border fabric is from Serious Whimsy by Carter Carpin.  "I can't cut this!" "Yes, I can!" and I did and it worked just fine.

The back is a thrift-shop cotton sheet.  There's a fair amount of it left.  

44" x 56" 

I began a batch of potholders, partly because I need some new ones and also because they make nice gifts for "a little something."    I think I'll make them until I've used up all the Insul-Brite.

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Recent reading:  

A suspenseful story of revenge.  I learned a lot about the Bosnian War and its atrocities. 

Our AAUW book club selection for June.   Alternate realities, a magic attic, and how to navigate a dizzying number of life choices.  At first I didn't like it but I stuck with the story and in the end I found it pretty good.  The discussion will be interesting.

Linking up with Design Wall Monday Oh Scrap! Monday Musings Sew and Tell

Friday check in: placemats and a new start

 

Sunrise today.

"Sky-blue pink," as Uncle Wiggly would say. 

Yesterday:  the Clara Cummings Book Club ended the year with a visit from American Impressionist Lilla Cabot Perry portrayed by Lynn Rymarz.   Perry was a Boston Brahmin married to a Boston Brahmin who was a diplomat.  In France they lived adjacent to Claude Monet.  Monet didn't take pupils but he was a consultant and mentor to her.  

Many, many years ago Clara Cummings was denied membership in the Excalibur Club, a very exclusive women's club in Waukegan.  Clara began her own club, now eponymous. Members used to read and discuss books. Later they had programs by professional book reviewers. Now there are four luncheon programs a year, mostly historical portrayals. 

I bought this magnet at the National Museum of Women in the Arts circa 1999.  It depicts Lilla Cabot Perry's "Lady With a Bowl of Violets." It's been on the refrigerator door all these years but I didn't know anything about the artist.  

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My studio is not as scenic as Giverny, but I've been productive this week.

I made 10 placemants for my year-long project.  The Ohio stars were left over from the monthly RSC. The other two were from the orphans box.  

These scrappy 9ps (6" finished) began with pieces from the scrap bags I bought at the church rummage sale earlier this month. I'll make four more blocks and assemble them. . . or I'll put them away for a while and contemplate something more involved.  

Linking up with Finished or Not Friday

P.S.  The fridge with all the magnets.  

A celebration of life

 Thank you all who sent cards and messages.  I truly appreciate your prayers and condolences.

Daughter Julie, her partner Josh, and granddaughters  Rachel and Alyssa arrived Thursday evening.  It's a two-day drive from central New Hampshire.  After they checked into the hotel in Zion we had dinner at a restaurant here in the Harbor.  

We did a little touring on Friday.  The Waukegan Historical Society renovated the 1902 Carnegie library building as a museum.  It reopened earlier this month and I hadn't been to it yet. (The Carnegie was vacant for decades after the main library was built in the late 1960's.)   

I only took a couple of pictures, none at all of the exterior or the chronological displays with artifacts. (Underground railroad, early movie making, Jack Benny....)    You can see more here

The fireplace is in an upstairs reading room. The walls are lined with original bookcases FILLED with all of the books that belonged to native son Ray Bradbury. 

It was sunny, hot, and windy -- a great day to go to the beach!   "It doesn't smell right," said these New Englanders who are used to the Atlantic.  I pointed out that it is high tide all the time, too.  

"It would be great if we could see some cranes," I said as we drove out of the park.  And there they were.  

We came back home to get everything to set up at the church and went back to the church to do that.  The church women were setting up the fellowship hall for the luncheon.  (Bless Josh, the engineer, who figured out a way to get the big photo collages to stay on the easels.)  

The vistation was at 10:00 -- so many people!  The service was at 11:00 -- so many people!  Our friends Ron and Cynthia (Lake County Symphony Orchestra) provided beautiful music.  The readers were local friends (his and mine),  Words of remembrance were given by Julie, Rachel, and Alyssa, and kindergarten classmate Ann.  The Texas nieces sent a letter.  

On the right: "Dad will taste the water anywhere." And he did with no ill effects.

There were three display tables.  You can see a bit of red suspender under the Maine Potato Growers cap. Right next to that was his cane.  

My Alpha Gam chapter sisters Mari-Anne and Alex, and Alex's husband Randy, came from Missouri.   We last met in person back in 2011--far too long ago.  

Alex, Randy, and their three children visited us in Maine in 1986. I took the parents to L.L. Bean and Steve watched the kids at home. Alex said that her daughter wanted me to know that still remembers the fun they had playing with Steve.

There were many, many P.E.O. sisters, AAUW and Rotary friends but no photos.  

Saturday dinner:  at home with leftover chicken and sides from the luncheon.   Sunday morning: I went to church, they slept in.  Josh and Julie met one of his cousins for lunch in another town.  Rachel and Alyssa spent the afternoon sorting a huge stack of Stevens and Woods family photos from the 19th and early 20th century. They identified everyone and scanned all the pictures.  

As is the case with many (most?) families, one side is far more extensively documented than the other.

Waukegan's famous pizza place, the Quonset, opened in 1946.  I had never been there.  Now we all have. (And the pizza is really good.) 

A last photo.  We joke that Julie got my dimples and Rachel got my curly hair. (We are not biologically related.) 

I spent Tuesday writing thank you notes.  Three to go.  My mother would be so pleased with me.  

 And, yes, of course I am sewing. But that's for later this week.  

Midweek: photos finished, quilted and bound, skirting the issue + reading

It was foggy all day yesterday.  I went out after supper and snapped this photo of the sun breaking through the clouds. 

My friend Renee and I spent the afternoon working on the picture collages for Saturday's funeral.  We'll finish the job today. 

The background for each is a piece of homespun plaid, an homage to the plaid shirts Stevens wore.   

You've seen all the stages of this year's Stay at Home Round Robin.  Barb-the-quilter did a beautiful job quilting it. I put on the binding Monday evening.

UPDATE:   I won one of the SAHRR sponsor prizes and it came today -- a set of four spools of Aurifil!  Neutral colors that will be very useful.  

I had a fabric adventure last week.  I wanted a navy skirt to wear at the funeral.  I still have tissue paper patterns and a fashion fabric stash.  I was excited to find wool yardage, but it turned out to be black.  I went to one Joann's--very little left, let alone anything resembling skirt-weight wool (poly would have done).  So I drove to Vogue Fabrics in Evanston.  They downsized and moved several years ago and I had not been to the new store.  But, whew, they still had bolts and bolts of suiting wools including a navy that was just right.  $29.95/yard, but I only needed one yard.  

Oh, yes, Vogue has quilting cotton....and I bought some. But not very much.   

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I've enjoyed reading books set in Maine since before I met Stevens.  I admit that this one is not "Down East quaint charm." Nor is it Stephen King.  More like The Beans of Egypt, Maine, set in a mill town (Waterville) with Franco-Americans and drugs.  It's also about heritage, pride, and love of family no matter what.  Well-written but definitely not cheerful.

Linking up with Wednesday Wait Loss

Weekly update: two finishes + reading

 

Two walks at Illinois Beach State Park this weekend were good for my body and my spirit.  

Woodland violet, field horsetail, wild strawberry, hoary puccoon, prickly pear, serviceberry, false Solomon's seal.

If you look at the horizon you can see the Chicago skyline, 40 miles away.

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In the studio:  two finishes!  

The flimsy was in my post last week.  Now it's quilted and bound.    One of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects this year is to make a wheelchair-sized quilt (approx. 40 x 50) out of Ohio Stars in the monthly color.

I signed up for the guild mystery quilt and made all the blocks.  I had fabric left from the "dust off a book" blog hop earlier in the year and used it with lavender that I had in quantity from an estate sale.   I chose this setting from the many that were suggested.  

The backing is all-one-piece from a wide back (thrift shop purchase).  

Blocks are 10" and the quilt is 60" x 80". 

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The poet and essayist Donald Hall was one of Stevens' favorite writers.  Last month I finally read String Too Short to Be Saved (review here).  

I read Without: Poems while sitting with Stevens in the hospital.   This slim volume is an elegy to Hall's wife, poet Jane Kenyon, from her cancer diagnosis through treatment, death, and the year afterward.  It is sad, fierce, and loving -- a tribute to Jane's life and work and to their marriage.  (She died in 1995 and the poems were published in 1998.)

"Always the weather / writing its book of the world / returns you to me . . . Your presence in this house / is almost as enormous / and painful as your absence . . ."  (p. 51)

~~~~~~

Then I turned to Life Work, an earlier collection of essays (1993).  A cancer diagnosis and subsequent successful surgery gave him pause.  In that pause he reflected on his career as a poet, writer, and intellectual. That life was in sharp contrast to his maternal grandparents, in whose farmhouse he lived (see String Too Short to Be saved) and his paternal grandfather and his father who owned a very successful dairy in Connecticut.  Hall respects the choices of his forebears and understands how that influenced what he became.  

There are more of Hall's books on Stevens' bookshelf and I look forward to reading them.  

Linking up with Design Wall Monday   Sew and Tell  Oh Scrap! Monday Musings  

Midweek: mini in the mail + reading

Left:  mertensia (Virginia bluebells) in the back garden.  I have sorely neglected said garden this season.

I signed up for the doll quilt swap hosted by Lori at Humble Quilts.  The instructions were simple:  make a small quilt using Civil War reproduction fabrics and a traditional block.  Participants sent to one person and received from another. 

Here's what arrived yesterday.  Debra from Colorado used a block called Old Maid's Puzzle (there are several blocks by that name).   I really like the pop of red.

She included a cute hotpad/tea bag holder made out of charm squares. 

The swap was a nice, low-stress exercise in creativity.  (Here is Rose Marie with the quilt I made for her.)

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When Davy Crockett made both the Big Screen and the Little Screen in the early 1950's, courtesy of Walt Disney, I was among the millions of kids who was entranced.  I sang the song.  I had a Davy Crockett wallet.  [That Halloween I had a beautiful visiting nurse's costume (white dress, blue cape lined with red satin). "Oh, you're a nurse!" admired a neighbor. "No, I'm Davy Crockett," I replied.]

Journalist Bob Thompson is from my era, but his investigation into the real David Crockett began with a Disney Davy revival.  His then young daughters were caught up in the catchy song: "DavEE, DAvee Crockett, king of the wild FRONteeer."  

Many people, both amateurs and scholars, have studied Crockett for decades.   Thompson began with "born on a mountaintop" and visited Crockett's actual birthplace (along a river, not on a mountain).  He visited all the places David went to:  Baltimore (as a young teen), Alabama (Fort Mims battle), western Tennessee, Congress (fiercely anti-Jackson, pro land reform), a tour through New England, back to Tennessee, and eventually to Texas. 

Thompson sifts through the information, disinformation, and myth with great good humor.  Crockett was a legend in his own time.  "If David Crockett had [survived the Alamo] we almost certainly wouldn't be telling his story today." (p. 336) 

"We have trouble preventing myths from hijacking the past," Thompson writes. "WE *need* stories that give us home, stories that give us courage in the face of death, stories that tell us who we are.....We long for Mythic Davys in our lives, and historians' efforts to teach us the difference between truth and myth will always be an uphill fight." (p. 332)

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Linking up with Wednesday Wait Loss 

Weekly update: the sew goes on

 I continue to thank you all for your kind words and condolences.  Quilting is very therapeutic during stressful times.  And the endorphin rush from bargain fabric acquisition is not to be discounted.   I have recent experience with both.   

Chris called to offer me several bags of fabric.  I bought a huge quantity from her a couple of years ago. She found more and for payment asked if I would make a quilt for her new great-grandson. Of course!

Her gift included bags of flannel that I have given away.  I kept this yardage.  The blue, yellow, and pink pieces in the front are 36"w vintage. Aren't the blue bears adorable?

I used some of Chris's fabric in the baby quilt. (But not the blue bears. I want to admire them some more.) This is my go-to I Spy design. The blocks are 4.5" unfinished. 

That was the final project for April. Here's the stash report:

Fabric IN, April: 252 yards, $22.00. That's .09 (9 cents) per yard.

Fabric OUT, April:  192 yards.

Fabric IN, YTD: 417 yards, $80.00, .19 per yard.

Fabric OUT, YTD: 466 yards. Net used: 49 yards.

The in-to-out ratio is going to swing back to IN for May.  The church rummage sale was last week.  I helped set up and I worked two shifts.  There was fabric. I bought it. 

By weight, 169 yards.  $45.00. That's .27 per yard. 

Mostly strips and squares, a fair amount of Kaffe Collective. A few FQs. 

I also bought a vintage picnic basket for $2.50 (comparable on eBay $45), some fudge, and two loaves of homemade sourdough bread. 

Yesterday I enjoyed spending the day with my sister at the Kane County Flea Market.  It's at the fairgrounds the first weekend of every month.  I got two vintage Fiesta plates, two Toby mugs . . . and fabric (14 yards, $25).  Because, well . . .

I posed in front of the swine barn, to remember Stevens and all the times we went to county fairs.  

Back to stash USE.  Green is the RSC color for May.  I made nine-patch blocks for one of this year's rainbow projects. 

I made 20 Ohio Stars for the other rainbow project.  And, how 'bout that? I have the backing fabric ready to go. 

The one monthly goal for May:  (a) figure out what to do with the guild mystery blocks (I'm not wild about them) and (b) sort and file all the recent fabric acquisitions.

Linking up with Design Wall Monday OMG 2025 Oh Scrap! Monday Musings