“Between the Years”

Early in December I spent a few days on Lake Constance, trying to relax after two and a half weeks of working in ICU. I went to the thermal baths, tried to ignore that I had chosen an apartment completely sub-standard (ugly and cold!), and just tried to relax. Participated in two interesting zoom sessions, read books in bed, knitted... 

Since then I have returned to the operating room, but a total of three weeks away also meant that I had to reorient myself. After only four weeks since beginning I hadn’t been acclimatised enough that this is an easy task. This pandemic is posing an additional strain on my phase of introduction to the new job.

However, I have taken myself back to the sewing maching, if only short periods so far, but I am getting back into a bit of a sewing mood. Since I challenged myself about wearing the purple pants vs. finishing the quilt, I took the purple monster off the design wall and have resumed stitching the letters.

 

I have already worn the purple pants, too, so I guess I have declared myself officially an old woman, according to the statement of Jenny’s poem. The strange thing is that in this short time in the operating room I have repeatedly seen people on the operating table who, by sheer numbers, are just a very few years older than I am – or my age even! – and I look at them and think, “this is an old person!” I am shocked to see them, appearing a lot older (to me) than I feel about myself. Gives me a lot to think about every time it happens. Am I much older than I think?

We have had terrible weather in terms of low fog, lack of sunshine, and ten days ago my husband and I just took off on Sunday, driving south, until we would – as pre-determined by a weather app – find sunshine. There we took a long walk along the shores of Lake Chiemsee, trying to jumpstart our vitamin D production. 

 

Christmas has come and (almost) gone, 

 

mother-in-law is staging a personal show to attract attention, my husband is working as always, and next year I probably will be working at least one of the days, too. 

Germany is going through a lot of discussion how to deal with the new virus variant, and supposedly we will end the year similarly as it started, with restrictions and/or lockdown... So it’s good to be able to sit down with knitting, or work on my contribution to SAQA Europe/Middle East’s project of the “Orient Express”.

The thing under the text is supposed to imitate this: 

I hope to be able to make it more recognizable through quilting.
 

And I want to take up again a regular schedule for exercising. Even in weather like this.

 

Merry Christmas!

 Wishing you all a merry ducky Christmas!

"Here comes the sun!"

 It is my turn today to be featured as the week's supplyer of the SAQA Europe and Middle East's group picture on facebook and Instagram. 

I had been scheduled for this date for a long time, and for almost that whole time I had thought I would be posting the picture of my quilt that is in the Forced to Flee exhibit, currently traveling with SAQA (and which will next be shown at Bedford Gallery @ the Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek, California: February 26 - June 19, 2022). But on the past Monday, when I joined the SAQA regional zoom meeting after not having been able to for a couple of times, and they were talking about music in quilts, how music affects us in our quilting, the importance of music for our quilting, I realized that I had a rather musical quilt in the backdrop. It has relatively recently come home from traveling with an exhibition organized by France Patchwork, and I realized that it would be a perfect candidate for the group picture. So I changed my mind, and because I hadn't sent anything to Birgit Schüller yet, it was easy. Then I realized that I had not even posted anything about this quilt on the blog either, although it is part of my series text messages (which currently gives me a headache because I have lost count of how many quilts I have made, but that is another story). This must have happened because I made it in a very brief period of time, just before the deadline. Then it was accepted quickly, gone right away, and I had not even had time to get a proper photo. 

So here is a little bit of introduction to the quilt. It got started by coincicdence. I saw France Patchwork's challenge fabric at Ste. Marie-aux-Mines: a piece of linen, with a good amount of yellow. Any kind of yellow gets me hooked, and this was very fine linen. But when I asked whether I could buy a piece Catherine Bonte just gave it to me, between EQA representatives, I guess, and said "but you do have to enter!" Title of the challenge: Do Ré Mi Lin. Part of the musical scale, with a slur into fabric, should be easy. Plenty of time, the winter passes, spring rolls around, and here I am, haven't even started on the piece. But suddenly it all came together. I had this cut out sun lying around, 

 

which came from some other piece I was making, and definitely did not want it to go to waste. Sun always goes with yellow, I have this thing with light, I love music, and when you talk about sun and music you just have to think about the Beatles' song "Here comes the sun" (composed by George Harrison), wouldn't you agree? I know other poems and lyrics on the topic of the sun, one of my absolute favorite songs is a Swedish folk song about a sunset on Kajsa's bank on the lake, 

 

a few lines from Ingeborg Bachmann, something Spanish, 

 

and a French chancon. A couple of Afghanistan embroideries from the Guldusi project went in as well,

 

and it all just came together as text messages 20.

Can't believe I didn't write about this one - it was such a happy making, so easy and flow like. If all quilt making was like this, and the sun were out ...