Sending to Australia

 

Off he goes...

Three weeks ago I put my 21-yr-old onto a plane to Australia where he will spend his ‘semester abroad’. (As he is studying in the Netherlands, ‘abroad’ from our point of  view anyway, this is indeed a special situation. He could have gone to Düsseldorf, but, not surprisingly, that wasn’t abroad enough for him.) Hard to believe that the funny little boy is so grown-up that he manages and undertakes things like that by himself now. Well, not exactly or entirely by himself, the parents are paying, and some organizational matters... But now he is gone, has arrived at his destination after a short stopover in Sydney and is finding his footing in his first weeks of studies.

I used him as a kind of letter-pigeon and asked him to post a letter to India Flint which contained my contribution to her collaborative international stitching project for an exhibition in February 2027.

She had written about that on her Substack last November, asking for embroidered pieces of remembrance, all in neutral colour “with perhaps a few mother-of-pearl buttons”. I had immediately known that I wanted to contribute but had lingered as to what to embroider on my piece of linen. My father’s name? Larger issues, such as peace of mind, humankind, humanity? Slightly preposterous, but it was on my mind. Finally, I decided on 'Palästina', the German version of Palestine. That offers three opportunities to attach a mother-of-pearl button for the Umlaut-dots and the dot on the I (which my father’s name would not have made possible). And I chose the German version, because I wanted to express that my grief for Palestine is the harder for me because I am fully aware that the German persecution and attempted extinction of Jews were very influential in the founding of the state of Israel, and thus in everything that has passed in that area since then. 

I managed not  to take a photo of the finished piece from the front, but only from the back.

Backside of a piece of linen with "Palästina" stitched onto in chainstitch

 My son has let me know that he has posted the item, and it remains to be seen whether it will be visible in whatever India Flint will make out of it.

What on earth was I thinking...? Part 2.

It is still supposed to be spring, but it has been so cold that the magnolia has frozen and there won't be many blossoms that will still open when it perhaps, finally, eventually warms up a bit.

 

As I am plowing through my moment of What-on-Earth-was-I-thinking I am also wearing my philosopher’s daughter hat. Recently I finished listening to Michelle Obama’s audiobook of “The Light We Carry”, in which she writes in detail about what knitting has meant to her during the early days of the pandemic, and what it can mean in anybody’s life. Yesterday that was added onto with an episode of “TheLong Thread” podcast, in which Melanie Falick is being interviewed about her book “Making a Life” and her investigations into the importance and meaning of making for our mental health and survival. I have been knitting for nine tenths of my life, with only a few years of interruption due to tendonitis, when I felt a severe sense of loss and disorientation because I could not knit any longer. That’s when I really got into quilting, replacing my yarn stash with a fabric stash. Of course, when I was pregnant I tried to knit a baby jacket, thinking ‘that can be done even when you’re prone to tendonitis’, and nothing serious happened, and then I knitted a pair of socks, and then several dozens more, and a jacket and another, and now there is a yarn stash and a fabric stash. And the fiber stash for spinning.

In terms of techniques of making, I have tried many. Sewing, knitting, crochet (not so much mine), Brussels Lace (great technique, but the results are not my style, even if done ‘modern’), macramé, embroidery, weaving, bookmaking (Loved that – might get back to it?), basket making (loved that – but it’s not easily done parallel with any techniques that require relatively soft skin on your hands), paper making…

While I am stitching my 24 full moon symbols into the temperature quilt, re-visiting some of the embroidery stitches from Mary Thomas’ Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches, which had been a beloved reference for A Scrap A Day already, I ponder about the tendency of the thread to run out just a little before the circle is complete (a parallel phenomenon to the empty bobbin in the sewing machine approx. 12 inches or so before the seam is finished). 

 

Or about how come that, although I really try to be careful and take precautions I think should be good enough, the needle tends to stitch through the embroidery thread at some point, jamming up, delaying the process considerably, if the mess can be undone at all. (No photo of this unpleaning situation! I refuse to photograph moments like that.) Some stitches are more prone to this malaise than others, unfortunately they have the tendency to be my favorite stitches, such as the French knot, or Coral Stitch. 

Elongated French Knot, dangerous.

Scroll Stitch, a bit dangerous.

 

Or whether it matters that the stitched full moons don’t seem to be very noticeable overall in the piece when seen from a little distance. Only a closer look makes them slightly more obvious.

 

These musings, of course, don’t compare in significance to those on the importance of knitting and making for well-being, physical or mental. In fact, I never really thought about that, I just was happy enough knitting and spinning and making and did not feel the need for thinking about this. But I do remember a sense of gratitude when reading Alice Starmore’s “Book of Fair Isle Knitting”, and particularly the first chapters, because finally there was somebody taking knitting, its history and development seriously. Not just something women did to keep themselves occupied.

And as for the unhappy tendency of the embroidery needle to stitch through the thread and get it all jumbled… there must be a way to avoid that more successfully than I can. Right now there are only 3 full moons left to embroider, and then I will put away the embroidery threads for a while again, there are other temptations out there waiting to be tackled. A new challenge for the 20 Perspectives Goup, for example. But right now, 21 full moons down, three to go.

What on earth was I thinking...?

 It's spring. 

 

It's cold. But the magnolia is getting ready, 

 

and the blackbird, too (sorry, not a good picture, but I did not want to disturb her more, this picture was taken with a strong zoom factor.)

 

It's the month when - hopefully - a bit of a new phase will start for me. Working fewer hours, earning less money, of course, but hoping for a bit more time for creativity, caring for my family, gardening, life.

It started off well enough - first three 'working days' of the month (yes, Saturday counts as a full working day in dialysis) were off, and I took the opportunity to visit my parents and squeeze in a day at Nadelwelt Karlsruhe. Travel on Friday, the beginning of Easter vacation was a bit cumbersome with canceled train, delays and very busy. 

 

But I always had a seat, and when I don't have any urgent appointment waiting for me at the end of the journey, I usually prefer traveling by train. Going by car would have been so much more work, and Friday afternoons is bound to be caught up in traffic jams, too.

The Nadelwelt on Saturday, where I have been a vendor with my fabrics when I still did that, but it's fun to be there just as a visitor and steward for the members' exhibition of the PatchworkGilde Deutschland. 

 

I was most impressed with the two individual exhibitions by Ulla Hoppe, "Eine Frau sieht Rot" (A Woman sees red - the title is a pun on the saying 'jemand sieht rot', which means 'to get very angry/lose it')

"A Woman sees (through) red" by Ulla Hoppe.

 

and Textperiment, a group of four women who combine found metal scraps with textiles.

"Verdreht" (warped) by Susanne Oehlschläger

After I had left a bag under the table at the Gilde's stand I went to fetch it on Sunday and turned that into a chilly but nice bike trip down from the early hills of the Black Forest to the location of Nadelwelt, trying out how macro my phone lens will go on the way.

Return journey home was much smoother on Monday, and now I have seriously taken up the needle to finish the temperature quilt. Throughout March I had participated in @amyscreativeside's 'ig-quiltfest', was most frequently a day late with my posts and only skipped one prompt entirely, but had felt a bit at a loss about posting something for the prompt 'what was I thinking?'. When reading the list of prompts beforehand I had thought of a different direction than Amy eventually suggested in her daily explanation of the prompts, which appeared in my feed later than I had posted this one. That's the thing with time difference and dates, when Europe is ahead of the US. But now I certainly have a 'what on earth was I thinking'-moment. The circles Barbara Lange and I took out when I was longarming at her house recently and messed it up are supposed to be symbols for the full moons of the years encoded in the quilt, and when it happened I thought, oh, well, not toooo bad, I will just do those by hand, a bit of embroidery is going to make it more interesting. Yeah. Twenty-four circles, the stitch holes are very visible, and must be covered ... here we go.

At present, seven circles down, 17 to go.

Done. Well - sort of...

When I went on vacation in the first 10 days of April I had packed sufficient textile projects to keep me busy for at least four weeks. After all, it could have happened that we get snowed in and ... (on the Canary Islands...)
In any case, I played catch up not only with the Daily Somethings, but with A Scrap a Day as well. And finally, two days ago - a week after I returned from my much too short vacation (I could not finish everything I had taken along!) - I put in the last embroidery stitch on the daily art project from last year. Or so I thought.
I put it up on the wall in a four-patch arrangement, took a photo and sent it to my good friend Kathleen Loomis who has been following along from the minute it began.

And I started fretting about how I would put it together. The pieces are not the same size, and I had not worked on making them the same size. But how would I get these to go together...?  Luckily, Kathy always has a good idea and is quick in her answers when needed - she suggested I just finish each of them individually. That way I could present them in various arrangements, depending on the amount of space available. Of course something needs to be done to cover up the back.

Ironing helps, of course, because it gives the pieces a different feeling.

First idea was to put them on a dark linen fabric that would give them a bit of a frame as well, besides a protective cover on the back. The curved pieces are all linen, too, so a linen back fabric seems befitting.

The brown linen would be shortened, of course.

However - right now I am not sure whether I like that as much as I liked the impression of the four pieces next to each other, but no interruptions through fabric frames. At this point I have only attempted to do it with one of the pieces. Have to sleep over this a bit, I think. Perhaps I can find a different type of linen in my stash - one precondition I have is that I want to use only a fabric that I already have. No new purchases!
Oh - and when taking the individual pieces down, I pricked myself, because there was one scrap that had only been pinned in place and not stitched yet. So those were the final hand stitches for the front.

 

A first reaction to Kathy's suggestion was 'oh, then I can just keep going', because I have at least another 4 or 6 of those round pieces that are calling for additions. And I have plenty of yellow scraps left, the whole project has not helped in diminishing those! But perhaps I will wait a little while before continuing on this journey. First I need to decide on the finishing touches for the ones that are completely stitched.