handstories

post trial soothing

    A delightful time was had by needle and me in the adding of some of Deb's cloth and thread to yesterday's piecing.  It cheered me right up, that along with remembering what happened after the jury story from yesterday...

    At the end of the third day of deliberations, I begged the bailiff for an extra half an hour, so we could vote one more time... and then, it was finally over.  (Other than one stressful moment, when the prosecuting attorney tracked me down a few days later by phone.  The defense had filed an appeal based on the fact that they suspected that I had been in the neighborhood of the crime scene during the course of the trial.  Thankfully, the judge threw it out saying, "We all got that feeling when she said she lived there."  Honestly.)

    Anyhow, it was done, and just in time to leave the next morning as planned with Janie and little L..  We were off on a road trip to Oregon to see the annual quilt show in Sisters.

    We drove to central Oregon, picking up Janie's sweet mom along the way.  The show was outdoors, hundreds of beautiful quilts hanging on buildings and railings all over the town.  We had such a good time- at the show and in all of those hours in the car.  Just three women and girl, singing, telling stories and enjoying the views... 

    "Look at the trees!" Janie exclaimed, over and over.  "Did you know there were so many shades of green?!  It soothes my eyes and soul!"   

grateful for now

    The first half of today was spent stitching and looking forward to a very special date this afternoon.

    About a month ago, I tried to sign K. and I up for a cooking class at the co-op (his Christmas gift), but the website wasn't working, so I called their office.  A woman answered, "This is L., can I help you?"  It was the daughter of Janie!  (A dear friend who died almost twenty years ago.  Click on the "Janie" category at the bottom of this post for more of her story.)  

    We talked for a long while and made plans to get together.

    It's been years since we last saw each other.  She's beautiful and lovely, graduated from college, traveled the world, and was married last summer.  We talked about who we are now, filling each other in on people each of us still know, and remembering stories of us, and of Janie.

    I wanted to share more about her mom with her, but found myself floundering and too overwhelmed for words, mostly only able to express feelings about how creative, wicked smart and passionate she was.  Things were never gray for her.  All of it mixed with some colorful crazy (which was part of her brilliance).  

    There was a lot of laughter and some tears.  We promised to keep in touch, and made plans for March.  I found myself staring at the glimpses of Janie in her, but really she is her own unique person- a wonderful confident thoughtful young woman.

    Janie would be so proud and in love with who her little girl has grown into, and I'm so happy to be getting to know her again.

how the body remembers

    I love this bird cloth.  There are bits of it here and there in the piles.  Bought a long time ago, back when I used to frequent fabric shops.  

    Janie, a long-gone friend, and I would roam the aisles together, with her toddler daughter in tow, who would reach for the bright cloths, saying "Dandelion!"  and "Apple!"  Her first words for the colors yellow and red.  

    Memories of Janie have been flowing the last couple of days.  This morning I remembered why, it's her daughter's birthday this week.  

    During this week the three of us would go blueberry picking, later there would be pie for little L.'s celebration.  One year it was unusually hot (just like it is now), and we decided to make orange-peach marmalade, too.  Arriving at their house with canning pot, jars, etc..., her husband thought we were crazy.  I laughed, "I think it's important that we do this on the hottest day of the year, to remember it!"  

    L. is in her late twenties now, the age I was when I met her, and then Janie.  Here they are stitching together, Janie is working on a quilt for L., there were orcas on it . . .

    Janie's been gone eighteen years now.  (If you're new here, there are more stories about her in the "Janie" category.)

    Gosh, I'm missing her today.

polar bears in the cold blue light

    Carla's class had us drawing polar bear shapes.  I chose this roaring mama.

    Which led to cloth (the background piece is another of Blandina's creations).

    Cut freehand from silk, she seems a distant relation to one of Jude's beasts that I love so much.  She fits perfectly into the cold weather we're having around here.

    We were back to school today, and while happy to see the children, thoughts of getting back to stitching her filled in the gaps of the day.  Thankfully, there are still some stars to stitch, because I'm a little in love.  

    And she reminds me of years ago, nine-months pregnant, working with first and second graders.  We were studying the Arctics and getting ready for a show.  One Friday I was teaching the kids the dance moves to "Go Greased Penguins" (sung to the tune of "Go Greased Lightning" from Grease), Janie wandered by and saw my Big belly bouncing around and shouted at me.  I told her I was going to dance that baby out! 

    Later that day a group of children and I rewrote "Goodnight, Irene."  Connie called me on Sunday night asking for the words to the song, just in case. . .  "He's never coming out!" I told her.  She was right, he came the next day, and I took baby Blue to the show a week later.  

    Janie and Connie are both gone now, but these memories keep me warm.

    "Arctics Goodnight" (sung to the tune of "Goodnight, Irene")

        Reindeer dream by the trees, snowy owls in their nests,

        Arctic foxes doze in their dens, and hares think burrows are best.

        Seals sleep next to the ocean, polar bears snooze in their caves,

        Walruses rest on the ice cold ice, and puffins dream on the waves.

           Arctics goodnight, Arctics goodnight

           Goodnight Arctics, Goodnight Arctics

           I’ll see you in my dreams…

tonight's plan for tomorrow

    A blue square was appliquéd over one of the spots, after taking off any "salvageable" scraps of the old one. They've been basted down and will be filled in with other scraps. 

    Today a student reluctantly and successfully let me teach him division, and then later, because he doesn't want anyone to get too close, set about to disrupt our group's science discussion and to piss me off, he was successful at both. Another student and I have connected. She's usually late, or absent, her life is chaotic, crowded, and full of need. The school has done everything it knows how to do, and then some, trying to help the children in this family, but they are being lost, one by one. It breaks my heart that things can't be fixed.

    Tomorrow I will try to build a moon and a sun-they were common themes in the units Janie and I taught- Raven bringing the light, the galaxy at Solstice time, fairies dancing by moonlight in the Spring . . . Janie loved the Sun, and me the moon.

    And tomorrow I will see if that boy will let me do division with him again, and tomorrow I will try not to yell, and tomorrow I will hold that girl's hand whenever possible, and tomorrow I will try not to feel hopeless.

mendings

    Jude put out an invitation to join her in a Mending Bee.  There's plenty here that could do with a stitch or two, but I keep thinking of this quilt.  It was made for and with Janie's class the year before I started teaching with her.  I remember watching them dye the fabrics from across the playground.  It lived in the classroom- her's, then our's, then her's again.  Used for warmth, hideouts, picnics, costumes, etc.  When she died I scooped it up and brought it home, for mending and keeping.   That was almost eighteen years ago.

    The twelve muslin squares are all in shreds.  

    Janie's story is very big, most of it good and brilliant, but her last year was complicated and hard, for her and for those around her, not because she was dying, because she wasn't.  It was a brain aneurysm that took her suddenly, actually a few of them, over a couple of weeks.  I've always wondered if she imploded from the craziness of those last pieces of time?  Something had to give.

    So, yesterday, I sat with some of the story, as much as I could bear.  Some things are not mendable.

    But this is.  I started a list of memories to mend it with- ravens, wolves, spiders, Harriet Tubman, Jake & Honeybunch, Baba Yaga, peach orange marmalade, the ranch trip, solstices, poems, beads, books, sashaying, loud laughing, singing, stars, stitching, and more- all the things I want to hold on to.

Art (London three)

    "Making Traces" by  G. Richter, Tate Modern

      The boys kept saying, "Enough art!"  I kept saying, "Just a little more…," dragging them along to the next room.

    "Proserpine" by D. G. Rossetti, Tate Britain

    I have long loved the blue of this dress.  I do have a thing for the Pre-Raphaelite paintings. 

    "The Lady of Shalott" by J. W. Waterhouse, Tate Britain

    The details in the blanket tell their own story.

    I tried to keep the boys entertained by making up captions for some of the art works . . .

   

    "Where did my clothes go?  I left them right here!"

    "Alleluia" by T.C. Gotch, Tate Britain

    This one made me smile, kind of Norman Rockwellish from 1886.

    "The Forest" by P. Webb, Victoria & Albert Museum  (sorry for the small photo-it was dimly lit, high and long)

    I was so happy to walk into the tapestry room and discover this piece.  Long ago, Janie and I admired it in a book.  I was in the middle of a needlepointing a pillow of the raven for her, when she died.  It's been sitting in a bag in the closet for the last 17 years.  Maybe I'll finish it, now that there are new memories to stitch into it. 

    Thimbles at the Victoria & Albert.

    One of the things I love about the museums is how beautiful the buildings are all on their own.  The photo above was in the cafe of the Victoria & Albert . . . quite the setting for my egg salad sandwich!

    The walls and ceilings-so rich with color and design.

    Victoria & Albert Museum

    Chihuly, wherever I go.

    "Sunflowers" by V. van Gogh, National Gallery

    More thoughts of Janie here.  Van Gogh's sunflowers were a favorite of hers.  She loved sunflowers, planted them every year-agreeing with his idea that they are a symbol of hope and friendship.

    I wish that she could have seen them up close.

    During this trip, I was struck with the realization of how many others travel along with you-in memories and associations.

the symmetry of time

    Working on the last strip for "Iowa".  

    It was over twenty-five years ago when Janie introduced me to the friend that "Iowa" is for.  I was in my late twenties, my friend was around fifty.  She was the director/founder of the school that Janie worked at, and where I would work for the next 23 years.  I found her to be smart, intimidating, and too authoritative, but I liked her.  She thought I was smart, down to earth, and had problems with authority, but she liked me.  We're both Irish, we both liked that.  Over the years we had our ups and downs, me saying no to her, her saying I was stirring things up and maybe I should go, but there was always mutual respect.  After Janie died, we found a new piece in our relationship, friendship.  It has grown over the many seasons, especially after she stepped down from heading the school.

    Yesterday we talked about old times, as we often do.  She reminisced about my being down to earth, smart, and how great it was when I would stand up to authority.  I shared my admiration for her brilliance, and appreciation for how she always took charge of situations and remained in control of things.

    It's swell how time balances things out.

monday memories: janie

(Quilts by Janie Hart 1956-1999)

    Thoughts of Janie filled the feverish night before last.  (I wrote about her here, there's also a "janie" category to click on below if you wonder more).   A pounding headache above my left ear woke me at 3am, drumming out a heartbeat rhythm.  I thought of her, how her death began with a horrible headache.  "I felt like someone had hit me in the head with a cast iron skillet."  It was a brain aneurysm.   She died two weeks later.  

    So, on the couch, head hammering, remembering Janie.  In the morning I realized it was the day before her birthday, and pulled out these two quilts by her.

    This was her gift to K and I, Christmas 1996.  It came wrapped around a sweet baby doll.   It was for us to "practice" with, since I was a few months pregnant.  A few months later, when that pregnancy ended, she drove right over, took away all of the baby things I didn't want to look at, and brought over ice cream and quilting books from the library.

    Here is the back.  She loved spiders- Anansi the trickster, Raven and Coyote, too.  

    This was the baby quilt Janie made for baby Blue in 1998.  Looking at the fabrics . . . She loved sunflowers, all flowers, would spend months planning her garden each year.  The small flower print is leftovers from a dress she made for her baby girl, and the star & moon printed pieces are scraps from a dress I made, and wore a lot when we were teaching together.  It was one of the many slow stitchings done in her sewing room (her slow was twice as fast as mine).

    Janie was so very right-brained.  Her "logic" followed whatever feeling she was having at the moment, and things were very light and dark for her.  It made for some crazy conversations, of trying to understand where she was heading, but I think it is what allowed her creative brilliance to shine through.   

    The last thought, as I waited for the aspirin to ease the thumping, was, "Well, if part of my brain is breaking, at least it's on the left side."

    Happy birthday, Janie.  I know you're somewhere basking in sunshine.

stitches in & out & in . . . & cake!

    That lone heart has been bugging me.  I took out the blanket stitched border, replaced it with a quieter running stitch, and am now covering it in criss-crosses.  I don't know . . .  I used to tell Janie, when she wasn't happy with how a quilt was going, "Just keep stitching, just stitch it out."  We'll see . . .

    Meanwhile . . . I am making a cake!              

    The frosting was sliding a little, so I'm taking a break to let it cool some more.  Moon's birthday is tomorrow.  I make pies.  I order cakes.  You can have whichever you like for your birthday, but that's how it is.   Until we went to a neighbor's birthday last week, and Moon tasted that cake.  "Please?!"  She promised it was fool-proof.  So far so good, but again . . . we'll see.