More Bloggy Meetings With Food

hi. I’m back. You thought I’d jumped ship, huh? No? Well, I was starting to think so.

Our trip to DC was great, but I missed you. It was strange not being here much last week, and each time I felt a moment to come here, it disappeared. Strange. And there came a time when it became a little overwhelming to read some of my favorite blogs due to being out of the loop for so many days, and this weekend I did some procrastinating on that too. But I’m back now and getting back in the groove. Slowly.

I had every intention of uploading photos and blogging at least once more from the road, but it just didn’t happen. You know how that is. And now I’m a little spacey and having some trouble formulating my thoughts into words. But photos will be processed and will appear on flickr, and maybe here, in the coming days. And I do have a few more thoughts on the rest of the trip that I’d like to share with you.

Last week I got the opportunity to make a drive to Baltimore to visit Emily. It was my second bloggy meetup in the space of a week, and I feel so lucky for both of them, I’ll tell you what. We had a very leisurely (and relaxing) 3 hour lunch cracking crab at a little place on the water, taking pictures and talking, and laughing, and then we split and while she went to fetch her little ones, The Husband, my friend Mel and I grabbed some cupcakes at Cake Love, and checked out the USS Constellation, and then we reconvened at Emily’s place for a relaxed dinner. It was lovely. Her kids are just darling, B showed us some macrame he learned at camp and they both did some camp songs for us. So seriously cute. Emily’s mom stopped by for a little bit, too. And Emily showed me some of her paintings, which was fantastic, because there are just some things about paintings that don’t translate in a digital image.

I absolutely loved seeing where she lives and hanging out with her family, I feel like the snippets of her life in photographs that I have seen all make sense now. It’s a bit of a feeling of completeness between us, and I love it. Thank you for bringing us in, Em. And thanks for the almost completely local meal, it was delicious, and the crazy fun experience of cracking crab! And all of the laughs. Of course.

Welcome to Kentucky

I have alot to show and tell, but first, I need to tell you about this. It’s not the beginning, or the end, but it’s my favorite.

Erin is amazing. More amazing than I could have even expected from all of the blog reading and emails. Just lovely. Sweet sweet sweet. Caroline is amazing. And so nice. Suzanne is amazing and hilarious. Really, they are all amazing, lovely, nice, and hilarious. All of their husbands and children. Amazing too.

Erin threw a little, or rather large, fiesta for us on Friday night when we were in town. She made a fabulous meal for us, and she let me hang out in the kitchen with her, and even let me help her out a bit. We watched the kids devise a waterslide out of the play equipment in the backyard – genius, sort of. There was some girlscout song singing that got carried into our many miles the next day. We made smores and took pictures and listened to the boom of fireworks in the distance and watched fireflies and drank good beer and wine and Erin’s famous margaritas and oh my did we laugh. There was alot of laughing. Some of it giggling, some other outright guffaws and cackling. It was as fantastic as I could possibly imagine it to be, and more, and throughout the evening I found myself soaking in these fleeting moments with these friends and their families that I know through their writing and photographs, and smiling, smiling, smiling. Beaming actually. And now knowing them through experience too. It was so wonderful. I’m smiling now just writing about it. I can’t stop.

When we finally had to leave, and head back to the hotel to get a few hours of rest before another day of driving, I was so wound up and excited that I couldn’t sleep. Really. But it was so. Totally. Worth it. I just wish it could have lasted longer.

Thank you, friend, from the bottom of my heart, for welcoming me, us, into your home, into your family. It was a treat, truly, and I hope that we can get together again. Maybe my place next time, maybe someplace else. Name the time and place, and I’m there.

Sucked In

Ok, so you can call me crazy all you want, but I think I am going to try to relearn to knit. This is something that I’ve been wanting to do for months, but I just don’t have the time at home to commit to it, what with the painting and the quiltmaking and the stuffed toy making and the photography and oh yeah the graphic design. Seriously, I hardly have time for those things, much less learning and practicing knitting. Not to mention, you know, regular goings on like cleaning and hanging out with The Husband.

But tomorrow I am embarking on a journey in which I will have a little quite alot of idle time on my hands, literally, in a car, on the highways of eastern America. A minivan, actually, with three friends and a husband and probably four iPods. It’s a 30-Something Roadtrip, and I AM STOKED (note -I am only 2 weeks shy of 30-something, so I am including myself in that age group). A journey that as long as luck holds to the plan will take me across the threshold of a lovely friend in Kentucky, and into the hands of three more friends there and in future destinations. I actually wanted to keep the trip a secret all to myself and then drop it on you with a picture like, Surprise! Guess who’s house I’m standing in!? But my guess is most of you already know a little bit about this and I just couldn’t keep it to myself any longer. I’m too dang excited about it. Eeek! Now you know I’m excited, cause I don’t make that noise often.

As much as I would like to read in the car, I know I just can’t do it. I’ll have the laptop and camera and various gadgetry, but I think that will only entertain me for so long. And there’s a bit of handsewing that I could bring, but really, I don’t know that it’s worth packing for the couple of hours it will take to finish. Knitting, however, could be the answer. And I came across this LLH warm purple merino the other day that was calling my name. Even though I am not a knitter.

I learned to knit twice before. The very basic basics only – knit, purl, knit, purl. Once from my grandmother, and the second time from her neighbor slash my piano teacher, Georgia. I was under 14 both times, I think, and both times I forgot the skill at some point for some other more interesting pasttime. Fickle, fickle youth. It’s soo surprising that I flutter from project to project now in my 30 years of experience at life. Ha! I think it was casting on that I forgot first, and when you can’t cast on, you’re pretty much screwed. But today, lo! We have the internets! With video! And it is easy to relearn these things at the click of a mouse button, without having to seek out your wise grandmotherly person to explain it to you YET AGAIN. And I have a number of resources friends that can help me in a pinch, too, thank goodness, one of whom will be in the car with me.

And even though I dropped the habit years ago, twice, doesn’t mean I’m not still inspired by it. Particularly the neutral grays and textures that Al creates. I’ve been wanting to pick up needles again for a long time. And knit swaths and swaths of gray wool. So I guess in the coming days I will.

Posting will be sporadic, but I do plan to check in while we are away. Erin, I’m on my way!

poppies

I purchased some pretty amazing poppies at the farmers market on Saturday, only to be dismayed at their apparent lack of lasting more than a few hours in my home.

3 Weeks

They are three weeks old now, and they’ve opened their eyes. They still look like little pudgy piggies though, and walk around the box like drunk sailors. They have yet to escape the box and wreak havoc upon the masses. We visited for a few hours on Sunday and this was pretty much all we did. Sit around playing with puppies. Which makes perfect sense, really. If there are puppies available, why do anything else but play with them?

It Was All Yellow

I should be organizing to pack and doing laundry. I should be finishing my Wordplay project since I will not be able to work on it all next week. I should be potting plants so that they have a better chance of surviving a week alone, and putting the drip hose and tomato cages out in the garden. I should be wrapping a few gifts that will be given oh so soon. I should be fashioning a stuffed monkey that should be a birthday gift to a soon to be birthday having boy. And I should probably be eating up leftovers.

But none of that has really been happening, because this has been consuming me. Yellow squares for a big quilt. Two blocks done, and a third very close. In the space of a week. That’s fast for me.

Oh, and have I told you how smitten I am with yellow these days? No? Incredibly smitten. Moreso than I EVER would have imagined. I consider myself an orange girl, through and through, but this fling with yellow has become a full fledged affair. So much that the orange quilt squares that are also floating about in my head get second seed to these yellow ones.

Each one will be different, and so far I am in love with each one as much as the last, for different reasons. No pattern, but based loosely on a log cabin, just random piecing, which is mildly cathartic for me. Purposeful randomness. Hoping that they work out without thinking too much about them other than what fabrics might look good next to each other and which lines should be crooked. I am always such a perfectionist, that it will be a challenge for me to bypass my inherent tendency to make things line up.

My first taste of that came right away with the first block, as after I added what I thought was the last layer of strips, the block measured just 12 inches, and I toggled back and forth in my mind wondering if it should have a 1/4″ allowance on the edges. But really? It doesn’t matter. They can all be slightly different, because there will be solid cream colored strips between all of them. So this one can be 12 inches, and another can be 15 inches. And I’M OK WITH THAT. Or, I’m trying to convince myself I’m ok with that.

Anyway, I plan to post blocks as I finish them, to keep ya’ll in the loop. This, apparently, is my summer project. I hope I can keep on, keepin’ on.

Meditate.24

Week 24 . Meditate Project

See it larger here.

Still here, still dry, thankfully. Unfortunately, lots of others are waterlogged, stranded or detoured after the last round of storms came through last week, closing tons of roads including parts of the INTERSTATE due to flooding. Hoping it dries out soon for those in that situation.

C’est fini

Thank you all so so much for your thoughts and words of comfort. I really appreciate it. Writing about it was hard, yet therapeutic at the same time. I really just wanted to get a bunch of it in one place so that I could remember, you know? We are all healing, slowly. Pain gets less painful, and memories, though always with us, fade too, with time, and part of the many facets of why I keep this blog is for me to remember what things felt like, looked like, how I experienced them at a certain moment in time. I really appreciate your company here with me on this journey, even when it’s hard, thank you!

In other news, it’s finished! I finished it! I finished a quilt! Be it a small one, but I went through all of the steps and milestones of the quilting process for the first time and it’s finished! With time to spare, even. I placed the last stitch in the binding and washed it on Sunday, and it puckered nicely, and now it’s all quilty and REAL.

I was inspired by Mama Urchin’s baby quilt in a big log cabin pattern. I used some of my favorite cottons for the top, as well as a scrap from the tablecloths from our wedding, with a border of white linen, and soft pink polka dot flannel for the back. One side for pretty and one side for snuggly. It’s girly, but hopefully not TOO girly. I was thinking about that little baby girl and my friends every moment that I made this, and I really hope they feel that and like it.

I used this technique for binding it, and I am really happy with it. I had all sorts of scary thoughts about binding this, since I’d never been to that stage before, but it was much easier than I expected. Except for the part where I had to join the ends of the binding together, which was tricky and I messed it up the first time and it gave me a sore back from standing over it for many many minutes of trying to figure it out. But figure it out, I did, eventually. Although I didn’t make notes so I will probably be confused again next time, but no matter. Hand stitching the binding down on the other side was surprisingly soothing, too. I was really expecting it to be tedious and horrible, but it wasn’t. Tiring on the eyes, a bit, but placing each of those tiny stitches just felt good, like I was stitching care and love right into the blanket. It felt like placing one foot in front of the other on a leisurely walk. And also sort of like cresting a rather large hill, and knowing that you are almost to your destination. We rewatched a couple of the old Indiana Jones movies and a bit of Star Wars while I worked on it, all of which I’ve seen multiple times before, so that I could watch but also not have to pay close attention.

And now that I’m done with that, and have successfully navigated the proper steps to quiltmaking on a small scale, I am going to start making blocks for a big quilt that has been in my head for awhile. A full size one. And really, I have ideas for two color schemes, so I guess I’m starting two. Oranges with light blue accents, and yellows and creams, with gray accents. I am so drawn to the scrappy log cabins out there, with uneven, contemporary shapes, like this and this from Denyse Schmidt, and this, this, and the ones Erin has been doing for the Virtual Quilting Bee. I love those wonky squares.

I’ve started, but have not yet photographed. More on that to come.

In Memoriam

Catnap

She walked into my mother’s flower shop as a young lost kitty, and I adopted her soon after. Suzie Sugar Toes. That’s the name that my mom coined for her, and what I continued to call her. She tiptoed around the house, and the brown fur on her feet had sprinklings of white, like beach sand, or sugar. She was always so adaptable, so social. She was never a cat to hide from visitors.

She wasn’t super snuggly, but she hugged my hands with her face when I petted her, sinking her cheek into the cup of my hand, gently resting there. She always was near us, though. In the room with me as I worked, at The Husband’s feet at breakfast waiting for a bit of milk from his cereal. She used to sit in the shadows sometimes, the stripe of white on her nose the only visible hint that she was there, watching, then the rest of her would appear from the darkness if she decided to come into the light. She liked popcorn, she would sit with us and beg for a couple of kernals. And she was a notorious bread stealer. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve left a loaf where she could get it to find kitty teeth marks in the plastic bag and bites of bread missing.

She helped me make our wedding tablecloths

She would talk to herself. Or to someone that we were never aware of. All the time. Sometimes, we would be upstairs in bed and hear her in some other part of the quiet house, “Meow meow meow, meow? Meow.” Not plaintively. Not expressing her desire for something. Just having some unknown conversation with herself. Or the dark. Or the ghost kitty of the house, maybe. I never understood. Those conversations with herself were always such a mystery.

Both times we’ve moved, she was always so curious, immediately nosing around, checking out corners, getting to know the place. She was never one to disappear after a move into some faraway corner, only to be seen again a few days later. When she was a young gal, the first year I had her, she used to dart out the door as soon as I would open it, I was so afraid of losing her. Because I’m sure that’s how I got her in the first place.

She would start shit with Nari, and then totally play the victim. She would sidle up to him in the middle of the floor and look at him, until he decided she was encroaching on his bubble. Then he would put his front paw on her head. It was the funniest thing to watch, I wish I could have captured it on film, but was never able. I never understood if it was some kind of warning, or playing, or just what exactly it was. Drove her batty, though. She’d endure it as long as she could bring herself to endure it, like a game of chicken, until one of them lost it and pounced on the other. Then there would be a rolling blur of fur, and she’d either run away hissing in protest, or chase him around the house. I swear it was a game, but she always ended it sounding so cranked out and pissed off, like oh my GOD did you just see what this little piece of crap pulled? when we know full well that she started it.

He misses her. We miss her.

Oh, how she loved to party. Such a social cat, she was. She was never afraid of guests, never one to run and hide, always eager to say hello, rub legs, give tail hugs, and generally sit around and chat. She’d greet friends and family and then mingle in the middle of a conversation. This was ever evident at our housewarming party a couple of weeks ago, even though she was by then starting to slow down. But she was still happy to hang out with everyone, chilling in the middle of the floor here and there, never afraid of getting stepped on. She was so brave.

I wrote this in bits and pieces, both because I couldn’t stand to pour it all out at once, my soul would have ripped open, and also because I wanted to write these things as I remembered them, while she was with us. Now, there is a piece missing here, a presence lost from our home, our family, our lives. A piece that cannot be replaced. That amazon stripe of war paint is gone.

We put her to sleep last Friday. She was such a trooper, but the cancer had gotten too big, and she couldn’t take it any longer. It was such a hard decision, one I didn’t want to have to make, but one that needed to be made, one she depended on us to make.

Goodbye, my sweet girl. Suzie Lou, Sugartoes. We love you.

Still

I’m feeling a bit quiet today. Reflecting on some things. But I’m enjoying Martha’s s t i l l group this week. Very much. I’ll be back.