Lineanongrata

my new obsession

It might be that I'm in a frightening sanitary state myself at the moment, with harvest going on around here, or maybe I just like the colors. I definitely love the different scents, though.

My new love is called soap.

Making soap is like knitting. You can do it even when you're completely exhausted because it doesn't need a whole lot of thinking. Just measuring. I can do that. It's one more reason to like soap making.

Of course, one could (and I do) spend a lot of time researching ingredients. And in many aspects it touches herb lore and ancient knowledge. Which I absolutely love. ... But try putting 'herb lore' into pretty photos. So you see, for the moment it has to be all about the pretty colors.

the unparalleled project

This is still a post about 'optimizing', or 'scaling down' as Amy has called it, but I disguised it. So as not to bore you more than necessary (says she, listening to 'Sunny' on her iPod and wriggling dance-like in front of her computer. Harvest season really is exhausting for body and for mind.).

As you have probably guessed, I'll be reporting on socks tonight.
They come in pairs and have, thus, a kind of a parallel. At least literarily speaking. Let's not talk mathematics because I almost failed High School because of a complete lack of mathematical understanding. Our maths teacher, a great fan of carrot cake and the healthy life, sighed greatly (and I mean greeeeeaaaaatlyyyy) and gave me the mark that had me pass - barely.

 

So socks come in pairs. And when you have knit a pair, you're sure to be left with a tiny rest of sock yarn. My sister tried to buy the same yarn again to knit a new pair and maybe finish the yarn this way, but she eventually got bored of the color scheme and was still, and very surprisingly, left with a rest of sock yarn. Which is kind of magic, if you ask me.

 

There are several, or actually, many of these tiny balls of yarns in my possession. And while I would move them to Berlin without any regret, I can just imagine myself opening a box in Berlin, in a new home, already quite distraught because of the moving stress, packing, unpacking, cleaning and being generally in a bad mood. And it's - oh, it's another leftover ball of untidy sock yarn. Great. Where shall I put that ?

Which is why we are starting the 'unparalleled project' here on the winery. The goal is to knit up any leftover sock yarn into funny socks that don't match and are thus unparalleled (in a literary sense, of course).

Anyone want to participate ? This is a challenge. I'm ready to employ terms like 'could not' and 'would not' and can't'. If anyone of you knits up a pair or more of these, I'd start my first flickr group (oh, what excitement there would be in store for me) and if you blog about them I'd blog about them, too. But really, there is no reason to go public. It's actually fun to knit socks that are not the same old same old all the time.

optimizing

As we are preparing to leave the winery, thoughts about what we should take and how the move(s) should be organized have come up.

For my part, I have been trying to optimize. To be able to take as little as possible, at least for the first couple of months. 

'Optimizing' has been to use every cream or perfume that I would not want to move but would have a hard time throwing away. Boy, I tell you: My feet are pampered these days. You wouldn't suspect it was harvest time by their smooth appearance. It's a pity Christian will throw me out of the cellar every time I try to sneak in in flip flops. Safety, he says... I imagine it is only jealousy.  'Optimizing' has also manifested itself in the attempt to use everything that has been stored in the larder... for quite a while, I have to admit. Resulting in a good but rather adventurous pecan pie (used every syrup and false honey for diabetics I could find, which didn't taste like much on their own but turned out to make a worthy pie filling) and new sandwich inventions (good thing the boys will eat basically anything in great quantities, if available.).

 

But I have also given thought to the material I have been collecting. All the papers, paints and the likes. Not to mention the huge stacks of magazines with inspiring pictures or articles. There is no argument that would justify moving those across 1500 km. Just to stay inspired.

But I did remember a blog entry that Lori over at Campcreekpress wrote quite a while ago, and that I didn't find today, because I am in a little bit of a hurry. It was about sketchbooks and the collection of ideas. Even at the time my fingers itched to start one right away, but as always, urgent things came up and I got distracted.

However, the really magic 'optimizing' let it come back to memory and I got out one of my many empty moleskine books (I can never resist purchasing new and empty pretty books, it's quite a character default in me), starting ripping out the pages and photos I wanted to keep out of my collection of magazines, and creating collages or just simple 'remind me' pages with them.

 

Nothing artistic, it's more about pattern, structure, color and ideas, really. It has been a great source of inspriration, has helped me reduce a huge pile of magazines to a small stack of papers, and it has been oh-such-bliss to just cut out chickens, pies, christmas ornaments, summer houses and whatever else I came across in the evenings, after another harvest day. Just what my tired mind can handle at the moment.

summer thoughts

Summer is reality.

Really and actually here. With temperatures so hot it's difficult to go outside at noon, and wonderfully slow evenings spent on the terrace.

While thoughts of days at the beach go through my head, reading, daydreaming and maybe falling asleep in the hot sand, a first inkling of fall is tickling me.

It has always been like that for me. When a season is in full swing, at it's peak, I always always start thinking of what's to come: A falling leaf, a peek of the first green, a snowflake drifting or the first barefoot walk in the grass.

And so, while this new bag I made for myself is initially thought of as a beach bag, large enough to put in books, sunglasses, sunscreen, towels, pencils and whatever else one absolutely needs in order to survive a day at the beach (did I just forget bottled water ?! Oh, and let's not forget the mascara and blush, the cold cream, the hairspray... everything one needs to pass for a real girl.), there is room for wool, knitting needles, maybe a warm blanket and the same old books and pencils in there, too.

Just in case autumn comes sooner than expected.

a finished quilt and a scary ghost story

We might say that I'm no better person than before. Time still is a concept that escapes me. Completely. I underestimated the time it takes to quilt a queensize by about a week.

Now that I think about it, I like time in a historical sense. The time you can name. In ... Julius Cesar had a bad stomach ache because Brutus... . The time I need to do something is a kind I don't manage well and which thus has it's threatening sides.

I managed to finish Hanna's birthday quilt while she was already preparing desert for her birthday barbecue.

After sewing straight through a couple of nights and more than one entire day. Quilting it took so much longer than I anticipated. Very very veeeeeery long.

Scary, too. The last night before my sister's birthday I got home later than I wanted to and decided to sew a little bit before going to bed. At around three in the wee morning hours I went into the kitchen (may I  mention that I was alone at home and that my parents live in a rather big house...) and saw two glass bottles in a place I was sure I hadn't put them in. Really absolutely sure. Because when we were little, putting glass bottles into that space would have meant certain death. Death by housekeeper.

Oh yes, that lady sure had rules.

So there was no doubt I had put the bottles there and had forgotten. It was impossible. 

But nobody else had been in the house the entire day, I was sure.

Immediately I started sweating and my illustrator's fantasy got to working overtime.

You know the drill: 'What about those ghosts and monsters' and the likes. 

Cellar - check. First floor - check. Second floor - check. Third floor, nobody either. Neither monster nor chainsaw murderer to be found anywhere, not even under the beds (God, am I glad nobody was at home to see me peek underneath the beds and behind every door.It's the stuff family legends and family jokes are made of.).

I got myself another beer to assure better sleeping, switched on the alarm and told myself there was no way anybody could get into the house or move downstairs without me knowing.
Which is the absolute truth by daylight.

Only at night I continued hearing noises from the kitchen. Glass making 'clink' against glass. Ghosts putting bottles where they're not supposed to be put.

At five thirty I fell asleep like a stone. Put out by the last beer and sewing straight lines across a quilt for hours.

To wake up at eight because the housekeeper (the one with the strict rules who still works with my parents) made the alarm go 'iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii' and didn't know how to turn it off. Which might have been a good thing because I didn't really go back to sleep and started sewing again earlier than I would have otherwise, finishing the quilt just in time.

Oh, and about the housekeeper with the strict rules ? Turns out she was in the house the night before, while I was still at a friend's house. She came to take in the milk and yoghurt left on our doorstep by the milkman and she seems to have taken to putting glass bottles into no-glass-bottle places.

So what about death by misplacing bottles and breaking the rules, I wonder. The world is coming to pieces if you ask me.

But the quilt is fabulous. Absolutely worth it scares and work. When my sister unwrapped it (got the cheesiest wrapping paper, too. Silly circus scenes on dark blue. After all my parent's house is in a village of 8000 people and an estimated six ghosts per person. One can't expect to find anything super fancy there.) she uttered 'oh my...'. And something about a lot of work.

I quilted each circle circly and every square separately with straight lines. One with a larger space between seams, the next with minimal space between them, and the result is something very lively. The back is white, made of old cotton sheets that still show my grandmother's and great grandmother's monograms.

 

Thank you, Amy, for sharing the roundabout design.  

it just needs binding

 

Do you remember Benoît ? The huge blond man who works with us ?
He just had his second son. Yanael. Little Yan in breton. Has us all wonder who in the family is from Bretagne...
Benoît sais the baby is perfectly normal: Every time he sees his father he starts screaming at the top of his lungs.

I don't know if 'stacked coin' quilts are a symbol for wealth or not. The name sure makes me assume so. And I don't know if, that being the case, a stacked coin quilt and the implied wish for wealth is really something one should give a baby.

There seem to be a hundred better things one should wish a newborn.
But the stacked coin quilts are pretty, no matter what might be their symbolism. I like their simplicity and the way they are quietly colorful.

So I guess once this quilt is bound and finished, it will go to Yanael to accompany him for a while.
With my best wishes.

becoming a better person

'Dogs again' you think. But the picture is there because I can't post pictures of what this post is actually about.
Because it's a secret !

If you are my sister Hanna, you may read this post, but you shouldn't click on any link and under no circumstance should you head over to my Flickr page. Really, don't. You'd spoil it for both of us.

For all the rest of you, if you would like to see pictures of what all this is really about, head on over here. And here, keeping in mind that it will be my sister's birthday on July 29th. Now that I think about it, you should have a peek at this, too, because Amy makes such beautiful things.

At this point my family is howling with laughter because I managed to start a gift three weeks before the birthday. That's a first. Usually I come home and tell everybody 'I've got such a neat gift for you, I just need time to make it'. In June, when it's a christmas gift, for example.
So bets are probably up that I'll get home with something half-finished that I need to finalize in the wee hours before my sister's actual birthday. We'll see.
They'll see. I'll try. To be a better person, in at least one tiny way.

If you comment, could you please not mention the words (the q-word, for example) that would reveal to Hanna what she's going to have ? You may break out in admiring 'oh's and 'ah's and we'll just have a good time all together without her, discussing the roundabout... something.

That's evil, isn't it ? Having people in more than three countries know what she'll get and pretending all the while that I do it only to be a better person ?

patience, my dear

'Patience makes a woman beautiful in middle age' , Elliot Paul.

And a wise man he was, indeed.

By the time I finish my Ohio star quilt, I might indeed be a middle-aged woman. But I will look beautiful, huddled up on a decorative couch, wrapped in my new quilt. Indeed.

Or do you think one should consider oneself middle-aged at thirty one ? Because if that is the case, I'll be old-age when I finished the quilt.

But then, maybe patience is completely overrated as a virtue. I'll tell you more about that when I'm about half way through quilting.

 

crafting for myself

In the last couple of months I have made so many things for other people (let's not talk about finishing Christmas presents in June), that I almost forgot what it feels like to make something just for myself. And something without any imminent use, at that.

It's the puzzle ball from 'Last-minute patchwork and quilted gifts' by Joelle Hoverson. A pattern I have been looking at for some time but which seemed rather complicated.

Now that I have tried I can tell you that it's not complicated at all, and it's fascinating to sew something '3D'.
On one of the blogs I read (sorry, but I forgot which one. That must be the age. Once you're over thirty memory goes down the drain, it seems.) somebody suggested that this is a great gift for babies. Helpful in developing tactile skills and the like. It is also a very good gift for thirty one year old adults, though. It's pretty and a pleasure to touch and to hold, and what more can you ask of a gift... to yourself ?

All right, I do have to admit that you can't cover yourself with a puzzle ball. Or snuggle up in it.

Like Vincent when he goes to sleep with his new quilt. Whom I envy just enough to have started sewing my own quilt.

I'm feeling traditional, can you tell ?

tadaa

I mean: TADAAAAAA !

As in 'an entire-herd-of-elephants-tadaaa'.

Please meet my first entire big (huuuuuge) quilt.

Don't ask me if this is a queen size. When I was in London the Queen wasn't there to have tea, so it don't matter much to me whether or not this is a queen size.
What matters is that it covers the whole length of a boy's long feet and body.

Because this is Vincent's quilt. Therefore the boy colors.
He did chose the red, last fall in Barcelona. Not for a quilt precisely, but he still likes it. Or else he doesn't dare tell me now.

I used some new and some vintage fabric and absolutely love how impossible fabrics (the apples on dark blue, for example, are from out of space if you see an entire meter of the fabric, but cut up in pieces they're quite acceptable. So are some of my grandparents old dishtowels.) suddenly melt with the entire piece and become not only acceptable, but beautiful.
The backing used to be a duvet cover in an anterior life, worn but not so much it couldn't stand some more years of wear and tear.
The batting is a lovely cotton/linen mix from Retrosaria. Very thick and makes lovely 'sheep' or 'snowflakes' if you leave the quilt out too long without binding it. Sheep everywhere you look. My studio and my clothes were covered in fuzz. I breathed it in, and was still ridiculously happy about it. Go figure.

Just one question remains: How do you photograph a quilt so it doesn't look boring ?