Incoherent Scribblings

SBQ: Halloween Edition

Carol sent me this SBQ quite a while back, but I have been saving it for this week because the theme couldn’t be any more appropriate.

If you were to come across a sampler chart that caught your eye and appealed to you, would you or would you not stitch it if it had a morbid or “creepy” saying on it? If not, why?

Of course I would! I like morbid or “creepy” things anyway, so it’s likely that I bought it because its “creepiness” appealed to me to start with!

October SAT

Over the weekend we had a Stitch-A-Thon over at the Robin’s Nest and unlike last month, when I was just too busy, this weekend I got to participate… AND stitch on one of my own projects to boot!

This is the first time since I have been back in the US that I have been caught up with my robins and exchanges enough so I could work on one of my own things without feeling guilty. And boy let me tell you, I so enjoyed working on something of my very own for a change!

I worked for about six hours on “Home of a Needleworker” and would guess that it is over half-way complete now. I was hoping to get more of the house done than I actually did, but wouldn’t you know it, I ran out of 420! Oh well, I guess that just gives me an excuse to go to the fabric store when I get paid later in the week!

And speaking of getting paid… I have a phone interview for a library job tomorrow afternoon! I am very excited, but trying not to get my hopes up too high at the same time. Keep your fingers (and stitches) crossed for me.

Which Way?

This week’s SBQ was suggested by Vash and is:

Which way do you stitch, i.e. do you stitch /// followed by \\\ on top, or the other way around \\\ followed by ///? Are you left- or right-handed and do you think that this affects the way that you stitch?

I stitch /// followed by \\\ and I am right-handed.

I have often wondered if whether or not which “handed” you are makes a difference in which direction you stitch. In fact, for the longest time I assumed that if you were left-handed you would stitch \\\ and then ///.

I suppose it is possible that your dominant hand has something to do with which direction you stitch, but I have been asked to stitch opposite of “my” way and as long as reminded myself to do it when I first picked up my needle I didn’t have a problem switching.

The Bridges (and Quilts) of Madison County

Hogback Bridge
Originally uploaded by blondelibrarian.

Last weekend was the annual Covered Bridge Festival in Madison County, Iowa. Now if you are thinking, “Hmm… it seems to me I have heard of these Madison County Bridges before,” you would be right. A few years ago (10 or so to be exact) there was a movie that starred Clint Eastwood and Meryl Steep entitled The Bridges of Madison County that you might (or might not) have seen. This movie was based on a book of the same name by Robert James Waller that you might (or might not) have read. (In case you were wondering, I have not seen the movie, but I have read book.)

Now, Madison County had this annual covered bridge festival long before the book or movie ever came out, but when the book was on the best-seller list and the movie was filmed on location (Clint and Meryl apparently even bought places to live in Madison County while they filmed), the festival became heavily commercialized and a huge tourist attraction… And in all my years in Iowa living less than 50 miles from Madison County, I had never attended the Madison County Covered Bridge Festival until last weekend.

On Saturday morning about 10:00 I stumbled downstairs in my blue and green IKEA robe to eat my morning bowl of oatmeal when Mom (who had been awake for a couple of hours) bounced into the kitchen and said, “Let’s got to Winterset today! They are having a quilt show as part of the Covered Bridge Festival.” I had planned a fulfilling day of nothing, but since Mom seemed so excited I decided I could take a shower after all and get my butt out of the house to see quilts and bridges. So I did and a little more than an hour later we were on the road.

With the exception of these covered bridges, the festival is a fairly typical small town festival. The town square was blocked off and full of craft and food vendors selling things at outrageous prices that for whatever reason you must buy and/or eat. And is tradition at these types of things, before we could see the bridges or quilts Mom and I had get our sugar rush by buying very crispy funnel cakes covered in powdered sugar. Once we could face the afternoon we purchased our tickets for the quilt show and covered bridge tour. And because we are always in such a rush to do things, we finally even managed to get the next to the last tickets for the last scheduled covered bridge tour of the day.

While we were waiting for the bridge tour, we went to the quilt show. I think this is the first quilt show I have ever attended and I was totally enamored by all of the beautiful quilts. Each quilt was displayed wonderfully with a little document next to it that not only had the quilter’s name on it, but a story about the quilt. Some were quilts that grandmothers had quilted for grandchildren, but the ones that I liked the best were the ones that had “history” to them: You know, the ones that someone puts together after inheriting grandma’s (or great-aunt’s or great-grandma’s) scrap bag. Someday I hope to piece together a quilt top (actually it is on my 1001 Days list) and this little quilt show really inspired me: I just wanted to rush home and start piecing away!

Finally it was time to load up on the school tour bus and go see the bridges. Our guide was a Madison County native so he gave us a lot of interesting history about the bridges and the surrounding area. As a librarian I was slightly offended that all of the interesting trivia bits he gave concerned the movie instead of the book, but sadly in this day and age I suppose it is likely that more people on the bus had seen the movie than had read the book. Six covered bridges remain in Madison County and all six are on the National Register of Historic Places: We saw four of them and got to get out and walk around on two of them.

It was a fun day and Mom and I considered going back the next day to see the parade, eat more funnel cakes, and finally try one of those pickles on a stick, but it rained and I had to work on Sunday night anyway.

Winter Square Finish

Well, I finally finished my square for Mylene’s round robin Saturday night… one day before the post date! This wasn’t a particularly difficult square to stitch and I was finished with it in about 20 hours, but with my sporadic stitching lately I managed to stretch those 20 hours over more than two weeks. I am pleased with the way it turned out and I hope Mylene likes it.

Now according to my daily rotation, Sunday is stitcher’s choice day if I don’t have any obligation stitching to do. Therefore last night I took the opportunity to stitch on one of my projects for the first time since before I left Germany. I worked for a couple of hours on “Home of a Needleworker” and managed to get half of the house’s roof done.

However, as I look back on the past couple of months and ahead to the next few, I think it is obvious that my daily rotation is on hold for now. When I have a chance to stitch every day the daily rotation works really well for me, but since I am not doing that right now, well… it just isn’t.

So I guess it is back to a screaming rotation for the foreseeable future because that seems the best way to define my life (and stitching) at the moment anyway.
Oh yeah, over the weekend my mom and I attended a quilt show. It was a small part of a larger weeked activity that I wrote a bit about in my main blog if you are interested.