tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56630661215201905672024-03-13T16:03:01.454-04:00The Art and the Craft of HealingA memory quilt from my mother's old t-shirts.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-8340065956412591532015-05-10T09:27:00.000-04:002015-05-10T09:42:43.018-04:00So much happened and when I looked for you to tell you, you were still gone.<h3>
Self Pity</h3>
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Years have past since my Mother's death and the start of my quilt built from her t-shirts. In fact, my last entry was two years ago. A busy two years of ambitious work, selling our house, moving, travel, watching our children transform into adults, watching our old dog get even older. New marriages. New places. New people. Same old quilt. Same old gnawing feeling of loss and absence. Grief doesn't getting easier, you just get used to it.<br />
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Oh, yeah, and it's Mother's Day today. That day, 3 years ago today, in which my mother slipped away from me like a sigh in the dark hour before dawn. Lying beside her dozing, that loud silence of the absence of her breath waking me. Because why would you ever wake your baby girl with anything more than the gentleness of quiet? A dark hour.<br />
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Mother's Day...<br />
I am a that little girl in the schoolyard with too short sleeves and crusted cereal on my wrinkled dress, crying behind a thorny bush. All the other little girls have made cherry blossom cut-outs for their Moms, with "Happy Mother's Day" in sprinkled glitter across the top. I weep because I am motherless and the other girls know enough not to taunt me.<br />
Mother's Day...<br />
I am that woman who has just given birth to a healthy, fat baby. As I hold him, looking into his wide open eyes... drinking him in, I am surprised at the euphoric feeling of this new motherhood. Still, a relentless dark cloud nags at me, she will not see this beautiful baby. She will not count his tiny toes with me.<br />
Mother's Day...<br />
I am angry always because she was torn from my life. I want to blame the system but I don't know what "The System" is and so I drug myself into oblivion to curb the anger. I stopped looking for her long ago but I still remember her holding me tightly, knowing that I would fall if she ever let go. I fell, hard and fast.<br />
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This day, today, I am every motherless child and until I make it through this first cup of coffee, it is as bad as can be. Am I one of the lucky ones, to have had her as long as I did? Through my own pathetic middle aged tears, I remind myself of that. This Mother's Day, my special day of mourning.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3SlRykWI1_p1dJ2sLHP0o_CecDljQcEAKCYs38vy3enDO_Lf5HzaDGQ_OfhjZuoXTV6F0gh_aU4vxVDJfiE8tqmcNdLE2yHJg1eEtfvC_WDJwqc4VAO6yCjHaDmbC4eV_chZ32eU1V8A/s1600/tekla54.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3SlRykWI1_p1dJ2sLHP0o_CecDljQcEAKCYs38vy3enDO_Lf5HzaDGQ_OfhjZuoXTV6F0gh_aU4vxVDJfiE8tqmcNdLE2yHJg1eEtfvC_WDJwqc4VAO6yCjHaDmbC4eV_chZ32eU1V8A/s320/tekla54.jpg" width="179" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My Daughter and my Mother aligned. </td></tr>
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The Quilt</h3>
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Once in awhile, I am asked... how's the quilt? It is true, I left it for a while... boxed amongst our things while we travelled and moved. Maybe I didn't really want to finish it? As if it would be an end to this process of relentless mother worship, this grief that I couldn't let go. But I hear my mother's voice saying... "Finish that damned thing, Tamara". Sewing machine oiled and fixed. Quilt trimmed of excess batting (I sewed for a long while without knowing I could trim off the extra batting, quilters: don't ask!). I am over half way quilting each of the 35 squares, determined now to complete this... what it is? this expansive fabric thing that attempts to break my fingers and machine?... art? craft? a thread? a threadbare shirt? a collective memory? a collected memory? a mother's relentless hug?</div>
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And between the trimming of threads, my son will bring me soup and love with his smart crooked smile. And between the needle breaking and cursing, my daughter will return home from London, wiser and more beautiful than ever.</div>
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Happy Mother's Day 2015.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stuff and sew! Halfway there!</td></tr>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-64069210134061023772013-05-12T09:17:00.001-04:002013-05-12T09:29:28.733-04:00Mother Love. Blog 14.<h3>
<span style="color: #76a5af;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A Conversation. </span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3C5pDXjCjDX8R_Ne1bNKGFgfFQGctDWeDmZe9tHm3oMgiPijaddJdpndYeuA7SfLLy-txe6kUF2Q6Iczl-Ypb2IIt-xAD0kFZHi5iI7I02_0Z9CowmPXTloZLT_jjOcyE6l-vfPQeOes/s1600/pregnant-mom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3C5pDXjCjDX8R_Ne1bNKGFgfFQGctDWeDmZe9tHm3oMgiPijaddJdpndYeuA7SfLLy-txe6kUF2Q6Iczl-Ypb2IIt-xAD0kFZHi5iI7I02_0Z9CowmPXTloZLT_jjOcyE6l-vfPQeOes/s400/pregnant-mom.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Family album: Mom pregnant and my smiling baby self.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />What was it like... that moment when I was born?<br /><br /><span style="color: #ead1dc;"><i>“You were a tiny and perfect thing. I don’t remember much of anything... the pains of labour, the delivery room, the fussing of nurses... anything except that long intense look we shared when they first put you at my breast. Your eyes were open and you were so calm, I could see every part of who you would become in that gaze. A circus could have tumbled through the room, a herd of purple elephants, and I wouldn’t have noticed, I was so locked in that intense, sweet stare.”</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I didn’t cry?<br /><br /><span style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="color: #ead1dc;"><i>“Oh, I suppose you did... a tiny mewling like a kitten. It was your open searching eyes I remember most. And your long fingers. Much later in the night, after everyone left... your father, your grandparents, your ‘big’ brother who wasn't even out of diapers... the nurses brought you to me, bathed and swaddled. Alone for the first time with you, I slowly unwrapped the swaddling blankets and checked out every part of your small perfection. Those long fingers! You were a ballerina, a piano player, a sculptor... I envisioned so many lives for you in those very first hours after you were born. You nursed easily, but always seemed more interested in searching my face than suckling. I felt that, with those small dark eyes, you could see my everything.”</i><br /><br /><i>“And what was it like... that moment when I died?”</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="color: #ead1dc;"><i> </i></span></span><br />It was late at night, that darkest and most quiet hour, and I was alone with you. All evening, I had been talking to you, singing to you, washing your face, combing your hair. I let your hair down, something you rarely did. Later, I realized that these were small rituals, preparations. Your breathing had changed and I asked the young nurse if you were in pain and she said, ‘no, just part of the process’. After some time it was as though I could hear you saying, perhaps a little exasperated: “Oh lie down, Tam, stop fussing and just lie down and let’s get some sleep”. Only you could call me Tam and get away with it. I lay beside you on the small fold out cot and listened to your breathing and the music I had put on. The music was Ukrainian lullabies, which included that particular lullaby you sang to us when we were babies, the one you requested us to play at your funeral. Your strange breathing soothed me, the music lulled me and I dozed. After a short time, maybe half an hour, the music and your breathing stopped and I woke quickly to a great silence. A stillness. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #ead1dc;"><i>“I didn’t cry?”</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #ead1dc;"><i> </i></span><br />No... there had been enough tears, crying, anger, despair in the days, the weeks, the few short months before. But in that still night when you allowed yourself to succumb to the terrible illness that is cancer, there was a dignity and quiet peace. Just after your breathing stopped, I crawled in the bed next to you, again a small child, and I laid my head on your breast. I held you and smoothed your hair and kissed the laughing creases around your eyes. You had been so unafraid of dying, and showed me, in one final lesson, how to be that brave. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">After some time, I went to the nurse and said simply, “My Mother is gone” and then I paused, remembering, and said “it’s Mother’s Day”. She gave me a shared sad smile. “My Mom knew how to make the most of any occasion” I said. And you did.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #76a5af;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Happy Mother’s Day</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwNxbJQYgexGoyrc8zy6umpCdEXvByvIRKf_dPiHIdgv5Ma2AjcTofsIiKjg7xjs7nXnKSAA9E39t2PqSmPNIM1cDZPEThXNmEF4s2tgQf-VOqpBzr-bIvJXDTF9Jh73LFBgE7Tn1I4x8/s1600/tekla-big-smile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwNxbJQYgexGoyrc8zy6umpCdEXvByvIRKf_dPiHIdgv5Ma2AjcTofsIiKjg7xjs7nXnKSAA9E39t2PqSmPNIM1cDZPEThXNmEF4s2tgQf-VOqpBzr-bIvJXDTF9Jh73LFBgE7Tn1I4x8/s400/tekla-big-smile.jpg" width="290" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Rare photo from the 70's: Mom with her hair down.</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />I would always call my Mother and say “Happy Hallmark Day”... that was our joke.</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> A special day created by card companies and florists to market and make money from all that human sentimentality... we poked fun of it in our own way. And how could I send her flowers? There was no florist on that small island where she lived. And, in her later years, she WAS the flower lady, the grower and maker of fine bouquets. The typical 2-3 hour long phone call that would be our celebration of each other, of mothering, and the labours of women. And so it goes, just a she laboured me into this world, I peacefully laboured her out... women’s work? Perhaps. Maybe losing her like that, on Mother’s Day, was her gift to me... I was honoured to be at her side.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfJrugM1odFbWfWS6deL3Fgbe9I3ydw9rMRjwMPVDe3acc59mFNdckaQOTYFW5J949xIdqNRY_lAJnq-Sxt3zmCnjaUzfJjYzzZ00ZMtdwBlvJ6P9r_ZQShOhPqtl2tKzf6dLbycM1GCA/s1600/pinning.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfJrugM1odFbWfWS6deL3Fgbe9I3ydw9rMRjwMPVDe3acc59mFNdckaQOTYFW5J949xIdqNRY_lAJnq-Sxt3zmCnjaUzfJjYzzZ00ZMtdwBlvJ6P9r_ZQShOhPqtl2tKzf6dLbycM1GCA/s400/pinning.jpg" width="365" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Preparing to pin the quilt on the kitchen floor.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #76a5af;">Enveloped</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUSViSCyQk_JpnNKU4HH36dLXN1FdHnRP30PyxpFGr4Xc8zKrWE5eaOmy_AxkHpLoQUEu4IVlXljbEGmRIkm_FgOe8igHLQ46tWAg5JWQFXZOwhlzobmPpC6vQPpqDCdpmcl8XWRhDN4k/s1600/enveloped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUSViSCyQk_JpnNKU4HH36dLXN1FdHnRP30PyxpFGr4Xc8zKrWE5eaOmy_AxkHpLoQUEu4IVlXljbEGmRIkm_FgOe8igHLQ46tWAg5JWQFXZOwhlzobmPpC6vQPpqDCdpmcl8XWRhDN4k/s320/enveloped.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Nervously starting to machine quilt, squish and flatten!</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />I have, tentatively at first, begun to machine quilt my memory quilt. It started out as this unwieldy and enormous beast and I wasn’t sure how I would manage it, especially with my small machine. I did a lot of practicing on small bits of quilted fabric, met with the women at a local quilting store: <a href="http://www.makesomething.ca/" target="_blank">The Workroom</a>, and bugged my quilting friends for advice. My fingers bled as I pinned it together, one little pin every square five inches, 200 or so pins. Ouch! <br /><br />The quilt is like a large sail. It has weight and enfolds me as I work with it. Sailing... I am sailing away with it now... taking my time and enjoying it. Tips from the internet, there’s so much advice, I loved <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc2Y14B-vwk" target="_blank">this video</a> especially. Squish, squish, flatten! After much experimentation, I decided to start with a straight stitch along the striped rows between the t-shirt blocks... well, almost straight... just the little curve of the wind in this newbie quilter's sail.<br /><br />I have also managed to sew and then carefully tear out great lengths of stitching. I guess a part of me doesn’t want the quilting to end. It is so good to be enveloped by this fabric of our lives.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #76a5af;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The Return</span></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #76a5af;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />It has been a hard, rotten kind of year. Death and broken bones and the push of time.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Pushy time, healing time, time to really stop and smell the flowers. I have come back to my Mother’s garden on this anniversary of her death... my first motherless Mother's Day. The purple tulips that we laid on her casket have returned. The peonies and the poppies are lush. Spring, renewal, regrowth, and a whisper of the flower lady’s eternal spirit through the cedars. </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-7183348886711431182013-04-07T19:42:00.000-04:002013-04-07T19:42:43.153-04:00April Fools<h3>
<span style="color: #76a5af;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Spring... finally</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />It has been a month since my last blog entry. A busy cold month of a return to work: the crazy madness of the film and television industry with everything rush, rush, rush, and the putting aside of all things personal. But now, on this too brief weekend, there is the smell of a certain spring: that brief and determined spring of Central Canada. Too brief. Like everything good in life. And that gardener’s ‘bend’ pulls me into a near trance of anticipation... that smell of the good earth, that growth, that green. Did I inherit this from my Mother? A pre-programmed genetic trait that insists on short, broken, and dirt laden nails? This soil that gives to us, that takes us, becomes us... that we become... I am transfixed by it.<br /><br />And in the face of spring and with the time punch of work, somewhere in all that I make a moment for the sewing of this memory quilt. Like a wind filled sail, it enthralls and encompasses me now. So much fabric and so many moments, memories and stitches. As I ironed the seams of the last strip of blocks that I sewed together yesterday, I admit that I wept and felt enormously alone. A sad completion of a large part of my quilting task that has provided me with so much solace. Then, as I took this fabric sail and wrapped myself in it, embroidering on the last of the appliquéd pieces... a mother’s posthumous embrace comforted me.<br /><br />So.... all those blocks are finally sewed together and that, I fear, was the easy part.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaI1_FkozVUN2LpVFSaqnImk_xHgeue8Ml7BMRiRdrL1ocfTcfqQ_cTDN4HF9Dfg5BY6a7zNNKVx8-HgnOBKP_wTuVR0pKRi84pGUVJDHZrseZQwzE55rj7-pWkH1dZN7Sa64PQfL-Gws/s1600/sewed-together.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaI1_FkozVUN2LpVFSaqnImk_xHgeue8Ml7BMRiRdrL1ocfTcfqQ_cTDN4HF9Dfg5BY6a7zNNKVx8-HgnOBKP_wTuVR0pKRi84pGUVJDHZrseZQwzE55rj7-pWkH1dZN7Sa64PQfL-Gws/s640/sewed-together.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">All the blocks sewed together as held by my son, David, and myself... (when did he get so tall?)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #45818e;"><br />Quilting... Hmmm?</span><br /><br />And as the trees and bushes and flowers and everything bursts and my life goes crazy with work and everything else... I will make my first efforts at machine quilting. Each block it’s own moment in time, each block it’s own pattern.I have some ideas and I have some quilted bits to try out before I try to stuff this vast pieced-together beast through my small and almost ancient home sewing machine (invigorated by a new feeder foot and regular oiling). A friend suggested that I get a quilting bee together for this next adventure... nice thought... but, like mourning and giving birth and dying, I feel it is something you basically have to do solo. Solo but not alone. And, with that, wish me luck! Send me advice and encouraging words as I try not to sew my index finger onto the fabric of this: my mother’s warm embrace. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQylYTYsnaoTZW3XWXhGj9ity5ycwFT3KHIZHXXfD1ozROZpU4cEOytIBsUIU4sKA9jbxiYI2ld_wbR_1YOrtNanQWS1r4g3_ptF5M-x579fEqaWHl2ut_jSjd95cEitCjYUumxkXfbMY/s1600/QuiltingStitchInspiration.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="113" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQylYTYsnaoTZW3XWXhGj9ity5ycwFT3KHIZHXXfD1ozROZpU4cEOytIBsUIU4sKA9jbxiYI2ld_wbR_1YOrtNanQWS1r4g3_ptF5M-x579fEqaWHl2ut_jSjd95cEitCjYUumxkXfbMY/s640/QuiltingStitchInspiration.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Searching the web for quilt stitch inspiration.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #45818e;">And just because she made us all smile...</span><br /><br />I looked for a photo of our Mother to add to this April Foolish blog and came up with many of her in her garden... so predictable, I thought... as this blog is all about Spring. I leave you, instead, with Tekla the headstrong harlot, the drama queen, and the devilish mistress of a long ago Halloween night. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And in my mind's eye, I can see her smiling, I can hear her laughing.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMxoSQDGMRPScJjE0jchrvKaAdTPjCUBKKpYWXZ2dbDp62cVJTqQ7OEvxWyV1cx97S1ugNSLQerwshLnnvW5DVW33CYTco4a6S0OffQo91a_x1I7JNgWAILHotnS1HXlQ4Q0I2cnijKS4/s1600/tekla_harlot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMxoSQDGMRPScJjE0jchrvKaAdTPjCUBKKpYWXZ2dbDp62cVJTqQ7OEvxWyV1cx97S1ugNSLQerwshLnnvW5DVW33CYTco4a6S0OffQo91a_x1I7JNgWAILHotnS1HXlQ4Q0I2cnijKS4/s400/tekla_harlot.jpg" width="275" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Tekla and friend Carl pimp it up for Halloween</span></td></tr>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-9840902253143917422013-03-06T11:23:00.000-05:002013-03-06T11:24:15.499-05:00A Birthday Blog. Blog 13.<h3>
<span style="color: #d0e0e3;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A Wrinkle in Time</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh01CT_3Y4cv-6hNc-nhdkztubR-Ta4aTY3zPVe3yQ_fYzUWYNpTVN61dwAtO2P-DWvBfQ6z95hdldn98fX0CgUOGXCiyyRaS5unHmmfQ8fF1jP3eRxWLqwigvx9kkza8M-2mhQGsaoNL4/s1600/laughing-lines.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh01CT_3Y4cv-6hNc-nhdkztubR-Ta4aTY3zPVe3yQ_fYzUWYNpTVN61dwAtO2P-DWvBfQ6z95hdldn98fX0CgUOGXCiyyRaS5unHmmfQ8fF1jP3eRxWLqwigvx9kkza8M-2mhQGsaoNL4/s320/laughing-lines.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Laughing lines.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />Today, she would have been seventy-six... my mother. Her hair a little thinner, wispier, her skin creased by more laugh lines, more frown lines: a point of pride for her. She knew she had earned those lines and she generously shared them with all of us, portioned out vigorously with her usual zest. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Our mother, our grandmother, our sister, our friend, <i>our Tekla</i>... yes, she would have been seventy-six years old... (and, here, I sigh)... <i>would, could, should</i> have been. And, then, who is to say? Death by childbirth, death by plague, death by hardship, death by torture at any given moment in our short and brutal human history- that was not her story, her time. Hard work and persistence earned her a rich life. I reflect on the preciousness of this fragile life and how it is, most definitely, worth a wrinkle or two. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Happy Birthday Mom. To a life well-lived.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #d0e0e3;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Of Spanish Wine and Roses</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_YvNASm7Dw14tCM7AkuY7rfKY5H4KTjio_BEiT21jq4u_AiOlIZL8rBj72dhDVELNtSRjyc1TwLMUIQgeMD381NrzevPlvt1qQxLK81bmGveftWjaWIGDuMkCmk7h6ffC4y1wO2A7WOQ/s1600/spain_collage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_YvNASm7Dw14tCM7AkuY7rfKY5H4KTjio_BEiT21jq4u_AiOlIZL8rBj72dhDVELNtSRjyc1TwLMUIQgeMD381NrzevPlvt1qQxLK81bmGveftWjaWIGDuMkCmk7h6ffC4y1wO2A7WOQ/s640/spain_collage.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Some of my photos from Spain, with an eye to my mother's love of detail.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXb3y9F8420AQymXZwL-mpcTe-t_EGaSPL8KpE9AwZzOmXi5x2BS1PjFvwu9BZOnC6erXgE3XpxcDkbwykQ19x4o1y80uIpM8lOJ7tsdMrYAq23nukZYbt1bAgSJIgEhXlIiWT1UElpeY/s1600/El%252BGreco%252B-%252BSt%252BJohn%252Bthe%252BEvangelist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXb3y9F8420AQymXZwL-mpcTe-t_EGaSPL8KpE9AwZzOmXi5x2BS1PjFvwu9BZOnC6erXgE3XpxcDkbwykQ19x4o1y80uIpM8lOJ7tsdMrYAq23nukZYbt1bAgSJIgEhXlIiWT1UElpeY/s200/El%252BGreco%252B-%252BSt%252BJohn%252Bthe%252BEvangelist.jpg" width="152" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">El Greco</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />Wandering the streets of Seville and Granada and Madrid, not quite hot but warm enough, we made our escape from Canada’s endless winter. We walked and walked, my husband and I, and I did feel my aching, healing, fractal foot with a slight limp on the cobbled streets by the end of each day. Spain was a ‘yum’ of history, art, music, wine cheaper than water, and olive laden tapas. <br /><br />Around every corner, I could feel my mother’s Spanish soul.<i>“¡Qué lindo!”</i> are my mother’s words that spring to mind, I can hear her voice: <i>“¡Qué lindo!”</i>, <i>How beautiful!</i> She spoke Spanish simply and clearly, having learned it when my parent’s bought land in Costa Rica more than 30 years ago, mostly to communicate with the worker’s as they built <a href="http://www.teabeans.com/" target="_blank">Villa Tekla</a> and then to the small children she taught and the friends that she made. She loved the Spanish language, the Latin flair, the fragrances of the Mediterranean, the clicks of a Flamenco dancer’s heel. She loved to travel and gave me that curious and insatiable travel bug.<br /><br />I felt her presence in the galleries while standing in front of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Bosch" target="_blank">El Bosco</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Paul_Rubens" target="_blank">Rubens</a> and, especially, the dark paintings of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Greco" target="_blank">El Greco</a>... and in my mind we discussed the colours, composition, and the studied faces. Art: my religion, gave comfort to my loss.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">In the heavy Moorish and medieval Islamic palaces of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra" target="_blank">Alhambra</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alc%C3%A1zar_of_Seville" target="_blank">Alcazar</a>, I echoed her words: <i>“¡Qué lindo!”</i> as I took in the intricate carved tiles and endless archways. The gardens, with their early spring flowers, thrilled my gardener’s soul... that heavily soiled gardener’s soul being one of my mother’s greatest gifts to me. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Thank you for all the flowers, the soil, and the soul, Mom.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYsavhi1EDkhqciLItVyA78kfDhSfRwew4FZyz7A9QGSlTycq4NuknsAhIHyWARx6hg0WizkrLgCDChajrZghjcYJ8Z-ZAiDIYZ477PRkK5EYyJBjQYAYCYgtOpEP9E6yDBGXsB3xgv9Q/s1600/tekla-travels.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="467" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYsavhi1EDkhqciLItVyA78kfDhSfRwew4FZyz7A9QGSlTycq4NuknsAhIHyWARx6hg0WizkrLgCDChajrZghjcYJ8Z-ZAiDIYZ477PRkK5EYyJBjQYAYCYgtOpEP9E6yDBGXsB3xgv9Q/s640/tekla-travels.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A Tekla travel collage (photos, for the most part, courtesy of her partner in crime, Bill Deverell, my father).</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #d0e0e3;">Back to the Grind</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />Sewing like a mad fiend now, my days are numbered as my return to the working world work looms and I still have this vast fabric <i>thing</i>... that which now seems gigantic as I begin to put it all together. I made 42 little joining-green-squares and 35 horizontal-joining-reddish-rectangles and 36 horizontal-joining-reddish-rectangles and, <i>whew</i>, after all that, I began to feel like a factory of one. I am dutifully pinning and measuring, desperately trying to line things up... do I work from the centre <i>out</i> or the edges <i>in</i>? I often imagine my mother standing in the doorway laughing at me, and with me, as I try to match the rows of the quilt blocks together. They <i>sort of</i> fit... and <i>‘sort of’</i> will simply have to do. Not looking for perfection here, folks, just the simple poetry of human accomplishment.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyWtZUbU0swuxOxKh7LOQT0mvH7VUMmH_GnvJ0DkfJopjXvqqQAd3ZyP2tkKfa4OAyVAo_oqZzTz6vvwjLhKfFkC5kCtT4Vgz2s1RvCTqFMC05ug3UwTR4zfcl7cVoEX4yg6X9M7l4Z8o/s1600/busy_collage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyWtZUbU0swuxOxKh7LOQT0mvH7VUMmH_GnvJ0DkfJopjXvqqQAd3ZyP2tkKfa4OAyVAo_oqZzTz6vvwjLhKfFkC5kCtT4Vgz2s1RvCTqFMC05ug3UwTR4zfcl7cVoEX4yg6X9M7l4Z8o/s640/busy_collage.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The busy-ness of sewing the quilt together well accompanied by the laziness of an old dog.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #d0e0e3;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Another thread</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />Blogging about my quilt was a way to ensure that I would complete the task, putting it out there so publicly and openly, a guarantee to succeed under the watchful eyes of many. What I didn’t expect was how I could move others to examine their own grief, accept, heal, and honour their loved ones. I am touched that I have been an inspiration to many but in particular to my cousin, Barb Lubda, daughter of my mother’s closet and dearest sister Sophie. Barb lost her son tragically when he was 18, her grief must have been almost insurmountable, I cannot imagine. Now, some four years after his death, she is making a healing quilt with friends and family using Lucas’ clothing. And so begins another thread... I am with you in this endearing endeavor, Barb.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3vA4fAW-CRPJMI-guqpq7PUIrTdP6Z2NIprU7tsxWx3qrSQWa3-KiSpMbjH7sMS7HWPlNW2oWMUBm2dFYrw_wvWhTR4L-tJhTA0VPrFEiTgCfR-HP7zV0PNl2loBptHVyHVEsMvGvNQY/s1600/peonies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3vA4fAW-CRPJMI-guqpq7PUIrTdP6Z2NIprU7tsxWx3qrSQWa3-KiSpMbjH7sMS7HWPlNW2oWMUBm2dFYrw_wvWhTR4L-tJhTA0VPrFEiTgCfR-HP7zV0PNl2loBptHVyHVEsMvGvNQY/s640/peonies.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I leave you with these... Tekla's unique and beautiful Spring peonies.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-41641287416136256552013-02-05T11:40:00.000-05:002013-02-05T13:06:58.273-05:00Cowgirl Song. Blog 12.<h3>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOxZLzWX0fNxsidVO6u7RjU-3sHbb0ucaGb7Ld_-gN-K03lU-LBsHVC5inQ4judrzTlWNRw0agZ5WP4cWt4B72AgZ8-3OFUeqwS0-vh5GjoCG9TTg6JilcteEugUlssrD9SDr_pUmxy-k/s1600/Tekla-and-sister-Sophie.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOxZLzWX0fNxsidVO6u7RjU-3sHbb0ucaGb7Ld_-gN-K03lU-LBsHVC5inQ4judrzTlWNRw0agZ5WP4cWt4B72AgZ8-3OFUeqwS0-vh5GjoCG9TTg6JilcteEugUlssrD9SDr_pUmxy-k/s1600/Tekla-and-sister-Sophie.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Sisterhood: Tekla in the cowgirl tee with my Aunt Sophie.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
last t-shirt, my favorite one. The vintage hand-painted cowgirl photo
re-purposed by the zany Texan artist, <a href="http://www.bobwade.com/" target="_blank">Bob Wade</a>, was too large to put on
one block so I split the image into two. My last two blocks, done! Whew!
<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">But...
wait, we had a moment there, my Mom and I, working through these old
t-shirts as if we were together. That emptiness, that ache, that loss...
there is no home to <i>go home to</i> where I can rest my head on my mother’s
shoulder. I am the wandering cowgirl, doing the rodeo circuit in my
dusty blue jeans, singing those lonesome cowgirl blues.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Yeah...
I wanted to be a cowgirl. A ballerina. A symphony conductor. A famous
painter. A biologist. A yoga guru. A philosopher. A chef. A poet. <i>“You
can be anything you want”</i>, she promised and she fed me art, science,
nature, music, beauty with a firm and open hand.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaR4cKcyGtfKnm2JxVHV2Hz6wD3KcdlCIbu_yuPejiRnynW-I9xV9y5T1_S0rkGbLY43ImXLg4wxK49EX10oiIZrb2rbxLR922AXuEoPt3dF-O1I2lEJO4_7d8Zt3MJ9euLrRT6GMGiQE/s1600/Cowgirls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaR4cKcyGtfKnm2JxVHV2Hz6wD3KcdlCIbu_yuPejiRnynW-I9xV9y5T1_S0rkGbLY43ImXLg4wxK49EX10oiIZrb2rbxLR922AXuEoPt3dF-O1I2lEJO4_7d8Zt3MJ9euLrRT6GMGiQE/s640/Cowgirls.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The two cowgirl blocks. My last two blocks stitched with a heavy and satisfied sigh.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Some Women Remembered.</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The
gals on the cowgirl t-shirt always embodied for me the not-so-secret
society of women in which I grew up, so lovingly enfolded. With my
Mother’s death, I am brought back to remembering two other amazing women
in my life who are no longer with us but whose stamp on my heart and
psyche remain as fresh and alive as when I was a young toddler crawling
on their laps. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLr8OxtQvmY2ApdjZ-lsUDt1UtExfC4vPQJGRGoO7Rg5j0hCA0pECcqGibFowfCopQNMlc_VzVvjMz-HEg5QD33E1cT6naXhQAjWvGdlNN7a6VQhb3dZ8AbFIoavWrxFBUS7456Uoutzc/s1600/tek%252Ctam%252Cgrace.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLr8OxtQvmY2ApdjZ-lsUDt1UtExfC4vPQJGRGoO7Rg5j0hCA0pECcqGibFowfCopQNMlc_VzVvjMz-HEg5QD33E1cT6naXhQAjWvGdlNN7a6VQhb3dZ8AbFIoavWrxFBUS7456Uoutzc/s1600/tek%252Ctam%252Cgrace.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">My Mother Tekla, a young me, and Grandma Grace.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />My
Grandmother Grace: nurse, healer, mother, friend. She was the essence
of loving and giving and generosity and, well, <i>grace</i>. Very much a part
of my upbringing... from the moment I was born (in the early sixties
when breast feeding was, unbelievably, still frowned upon and she
staunchly supported my mother in this age old endeavor)... to my
troubled teenage years in which she was the solid mast to my youthful
tempest. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And
my Aunt Judy who, like so many women, had her life unfairly shortened
by breast cancer. She was as much an older sister as an aunt, being born
much later than my father and uncle. Judy was smart, funny, solid, a
staunch feminist, and an occasional romantic. When my daughter was born
prematurely, I was terrified to touch her, so tiny in her incubator.
Judy came to the hospital, scrubbed up, and reached in and cradled her
with incredible tenderness, showing me how to mother this small, delicate
baby. My baby never got to know Judy, she passed away on my daughter’s
second birthday, to the day. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />A triumvirate of women leaders. Tekla, Grace, Judy.</span><br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo10MpnYTsntqo2E00c3jLiieWmljf2oi-75XRJiiZSdFlCK0kP3U3XyZc97AGzXqIn67a73pMCJ_b51BbtCAC2o87bGMFXUBAMbDhtN7xg8zICLw1UGfxxdpQBl_Ni3jX_Ohv9TPWaIU/s1600/judy_remembered.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo10MpnYTsntqo2E00c3jLiieWmljf2oi-75XRJiiZSdFlCK0kP3U3XyZc97AGzXqIn67a73pMCJ_b51BbtCAC2o87bGMFXUBAMbDhtN7xg8zICLw1UGfxxdpQBl_Ni3jX_Ohv9TPWaIU/s400/judy_remembered.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">My Aunt Judy, lovingly remembered.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;">All the Cowgirls.</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;"> </span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">But Aunt Judy introduced me to other cowgirls: Shelley, her life partner, and
their most remarkable daughter Amy, my wonderful young cousin, and then Karen, the rock (and the roll). And there
is my own little cowgirl, Rachel, the preemie baby who grew up to be
taller, smarter, and more beautiful than I would have ever thought
possible, she is my most precious buckaroo. There are the girlfriends from one
end of this country to the other, and my mother's many friends, my sweet niece
Sophie, all the other Aunts and Cousins, my Baba and my dear old friend Diane (RIP).... yessirree, to
all the Cowgirls in my life and in honour of my mother: I tip my
stetson, hop on my trusty steed, and make a swirl of dust as I sew.
Yippeee Ka-yay!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Trotting along.</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLuLb1-ShLKBqWt6SawXPscgP71Oa-VIaGMudJuByoZnseqV2CH5nkzT1I5-RjgII0INk-VehDOQ9RpaX92z3-oyoeHHd5OulIn3qLPZ6bxvTB8amwrfJ-YmK1bzCaR8I2WppMtTTQER4/s1600/backing-fabrics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLuLb1-ShLKBqWt6SawXPscgP71Oa-VIaGMudJuByoZnseqV2CH5nkzT1I5-RjgII0INk-VehDOQ9RpaX92z3-oyoeHHd5OulIn3qLPZ6bxvTB8amwrfJ-YmK1bzCaR8I2WppMtTTQER4/s320/backing-fabrics.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Some fabrics Mom had kept, my weird batik on the right.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A busy weekend in New York celebrating my birthday (what! another one?) now finds me back in my sewing/ writing nook. Sewing machine oiled: check! All blocks done: check! Fabric, thread for stitching them all together: check! Back of quilt fabric: hmmm... check!... found some pieces of batik-ed fabric, including some that I had done way way back in high school, in my mother’s cupboards. These will form my backing. She kept them for a previously unknown reason. Now we know why.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjVAa6-Bc-EMgQXghCDgGF7EWRZ4QP0EAJLaPVVZwae34pSjnAd_uj8GplAGEv_B5HjItYyHuooJuhSjvsxsSk-8NRfjftV3NLuSQSHgE8im-tbuTGDcrDkJLcuMx3XN0mLcaMWkRNp58/s1600/quilt_all-blocks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjVAa6-Bc-EMgQXghCDgGF7EWRZ4QP0EAJLaPVVZwae34pSjnAd_uj8GplAGEv_B5HjItYyHuooJuhSjvsxsSk-8NRfjftV3NLuSQSHgE8im-tbuTGDcrDkJLcuMx3XN0mLcaMWkRNp58/s400/quilt_all-blocks.jpg" width="331" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">30 worn t-shirts made into quilt blocks.</span></td></tr>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-26798899361564053712013-01-22T11:31:00.001-05:002013-01-22T11:31:04.253-05:00A Brief B.C. Blog. Blog 11.<h3>
<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A Visiting Thread</span></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I looked for her in the bottom of kitchen cupboards underneath stained cheesecloth, between the pages of cracked books, under the house in the layer of the fine dust that had formed over the pickling jars, in a cigar box of faded embroidery thread... I looked for her but I could not find her. What are these useless things? <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I found her in the sleeping garden as the raven’s wing cut the wind overhead. She revealed herself in the tips of peonies already emerging in the January cold. I found her in the sighs and comfort of her friends, the wringing of hands, the pained embraces. As I moved through the space she once brought to life, I found her in the sadness of my father’s eyes, watching me. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I found her and I lost her and I found her again. Repeat.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Tender Pender</span></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi-9eTJVFV_y_mslJDgron0TFg-ghIeaqTSjkIiB1PO1hr1HD72t9it89YgZXQKhJ0UtjZ35xmrBUyb5Or9kL9UwfUVQhzZGY-rurdiqG2CbHnyK4tZlUHAqoNoPrEdttyKQDi4JhbbXQ/s1600/tekla_farmer's-market.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi-9eTJVFV_y_mslJDgron0TFg-ghIeaqTSjkIiB1PO1hr1HD72t9it89YgZXQKhJ0UtjZ35xmrBUyb5Or9kL9UwfUVQhzZGY-rurdiqG2CbHnyK4tZlUHAqoNoPrEdttyKQDi4JhbbXQ/s400/tekla_farmer's-market.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The flower lady holding court at the Pender Farmer's Market.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">One block this blog. Maybe one of my favorite Mom t-shirts ever, art by local Frank Ducote once again, this time I kept the t-shirt image pretty much intact. The Pender Island Farmer’s market is where my mother sold her incredible flowers, fruits, and vegetables for many years. I remember visiting and working along side her, cutting and clipping and arranging flowers for rock bottom prices that you would never find elsewhere. Line-ups would form for her arrangements and she had no use for impatient city folk who could not take the time to wait for her personalized bouquets. It was the act of putting them together that was worth waiting for.... the choosing of colours and sizes and smells. My mother the flower-lady-superstar, performance art at it’s most pungent.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /> </span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDAmgZAE334zpRKkrBBc1blgi9rU8YgWu_h2H4IDrFwzLr_21QA-YNvLj7as24_ptS2oVUBhwZ4aDqulu2P1XhLBCTckT-kdicqSozTDpdsopxn6ejRsa8lYb5GUXULuEXGmM7xXaJKS8/s1600/farmers_market.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDAmgZAE334zpRKkrBBc1blgi9rU8YgWu_h2H4IDrFwzLr_21QA-YNvLj7as24_ptS2oVUBhwZ4aDqulu2P1XhLBCTckT-kdicqSozTDpdsopxn6ejRsa8lYb5GUXULuEXGmM7xXaJKS8/s400/farmers_market.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Pender Island Farmer's Market t-shirt block.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I have sat in the comfort of my mother’s home and embroidered some of my quilting fabrics (pinned in the photo) onto this block. Sewing by the wood stove, I can hear her questions, criticisms, and glorious praise for my not-so-fine and not-so-even stitches. And who would have thought that this big city girl with her busy career and fancy Toronto house would sit by the fire in the sleepy Gulf Islands to sew, by hand, one small story at a time?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Quilting.... Eek!</span></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Two more blocks and then sewing the this whole mess together and then the job of actually quilting. Almost forgot about that!</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB0SwXN0zBv9MSJ_aB5gQfUgk8KfndiFdjZai6M0vSXHvsKScxoVB5awILC2b9k4gKnGXi4hwNSUYYjBOblhjLmkVr-_CcqQFoPklyuAn7TK-2FUOLbCE-75E8w4qEQviHlsRf8Y2PZ68/s1600/samples.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB0SwXN0zBv9MSJ_aB5gQfUgk8KfndiFdjZai6M0vSXHvsKScxoVB5awILC2b9k4gKnGXi4hwNSUYYjBOblhjLmkVr-_CcqQFoPklyuAn7TK-2FUOLbCE-75E8w4qEQviHlsRf8Y2PZ68/s400/samples.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Photo of Barb's quilts as notes for the next steps.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgdROTuUiRPLp8ar_C0VFjKXNM4Fj92ycpMjq_O9XiGRqulyChVrfSTMo55r5LPP3wBwGHrQx5QNMWzQC3Tnray-9IBkqSUMz9rH-kQOZ7NJsHR_99pUbdLe7okTgs8KjbyNRAfwkgG3w/s1600/barb_guru.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgdROTuUiRPLp8ar_C0VFjKXNM4Fj92ycpMjq_O9XiGRqulyChVrfSTMo55r5LPP3wBwGHrQx5QNMWzQC3Tnray-9IBkqSUMz9rH-kQOZ7NJsHR_99pUbdLe7okTgs8KjbyNRAfwkgG3w/s320/barb_guru.jpg" width="193" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Quilt guru Barb with a bouquet from Mom.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">My trip to the West included a couple of too short days with my <a href="http://houseofbug.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">favorite quilting guru</a> on Denman Island. In the comfort of the little round house, I tried to absorb as much as I could about the styles, will, and wherefores of the quilting process. Wool versus cotton batting, hand versus machine. The quilts were pulled down by ladder from the loft and flipped and examined and photographed and slept with as though, like learning a language, I could absorb some quilting know-how in my sleep. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I limp along, literally and figuratively, trying to catch up.</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-58975193168360022982013-01-10T21:56:00.000-05:002013-01-11T10:17:19.913-05:00A New Year. Blog 10.<h3>
<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The Time of the Dinosaur </span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnSdyhqBND91HHhwNxn3M5aUC3zV02qbJl0qGyubiW39oZJrHVD-xYN572LMKT09L34nS4a1GWFdshX9nh8KeF7MV8demTq7PPcawmF1J2SIDs8ZVBfX16iQoQvpScNxxpsbsjgk1fVRI/s1600/DINO-SHRT-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="93" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnSdyhqBND91HHhwNxn3M5aUC3zV02qbJl0qGyubiW39oZJrHVD-xYN572LMKT09L34nS4a1GWFdshX9nh8KeF7MV8demTq7PPcawmF1J2SIDs8ZVBfX16iQoQvpScNxxpsbsjgk1fVRI/s320/DINO-SHRT-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Before photos of the thin t-shirts.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Paper thin... even thinner, so thin they have runs in the fabric like cheap nylons, the dinosaur t-shirts date back almost 30 years. My girlfriend, Barb Mortell, and I hand-painted the t-shirts used in these blocks. In the years leading up to movies like “Jurassic Park”, Dinosaurs were <i>IN</i> and, as we were fresh out of art school, we thought we’d cash in big time at our own ‘hand-painted t-shirt cottage industry’... or maybe we were just doing them for fun.... money didn’t matter so much then, fun did. There was the dinosaur t-shirt series<b>,</b> a bird series, and a floral series. The colours haven’t faded much and I imagine it is because the fabric paints that we used were fairly toxic. Looking at them now, I am even not entirely sure which one of us painted these particular dinosaurs... feeling like a bit of a dinosaur myself. I think it was Barb, a phenomenal <a href="http://houseofbug.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">quilt and fabric artist</a> who now lives in (and on) her own piece (and peace) of Denman Island in B.C. We have continued our friendship, Barb and I, despite distances and time with a colourful and painterly quality.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />One of the dino t-shirts was pulled from my mother’s drawer, the famous pile of sentimentality in the form of worn and stained and faded t-shirts that I came upon in the summer... that same famous pile which is down to only three t-shirts now. The other dino t-shirt was brought back this past November from Costa Rica by my father. Really, one of the dinosaur t-shirts was his and one was hers but as their lives were so intricately entwined, it does justice to the over fifty years of togetherness to have my father’s dinosaur t-shirt become part of the Tekla quilt. It was time for the old boy to retire... <i>no</i>, not my father, but the dino t-shirt. My father, alive and invigorated, continues to evolve, not a dinosaur at all. And with this evolution, I dedicate the dinosaur blocks to him and to the great love and care he gave to our mother, especially through her devastatingly brief and aggressive illness. <br /> </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6GKfHqtRwuThMCd3Xiq7LvE6Lt5YeIyc7qqmVIkj3snXTNoGFSPK9IyCeeGe5ckTCyUFGBJKZqn8uKXst5V3nOaQpbnPHlQ2XlJJoT8-lPZmEk5qxy3B86Vd1xffAvcmomC3SfuUGIjg/s1600/dino_all.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6GKfHqtRwuThMCd3Xiq7LvE6Lt5YeIyc7qqmVIkj3snXTNoGFSPK9IyCeeGe5ckTCyUFGBJKZqn8uKXst5V3nOaQpbnPHlQ2XlJJoT8-lPZmEk5qxy3B86Vd1xffAvcmomC3SfuUGIjg/s400/dino_all.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The four dinosaur blocks, two from each shirt.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Some words stick with you... for me, my mother was, well... my <i>mother</i>, nurturing, nutty, occasional girlfriend, occasional fiend, but mostly just Ma, Mama, Mom. When my father referred to her as a <i>“Lady”</i> in the palliative care ward (as we ushered out some visitors to allow the nurses to attend to her), I saw for a brief moment my mother through my father’s eyes. A <i>Lady</i> is noble, honourable and honoured, elegant, holds her head up and is respected... those were qualities that my father saw in my mother. Qualities that, even as she lay there in her last days, I had only begun to know. That almost archaic word my father used, a word that makes one think of a 40's musical... <i>“Lady”</i>... it struck a note with me. A Lady wears her hair up. A Lady receives guests politely. A Lady smiles through pain. A Lady dies with her dignity intact. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">It takes a gentle man to see all that.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg_pHdN8S2ZlXWBYFzp9Uc1Sbm0BBKygzkWh6zLNUP7IEb9CGBrOGxWJsp4LZj8kavacLqjEkSeMYWcjDZeVk9EZJO4lrQg7mirB1aGhRz7rDR8pOs91g_G-WLLBRR1aDydfgSWkv5HhI/s1600/painted-tees.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg_pHdN8S2ZlXWBYFzp9Uc1Sbm0BBKygzkWh6zLNUP7IEb9CGBrOGxWJsp4LZj8kavacLqjEkSeMYWcjDZeVk9EZJO4lrQg7mirB1aGhRz7rDR8pOs91g_G-WLLBRR1aDydfgSWkv5HhI/s400/painted-tees.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Some of the famous painted t-shirts: parrot, dinosaur, and flower.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A Ukrainian Thread</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFCOQO8lDl5LSafsPkTS8Z-fTzZpFN5wtrvuTNqujy9rd8AVt2iRlAc3043YlfV6UhMlx3MvX6B3Mkez5_DYjlvdgSOlWmYTLNIwbetwu-v0pQ3meP3ykTLHE747jWIjHTuD8fRFCGxw0/s1600/embroidery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFCOQO8lDl5LSafsPkTS8Z-fTzZpFN5wtrvuTNqujy9rd8AVt2iRlAc3043YlfV6UhMlx3MvX6B3Mkez5_DYjlvdgSOlWmYTLNIwbetwu-v0pQ3meP3ykTLHE747jWIjHTuD8fRFCGxw0/s320/embroidery.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Details of my embroidery attempts.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Winter holidays meant leaving my quilt behind. It was too much to bring the sewing machine, fabric and cutting board with us as we traveled to Montreal and Vermont. I brought some knitting, a book that’s taking me months to read, the banjo I keep trying to play, and my computer. At the last minute, I threw in some of the blocks onto which I intended to hand appliqué pieces. Like quilting, I have never really embroidered. I quickly emailed myself a few embroidery instructions, knowing we’d be without internet at the old farmhouse we had rented in Vermont. As I started to chain stitch with the colourful thread, I thought about embroidery as such an important part of Ukrainian identity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Growing up in the prairie farmland of Saskatchewan, my mother’s first language was Ukrainian. My Baba, her mother, was a farmer and quilter and maker of some of the tastiest Ukrainian perogies known to the prairies. The simple and colourful threads and my attempt at fine, even stitches paid homage to both my Mother’s, my Baba’s, and the rest of the family’s Ukrainian culture and background. My embroidered stuffed garlic, although puckered and not entirely successful, reeks of Ukrainian prairie farm goodness.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV2Cw10Dn5IiRqXdysVEN2kDUFGiaUuyVxEIf3kAwfK4TRpcCbjEATNEELDtbJZxMTS8RceJtRzB3O_tC4lT-7BLaUBWxM8dERAKhsovapW4dWcXOWtmmVwhxnzCVHKycXBPx0zn2zaWc/s1600/baba_giedo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV2Cw10Dn5IiRqXdysVEN2kDUFGiaUuyVxEIf3kAwfK4TRpcCbjEATNEELDtbJZxMTS8RceJtRzB3O_tC4lT-7BLaUBWxM8dERAKhsovapW4dWcXOWtmmVwhxnzCVHKycXBPx0zn2zaWc/s640/baba_giedo.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Hard working Baba and Geido with their children: late '50's and early '80's. Tekla in centre behind her mother.</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Limping, Walking, Downward Dog, and the Napoleonic Wars</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">How does it feel to walk again?.... a little sore, a little wobbly, scary on ice, and absolutely amazing. After almost four months of crutches and knee walkers and rolling chairs and whatever else I could do to keep off my fractured left foot, I walk with very little grace and agility but <b><i>I walk</i></b>... and each day is an improvement. Slowly moving my foot in ways that I will never take for granted again... that complete bend of the toes in downward facing dog is a yogic impossibility right now... soon, though, soon. <br /> </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbN2RCBUCvipH52n8-AbC0HueVsKZUTtEqZ34ZcdfzVaM8r1cVx4lK_P_iZNtgGLXOr4x8qTwjyl2OQ95c-9KmMDj13N3Mkb3L647vD8CDK-nEWohnN4H8_N-i2u6iT-X9O2d4qWMvNBA/s1600/Dr.-Lisfranc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbN2RCBUCvipH52n8-AbC0HueVsKZUTtEqZ34ZcdfzVaM8r1cVx4lK_P_iZNtgGLXOr4x8qTwjyl2OQ95c-9KmMDj13N3Mkb3L647vD8CDK-nEWohnN4H8_N-i2u6iT-X9O2d4qWMvNBA/s400/Dr.-Lisfranc.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Napoleon's infamous surgeon, Jacques Lisfranc, and his battlefield.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And for my functioning left foot, I would like to thank science, technology and modern medicine. Named after the pompous and <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bellicose" target="_blank">bellicose</a> (yes, I had to look that word up) surgeon, <a href="http://www.surgeons.org.uk/history-of-surgeons/jacques-lisfranc-de-st-martin.html" target="_blank">Jacques Lisfranc de St. Martin</a>, the self-dubbed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisfranc_injury" target="_blank">Lisfranc injury</a> became a regular occurrence during the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Wars" target="_blank">Napoleonic Wars</a><i>. </i>In Battle, soldiers would fall off their horses, feet caught in stirrups while the horses kept running through the war torn fields... you can almost hear the twisting and crunching of tiny foot bones, metatarsals, and ligaments. The medical treatment by Napoleon's famed surgeon at that time<i><b>:<span style="color: #cc0000;"> <span style="color: #e06666;">amputation of the foot</span></span>.</b></i> Need I say more? I would take my not-so-pompous and hard working surgeon, Dr. Johnny Lau, over the celebrated Docteur Jacques Lisfranc de St. Martin anytime, with no apologies to Napoleon Bonaparte whatsoever. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And, yes, born in the right era, for sure.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7sanOmEfkDYqUylGIopG9pPRJ9iGXYlG6p7YNrq3TaiNhMIKQRvVaYmt5ffgvZinSgy1OlxhXZPYWAcAMrwKtU0olBui1xNmVx2lgzNPPCGKi8h0QJKlllXn8dm6hkUTklQwBxfMwFj0/s1600/dr.lau.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7sanOmEfkDYqUylGIopG9pPRJ9iGXYlG6p7YNrq3TaiNhMIKQRvVaYmt5ffgvZinSgy1OlxhXZPYWAcAMrwKtU0olBui1xNmVx2lgzNPPCGKi8h0QJKlllXn8dm6hkUTklQwBxfMwFj0/s400/dr.lau.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Dr. Johnny Lau, Superstar of Foot and Ankle, and his battlefield.</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Happy for a New Year</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">2012 will be a year to never forget. Losing my mother, breaking my foot, middle age hard upon me. Still, in the creases that have formed around my eyes, there are no truly sad stories. I am one of the lucky ones. 2012 saw children shot dead, women savagely raped, homes destroyed, fires burned, poverty, war, hatred, bigotry, violence. I know none of this. The cherished life of ease and entitlement that I have... living in this place, at this moment, is something I entirely take for granted. For it is in this luxury of time and space, as I sew and write, that I realize that I have not entirely lost my mother in so much as I have found her in myself. A rich life lived by her, has been gifted to me in my pampered and peaceful existence. Although my sadness is real, I know no unbearable pain. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Still... high hopes for 2013 to be a better year, if not for me, for the rest of this beautiful and pitiful human race.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm9IRIIV0ZQFwJv5GkvwQMztFyVRateJ2_0MMUhu4BNHttbDFtkOULCirmBQOcw84u4AXy68bh7ZWepTjT6wLvTqUCuyM8q0U2Woq_eHPP0u-MJuiNAGZ3vZKLnqnfBwvC6l5Ivf9ILVc/s1600/quilt_3-left.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm9IRIIV0ZQFwJv5GkvwQMztFyVRateJ2_0MMUhu4BNHttbDFtkOULCirmBQOcw84u4AXy68bh7ZWepTjT6wLvTqUCuyM8q0U2Woq_eHPP0u-MJuiNAGZ3vZKLnqnfBwvC6l5Ivf9ILVc/s400/quilt_3-left.jpg" width="331" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Three more blocks to go.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-5218782821476304362012-12-28T19:02:00.000-05:002013-01-08T13:15:31.451-05:00Awakening. Blog 9.<h3>
<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Winter Feelings</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCnzhRt0XG7cxBA6-DBXSwoeL53pmhdls4ctlqHswz_i-HruDkKD80yDmWZNEWr8B1t1dYSePex_BUbdfkwUZrqQns9Cl3K61Wfb-fJY6fELbvHCzxxymVAmEVY1aAdXYQNOBo5Iry0Lo/s1600/Xmas-turkey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCnzhRt0XG7cxBA6-DBXSwoeL53pmhdls4ctlqHswz_i-HruDkKD80yDmWZNEWr8B1t1dYSePex_BUbdfkwUZrqQns9Cl3K61Wfb-fJY6fELbvHCzxxymVAmEVY1aAdXYQNOBo5Iry0Lo/s320/Xmas-turkey.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Happy cooking for the family.</b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Holidays and memories of my mother smiling, laughing, cooking. A dove of peace atop our tree, it must still be in a box somewhere underneath my father’s house. Looking through what I have written here, however, I feel a little bit like I have blogged my mother into <i>angel-hood</i> or <i>dove-dom</i>. To clarify, my mother was not all goodness and smiles. She had a ferocious temper, an unreasonable impatience with imperfection, and an aggressive and often biting fierceness to her. She was friend to many, deeply and passionately, but also, to some, a famous enemy. Outspoken, passionate, and often temperamental, she mellowed some with age, learned patience and, when faced with death, spoke with pride and great courage. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Upon learning of her terminal cancer, she decisively asked for all her grandchildren, our two and my brother’s two, to come to her before she was too sick to really <i>be</i> with them. We came first with Rachel, 20, and David, 16, in March. My brother followed in April with Will, also 20, and Sophie, 17. In the evening of our first night, she sat with me and the kids, I was incredibly impressed with her ability to confront her illness and speak openly. I was unable to sleep that night until I wrote some of it down:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /><i>“Tekla speaks to her grandchildren with an honesty and integrity and courage that amazes me. She tells them clearly about her illness, how quickly it has come on, how virulent the cancer is and her choice not to have chemotherapy. She explains that is hard and painful for her not to see them grow up, talks about how special they are to her: Rachel as the first grandchild and their very close and special relationship. David and their special relationship... She tells them how she is not afraid and how she goes away from life with no regrets. We list her accomplishments and she speaks of them with pride. And I am so, so proud. We all weep a little and laugh a little.”</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />Of course, the following day, when my daughter and I discussed how both hard <i>and</i> special it was to have her grandmother be able to say good-bye as she had done, I mentioned to my daughter how I couldn’t sleep until I wrote some of it down. My daughter’s response? “Ma, I recorded it on my iPhone”. Technology... sigh... at it’s best. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />My mother made a dying gift to us all of her openness, strength, and eloquence. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6G_1qHKZoqlkUF7MCiUgRSWIcHZoX6lShNaqPbwr7QUfL_ZINkA2vNJHKy5ZCSGb09mUm8iddOaHETcc6jlpALUC-qWMKKJgBpSxE0ljgxxQBkia8msYLBpF0MCTwJsagMcLYz1VQ2VQ/s1600/grandkid-collage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6G_1qHKZoqlkUF7MCiUgRSWIcHZoX6lShNaqPbwr7QUfL_ZINkA2vNJHKy5ZCSGb09mUm8iddOaHETcc6jlpALUC-qWMKKJgBpSxE0ljgxxQBkia8msYLBpF0MCTwJsagMcLYz1VQ2VQ/s640/grandkid-collage.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Tekla's grandchildren, a collage through time.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Mother Bear</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">After the building of the new <a href="http://www.penderislands.org/" target="_blank">Pender Island Community Hall</a>, my mother was part of a group who carved the “mother bear” and other totem poles which now stand at the front of the Hall. I remember her proudly telling me about the carving, a special time in her life. My mama bear, the totem climber and carver....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">This was one of my favorite t-shirts. For the block, I only used one choice of the quilting fabrics which I initially chose: the fern pattern. Ferns in B.C. and in Costa Rica, both her homes, were what prompted me to choose this fabric. I especially like the bleach stain spot and the faded worn and warm essence of this shirt.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFm-iqenX1VLAiUYuJbVm3vZqoFrL1PExBHEgcHhcvGSfhyphenhyphenMoY3lBg5P8xKxkWXYvFr3QdA07EYw5f1773oc0F9dkVqYkTh6Icka75XOcEQnqyq6FbVRgwGCLTXtocrTJn4rjCQmPYfuo/s1600/totem_carvers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="131" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFm-iqenX1VLAiUYuJbVm3vZqoFrL1PExBHEgcHhcvGSfhyphenhyphenMoY3lBg5P8xKxkWXYvFr3QdA07EYw5f1773oc0F9dkVqYkTh6Icka75XOcEQnqyq6FbVRgwGCLTXtocrTJn4rjCQmPYfuo/s640/totem_carvers.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>The Totem Carvers</b></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu3KqPNZTRkUYCYhkNOSkRPyh1MB8aW-8tDQO7YlrhM36AVawbvrezRFvrvlsej5DQSuAc3aO9pICy7fvtLL0L5rX1QNaO_xZ3BQpx-V8kyECJfFfd8weNSeS2hxB_WMfREL66w7C-S1w/s1600/bearmother.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu3KqPNZTRkUYCYhkNOSkRPyh1MB8aW-8tDQO7YlrhM36AVawbvrezRFvrvlsej5DQSuAc3aO9pICy7fvtLL0L5rX1QNaO_xZ3BQpx-V8kyECJfFfd8weNSeS2hxB_WMfREL66w7C-S1w/s320/bearmother.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Block from T-shirt to raise funds for Community Hall Totem.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Proud to Farm</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQpEs9XEz_h8B3PwWrWOyT3QY6wqAYoLtUSVc-_-naR09a8UhL9lRGyKJgN-lU_RVFy9w4o2xRHz7vzkLeh-8tqIjyf3mRZ8n_t55UmV7LxNC54VNLBYs5vic4ged76R0CI85m_yIhsfw/s1600/tekla_proudtofarm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQpEs9XEz_h8B3PwWrWOyT3QY6wqAYoLtUSVc-_-naR09a8UhL9lRGyKJgN-lU_RVFy9w4o2xRHz7vzkLeh-8tqIjyf3mRZ8n_t55UmV7LxNC54VNLBYs5vic4ged76R0CI85m_yIhsfw/s320/tekla_proudtofarm.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Tekla at the Farmer's Market in her "Proud to Farm" tee.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">From the wide stretches of Saskatchewan prairie farmland to the city and then to her country garden on the Gulf Islands, my mother always had the heart and head of a farmer. She knew the soil, understood the timing of growth and the goodness of rain. A bad grub would be swiftly executed, earthworms would be praised, watering would be root deep, composting clippings would rustle as they transformed into fine rich dirt. Fat peas were grown to be stolen from the vine when we visited her garden. Her flowers almost embarrassed and overwhelmed us with their beauty. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">This block will have some leaves stitched on, they are currently pinned. I was going to cover the corporate “American Eagle” logo with a leaf and then I saw the t-shirt had some fame as a retro tee being sold on eBay for an inflated price... this gave me a chuckle, so I left the "ae".</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAgq3nCX0CA92veGIZWQHEZ7bndv5dznjdsvkVIXlpt0oIpaBW2gPtfzo6aXGWtu_xK2b-_f-WtXXknypF9ivlosvj-_zsBg4tWpwHhxaIOdY3ZapOHnW2qSoP7PKGw-oCMk54NGQ-Kj8/s1600/proud_farm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAgq3nCX0CA92veGIZWQHEZ7bndv5dznjdsvkVIXlpt0oIpaBW2gPtfzo6aXGWtu_xK2b-_f-WtXXknypF9ivlosvj-_zsBg4tWpwHhxaIOdY3ZapOHnW2qSoP7PKGw-oCMk54NGQ-Kj8/s320/proud_farm.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Proud to Farm t-shirt block.</b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Definitely the Opera</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A late addition to the dwindling t-shirt pile, this one from CBC’s “Definitely not the Opera” weekend radio show. When I realized I might run out of t-shirts enough to make a queen sized quilt, my father brought this back from their other home in Costa Rica. So worn, it was almost falling apart in my hands as I ironed and sewed it... the tropical climate of Costa Rica makes everything so transient, moisture and weather taking back all our fragile man made goods. Return to the earth says the rain forest, return and renew.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin3r5KtUhNMf1oxqSGh0_Rn7NIXZLJLN78vbWh6BZncwbSmrltI-I0OpFY6Htkp8ydjx_G6jML8LeTWk0I6zZIbb9ViaTUMvECJxHTJ83f9rP1SQUiLdI583VcXh9_RTSazaAYVFep2MA/s1600/defnot_opera.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin3r5KtUhNMf1oxqSGh0_Rn7NIXZLJLN78vbWh6BZncwbSmrltI-I0OpFY6Htkp8ydjx_G6jML8LeTWk0I6zZIbb9ViaTUMvECJxHTJ83f9rP1SQUiLdI583VcXh9_RTSazaAYVFep2MA/s320/defnot_opera.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Threadbare tee made into thread-rich block.</b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />In the garden, my mother would consistently have the CBC playing on her battery powered radio, she would listen to most anything that they put on, but it was “Saturday Afternoon at the Met", the formidable force of those operatic voices, that she enjoyed the most. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=CA&v=VATmgtmR5o4" target="_blank">Pavarotti was her most beloved opera singer and he joined us at her “good-bye” just as she had planned. <span style="color: black;"></span></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5663066121520190567" target="_blank">Listen.</a></span><br />
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Solstice</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsIJ4dZc3lGcoHZkWd295VqB_qlcwxvsCwWib5JnO5jAURmug0mEAWCj5roNlD_PsV0l4hqV4JxDRfmqKBWEGe8B7CV-_FccNL5uHnGH6N1nD6Ay0_4Ntv477-Iwqgo8CnPVA6TFtahmE/s1600/solstice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsIJ4dZc3lGcoHZkWd295VqB_qlcwxvsCwWib5JnO5jAURmug0mEAWCj5roNlD_PsV0l4hqV4JxDRfmqKBWEGe8B7CV-_FccNL5uHnGH6N1nD6Ay0_4Ntv477-Iwqgo8CnPVA6TFtahmE/s320/solstice.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Celebrating the summer solstice of 1984 in the winter solstice of 2012.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Winter solstice </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">(Dec. 21st)</span> now passed and I am walking since that solstice day for the first time after almost four months. The foot aches, the ankle, the knee, the hip, but to move is a gift and I am grinning and bearing (and sometimes crying) with these new pains and the effort of walking again. I crawl out of my 2012 cocoon of injury and grief moving slowly towards a new year, 2013. And I hear my mother’s words... “take care of each other, take care of the earth”.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Dm_EvyPwQIZptDZCb298MI6IFvJQLxdaXmAYQG9jc1FVWh9kxGX3hKLWP1SC8p9aEVpyDcUeRMSl31Yki-S8G3KAMjUtik8V8i-HzjDjEsfuuf-kWKuv_fr4e1-0A-6fn7ZWLfUrd3Q/s1600/quilt_dec28.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Dm_EvyPwQIZptDZCb298MI6IFvJQLxdaXmAYQG9jc1FVWh9kxGX3hKLWP1SC8p9aEVpyDcUeRMSl31Yki-S8G3KAMjUtik8V8i-HzjDjEsfuuf-kWKuv_fr4e1-0A-6fn7ZWLfUrd3Q/s640/quilt_dec28.jpg" width="530" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">My Tekla memory quilt layout updated, six more blocks to go.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-11235201201881147432012-12-17T22:54:00.001-05:002012-12-17T22:59:59.584-05:00Good Medicine. Blog 8.<h4>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Medicine Beach</span></h4>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaE0Yc9R-Wz0waydKMwpkNczuX4OXAh9og2Gr9OSr9q8ZBAgrgqKETo_7YvJmCSGGHVe-ZYWpzpGf0oPlNyi9PIgYQ6hjSb1AiPiLGrTZ8kHK9iewKErmeu4Fq_-fQeksziXyW4yIBIYI/s1600/Great_Blue_Heron_On_Rock1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaE0Yc9R-Wz0waydKMwpkNczuX4OXAh9og2Gr9OSr9q8ZBAgrgqKETo_7YvJmCSGGHVe-ZYWpzpGf0oPlNyi9PIgYQ6hjSb1AiPiLGrTZ8kHK9iewKErmeu4Fq_-fQeksziXyW4yIBIYI/s400/Great_Blue_Heron_On_Rock1.jpg" width="215" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Great Blue Heron</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>For Tekla</i></span><br /><br />We search the hours for solitude,<br />the quiet of herons in their sleep,<br />a fisher on the wing who falls<br />into the waves in search of silver<br />or a woman making her way through mist<br />in early morning, delicate as water.<br />We search for this, a small stone<br />in the tide, a broken shell, a crab<br />so still we think it prays, its claws<br />raised to our hands as if<br />what we wait for is return.<br />What do we do with our hours?<br />We reach for what comes to us<br />in quiet. There is in us a need<br />for silence. Look at the woman<br />who is heron in her mind.<br />She has made of life a silence.<br />See how she holds all her life<br />in her eyes. She walks among stones.<br />Far from her in the tidal reach<br />birds rise into the light.<br />Who goes to her but herself?<br />What she has held is hers and hers<br />alone: to watch the quiet of herons,<br />a kingfisher falling from all the sky<br />there is upon this quiet<br />she gives only to herself, a beach<br />whose medicine is hers and hers alone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;">Of Songs and Birds</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfEO5JqHPqQG3LEl_62N4Vq5IDRuzHsr85w33qrYdWerNp4_QyynonpOX3IVvF3ePVJrMoKAGk3VdcDfAgZv3nq_SwhOSZ7oa8KwdF7PgBHhexRqV7OgNH_CmCvKXVwOee_Lonj5MNUwE/s1600/birders.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfEO5JqHPqQG3LEl_62N4Vq5IDRuzHsr85w33qrYdWerNp4_QyynonpOX3IVvF3ePVJrMoKAGk3VdcDfAgZv3nq_SwhOSZ7oa8KwdF7PgBHhexRqV7OgNH_CmCvKXVwOee_Lonj5MNUwE/s320/birders.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Tekla and her birder friends.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">My mother was an ardent environmentalist and occasional birder. The proceeding poem was written by <a href="http://www.patricklane.ca/about/" target="_blank">Patrick Lane</a>, poet and friend, in support of <a href="http://www.penderisland.info/medicine-beach-north-pender-island/" target="_blank">Medicine Beach</a>, a fragile beach adjoining a unique salt water wetland area on one of B.C.'s gulf Islands, Pender, where my mother spent the last 30 years of her life. This poem is published in my father’s book <a href="http://william.deverell.com/books/" target="_blank">“The Laughing Falcon”</a> in honour of his wife and “tireless” editor. In the poem, my mother, to whom it was dedicated, is both woman and heron.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The Medicine Beach/ Pender Chorus fundraising t-shirt became two blocks: the frog like creature drawing on one, almost complete, and the words: “Join the Chorus” on the other block. Good Medicine, singing and saving the beach... good medicine, sewing and writing... good medicine, healing my broken foot and heart... good medicine, celebrating my mother’s uniquely rich life. Good medicine indeed.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIgl0elwnRQR3goS092gKOGkgTLLkr80-W_FXawH6yrHnyJI5Xxfhwrgc1H8lOxYRvSBJ742Kqy_fzQzaTR3P97oDG4XeM0j2EnuCbva5zHqvBuRB4Fq_z5C4Gs_hcRPkccwWfR3Ns5WE/s1600/medicine_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIgl0elwnRQR3goS092gKOGkgTLLkr80-W_FXawH6yrHnyJI5Xxfhwrgc1H8lOxYRvSBJ742Kqy_fzQzaTR3P97oDG4XeM0j2EnuCbva5zHqvBuRB4Fq_z5C4Gs_hcRPkccwWfR3Ns5WE/s400/medicine_01.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The medicine frog</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimWNAM4KXVUEcurikaW4yVQKmRZEmdtW3QN_3mPoTL7w65F8mp2oJ1UobTh43Pn04lXT04xGXxpZf28UEXJk_RxN0wCiikNe4MPZzBIoe6UX4PB-4XshzHzA-ktthZB9H6WVczd7caJ40/s1600/medicine_02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimWNAM4KXVUEcurikaW4yVQKmRZEmdtW3QN_3mPoTL7w65F8mp2oJ1UobTh43Pn04lXT04xGXxpZf28UEXJk_RxN0wCiikNe4MPZzBIoe6UX4PB-4XshzHzA-ktthZB9H6WVczd7caJ40/s400/medicine_02.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Chorus sings to support Medicine Beach</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The Point of Brooks Point</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I struggled with this t-shirt. It’s thick plastic-y screened image, bright and beautifully executed by Pender Island artist <a href="http://www.bloodstargallery.com/fducote.php" target="_blank">Frank Ducote</a> was difficult to work with, apologies to Frank. I originally had intended to make it into 3” squares but accidentally cut them much smaller at 2”. The image is in extremely vivid colours on black, I was hoping that breaking it up it would blend into the other colours and layouts of the other blocks. I’m not sure that it’s working. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">My inner dialogue with my mother, which I often have while sewing the quilt blocks, “this is my difficult child, unruly and awkward and contrary”... she would laugh at my minor frustrations and then encourage me, as she always did, to work it through. The block is uneven, some of the plastic image is melted, everything is crooked and puckered, my iron has a gummy melted mess on it. Like all difficult children, it should not be neglected.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCQxtdqKhcPoC7pCy71Pima_K1U2pSouFXmbFcaBsvoFNKdtDXjCanznrfuFweEHLN6papNfiBkfiB5FPSHvnibNlOrjOQYGezSA9DwdArkuFw7Px9mbXk6HG5nUfsIUhRNyNnTpRE6P8/s1600/14118_412670448985_3867097_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCQxtdqKhcPoC7pCy71Pima_K1U2pSouFXmbFcaBsvoFNKdtDXjCanznrfuFweEHLN6papNfiBkfiB5FPSHvnibNlOrjOQYGezSA9DwdArkuFw7Px9mbXk6HG5nUfsIUhRNyNnTpRE6P8/s320/14118_412670448985_3867097_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Silhouetted at Brooks Point</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.crd.bc.ca/parks/brookspoint/index.htm" target="_blank">Brooks Point</a> was one of our favorite walks. There was always a special trip out to Brooks Point on South Pender for beach combing, whale watching, barking at the seals and balancing along the driftwood when we would visit. The children would build forts from the bleached wood and there would be a simple picnic of cheese and crackers and my mother’s pickles on logs near the water’s edge. Through the efforts of people like my mother in the Pender Island community, the Capital Regional District in Victoria completed the purchase of Brooks Point in 2010 making it a regional park for all to enjoy in perpetuity. I do not believe in heaven and yet, there, amongst the wet pebbles, the wind, the gulls, and the salt water is a heavenly place where I will always find her.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1zUWk9uigNGRiPAizn1ObVaL2zj2fvQ-Q-iB_5dZIEjy2WeBWbawXQenNKbFa7U6eHS2VsWxQny-hICJwXK0PNoSzbCs9qAwZZbhDX50xgObMhdCn9EV2RF1vPyOWAVezjY6t6Y8VVX0/s1600/brockpoint.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1zUWk9uigNGRiPAizn1ObVaL2zj2fvQ-Q-iB_5dZIEjy2WeBWbawXQenNKbFa7U6eHS2VsWxQny-hICJwXK0PNoSzbCs9qAwZZbhDX50xgObMhdCn9EV2RF1vPyOWAVezjY6t6Y8VVX0/s400/brockpoint.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">An unruly block</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Browning Bombers</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvrGMMwP_38ti5jLjTnrleu0_FsruEcyaeW53RexyZ3S5cNVaMUz1jOQHJDtS74mKC6J2TZ137hKq4skgg7tuUYGYLZ0ejKb22EM2JwohReMrCXwUBZSIVBbMpsw07DFVYherfE_HQzRA/s1600/totem_pole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvrGMMwP_38ti5jLjTnrleu0_FsruEcyaeW53RexyZ3S5cNVaMUz1jOQHJDtS74mKC6J2TZ137hKq4skgg7tuUYGYLZ0ejKb22EM2JwohReMrCXwUBZSIVBbMpsw07DFVYherfE_HQzRA/s200/totem_pole.jpg" width="190" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Climbing the Totem</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">At the local Pender Island Browning Harbour pub, where many, many years ago I saw an unknown band called <a href="http://ca.myspace.com/music/player?sid=28016060&ac=now" target="_blank">“Spirit of the West”</a> (link to song, have a listen), it was there that music, guffaws and spilled beer was, and still is, shared by the locals and intermittent weekenders and tourists with great gusto, merriment, and small town friendliness. Local legend has it that my mother was the first to climb the totem pole which stands in the middle of the bar room holding up the roof. Not sure where the fine folks who made up the Browning Bombers Blues Band have gone but, I imagine, a few of them might still be found picking out some blues on a wet coast night just below that famous totem pole.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6LpKnL8BgaZ2HDFuxJh4R5ysGfxf2MZ-La897PAJ3n9f0pIPIhna_7-pcuuNh5WnNHnkFT4sdNQprxwpys6AB6bLicSjqkOKpRtb90qlUcfR8WvdKeKzQ2932Dkbx0I5A6SSrnjh7pNY/s1600/bombers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6LpKnL8BgaZ2HDFuxJh4R5ysGfxf2MZ-La897PAJ3n9f0pIPIhna_7-pcuuNh5WnNHnkFT4sdNQprxwpys6AB6bLicSjqkOKpRtb90qlUcfR8WvdKeKzQ2932Dkbx0I5A6SSrnjh7pNY/s400/bombers.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Browning Pub Blues</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;">Just Mom and Me</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;"> </span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyExBz8lc-Ygimf4BE4bCUkboMXyOEAX3k9DH5hITFaW1-SZDf1oJnZMmgnviytuv04I77PlJ_amS0pp8Z_cdVLU_YyjE8-Wt7gI3LvprO8hoKk_j93gxKUjIs4e6aUZTvaAxtynDHcJQ/s1600/me_and_mom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyExBz8lc-Ygimf4BE4bCUkboMXyOEAX3k9DH5hITFaW1-SZDf1oJnZMmgnviytuv04I77PlJ_amS0pp8Z_cdVLU_YyjE8-Wt7gI3LvprO8hoKk_j93gxKUjIs4e6aUZTvaAxtynDHcJQ/s640/me_and_mom.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Mom and me through the years.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;"> </span> </span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8-mlpCbzdcNKe-Vnwiyo9m2r0u-4jgT1-O2Y7doW3HwG9JMSn8P9CSPVgJKhLrEjLOSks38MSWczktiblulquCEBqokEEAipBATUY79ebJI55wSVJa9Xxjhe6QRqgYsMmYDoISSfw3A0/s1600/love_delivered.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8-mlpCbzdcNKe-Vnwiyo9m2r0u-4jgT1-O2Y7doW3HwG9JMSn8P9CSPVgJKhLrEjLOSks38MSWczktiblulquCEBqokEEAipBATUY79ebJI55wSVJa9Xxjhe6QRqgYsMmYDoISSfw3A0/s200/love_delivered.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Last photo together, love delivered</span>.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">It’s funny the small moments one remembers, the almost insignificant beats of a too-busy life that can wake you from a fitful sleep. When I first learned about my mother’s terminal cancer I struggled like a drowning person, gasping and grasping for all the moments I had had with her, worried that I would lose all memory of them... all those everyday moments, not the special holidays or birthdays that were made famous through photographs and family lore. One morning I woke with great clarity and I remembered with vividness how we would walk, my mother and I, holding hands and making small farting noises by suctioning our hands together. A silly thing that we did from the time I was a little girl until we were both way too old to know better or even care... our little secret. I remembered us walking through a West Vancouver shopping mall and making little farts behind a very uptight and proper ‘blue rinse’ lady, acting shocked, and then suppressing our giggles like the naughty little girls that we were. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Just a thing that we did, holding hands. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Anticipation and Progress</span></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A few days away from walking without crutches on my once broken, now fixed, foot. My left foot, at least it almost feels like my foot again, goes by the nickname: Liz Frank. Tingling with anticipation and the ever-so-slight feeling of a plate and a few screws inside it... I am trying to get as many quilt blocks done as I can before I will busy myself with the effort of learning to walk again. Although, I am sure a ten minute walk seem like a marathon and the comfort of sewing will draw me back to the smaller yet impressive stack of remaining t-shirts. And, yes, I am still saving my favorite t-shirts for last. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">With such an eclectic mix of blocks and images, I became worried at how it would all work. I set up a template in Adobe Illustrator to contemplate the potential final look, the simple solid colours and borders that I may use to pull all these disparate blocks together. I am pretty happy with the result. No idea how it will all fit, but pretty happy nonetheless.<br /> </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgau2BclGv5Px13CWR52jhyphenhyphenIZz3-QptOAlZbzX3NJUh4O4HYooboAcDOx7mYajSriFWdJYyYFiQtYb7qgN4F8EZ-4gkPZ5vasuR4DWqhz_cscBBukvftG86hBxRGMbaJojl95Cx6REMXy0/s1600/quilt_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgau2BclGv5Px13CWR52jhyphenhyphenIZz3-QptOAlZbzX3NJUh4O4HYooboAcDOx7mYajSriFWdJYyYFiQtYb7qgN4F8EZ-4gkPZ5vasuR4DWqhz_cscBBukvftG86hBxRGMbaJojl95Cx6REMXy0/s640/quilt_web.jpg" width="515" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The queen-sized quilt layout, a loving work in progress.</span></td></tr>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-51890844366514762082012-12-03T16:59:00.000-05:002012-12-03T21:01:55.417-05:00Movement. Blog 7.<div style="text-align: right;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlNY1I5-MDyhS-XKL9tg7pmuScx_QZmWYT74YleJdCKm4FIhMc61usUn1AtxsZKFOil6-Hxt2nfx1XDJqe6GMvC6FLpYFkjpqouGNe0bNQJ9Tv8aOP-89o0LLjqAybEmmviFuWIA1yLMY/s1600/health.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlNY1I5-MDyhS-XKL9tg7pmuScx_QZmWYT74YleJdCKm4FIhMc61usUn1AtxsZKFOil6-Hxt2nfx1XDJqe6GMvC6FLpYFkjpqouGNe0bNQJ9Tv8aOP-89o0LLjqAybEmmviFuWIA1yLMY/s400/health.jpg" width="398" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">A broken block.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Broken</span></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">It was with great verve and anger that I attacked the t-shirt that advertised: “Don’t Play With Your Health” Indeed!... <i>'playing'</i> with my health, going up an unsafe ladder, (one that I, myself, had set) and falling to my own broken state has left me with three and half months of <i>crutchdom</i>, crawling up stairs on my knees in utter humiliation, suffering through painful surgery, and fractured bones that may, someday, heal. With less than three weeks until I get the okay to slowly start weight bearing and walking, I am anxious, a little terrified, and completely and utterly fed up. I am headstrong, too fast to judge, and always think I know best... all qualities that I inherited from my mother... in both their good and bad affiliations. </span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4v3EeZhNr8XWkgXZP9x0KxYWSVDbjXJtgut3r2dO1OE1Agb8DwBtkBy_BM5sMFqxoApLmFzDQsa7lZXyCiNizNuNisI0650xhjuCWAgfTzFdW7-UZFrCMkIr5Zd5zTCnVMrmtSX6k3AI/s1600/crash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4v3EeZhNr8XWkgXZP9x0KxYWSVDbjXJtgut3r2dO1OE1Agb8DwBtkBy_BM5sMFqxoApLmFzDQsa7lZXyCiNizNuNisI0650xhjuCWAgfTzFdW7-UZFrCMkIr5Zd5zTCnVMrmtSX6k3AI/s200/crash.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">This “Parkdale Occupational Health and Safety Committee” t-shirt was comprised of a series of comic-like drawings of work and home accidents. It was the one word “CRASH” in cartoon lettering that spoke to me the most. That sound of a ladder falling haunts me forever. I wasn’t sure where I was going when I started this quilt block, but, as I kept cutting and sewing, I realized I wanted to make it feel ‘broken’, like shattered glass or bones... off-balance and sharp. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Anger to Sadness... if I could just call my mother and have her admonish me for my stupidity. Sigh.<br /><i> </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i>Note to all: always have a ladder buddy below.</i></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbX5wQ4xsGdsaGO3V0zSCeAmWWZBvQDeZzkI1E6EyAVbunm0hWRliMp0pw0YH8ibKvrN-m3PrrYCPyVbjP_7nnNgAiebgkHbTUN-ErV_ntoPmPN3dSDTTb0OjX_jytA6hnHyi8bmPWu1Y/s1600/fish3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbX5wQ4xsGdsaGO3V0zSCeAmWWZBvQDeZzkI1E6EyAVbunm0hWRliMp0pw0YH8ibKvrN-m3PrrYCPyVbjP_7nnNgAiebgkHbTUN-ErV_ntoPmPN3dSDTTb0OjX_jytA6hnHyi8bmPWu1Y/s400/fish3.jpg" width="332" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Fish and leaves to be embroidered on at a later date.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;">Fish and Foliage</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;"> </span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I started swimming as part of my physio: moving through watery space with some speed, heart beating, ankle loosening, body thanking me... underwater: I want to be a fish, or a dolphin, an orca whale. (Word of advice to anyone who suffers an injury similar to mine: swim as soon and as often as you can.) I dedicate this block to my harsh but true mantra of late: “move or die”. Swim, hike, bike... move. A family of walkers, my father hikes his way to a renewed life and love through the jungles and beaches of Costa Rica. My husband waits impatiently for our long walks, future travels, hiking new trails and old paths. Our old dog still jumps up when I move from room to room, ‘will she finally walk me?... it is time?’. Soon, dog, soon.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />Hiking is healing. As family and friends gathered for my mother’s funeral, we went on a few group hikes to some of her favorite spots. It was a great time to walk together, be together with or without words, share our sorrow and heal.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8rQqBtDUOF_Lyy3BQzOrL5X7ghDjkEcwLPvTtsE_6gHusWvMpc5-qRddSYuqDrAsIwZ6eJBXtnNdHR5H4cHxR4rPVnp44PCzk85KCTeDrTsPY7eLhDkY5a7b8t62hhrkUJOZHMqsJQLQ/s1600/bluffs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8rQqBtDUOF_Lyy3BQzOrL5X7ghDjkEcwLPvTtsE_6gHusWvMpc5-qRddSYuqDrAsIwZ6eJBXtnNdHR5H4cHxR4rPVnp44PCzk85KCTeDrTsPY7eLhDkY5a7b8t62hhrkUJOZHMqsJQLQ/s640/bluffs.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Some family gathering at the bluffs, remembering.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The freedom shirt.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Liberté, Freiheit, Libertad, Freedom</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJjyG3GHPDzVf_9JtI8sv8IA_dw_dzkguYb5O1nzk3SOGDJ_7PPlbNVbRG5mjzXaT1gU7Zxw53Q5V7Qmi9Bf6WjwTzfHiX6r7BXViXPFKBMsVqTRMKcrd4SukXyQHLaUqtwYy5QYYRpB8/s1600/tekla_hike.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJjyG3GHPDzVf_9JtI8sv8IA_dw_dzkguYb5O1nzk3SOGDJ_7PPlbNVbRG5mjzXaT1gU7Zxw53Q5V7Qmi9Bf6WjwTzfHiX6r7BXViXPFKBMsVqTRMKcrd4SukXyQHLaUqtwYy5QYYRpB8/s400/tekla_hike.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A road to travel, a desert to walk.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Those words in many languages were spelled on the t-shirt used in this block. I reflect for a moment on my mother as a feminist. Remember the early days of feminism? There was a time when all that I know, and all that my daughter takes for granted, was simply not there for women in this country. Needless to say, in so many other countries and nations, women have no where near our rights and freedoms. The struggle <i>does</i> continue. But in honour of my mother, I harken back to the sixties and seventies when feminism first grew strong as a movement and then as a way of life. She marched and rallied and held her head high as a vocal woman, an educated woman, and a fearless woman. I winced as a young teenager at her diatribes on the importance of the feminist movement, embarrassed at her passionate and opinionated voice in front of my shy and wordless adolescent friends. I struggled with her formidable presence... I just wanted to blend in with the latest fashions, peer pressures, and mindless attitudes. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized how the gift that she gave me, that very same strong voice and feminist attitude, has formed me. A favorite song from those pioneering days of the feminist movement: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEffTvbVqmc" target="_blank">Give us bread, but give us roses.</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">For the people hear us singing: Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">For they are women's children, and we mother them again.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The rising of the women means the rising of the race.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses, bread and roses.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Hearts starve as well as bodies; bread and roses, bread and roses.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-70480794372209281072012-11-23T21:27:00.000-05:002012-11-23T21:41:15.280-05:00Gratitude. Blog 6.<h3>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;">Gratitude in the Garden</span> </span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Gifts come in ways that are often unrecognized at first. I arrived from the palliative care hospice to my parent’s house after a sleepless night, my mother’s last, wearier than I have ever been and heavy with an ache that I had never felt before. There was resolve and peace in my father’s arms as he met me- our deep sadness and, yes, our relief, shared. My father said “Go to the garden”. Some time before, a Sunday garden ‘bee’ had been planned by friends to help out during my mother’s illness. My beautiful daughter and I walked the path down from the house to her garden, the path that she had walked so many times. We opened the gate of Tekla’s “Tree of Life” to the sounds of soft voices, children, bees, the wind, the work. As we walked through the rows, I hugged and wept with each friend... some I barely knew but all of whom I was grateful to, both for their support and for their comforting words. The bleeding hearts were in full bloom under the warmth of the May sun, as were my mother’s deep purple tulips and peonies. After sharing our sadness, each of us continued to work: pulling weeds, raking, clipping, turning the dirt, all the while feeling my mother’s presence in the peace of her garden, taking solace in the warmth of her soil. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnA8w_Fe1xl9a-tB-tr8u9l8SGsR8ucz0c20tkxVotdryDFUvkz2dZIp5MLn09Y58cGJjtSXI2_0vDKVsmCQNyd5r433STff9UayxmnLHzEs8P54cBJo9IrTWVmc5uVaAWIoCrjXjOs4E/s1600/FLOWER-TRILOGY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnA8w_Fe1xl9a-tB-tr8u9l8SGsR8ucz0c20tkxVotdryDFUvkz2dZIp5MLn09Y58cGJjtSXI2_0vDKVsmCQNyd5r433STff9UayxmnLHzEs8P54cBJo9IrTWVmc5uVaAWIoCrjXjOs4E/s640/FLOWER-TRILOGY.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Me with bleeding hearts, peonies, and Tekla with yellow Iris</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Four More</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Four more weeks before I can walk without crutches on my broken foot, four more quilt blocks built. I have reigned in my wild newbie quilting ways, a sightly nagging fear of making all the blocks actually work together. Starting to wonder about, eek, hand quilting versus machine quilting.... does it really matter? Especially when I know nothing about either. And how big do I make this thing? Will I have enough blocks for a queen sized quilt? What the hell is queen sized anyways? More research and helpful hints required! Fixing the sewing machine tension while taking my time to enjoy the process. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJjwXdvbmt8zEcitqKJX-eUlnUgysPPsqYsEyJpD1KLvpl5BJAADML5n03ibMsHMzpIwPkNmmdRIHmaLngkBtnAB3T-mE9QzVGC-n5T8dd5OLTs7zw0F1v-IX2kAv_kEycVJ9U315-3ko/s1600/organ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJjwXdvbmt8zEcitqKJX-eUlnUgysPPsqYsEyJpD1KLvpl5BJAADML5n03ibMsHMzpIwPkNmmdRIHmaLngkBtnAB3T-mE9QzVGC-n5T8dd5OLTs7zw0F1v-IX2kAv_kEycVJ9U315-3ko/s400/organ.jpg" width="397" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The Organ with tubal ligation</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The “Organ” block made from a thin t-shirt from who-knows-where, had to use the stiff and somewhat dreaded fusible backing, sewed the labels with baby heads into the block. A nod to my mother’s love of babies, birds, and all kinds of music, even the oftentimes dreaded organ (although I am sure she would have some snide remark about the word “organ” in all it’s other tubular instances).</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzsthevrSWnj9s0cJRD7If6_mRZsfMKy7WjFUw2kIwS7vmzaZp0XE_EC-ks2N53ur2zIjw3nl5HjrU78r8Jr2OHldEWWxegc_eAsTULicaaqSTLrr52wrsRn7WRqtfULd_eCh7ZaCJmdc/s1600/squirrel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzsthevrSWnj9s0cJRD7If6_mRZsfMKy7WjFUw2kIwS7vmzaZp0XE_EC-ks2N53ur2zIjw3nl5HjrU78r8Jr2OHldEWWxegc_eAsTULicaaqSTLrr52wrsRn7WRqtfULd_eCh7ZaCJmdc/s400/squirrel.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The Squirrel with pigeons.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The “Squirrel” block, likely another t-shirt from my New York brother with the pictured squirrel atop the Empire State Building. Lots of little annoying pieces but I love the result. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBgI9pludbau-4I-Wg89yqxjdgHfdVkUfV7rdoAYL3Tp6imFNfonDCQBTybmelE0CaJJTPzmJLr2iMMlRA0eU3H8qew_CYgO-3Xs0zUBzdX6_adpdD7a1fJMMcP-VTf8aByc6dT0S4YOA/s1600/puravida.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBgI9pludbau-4I-Wg89yqxjdgHfdVkUfV7rdoAYL3Tp6imFNfonDCQBTybmelE0CaJJTPzmJLr2iMMlRA0eU3H8qew_CYgO-3Xs0zUBzdX6_adpdD7a1fJMMcP-VTf8aByc6dT0S4YOA/s400/puravida.jpg" width="395" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The adventure of Costa Rica: <i>Pura Vida!</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">“Pura Vida” from my mother’s second home in beautiful Costa Rica. Pura Vida, a strictly Costa Rican phrase meaning: "plenty of life", "full of life", "this is living!", "going great", "real living", "Awesome!" or "cool!" The ‘sculpted’ figure is roughly placed and will be embroidered onto the block as soon as I learn how to do that as well!</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1lsJ1OmgMZgabMyOBftrLLiosi9s0D4R49ETH-NY4_XGQsccH0xkUViffl_i-QgWjl7sHWOK6Gs1YujisVzTn_n2apvmNvSrf31Pr9VrYSUWiFPwyKvD8s_wFhzyQE3YQky5Tu4qOxFE/s1600/writers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1lsJ1OmgMZgabMyOBftrLLiosi9s0D4R49ETH-NY4_XGQsccH0xkUViffl_i-QgWjl7sHWOK6Gs1YujisVzTn_n2apvmNvSrf31Pr9VrYSUWiFPwyKvD8s_wFhzyQE3YQky5Tu4qOxFE/s400/writers.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Writer's Block</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Last, but not least, the “Writer’s” block (pun intended). My father, a novelist... this is his shirt, I believe, from the Shawnigan Lake writer’s festival, kept for sentimental reasons?... maybe... or just another good thick work shirt. A gracious nod to the writing world, not just my father’s world, but also my mother’s world as editor, sounding board, avid reader, and number one fan of aforementioned author: <a href="http://william.deverell.com/" target="_blank">http://william.deverell.com/</a></span><br />
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">An inspiration to remember</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I wanted to share a thought from my mother’s dear friend, Ken Hancock, he wrote to me: “thank you so much for sharing this, I remember the healing power of quilting back in the 80s and 90s and how it helped my gay brothers and sisters, friends and families cope with unbelievable loss”. I hadn’t thought about the AIDS quilt ( <a href="http://www.aidsquilt.org/" target="_blank">http://www.aidsquilt.org</a> ) for some time, how it relates to what I am doing: loss, reflection, community, grieving, quilting. As I sewed these last few blocks, I also reflected on the loss of many gay friends in those terrible times in the 80’s, too soon, too young, life unfulfilled. <i>A remembrance to you: Guy, Pierre, Gordie, and all the others, a sweet remembrance as I sew.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;">Interesting discoveries</span> </span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Received a couple of emails solving the mysterious origins of various t-shirts and why my mother kept them. The “Women’s Faces” block (from my blog entry Nov. 14th) was created by dear artist friend Isabelle Roberts. And friend and close neighbour Michelle Marsden created the “Love Your Ocean” (see blog entry Nov. 8th) as part of a local beach clean-up campaign. To those women: a posthumous and vigorous applause from Tekla for allowing her daughter to reclaim your artwork in her honour!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-77291831063654748602012-11-16T18:35:00.000-05:002012-11-16T18:41:32.228-05:00Brooklyn Blog 5.<h3>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;">A Tree Grows in Brooklyn</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">A block made yesterday in honour of my brother Daniel’s birthday. A New Yorker for over twenty years, my brother gave this t-shirt to our Mother... point to be made, trees <i>DO </i>grow in Brooklyn, it isn’t just concrete and cement sidewalks (with a definitive nod to Betty Smith, author of the American classic novel of the same name). Our mother held life in the big city with some disdain, it was not for her. My brother and I, however, sought out the fast<b>er</b>, grittier, noisier realms. Despite distances and differences from East Coast Big City to West Coast Rural Bliss... Danny Boy was always her baby boy. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzNSG3lbs-Lrja2Y5M-k8iOcCSudW3tirYxlZZVlmb14RKLM2-cFid9B54S8aVk7HS1QXANRPwOPJ0bnFy6EFXpxxNG06NTYx8TvkhcZIYX2fAtqxHT4sk76dTBXRojCFulgQjVEjC0ac/s1600/tekla_dan3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzNSG3lbs-Lrja2Y5M-k8iOcCSudW3tirYxlZZVlmb14RKLM2-cFid9B54S8aVk7HS1QXANRPwOPJ0bnFy6EFXpxxNG06NTYx8TvkhcZIYX2fAtqxHT4sk76dTBXRojCFulgQjVEjC0ac/s1600/tekla_dan3.jpg" height="214" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Mother and son, early photos and last photo together, a tender moment.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Some (Un)Technical Notes</span></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> </span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZyej7nCCMgh0dnLeYmLAQ2mMWmcsQ7WsMNJDvrp8z7NOCqkvFKk2vkzuQbC_NIKbkPsNdgzw50tMahc3LkeQq4_hxsw6rdpIkqkZUoGSS-lpw7be4bDqHRDL9AqXQzUiTHS0BrP16w1c/s1600/makingof-trees.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZyej7nCCMgh0dnLeYmLAQ2mMWmcsQ7WsMNJDvrp8z7NOCqkvFKk2vkzuQbC_NIKbkPsNdgzw50tMahc3LkeQq4_hxsw6rdpIkqkZUoGSS-lpw7be4bDqHRDL9AqXQzUiTHS0BrP16w1c/s1600/makingof-trees.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Making it up as I sew.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">I have quickly become a rogue quilter/sewer. It was bound to happen. Careful measuring, pinning, fusible backing, and cutting have gone by the wayside for a more immediate... er... artistry. For “A Tree Grows” I wanted the feeling of trunks and fall leaves (it is November) but also city. I just kind of went at it without a real plan, snipping and slopping bits of fabric about, still without that badly needed rotary cutter. My advice... “Don’t try this at home kids”... sometimes it’s good to let loose a little but this method kind of bit me in the ass... many stitches had to be removed and re-sewn with added bits. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">A cathartic and messy experience, not for everyone.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-74945840709415672502012-11-14T12:30:00.000-05:002012-11-25T13:34:29.026-05:00A Simple Green Stain. Blog 4.<h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ihSkOETaK13X4Mc52HuFJoBi1aqK2JTSQcYs7d_O5biWOf9U8oVVn_Veh64_xHyXAh5Vhnpsnvx27VncTwpLQkXVuRpnw9qCHAAk7y1nHzs2Snhgb1mmx8OJCiowW3hxySwNmmMI9Nc/s1600/Georgia_O.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ihSkOETaK13X4Mc52HuFJoBi1aqK2JTSQcYs7d_O5biWOf9U8oVVn_Veh64_xHyXAh5Vhnpsnvx27VncTwpLQkXVuRpnw9qCHAAk7y1nHzs2Snhgb1mmx8OJCiowW3hxySwNmmMI9Nc/s1600/Georgia_O.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Georgia O'Keeffe, young and old, with Poppy painting from 1927</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4pMOCHwgMDkQ_Ljbit1MPHuWd9kdKV6k_p4mCoRUWlyBmMaGFn5xFJmZpHMCMG9IqUm1XsU47KkQriuGyAGr3mvb2pdLX_dX_qtD5abrvaG9vRb1ebipRrx5c2UMOUgUFKZv3HryQJFE/s1600/weaving+web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4pMOCHwgMDkQ_Ljbit1MPHuWd9kdKV6k_p4mCoRUWlyBmMaGFn5xFJmZpHMCMG9IqUm1XsU47KkQriuGyAGr3mvb2pdLX_dX_qtD5abrvaG9vRb1ebipRrx5c2UMOUgUFKZv3HryQJFE/s1600/weaving+web.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Our daughter, Rachel, weaves her web around Grandma.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;">Georgia O’Keeffe</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Exposure to art was one of the greatest gifts my mother gave my brother and I. Weekly lessons at the Vancouver Art Gallery from a very early age were essential in her mind. Despite the fact that she was neither artist nor performer: art, dance, and music were always encouraged. When our young children got into her knitting basket and let loose with a giant and intricate web of all her wool throughout the house, a mess through which none of us could move, they were not admonished, instead they were celebrated for their sculptural abilities and encouraged in their art play. A few days before she died, in a moment of lucidity for both of us, I thanked my mother for all the art, the dance lessons, the piano, the attention to detail, all those gifts. Life and art a web... woven, intertwined.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgXL5wYj6dzw-gkSa_tOMSatNBELNbp5ZfpdRkcz97I4pr8aX0EV3kpjE0H8MI76RLEJLqzPwlGbO1OO272-pB4oeokZWk55QXEoMMf2aegerkYexdjyu4tw5__GFojao3uhpHK49nyfw/s1600/poppy_tekla.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgXL5wYj6dzw-gkSa_tOMSatNBELNbp5ZfpdRkcz97I4pr8aX0EV3kpjE0H8MI76RLEJLqzPwlGbO1OO272-pB4oeokZWk55QXEoMMf2aegerkYexdjyu4tw5__GFojao3uhpHK49nyfw/s1600/poppy_tekla.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Tekla's poppy, the day she died.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The Georgia O’Keeffe t-shirt, I believe, was purchased while visiting a close artist friend in O’Keeffe’s beloved New Mexico. Desert rocks, bones, skulls, flowers... poppies that burst orgiastically from their pods. I particularly love the fact that there is a stain of green paint across the Georgia O’Keeffe signature on the t-shirt. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXqnlt9a9HAk-V6IxtrgL2w1DP-hdlgc-wNN2np97mGgezRQc7aZFAqa0czOvJmVPflsbk_089ZxV59jYsE-T-3_C-kYDbRjh4qoxReUs4MDqnOo3OFpeXgNm97F_-4HeRk1ScRr3XaCA/s1600/Georgia_okeeffe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="385" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXqnlt9a9HAk-V6IxtrgL2w1DP-hdlgc-wNN2np97mGgezRQc7aZFAqa0czOvJmVPflsbk_089ZxV59jYsE-T-3_C-kYDbRjh4qoxReUs4MDqnOo3OFpeXgNm97F_-4HeRk1ScRr3XaCA/s1600/Georgia_okeeffe.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">O'Keeffe Poppy t-shirt block.</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The Dirt</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx8tLnJ0iKdZuNQDXDfyEbVHri3cft9abJdchcdPXNQzFCfHYDm3FO8PPBdQVk1QCqLxEAsZ-W06kkodNoSpxx3AgxiYpXHzmtviX-Q4aKtj4bZTfTqhtlRAJnhGJ80lLnJIXFBBq2MHo/s1600/dirtshirt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx8tLnJ0iKdZuNQDXDfyEbVHri3cft9abJdchcdPXNQzFCfHYDm3FO8PPBdQVk1QCqLxEAsZ-W06kkodNoSpxx3AgxiYpXHzmtviX-Q4aKtj4bZTfTqhtlRAJnhGJ80lLnJIXFBBq2MHo/s1600/dirtshirt.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The Dirt Shirt from my mother's beloved Costa Rica.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkUTmOHWofQem_Tqn-tvl10xM5yHHpTfCv6eJaF7jAwHw5WDMeeGvwcPN05AmQjdnYnfSHfXWlYxjtki-F6UqkLEkAWNDix2IauWoAZMqUVdThQOby3t9u1K6fy7UGiUQckCxf5hhMwF0/s1600/Dirt_tekla.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkUTmOHWofQem_Tqn-tvl10xM5yHHpTfCv6eJaF7jAwHw5WDMeeGvwcPN05AmQjdnYnfSHfXWlYxjtki-F6UqkLEkAWNDix2IauWoAZMqUVdThQOby3t9u1K6fy7UGiUQckCxf5hhMwF0/s1600/Dirt_tekla.jpg" width="204" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Mom in the garden, </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">a celebration of dirt.</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The block that I made from the Costa Rican “Dirt” shirt was fast and fun. Dirt: hands in endless dirt, the smell, the goodness, the creatures, the start and end of life... giver of food, flowers, trees then air. Love dirt. </span><span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Woman’s Faces</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjy8vXMNgCg8KYgkH7XUSD6Fhw21Sp0PNXKVtNj3in1xE2_RhDFtMt5WZce0zLcPUAj3JcKRLRtGN2LO8EP2BDM71_0Bs9z0dSr4SEDsTEt8j7Kok2rZ-SpIfgKed9LOsQxfXbgtpIWOc/s1600/tekla-beauty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjy8vXMNgCg8KYgkH7XUSD6Fhw21Sp0PNXKVtNj3in1xE2_RhDFtMt5WZce0zLcPUAj3JcKRLRtGN2LO8EP2BDM71_0Bs9z0dSr4SEDsTEt8j7Kok2rZ-SpIfgKed9LOsQxfXbgtpIWOc/s1600/tekla-beauty.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Beautiful face.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">This is the first t-shirt which I did not cut up, instead, I left the image intact. These sad women’s faces showing so many aspects of grieving. An often worn t-shirt with haunting empty eyes, I hadn’t seen the sadness in it all those years my mother wore it. Until now.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ1BsfHQIrdjq1Gp7qGKc5Cm8OfojBSGeJGVYiGeEgme645F-1L1oIq296jxUU8ZuSC34sytEVzDIcsVJGBftvriG_Qnm8tIdRHuSQ5QuQlWFuMUPeKpoJoLGhr5xrfhEsnwUgidYADG0/s1600/women.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ1BsfHQIrdjq1Gp7qGKc5Cm8OfojBSGeJGVYiGeEgme645F-1L1oIq296jxUU8ZuSC34sytEVzDIcsVJGBftvriG_Qnm8tIdRHuSQ5QuQlWFuMUPeKpoJoLGhr5xrfhEsnwUgidYADG0/s1600/women.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Women's Faces... needs a few more patches.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">MMMMM... Mother, Mourning, Menopause, Metatarsal, Madness</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUccjOY8KoVBc2T2eDcAezr2mmPF6SBuVMPMv089YdgaYyHJGYiHw5sR5iMWpNLomGv_fDlNFlOPMqu6K-KvEVmWBK8ZFYDx2gy9uCv3S1equXjbP3tutwQ-ZESthv2FXfUXb8X964Ouo/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUccjOY8KoVBc2T2eDcAezr2mmPF6SBuVMPMv089YdgaYyHJGYiHw5sR5iMWpNLomGv_fDlNFlOPMqu6K-KvEVmWBK8ZFYDx2gy9uCv3S1equXjbP3tutwQ-ZESthv2FXfUXb8X964Ouo/s1600/photo.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">My left foot: first metatarsal good and screwed.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">If life comes in waves, then this year has been a tsunami of sorts. My frankly tiresome Lisfranc foot fracture heals with no great aplomb, just little by little, testing my patience each tiny step of the way </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">(or lack thereof) </span>. I swear to stop reading about bone loss in menopausal women in front of the computer. It does not help '<i>them bones'</i> to heal. Instead, I crutch my way to my little city garden and take what sun there is and munch on something not yet killed by frost.... recommended vitamins D, K, and F-ing whatever! Am I angry at my broken foot?... hell ya! It’s a good thing that it was <i>me</i> and only me who fixed the ladder when it slid off the roof’s edge with yours truly riding it all the way down (<i>sound effect: ladder crashing</i>). Am I angry that my mother died?... I suppose I <i>was</i>, but anger just becomes a kind of helpless sadness. I <i>AM</i> angry still at her unrelenting addiction to nicotine. That sense of anger and betrayal and disappointment of her endless smoking will never go away. They say that smoking takes ten years off your life. Despite any anger, I could have used another ten years of her. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Mother does not always know best. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-25708774566294647082012-11-08T23:46:00.000-05:002012-11-10T16:43:21.939-05:00A Few More Blocks Completed. Blog 3.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2evZ-vYgcOOeBABA6_2XbvrUh93Y2Zrqy_LKxa02jVpgmnWkXsTseiJE1tozILpq2IfE_pJq8ksANruYqTfz3pDQ2ZoOahmeWzQZfuQqugS2MeEhtGmAxCEIbVU16Wp6m1x8euIsdiMM/s1600/garlic_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Garlic, Gilroy, and Good Times</span></span> </h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg40BPMPve1pDJ77gZ8k31i9Kpcsej5-aXWeO4UKkx480gUbrNfF1bZUx2XxznVqf5eEGOv1K9NdjBwh05EQMSR-0g5II4AToFpc49jArxNEmvJ51N9GG7WiiPn1l9M4chmjNn_tkUTHHY/s1600/tekla71-(1)-copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg40BPMPve1pDJ77gZ8k31i9Kpcsej5-aXWeO4UKkx480gUbrNfF1bZUx2XxznVqf5eEGOv1K9NdjBwh05EQMSR-0g5II4AToFpc49jArxNEmvJ51N9GG7WiiPn1l9M4chmjNn_tkUTHHY/s1600/tekla71-(1)-copy.jpg" style="cursor: move;" title="" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Mom with her prize winning garlic braid</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A pungent nod the world’s biggest garlic festival in Gilroy, California, <a href="http://gilroygarlicfestival.com/">http://gilroygarlicfestival.com/</a>, as I cut up two of my mother’s t-shirts from some of the early years of this celebration of “the stinking rose”. For a number of years, my mother grew garlic as the main crop of her small organic farm. Sometime in late summer, there would be heaps of garlic drying on the deck to just the point where they would they be pliable enough to braid. I would help her with stripping the excess dried strands, cleaning the bulbs and trimming their roots, making a good tight braid and decorating with small dried flowers from the garden, always that heavy but sweet smell of garlic and her careful instructions. She went down the West Coast to the Gilroy festival in California a couple of times in the early 80’s, learning the ways of the true garlic aficionado. Her garlic was small but flavorful, in fact, my mother discounted those large bulbs of "elephant" garlic as tasteless and showy. Bigger is not better. Good, garlicky times.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I am especially pleased with the “how to grow garlic” block. Learning from my nervous beginner experience, I have decided not to trim that block just yet. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2_5ONrtyLV3AcSjM4pOeWrJOAcphDXoGPk0YbIokoJ3zlB5BxXsIiZTbvm8wNK45SwfxHHOX54xa_S8-x4u3uZEPXJaM7m1-HNnNUXJmHcffP02nbcn3PIgHc2x2ZHzHMNJIZSazQDPs/s1600/garlic_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2_5ONrtyLV3AcSjM4pOeWrJOAcphDXoGPk0YbIokoJ3zlB5BxXsIiZTbvm8wNK45SwfxHHOX54xa_S8-x4u3uZEPXJaM7m1-HNnNUXJmHcffP02nbcn3PIgHc2x2ZHzHMNJIZSazQDPs/s1600/garlic_1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Garlic block number one.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJQAT8j4-u97VaQGLaVal7WpyJM7vn8unkw1FEzF0nFqO20npzE9j5yZw0WVrGB9XVeh53Tml-0g5j5fJV05yZXw7GB7AxgX0Ithu4O7wKPy4Be81vX1reihjBjbIaX7OGAaB6YgpktK4/s1600/garlic_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJQAT8j4-u97VaQGLaVal7WpyJM7vn8unkw1FEzF0nFqO20npzE9j5yZw0WVrGB9XVeh53Tml-0g5j5fJV05yZXw7GB7AxgX0Ithu4O7wKPy4Be81vX1reihjBjbIaX7OGAaB6YgpktK4/s1600/garlic_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Untrimmed "How to Grow Garlic", lots of little pieces.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></b></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">"What garlic is to food, insanity is to art."</span></b> </span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">- Augustus Saint-Gaudens. </span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;">Love Your Ocean</span> </span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM3v_w99qHjLJFr97lbU7TtbFkVzbq7ph-rHh3ByuJe1gh_k7uwRhSnTTNCMa_63Z-KjHzM-vum-DyxFoIwFychU8K_uKocsUHokbtEDp-4Wywu3OwWTgnRdakMpisg3bXYZChOscSnp0/s1600/loveyourocean.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM3v_w99qHjLJFr97lbU7TtbFkVzbq7ph-rHh3ByuJe1gh_k7uwRhSnTTNCMa_63Z-KjHzM-vum-DyxFoIwFychU8K_uKocsUHokbtEDp-4Wywu3OwWTgnRdakMpisg3bXYZChOscSnp0/s1600/loveyourocean.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Love Your Ocean.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Walks along the shore picking shells, driftwood, spotting terns and gulls, seals and sea otters, my mother never missed a sighting. She had ‘macro-vision’... tiny crabs under tiny rocks... the complete and independent world of tidal pool inhabitants. She loved the ocean, maybe feared it, as all good prairie girls should. Mostly, she respected it. The “Love your Ocean” from a seaside clean-up campaign in 1992 might just be one of my all time favorite quilt blocks... so far.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuQOi2D_CjtuWdOu2asqM5wuIBZaF7YQonQbWxAy1jAP-XHkzxqvz1NSD7mAS4Mgx5mcX2B-YG_fHQK76XrMNBCkGl9EObrx50KmK_Nl0OhSipRkak2iZT-lhLlHGsbBCPYZVQ9OWPYU8/s1600/tekla97-(1)-copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuQOi2D_CjtuWdOu2asqM5wuIBZaF7YQonQbWxAy1jAP-XHkzxqvz1NSD7mAS4Mgx5mcX2B-YG_fHQK76XrMNBCkGl9EObrx50KmK_Nl0OhSipRkak2iZT-lhLlHGsbBCPYZVQ9OWPYU8/s1600/tekla97-(1)-copy.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Mom at 73... barefoot in the sand in Costa Rica.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Some More Things Learned...</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Four blocks completed, each tiny piece of fabric individually measured and marked and carefully cut along a thin pencil line while going cross-eyed. I know there’s a better way, better tools... something to do with a rotary cutter. Note to self: get whatever those tools are before going bonkers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;">As I Cut and Sew...</span> </span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />... remembering and grieving, and sometimes I cry, listening to some of the music I played during her last few days... looking through photos to find her in that particular shirt, at that particular time and place. But then, more often, I smile... because my mother would love that I am doing this, she would <i>get it</i>, chiding and teasing me for using those old stained shirts but understanding and appreciating it all the same. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A shared vision. The art of healing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-43366301353439011812012-11-07T09:46:00.000-05:002012-11-08T21:04:22.939-05:00A Rough Patch. Blog 2.<h4>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;">Entwined in Memory</span></span></span></span></h3>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;"> </span></span></span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXAzm2rauREIcytFceo9Wc7bHbsy7dtFkiXCv22TBTwlaAZ5Kocgm94yMs4L0mFD1jM4jjZHyqdAQLmJJnNEc0e3fz665POfR3DueQlCjg1ysesAtQ7wZm1b8y57hc1GVM3zHdAhVbQwA/s1600/tekhair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXAzm2rauREIcytFceo9Wc7bHbsy7dtFkiXCv22TBTwlaAZ5Kocgm94yMs4L0mFD1jM4jjZHyqdAQLmJJnNEc0e3fz665POfR3DueQlCjg1ysesAtQ7wZm1b8y57hc1GVM3zHdAhVbQwA/s1600/tekhair.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo by my husband Ken Woroner. </span></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">I found one of my mother’s hairs electrostatic-ally stuck on one of the t-shirts that I am using for my memory quilt. Long, thin, blonde-grey. As a small child, I remember pulling at her braided hair from the back seat of the car... camping or driving to the mountains or heading to the prairies, maybe one of my first memories. She never seemed to mind my tugging at it. Later, always in the kitchen, her fine hair caught on her finger while cooking, always cooking... “oh, Tam, get it”... I can hear her now with startling clarity (only my mother was allowed to call me <b>'</b>Tam'). Hair always in her famous loose bun, strands spilling out as fine as a silk web. She never let it down. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">My First Patch</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2nduyeOliAQAifT8Tw6DtWoavTyV7ck_f-ZjLjz_FRtSgrv-uxD0klHftyO2A9KNHt0MZLtLZr4wjpZxQUSG80NFlhXP4E63FoVeMsu12w5iKsWD0Oq1WM0azS_R88LXm318g7-7RTZs/s1600/block-1progress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2nduyeOliAQAifT8Tw6DtWoavTyV7ck_f-ZjLjz_FRtSgrv-uxD0klHftyO2A9KNHt0MZLtLZr4wjpZxQUSG80NFlhXP4E63FoVeMsu12w5iKsWD0Oq1WM0azS_R88LXm318g7-7RTZs/s1600/block-1progress.jpg" width="210" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Drawing and cutting.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I learned from my mother a pride in excellence, doing things well. She was harsh in her attempted perfection of everything she did, touched, worked at. Her pickles were phenomenal, her dahlias gargantuan, her meals were sublime. When my brother and I were very young, she worked her way through university, a top student in a very demanding Masters program in Psychology. She went from nursing, to teaching, to psychology, and then on to organic farming and eco-politics on the small Gulf Island where my parent’s built themselves a new home and life away from the city. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />As I started to put together my first quilt patch (or are they called blocks?), like my mother, I was stressed about my level of perfection and ability, especially as I have never done this before. I started with some research, looking at a lot of quilting blogs and websites. Then I did a little doodling from some of what I saw. As a production designer, drawing is second nature, so it seemed like a good place to start.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDZX6H4Bc98PW4SDYIUU2Y53Tr5fl48nvpgWTcazXEvuk9NqkS9_XTxgLB_aaL2v8hBjtfHUKKq3pTFSaFLnancaiweBOAM47E8RaUUUdGRBAyQuMAoEhnDq7Zs08deE5kmJ-YQeggtmE/s1600/block-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDZX6H4Bc98PW4SDYIUU2Y53Tr5fl48nvpgWTcazXEvuk9NqkS9_XTxgLB_aaL2v8hBjtfHUKKq3pTFSaFLnancaiweBOAM47E8RaUUUdGRBAyQuMAoEhnDq7Zs08deE5kmJ-YQeggtmE/s1600/block-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>My first quilt patch ever. </b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">For my first patch, I chose a couple of t-shirts that weren’t my favourites, knowing my limitations as a newbie quilter. One from a sandcastle competition in White Rock, B.C. and one from the 'Prince Charming' printing company, both from the early 80‘s and both stained as they were used for work shirts, likely re-staining the deck or carrying sap-filled logs. Maybe just a spill of strong Costa Rican coffee. The stains were irksome at first but then I decided they are part of the history, my Mother’s history, my history. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The patch is less than perfect but it’s a start.</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A Few Things Learned...</span></span></h3>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Do NOT use kitchen scissors normally used for cutting up whole chickens on fabric. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The iron, despite what you may feel about ironing, is your FRIEND. Keep it close and at the ready.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Fusible interfacing is stiff and hard to sew, use it only on larger pieces of t-shirt fabric. Small strips don’t really need it.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Cranky and unused sewing machines, like us all, need a little oil massaged into their workings. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Spend
lots of time with patterns, colour and colour choices, different bits
of fabric thrown on different t-shirts or remnants... for no other
reason than it is fun. And fun is good. </span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Broken Paws</span></span></h3>
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">When I first heard that I had to be off my broken (but fixed) foot for 3 months, I thought I would never make it. Today I am halfway there at six weeks post surgery. Funny how you can get used to anything. I go up the stairs (in our 3 story house) on my knees and I wheel about the kitchen, like a demon, on a rolling office chair that I borrowed from work. I don’t even know how I managed to go to work with this injury but for the grace of an excellent and sympathetic crew, and I am relieved to be finished my contract. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpbgB_VLe6Jvb9HD0nCguGT6vtjjWNZiDCCmenzF1ytC6tPIzLSX1B-3Kuc51JuC6KQK6q4U8ro8obIq3YZBrGFisN8u3ue_gt_shwHe8XTzzUpu4coLNaQxZXPchhJzcvNzNTEo18pN4/s1600/dogcast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpbgB_VLe6Jvb9HD0nCguGT6vtjjWNZiDCCmenzF1ytC6tPIzLSX1B-3Kuc51JuC6KQK6q4U8ro8obIq3YZBrGFisN8u3ue_gt_shwHe8XTzzUpu4coLNaQxZXPchhJzcvNzNTEo18pN4/s1600/dogcast.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Our left feet. Woof.</span></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I have set myself up in my home study with computer, ironing board, iPad, sewing machine (dusted off from years of disuse from closet), fabric, brand new scissors (see note above), camera... everything within arms reach. The planning and cutting and sewing of my ‘Tekla memory quilt’ is quite absorbing, keep my mind off my temporary disability. So annoying not being able to just get up and take a few steps anywhere, even a quick bathroom break is an ordeal... I ache to walk again without crutches. (And, no, I shouldn’t complain, there <i>are</i> people far worse off than me... but it’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to...)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Finally, I had been suffering tremendous remorse and guilt at not being able to walk our old dog. And, then, a few days ago, he managed to get a large, nasty, deep cut to his paw while chasing critters. Stitches and must stay off it as much as possible and ridiculous vet bills, the dog sleeps near me under foot (or crutch). Both of us with our broken left paws humbly waiting to heal. At least I have medicare. </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663066121520190567.post-38791853353838200112012-10-30T10:50:00.001-04:002012-11-04T13:07:50.846-05:00My first blog. Ever.<h3>
<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Lost and Found</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />I lost my mother to cancer in May of this year, no... <i>wait</i>, “lost” doesn’t seem like the right word. The word “lost” invites the possibility of finding something. My mother died and I will never find <i>her</i> again. What I lost was part of myself: the comfort, the personal history, the love, both received and given, between mother and daughter. Those things which I hope to find again... and again. </span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi74W9jlxUp9oLJ-M23AY7mi6eQgRPStYbvRfuWaieKXsp3W28l430nl-QAy1VHLmFxMg-y-Jt5TIHsFJG99Ihw6or0kNn2xO6geDI23JOMTp7NTxkaXx1bsfdvMZtXQwzXVrh_MC7qj5A/s1600/faf_bocce_pender_095+-+Version+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi74W9jlxUp9oLJ-M23AY7mi6eQgRPStYbvRfuWaieKXsp3W28l430nl-QAy1VHLmFxMg-y-Jt5TIHsFJG99Ihw6or0kNn2xO6geDI23JOMTp7NTxkaXx1bsfdvMZtXQwzXVrh_MC7qj5A/s320/faf_bocce_pender_095+-+Version+2.jpg" width="210" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">My mother, Tekla, serving up cake.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="color: #a2c4c9;">The Fabric of our Lives</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />I returned to my parents’ home in July, two months after my mother’s funeral, to sort through her things. There was the endless paper, a junkie for keeping her own books and archives, my mother threw nothing out. My father and I sorted and purged as much as we could, establishing a new bond as, well, survivors. There was the kitchen: smells and pickle jars and recipes and dried sage and cheesecloth... every little crumb the essence of her mastery of all things food related. There was her garden... <i>her garden</i>: it was <i>her art</i>... perennial flowers bending with the weight of their blossoms, bees stumbling drunkenly from lilies to cornflowers unfazed by the passage of time or life. Then, there were her things: shoes, clothes, sewing baskets, knitting, jewelry... a love letter from my father circa 1958, a bright piece of a child’s costume, crocheted squares for a blanket we were making together, never finished. I stumbled through it all... scarves to her sisters, a baby book to my brother, sweaters to friends, jewelry in a box for her granddaughters. It was when I opened a drawer of just t-shirts that I started crying and laughing hard and long. Stained and worn to paper thinness, my mother kept them all. Each one from a time and place, a moment or a movement that she couldn’t bear to throw out.... the garlic festival in Gilroy, California from the time when she was a garlic farmer... the t-shirt that my brother gave her “a tree grows in Brooklyn” just to prove he didn’t live in a concrete jungle, the ones in support of Medicine Beach or Brooks Point Park on the Gulf Island where she lived, the t-shirt with a Georgia O-Keeffe flower that was gifted from a dear artist friend. It was impossible to throw them out, as impossible for me as it was to for my mother. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Fusible Backbone </span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxV98SYOjhXWTd0P2xcs8CfaI6xlBb5XFdHQlsljh8hOHYq72eXhGDHKXFTPz0e0uftwzzehHyWvfJ5b-T62aZj5656n4i1c6iv8nE-FeXrRXOJe80WBilABrWw7bZnFuK-Xl2UB-neyk/s1600/geesbend.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="129" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxV98SYOjhXWTd0P2xcs8CfaI6xlBb5XFdHQlsljh8hOHYq72eXhGDHKXFTPz0e0uftwzzehHyWvfJ5b-T62aZj5656n4i1c6iv8nE-FeXrRXOJe80WBilABrWw7bZnFuK-Xl2UB-neyk/s320/geesbend.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Some of the Quilts of Gees Bend.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />I remembered seeing an exhibit in New York some years ago, “The Quilts of Gees Bend”. African-American women from a remote community in Alabama who made quilts from old clothes, often using deceased families members’ cherished clothing. I was struck by the dignified artistry of these simple and geometric hand made quilts, they were more powerful to me than the De Kooning and Jackson Pollock paintings that one expected to see gracing the walls of New York museums. I also found inspiration and encouragement from my dear friend and quilting artist, Barb Mortell <a href="http://www.blogger.com/(http://www.houseofbug.blogspot.ca/)">(http://www.houseofbug.blogspot.ca/)</a>. She made a small memorial quilt which we draped on my mother’s simple seagrass casket, my mother was buried with it. Visiting Barb on Denman Island in July, we talked about memory quilts, looked at some websites about ‘grieving quilts’ made from old clothes, we ran the thin fabric of my mother’s worn t-shirts through our fingers. “You’ll need some kind of fusible backing” said Barb. Fusion, backing, backbone, fabric, dignity, grief, thread, memory... as I went to sleep, hugged under a pile of Barb’s quilts, I knew what I should do. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #a2c4c9;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Hurting and Healing</span></span></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzdGQUuwmf1238dv8HQviIPwH7lzgGAGaw_0kUpS8aPsjtFp1q6aBASlhdhbDmi4FBTDqTArgccsjkBHjTHQSJ3CK_7-p8Urzw5KH7NbK31KPmOCVhRj5Kxttr_-aH9TToFKyEakwJhXs/s1600/DSC_0052.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzdGQUuwmf1238dv8HQviIPwH7lzgGAGaw_0kUpS8aPsjtFp1q6aBASlhdhbDmi4FBTDqTArgccsjkBHjTHQSJ3CK_7-p8Urzw5KH7NbK31KPmOCVhRj5Kxttr_-aH9TToFKyEakwJhXs/s200/DSC_0052.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A quilt block by Barb Mortell.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />I devoted a suitcase to my mother’s t-shirts and schlepped them back to the ‘big stink', Toronto, my home. Returning to work in the film and television industry, I worried that I would never make time for my “memory quilt”. Long hours, all consuming, no time to mourn, work and more work, rake in the money, forget about the pain. Distraction. Yes, work was a welcome distraction, as the sadness was too overwhelming at times. <br />Then, I broke my foot in early September. A bad break on the arch, a Lisfranc fracture which, historically at one time, involved amputation of the foot as part of it’s regular treatment. I have continued to work with this broken foot over the past 6 weeks despite surgery and crutches, knowing my contract on the TV series would soon be over. So, here I am now, today,... no more work, no weight bearing for 2 more months, left foot broken with screws and plates, emotionally battered, physically scarred. No mother to kiss my boo boos... ouch. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> And I have never made a quilt in my life, not even one patch. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjDF6Gw9G35ihPj8dn-VadHv2Wf8eWsTvFSat-_dvqBvB-dbR6eYSefDuU0AsFz_xmAkrrRjhtDOh9ATTDp_81FPpIQpof47t8lPm8x1P93aijRCnL6m0ZNiG6n4mPi9Ya3IVxmShh2fw/s1600/tshirts-1blog2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjDF6Gw9G35ihPj8dn-VadHv2Wf8eWsTvFSat-_dvqBvB-dbR6eYSefDuU0AsFz_xmAkrrRjhtDOh9ATTDp_81FPpIQpof47t8lPm8x1P93aijRCnL6m0ZNiG6n4mPi9Ya3IVxmShh2fw/s1600/tshirts-1blog2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A sample of the legacy of t-shirts from my mother.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span id="goog_1933145528"></span><span id="goog_1933145529"></span><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09349591463442489398noreply@blogger.com2Toronto, ON, Canada43.653226 -79.383184343.469412 -79.69904129999999 43.837039999999995 -79.0673273