Safe At Home First Cuts

 I started in on actually cutting my pieces for the first row of the Safe At Home quilt. Several shades of grey and golds are stacked up and waiting. I used the box from the Modern Quilter's Box since it was sitting out on my table and handy.

 A shadowy shot of the coral and orange strips ready for cutting down into smaller pieces.

The detritus left behind.

Staying Positive

I've been accused of being too positive at various times in my life. But not so much lately, it's been hard adjusting to all of this, hasn't it? So much is up in the air and unknown and just plain scary. So here's a few things I've found helpful lately to keep my spirits up.

I read this essay by Rebecca Solnit "The Impossible Has Already Happened, what Coronavirus can teach us about hope." and it just...helped.

Thanks to the weekly Brain Pickings newsletter (which I really recommend subscribing to) here's an amazingly moving performance by David Byrne and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus of one of the most uplifting songs I've heard in absolutely ages.



Recently reading Anne Lamott's recent book, Almost Everything, Notes on Hope.

Reading this from UC  Irvine about why how and why our sense of time is being changed by the coronavirus. It helped me put things in perspective.

Reading this from Chuck Wendig about how we are all Calvin & Hobbes in quarantine.

Another thing that has brough me some joy is watching the SF Opera's free streaming on the weekends. So far we've watched two, and it's been absolutely captivating. The costumes and backdrops are amazing. Last weekend's was "The Capulets and The Montague"s" which is not based on Romeo & Juliet by Shakespeare but instead on a 1600's popular story instead. It was beautifully done and a nice little twist on the familiar tale. The previous week it was Mephistopheles, and it was delicious. Here's a little treat that some of the opera folks are doing from home:




Turns out that watching musical performances is a great distraction for me, it reminds me of the beauty my fellow human beings continue to create. That gives me a lot of hope. This Wednesday I'm going to watch the Dave Matthews Band, they're replaying a different live performance every week.

Hope you're doing well and staying safe & healthy!

Flower Friday

 A begonia blossom on a blue bell.

 One of our scented geraniums, look at that five-armed pistil, I love the shadow it is casting on the petal.

 As seen on our daily walk a California Native- Sticky Monkey Flower.

 A California Native - Hummingbird Sage (Salvia spathacea) I love the fruity scent of the leaves. And the deer don't eat it!

It might be a common iris, but this color always makes me happy. Especially when the light hits the petals.

The fancy iris in the front yard bloomed again. Still don't know where this one came from and whether it's a spontaneous mutation, but I'm happy it's producing flowers every year.

 And now two pictures from my DH. The Peace rose, this one was here when we moved into this house back in 1994. It always has the most blossoms of all the roses.

Calendula, reseeding faithfully, year after year.

Safe At Home

 One of my local quilt shops (LQS) is Modern Handmade in Scotts Valley. Right after the Shelter In Place (SIP) was declared they started an 8 week row quilt pattern. The quilt is named Safe At Home and it is still available for download.

I loved the name of the quilt, the idea of a weekly row by row and the initial quilt block design and hot vibrant colors. And then I didn't start it and I didn't start it for various reasons.
But now I have actually gotten to a point where I can begin. Hooray!
So...here is my fabric pull and I'm off to start cutting. I may just stick with batiks, but I've pulled some prints too, we shall see.

Wandering Wednesday - The Slopes of Haleakalā

Since I'm not really wandering much, on Wednesdays or any other days, here's a blast from the past from our trip to Maui a few years ago. This was our non-sunrise visit to Haleakalā National Park. The drive up was lovely, scattered clouds, brilliant blue sky, perfect Maui weather.

 As soon as we got into the lava fields, the landscape changed, it was a very distinct line. I had always seen pictures of silverswords in other gardens mixed with other plants and thought they were beautiful and strange. But the utter starkness of the volcanic landscape in comparison to this luminous plant was so striking I was breathless. Or maybe it was the elevation, who knows?

 The switchback road quickly ascended. And the cloud cover increased.

 I like the simplicity of this picture, the way it's divided up is very soothing to me.

 Already at ten thousand feet.

 The clouds sort of cleared as we parked at the summit.

 I snagged this panorama picture showing the observatory buildings.

 See it was even sunny enough for a goofy selfie picture at the summit.

 And then it wasn't. It went back and forth several times. Brilliant blue to dark grey and back again. Here's Marc in front of what is probably a very nice outlook station if there was anything to overlook besides swirling clouds.

 Then it cleared again. Boom.

 And then the clouds came back and obliterated it all from view, like a wet blanket pulled over everything.

It was awesome being in the clouds up on top of a volcano.

Box of Joy

What a nice surprise on Mother's Day when we picked up our mail, my first Modern Quilter's Box had arrived. My local quilt store (LQS) Modern Handmade offers a monthly subscription box, and I hadn't signed up before figuring I have Enough Fabric for several lifetimes. But then the SIP happened and I really wanted to support this awesome little shop. Isn't it a lovely design? I'm going to use it for storing a project in process inside of it instead of recycling it right away.

 A look at all the fun goodies inside!

• A bunch of FQ's (9?I think? They're in the wash right now so I can't count them!) from the Art Gallery Fabrics new collection:  Marrakesh Fusion. So very very BoHo so I reallly love all these patterns and colors all together.
• A pattern by MasterpieceQuilting Nancy Scott - Barn Raised Birds - I've never done a Birds In The Air quilt, maybe it's time now that I have a pattern
• A rainbow Choose Joy sticker which is utterly perfect for this moment in time
• A That Purple Thang - always good to have a backup, this is a very useful tool that I will add to my to-go bag.
• A type of Stash tea I've never tried, Meyer Lemon, it was very good, but my advice is to not add milk as it is quite lemony, unless you like curdled milk in your tea of course.
• A Stroopwafel that was so nice when heated up on top of the cup of lemon tea, all gooey and caramelly.

I'm so glad that I signed up for this box. I know it was hard to get it out the door and mailed this month, so I very much appreciate Modern Handmade for getting it done.

First! Flower! Friday!

I now pronounce Fridays to be Flower Fridays.

One of the special irises we planted a few years ago has finally bloomed. We bought a bunch from a local iris farm, Brook Lomond Iris Farm.

They look nice with the regular plain old purple irises that I have plenty of already.

This rose, oh this rose. It was here when we moved in all those years ago. It's survived benign neglect, droughts, dogs, gophers and invasive redwoods. But every year it seems to get even more beautiful.

 The Cécile Brünner rose is doing very well this year. I love seeing it every morning.

The bees are really loving on the Pride of Madeira which is enormous now.

A Small Part of 25,000,000

 Well, the deadline finally arrived so I had to stop stitching on my 25,000,000 piece. There is going to be an online exhibit and then once the museums and venues reopen, then there will be real world exhibits. I really look forward to getting to see both types of exhibits. So, this is how my final piece looks, note it is an inside picture. It is an off-white fabric, so this is more accurate than the outside pictures I took.

And here it is outside, a little hard to photograph in the bright sunlight, kind of washed out, it is not this white. So I took a bunch of pictures both inside and out.

 I'll admit that I'm kind of obsessed with how this part turned out.

 So every stitch is meant to represent one refugee. I made trails and tracks of the pathways the refugees travel to find safety. Sometimes there are large groupings. The X's do not represent deaths,  my intention was to represent pauses or stops in the journeys.

 I really like this many pathways crossing one.