Thumpin' Thursday

For the past few weeks I've been feeling really creative. Perhaps it's the parade of finished objects that I've produced since the beginning of the year, or maybe it's just the fact that it's a new year and "fresh start" is in the air. As a result, I'm still working on what I'm now calling "The Sampler By Any Other Name" and seeing real results, and am looking forward to finishing the next section that was started so long ago, which is the Old English alphabet in the top part of the work.

I can see a real difference in the way I approach projects now, and this finishing-old-stuff-business has brought it home to me yet again. One day while I was in the middle of writing my dissertation, I was suddenly seized with a need to make a quilt, something I'd never done before. I had seen a really neat pattern (strips of calico arranged to resemble books in a bookshelf) and simply had to have it immediately. I found myself at Joanne Fabrics getting yards of this and that and dragging out my sewing machine and actually cutting out the pieces for it, before I knew what was happening. Soon, I realized that making this quilt was keeping me sane and I allowed myself an hour every day to work on it, and as much time as I wanted on Sundays. About the time I finished the writing, I finished the quilt top. Funny, after that I couldn't decide what I wanted for a backing, or how I'd quilt it, so it languishes still in my workshop. Maybe I should just take a nice cotton sheet and make it into a duvet cover for our down comforter. (Hey! that's something I could do this very weekend, and it would be more useful to us!)

Anyway, something happened to me when I went to graduate school: I developed a kind of patience that I hadn't had before. I used to take sewing or crafting shortcuts to arrive at a relatively finished project more quickly, but post-dissertation, I found myself willing to follow the instructions, use small stitches to hem things, and go through the entire process a step at a time instead of just banging things together and moving on.

For example, I can remember trying desperately to figure out some shortcuts when I first started working on the Pineapple Candlewick Pillow in 1980. Maybe I put it down because I couldn't think of any. Maybe I needed to reach a kind of craftwork maturity before I could tackle some of these projects. As I worked on the Pineapple pillow last week, those searching-for-shortcut thoughts came back to me, and I rejected them, instead just sticking to the project and finding that it doing it right didn't take so long after all. I still have to sew it together, but now it's down to deciding whether I would use a pillow with ruffles on it as the pattern calls for, or would rather have it with simple piping for an edge.

Another way that I'm different is in that my sight has gone south -- so far south, in fact, that if I didn't have a really good eye doctor I'd be scared I was going blind. I'm unable to function without my glasses now, and without good light I can't do the kinds of fine handwork I used to be able to do. My doctor checked carefully and thoroughly and told me that my eyes are healthy and this is just a sign of aging. The Emperor, bless him, bought me a magnifying lamp for Christmas a couple of years ago, because he knows how much pleasure I get from making things with my hands.

My idea for retirement is to have a nice little cottage near Flagstaff, with a room that has lots of natural light coming in where I can put my spinning wheel, a table, and a comfy chair. And my magnifying lamp. I'll go for walks in the woods, volunteer at the local library, and keep making things with my hands. And have a cat. Something to work for, eh?