Finish it Friday ~ That 70s Quilt

The first quilt top from this post, the one my mom started way-back-when and then passed on to me still not-quite-as-way-back-but-still-pretty-far is done! And don't you love the way the alternating rectangles and triangles make that cool diagonal pattern?

Since my mom got the original pattern idea from a movie about poverty and tragedy (she still doesn't remember which, but I still think it was along the lines of Coal Miner's Daughter or The Dollmaker), it wouldn't have been right to pay a hundred bucks to have it professionally quilted. And besides, tying is more appropriate to the 70s aesthetic. So is puffy polyester batting, which is all my quilt lady had in stock when I finally made it to her shop--she's moved way out to the boondocks (boondocks that are far away from the boondocks where I live), and she's downsized, becoming more of a longarm quilting service than a fabric store, which makes me no end of sad. But she did give me the idea of turning the quilt, which saved me the hassle of making and sewing on binding.

The purple part of the backing is a length of fabric I bought at our local department store--Reny's--way back when they still carried fabric, with this project in mind. I thought it had a groovy 70s vibe. Unfortunately I didn't buy enough for the whole quilt back. At the quilt shop, I picked up some plain muslin to finish it off with, but that seemed far too dull for this particular blanket. So I dug through my stash and came up with this orange that has an almost imperceptible leaf print. I had just enough to make two strips along two edges of the purple. I spent several TV-watching sessions threading embroidery floss through each corner and the center of each block, and voila! A bright, cheerful, totally cozy, ecstatically retro throw for those chilly evenings in front of the TV (yeah, a lot of TV happening these days).

Dollhouse Updates ~ Tiny Carpentry Projects

I thought I was done with the dollhouse, but every once in a while, I get something in my head that it absolutely *needs* and I don't rest until I've made it come to pass. One thing I planned to add all along, was a desktop tablet--everything the writer/artist living in the house would need for creation. I had this piece of lucite-like material in a desk shape (something my dad brought home from work a good 40 years ago for me to use in this very dollhouse). It makes for an ultra-modern workspace. 

I honored that aesthetic with a lamp made of two buttons and a thin plastic tube (found in my "box of random things that might come in handy some day") and added a blotter (I don't really know what purpose a blotter serves, but I've always wanted one), a set of watercolors (piece of popsicle stick, painted) with a brush (toothpick) and a water jar (bead), a pencil (toothpick again), and a small book (paper, folded and sewn). A spool stool and a groovy rug make this corner of the attic bedroom the coziest little workspace.

For the other projects I've wanted to complete, I've had to take up carpentry--very tiny carpentry. First I gave the bathroom mirror (a piece of shiny silver paper that I'd added when the boys were little) a popsicle stick frame. Then, using some little plywood pieces (also from the "box of random things that might come in handy some day") and a toothpick, I built a shelf with towel bar for the wall over the tub. A fancy towel, groovy bathmat, and pair of shampoo bottles (glass beads), along with some seashells (every bathroom needs seashells so that bathing feels like a trip to the beach) and a cup (bead), finish the room.

My Fiesta ware-like dish collection continues to grow, and so the kitchen needed some more storage space (just like my kitchen in real life). So I built a little wall shelf (more little pieces of plywood and a popsicle stick) to go over the table.

A set of colorful mugs necessitated a mug tree (chop stick, toothpick, and button).

Here's how the kitchen looks in its current state:

Finally (but not really finally), another problem that corresponds to one of my own: the growing book collection necessitated a bookcase. I made this one with more pieces of plywood--they have an angle at one end, and I made use of this to create a dictionary-stand-type bookshelf--and a toothpick (to keep the books from sliding off the top).

I didn't think about the books being mostly dark green when I decided to paint it that color, but I think it works okay. (The books here are field guides to wildflowers, birds, and moths/butterflies, Pride and Prejudice, plus two "dummy" books that look old; in other parts of the house are Winnie the Pooh, The Night Before Christmas, a dictionary, and the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook--see the kitchen photos--which is a pretty good collection of essential books, if you ask me.)

Book Stack ~ January 2021

Last year my book challenge was to read 52 of the books in my to-be-read stack. Not only did I not come anywhere close to this number, but my stack continued to grow over the year, because I kept ordering more books as a coping mechanism for dealing with the apocalypse. So I'm trying again this year: The stack on the right is fiction. I plan to read it "all" (there are somewhere around 30ish). I'm also not allowed to buy any more fiction until this stack is done. The stacks on the left are nonfiction. I plan to read the lower, front stack (as part of a long-term project I'm working on) and *some* of the others, but no definite number. The lower stack on the right is poetry, which I also plan to finish. (The very leftmost stack--basket and bag--are magazines I need to deal with; either read and recycle, pass on, or file if there's something essential I want to save within. Wish me luck!

I'm already off to a good start, having read five from the stack in January.

Fiction: 

I *finally* read The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, which is one of those books one should already have read, and one I've been *meaning* to read for a long time. And it's soooo good. Just really fascinating delve into the lives of these characters--four Chinese women immigrants and their four first-generation American daughters. The characterization is tremendous and the storytelling and atmosphere are wonderful. So glad I finally read it. 

I also read The Knocker on Death's Door, a mystery by Ellis Peters that my mom sent me around Christmastime in a box of books. It was a pretty entertaining read with a twist ending, and a fun old-style puzzler, with an omniscient, head-hopping narrator that you don't usually get these days.

Several of the books on the stack are collections of short stories. I think I burnt out on short stories during my MFA program, when that's all I read, because I almost never think of grabbing a book of short stories when deciding what to read next. So I've decided to assign myself one per month, and schedule Short Story Saturdays, to make sure I get these read. January's read was Waltzing the Cat by Pam Houston. I'd read Houston's first book of short stories a few years ago and didn't love-love it, but this one I enjoyed much more and I liked the stories better as the book went on...probably something to do with there being less focus on the main character finding a man.

Nonfiction:

While I was reading that mammoth collection of nature writing I wrote about last month, I got in the habit of starting most mornings with both a poem and a nature essay, so I kept that habit up and finished reading The Colors of Nature, edited by Allison Hawthorn Deming and Lauret Savoy, which I'd started in the fall, an anthology of nature writing by writers of color. I love how this book expands on the notion of nature to include not just the wild or pastoral, but also the agricultural, the urban, the compromised and broken, and it challenges the genre to not only praise and sentimentalize but also argue and fight for environmental justice and make seen the invisible people and pollution.

Coincidentally, I read Lauret Savoy's essay collection, Trace, which travels through different American landscapes, searching for Savoy's family stories and revealing aspects of US history that are usually ignored or papered over. It's a lovely book, quiet in tone but powerful in message, and one I expect I'll return to again and again to let the words make a deeper impression.

Finish it Friday ~ Two Quilt Tops

Over the past year, thanks to the pandemic, I’ve dealt with a lot of deferred maintenance, big (like repainting the exterior trim on our house) and small (like repairing my favorite bracelet). It felt good to get these nagging tasks off my list, so I decided to make my word, and theme, for 2021 “finish,” and I wrote a list of 21 things that I’ve either started and left hanging or have been meaning to get around to doing—from writing projects to reading lists to crafts. Enter these two throw quilts, both of which started with my mom and have been sitting in my to-do pile a very long time.

The first is this retro number that my mom must have started in the very early 80s, and passed on to me, partially assembled at least 20 years ago. I finished putting it together way back then—mostly. I was short a couple of rectangles and had assembled on block backwards. It was the work of less than an hour to take apart the bad block, cut a few rectangles, and finish it already.

Many of the fabrics in the quilt I recognize from dresses my mom made me when I was little.

Others predate me, but are seriously groovy.

The alternating blocks of rectangles and triangles makes a neat diagonal pattern overall. I recall my mOm telling me got the pattern idea from a quilt in a movie—something tragic like Coal Miner’s Daughter or The Dollmaker.

The second quilt project also came from my mom—she cut out a zillion “wavy charms” during a destashing episode a number of years ago and sent them to various quilters in the family. Two things stymied me on this one—there weren’t enough pieces for a whole quilt, and I wasn’t sure how to sew together the wavy edges of the charms. I solved the first problem by letting a lot of years and my own stash build up, and the second by just diving in with sewing.

A little stretching here and a pin or two there, and it worked out fine. This quilt was a walk down memory lane, too, with fabrics that go back at least to my first communion dress (tiny strawberries on a white background). In putting these very disparate prints together, I mainly focused on alternating light and dark, warm and cool, floral and geometric, older and newer, since there was otherwise no rhyme or reason to them. And though you’d never choose any of these fabrics to “go” together, I like the overall effect. 

A New Hope

My suffragette Christmas tree ornament had an inauguration party in the dollhouse
on Wednesday. When asked what she thought of the first woman being elected
Vice President 100 years after women gained the franchise, she said,
"What took so long?" and also, "Vice President?"

The insurrection at the US Capitol two weeks ago shook me, hard. I had bad dreams. I felt sick all over. I could not stop scrolling the news, searching for stories of consequences for the rioters. When I went grocery shopping two days later, I felt suspicious of every person in the store. Of each I wondered if they were likely to be driven to mayhem and murder when things didn't go their way, when driven to the edge of insanity by lies and misinformation. 

In short, I felt traumatized. Maybe it was because the day before the insurrection I'd had my own run-in with people loitering around the Statehouse, looking to start trouble (I won't call them protestors; I've participated in many protests, and no one has ever screamed in the face of a passerby--or anyone else). But I believe that anyone of conscience in this country, anyone who's gotten teary-eyed while humming along to "My Country 'Tis of Thee," anyone who, despite knowing that the reality falls far short of the ideal, believes deeply in the promise of liberty and equality, must have felt the same visceral horror and shock at the desecration that took place in the heart of our democracy.

As the days passed, the inauguration neared, arrests started to roll in, and quiet began to settle over the land, the full-body revulsion I felt began to be replaced by a different feeling--hope. Not the grand, lofty hope we all felt at the start of Obama's presidency, the hope of a changed world, of the arc of justice bending more sharply, but rather a more mundane, bureaucratic hope. The hope of competent people setting out to govern not out of spite but for the good of all. Hope that children will be taken out of cages and returned to their families, hope that the COVID-19 pandemic will be addressed in a coordinated and centralized fashion, hope that people will receive some economic relief, hope that climate change will be approached as the existential threat that it is.

I know people who are already agitating that this administration won't be the paragon of perfect progressiveness they believe this country needs, but for now I'll settle for the righting of the ship of state. I'll settle for articulate speeches about possibilities. I'll settle for a moment of silence to acknowledge the 400,000 people who died of COVID-19 over the last year and who had been dismissed by the previous administration. I'll settle for immediate administrative actions to erase some of their more egregious policies.

I will also celebrate the FIRST WOMAN Vice President, the first African-American Vice President, the first Asian-American Vice President. As Kamala Harris took the oath of office and my eyes filled with tears, I realized that we didn't get a chance to celebrate this monumental achievement after the election amid all of the noise and rancor about election results generated by the merchants of lies and disinformation. But now we can breathe deeply again--for the first time in four years--and we can embrace and enjoy this moment for what it is--huge, earth-shattering, beautiful, and long overdue.

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Book Stack ~ December 2020

A monthly list of books read. Previous months here: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November.

December was a bit of a slow reading month, like November, and not for any *good* reason, like my hands being busy making a lot of holiday gifts, because this year I made nothing. Rather it was a combination of returning to work and watching way too much television. But I've made some changes that I hope will make it easier to incorporate reading into my life more regularly in 2021.

First, the nonfiction:

I finally finished reading The Norton Book of Nature Writing, College Edition, edited by Robert Finch and John Elder, which took me at least all year (I wish I'd noted when I began reading). It doesn't look that thick, but it has onion-skin pages and clocks in at 1,135 pages before the permissions section. Most traditional nature writing anthologies include a whole bunch of white dudes plus Rachel Carson. With this one, you can tell that the editors went to some pains to include more women and some more diverse voices, and these appear more toward the back of the book, among the more recent selections. But still, there's a whole lotta old white dudes represented. Nevertheless, it's an excellent survey of the genre, and it introduced me to several authors whose books I have acquired and read or plan to read soon.

As a companion, I read A Natural History of Nature Writing by Frank Stewart, which is a book that shows how American nature writing evolved since the time of Thoreau, and how Thoreau influenced some of the more influential writers of the 20th century (Aldo Leopold, Ed Abbey, Rachel Carson, Bill McKibben; in other words, a bunch of white dudes plus Rachel Carson). Unfortunately, I spread the reading of it out to coincide with reading the excerpts by the relevant authors in Norton, which means I didn't really take in the author's thesis as well as I might if I'd read it straight through. It's one I might revisit later, as I continue to hone my understanding of and approach to nature writing.

For fiction:

I listen to the #AmWriting podcast pretty religiously, so I heard a lot about the development, delay, and eventual release of The Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell'Antonia, so of course I had to read it. It's the entertaining story of a decades'-old family feud, conflict between a pair of modern-day sisters, and a reality TV show. Oh, yeah, and fried chicken. If you're looking for something fun and lively to read to escape from the insane moment we find ourselves in right now, check this one out.

Finally, I read The Christmas Story by Jean Shepherd, which is a collection of the essays/short stories (they seem to blur across the line) on which the movie was based. We were late comers to the movie, which my sister sent us a half-dozen Christmases ago or so, but it's since become one of our favorites. I think it gets more amusing every time I watch it, and the grinchy teenagers even seem to enjoy it still. I thought I'd never read it before, but now I see I read it in 2018, which is really strange, because none of it seemed familiar to me, except the parts that show up in the movie. If my book memory starts to go, I'm going to be really upset. In any case, it was a fun, fast read, and Shepherd's humor style is super engaging and fresh, even though the essays were originally published decades ago (and the events took place in the 30s).

I Did It! 2020 (aka Apocalypse Year 1) Edition

For the past six years, I've tracked my annual accomplishments via an annual I Did It! list, originally inspired by writer Lisa Romeo. Previous posts can be found here: 2019 (including decade-in-review), 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013. 

Let me just start this year's list by acknowledging that 2020 was a real sh*t-show of a year, and if all you managed to accomplish was doom-scrolling Twitter and binge-watching Tiger King, that's okay. I'm not here to judge or make anyone feel bad. In terms of hours devoted, streaming TV was probably my most productive activity of 2020. Nevertheless, traditions are traditions, and my tradition is to take a minute to celebrate my wins for the year, big and small.

Writing I-Did-Its!

My big win for the year is, of course, finding a publisher and signing a contract for my book. This was a four-year-plus-long process to get to this point, and I'm not going to let 2020 take that away from me.

My stats for this year:

• Submissions: 16
• Acceptances: 3
• Rejections: 7
• Withdrawals: 4
• Radio Silence: 2
• Publications: 4

"The Quilt" Willows Wept Review, September 2020 

"A Review of The Beginning of Everything by Andrea J. Buchanan" Literary Mama, May 2020 

"Faith in a Seed" Spire: The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability, April 2020  

"Sled Dogs and Search and Rescue" Maine Wilderness Guide, Winter 2020  

As  was the case for the last few years, while I've been working on The Book, I haven't been producing as many shorter works for submission. Some day I'll have to figure out how to keep short pieces going on the side while working on longer works. 

Other writing accomplishments:

• I re-reinvigorated my newsletter, moving to a monthly schedule and sending out 11 issues.
• I only wrote 35 blog posts--my lowest number ever--but I didn't abandon the blog entirely.
• I mostly finished drafting a second book and I did a fair amount of research on a third.
• I started a novel and got pretty deep into characters and plot, but had to shelve it at the point when I needed to delve into historical research, just when all the libraries shut down for the pandemic.
• I continued to edit for Literary Mama, both as a department editor in the Literary Reflections Department and as a Senior Editor (I suppose you could call another publication my letter from the editor in the July/August issue).

Travel and Adventure I Did Its!

Well, it wasn't much of a travel year for anyone, was it? Weeks went by in spring when I barely even left our property, let alone the county. What I did manage:

• Several local kayak trips, including one night paddle among the bioluminescence. I had fun making journal pages for some of these trips

• An overnight at a cottage on the beach, courtesy of a friend.
• A November hike with my family (who are usually impossible to drag out of the house) up a mountain not too far from home.

Arts and Crafts I Did Its!

Likewise, this wasn't a very crafty year, although it seems like it should have been what with all the stay-home-ness. What I did do:

• Made a cute little table topper thingy.
• Made a table runner.
• Made a billion face masks, starting with these.
• Finished C's fair isle vest.
• Remodeled my old dollhouse (phase 1, phase 2, phase 3).
• I've been working on one, long, endless knitting project most of the pandemic. It's been a good TV-watching knit, since it doesn't require a lot of attention-paying, but I've fallen out of the habit the last few weeks. Time to pick it up again.
• I did not do as much art as I would have liked, other than a little nature journaling and a couple of watercolor paintings. This is an area of my life I'd like to reinvigorate in 2021.

Household I Did Its!

2020 was the year of dealing with deferred maintenance, from repairing little things (bracelets and wind chimes that have been broken for years) to finally, finally repainting (most of) the house trim and the exterior doors. (See above. How much do you love that purple and green together?) Not that anyone other than the UPS man has seen the results, but it makes me smile every time I come home. I also:

• Finally cleaned up and organized the basement, starting with the "jar room." Other areas that got tidied up were my arts and craft supplies, three big bins of hand-me-down clothes that are all now either in kids' drawers or at the thrift store (or waiting till spring to go to the consignment store). I would still like to do a better job of organizing the camping gear and my fabric stash (maybe either burn through or get rid of some of it), and I finally threw out stuff I was waiting for recycling opportunities to open up for--old floppy disks and vinyl bags, that sort of thing. What I'd really, really like is for C to finish off the corner of the basement where all this stuff is stored and put in better lighting and shelving so I have better space to work with. Maybe some day...
• Expanded my Fiestaware collection...by a lot. I admit, I got a teensy bit carried away, but I'm pretty happy with my purchases (it all started with Goodwill but after the pandemic began, I turned into eBay, Replacements Ltd., and Fiesta Factory Direct for my fixes). Okay, so maybe buying stuff isn't exactly an accomplishment, but Fiestaware was invented during the Great Depression to cheer people up, so I feel like I'm carrying on that tradition--of cheering myself up with colorful dishes. All the new dishware necessitated reorganizing kitchen shelves and cabinets to create storage and display space where there was none before, so that's something
• In this same vein, I continued on my never-ending (and vain) quest to get the house so clean it stays clean by reorganizing and decluttering various book cases, cabinets, closets, and rooms.
• I spread topsoil and grass seed in front of our house, something we neglected to do after building, resulting in a bald, weedy lawn (don't get me wrong; I'm okay with "weeds" and even planted violets and bluets in the new lawn, but more green growing things than brown dirt was my goal).
• And I planted a butterfly garden, where I long ago put in an herb garden and then neglected it.

Nature I Did Its!

• I co-coordinated the Maine Master Naturalist training course for 2020, with three other terrific leaders. We pivoted and retooled with the pandemic, and were able to continue carrying out a complete and robust course using remote learning platforms, videos, do-it-yourself field trips, and socially distanced field days. The further I get from the elbow-deep, day-to-day operational logistics of this, the more I realize what an accomplishment it was. As a bonus, sitting through all of the lectures reinforced my own learning from the course (back in 2014-2015) and re-sparked my interest in several nature topics.
• I took an online class in butterfly ID and ecology, and discovered 40+ species of butterfly on my property alone.
• Most of my birding I did at home, yet I managed to log more checklists on eBird and more species than any previous year. I also had a couple of life birds and a few not-seen-in-a-long-time species, including two great sightings of sandhill cranes (not on my property), and I worked on my birding-while-kayaking skills. One of my big plans for 2021 is to get a lot better at birding.
• All the kayaking reinvigorated my long-held but recently dormant interest in dragonflies, and I reacquainted myself with some of my favorite species and learned several new ones. I look forward to pursuing this more in 2021.

Not too shabby for an otherwise hellish year. Another goal for 2021 is to not try to wish time away--even pandemic time, even work time--but to appreciate each moment as it comes. I'll let you know how it goes in next year's I Did It! post.