Work, and its pleasures

Last time I wrote about something relating to my work life, in the first half of 2022 (about knitting pink socks, my absolute non-favorite color, for somebody whose favorite color it was) that post resulted in a conversation with the head nurse, who is a friend in fibers. Subsequently I took the post down, but the conversation had also shown me how many aspects of the work situation there were not contributing to me feeling satisfied. Follow-up conversations with my husband led me to start looking for a new job. Which I took in July 2023, and where I was pretty happy in the beginning. I am still content with the overall feeling within the team in total, although by now some dampening of my initial enthusiasm has happened, regarding organizational aspects, the head nurse’s behavior in general – I do think she is a bit of a brat with less than good manners, and I do not hesitate to say that here - and a few other things that must not be spelled out in detail. Some of these aspects caused me to cut back on working hours in April, now only 3 days a week, some others, more dissatisfying ones, have occurred since, and I am again considering options. Of which there are not many, as I don’t want to go back into a hospital, I do like the fact that I don’t have to work night shifts in dialysis, nor Sundays.

With three days a week it has gotten a lot easier to arrange a few days off by placing early requests so that more flexibility arises to move around. Thus I can go and take care of my ageing parents, or plan a trip to a quilt festival, for example. My trip to Birmingham was possible by using up only one of my vacation days, for example, although I was gone for 5 days altogether.

It is amazing, though, how much of one’s life quality is affected by that environment you encounter in your workplace. Perhaps I was naïve because I had not been involved in a lot of work environments with many people – academics in the field I was in tend to work individually, after that I was self-employed as a fabric dyer, and the other part of work environment was the family at home. I didn’t have to deal with the issues I am facing now. Perhaps I am too old to be disrespectfully kept on at by somebody who is only a bit more than half my age and lacking leadership qualities. Perhaps I am getting a bit sensitive in this regard, but most of the other team members are saying the same thing. Perhaps …?

I cut back on the working hours in April because I thought I had found enough of a footing in the field that I could now turn back to having a bit of making time in my real life. As it turns out, it is not easy to start being creative, with these things going on in the background, even on the days when I am ‘not working’. I still make as in knitting, spinning, fiddling small pieces of fabrics around paper templates for a wildly oversized something so I can fondle fabrics, but that is far from the kind of quilting I used to do. I have lost my former ambition for marking my spot in the art quilt world.

But when I decided I wanted to enter a piece in the competition for the Prague Patchwork Meeting that has now moved to Brno, and took note of the entry date, I finally returned to my sewing room and the design wall. 

 

The entry guidelines call for ‘unusual materials’ to be used in the piece, and I have a certain range of options that can be included. I had forgotten how it feels to be piecing fabric together, getting back up to the design wall, putting it where I thought it would go, seeing that it might not have added up in exactly the way I had thought it would. 

 

And how it feels to sit and look at the design wall, waiting for an idea how to move on. That is the real kind of work that is enjoyable. I hope it will tie me over the other stuff, and give me strength to just bide my time there until we find out about my husband's health, and possible changes on his side.

 

'Meeting' somebody via Zoom

I don’t know how it happened that at some point Sarah C. Swett appeared in my instagram feed a few years ago . But I do know that I was delighted by her posts, enchanted by her comic drawings and always had a smile on my face when I had seen a new post of hers, or read a blog post. Making yarn out of coffee filters. A Sweater, somewhat slanted. Making yarn out of milkweed plants by meticulously securing the fibers, spinning these - and then weaving tapestries from them… Stuff like that. Things I find absolutely fascinating to read about, being able to go part of the way with them (I mean, I do spin, I quilt, sometimes I hand-sew large quilts, I have hand-quilted large quilts, I knit…), but not all the way entirely. (I don’t do hand-spindling, for one thing.) Sarah has meanwhile changed her mode of publication from her blog of many years (a field guide to needlework) to The Gusset on Substack (find it here) and is continuing to delight readers with her adventures in fibers, weaving, comics and the new-in-her-life dog.

When the topic to be covered for the German Guild’s magazine called for ‘Strafarbeit’ (work/chore as a punishment) I knew I wanted to get in touch with Sarah and write about her. The things she does are nothing like a Strafarbeit for her, I knew that before I talked to her, but I know there are many people out there who would consider these activities exactly that. (I mean – when you knit in public, how frequently do you get comments about the amount of work, the time it takes, that the person commenting would never know how to do that nor care to do that either?) Perhaps not too many people like these appear amongst the members of the Patchworkgilde, but even there you can find some who would be appalled if you tried to talk them into doing a bit of English Paper Piecing, for them EPP is very close to a Strafarbeit indeed.

I got in touch with Sarah, she was gracious enough to grant me two extended zoom interviews, supplied several pictures of her works, explained a lot of details about finding, harvesting, stripping, preparing, weaving milkweed, doing the coffee filter thing and other aspects of life that I considered myself to be a very fortunate person indeed, having to write on the topic of Strafarbeit for the guild. It was like meeting a soul mate, and it felt as if I had found a friend out there in the depths of Idaho. Talking to her came easily, and it wasn’t even necessary to prepare a series of questions to exert any information from her because it all was one easy-flowing conversation about common interest matters. I could have gone on talking to her for hours, hadn’t it been via computer screens.

Of course, I am only one of her zillions of admiring followers, and living far away that is what I will remain, an admiring follower from the distance. But it was an interesting experience to feel such a degree of connectedness merely on the zoom platform.

The issue I am talking about will be published by the middle of September, and I am not going to show any of the photos here, merely a wip-photo of my Sweater Somewhat Slanted. It hasn’t made a whole lot of progress in the past few weeks as I was busy spinning for the Tour de Fleece and with all the other things going on lately, but I am planning to get back to it soon-ish.

 

The pattern can be bought via Sarah’s shop on her website, or on Ravelry, the free website for knitters, crocheters and fiber artists .

Sarah had a wonderful article in the spinning magazine Ply a couple of years ago and she was recently featured on this podcast.

Instances like this make me happy, being a ‘writer’ for the guild magazine is certainly enriching in many aspects.

EQA (European Quilter Association) at FoQ (Festival of Quilts, Birmingham)

 Last Thursday I got up almost as early as I would have, had I been going to early shift at work. However, I was more fortunate, took the train to the airport, boarded a plane to Birmingham, and got to spend four lovely days at the Festival of Quilts, 20^th anniversary edition. 

 

It was the first time for me in a while as I hadn’t been back there yet after the pandemic, so I assume 2019 was the last time I was there, just before I went on to South Africa. This year I did not enter a quilt myself, as I am still not convinced that shipping to FoQ after Brexit has become feasible again. One member of the German Guild’s report on her difficulties in getting her quilt there on time, indeed, at all, has merely increased this conviction of mine. I was there mainly for the EQA meeting and exhibition, and as writer for the German Guild’s magazine, looking for interesting topics and possible future interviewees.

It was interesting to be back and see the differences. It feels a lot better with the additional space in the aisles between the vendors. The ventilation system must have been improved dramatically because it was almost drafty and sometimes near on cold in the halls, which I don’t remember from earlier visits, which used to be a bit stuffy, very crowded in the vendors’ area, and not a whole lot of space between display walls for the exhibitions of the competition quilts.

A number of the interesting vendors I would have liked to shop with were not there – some of whom I know have gone out of business. Overall, supplies on offer did not fulfill my needs, I only bought a few pieces from Leah Higgins and four African fabrics fat quarters.

One thing I noticed was that there seemed to be fewer international visitors. I believe last time I was there I could hardly move from one place to the other without running into several people that needed talking to, this was not the case this time around. Yes, I did meet some people, but it didn’t seem so numerous. And I must say, I was not particularly impressed with most of the First Prize winners. I am not sure whether that results from the fact that by now I have seen so many quilts in my life that not much will give me a ‘wow’-effect-reaction. Similar as with the yearning to be able to listen to Johannes Brahms’ Requiem or Antonin Dvorak’s 9^th Symphony for the first time again and repeat that feeling of awe and admiration.

But as I said, I went there for the EQA-meeting, and although we had some serious business to attend to, 

 

we had a good time together. 

 

The exhibition had been put up by a few other international representatives, 

 

I came when the festival had already been officially opened, and stayed on to take the exhibition down after the closing on Sunday afternoon. When I remembered the amount of work (and anxiety!) that had gone into preparations for this particular exhibition earlier this year, I was very pleased that the final effect turned out to be so convincing. We were showing a carpet of flowers, and visitors were delighted at the overall appearance.

Taking it down is always so much faster than putting it up!

Finished - Mary Hunter (2nd from left) took them directly to the
airport and proceeded to put them up in Ireland the next day,
i.e. yesterday. That must have been the fastest turnaround of any EQA exhibition
ever.

 The future of EQA-exhibitions at FoQ is everything but certain, and we are trying to figure out how to proceed from here. It will take negotiations with many players, everything burns down to the question of costs, and right now we don’t even know whether we will be able to go back next year. It is rather difficult to integrate the amount of volunteer work, outside effects and appearances created by that in quilting communities – how much of a pull factor is a small quilt hanging in Birmingham for an ‘ordinary’ quilter to come and visit, and does that justify the amount of hotel costs we have been granted so far? – with a strictly business-oriented organization that sets up the festival. We will see.

A bit of 20 Perspectives was thrown in as well – 

 

Allison James (left) and Ildiko Polyak (middle)

and I met Joe Cunningham in his exhibition, whom I will visit in his gallery in November, 

 

so it was a time with many different and interesting encounters.

You have a new subscriber…

About eight months ago I signed up for a Substack subscription/account/identity – I don’t even know, what it really is called. I had seen that Margaret Atwood was now publishing on Substack and I wanted to follow those posts. Soon followed India Flint, and by Sarah C. Swett (more on her in another post in a few days). As for ‘browsing’ and finding interesting new voices, that has not turned out to be the case for me, so far. I do not want to spend too much time on it and going down a rabbit hole, as I would rather spend more time making things than being caught in the digital web. 

But imagine my surprise when, a few weeks ago, I received an email with the title ‘you have a new subscriber’, and supposedly somebody has signed up to follow me on substack. I am not aware that I have registered as a writer, I thought I was just signing up for reader, and the only thing I have written are a couple of comments where I am allowed to. I am not a paying subscriber to India Flint, so I am not allowed to comment on her, although I might have given her a hint on the Bach piece she was talking about a little while ago. I do understand that this app is offering a place for writers where it is supposed to be easier for them to earn money for their writing by acquiring paying subscribers. While I am considering upgrading, perhaps, I had not even remotely thought about writing on Substack myself. When I was young, into my teenage years, I did say I wanted to be a writer. To be honest - the two or three novels I wrote as a teen were lousy and have been lost to the obliteration of times. And somewhere along the line I gave up that yearning to write novels. Can't come up with a good plot and pull it throuhg, although I did find three or four fantastic first sentences that would have made good entries.

I have indeed published a book – my PhD thesis, not exactly a bestseller that made me rich, and, to be honest, I don’t even know whether it could still be bought, after all, that was 20 years ago. I have written a good number of more or less interesting newspaper articles for our local paper, but gave that up a while ago because that was rather low paid. I write this blog – not regularly enough, and, for my liking, not always interestingly enough, although some posts were pretty good, I think. And I write for the German Guild’s quarterly magazine for members, which is fun. Unfortunately a couple of times the people I wanted to write about had just been ‘done’ by the commercial magazine Patchwork Professional, which meant that we put off the feature in the Guild’s for a while and may return to it at a later point. 

However, I wonder what that lone subscriber was expecting, how he (male name) came across ‘me’, and why on earth he subscribed to somebody who had not published a single post. 

Since April I have been working 60% and had thought I would be more relaxed for sitting down at the sewing machine. Then I would have had interesting stuff to write about here, too. Hasn’t happened. The 60% is still encompassing a lot of emotional energy, my husband’s illness is not exactly for the light-hearted, or at least I can’t take it light-heartedly. And July was Tour de Fleece, as mentioned in my last post. As last year, I spun along. This year I did not have 3 weeks of isolation, so I wasn’t expecting to accomplish really much in that area, but as it is the closing date today and I looked at what I managed to spin, I think I did pretty well. 

First goal had been to ‘spin every day I am in town’, and finish as much of the red as possible. That happened pretty quickly. 

Went ahead to spin the third thread for the 3-ply.

I plied the red, 

 

then re-started on this very fine cashmere-something mixture (which I am still working on), for spinning at home, and the bobbin is much fuller now.

 

And carded most of my blues together to have another spinning project for when I take the traveling wheel to go and spin somewhere. 

 

Which I did a bit this week, twice, ending up with an impressively full blue bobbin right now, and still a good load of more blues to spin in the future. 

 

But the tour is over. A lanolin bath was in order.

 

I am not measuring, but I like the pictures of what I have done. So perhaps, hopefully, back to the sewing machine again. Putting on the backburner the things at work that have been tying up my creative energy more than I appreciate. And – I am going to Festival of Quilts this coming Thursday. That should be nice. But not a whole lot of sewing will be going on during those days, either.

TdF 2023, Rest Day

 The Tour de Fleece 2023 started a week ago Saturday and I am 'participating' again, as has become a bit of a custom for me during the last years. Not taking it too seriously, for example, I didn't post myself a special 'challenge' yesterday, although it was an especially hard day for the cyclists. 

Final goal of stage 9 yesterday... I really do like biking,
but I am not sure I would want to go up this hill in a race!

Fortunately, this year I am not in isolation with the grand sickness, but that, of course, means, that I don't get to spin along the tour exactly on every day. Nevertheless, I have done pretty well so far in terms of yarn produced.

I spun the largest part of this red, only a small amount had already been on the bobbin.

Then I carded a remnant of some orange-red-y fibers I had with gray and Nassi silk.

It is supposed to be the third thread in a 3-ply, and I am now filling the bobbin gradually.

I am more than halfway through the carded lot and thinking about plying a first attempt with the little bit of the one thread on the picture above, which, if I do a bit of weighing and calculating, might tell me whether the pure red is enough or needs to be spun on a bit.

But I have also finished the "Entangled in Yellow" binding (now it only needs a tunnel). 

 

And because I felt a severe urge to start a new quilt I have been wanting to get going with I also threw a few turquoise scraps on the wall - and ended up fiddling with this little boat that wants to be made. Not sure where it will take me, or how big it wants to be.

 

In the realm of establishing order I tried to introduce a kind of inventory of my spinning fibers as well. These are not all of the boxes I own, but at least they now carry an indication of what is in them. Makes it easier to find something. Or to be reminded of all the different things available for carding and spinning experiments.

Confusing times

Would you pay a quarter million (in any currency) to enter a dilapidated tin can that would take you into a cold section of the ocean near a famous wreck to see this wreck only through the projection of a camera, which you could see just as well by just sending that little boat-y-thing down unpeopled? Yes, the Titanic has a reputation, and its sinking was a catastrophe. But these past years we have had several ship wrecks or catastrophes in the Mediterranean, and the number of victims taken together is far larger than the numbers who drowned in the Titanic catastrophe. Our newspaper today printed the sob-story of the widow and mother of two of the victims, and how she is affected, as she told it in a BBC interview. I do feel very sorry for her, it must be terrible to lose two family members at once, and in a situation like that. But who is talking about all the widows and mothers and children who lose their relatives in the Mediterranean waters, and often they don’t even know what happened, contact with their relatives just stopped. 5 rich people dead in the North Atlantic (who is paying for those search missions?) – thousands of poor and desperate people dead in the Mediterranean, and the EU is paying heavily to maintain Frontex patrol boats to keep these people out of EU waters, ignoring distress calls. There is speculation now that push-back boats may have caused capsizing by ramming – my tax money is paying for this, and I am finding it distressingly difficult to think about it.

Then there was this fake? thing in Russia – or do you believe this was a real live rebellion, when nobody held them up, and everything was settled by negotiation within a few hours?

Germany has a first district governor from the very right wing party that is being watched by Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, and support for the front ruling party Social Democrats on a Federal level is plummeting … What is happening in the world right now? How can this multiconfusion get stopped - or even only endured?

In situations like this my making procedures tend to turn to the small-smaller-smallest, in terms of pieces I am thinking of assembling.

 It's all more a thing about keeping the hands busy rather than making art. When the hands have something to do it keeps the mind from wandering...

And then grand ideas have a hard time keeping their head above surface. But I do want to start on a piece to enter for the challenge for the Brno festival, an idea that has been hovering in my head for a while, and that I have gathered material for. So cross your fingers that I will get around to it.

Last Tuesday the 20 Perspectives group had the internal reveal of our pieces for the ‘Monochrome’ challenge. Today the individual blog posts were published on the group blog. For the reveal mine wasn’t entirely finished, and I thought all I needed to add was the facing, but when I started on that this morning by measuring the width I realized that once again I have a size issue. I use the parquet tiles on my floor to ensure straight edges, and realized it is one inch too narrow to meet the required width.

 

Although I was working with a preinstalled ‘frame’ on the design wall… it just doesn’t seem to be my strong point. And despite the fact that this is not a juried exhibition where a piece just a bit too narrow will be excluded simply because of this formality, I have decided to cheat just a little while on the ‘finished’ photo on the Perspectives blog until I have repaired the lack of one inch and then replace the finished photo with the new one.

Readers of this blog will know, but who will notice for real?

Amidst all this outside confusion and my son’s High School Graduation Ceremony I did manage to last-minute-enter my SAQA Benefit Auction piece. 

 

Red Eye of Reflection - Donation for Saqa Benefit Auction 2023

And immediately sent it off, paying dearly for airmail and global package. €58 for a parcel of less than 300 grams – this quilt better sell at a high level to make it all worth while!

Temperature Quilts, EQA-Diversity, AGM – Patchwork Gilde Deutschland in Dinkelsbühl

 

The Patchwork Gilde Deutschland holds an annual patchwork event around the legally required AGM meeting in order to attract many members to attend that meeting. The location varies. Last year, it was held in Meiningen, for the first time in what was formerly GDR. This year, we returned to Dinkelsbühl, a Frankonian town with a very compact and well-preserved medieval inner city and appearance, north of Augsburg.

 

I made the mistake to drive there after a full morning shift, and on the afternoon before the holiday – and I hadn’t believed the navigation system regarding the route it wanted me to take. So the trip took considerably longer because of a detour, I had to take a power nap on a rest area, and afterwards there was a traffic jam due to an accident and closing of the road… it took me almost 6 hours to get there, whereas it should have been a trip of only a little over 3 hours. But it was fun to be with my fellow volunteers from the Guild, and we started off the event with a joint dinner in a very scenic and delicious restaurant with beer brewing on the premises. On Thursday, we hung the exhibitions, according to a detailed plan, and on Thursday evening the official opening took place.

 

As the inner city is not very large and all exhibition venues were within the city wall it was easy to access all the exhibitions and get to see them all, despite the fact that I was stewarding the EQA-exhibition several times.

 

I had been so stressed out with receiving the quilts for the temperature quilt exhibition, the EQA quilts for the exhibition by the international representatives and the postal box mess-up that it took me a long time to calm down. But it did happen eventually, and I was able to enjoy the days there already, at least a bit, and even more calming down happened after I returned home.

Hanging "Sew EQA - EQA näht"
with strong and effective helpers.

 

I had been responsible for organizing the exhibition by EQA International Representatives, which was part of the stress beforehand due to the shipping issues. The location where the “Sew EQA – EQA näht” exhibition was shown is a rather rustic barn, storage room for stage props for a historical play enacting a mythical part of the town history. I think the surroundings were very interesting as an exhibition space, although it was a bit cold at times.

 

And I had been partly responsible for the display of the temperature quilts that were the result of the online group Bea Galler and I had led during 2022. Both exhibitions were very well received.

 

#temperaturcode22 by Bea Galler

*Year befor my 60th Birthday by Carola Runge

4 Seasons in Freiberg by Yvonne Joseph

I managed to see all the other exhibitions, although I did not take many pictures there. As always, I loved the children’s challenge quilts. It is fabulous what they come up with in answer to a cue, I always make sure to see them, and to cast a vote for the prize-giving at the last day.

 

I wish I were a chicken by ??? -
I didn't find out the makers name as I did
not attend the prize giving ceremony

Next year’s AGM is going to be held in Moers, near Düsseldorf. Haven’t been there yet – should be interesting!