*Everyday I write the book-Elvis Costello
I’m reading Susan Wise Bauer’s book and A Well-Educated mind. Which I picked up at our local library. I’m only in chapter two, but already this book has changed so much about how I think about reading.
I have always been a reader, at age nine I was reading Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey Twins, and once I received my first library card I never looked back. So it was with surprise that I read in the first chapter about being a concious reader (my paraphrasing) about taking the time and the practice to really read. Practice? She talks about how you have to exercise your reading skills, set aside time for reading each day.
As so many parents, can attest to, I’m sure, I have read every day. I make sure my kids read each day we set aside time for it. But my reading usually happens at night, exhausted and looking to relax I pick up the latest Elm Creek Quilts book (which I love) but are not the work of Homer. They are written in the common vernacular, they talk about subjects I am intimate with, quilting, mothering, friendship. And so they are not hard to read, they are a comfort a the end of the day.
I have lately found that I miss the harder more educational readings I did when I was younger and not so exhausted. But I also find that (as I read mostly before be) I tend toward reading the happy, comfortable books. Susan Wise Bauer tells us that if we want to be reading longer hardier books than we must make sure and take the time to read during the day before we are tired. I find I am the only one who gets drowsy when I read aloud at night. 
She makes the point that we expect to train for physical events like marathons but think if we can’t read the Iliad through and understand every word it is because we are not capable as opposed to in good reading shape or well trained.
Chapter two brought me even more gems, and inspired this post. Chapter two talks to us about journalling, the recording of thoughts.
- But the Journal of self education has a more outward focus. It is modeled on the last century’s “commonplace book,” a loose leaf or bound blank book in which readers copied down quotes and snippets that they wanted to remember.
In its simplest form, the commonplace book was a handmade Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, a memory aid for the writer.
This passage actually made me put down my book, come over to my online journal and start this post. I have always journalled, boxed of spiral notebooks in my closet attest to this. This quote jogged my brain enough to remind me that this is what this is why I journal, that this is what this blog is for me, a daily reminder of quirky things my kids say, of quilt projects, the garden, and a laundry list of thing that go on day by day at The Burrow.
It doesn’t have to be deep and reflective, it doesn’t always have to make sense. Some days I may just want to remember the sunshine, or the pounding of rubber boots up and down porch steps. I may mark the passage of time in projects completed (today the replaced the window in the woodstove room) or in animal antics (today we picked up Lily from the vet, she had to have an abscess lanced-blech). Today is the day Zoot wrote this post “The elusive Mommy-wars” and it rocked my blogosphere. I laughed, I cried, I cheered. Then I shared it on facebook, on google and here.
What it does have to be is honest, and truthful. It doesn’t have to tell the whole truth (sometimes it shouldn’t) it can just be a snippet. But the fact that it is here, for me, to remember. That is it’s purpose.
* I am the Walrus-The Beatles
*And I love her-The beatles
This last few days have been down right hot. Which is amazing, I haven’t been moved to tackle the outside world of gardening yet, although the time is fast approaching when the blackberries will win their spring march on the yard. You have to get those spring starts early and you have to stay on top of them! But the warm weather has driven us to the basement (two among are numbers are fair skinned red heads-and while I enjoy the sun, I don’t enjoy it for several hours at a time or I get all crispy) the lower level of our house reserved for laundry and legos normally.
It is also where my sewing machine has been regulated. It is generally very cold in our basement (a welcome change in the summer) and so I don’t spend a lot of time there. I may nip down there for a quick seam repair or another patched knee, but in general my quilting is by hand and so the cold basement placement of the sewing machine is not a major issue.
However since the organization of my U.F.O list (unfinished objects) has gotten serious, I’ve been spending a lot more time at the machine as I prepare tops or quilting. This month I finished a quilt that wasn’t even on my list of fourteen UFO’s. Technically because it was my quilt but still, it should have been there.
My Mother in Law won these quilt blocks at one of my Winter’ Blue’s Quilting bees, (long before I had babies I had time for quilting bees) and she sewed the top together and then gave it to me to finish. One of the ladies in my quilt group just started long arm quilting and asked for practice quilts, I gave her this one, and she finished it up in less than a month! Crazy machines! I bound it up and gave it to my Mother in Law on mother’s day for her guest room bed. Hurray for marking things off your list (even if they weren’t there yet )
Dr. Pepper(it’s a random type of day)
My inside garden project.
Today is rather colder and not as sunny as yesterday (80degrees!) always a letdown. It seems, here in the PNW, that we often spend our spring saying, “this is it! the hot weather has arrived” but that day is followed by grey days and then another sunny day along the way and we are on repeat “this is it! this is spring/summer!”
We start our gardens inside and do not plant them outside until late May, sometimes Late June, maybe even July. Pumpkins and zucchini do great here, as do blueberries and blackberries. Tomatoes have to have just the right spot next to the stonewall of the house and the lavender flourishes under the stairs. The established plants are putting on a show and we are babying the new buds along in hopes that this year we’ll have more than enough pumpkins and tomatoes.
-tiptoe through the tulips
When the sun comes out in the Pacific Northwest, it often blinds us to everything else.
And we must bask in it.
Sunshine on my shoulders-John Denver
six year old: I”m done with my A scale (violin)
Me: hmm (distracted) good
six year old: Why are you not answering me
Me (I”m freaking making dinner) because I”m doing something, I heard you, you did great
six year old(in a huff) you could at least clap
-Mama said-Phil Collins
Inspired by Soulemama
Me: (coming upon underwear clad violin player)Where are you pants?
six-year old: I was hot
Me: if you are hot take off your fleece jacket
six-year old: but I am cold
Me: then go get some pants on
six-year old:(pause, then takes off fleece) no I’m hot
Me: (wanders away in confusion)
I have found that as I work on organizing different areas of my life including house, blog and body seem to fall in to line. Streamlining one area allows you to look at other areas. Similar to when you wipe out the refrigerator before you know it you are washing the shelves and the drawers, and it’s suddenly afternoon. Okay cleaning was a bad example. I do find though that organizing photos, or blog posts can cause me to lose a whole afternoon.
Enough rambling from the redhead.
This quilt has been over four years in the making. Four years ago I talked four friends into doing a Running Round Robin. And they agreed. Because this quilt was already in the process of being quilted, I put it on the top of my UFO finish list for this year. I figure why not start with something easy? I quilted swirly turtles along the borders, they are a little hard to see here.
but I really like them.
My friend Juls did the second border on this quilt, and while I was working on this quilt I thought a lot about my three pals, Mia, Juls and Lady J who I don’t see very much anymore because she moved away wah! But this month my thoughts were with them alot. They were with Juls as she grieved for her father in early april. And they were with friends here and far as I thought about my own grandmother through the last stitches of this quilt.
I’m always a little sad to finish a project, because there is a certain amount of revving up you have to do for the next project. But I’m happy to move this former UFO off my list and into my Quilt Gallery.
April Quilty goals up
Running Round Robin (done!)
28 9 patches (done)
15 hours of quilting on Aqua quilt (not a darn minute…dang it)
*A little help from my friends-Beatles
His gift to his Aunt, at her bridal shower was a Magic Show. His joy at preforming rivals hers, he has a certain confidence that he did not get from me. The confidence to be at the center of it all, to try new things without considering other people’s thoughts, to command the attention of a room. He gets this confidence and presence from his father. His flare for the theatrics though, he gets from his Aunt.
They spent their brief visit last week working on his latest endeavor. A movie. About time travel. His Aunt went to film school and he learned a lot about movie making in a very short time. He soaked it all in and has reported it to anyone who will listen.
“There are three stages of film making, we are in the pre production stage”. He will tell you along with all the details you never wanted to know about his current script.
As for my gift to my sister. As the mother of the Ringbearer I felt it only appropriate to make the ring bearing pillow. The off white silk front of this is from my grandmother’s wedding dress. A dress that my grandmother herself cut down to size for her daughters to play dress up with and years later I used in two different quilts that I made for my sisters.
*Back in time-Huey Lewis and the News
Craft Haiti
