November, full of plans

Out of the twelve different months of the year, November is the one I like the least. This is partly due to the fact that the days are getting shorter and shorter – and one knows after the end of the month there are still three more weeks of even shorter days before the winter solstice! Another factor is the weather in Germany in November – a lot of fog and drizzle etc.

However, this year seems to be slightly different. For one thing, the weather has been pretty good so far. Today was mostly sunny, and last remnants of foliage have a wonderful autumnal range of colors on display:

For another, the whole month is full with exciting things that keep me so busy I have hardly time to catch my breath.

It started with a scheduled weekend class at the Petersberg, a Catholic Community College where I have been teaching patchwork classes for several years. This one is going to be ‚Finish your UFOs!’, and I am really looking forward to it. I am curious to find out what kind of UFOs the participants are going to bring along, and what we are going to decide to do about them.

Sometime during the spring the administrator of Petersberg came up with the idea that they would like to host an exhibition of my works for two months, and we decided to match the beginning date with the class: November 20, the opening is at 7.30 p.m. If you should be around, feel free to drop in! So that meant I had to work on invitation cards, which really should have been sent by now, and of course I wanted to finish new quilts to show.

Then I had the idea that it would be nice to have something else in the realm of greeting cards and the like than just the greeting cards from my series ‚Metamorphoses’. So I set myself to designing a new calendar of my quilts from the series ‚Play of Lines’. That, of course, took several hours and days longer than originally intended. But I learned a lot more about the design program I use, and I am really proud of myself that I had the idea to make a perpetual calendar. It should have been printed by now and should arrive later this week.

Then my good friend Lisa Eiter asked me to teach my new class, „IQ – from inspiration to quilt“, at the Fraueninsel in Lake Chiemsee at the end of the month.

And, of course, there was this idea with the fabric club for hand-dyed fabrics, which also somehow demanded that the first shipment be sent during November... After several days of dyeing, cutting, wrapping them in tissue, registering the business, and investigating about adequate packing materials, the first sixteen packages are just waiting to be off the shelf. Aren't you curious to see what colours are in them? In just a few days the secret will be revealed. 

So the entire month is full of work and various things that need to be taken care of. I have been making lists and crossing things off, and it has kept me very busy, I did not even have time to notice the weather on those days when it wasn’t good enough for my taste.

And once I will have finished all of these, December will roll around, and there will be Christmas cookies to bake and …