52 Photos Project: Waterdrops

Over at 52 Photos Project this week is about waterdrops.  I have tried to take pictures of water before; we have a rain chain outside the French doors near the chair where I have my first morning coffee (& my second morning coffee & these days my 3rd, 4th etc. all the way through my digestif after dinner).  I have more or less given up taking pictures of the rain on the chain & it was only after I stopped I realized I was never going to get a good picture as our rain has two cycles:  drought & deluge.

I have been more successful with frozen water.  It doesn't freeze much here, but when it does the drops from the hose or drips down the whatever really can be lovely.  Especially as we have well water which is mostly clean but hard & therefore very very refractive.  Refracting?  Whichever, it is pretty.

I knew the picture I wanted, though.  There was some question as to whether or not I could get it occurring naturally & if I couldn't, did I want to run water across my subject?  I more or less decided if it didn't happen, it wouldn't happen. 

Then Monday, about an hour before sunset it rained.  More importantly, about 15 minutes later it stopped.  So here it is, one of many shots I got of Cycas revoluta.

The fronds are very young; they emerged maybe seven days ago, maybe ten?  As they uncurl, they become more rigid & then remain that familiar flat, palm-looking way.  But this week (& part of last week, probably not next week), they are still soft & flexible. 

Here's the story

I have been a little bit distracted lately & have told half the story (or the story to date) to just about everyone & telling it makes me so miserable I don't want to have to keep telling so here it is, once & for all:

A bit more than a month ago we noticed something not-quite-right in our chihuahua?dachshund?jack russell? mix.  She seemed "off" for a little while, but we were chalking that up to old age (she is in her early teens....we think; we have had her since 2004 & she was 2+ then).  She was developing cataracts & not seeing well certainly explained some of her problems but then she started turning down treats.  Actually she wasn't turning them down, she was accepting them & then not eating them.  She had had a dental cleaning & all that entails the first week of January but maybe she had developed a new cavity?  So to the vet we went.

In the course of the exam the vet found a pressure point along her back that certainly hurt her, so a radiograph was in order.   Following that we had some information:  inflammation between the second & third vertebrae.  More than that, what it took to get a clear pictures hurt her quite a bit.  At least she came home in more pain than she went in.  The pain got worse not better over the following days.

Let me stop here & say I do not regret the radiograph.  nor do I blame the vet for hurting her.  Among the breeds mixed into her history is dachshund & there is no ignoring back pain in dachshunds. 

We spent three weeks treating her pain & all that entailed.  Her appetite was nonexistent, so we have also been force feeding her.  This goes against my animal care philosophy, but we were working from the assumption that the lack of appetite was caused by a combination of her pain & the medications she was taking for pain.

Last week we had a follow-up & we now have a different picture.  The cataracts & the back problems are not great BUT our real problem is very likely a tumor.  The suspected location is her nasal cavity, probably somewhere behind her left eye.  The reason I say "probably" is we have elected not to have it definitively diagnosed.  The only was to do that would be at least one expensive, invasive procedure.  If we had the diagnosis we expect the treatment is, in a word, hellacious:  chemo & radiation & after that misery she would likely be blind & six months after treatment 80% of the dogs that go through it are dead anyhow. 

So we brought her home.  Her appetite is back (thank you prednisone...& the anti-emetic & anti-nausea meds she is on), but her diet is limited.  After more than a month of eating almost nothing, her digestive system is fragile & big bites & chewing are problematic because of whatever is going on behind her left eye.  & that is where we are.  It is hard to say how long this will last; as long as she wants to eat we will feed her, but sooner rather than later she will have problems swallowing even the small bits of chopped chicken breast I have been making for her & that will be that. It could be a couple weeks, it is unlikely to be more than a few months.

In the meantime, she is back to being our own little dog.  She gets tired more easily, but she is up & wagging her tail, bumping noses with the cats & doing the things that make her happy.  She has regained a little weight (she lost almost 1/3), her back is not bothering her much but all the reasons we thought she needed to go to the vet remain.  If she has what she is showing all the signs of having, when she goes downhill, it will be very fast which is hard on us, but I think lingering might be harder on her.

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Spring Break

The Blogger's Quilt Festival opened on ?Friday?  I think....?  This is no reflection on the Blogger's Quilt Festival; I have been very out of it for a month now (nothing to do with quilting, just in case you thought I had fabric induced dementia or something). 

This go round the festival is broken down into categories, which I guess I understand.  There is no question that one big list of links could be overwhelming.   Still, I think it is worth a cruise through even the categories that don't much interest me (I'm sorry art quilt makers & professional quilt quilters; if it helps I know I am a philistine).  In the end my favorite quilt is often a quilt I know I never would, never could make.

& now for my entry:

After no thought at all, I decided my quilt belonged in the bed quilt category.  Because it is on a bed.  My parent's bed, to be precise.  The bed is an old-fashioned, not often seen anymore, garden variety double bed.  & while the quilt does look like an old fashioned pattern, it isn't. 

After I cruised around the festival I realized my quilt could go in more than one category, so I also put it in home machine quilted quilts because it was, although I know I deserve no particular accolades.   My style of machine quilting is to sort of slowly push the balled up quilt around while I do what I am told looks like really lame yoga poses that all seem to involve my arms being held out straight, locked at the elbows.  I call this technique "free motion with walking foot".  The result is wavy irregular lines that sometimes look more like... ehrmmmm... stylized lady parts than I ever Ever EVER intended. 

Once this was pointed out to me (yes, it had to be pointed out), I started quilting in a more or less diagonal pattern, limiting the swoops & swirls & that was fine.  Until SOMEONE asked why I was not doing anymore yoni quilting (her words, not mine) & I thought "oh screw it, yoni quilting it is" & have started doing it again. 


With almost no changes (one change, which I will go into in a bit & maybe another), it is the Spring Break quilt pattern from Atkinson Designs' pattern book Spring Cleaning. 

Spring Break is another one of those quilt tops I made in abundance.  Off the top of my head I can think of five quilts I made from this pattern, soup to nuts, on purpose.  I also once taught a (very poorly attended) workshop using this quilt as a jumping off point, so I guess I could say I was in on those as well.  As it is what could be described as "cutting intensive" & so I have also cut up scraps for it & then handed them off as well as received fabric cut by others... 

In short, I have had a hand in at least a dozen versions of this quilt.  But this one is the first one I made all by myself, cutting to piecing to basting to quilting.  I honestly cannot remember if I bound it.  I certainly MADE the binding but I might have sent it off for mom to bind.  Because I do that.  Also, I think it may have been a Mother's Day gift that showed up MONTHS late.  Which also sounds like me.

I tried to take a picture of just one block so you could see what makes it so cutting intensive, but alas the fabrics I choose (with the idea they would match the bedroom of the recipients, which I think it does) are so soft & blurry you cannot really see the contrast.  In fact, when I blew up the whole bed picture at the top and below, I realized it looks like there are dirty pillow cases on the bed!  There are not.  It is just that what it took to bring out some contrast in the quilt blocks also brought out every shadow of the ordinary wrinkles of the pillow, making it looks like a brylcreem aficionado sleeps there (he isn't).

Lastly I tried to get a whole quilt picture but it was December 24th & one of the room's residents was getting dressed for his once-a-year appearance & somehow I never made it back in there with the camera.

This is almost the only angle you can almost see the one change I am quite sure I made, though.  The quilt top itself is 5x6, that is five blocks across by six blocks long for a total of thirty blocks.  I think.  Which might be a deviation from the suggested layouts, but if it is it is a small one.  Then there is a narrow border around the whole thing & finally, wide borders on the left & right sides & the bottom which do not connect, giving the whole thing a distorted T-shaped layout.  The concave corners allow the quilt top to hang snug to the mattress without getting caught up on the footboard.  This is a fairly common feature in New England quilts, but not often seen (at least not by me) anywhere else. 

& my digital quilt label:

Finished Size is approximately 69 inches wide by 73 inches long

Pieced & quilted by me on my Bernina 153

Pattern is, as stated above, Atkinson Designs Spring Break from the book Spring Cleaning

 

 

If you came here through the Block Lotto Weekend Update, I hope you will hippity hop back to the beginning of the Blogger's Quilt Festival & if you came through the quilt festival, please do pay a visit to the Block Lotto.

Today's word: Bildungsromans

I am not saying I never saw the word bildungsromans before.  I am sure I had.  I probably once had the definition right there at the tip of my brain.  But there I was in the library's digital catalog putting a book my mother had recommended (Tell the Wolves I'm Home) on hold.  As I was clicking through I travelled across the "Subject" section & there it was:  Teenage girls -- fiction, Loss (Psychology) --fiction, Friendship -- fiction, AIDS (Disease) -- fiction, Uncles -- fiction, Bildungsroman, Love stories.

First, let me say Spoiler Alert. Yep, I should have said it at the top, but I didn't.  & naturally, I clicked it.  Turns out there are >1k titles in our local library with that specific subject.  Even more interesting there is one (1) book with the additional subject of Bildungsromans American, one (1)  Bildungsromans -- Comic book etc, two (2) Bildungsromans -- England -- Yorkshire -- Drama, three (3) Bildungsromans -- Mississippi & a handful of other singles doubles & triples.  Oh & one (1) Bildungswesen. 

So the word itself: it means a coming of age story.  I wonder there were only just over one thousand as so many many many stories are, at some level, coming of age stories.  

52 Photos Project: Crop it

This weeks at 52 Photos Project the assignment is Crop It, a before & after view.  I have folders & folders & folders of pictures of birds, many of them taken from some distance so I knew where I would go for this weeks picture.

I have spent some time (not a lot, but not none) trying to make a happy home for bluebirds.  First of all, I like bluebirds.  But I am also interested in any kind of no-pesticide insect control, particularly around the cow.  For reasons that are too involved but trust me, they were reasonable, our round pen is actually in the smaller pasture that also has the cow's milk stand & stall.  & although the gates between this pasture & the larger one are almost always open, this area around the round pen & the milk stand is always where the bugs converge.

So, bluebirds. Or purple martins, which is who we actually expected.  In the tradition of "if you build it, (t)he(y) will come", we put a potential martin house on the highest post of the round pen & within what seemed like moments, we had bluebirds checking it out.

This particular photo was taken early in the morning when I went out to deal with our hens.  The whole time I had a feeling I was being watched & when I looked, there he was on the fence between the small pasture & the backyard - the round pen is in the background,

 

 

& it turns out, he was looking at me.