Musings on life (and loss)

Last Sunday my family and I set out to visit my parents. I packed a small suitcase with the clothes needed for a two-night-stay, and a few items to keep me busy during the several-hours-train-ride.

This blue suitcase had been with me since a trip to Vancouver many years ago when my friend Maike got married and my carry-on bag gave out just as I was arriving at the airport. It had been to places, but it was still in pretty good condition and the perfect size for shorter trips like this. This little suitcase was not one that I particularly cared about, it was just a practical suitcase. But it was stolen on this trip, straight away from the streetcar, without either of us three travelers noticing anything.

The monetary value of the items in there is not really high, as most of the items were used, every-day items, and some had been with me for several years, too. The only items that I could put a price on pretty exactly must have been the new curcular knitting needle which I had bought just last Saturday for a knitting project (€ 5,75) and a brandnew Spanish dictionary (€ 29,95) which I bought a couple of weeks ago. But in the suitcase was a wooden backgammon set which I really liked, made of cedar wood, with a very nice smell when you open it. (I love playing backgammon, and much prefer ‘real’ encounters with real people compared to games on the smartphone, where the phone always has the double throws and games never seem fair.) And a couple of balls of not exactly cheap woolen yarn for that knitting project. Three different charging devices for the various electronic pieces of equipment one carries these days. All of the electronic devices themselves were in my backpack, they were not lost. (My computer, whit LOTS of photos, all my writings etc., the phone, the camera.) And a hand-bound book made by a friend who is very ill, and which I had been using as a diary since January. Not a whole lot of monetary value, but if you compile the cost of re-aqcuisition, it adds up, too. And the emotional value is not to be measured in any way, either, even if it seems stupid to grieve for a little set of backgammon.

The police officer whom I talked to when I went to the police said I should be grateful that all my documents were with me, no money stolen. Be grateful when you had things stolen from you? Somehow this seems a strange way of thinking.

Nothing in there is of any value for the thieves. They will throw everything away. And I would have liked to use these items for many years to come. What a waste. What a stupid way to hurt people. What a superfluous experience to have to go to.

But then – is it worth grieving for these little items, as dear as they might have been? Life is strange.

Happy Easter!

Test Drive for Prague

During the last weeks I have felt a bit like the frog who jumped into the jug of cream and is now paddling around like mad, waiting for the cream to turn into butter so that it can get out of the mess it got itself into...
I am hoping that, once I return from the Prague Patchwork Meeting AND the workshop that Kathy Loomis will be teaching here will be over, my butter will have settled!
Part of the density of it all - to be honest, a very large part - is the involvement with the refugees, which has been taking much more time than I knew I had still at my disposal... Three to five hours of one-on-one German lessons per week is fun, because my student is very studious, very eager to learn and a wonderful person to get to know. But add to that regular visits to their house (and you can't just stop by and leave again after a brief chat, you have to spend time if you don't want to be rude or inconsiderate), arranging appointments for doctor's visits and accompanying them for translation, picking somebody up at the hospital, enrolling a child in kindergarten ...
And there was still stuff to prepare for the Prague Patchwork Meeting. Where I will be going next week to accompany the first exhibition of International Threads, but I will also be demonstrating at the Bernina stand, and teaching a half-day workshop. So I had to make sure that everything I need for the demonstration is ready to the point where I can just talk about and show what I do when I do what I will be demonstrating. For this, a certain amount of preparations was necessary - made more difficult by the fact that a) I don't know the type of machine on which I will have to do the demonstrations, and b) my own machine is away for maintenance, again, so the preparations had to be done on my old Bernina.

text messages 7, in progress

This machine does take this thicker thread -
but will the one in Prague as well...?

Which worked out fine, I think I am all set, but it was a tense time... What I don't have yet, and won't be able to finish any more before I leave on Thursday, is a handout for the half-day workshop. People will actually have to take notes on what I am saying. I hope they can manage that!
And I managed to finish the pages which we want to display at the exhibition, today. Before being able to do that, I had to get my husband to take my photo, because all the ones I had were very out of date, and every attempt at taking a 'selfie' returned unsatisfactory results!

What I could not finish today was printing out the signs of quilt names to be added to our display, because one of the members of the group (I'm not giving a name here!) managed to forget to send me the last two titles of quilts she was still finishing as we were compiling the list for insurance values, on which I was going to base the signs. So that will have to wait until Tuesday afternoon, when I return from a two-day-visit to my parents, together with my family. Just as well that we are going by train - let's just hope the German railway system is up to its former high standards and does not present us with surprises!
So the frog is still paddling. But it hasn't drowned yet, there is hope for the butter.

High Noon Abstract in March

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Finished the last piece for Prague Patchwork Meeting

On Thursday next week I will be heading to Prague with a whole stack of quilts from my group "International Threads". We have been working to assignments given by the members of the group in turn for about one and a half years.
We will be having our first appearance as a group, and I finally finished my last piece for the show.

This is a view of the stack of quilts I will be carrying:

My last piece, which I have already given a sneak view of here is now finished. It was made to fulfill the assignment 'proof of sketch', which is a difficult one for me, as I believe my sketching activities are not intensive or elaborate. Well, it turns out they are more elaborate than I have cared to admit to myself, and they have increased with the assignments in my abstraction workshop with Lisa Call. So I was finally able to sit down and do this one.
Here is the sketch:

It is a line tracing of a photo of water swirls I once saw in a book on water. I used solufix and avalon film, arranged a lot of scraps, stitched them all together, and then dissolved the solubles:

This is the finished piece:

Strictly speaking it is not a quilt, as it has only two layers, and they are not even stitched together except for at the top/sleeve. But there is no rule in the group that it has be quilted, so I think I am safe.

Two ticks off the list

Sunday was a very busy day at the fair, and I was satisfied with the results.

Everything out of the car, waiting to be set up,
two more hours to go before the show opens.

I am always happy if I get one more new subscription to the fabric club, and that happened. However, I think I need to branch out on the darker colors. Except for the fact that the loading capacity of our car is at its limit...

My most reliable helper, Hildegard - usually she helps
me roll the fabrics onto the cardboard - guarding
the stand for me while I take a quick trip to the Ladies'.

So I have taken out a few of the lighter pieces of colors which seem to be in lesser demand, and will overdye them, to begin with. I have seven weeks before Karlsruhe, the next occasion where I will be selling.
I was amazed at how tired I was Sunday night. But perhaps it's understandable, not only after that week - on the day itself I was up before six, got back home at seven in the evening, with lots of boxes of fabrics unpacked, repacked, ... I went to bed at the same time as my son (who was annoyed that I would not read out aloud for him that night).

Yesterday I finished a 'secret' piece, and finally got to work on my first Journal Quilt. Just before the closing of the January folder - I even tried to upload it this morning. I couldn't verify whether this was successful, but I will be informed through the notification which I receive by e-mail.

Where have all the hours gone?

Just in case someone has been wondering: yes, I am still alive, and no, I have not abandoned this blog. It was with dismay that I realized this morning that it has been nine days since my last entry. I haven't been idle for one minute - but what have I been doing?
For one thing, life changed in that at last a group of volunteers has got together in our town and is now trying to help the refugees from several African countries, Syria, and Russia who have been arriving in our town, distributed by the authorities according to some bureaucratic rule and with only a minimum of help or orientation. I am part of this group of volunteers, and suddenly I find myself teaching German to a Syrian university student who is more than eager to pick up his studies as quickly as possible. Last week he came to our house three times, and it was five times this week - that adds up! I will also be taking a two-year old child to the doctor next week, the appointment had to be made, plus calls to obtain a medical insurance guarantee form from the authorities... But I have also been invited to a wonderfully tasting Syrian dinner

I don't think I've had such good food in a long time!
M first real Syrian dinner, cooked by Anas.

and played cards with them all. I have learned the Arabic words for green, red, blue and yellow - the color in UNO - and forgotten them again. Learning a foreign language is difficult, indeed. And being confronted with a totally different kind of society, far away from home without a decent chance to go back in peace must be even more difficult. And I haven't even heard any of their stories, right now we are only dealing with day-to-day matters here!
Time is even scarcer now than it was before, but I do think this is necessary.

But I have been doing things in the textile realm.
I tried my hand at a bit of wool dyeing, in a friend's studio. Another friend of hers was there , too, and we could easily make out that we are the two most opposite types of dyers you can imagine. Sophia meticulously painted her skein of wool with a brush, . I, too, had mixed the colours to do that. But when I realized that I had made a mistake by adding something like 6 ml of black instead of 3 ml I went 'back' to my kind of dyeing. Put the skein in and liberally pour colour over it - and wait for the surprise result in the end.

Sophia

Uta

We tried a method in the micro-wave oven, and although I liked the speed with which it was finished, I am not so sure whether I like the way the wool changed. But I haven't tried out the method in the pot yet, so I can't say whether I would like that method's results better. I do like the colours I had mixed:

This is the finished lot:

I am still debating with myself whether I should do more wool dyeing or not. My mind keeps changing about it - and I can't say right now what I will do.

I have also been working on my final piece for the International Threads exhibition in Prague.

I am finally doing something in the techniques I learned at the workshop with Jan & Jean last June - and strictly speaking it is not a quilt, as it won't be layered. But I think it is going to be really good, although you can't really tell from these pictures, where the avalon hasn't been dissolved yet.

And I have been dyeing the March collection for the fabric club, after my fabric finally (!) arrived. The last pieces were ironed today, I will be able to take it to the fair on Sunday and then ship it next week, juhuu! (Colours will be officially revelaed on Sunday.)
'On the side' I kept throwing in a few more of my erratic pieces of Shibori experiments:

The piece on the left is the piece that was yellow above -
the results of the two clamped and tied pieces can be seen below.

I had hoped for clearer circles

This one is all blurry - 

I haven't undone the pebbles yet, so don't know the results of those yet. I'm not too thrilled with the two shown above. Perhaps my expectations would have been met better if I had used pre-soda-ash-soaked fabric? I think I'm getting to the point where I might decide to end my dabbling with shibori... not my type of dyeing! But we'll see.
I also photographed all the remaining snow-dyed fabrics from this winter, but as I haven't had a chance to upload them to the website, I won't show any of them here yet. But you could come to Erding, Germany, this Sunday and take a look!