Shiny Things and Kisses

I finished spinning up the Chasing Rainbows merino/bombyx silk, a feat I still cannot believe, it went so quickly with Joel the Reeves wheel in charge. For the first time, I am happy with a two-ply yarn, and though it is not perfectly consistent, I feel it has character. It worked out to be about 6800 ypp, and I got 777 yards from just short of 2 ounces. In knitter terms, this means it's a bit skinnier than Zephyr but with the same fiber content, and hand dyed by Nancy Finn in what she calls "Rose Petals".

Now I am working on another of her colors, "Dove", in the pure Bombyx silk, and I will have no choice but to knit something from this, it is so beautiful.

Here is my latest quilt block, not quite finished but well on its way, called "star flower". I used the freezer paper on top method, but I fear I cut my allowances too close and will probably go around the edges of each applique with FrayCheck eventually.

Let's review where we are on the 100 Things. I am through high school, uglier than sin, more awkward than a bull in a china shop, unpopular, unathletic and have never had friends that wanted to hang out with me. I have never dated, never kissed a boy, never drank a drop of alcohol or used any drugs whatsoever. I am 5'7" tall with a 24" waist but I weigh 135 pounds...my only redeeming qualities are a brain and musical talent, and in my mind that was hardly enough.

52. The summer after high school Mr. Mettler got me a job at the City Hall as the Parking Meter Clerk. This meant that I got to count all the money collected from the meters (there was a machine that actually did the counting) and send bills out to the folks who hadn't paid, send letters with the bills and collect from the folks who dropped by. I sat at the front desk, so I met a lot of people who had business at City Hall. I worked with three older women, one of whom was the mother of one of my former classmates. It was a lot of fun. We took actual coffee breaks, which meant that we left the office, walked down the block to the Taylor-Magill Hotel, and ordered a cup of coffee and a doughnut. People should do that nowadays, it's much more relaxing than sitting at your desk.

While being the PM Clerk, I practiced flirting, though I didn't know that's what I was doing at the time. I had a thing for men in uniform, and teased them. The mailman of course dropped by every day and after a while asked me if I'd meet him at the Dairy Queen for a Coke. I was heady with success. An actual almost-date!

One day a funeral director called up to check on a death certificate. The lady he needed to talk to was on the phone, so I put him on hold, and totally forgot about him. That evening, he called me at home. "Is this the girl who put me on hold and never came back?" he asked. I was stunned. Was I in trouble? No, it turned out he wanted to ask me out on a Real Date. I was agreeable, but very concerned. This man was 26 years old, and I was 18. Mama would never let me go out with him, I knew. So I didn't tell her how old he was, and agreed to go see a Bob Hope show with John the Undertaker. Yes. Bob Hope. Well, Mama of course found out before the big night how old this man was, and she was not happy. When John showed up, though, he came in, sat down, and talked to Mama for at least half an hour, showing her the respect she deserved and showing evidence of all his good manners and upbringing. By the time we left I think Mama might have wanted to date him, too. He was fun and entertaining and fascinating, and I wished that I would be around longer to get to know him better.

53. I still played saxophone in the Community Band, and we performed on July 4th out at the high school, where they did fireworks. While walking back to my parents' car, a policeman saw me and asked me what I was doing there. I seriously started to explain that I was merely walking back to my car, but it turned out he was only teasing. Clinton had just got its very first pizza restaurant, and he asked me if I'd like to go get a pizza, so I did. Wow! He drove a Starsky & Hutch lookalike car, in red, and his cousin had one too, in blue. We went on a double date to see Captain & Tenille in Peoria. On the way back he kissed me. Only he didn't know how to kiss, and neither did I, and I thought that if that's what kissing was like I could do without it.

54. My church friend Susie Bateson had successfully gone off to one of the bible colleges near Chicago and found a husband, and I was in her wedding, wearing a long pink dotted swiss dress that I made (the others wore other pastel colors of the same pattern) and a pink picture hat. One of the friends of the groom was a UPS man, and yes, I flirted with the UPS man. He lived in Chicago, but ended up asking me out to a movie anyway, and drove three hours to pick me up. We had a great time, and *he* kissed me goodbye, and this was more like it. I decided maybe kissing was okay after all. Unfortunately, he made the fatal mistake of not walking me to the door, and I was not allowed to date him any more.

55. The summer went by quickly, and I was soon getting ready to go to Mississippi to college. They sent me a letter telling me where I would live-- Fant Hall-- and that the walls were cream and antique gold and there were twin beds and that my full scholarship was contingent upon me maintaining a 3.2 GPA and all kinds of other information. I was soon ready to go, and we piled into the big van and headed off to the future.

The Gentleman from Iowa

I have a new love, and he has a heart of oak. Solid and strong, the silent type, but oh so handsome. I can bearly tear myself away from him at night, and rush to his arms in the morning.

I have named him Joel, for the Joy of Noel, a frame wheel, a Gentleman From Iowa, the son of Mr. Reeves the master craftsman now retired but not forgotten. You will see later in my reminiscences that I once knew another Joel from Iowa.

I have spun two bobbins of Chasing Rainbows Silk/Merino and am now plying them:

My time has been consumed with family festivities and spinning, so I have not yet finished my current quilt square. But let me continue with my Things...

47. Sometime around the end of junior high and the beginning of high school, Mama and Daddy decided to bid on a Star mail route. Daddy had gotten out of the gas station management, largely because he was too generous to make a profit. Families would drive up, penniless but in need of fuel, and he would make them trades. This is how we ended up with the 8mm movie camera, a table, and other odd and assorted things. After that, he went back to working on pipeline contracts if they were close enough, and also bought a semi truck and hauled various things within the midwest. I was embarrassed. Here I was, a teenager, and supposedly very bright, and my father was driving trucks?!? Actually, I was always embarrassed by my parents. If it wasn't their southern accent it was their over-protectiveness, or their insistence that we were in bed by 8:00 p.m. every night, all the way through high school, or Daddy's vernacular, or any other of a million things.

Anyway, they bid on the Star mail route. This was a route that went from Clinton northeast to Farmer City, then back through Clinton and southeast to Kenney, around to the north and back to Clinton, delivering or picking up mail to the post offices in all the small towns, some with no more than three or four hundred people in them. They won the job, and for the next 25 years ran the route. Whenever Daddy was trucking or pipelining, Mama worked the route, and this was often. The route was run twice a day six days a week and took about three hours each time-- once starting at 5:30 a.m. and later at 3:30 p.m. This meant that Mama was not at home to cook breakfast or dinner, so that task was left to me. I would get up in the morning, cook breakfast for my brothers and sister, and then get ready and walk to school. When I got home, I would cook dinner. Perhaps this is why cooking is not a pleasure for me as it is for many people, although I certainly know how to plan and execute a delicious meal.

48. If there is one class that I took in junior high that positively affected the rest of my life, it was typing. We learned on the old-fashioned kind of typewriter, the ones where you had to pull the lever to advance to the next row and shift back over to the left of the paper. We had to figure out margins and centering and all those things that software now does for us automatically. I learned that generally, piano teachers don't like typing students, but typing teachers love piano students. I would type in my sleep until I was confident of my fingering, and I was always very fast and accurate. When the electric typewriters came along I was fascinated, and when computers got here... well, that's a different story.

When I was 13 I was old enough to get a summer job detasseling corn. Corn in Illinois is like rain in Washington. It is ubiquitous and tall; I laugh at what they call corn here. The Thorp Seed Company was located just north of Clinton. Their corn fields were vast. One type of corn was planted for four rows, and then one row of a different type was planted, so the corn was reminiscent of a football field, all divided up by fives. Detasseling crews would ride in strange looking machines driven by a crew boss. The machines had four buckets, each of which held two people. The job of these two people, mostly teenagers, was to pull the tassels out of the corn on two the four rows. This allowed those rows to be pollinated by the fifth rows.

Corn is brutal. We started work at 6:30 in the morning before the dew had dried. If you didn't wear long sleeves and gloves your delicate lily white hands would be torn up by corn leaves very quickly. If it rained the machine would be unable to navigate the fields, so you would have to walk. The corn was over seven feet tall, so you would have to pull the stalks down in order to get to the tassel. I lasted part of one summer. It was hard work, especially for a girl who had no muscles!

There were people in my church who watched out for me, and one of those was Mr. Mettler, the city commissioner of finance, and he offered me a part time job as his secretary, working three hours each Saturday afternoon, because I could type and write and file. I worked for him all through high school, but never felt quite at ease. I'm sure he was harmless, but every single Saturday he brought me a box of Fannie Mae chocolate mint meltaways, and I felt this was very odd indeed.

49. 1976 was our country's Bicentennial, and Mama and Daddy decided we should tour the country. Imagine it-- three teenagers (aged 15, 16 and 17), a 7-year-old and two Tennesseans driving a large red and white van and driving all the way out to California, up the coast and all the way back in three weeks. My little sister loved every minute. I just wanted to get back home in time to help with Daily Vacation Bible School. But we saw everything. Carlsbad Caverns, the Petrified Forest, the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam... ev-er-y-thing. We even stopped at the hospital in Arizona where I was born and took a picture.

50. In my junior year, the church got a new youth pastor, a funny-looking guy with big ears named Jerry. His wife Melissa was beautiful, just 21 years old. Her skin was albino white and never was affected by the sun. Her hair was so blonde as to be nearly translucent, and she had the voice of an angel. They had a little baby named Sherah, and I was so enchanted with the name that I swore I would name my own daughter Sherah should I have one. Melissa and I got to be good friends. She was from Iowa, and her brother-- Joel-- came to visit one day. He was in the Air Force, and we started corresponding. It never came to anything, but it was so nice to look forward to letters from him. I was never allowed to date in high school and in a way this was a relief, since nobody would have asked me out anyway. I thought that there was no way any man would ever marry me, and this was the one thing I really wanted in life-- to be married and have a family.

Melissa and Jerry had another daughter a couple of years later, and named her Shelah. Then they moved somewhere else, and I missed them terribly. Unfortunately, it was not the last I would hear of them.

51. My senior year in high school was busy and eventful. It seemed like every time I turned around I received another award. I was chosen for a scholarship from the Daughters of the American Revolution and attended one of their meetings. I scored very highly on my PSAT/NMSQT test and was named an Illinois State Scholar and received a National Merit Scholarship. I continued to be in the National Honor Society. My physics class took a trip to the Universtiy of Chicago, which was an eye-opener. I attended a lecture called "The Various Isotopic Anomalies in Carbonaceous Chondrites" and one on quarks. I took chemistry and calculus but I refused to take band, my little way of rebelling, I suppose. My civics teacher, Mrs. Karr, was one of the few people who really appreciated the things my parents had taught me-- to respect others, to have manners, to defer to older people, etc., and as a graduation gift she gave me her violin. But her final exam was brutal-- 100 questions, all true/false, and every single one was false except for one. I didn't let her down; I was the only one with a perfect score.

One afternoon when I got home from school I found a note from Mama. It said "Congratulations, we love you too!" This was very strange. Congratulations for what? And to my knowledge, Mama had never told me she loved me, though she proved it every day with her care and generosity. I thought long and hard, and finally realized what day it was. November 1. On the first day of every month, the local paper, the Clinton Daily Journal and Public, would choose a high school senior as the calendar girl, chosen for her accomplishments. I was Miss November, and almost died of embarrassment because I hated my picture.

I scored highly on the ACT (three points below perfect-- is that 29 or 39, I can't remember) and the SAT(forgot the score) and was offered a zillion scholarships from a zillion colleges and universities. Among them were MIT and Duke, and I wanted to try to go to MIT. But Daddy had a thing about sharing his financial information with anyone-- he wouldn't do it, not even to prove that his daughter was eligible for a scholarship. There wasn't anything I could do about it that I knew of, so I relented and accepted the one offer that came with no strings attached, no requirements for paperwork and most importantly for my dad was in the south and all girls only-- Mississippi University for Women.

The Spirit Arrives

I finally got around to wrapping presents yesterday, probably due only to the fact that my sister sent me a live Christmas tree, already ornamented and lit, a three-foot spruce that she knew wouldn't fail to make me smile. She and my mother have always been the holidayholics, getting out the wreaths and snowmen the day after Thanksgiving. Their fervor for festivity doesn't stop there, though. Halloween, Valentine's Day, July 4th-- every event gets its glory.

Back in Illinois, the quest for a Christmas tree was unpredictable. Daddy had to be in the right mood to go and get one, and they had to be available at the same time his mood struck. He often scoffed at the fact that all the trees "came all the way from Warshington State". Now that I live in Washington State, the sea of trees is quite overwhelming. We can go anywhere and see hundreds of beautiful trees, or we can drive just a little way out of the city and cut our own.

Apples are also abundant here, of course. The Washington Apples that we used to sell to raise funds for band trips, the giant, juicy apples that came in a big box and that my mother lusted after-- they are the norm in our grocery stores. I made an apple pie the other day and realized just how different they are from the ones we got in the midwest. The recipe called for six medium apples, and I always used six medium apples back in the Land of Lincoln. Here? Three. Three medium Washington apples = 6 medium Illinois apples. Go write that on your food equivalency charts!

More of my 100 Things:

40. From the time I was twelve years old, I looked like I was in my early thirties. I was often stopped in the halls of my junior high school and asked if I was a teacher. When I was 18 years old I went to a state fair and the guy who guessed ages guessed I was 32. I won a little statue of a pink panther for his gross failure to succeed.

41. I had been making fairly good grades all my life-- A's and B's-- but when I took the state achievements test in junior high and scored the highest in the state, my parents were angry with me. They felt that I had not been "applying myself", and here was the proof. If I was that smart, they reasoned, I should be making straight A's. The truth was, I never studied for anything. It all came easy. Whether it was the style of teaching, or the level or the teachers themselves, I was hardly ever challenged by schoolwork. I also was never required to think much, everything was rote learning. I was good at writing and essay questions were fun. Even for music I didn't practice much. I was always first chair sax, and poor Mark Killough was very frustrated. He practiced for hours before "challenges", which came once or twice a year and were his only hope of beating me out of first chair. I never practiced, and yet flew through my proficiency auditions effortlessly. Although I was required to practice piano 30 minutes per day (sometimes my younger brother would play his trumpet loudly in my ear as I tried to practice), I often just played whatever I wanted and paid no attention to the lesson material. At my current age, I do wonder what I could have accomplished if I had applied myself.

42. Although I was not a popular person, the fact that I was smart and musically talented helped to balance the scale. But I learned at a young age that life was just as much about not attracting negative attention as it was about attracting positive attention, or avoiding attention altogether. The church was predominant in my life. Rock and Roll music was of the devil. Of course, rock and roll included any kind of secular music. I was shocked, shocked! to discover that Melissa was listening to the song "You Light Up My Life" on the radio. Blasphemy! Dancing was a sin, and wearing skirts above your knee was an invitation to rape, according to the King James Version. My brother David was very much into the church, too, and he asked me very seriously one day if I knew why I was not supposed to wear short skirts. He explained that according to Deuteronomy something:something that if a woman showed her thigh she was the same as a prostitute. A little saying we had was "I don't smoke and I don't chew and I don't run with those who do."

43. Every summer we would go to the Bill Rice Ranch in Murfreesboro, TN for church camp. It was there that I learned how sex worked, not from personal experience but because Robin Cooper asked our cabin counselor, who explained it to her, who explained it to the rest of us girls. The featured speaker at the Ranch was Paul Levin, an older man who could be very funny. His appeal to girls not to wear skirts above their knees was based purely on vanity. Knees were ugly, he said. He had a famous sermon called the "blackjack" sermon, where he advised young women to carry a blackjack in their purse in order to fend off the amorous attentions of young gentlemen.

There was a blind singer who had the loveliest Irish tenor and whose wife played the piano and the accordion to accompany him. One of his most beautiful melodies accompanied these words

The rich man came to the master one day
he sought to gain Heaven the easiest way
How do I get there, I'm rich don't you see?
Wealth must suffice for the people like me.

And a lively tune that I can still play on the piano:

I cannot come to the banquet, don't trouble me now
I have married a wife, I have bought me a cow
I have fields and commitments that cost a pretty sum
Don't bother me now, I cannot come.

He had been blinded in WWII and eventually regained his sight after nearly 40 years of blindness through modern surgery, but I think he was more effective blind. The camp held musical competitions, and I entered as a piano and voice soloist, but I could never beat Miss Kimberly Buffington from Texas, who played an enchanting orientalish arrangement of Jesus Loves Me-- every single year. I was aghast that they would allow her to play the same thing year after year. For all I or they knew, it was the only thing she could play. Not fair!

44. The band teacher my freshman year of high school was a wonderful man, Mr. Davis, who had at one time played trombone with Stan Kenton's band. He was very cool, but he left after the first year. I later heard that he had some kind of gum disease and had to have all his teeth pulled, and as a result would not be able to play trombone as he used to, so he went out and buried his trombone in the back yard and never played again. He went to work for Illinois Power, which was building a nuclear power plant just outside of Clinton. Mr. Garrison took his place, a youngster just out of college and a man even I recognized as the nerdliest of nerds. Nobody liked him. He started a marching band, because he was in one at the University of Illinois, and insisted that no matter how short or tall, fat or thin a person was, the distance between the joint of his hip and the joint of his knee was precisely 22.5 inches. Because of this, if you marched properly you would always take exactly eight steps to five yards, which were clearly marked on the field. Once during a football game several boys carried his car waaaay out behind the buses that were parked in back of the school. He was not amused.

45. Mama decided I should go the "charm school" which was held at the Fine Arts Center once or twice a week for six weeks and taught by a modeling agency owner. We learned how to walk and sit properly, how to apply makeup, how to wear scarves and other types of accessories, how to pluck our eyebrows, etc. I was the only girl there, everyone else was adults, mostly wives of Illinois Power or Revere Ware executives, as these were the two major employers in Clinton.

46. Each year in high school a musical was produced. The band would accompany, and I would play the piano. This was fun, and the rehearsals were so frequent that I had the whole plays memorized by the time they were done. My senior year I decided to audition for the play, which was Guys and Dolls. I wrote on my audition slip that I would like a major role, but if I didn't get one I'd prefer to play the piano again. Much to my surprise, I got the role of Miss Sarah, which was the second female lead. I loved every minute of my acting career. I loved the singing and the rehearsals, the costuming and the makeup, and of course the audience. Mrs. Jones, the drama director, told me that I was "actually a very pretty girl, but what makes you pretty is your smile, so you should use it more often." Once the musical was over, I fell into a deep depression, maybe the first in my life that I really recall. Life was so empty now that the play was over. I didn't know how I could make it through the rest of the school year, and I would sit in my spidery basement and consider how I might commit suicide. Even though the end of high school was mere months away, I didn't think I could wait that long to get out of my house and away from my parents. Somehow I made it.

The More

Here is my first applique block, called "Song Bird", and I was so amused/bemused by the fact that I actually had fabric with music printed on it, which I've used for the corner triangles. The bird's leg and beak, and the berries, are satin-stitched, and the eye is a french knot.

I appliqued this block using the needle-turned technique, meaning I didn't pre-press the seam allowances on the appliqued pieces, but turned them under as I went.

Using the same method, I made the next block, called "Twisted Tulips". I was a little worried about the smallness of these leaves, but they weren't a problem.

For the current block, I am using Elly Sienkiewicz's freezer paper on top technique, which is a bit different but I'm not sure any easier than just turning it as I go. But the results are just grand. I'm quickly learning, from my reading of many different applique artists' admonishments, that there is a wide variety of techniques and whatever works for you is the best.

I'll continue with my 100 Things tomorrow!

Just when I thought all was well with my computer, it refused to boot again, claiming that the system file was corrupted. I thought it was just being recalcitrant, so I stubbornly refused to reinstall the operating system for a couple of days, just enough time to develop an intense hate of using the Gray's ancient system.

Therefore, I stoically waited through hours of installation and updates this morning, entertaining myself by ironing lengths of washed quilting fabrics. I installed every last update known to mankind this time. I even bought and installed super-duper-wooper virus and spyware protection. (I can't wait until someone comes out with spryware, I'll need it when I get older.)

I haven't yet reinstalled my photo processing software (Fireworks), but when I do I will show you the pictures of my progress on quilt squares. I am still loving applique, and I am still Not Knitting. However, I am Spinning most every day, and am anxiously awaiting my recently-acquired new Reeves frame wheel!! My little Lenny, adorable as he is and proficient as he is at spinning, is just too light to handle my demonic treadling speed. My wonderful Chimiel, the Polonaise, is beautiful and well-behaved but I can't spin more than a couple of hours on her without my right ankle hurting. Thus I have concluded that I need a heavier, double-treadled wheel. The Reeves is solid oak and double treadle.

More later, mon amie...

Carolina Lily

Today I show you the Carolina Lily square, the simplest one I've done yet. But in a sampler quilt, I think it's important to mix simplicity with intricacy just as it is important to have a nice balance of color and shape.

The Fan square is still missing. I probably folded it up in a book or a piece of fabric somewhere. Most likely it will appear as soon as I have completed the quilt without it.

I've been working on my first applique block. Yes, I've done applique in the past, but poorly, so recently I bought a book on Jacobean Applique by Patricia Campbell. Apparently Jacobeus something Rex was the official name of King James, he who commissioned the translation of the King James Bible-- the one which fundamental Christians believe is the only translation to be believed. But I won't start ranting about that right now. Jacobean embroidery, called "crewel" by Americans, was the style prevalent during James' reign, and Ms. Campbell has translated that style to applique. (yes, I know applique has an accent at the end over the "e" but I'm lazy).

This book has taught me more in about three pages than I ever learned anywhere else. The result? I adore appliqueing. In fact, I woke up this morning, had my cup of coffee and then raced downstairs to the Parlor to continue appliqueing, meanwhile chanting to the tune of "I Love Rock and Roll" the words "I love Applique". Bizarre, you think? Nah, you're likely as nuts about needlework as I am.

While stitching and shopping and painting I've been thinking about the next things in my list. I know there are those of you out there who wonder why in the world I am writing so much; some of you who think it's stupid, some who are talking amongst yourselves about how awful it is. Get over yourselves. This is my blog (insert big smiley face here). As it turns out, I highly recommend this exercise to other bloggers or writers or anyone, actually. I am remembering things long forgotten, and understanding myself better than ever. To be honest, I didn't write yesterday because the remembering had me a bit depressed. But you have to remember the good with the bad, realize the number of lessons learned and understand that it is all part of growing up and becoming yourself.

Now where was I? Oh yes, Mama Marie had just died....

30. Looking back, it seems like my mother's death signified a turning point in my childhood-- not because it in itself affected my day to day living, but because of the time of my life at which it occurred. Up until the fifth grade, although shy, I didn't think much of the fact that I didn't have many friends, I never had people over to play or to sleep over, and I was an odd child, growing up as a Tennesseean in the land of Yankees. Neither Mama nor Daddy ever lost their southern accent, and perhaps for this reason our family was always thought of as the "newcomers", even after many years.

31. I was involved in many activities. At 8, I learned to knit and swim at the local YMCA (not at the same time!). I was involved in 4-H and my club was called the "Measure-Ups" because we were involved in both cooking and sewing. I entered things in the state fair and won blue ribbons. To this day I cannot look at a peanut butter cookie. I did crewel (Jacobean) embroidery and Swedish embroidery and the kind of cross-stitch you did without counting. For some reason we started going to church, and the closest one to us was the Baptist church, which happened to be self-described as an "indepent, fundamental, bible-believing Baptist Church". My parents didn't go, but they drove us back and forth, er... religiously.

32. For sixth grade I got Mr. Milton, my first male teacher. He was the most progressive-thinking teacher I have ever known, before or since. He took what was for me a very fun approach to teaching and learning. Some subjects, like reading, we were allowed to do at our own pace. When we finished a unit and took the test, we were "paid" for our grades. I think it was $10 for an A and $5 for a B and maybe $1 for a C, but I never got Cs so I can't remember. With our money we could buy free time, and we were allowed to go to the free time area and play games or read books or whatever we wanted to, for the specified time that the amount of money bought us. This was wonderful! Randy Pound and I bought lots of free time and loved to play Rook. Of course, I had had a crush on Randy and Bill Chamberlain since the first grade, so this was even better. We also played Jeopardy! as a way of learning geography and history and this too was fun. Unfortunately I came to believe that if you worked hard and did good work you would be rewarded accordingly and be able to go do something else. I have since learned the hard lesson that this is never true. No matter how hard you work or how well you do, you will never be allowed to benefit from it. You may get rewarded, but you will also be expected to perform better, higher, bigger and faster feats until you burn out and become bitter.

32. Mr. Antrim was my math teacher in 6th grade. He wore those thick black-framed glasses and was bald. I liked him and thought he liked me, but he was the first man I knew that betrayed my trust. There was a sixth-grade dance scheduled, my first dance ever. It was to be held in the gym, and of course every girl wanted some boy to ask her to the dance. Mr. Antrim was talking about the dance in class one day, and asked me who I wanted to go with. I was severely shy, of course, and wouldn't say. "Just write it on a piece of paper, Sheila," he said, "I promise I won't tell anyone." So I did: Randy Pound. Later during class he asked me to take the milk cartons and trays back to the cafeteria (remember that? three cents per carton of milk, and morning and afternoon milk breaks?) At lunch the next day a girl I didn't know too well named Judy came over to me and told me that while I was out of the classroom, Mr. Antrim had told everyone what I had written. I was ashamed and embarrassed and humiliated. It never occurred to me to be angry with Mr. Antrim. All my life I had been taught to respect my elders. I said "yes ma'am" and "no sir"; "please" and "thank you". I gave up my chair for adults, always obeyed (well, except occasionally for my parents!) and never thought that adults could behave badly. I was now the laughingstock of my whole class, and Randy Pound avoided me like the plague.

33. From that time on, it seemed like I was the "Loner" as they used to say. I was the last one picked for any team in P.E., the last person anyone wanted to partner with for a project in class. I was made fun of because my mother would not allow me to wear pants to school at a time when everyone was wearing hip-huggers and mini-skirts. My skirts and dresses had to be at my knee, and what's worse, I had to wear my Aunt's hand-me-downs, '50's style suits and dresses. My ankles were weak, said the podiatrist, so I had to wear shoes with wooden heals that could be altered, and these always looked like old-lady shoes. I was still only allowed to wash my hair once a week, and as I became older my hair would become greasy and awful by about Wednesday. I was not allowed to shave my legs or armpits, and haircuts were too expensive to indulge in, so if I wanted my hair cut, Mama would do it for me. It's no wonder I liked going to church, where people were accepting and even eager to have me there. Their acceptance made me reciprocate by accepting whatever it was they were sellin... I mean, preaching.

34. The town of Clinton, Illinois, was very planned by its founding fathers. The city was divided into quarters by Central Street, running north-south and Main Street running East-West. All the other East-West streets were named for former Presidents... Van Buren, Monroe, Madison, etc. The other north-south streets were named for trees. Poplar, Oak, Elm, etc. We had only one stoplight, at the corner of Main Street and Highway 51, and a four-way stop at the intersection of Highways 51 and 10. Main and Center streets intersected at the town square, in the middle of which was the imposing granite courthouse. A statue of Abraham Lincoln stood on one of the lawns with the inscription "You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time", which he supposedly first said in Clinton.

The population of Clinton was only about 7400 people. To my knowledge, by the time I left high school, there was one African-American family, one sort of Hispanic family; one Eqyption family and one Jewish family. There were no Asians, no Indians, no other ethnic groups, and few Catholics and I am sorry to say that this is the reason Daddy thought it was an ideal town for us to live in. Despite that, or maybe because of that, I was intrigued and extremely interested in other cultures and languages. Unfortunately the Baptist church was just as prejudiced and biased as my father, and even more unfortunately I was getting more and more involved in church.

35. In Junior High I became the assistant church pianist, sang in a duet with my best friend Melissa Webb, sang in a trio with Melissa and the preacher's daughter, Debra, and joined the quiz team. The quiz team was assigned two chapter of the [King James] Bible to study every month. At monthly "Youth Rallies" in neighboring cities, several churches got together and competed. The chairs were lined up at the front of the church, and four people from each team sat on them. There were pads on the chairs connected by wires to a central lightbox. The first one off their seat to answer a question was indicated by their light coming on in the box. The questions were all about these two chapters, and if you jumped before the question was finished you had to finish the question precisely as it would have been asked, then answer correctly in order to score for your team. If you answered five questions personally, then you "quizzed out" and were replaced by another member of your team.

I lived for these youth rallies, all through Junior High and High School. I was starting to learn that being smart got some positive attention, and since there were all kinds of... boys!... at these rallies, I wanted positive attention. That is to say, of course, that I wanted to learn my Bible really well (cough, cough). I have always performed well under pressure. I love tests, and test well. I would simply memorize every verse of the two chapters. I would test myself by quoting them forwards and backwards or by writing the verse numbers in random order and then quoting them that way. I always quizzed out, and I even have a trophy. Big deal. My primary concern was what I would wear and who would be there. I had started making my own clothes by then, and would think up something new to make for each rally. I particularly remember a lime-green knit dress with a belt.

36. Junior high was a little more interesting than grade school because this was the first time all the schools came together. We had four grade schools. On the west side of town, where I lived, there was Lincoln and Washington elememtary schools. On the East side, there were Douglas and Webster elementary schools. But there was only one junior high school and one high school. I was in the chorus and the band and the jazz band. We competed regularly in state and local competitions, and I would not only compete with the bands and chorus, but also as a soloist for piano and saxophone. This was very rewarding for me, too, as I did well musically. My vocal range was three octaves-- low C to high C, and I was a favorite of Mr. Thomason, the music teacher. In art class, however, I was told by Mrs. Mendenhall that I was "not creative" and I believed her. It occurs to me now that perhaps she was speaking of my performance on one simple assignment, but I thought it was a sweeping indictment of my artistic ability, and never again took art.

37. In January of 1972, my girl scout troop went to Washington D.C. for Nixon's second inauguration. It was very expensive to go-- $75.00-- but my parents thought it worthwhile and saved to make it happen. For Christmas of 1971, I received all kinds of things specifically for the trip. A brand new camera, a new leather purse, a new leather-look coat in the new "midi" length; and my mom and dad gave me a beautiful aquamarine birthsone ring.

When we went to band class, there was a table on which all the students put their books and purses during class. The first day back to school after the holiday break, I had my new camera in my new purse with other new things, and put it on the table. It was stolen, and I was in big trouble. Why, I never really understood. Everyone put their stuff there. I ended up using my mom's old camera and an old purse. As if that wasn't bad enough, I left my beautiful new ring in my gym locker and it, too, was stolen. Mama and Daddy said I was too irresponsible to own jewelry and never again bought me any. I spotted that ring on a fellow classmate who also happened to attend my church, and I know she took it, but I couldn't prove it and she was mentally disabled, so what could I do? Life was getting so hard.

38. I got a letter one day. Mama gave it to me, but before she did, she asked me "Do you remember your sister Cynthia?" My what??!? She told me about my older sisters Rose and Cynthia, who used to live with us when my Dad was first married. I had forgotten them. I couldn't believe I had two older sisters. Cynthia's letter was written to me because she wanted to be sure I knew about Mama Marie's death. She told me about herself-- that she was in a foster home in Louisiana with a Mrs. Delacomb, who was in her eighties and only spoke French. She was 14 years old, loved to dance, and hoped that I was doing okay. She said that Grandma's husband Leman, my grandfather, had died, and that Rose was at Mandeville. Much of the letter didn't make sense to me, but I was glad I got it. Unfortunately I knew it was evil to dance because my church told me so, so I thought she was going to Hell. (Mandeville is a state mental institution in Louisiana, in fact the very one where Ignatius Reilly was to be sent in the book A Confederacy of Dunces.)

At about this same time, my friend Melissa accidentally found her birth certificate in her attic, and found out that her "brother" was actually her father. We were swept up in drama and intrigue but at least we were friends and our personal histories seemed to make our bond stronger. And then my brother decided Melissa should be his girlfriend, and I pretty much lost her as my own friend.

Six More Days and Nine More Things

Everyone else counts the number of days before Christmas. I count the number of days until the Equinox, because after that the days will start to get longer again! Only six more days...

I have used lightboxes in the past, but they help only minimally. I had full-spectrum lights throughout the house and keep as many lights on as possible. I go through the house turning lights on; Brad goes through the house turning lights off. I think he is trainable, though; I'll keep working on it.

I didn't get my current quilt block finished yet, but it should be done today. In the meantime, the Fans block has totally disappeared. Honestly, how can a quilt block get up and walk away? I'm mystified, flummexed, gobsmacked and befrettered. Have you seen my quilt block? Please, if you have any information leading to the discovery and rescue, email me!

Now on to our next few Things on the 100 Things About Me list:

21. Our house had some good features and some bad. There was a built-in linen closet and chest of drawers in the hallway, where we stored linens in the cabinets above and my dad used the lower drawers for his clothes. In the dining room there was a built-in china cabinet. But we had only one bathroom for six people and no shower in it. We had no dishwasher or disposal, although later we bought a portable dishwasher. Green, of course. The kitchen had white metal cabinets, a white speckled linoleum floor, and a great breakfast nook all tucked away at the side. Unfortunately, my dad used the nook as his office, which meant that he had a big metal desk in it and it was heaped with papers and objects and all kinds of junk so he really couldn't ever get to the desk. We had our milk delivered twice a week-- three gallons each time, placed in an aluminum box that sat on the porch by the front door. We would cut off the top of the plastic milk jugs and use it for table scraps. My bedroom had no closet, but there was a storage closet in the hall, a long narrow space that had two rods across it. Lynne's clothes hung on the front rod and mine on the back. This was ok until Lynne got bigger, and I had to brush past or through her clothes to get to mine. It was especially bad when the light bulb blew and it was dark.

22. We had a full basement, very unfinished, where the washer and dryer were. It was full of exposed piping that creaked and thumped and whined. It was creepy. One of the basement rooms was supposed to be a playroom, but as it was all concrete and damp and spidery, we didn't like to play in it. However, we were condemned to polish our shoes there every single night. We later learned that the very back room, the creepiest of the creepy, was where Santa hid the Christmas presents. When I was in junior high, we put a shower stall in the basement near the rusted-out sink. There was just a curtain separating it from the whole basement, and I never used it for fear I'd be exposed. I was very modest.

23. Our "new" piano was a disaster, a large upright that was probably made in the '20's. The tuner gave up on getting it into tune, but we still had to use it for piano practice. My piano teacher was Mrs. Gladys Morin, the veterinarian's mother. She was older than Methuselah, her hands deformed with arthritis; but she was one of the sweetest ladies that ever lived. She gave lessons in her small foyer, and I hardly ever saw the rest of her house. At Christmas each year she made the best hard cinnamon candy-- it was like peanut brittle, only cinnamon and spicy. By the time I was nine years old she said she had taught me all she could, and recommended that I continue at the Fine Arts Center.

24. Also when I was nine years old and in the fourth grade, I started playing the alto saxophone. I still remember the price tag on my new sax: $325.00. It was a fotune and I still don't know how my parents paid for all these lessons and instruments. Since I already knew how to read music and was very good at sight-reading, I didn't have much problem learning the sax. I still didn't ask questions, and tried to be very patient, but one day I just couldn't stand it any more and told Mama that I liked playing the sax but when was I going to learn to play chords? Thankfully, she didn't laugh at me, but I was very disappointed to learn that you could only play one note at a time. What was the point? It just seemed wrong.

25. I was in Brownies and Cadets and Junior Girl Scouts. Until the end of the second grade, I wore my thigh-length hair pulled straight back from my face into one long curl of a ponytail. Mama would never brush it out, but would just loosen the ponytail holder, brush back the front, and reclose the holder. This meant that on Saturdays, when we washed hair, the torture was unbearable. One day, the Brownies were celebrating the American Indian, and we were going to Bloomington to do it (about 21 miles away). We were to dress like Indians, so I convinced Mama to let me wear my hair down, with a headband around my forehead. I climbed into the back of Kathy Cook's yellow station wagon, where all the rest of the brownies were (Kathy was one of nine children, and the only Catholic I knew). Nobody spoke to me, and it wasn't until the day was almost over that I realized that they did not recognize me. When I told them who I was they hardly believed me.

26. Mama started to act a little unpredictable. As an adult, I realize that she had a lot to deal with. Three growing children and a baby, tight finances, busy schedule... enough to make anyone crazy. She was very firm that I should not hold or carry my baby sister at all, anywhere, for any reason. One time she was in the bathroom and Lynne was in her stroller, probably ten months old or so. The sofa bed was out in the living room, and I decided to take Lynne out of her stroller and put her on the bed and play with her. As I leaned over to place her there, I hit my knee on the exposed metal underworkings of the bed and split it open. I quickly put Lynne back in her stroller and pondered the situation. What could I do? If I told Mama, I'd be in trouble (it didn't occur to me to tell her I'd hit it on the bed without telling her why I was by the bed!) So I ignored it. There wasn't a whole lot of blood, but the cut was deep and should have had several stitches. I was in Mrs. Hagerman's fourth grade class, and showed it off to the kids. I could open the wound and you could see all the way down to the... well, whatever. Muscle? Bone? I don't know. Mrs. Hagerman called Mama and I got in trouble. Again. I still have a very prominent scar from that little incident. Another time, Mama was in the bathroom and Lynne was in her stroller right outside the bathroom door. She was getting fussy and starting to cry, so I was trying to calm her down. "It's okay, Lynne, Mama will be back in just a minute..." Mama rushed out of the bathroom and told me to never think that I was Lynne's mother, that she was her mother and she would do the mothering. I was stunned and hurt. No doubt my mom has no recollection of that incident now, but it was highly traumatic to me then.

27. At the end of fourth grade, everyone said that the worst teacher to get for fifth grade was Miss Johnson-- Miss Harriet Johnson. She was mean, they said. Of course, that's who I got. I don't think she was mean, but when we learned long division I found out she wasn't as adept at the practice as she should have been. I was convinced I was right on a test solution, and she said I was wrong. I explained to her how I had arrived at my solution, she showed my how she arrived at hers, and although she could not tell me why I was wrong, she insisted I was. "Numbers never lie, Sheila," she said. This was very disconcerting.

28. When the date was about to change to 1970, we talked in class about all the wonderful changes a New Decade! would bring. Flying cars, trips to Mars, etc. As it turned out, the '70s weren't much different to me than the '60's. But in fifth grade I first became aware of the fact that there was a war in Vietnam, because Joye Sprague was wearing a POW bracelet. She showed it for Show and Tell, and I was intrigued. I shortly forgot about it, though, and was largely unaffected by the war. I suppose Joye was more in touch with it because she had an older sister who was very popular and suffered from some mysterious illness.

29. In April of 1971 I was eleven years old. Daddy now managed a Gulf station, and as his nickname was Smiley, it was called Smiley's Gulf. I remember the Grand Opening. Daddy had a cotton candy machine there and all kinds of people came by and life was wonderful. Then one night before we went to bed, Mama called us all into the living room, where Daddy sat in his big green recliner. I was wearing my pink quilted bathrobe and my fuzzy pink slippers, and the boys were in their pajamas and robes as well. We all sat on the couch, me in the middle, the boys on either side of me. Daddy explained to us, with tears rolling down his face, that Mama Marie was dead. She was only 35 years old. I just sat there wide-eyed, letting it sink in. David and Phillip started crying, but I fiercely refused. Daddy explained that Grandma Wilson (my maternal grandmother) had called and said that Mama Marie had been killed in a restaurant fire. The funeral was too soon for us to be able to get there. (I would learn much more about my mother's death later.) We went to bed, and there I cried. I don't think I cried because I missed her, after all, I hardly knew her. I think I cried because I knew I would never be able to know her. I cried for me, not for her.

Fans in the Land of Eternal Dimshine

These days I wake to and dwell in perpetual twilight; we are shunned by the sun and surrounded by the stereo of rain and gutters dripping. The dissonant offbeat drum of hammers next door at the Persian's house is jarring and I wonder how long it will continue. It doesn't seem worth it to get out of bed. I should have been born a bear so that I could sleep through the winter and awake to a beautiful spring.

This is the second Christmas season for which I have not decorated. Last year we bought a tree but never put it up. I associate Christmas with snow or at least cold, crisp, clear weather. It's hard to believe this is the right season.

The second sampler square is now complete. The pattern is called Fans, and employs both piecing and applique.

I took out my Rose of England lace tablecloth to see if it would inspire me to finish it, but no dice. I wish I had not used variegated thread.

I contemplated my curtains yesterday and had to make some adjustments to my cunning plan. I had carefully calculated the amount of fabric necessary for inner curtains, outer curtains, and valance. There is one central window and two side windows in the bay. I ordered the fabric for the outer curtains and valances online because I found it for 5.25 a yard (normally 8.99) but the stripe for the inner curtains was not available online, so I went out and bought it. I needed 10.5 yards to have a 2.5 fullness, but the bolt only had 9 yards, so I bought 8.5 yards for a 2x fullness factor. Unfortunately when I got home and started figuring out how to cut it, I realized that I had forgotten to multiply the yardage for the small window by two. Argh! Fortunately, I got extra for the larger window, and the valance doesn't matter, since it goes on the wall, not the windows.

When life gives you lemons, you suck it up and make a really sour face. Then, if you're me, you pretend that you wanted lemons all along and figure out how to make lemon icebox pie. I decided that Roman shades would be perfect, and the stripe would make them really easy to make. The only fly in the ointment is having to have a header board, which screws into the window facing. I can't do that by myself, and I hate having to ask the Gray to do it because he is already so busy and stressed out at work. So I have decided to try using industrial strength or "Extreme" Velcro. I hope it works.

I'm still cogitating on the next Things in my list. I never dreamed there was so much, and I have to thin it down. I'm glad to hear from you readers that you are enjoying it. I know that each individual's history and background is central to their current personality and I wish I knew so much more about everyone so that I could understand their behaviour.

Janine asked me what my next dyeing adventure would be, and the answer is simple: I don't know! I might like to try dyeing muslin, or yarn with which to weave a colonial overshot coverlet.

My Blameless Commerce items from yesterday haven't seen any action yet, so until they do I'll hold off on adding more.

Here's wishing you sunshine!

Delectable Mountains, Blameless Commerce and More Things

This weekend, I decided, was the one where I would start painting the bedroom. So, between spattering myself with Rose Linen and Honey Bird and Celery Sprig and Popcorn, I've been planning new curtains and hand-piecing quilt sqares for a sampler quilt. The first block is a Delectable Mountains variation:

These sample blocks are being constructed from Moda Fabrics' Sentimental Journey collection for the most part, with a piece here and there from other fabrics.

Jojo enjoys observing from his perch in the Parlor. My innards were tickled by this little scene. Before I got the camera, he and the little ceramic poodle were staring at each other.

Okay, now for a little Blameless Commerce. I am in Dyer need of thinning out my stash, and I would love to have a little pin money. I'll just mention a couple of things each day, to save both of us from overwhelming sorrow, surprise, regret or pain.

First on the chopping block is all the original Rowan yarns for Donegal, plus what I have knit so far of this sweater, which you can frog or continue at your pleasure. First to email me (fortuknit at hotmail.com) takes it for $150.00. Secondly, I have a box of the cute little skeins, 140 or so colors of Jamieson Shetland Spindrift--every color except the naturals in Spindrift, in approximately 20-yard skeins. The lucky buyer can have this for $180. Wouldn't it make a great Christmas present for the fair isle freak?

Commercial over, and now I continue with my 100 Things, a little less orderly that the first seven, but there's a lot to remember!

8. The night of the flood, I and my brothers were in the basement at the John Warner Fine Arts Center at our dance lessons. We were practicing for our upcoming recital. We sang a cute little song that started out "We Are the Wee Rockettes (shuffle, tap, step)" and wore white satin costumes with red sequins.

9. When our trailer was washed away, it floated down the creek and struck a bridge, smashing it to smithereens. Whenever we drove anywhere outside our very small town for the next two years, Mama would cringe with embarrassment when she saw large-sized underwear strewn on bushes and trees.

10. When our furniture and appliances arrived at our new real house, they were all green. Green dining room table, green chairs. Green recliners, green sofa. Green refrigerator and stove. But my room was white with gold trim-- a dresser, a chest of drawers, a set of bunk beds and... a crib. This was my first clue that I might not have my own room.

11. My favorite color was pink, and it is still a favorite. My curtains and bedspreads were pink with 8-inch pink ruffles in 3 tiers at the bottom-- medium pink, darker pink, and darkest pink. I loved them except when they were washed and I had to starch and iron them.

12. When I was eight years old, Mama taught me how to sew. I started by learning to blindstitch hems and sew on buttons, then progressed to using the sewing maching. I made Grandma B a sunbonnet so that she could work in her garden and have shade for her eyes.

13. We spent a lot of time traveling back and forth to Tennessee. It was an eight-hour drive and we would go there for every major holiday, grandparent birthdays, and Decoration Day. In the summertime, I and my brothers would spend a week or two with each set of grandparents, and perhaps another week or so with aunts and uncles. When I was very young, Grandmama and Grandaddy had not yet installed indoor plumbing, and we had to go to the outhouse. At night we had porcelain chamber pots under the bed. I learned from Grandmama that there were some words that you could only whisper, like tee-tee and bottom and later on, brassiere.

14. Grandmama and Grandaddy "kept" cows and pigs and chickens and hunting dogs. I helped Grandmama churn butter and pump water. We washed all the dishes in one little basin of water. Even after they got running water, this never changed. She would get up early in the morning and make biscuits in a bowl that was never washed. She just added more flour and milk and other ingredients, rolled the biscuits out, and put the bowl back under the sink with the sifter in it.

15. Grandmama had a chicken coop and would gather eggs every day and I would help her. Sometimes she took a chicken and wrung its neck, then chopped off its head and hung it on a line outside the back door to let it drain out. She loved cats and Grandaddy didn't, but there was a feral cat she named Smokey, a beautiful gray tabby, that hung around and I spent hours coaxing it to come to me. Grandaddy always had spotted hunting dogs, and inevitably had one named Spot. Grandma B always had German Shepherds, and they were always named Rex.

16. If we were at Grandaddy's and Grandmama's during the right season, we would be put to work shelling peas and snapping beans; shucking corn, cracking walnuts or helping to can jelly or soup or pickles or pickled peaches or pear preserves. No matter where I was in the summertime I always got a horrible case of poison ivy.

17. My third grade teacher was Mrs. Williams, and she had to be my all-time favorite. She brought in a sombrero once and we learned the Mexican Hat Dance. I always chose to sit close to the front of the classroom because I loved her, but she thought I sat there because I couldn't see well, so she called Mama and told her I needed an eye exam. Soon I was sporting a pair of pinkish glasses with the turned-up corners. Ugh.

18. When we first moved to Illinois, I had an extreme southern accent and used the vocabulary of my Grandmama (3rd grade education) and Granddaddy (6th grade education). Of course I was laughed at, so I learned to be very quiet and not ask questions. Perhaps for this reason my teachers thought I wasn't very smart, although my report cards were just fine. They recommended I go to summer school, and so I did. I rode my bike all across town and was miffed at the librarian because she wouldn't let me check out 6th-grade level books to read. (It was the summer after third grade)

19. Mama bought me a wildly flowered dress, very 60's, that was short-sleeved. She told me I could start wearing it when she went into the hospital to have the baby. Carmeda Lynne was born on April 7, 1969 and Grandma B was staying with us. I wore my new dress that day, even though it was freezing cold. Lynne was born a month or so early. We started calling her Car-Car, so Mama made us change it to Lynne.

20. One day I was shocked when I was talking to Mama and somehow in the course of conversation she said to me "well, you have two mamas, you know." What?! Two mothers? When did this happen? She explained to me about Mama Marie, and sometimes I wish she hadn't. I had forgotten all about her. Divorce was still a stigma in the sixties, but I didn't know that. I started bragging to my friends that I had two mamas. They were unimpressed.

The first seven years...

Since I don't have a lot of interesting things about fiber arts to discuss today, I thought I'd join the bandwagon of 100 things. I have done this previously, but lost my copy in the crash, so I thought I'd be a little more in-depth because, well, it's fun to go down memory lane every once in a while.

Rest assured that I am still working on my quilts, coming up with new ideas and even {shhhh, don't tell} contemplating knitting something.

1. I was born in March of 1960 in a small town in Arizona, the sixth child of my mother and the second child of my father. My dad was in the Army, or the "service" as he always called it, though he was born and raised in Tennessee. My grandmother came out to visit and help, and my mother ran away for two weeks as soon as she got out of the hospital. I was exposed to a lot of Elvis Presley music that first year of my life, and to this day when January 8 rolls around and the radio stations play an entire day of Elvis I get a very weird memory sensation that makes me want to cry.

2. Until I was about two and a half years old, my mother left most of my care up to my two older half-sisters. They were four and five years old. Before I was three, my parents divorced and I and my two full brothers went to my dad.

3. I remember seeing myself in the mirror for the first time when I was three years old in the traumatic incident of a Shopping Trip to Memphis to buy a dress for the upcoming wedding of my dad and "Miss Shirley", my soon-to-be stepmother. Realizing that is was me in the mirror, I was scared to death. I still am. It was also my first experience with an escalator, and I was sure I would be flattened just like the stairs. To this day I am not on speaking terms with escalators. After the wedding, we went to live with my stepmother at her mother's home in Covington, Tennessee, while a house trailer was being built for us. My dad was working on pipelines by then and this required moving every three months or so. A trailer seemed the best option to keep a stable home for three children.

4. We got the trailer, moved in, and proceeded to move about the country. I lived in thirteen different states before I was six years old. One time we were moving and my dad was ahead of us pulling the trailer, when the axle of our sixty-something Ford station wagon broke. It was a hot summer day, and we sat on the side of the road for hours until my dad figured that something must have happened and came back to find us. After that I didn't want to ride with "Mama Shirley" as we called her then. The next time we moved I chose to ride with Daddy. I changed my mind again when he got the trailer stuck under a viaduct. I still refuse to drive cars that are in less than perfect condition, and instinctively duck whenever we drive the SUV under low clearances.

5. When I was five, I went to kindergarten in Louisiana, and colored in coloring books that showed big pictures of objects like apples and houses and horses and gave their names in French. I colored everything black. This alarmed Mama, as we now called her, but the truth is I just liked the color black. I still do. After that, we moved to Florida, where the coloring books had the names of objects in Spanish. I liked French more than Spanish, but didn't learn until years later than my biological maternal heritage is French. After that we moved to Michigan, where I had a best friend named Butch who wore cowboy boots all the time, even in snow up to our armpits. He got me in trouble one day by playing a record on the record player in the classroom and then telling the teacher that I did it. I adored him.

6. We moved to Illinois, where I continued first grade and my teacher was Mrs. Strange. She told my mom that I didn't have any muscles, not even enough to write, but I loved her anyway. My brother got to take piano lessons and we bought a brand new beautiful spinet piano, and soon I was teaching myself by copying my brother. I was immediately put into lessons too, for fear I would "learn wrong". We also got our first television set, and just as it seemed that life couldn't get more wonderful, Daddy brought home a huge wonderful beautiful silver German Shepherd that we called Silver. He would ring the doorbell to come in, and knew how to open the cabinets to get to his Gravy Train. The local police force wanted to buy him from us, but we loved him. Others in the trailer park didn't love him, and he died on my lap one day after eating his favorite snack of bread and milk, having been poisoned. I was wearing orange flowered bloomers and a sun top.

7. In 1967 I was taking ballet and tap dancing lessons to try to get enough muscles to write with. So were my brothers. Daddy brought us a new pair of German Shepherds named Daisy and Maisy. My teacher at school was Miss Disbrow, and we would line up before class at her desk if we wanted to tell her something. One day I lined up, and explained to her that our trailer had washed away in the flood that had been brought about by tornadoes. We lost everything except one change of clothes for school. Mine was a plaid blue and brown dress. All of our pictures, our piano, our toys, my parents' wedding gifts and quilts. Daisy and Maisy were all right, but had to go live with Grandmother Beaver (we later shortened her name to Grandma B). We lived in a motel room for a month, than a tiny little utility apartment for several months, waiting for insurance settlements. But finally we moved-- into a Real House. Mama and Daddy ended up renting that house for over 30 years, and the rent never went up. So far, since my parents divorced, I had seen "Mama Marie"-- as we now called her-- exactly once.

Future Memories

Here I am at 7:30 in the A.M. I have cooked breakfast for my little family, eaten and cleaned up the kitchen. I have made my bed, showered, dressed, and even put makeup on. Yes, my dear friends, Not Knitting is working for me.

Since I stopped knitting, the dogs get walked daily. The husband gets home-cooked meals and real apple pie, and appears stress-free. The clothes get washed before the last pair of undies is used, and the Parlor is no longer littered with balls of yarn that start knitting but do not continue.

The ultimate test was going to the Feral Knitter's group meeting last night. There I sat among my friends, watching them try to see in the dim light, noting their lack of knitting progress due to the charming distraction of their fellow conversants. And I? I had brought little quarter yards of fabric to mark up in little one inch squares. I was not tempted to knit, though my knitting admiration gene is still quite active, and Janine's stunning vest in progress energized it considerably.

While Not Knitting, I seem to be more relaxed and at peace. I do not feel the pressure of competition, I do not feel the guilt of not keeping up on knitalongs, I do not sink into my chair with dismay at the amount of time it will take to finish a sweater and the knowledge that an appearance of the Beast of Depression might prevent it from ever being finished. I do not fear the inevitable question: how far along are you on the [insert sadly far from finished item here]?

I have to admit that I'll probably fall off the wagon one day. But I may just keep it secret unless I finish something.

At the meeting last night I was seated by the lovely Caroline, a friend of June's and, as it turned out, an expert quilter of many years. We discussed various aspects of my Civil War repro quilt, and she offered invaluable advice. I now impatiently await the opening of any one of the 40 or so quilting shops in this area so that I can arm myself with her recommendations for marking pencils.

I mentioned to her that I had just read Winning Stitches, a book of quilting designs and quilts with the author's (Elsie Campbell) advice on hand quilting. Elsie has won quite a few prizes with her hand quilting. One of the things she says that I disagree with is that any quilt that is to be used on a bed should be quilted simply. Why (she says) waste all that time with beautiful quilted motifs when the quilt will undergo so much wear and use? She advises one to save the fancy quilting for wall quilts or "formal" quilts (I assume this means for guest beds).

My new friend Caroline also disagreed-- and what she said absolutely enchanted me. She said:

"just think of the sick child lying beneath that quilt, tracing the outlines of all those designs with his finger, over and over again, and how he will then remember it all his life."

Heirlooms are wonderful, and preserving excellent work well worth it. But I, too, would rather see the wonder and contentment on a sick child's face as he traces future memories on a beautifully wrought quilt, or the glazed smile of fond remembrance on an aged adult as he sits in his wheelchair in the nursing home with that same quilt in his lap.

Fun with Fabric

It's snowing here on a gloomy Northwest Sunday, but it won't stick. I ran a few errands yesterday and was sort of surprised to see all the Christmas shoppers. I still equate Christmas with snow, not rain, so it never really seems like real Christmas. Maybe if all my family descended upon me for the holiday I would feel differently. I'll work on that.

Before starting on the repro quilt, I needed to wash all the fabrics, so while they were washing I dug out the pieces to the Octopus Garden quilt that I started five years ago. I finished piecing all the blocks (they are machine pieced) and laid them out on my board. I still think it's a "right purty" quilt (Tennessean for "nice-looking"), but I think I'm more of a traditional gal and will probably stick to the thousands of older style patterns from here on out. However, I'll finish this one and figure out something to do with it.

I've assembled the squares in the lower right corner into rows and then joined the rows. I almost decided to give it to my sister, because her last name begins with "K" and there are thousands of K's in the quilt. But then I remembered my mom telling me that her husband had received a horrendous number of quilts from his family members. For some reason he felt they should be stored flat (not a bad idea, actually), and when he piled them up on top of each other, on top of a spare bed, they reached to the ceiling! No, I don't think they need another quilt.

In the evening I work on hand-sewing, which means quilting the little Christmas quilt and piecing the repro CW quilt. The actual old quilt has squares on the checkerboards that vary from one to one and a half inches. Many are not exactly square, so it was hard to tell what size they were supposed to have been. I started out with one and a half inch squares because I have a great template set from "Come Quilt With Me" for that size square and its accompanying half square and quarter square triangles. I started piecing it and realized it would be too big to feel like the original quilt. I started over, this time with one-inch square, and I like it a lot better.

In the meantime, I finally found border fabrics that I can live with. The green is the right shade but is not really solid. Oh well. I could use the back of it if I wanted to, but I don't want to.

The second quilt that I brought home is in much, much better condition than the first, and Jojo has declared it his favorite. I particularly like how each point of the star is pieced with several pieces of fabric, as is done in crazy quilting, although this isn't a true crazy quilt.

Knitting? Not happening here. Maybe Janine will inspire me when I go to the Feral Knitters' meeting tomorrow for the her auspicious visit. I can't wait to see what she's been up to!

Tennessee

What can I tell you about Tennessee? We went out to the cemetery to see my dead relatives. They were all still there. My great-grandmother was the first one buried in that cemetery. She died of a ruptured appendix two months after my grandmother was born. She was 30 years old and my grandmother was her ninth child, all living at that time.

We stopped by a little gift shop in Lexington. My sister had been in there at least once every two weeks since January, waiting on a crystal platter, yet the owner did not seem to recognize her. She asked "can ah help y'all with anythang?" and my sister told her who she was. "Oh, Ah'm sorry, Ah didn't pay no 'ttention to who you was," was her smokey-voiced reply.

We had some business at the courthouse, the kind that is small and on a central town square. The elevator is scary and there is an office called the "Clerk and Master" that we needed. I think I'd like to be the Clerk and Master some day, it's a great title.

We also had some business at the old and musty Decatur County's Sheriff's office, aka the County Jail. That was even scarier. The ceiling was about six and a half feet tall, and your average basketball player would look like he had contracted osetoporosis if he spent much time there. Old yellowing signs were everywhere, advising us that money could only be given to inmates in dollar bills and quarters; that cigarettes could be given only on Saturdays; that personal items could only be delivered on the day of incarceration, etc. The Sheriff himself wasn't a day over 75, and shuffled around like he was wearing old bedroom slippers. We were glad to get out of there.

We visited the old farmhouse where Grandaddy and Grandmama lived all my life. The paint is peeling off now, the porch swing is gone. The flowered room-sized linoleum in my aunt's room has shrunk and rises off the floor as if it were being shed like a snake's skin. The pot-bellied iron stove is missing, and the floors sink a bit as we walk on them. The house is dark and moist like a mausoleum. It is all much smaller than I remembered, and I prefer to remember it as it was when I was a child.

From this house came the civil war-fabric quilt, which as you can see is in bad shape. There were many other quilts in far worse shape, barely hanging together. This one has two sections, an original section and one that seems to have been added much later.

The original section was pieced and quilted with precision. It is composed of blocks consisting of four checkerboards set on point and divided by an olive green sashing with a plain square in the middle. The blocks are seperated by indigo sashing with turkey red blocks at the intersections. Some of the sashing is added with machine seams, most likely the old treadle machine that is sitting in my mother's attic and for which I did not have room.

The second section was either added by an inexpert quilter or perhaps a very old person, maybe even the same person that made the original section. But the checkerboards are not turned on point, and there is only half a block added down the side. The stitching is poorly rendered. The entire quilt is small, but was surely beautiful in its prime.

The quilt is in bad shape partially due to fabrics that were not all cotton or to dyes used that contained too much acid and eventually ate through the fabric.

The quilting was done with natural-colored cotton for the blocks and navy cotton for the sashing.

So far I've been unsuccessful in locating the right shades of indigo, red and olive for the sashing, but I've selected a fairly good set of prints. I hope to get started piecing checkerboards today.

I was unable to resist putting the Christmas blocks together into a tiny quilt and adding borders. I'm hand-quilting it, mainly because I want to practice handquilting after quite a few years' hiatus. My quilting muscle definitely got a workout last night.

Easing Back In...

Yes, I have returned. No, I did not want to leave Tennessee. Blue skies, golden trees, roomy homes, delicious food. Toddlers, children, old folks. Love, conversation, laughter.

Monday night my sister and brother-in-law took us bowling with some friends of theirs. The good news? I beat everybody, and I've never been a good bowler in my life. Sis was a discus and shotput throwing champion in high school, but she had rotator cuff surgery in January. The bad news? I spent the rest of the week recovering. I think I caught arthritis from my mom, too.

I am sick of knitting. I may not ever knit again. I finished Lurlene, the almost-sock without a mate, and started Purlene, her mate. I knit a counterpane square (Lanarch's Castle) from Mary Walker Phillips' book using 5-ply gansey yarn. Looks great. I started a scarf from some homespun that is working up beautifully. I have no motivation to take pictures of any of this, for I am sick of knitting. The Traveler's sock that Sue recommended is beautiful, but the shade of Koigu I was using made the patterning practically invisible, so I left that until I can find a better color. Why put all the work into it if nobody can see it?

Since returning I have been working on little miniature quilt blocks, which may turn out to be Christmas tree ornaments or may turn out to be joined in holy quiltimony in a miniature little Christmas quilt. It's the first time I've paper-pieced anything, and I think I like it.

I brought back a couple of quilts that were my grandmother's or perhaps my great-aunt's, or perhaps either one of their antecedents', to some nth degree. One is in ill repair, and I want to recreate it, or at least the essence of it. In trying to do so, I find that the fabrics are all Civil War fabrics. No wonder the quilt is falling apart.

And that is all I shall report for now. One day I might be persuaded to find the camera and post some pictures. I hope everyone had a nice relaxing holiday wherever you were.