Tea Towel Challenge towel chosen

I decided to join this year's Tea Towel Challenge because I have a surfeit of cotton kitchen towels.   Then I used the excuse of the TTC to acquire more towels.  This is how it went:

My original plan was to use a 2014 calendar towel I found late last year, but the more I thought about how long it would take me & how much I would rather just have the towel for the whole year, the more I thought I should keep looking. 

& keep looking I did.  I went through my cache of towels.  I have more than I realized but most of them are solid colors (& most of those are white).  If i ever go in for embroidering tea towels I am all set. 

There are others I set aside....for a bit, mostly souvenirs from places I have never been including one fantastic "Sheep of Great Britain" (I think) towel that the people who used to live in this house left behind in a drawer. 

I also looked on-line & found all kinds of towels that I liked (including a real-life-sized scrabble board, natural I ordered two & sent one to my mother) & a gardeners schedule towel (also got one for mom) that I would have used but it was linen & I didn't want to deal with linen.  Also it is a coarser weave, which I REALLY didn't want to deal with.

Then I found it.  The perfect tea towel.  Perfect for me anyhow because it has dachshunds.  I know this picture is shabby, but I wanted to get it in the wash so I could get started right away.  & by right away I mean maybe next week.

By no small coincidence (& by that I mean no coincidence at all), it is in a muted color scheme that I love.  I already have plenty of fabric for this, which does not man I won't take my new tea towel out for a drive just to see if anything else matches better.  After all, it would be a waste not to use that little polka-dot banner at the bottom to do some matching, right?

Stripping Christmas

There are few things I enjoy more than a quilt-y themed swap in which I am not driving the bus.  One of those things that I DO enjoy more is foundation free string quilts.  I have extolled on the virtues of string quilts here before.  In short, I love them.

It took a couple days to find the time.  Yes, I had PLENTY of Christmas fabric.  I sliced my strips & was stuffing envelopes then it was pointed out to me that one of my Christmas strips was actually a Chanukah strip.  So I ended up sending out a baker's 1/2 dozen. 

& I got all but one reciprocal set, seven of them before the deadline even.  I cannot help it, this irks me.  I know, I know life gets in the way.  but 20% of the participants are late & another 10% are never going to show.  I enjoy it when I don't have to be in charge of a swap & I enjoy it when the way our group's swaps are handled are reaffirmed.  I am snarky that way.  Oh & 10% of the strips that got here on time were the wrong width.  Which means that there was a problem with 40% of the swap sets.  Yea, I have no plans to do this again.  For a while, anyhow.

So now I have these strips & I am thinking it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  & this year I am really in the mood for it, despite all the bitching about swaps gone wrong.  & now I get to decide on a pattern.  Any thoughts?

George who

Last October (in aught-nine) when I visited my parents, my step-father gave me some cash the day before I left.  I do not remember why, although in another place I made a note that he was paying back $$ I had given my mother.  This is probably true, actually; ordinarily I don't care how money falls into place but at the end of a visit I am often squeezing around for bills to use to get my truck out of airport parking. 

Anyway...one of the bills he gave me had a strange stamp on it which directed me to a website:  Where's George.  Now that I think of it, I have a vague memory of begging for that one dollar bill.  Anyway, we logged in, confirmed the bill's (then) current location & when I got back home I set up my own account & set the bill back on it's way.  When someone out in the world entered it a few days later, I was thrilled.  & hooked.

It has been a bit more than a year, but I finally got around to getting my own Where's George stamp.  I freely confess this is because we are planning a trip off the mainland later this year & will be passing through more than one airport outbound & return.  I plan to buy a pack of gum in every single one, just to get them distributed.  I accept this is priming the pump somewhat, but I do not care.

Yes, this is a silly way to spend my time, but it was still interesting in a small way.  Since discovering the site,  I have been surprised that more civics teachers did not use it as a point of interest, but none of the teachers I talked to had ever heard of it.  Okay, that's a lie, M****** had heard of it & so had C****, but she was a reading teacher & was not even teaching when we had the conversation.  I should ask if she got the info. from a civics teacher.  Of course, tracking monetary bills is almost certainly not covered on the FCAT & that might be the answer right there.

A thorough birching

I have been bogged down on the Betulaceae for quite a while now.  Not like the Anacardiaceae but still, there is a lot of birch out there.  As a result of all that birch out there, there is a lot of birch in the herbarium wood collection.

Birch trees are the first trees about which I have a specific childhood memory.  There were a few paper birches in the yard of my family's home & the temptation to peel those white strips all the way around could be overwhelming.  I remember brushing the palm of my hand over the frayed edges that had naturally peeled away hoping & hoping not to roll them away just a little bit further.  I remember being told that to do so, all the way around would kill the tree & I wanted so badly to do it anyway.

As it happens paper birches are indeed on the decline; deer & paper manufacturers do not share my conflict of spirit.  This tree was once considered an almost aggressive weed tree (I am quite sure we had them because the white trunks were at least something to look at when all the leaves were gone).  Where you chopped down one birch, three more would grow.  Unless you paved over the entire grove or  drained the adjacent wetland.  As I recall, the birches in our yard preferred lower land & wet feet.

Later in life,  I learned of that other famous birch, John Birch.  For no good reason I seem to get the man confused with another man, John Stuart Mill, which is just, well bizarre.  They are both named John....& so are a gazillion other people past& present that I am able to keep separate from either of them.  This confusion is why I am always Always ALWAYS caught off guard when the John Birch Society does something well, fairly typical for themselves. Most recently it was they have groused about the lack of documentation (their word) that "Clean, safe water is a right for all Americans"  while also biotching because full-on access to guns is  indeed a right of all Americans & they have the documentation.  If only the framers of the Constitution had thought to say "oh by the way, water that is not poisoned, that's good too".  It might help you understand how confused I make myself if I provide John Stuart Mill's most famous quote:  Although it is not true all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.

Which finally brings us to today's word: birching.  Once upon a time it meant a sound whipping, often with a birch whip, hence the "birch" in "birching".  You don't hear that one much any more.  Birching in schools (I am guessing I first encountered this word somewhere along the way with Laura Ingalls Wilder) has gone out of fashion...& I do mean fashion.  Whether it will come back or not I cannot say.   Having been on the receiving end of a particular teacher's targeted malice I would hope not, but having seen first hand what passes for self-discipline (& how one unregulated frosh can incite the whole class) I wonder if there are other options.  So there you are, three old words to use in new (old) ways.

Be careful what you wish for

I admit I do love to collect old adages, whether or not I believe in their truthiness.  I am quite sure I was still in middle school when I saw the flawed premise in "it is always in the last place you look".  & as for "if it's not one thing, it's another" well, duh.

There are a few I do come close to believing though.   "A penny saved is a penny earned" is still mostly solid, so long as you do not consider a penny in the stock market to be a penny saved, but shocking number of people DO think of the market as a big piggy bank.  & while it is not true that "you cannot cheat an honest man", it is a helluva a lot easier to cheat a dishonest one.

Which brings me to a long time favorite:  "Be careful what you wish for (because you just might get it)".   I am genetically related to a person who wished long & loud & hard that his children would just all go away.  & none of us have spoken to him for years; some of us are closing in on the end of the third decade of not speaking to him.  I have no idea how this worked out for him, but I for one am very happy with his wish fulfillment.

"Be careful what you wish for"  is also good business-planning advice.  I remember when it was possible to be in another room, far away from the television & not be able to tell from the jump in volume when the program had cut to commercial.  People who remember him fondly mostly remember Ronald Reagan for his pro-humanitarian activities: negotiating with Iranian hostage-takers, trading arms for drugs in Latin America, & busting the air traffic controllers union right here at home.  You could also remember him as the guy who removed any volume regulation from the segue between programs & their sponsors.  I am sure the advertisers thought this was all their wishes rolled into one --- until it turned out the blast was so obnoxious that people who had never used a remote control before learned how to work that mute button.  Nowadays, even the technologically delayed (hi Mom) routinely record their programs & speed through those commercials like they were never there.

There are other collective wishes that backfired big-time.  One of my favorites is the increase in anal sex among teenage girls who identify themselves as christian & want to  stay "technical virgins" until marriage.  Bill Maher calls this thinking outside the box.  I admit that christians often have me flummoxed but I think I am safe in saying that they never expected to have to include anal penetration on list of what exactly constitutes sex with their abstinence directive.  As one Catholic friend expressed it " I just cannot picture Father standing up at CCD & saying " 'this mean up-ay the utt-bay' although I would pay to see it ".  She was speaking in a different context, but I think it still holds.

Another favorite that really needs a footnote is "the squeaky wheel gets the grease".  I once worked with a programmer who waited until a project was at a particularly delicate stage (timewise, skillwise) & then started tossing out new demands.  I admit I was very aggravated to have to give in (which I did, completely without grace) & he made a big show of telling the entire staff meeting that it was the squeaky wheel etc.  When things flattened out a bit & I had some breathing space, I made a big show of introducing him to the new wheel.  He somehow never saw the next step in the squeaky wheel gets the grease ... until the driver is in a position to deal with the squeaky wheel, permanently.  If that old wheel wanted back on the wagon, well, he would have to work long & hard (& cheap) to convince me he is worth replacing a perfectly good, brand new wheel that is not squeaking.  I think that metaphor has just completely run its course.

Of course I like to keep my eyes open/ears up for the next "be careful what you wish for" moment.  I am seeing it in the Tea Party movement: we want to make a lot of noise & garner some attention to our causes which are...looking more & more like just a list of complaints without much in the way of suggestions, frankly.  They got the publicity wish & now experiencing the maybe we should have thought this thru some more follow-up.   I also see the wish part in parents first "I cannot wait until this baby is OUT OF ME & I don't have to carry this weight around" (every new mom I know has said this at least once).  As for the dads:  "I hope he starts walking soon" or "she'll be so much more interesting when she can talk".  

I think another big one is right around the corner though.  I know a lot of people who usually tread the straight & middle have shrugged their shoulders over Arizona's decision to further marginalize their undocumented workers (setting aside the anxiety they are causing people who might look undocumented but have every right to be here).  Not to take a giant leap over human right violations, etc., I wonder what Joe Q. Moderate is going to do when there is a fraction of who there used to be to harvest & processing his food.  & that fraction expects to be paid minimum wage, by the hour, not pennies for piecework.  I am quite certain, the guy who sneaks across the border to live in horrible conditions just to send money back to his family a few months a year is a much less expensive & much more reliable worker than the guy who will likely be replacing him.  Because there is one demographic for whom this law is likely to be very very good:  parolees.

Turtles all the way around

A very good friend of my mother's (& of the whole family, actually), collects turtles.  Not living ones, but mostly realistic representations of turtles.

I have had a completed turtle quilt top for a while.  So long, I have been threatening to baste it & quilt it since before....well, it could have been done for last christmas, but it wasn't.

The pattern will certainly look familiar to anyone who is part of our quilt block swap, as it was the February 2010 block, although the color & concept were very different.  In this case, the fabric was from a bundle of batik fat quarters, I think A bought for me at a Tree City quilt show five or seven years ago.

But not the turtles themselves.  They were all packaged together & came from a grab bag gift exchange quite some time ago. I decided to use them on the corner pieces, the pieces that would never be cut & then laid the completed  blocks out using the reconciling the disparate sashing because the blocks were indeed quite disparate.  Not all the turtles squares were the same.  I do not think any of them were even square & I cut the whole block down to keep as much "turtle" as I could, ending up with nine blocks that were themselves n longer square.

& finally the quilting itself is what I call free-motion with walking foot.  I keep the walking foot on & the feed dogs up & just kind of slowly, gently swoop.  It is almost more a series of tai chi postures than anything else.

As for the turtles, aside from them being a long established favorite, I have nothing. Or too much.  My mother loves the book Old Turtle & has been know to gift it to the local public libraries of friends who have lost children.

The flat world exists on the back of a turtle according to the Iroquois.  This kicks off the favorite fable of physicists about turtles all the way down.  Which is also the much more prosaic expression for programming code that loops back on itself.

So here I am, back at the beginning again.  Only this time the quilt is quilted, the binding is on & everything is boxed to go tomorrow to mom, because she will turn the binding & stitch it down.  In this way I manage to never quite finish anything ever.

Collectible collectives

I admit I live in my head. So does A; it is a wonder we ever meet. Or ever even met.

While I was still a child (well teenager) I started collections that could not be taken away: words that mean the opposite of themselves but are spelled the exact same (my favorite was mother & mother, well actually it was catholic & Catholic but I am told the capitalization does constitute a spelling change. That's right, there are rules); women who made their ex-husband's names famous as their own (Dorothy Parker, Susan Sarandon).

While getting an english lit degree I collected opening lines (When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow). All it takes is a piece of paper & you have a collection. If you keep that paper with you & memorize it in spare moments, you can learn to encapsule anything, ready to be released when you read your list aloud.

Everyone knows someone who collects exes. C****** likes to gather musical covers. If I am remembering correctly, she once did a school project on covers of Twist & Shout. I am not all that interested in exes (although I DO like Twist & Shout, Twist & Shout & Twist & Shout).

When I was in my 20's, I began trying to take myself out of my head. Or at least to empty my head 'on the stage' so at least some of what I did had some context. That is when I began collecting collections. There is nothing that delights me more than whatever someone else has seen fit to gather. That is not true of course; I am most delighted by what no one ever meant to gather, or at least the gathering was not so much a goal as a symptom or even a side effect but when that collection is the backbone of something else entirely.

& that is when I began collecting collectives. The first one I realized was a list of so-called subversive & fringe groups that all recognize the international symbol for anarchy. Give it a minute.

Since that day I have made notes on all unintended groupings. Used books stores are fun. Somehow they always seem to have themes that emerge, often quickly, that are obvious to any new customer & invisible to any regular visitor. The used bookstores that sells silver jewlery at the counter-very heavy in the sci-fi department.  The one with the vegan cafe within its walls:  not so much on car repair.

Artisans guilds can be interesting too. I had a ring-side seat (no I was never a member) when one of the local groups had a 'political restructuring'. The theme of the new concept could be summed up in the words of one former board member "I do not care how many G*d damned kids you have, hire a babysitter or leave them home alone, but do not bring them here when you are supposed to be working".  Last time I checked a lot of guild members were child-free.

Farmers markets are another favorite of mine. Less diverse than other markets as they are self-limiting (after all if you are going to grow your own food & then sell it you are probably not doing it to gain entry into the world of industrial food), but still there is variety. The heirloom turkey breeders do not always see eye-to-eye with the vegan soap makers.

There is a new collective in town. A food co-op is trying to form in our area. I could not be more pleased. I like the idea, I agree with the philosophy & I am sure that like minded & agreeing people will provide much discussion & conflict for years to come. & yes, I think that is a good thing.  In the meantime a CSA has formed & we joined.  Every saturday we pick up our basket at the farmers market & go home & try & figure out what to do with what we got.  At last, something to do with all those obscure cookbooks I have been collecting.

How much wood would a botanist log if a botanist would log wood?

I am no botanist. But I am a logger, a data logger. For a few years I have spent a few days/weeks in the Herbarium doing general herbaria chores. Initially I went so I could learn the proper way to collect & record botanical specimens. In return for this training, I was also taught how to mount these specimens & then I was let loose on a decades-old pile of specimens improperly documented that now makes up a good portion of the local synoptic collection.

As I was working my way through the pile, I learned that there was no one, No One in a position to enter this information into a database, thereby making the synoptic collection more available. My new career was born.

More recently I have undertaken the digital recording of the existing wood collections (yes, plural) that have been merged and carefully cross-referenced....on index cards.

Last semester I finished the Acanthaceae. They made up about an inch & a half of index cards. I have now been working on the Anacardiaceae for what seems like a lifetime. I have recently arrived at poison ivy. Guess what still has toxic oils even after 60+ years in a cabinet? At five to nine months or so a drawer, I am looking at job security for the next several years. If only they were paying me, but you cannot have everything.

I have talked with a few friends who used to have paid work & now have no work but eschew volunteer work & I admit it leaves me stumped. How can it possible be better (for your resume, for your psyche, I would say for your self esteem except I do not actually believe in self esteem as defined by our culture), how can it possible be better to just wait; maybe you could reconsider? Why not do something while you are waiting? & you never know, you might meet your future employer while volunteering.- your volunteer job might become paid. This happened to one of the herbarium volunteers & could have happened to me but I would rather...set my own schedule. Yeah, that's it.

Sooooo if you have been not getting in touch with your local volunteer center because: you need to be available (if only cell phones had been invented), you do not want to make a commitment you cannot keep (no one ever heard of a temporary volunteer job), you want to use this time to catch up on things around the house (it can take weeks to dust behind the fridge; it takes me years), please take some of your busy, full day & think about doing something that does not remind you of what you are not doing.