Café Leisure - almost

 It has been years since I last used that heading for a post, and it feels like many more years that I have actually done that. Sitting in a café without any pressing matters or stuff going on. Can't even blame it completely on the pandemic, because the last time I used that label was 2017. ok. before I started the nursing course, a lot changed with that already.

So today I went to Landshut to get myself an international driver's license so I will be driving legally in the US when I go to visit in November. The last time I visited the US (and rented a car!) I never even thought about bringing one or needing one, so I guess it was just as well I didn't do any serious speeding. But this time the travel agent told me to get one, so I managed to figure out how to make an appointment online (not extremely straightforward - made me wonder how to people do that if they are elderly and even less computer savvy than I am?) and figured I would spend a bit of time at the café before going to my Spanish lesson later on. But then I realized I needed a plug adaptor, too, because mine seems to have disappeared, and I went to the phone company to clarify my contract and how to deal with it all in the States, and then I thought it was too late to sit down in a café and just lounge. Although I had taken the computer with me to be prepared. So the café visit was canceled. Perhaps next week, between my job interview and the next Spanish lesson? 

The first part of last week was spent at Petersberg and we had three quiet and peaceful and warm and sunny days of sewing. Nobody talked about the news from around the world, nobody talked politics.

I made progress on my piece for the next 20 Perspectives challenge.

It needs to be finished in a week, so I better get going with the quilting, which I did not start there.

I also continued making blocks for a self-trial based on an interview I recently did with Caroline Hadley  @geometriquilt for the next issue of the member magazine for the German Quilt Guild. I love her Sunday Posts of quilt designs and was captured by a very yellow version of her Sunday Sketch #372 a number of weeks ago. Caroline is kind enough to be happy when somebody tries to put her designs into fabric, and I had started pretty soon after the post appeared. But it had not progressed far beyond a few prototype blocks to figure out prolific production, so a chance at actually sitting down and prolifically produce was very welcome indeed.

Of course, by now I have some own ideas I will incorporate into the top, to make it more mine, which will be fun to figure out. And looking at this picture I think the yellows need to turn a bit more yellow still, but perhaps that is due to the unflatterin lighting in this picture.

While at the retreat I saw that Ursels QuiltCabin had just had a shipment of PSS's oval templates arrive in their shop, and because I had been wondering how I could get at those without having to pay the outrageous post-Brexit customs and shipment costs I went ahead and ordered them. Plus...

... a bit of yellow fabric Caroline and I had talked about during our conversation. 

 Probably more expensive than if I had bought it in Houston in 2 1/2weeks, but now at least I won't have to lug it home across the Atlantic. Hope to get some sewing time in tonight!

A first time in Houston

Everybody talks about the International Quilt Festival in Houston. I haven’t been there, yet. (Though I hope to go, perhaps in two years’ time.) But this year a quilt of mine was there, for the first time.

The quilt I am talking about is “o(rounD)moon,” – watch out for the strange spelling! – which is part of the SAQA exhibition text messages that just opened at Houston and is supposed to be travelling now.

My inspiration for this quilt comes from e.e.cummings, and I have already postedthe poem that is depicted on the quilt here. 

My story with e.e.cummings goes back to my school days, when I found his poem “l(a” in one of my English text books, although I can’t remember which year.  We never talked about the poem, but because I had been to the States before and was so fluent in English that I usually had to spend most of the lesson time trying to hide my boredom I read every single line and page in that book several times, and immediately fell in love with this poem once I had figured it out.

l(a

le

af

fa

ll

s)

one

l

iness

—E. E. Cummings

Probably it was better for this little love affair that we did not talk about it in class...

Later, when I returned to the States (that was the time before book ordering via internet) I was happy to find “a selection of poems” by e.e.cummings, and even copied some more from the Complete Poems, typing them on a type writer, to maintain the typographic impression!

When I was thinking about what to use as text message on my piece for text messages I pretty quickle decided I wanted to do something with e.e.cummings, and I thought I remembered an opening line of a poem that would have been fun to do. However, it was not in my selection, I had not copied it, and so I had to do an order for an interlibrary loan. Leafing through the big volume once it arrived, I realized that my memory had cheated me, the line I had thought of was different from what I remembered, and not as suitable. So I went through the book some more and finally chose o(rounD)moon, which is short enough that the whole poem could be put on the quilt. 

o(rounD)moon, 2013

For the marking of the moon I printed out a NASA picture of the moon’s surface and copied the outlines onto my fabric as quilting lines – sort of.

o(rounD)moon, (2013) - detail

The full text of the poem is included on the piece in tone-on-tone machine stitching, though the impression for the viewer from a ‘normal distance’ is as if s/he were looking at the night sky with a full moon, the message being only subconsciously received. Beauty and meaning, of course, lies in the eyes of the beholder.