A mid-week post, as I failed my task here last Friday. But I don’t wish to let a whole two week’s time slip away without capturing some part of it — everything always moving too fast. That said, I have no regrets about how I spent my time last weekend. Every moment felt needed.
Those moments included buckets of rain and also the clear, scrubbed-gold sunshine that only ever seems to accompany towering, slate-blue storm clouds on the horizon. I sat up late into the night in the woods of Sauvie Island, in the ring of deep heat put off by a long-burning bonfire, surrounded by friends, celebrating spring, and a birthday. I sang out loud with others and leaned into the silliness of it. I slept in, I made buttermilk biscuits, I indulged in a mid-day, couch-puddle-movie-session with my favorite people. I napped. I put on my running shoes and tenderly explored re-invigorating an old form of self-care. I semi-organized the piles and piles of yarn scattered around my house; I knit, and knit some more; I started something new, I finished something old, I plugged away at WIPs. I am on the hunt for the wool yarn in the perfect shade between purple and pink. A hot lilac; a cool cherry blossom. Do you know where to find it? Can you tell me?
And, I sat under the golden ring of stars and I put in stitches. Not enough — not nearly enough! — but some. And it continues to be transformed, through the magic of handquilting, the way only handquilting can. It’s been too long since I’ve had a quilting needle in my hand; my callouses are slowly returning. I watch this piece transmute slowly and I find myself stopped often, to run my hands over it, or to stand back and see it more fully, in its metamorphosis. Quilting, truly, is a great love of my life.
And yet I am living in a sort of low-grade panic about getting this done. Will I finish it in time? I get on a plane two weeks from today. If I do finish, will it even fit in my suitcase? How will there be time to photograph it before I leave? Could I really send it away without capturing it with professional photography, when I love it so?
I chose a dense quilting pattern for the golden field, I have not yet chosen the pattern I’ll used to finish the lilac border. I have not yet decided how to quilt the stars. I do not yet know what I will use to bind it. Who will I beg to photograph it for me? This one doesn’t have time to be shipped across the country, to Brittany, and back again. And I no longer have a studio wall big enough for making do, as I did a few years ago.
And still, despite the deep pleasure of quilting, and these consistent pressures running through my brain, I have not been prioritizing these many necessary hours. I have not been choosing, as I should, to have this piece in my lap every available moment. I am, as I said above, knitting every moment; I am daydreaming constantly about Monochrome Neon Clown™, and I am hunting for apparel fabrics in eye-searing colors. The MNC wants to go to Paris in the springtime; wants to match this quilt that will, hopefully, pray for us, accompany her…
So all the slowest handcrafts find themselves in a race against time. Two weeks to go!
