Staycation

My husband and I are on vacation - staying at our home in northern Germany because our son will be going to Australia for his semester abroad in July and we can't afford to go anywhere else right now. It feels really good not to have to go to work for a couple of weeks, I must say. I had not fully comprehended how exhausting the first few months of the year had been at work! Actually, I am starting my vacation days only today, and I have two more weeks. Nice!

This morning I left the house without taking my phone with me, which was hooked up to be charged, and I simply forgot to take it. By the time I realized I had already gone to far (by bike) that I didn't want to go back and fetch it. I didn't think I really needed it, and I didn't really. But knowing it wasn't there, I almost felt a bit, well, naked, because I had several instances where I wanted to reach for it, perhaps take a photo, or to take a note. We had gone to a book store, and I would have wanted to take down a few titles for perhaps later reading, trying to get those books through my e-book-club as I am trying to be serious about buying fewer books. The frequency of these reflexes reminded me of a moment when I was taking an online class with Lisa Call many years ago and she told us she had 'put her whole life on her phone' and at that point I thought I would never want to do that. To be honest, perhaps not my whole life, there are things digital I don't do on the phone, but isn't it amazing how much we depend on these things these days? Many advantages, but so many not quite so advantageous developments as well, and how often do you reach for the phone when a moment could be spent just being yourself by yourself and then you end up caught up in some social media environment instead. I have noticed changes in my concentration and consistency with which I follow tasks that have alarmed me, and consequentially I am trying to be more conscientious about using the phone. But it's hard going, trying to extract oneself from that digital web. And, to be honest, I love the fact that I can feel connected to many people around the world, talking to my friend in Australia, in Canada, in the USA...

So when we went for a walk this afternoon I took the phone with me again and took photos of the surroundings, the forest is just turning green.

 

I took my plunge today at a different small lake than usually.

 

Only a few kilometres from here used to be the German-German border 
from 1949 until 1989. This entire area profited from this phase of 
borderline existence and is now a natural reserve. Unfortunately, 
some people don't respect easy things such as keeping dogs on a leash, 
or keeping them out of the water. There are 3 places for visitor to take a swim, 
though.

I am happy that the apple tree I planted just a few weeks ago is already in bloom, quite abundantly for its size. (After flowering season I will remove any potential fruit beginnings ths year, so it can concentrate on building strong roots this year. But let the bees have their fun first.)

It is a bit cold for the bees still, and very windy, so I don't think 
there are that many of them out there right now.

Did some gardening, too, and am slowly discovering what's growing 
in the garden that I am seeing in spring for the first time now.

 

Spending time knitting, during my last lengthy train ride I did some serious swatching, resulting in not being able to make up my mind about which pattern to choose.

I probably have enough yarn of each color for a sweather by itself, 
but right now I think I want to combine the two, to reach a bit of diversification.

 

So I started trying myself at a knit-along. 

 

Picking a lot of debris from a rather expensive hand-dyed linen and silk yarn which is slowing me down a lot. But as I am a person who removes any label from clothing because it bothers me I am afraid that these little pieces protruding from the yarn will be a nuisance. 

 

By now it has become clear what I assumed from the beginning anyway, that I don't have enough of my original choice of yarn and I will have to morph into another color. Which is a clear plus in terms of color and interest to the piece - and with regard to the picking out of linen pieces, too, because the red does not contain any of that. I hope, when I progress further, I will be able to knit a lot faster, as the picking out makes it rather slow going right now. But I don't want to abandon the green altogether, I'd rather get it out of my stash now than having to come up with another solution.

 

Thinking about new quilt projects, too. 

This one was started before we went north, so it looks a bit different 
already and has gone beyond mere 'thinking about it'.

 

This one is emotionally charged, and still brewing.

And waiting for my custom printed fabric for my next piece of femina.

When life gets in the way...

 

A couple of days ago I read a post by Anna Wharton who posts as White Ink on Substack about how life had got in the way so she couldn't write her weekly newsletter. It feels a little bit like that for me right now, except that I can't say what the reasons were for never completing and posting the two starts for posts that were waiting in my 'blogger stash'. I did get started, then something called me away, I never returned, time passed, I did keep telling myself 'you must put this into the post'... And here we are, again it has been too long, really, since my last post.

On Tuesday I spent an involuntary hour at Hamburg main station
 because of a canceled train. I tried to make the best of it by 
taking pictures, 'training' my eye. I posted more of 
those on my instagram account, @justquiltsjustcolors.

 

A lot has happened, even some things in my art-part of life, and it won't be possible to now catch you up on everything. But I am still at the beginning of almost 4 weeks off work - 2 weeks for my 'off-time' and another 2 weeks vacation - so I may actually be able to sew and write again? We'll see.

During our 20 Perspectives bi-weekly zoom-meeting two weeks ago we talked at length about the exhibitions that our various collections have been traveling with, and I realized that I had no real understanding where my quilts were going or had been. And will be going. We do have a spreadsheet for the group that lists exhibition dates and venues, but I admit, once a quilt is on its way to somewhere I don't check that spreadsheet. But we had a lot of exhibitions, and after I finish writing this post I will try to post two videos on Instagram that members of the group sent of our exhibitions, so you can get an impression of what's going on with 20 Perspectives. (Keep your fingers crossed that this works! That's another something going on ... me and digital stuff ... no further comment!) During the discussion it became clear that the recent developments of world situation, shipping restrictions, uncertainties, tariffs etc. have made it decidedly more difficult to transfer quilts to and from wherever they are. The group is a web of clandestine quilt movements, and I am certain none of us could easily recollect who is taking whose quilt to where to be handed over when and to whom. 

Just how precarious shipping has become I have experienced during the past three weeks. I was informed that three boxes of EQA-quilts of the challenge "Contrast" had been shipped to me from Finland. Two arrived rather quickly. The third one was missing. 

 

Tracking information told me it had never left Finland. The Finnish IR called the post office. She called again. Tracking information was removed from the app because of time lapse. No news from the search in Finland... I was getting nervous. I had only told the Finnish IR, who did the searching on her end, and our new EQA Chair because I did not want to scare anybody else. But it seemed like it was getting tight because my husband and I are leaving next week and if nobody is here to receive the package... Tuesday afternoon I suddenly received an email that the next day the box would be delivered - and it was. What a relief. Now there are three boxes, and the exhibition at Patchworktage in Suhl in May can go ahead as planned. And I will suggest to EQA that we start shipping those collections with air tags!

When walking to the hairdresser yesterday I passed the 
local pond and liked the light condition. And the fact that 
spring is slowly beginning to put green on the trees.

 

I recently returned to my husband's place and immediately started working on my piece for EQA's challenge 'Insects', which will premiere at Carrefour in Ste. Marie-aux-Mines in September. Fortunately, I am the person who is in charge of delivery of German entries and have a lot of time left, because I don't have to send it anywhere in advance. But I would like to get it done soon, quickly, to be able to continue with other things. It was a messy situation yesterday, because I had put markings onto the piece by sewing over paper and that had to be removed. Not a favorite activity of mine...

 

For this piece I let myself be inspired by the so-called Picasso-Bug, using a selection from the markings on its back and changing coloring a bit. It will be called "Picasso Bug in Yellow". Here is a first glimpse.

Probably the orientation is going to change in the final state, 
but that needs to be decided.

 

Also further planning for my next "Femina"-piece for 20 Perspectives. Need to order some custom printed fabric for that!

What to say.

In the news they are counting the days since the attack on Iran - "day x since ..." - and that number also indicates the days since I have completely lost hope that the world will find a way out of this misery. Of course, we need to add the number of days since Feb 24, 2022, the attack on Ukraine (or, more honestly: since 2015, the annexing of Krimea), and the days since Oct. 7, 2023 and what Israel has been doing to Gaza - note: I completely condemn the mass murder on Israeli citizens that day. But the degree of retaliation has been out of measure. And I don't know what to say. Don't forget Sudan, Myanmar... it is absolutely horrifying that humans can't seem to be able to live in peace. Sometimes I wish that somebody would just push the button, blow us all up and leave the planet devoid of the human race, certainly it would fare better like that. Then there might be hope.

Stitching and sewing and knitting seems irrelevant in the current situation. And yet I continue, to avoid despair.

20 Perspectives had their newest reveal last week, and although my piece isn't entirely finished, there is a blog post up and can be seen here.  The title hasn't been decided on finally, yet, but it's probably going to be "Who is Afraid of Ana Mendieta?", since her work was inspirational for this piece, as I describe on the 20 Perspectives blog.

As of yet Untitled...

 The edges haven't been finished yet, but I do hope to get around to that next week.

And I have an idea for the third piece in the series, it's brewing in my mind. 

I am still juggling with my two laptops and having a hard time getting myself acquainted with GIMP for photo editing, but hope to get around that soon as well.

Good and interesting news is that I was invited to have a solo show at Dansk Patchwork Forening's  annual AGM in August. At first that came as a complete surprise, I had  somehow given up on having another solo show again, was concentrating on making quilts for the individual challenges of 20 Perspectives, and for Voyage (we had a show in Glasgow weekend before last, and will have an exhibition at Nadelwelt Karlsruhe in May). 

 

And I have been invited to pick a virtual gallery for SAQA for June, which is going to be fun and interesting. Will that cheer me up? A bit, certainly. But what I really and truly want is for all the wars on this planet to end. It's absolutely not right to continue like this.  

Looking forward to going to teach at Petersberg next week. Three days of retreat in a house where you can sew all day and don't have to bother about the rest of the world is just what I need now!

Lost in transition

 

This photo was shown me by my phone a couple of days ago asa memory from the cloud. Nice. That happened during a week straight from hell at work, even nicer. (The hell aspect of work has resided a bit, but I do feel rather unappreciated by the employers, and that is not a fun-enhancing factor when going to work and you are supposed to be nice to patients.)

For a while now I have been trying to transition from one laptop to another (the while is going on to a year now, bear with me), procrastinating, because that transition includes the loss of my photo editing software. I have been trying to find something new that's satisfying, but somehow have not been very successful in that. I really only need a bit of color adjustment, size adjustment and prettying up the pictures so I can post them here on the blog, but my most recent attempt at getting acquainted with Gimp is not proving satisfactory. It keeps getting hung up, I don't find it intuitively easy and I am getting a bit grouchy about all this. 

Add to this last night's experience that my online e-book library is transitioning and the new version is getting hung up on me, too. Is this a kind of digital Bermuda triangle I am caught up in?

Last week we had winter. 

This is actually one of the photos Gimp let me do before 
clogging up on me - it is the balcony at my husband's
 place, whereas now I am up north again.

 

Germany hasn't had much of any kind of winter in recent years, so this took getting used to. Virtually impossible to buy stuff to put on the sidewalk to prevent people from slipping, everything was sold out - but you are not supposed to throw road salt for environmental reasons, but you are obliged to put something as the owner of a house. I reverted to throwing ash from the oven to dull the ice. Now it seems to be melting but they are announcing more cold... I do like winter, although it makes going places by bike harder. I actually resolved that I would be going to work by car (after slipping on an icy road with my bike, fortunately no broken bones or anything.) The down side of winter last week was that it was so cold that the lake was frozen and I could not go for my daily cold-water-dip. That has improved, two days ago it was possible again and I feel much better.

While I was at my husband's place, I learned that "Legendary Blue NuDenim" was indeed selected for Patchwork Gilde's Tradition bis Moderne exhibition, which I was very happy about. I started working on my next piece for 20 Perspective's "Femina" challenge, reverting to my technique of custom-made paper templates.

 

It's been so long that I made anything with this technique that I was a bit out of practice and may have been not thorough enough about adding marks for joining and adjustment. But it is only a small piece, I hope to get it finished nevertheless. I did go for a couple of rather small curves that make sewing tricky, but one grows with the challenge. Unfortunately I can't show you more pictures right now because see above...

When in the north I do knitting and am currently working on a Spot-Sweater after a pattern by Anne Ventzel which I have been waiting to do for several years. Unfortunately her instructions completely DON'T fit my body and it has taken my three starts to get it somehow to fit - not completely happy with the neck region either, but hoping that it will work out after blocking. That taught me once again something I have known all along: knitting after somebody else's instructions is not for me. I hate the way these instructions are written up these days, and I would rather work after my measurements and change stuff as I go. So further knitting projects will at best take an idea from somewhere and adapt them without sticking to any kind of written instruction. Again, you will have to wait for a picture here, sorry.

Hope to be back with a more cheery approach to posting than this one - but I have been procrastinating this post due to all the difficulties with the photos although I have been thinking about what I could write about.. 

 

I did it...

Imagine you get photos made of three quilts by a professional photographer to be able to enter these quilts in a pestigious show in Germany. Patchwork Gilde Deutschland has a tri-annual juried show called "Tradition bis Moderne" (From Tradition to Modern), I have been in it a couple of times, and I even have juried it once. I wanted to finish two quilts for this show which are both still pretty far from being finished, by at some point I realized I didn't need to fret about this. I could enter others. But I needed the professional photos. Fortunately, the photographer who used to take the photos of my quilts when I was still living in that small town to the north-east of Munich had agreed that I could send the quilts in a package, he would shoot the photos, ship the quilts back and send me the files digitally.

He did send. I did download. I remember that I did. But when I finally got around to "you need to get this entry in" and it was already getting relatively close to the deadline, I could for the life of me not find the files. No memory left of what names I had attached, hard disc searches were unsuccessful, even the digital native could not help. Fortunately I still had a tiny bit of leeway and I called the photographer the next mornign and asked him to send the files again, which he kindly did.

This time I managed to keep track of where I downloaded and saved the files, was organized enought to find out whether I had to downsize the pictures, had typed up artist statements that I could just copy-paste, and got my entry in more than 2 hours ahead of time.

The show takes only one quilt per entrant, but I figured it would increase my chances to try with the three pieces of entry allowed. Now we will have to see whether one of them makes the cut.

Here are the detail shots I included in the entry.

 

Detail from "Alchemy of Textiles"

 

Detail from "The Legendary Blue NuDenim"

Detail from "The Quilt that Sewed Itself"

 

 This Blog Entry, again, has been a long time in the making. I started to write it right after New Years', mildly proud that I had managed to get the application in. But as I am still juggling between two different computers and haven't figured out my saving system yet and am unable to let go of the photo editing software that is on the old one but can't tranfer to the new one... once I have written the text, somehow it registers as 'done', but of course the pictures need to be included, and as mentioned, something was amiss with these photos.

So by now it might even be time to receive news whether either of the three was accepted. I know only one will be shown if at all. I just hope at least one makes it, disappointment would be severe if all three fell through. But then, I have juried quilts out for this show. Fittingly, the next magazine's topic is 'Rejected!' and I wrote an article on #quiltconreject. We'll see whether I learned something from it. 

 

 

 

Imagine…

 … you come home from a couple of days of a workshop aka retreat, after which you went to see and support your aging mother after heart surgery for a few days, and when unpacking the car, you realize that the foot pedal for your sewing machine has gone missing. You call the location where the workshop took place, they haven’t found anything. You make an inquest in the group of attendees, nobody has seen anything. You go through all the boxes you had with you, nothing in there. You check the case for the sewing machine into which the pedal would naturally and instinctively be packed at the end of the days for the sixth or seventh time and it still hasn’t materialized there. You go back to the car and check under the seats, in the luggage compartment (and that’s only a small car, it couldn’t really hide anywhere). Nothing.

You have a wonderfully uninterrupted full week of empty days ahead of you and wanted to get started on at least two projects that are looming with a deadline, one more urgent than the other. The spare machine is located in your other abode 600 km away.

The machine is waiting, yes, in this setup the enclosure is not there yet,
because it will be easier to attach the cords once the pedal will have arrived... 

You call a sewing machine dealer and order a new pedal, click on ‘immediate money transfer’ (which costs an additional fee with the bank) when making your payment, you had the affirmation that the dealer would ‘send as soon as payment comes in’ (and payment should have been visible on their account within minutes), but it takes three days for them to acknowledge payment was received, now they would ‘send quickly’. That was three days ago, today’s post is in and did not include that parcel. There isn’t a whole lot left of that full week to get started on those two projects by now.

Meanwhile, you kept yourself busy hand-stitching more French Knots on a piece you’ve been working on, but to determine how many knots exactly still need to be added you do need to start on the binding at the top because only then will you know how far down from the top edge you will need to stitch. Which can only happen with a sewing machine…

French Knots on "The Essence Behind the Words" for the
"Femina" challenge of 20 Perspectives

Other things you can occupy yourself with is starting to put together a huge piece of hexagons made from 1-inch-diamonds that you started more than 3 years ago and which had progressed to a point where you only need to make about 10 more of those hexagons to have enough, 

and of course you keep re-arranging some, exchanging a couple with each other, and actually joined some already. 

Nice surprise that the appearance of the hexagons changes considerable when they are joined, the background of the fabric they have been pinned onto disappears and they blend together somewhat. So that’s a good result of the week.

Hoping the foot pedal will arrive tomorrow? Keep your fingers crossed for me, please! 

At least the Choir of Angels has been out for a few weeks already, to be honest, since I had to go up to the attic to find a quilt which was supposed to go to an exhibition in the US and would have found a clandestine carrier to evade customs, but which is still missing in action. Who know when that will resurface - before or only after the next move?

I may have to purchase a couple more musicians before Christmas to give myself a shopping expierence gratification!

 

Update on the 70,273 project

For several years I was involved in collecting, sorting, assembling, quilting for the 70,273 project (a post on my German blog can be found here), 

The aim of the project is to commemorate every singe victim of the T4 Nazi-extinction programm of handicapped people which lasted from  1940 to 1942 and officially counted 70,273 victims. (The program was officially stopped after a degree of resistance of citizens but continued undercover, the final count of victims is not known.) Jeanne Hewell-Chambers initiated The 70,273 project after watching a documentary on World War II on TV in 2016, when she realized that her beloved sister-in-law who had suffered a terrible accident at age 3 which left her handicapped most likely would have been a victim, and brought to death, too.

Our activities went publich with an exhibition of the German contributions at the Patchworktage of the Patchwork Gilde Deutschland in Celle in 2018, and in Munich. And an event in Dachau about the seven quilts made by arttextil Dachau as well, as written about on my German blog. 

Jeanne Hewell-Chambers, her husband "The Engineer", 
and I one evening in Celle.

 

A view into the exhibition in Celle

Then Covid hit, everything stalled, I sent my materials and data sheets and quilts to the US, asking once in a while how far the project had progressed toward the ultimate goal of a joint exhibition of all the finished quilts. Things were taking time, a LOT of work needed to be done!

Earlier this year I was approached by the board of arttextil Dachau whether I would like to give a presentation about the project for their anniversary celebrations. I contacted Peggy and Jeanne about newest developments, and it turned out that Peggy was taking over being the chair of the board from Jeanne due to a number of reasons. As an introduction to her new role it happened that Peggy and her husband decided to come for the event in Dachau, bring the quilts, Peggy would deliver the presentation and I would be translating. All of this took place this past Friday. 

Peggy and her husband had done a few days of traveling prior to coming to Dachau, and they were met and hosted by members of Arttextil e.V. . I joined them for a (very cold!) tour of the inner city of Dachau on Friday morning, followed by a Bavarian-style lunch in a typical restaurant, and then we proceede to the lecture hall where we had to hang the quilts.

 Peggy had brought ten quilts with her, all seven that had been made by members of Arttextil to commemorate the 207 inmates of Franziskuswerk Schönbrunn who fell victim to T4, and three others. 

 

One of the three additional quilts was Quilt #521, assembled from blocks that had been contributed by quilters from Israel. (This quilt is one who always moves me to the bone, even though the T4 program is not equivalent to the extinction of Jews. I am very grateful to the members of the Israeli guild that they participated in the project, and that they did this through connections to the German guild.)

Quilt #521

 We were also joined by Renate Pognée, a member of the German Patchwork Gilde and a longarm quilter. She had quilted several of the quilts for the Dachau group and was very moved to re-encounter them on this occasion.

The ultimate aim of presenting all the by now more than 620 quilts in a huge exhibition is still on the agenda - that will be the TGGG, The Great Global Gathering. The website is being revamped, a new facebook and instagram appearance is in the making and things are moving forward again after Covid had been a bit of a grand slow-down.
 

It would be wonderful to be able to travel for that occasion - I hope political circumstances will make it possible when the time comes.