Quilt Shop Hopping in Sew Oregon 2009

Last week my mom was visiting so we participated in the Sew Oregon Shop Hop, traveling to 10 stores over three days. I thought I would give my impressions of each shop here, and report on our experience.

I actually began the tour June 25th — the first day of the tour — because I had a class at Cool Cottons that evening. But I’m going to save my review of Cool Cottons for the end of this post because that’s where we turned in our passports.

The idea is this:  at each shop you visit, you get your passport stamped and get a pattern and fabric to make a quilt block.  Each shop’s block includes a fabric selected by Sew Oregon.  The shop gets to decide what coordinating fabrics to use and how to put them together.  You decide what to do with them. If you visit enough shops, you could make a full size quilt.

Pioneer Quilts

So after picking up my mom at the train station, off we went.  We first headed to Pioneer Quilts in Damascus, a small town east of Portland. It occupies a fairly small space in a rather nondescript strip mall kind of space, but there’s a surprising amount of fabric and a lot of creativity on display inside. I think a lot of classes are offered in the room behind the cash register, where some beautiful quilts hang on the walls.

Cinnamon Ginger by Lori Allison

I especially admired a Cinnamon Ginger quilt made of gorgeous Kaffe Fassett fabrics (he might well be my favorite fabric designer). In this case, admiration led to a purchase of a kit of the pattern by Lori Allison and fabric so I could make my own (my mom thought it would be the perfect 60th birthday present for me, and she was right!)

It seemed Pioneer Quilts also had a lot of reproduction fabrics from pioneer days, as well as quite a few Christmas prints.  So its Sew Oregon block of a gift wrapped in a bow looked right at home.  The block was designed by Jolyn Buhl, teacher of several classes I’ve taken (she is amazing!)

Pioneer Quilts block

Making this block was my introduction to using freezer paper. I had no idea it really sticks to fabric when you iron it on–shiny side toward the fabric. Not much fun to remove after sewing, however

The instructions with this block were awesome! Foolproof! Really made what looks like a very complex block very simple to make. I can tell I need more practice before I grok the freezer paper thing, however!

Paradise Quilts

It was an easy matter to get from Damascus to Paradise Quilts in Sandy.  This shop is located in what looks like a small house. It’s quite tiny.  The shelves are pretty well packed, but it can get a bit crowded inside when more than a couple of people show up. The store seems to specialize in multiple shades of a color.

Paradise Quilts block

It’s block was very simple, a large center block with stips of other colors sew on the sides. Very straightforward, not very complicated or elaborate. Kind of like the shop. It doesn’t have a website.

Having finished the east part of the Portland area, we headed south on I-5.

A Common Thread

I’d seen this store before because it’s near the sleep lab I visited a few months ago. This shop is in what looks like a suburban office campus just off I-5 near King City.  It’s quite large, with an open spacious feeling, maybe because the ceilings in these spaces are so high.  Quite a lot of the space is devoted to selling sewing machines.

A Common Thread block

I saw a lot of fabric that is designed for craft type projects moms might do, like halloween costumes or other holiday decor.  I bet a lot of soccer moms shop here (if they sew).  One nice thing about this store was the bolts of coordinating fabric with the Sew Oregon feature fabric.  I picked up a few fat quarters of these, which came in very handy when I was figuring out what to do with my blocks.

A Common Thread’s block was uncommonly detailed. In fact, it was so complex that the directions took several pages (one page replaced another that had an error). In making this block, I encountered paper piecing for the first time.  (Paper piecing means you sew a piece of paper right onto your fabric, sewing along the dashed lines, then you cut along the solid lines and the pieces magically come out sewn together.) I thought it was pretty darned nifty! It really works! I’m definitely going to have to work on my paper tearing technique, because I got so enthusiastic I pulled out more than a few stitches when I was removing the paper.

Canby Quilts & Fabric (the link to the website wasn’t working when I tried it)

We hit the road again and made our way through Willamette Valley farmland to Canby, where the quilt store is located in the picturesque old part of town near the railroad tracks. This shop is stuffed, not only with fabric but books and patterns. I confess I felt a little overwhelmed by it all.

Canby Quilts & Fabric

I find when I get overwhelmed in a fabric store, I don’t buy much because I can’t see the forest for the trees. I don’t know where to start. I can’t step back far enough to see it at the right distance.  I also need good lighting to get my view on.

The block from this shop was very clever…but I’m not clever enough to understand the directions.  So I kind of faked it. As a result, my block was a little, oh, I don’t know, underwhelming I guess. It seems too small in the block of fabric they provided. Maybe I need to embellish it. Or something.

Let’s Quilt

We got directions from the Canby shop to Let’s Quilt in Oregon City but I somehow missed a turn or something because suddenly we were in unknown territory, heading into an orchard. Lucky for us, the Google maps app on my iPhone pinpointed our location and we quickly got back on track.

Let’s Quilt is big! It has a lot of beautiful fabric! I spent a lot of money! But along the way I learned something important about my shopping habits that I’m going to confess here for the benefit of the entrepreneurs out there. Call it Marie’s stimulus package.  And here it is:  apparently I really appreciate and fall for and buy packets of fabric (fat quarters or half yards) that have been cut and nicely tied together in a stack. Especially when they are amazing bright and bold colors and patterns.

Let's Quilt block

When I walk into my favorite fabric stores, I see whole shelves of fabric that I love. But I can’t buy the whole shelf. I feel too guilty to ask the proprieter to take down multiple bolts to cut off a fat quarter or so. So more often than not, I leave empty handed. But if said proprieter has already done that before I get there, maybe selecting 10 or so Kaffe Fassett fabrics in reds, oranges and green prints and arranges them in an attractive stack, I will walk in and think, “I must have that!”

For example, I’ve been wanting to buy an assortment of Kaffe Fassett’s shot cottons. But which ones? I have no idea. I don’t have a specific project in mind, I’m buying them on speculation. So I can’t decide… Let’s Quilt had a stack of them already cut into fat quarters. When I walked in and saw them, I could hear them say “Marie, over here. We’ve been waiting for you. We need you to take us home…”  And I happily did.

This shop had among the most complex websites of the shops (more on that below). However, the planning and care this shop has put into its fabric selection and website was surprisingly not in evidence in its quilt block. It was the simplest block of all, and these were the instructions:

(1) 6 1/2″ block center

(4) 2″ x 6 1/2″ sashing

(4) 2″ x 2″ corner stones

No kidding, that’s every word. Everything. Guess you’re just supposed to know.

Heart to Hand

Heart to Hand block

Oregon City has another quilt shop, but it’s a little hard to find because it is located in an industrial park. Kind of near the back. The owner points out that this no-frills location is quite affordable and she passes on the savings in overhead to her customers.  She was busy making more quilt blocks when we were there, as she’d had many more shop hoppers than she expected. Nevertheless, she welcomed us warmly and made us feel she had our hearts in her hand.

This shop’s block was a classic pattern, easy to make… no frills with very low overhead.

Hollyhill Quilt Shoppe and Marketplace

From an industrial park to an upscale shoppe and marketplace in the historic Willamette section of West Linn. Quite a leap! Wow, this place is big and it is decorated with a designer’s eye! It has many departments…there’s a civil war fabric zone, holiday and seasonal zones, home decorating, etc. etc., just a whole lot of stuff (stuffe?)

It would be easy to while away a day here looking through all the offerings. I can’t imagine how much this much inventory must cost! Yikes!  The shop was hopping, and there appeared to be a lot of buying going on.

Holly Hill Quilt Shoppe & Marketplace block

It has the most complete collection of Moda cake stacks I’ve seen anywhere! Which fit my weakness for pre-selected selections of fabric. The prices were better than I expected, seemed to be about the same as other places, despite its location in this affluent suburb.

Hollyhill’s block was stylish and sophisticated. It also has the most sophisticated website of all the shops, with online shopping featuring an interactive design wall.

The Pine Needle

The Pine Needle block

I was a little apprehensive about the Pine Needle, since I had already spent more than I planned and I always seem to be drawn to big purchases at this shop’s booth at NW Quilter’s Expo. In Lake Oswego (an even more affluent suburb than West Linn), this shop is in the older downtown section that looks more like a movie set than an actual city center.

When you walk into the shop, you are greeted by several quilts featuring very “today” fabric and patterns. The big and bold colors make me salivate.  I want to eat them!!

This is another shop that does a great job of offering pre-cut selections of fabric collections. I was quite impressed with their sale prices (e.g., 99 cents for fat quarters of very recent fabric!)

The quilt block was an attractive variation on a fairly traditional theme.

Quilted Corner

This shop is situated with several other gifts/crafts/collectibles shops in low

Quilted Corner block

buildings lining McLaughlin Blvd in Milwaukie.  The interior space is small but attractive. Several women were in the back running sewing machines, maybe in a class?

This shop had the most unusual block:  an appliqued Christmas tree ornament. I’m afraid the directions were over my head, so I just traced some lines on fabric and faked it. It turned out okay, but I’m not sure this is quite what they had in mind?!?

I found the prices at this store to be great!

Got some Michael Miller  fat quarters for $1.50 each (usual fat quarter prices are $2.50 – $2.75)

Cool Cottons

Cool Cottons on SE Hawthorne

For nearly all the shops I visited, the Shop Hop was the first time I had been in the store.  However, because Cool Cottons is literally feet from my home (our backyards almost touch!), I’ve been there any number of times.  I take classes there. I buy fabric there. I attend sewing groups there.

Now that I’ve done recon at 10 shops in the Portland metro area, I can say with certainty that Cool Cottons is my very very favorite. And here’s why:  although I can find something I like in every store (and, indeed, I made it a point to buy something in each store, even if just a couple of fat quarters), and sometimes entire departments that I like, there is no other store in this area where I would love to buy fabric from each and every bolt.  Seriously.  In Cool Cottons, it’s as if someone decided to make a fabric store just for me.

So while it’s not nearly as big as many stores (it’s located in the first floor of an old Portland house), there is nothing to skip past. Every bolt is from a favorite fabric designer of mine… every single one.  And many of the fabrics (e.g., those from Japan) I didn’t see in any other store.

Can you imagine how blessed I feel that Cool Cottons opened where it did????? At this point, I don’t think I could manage without them. Too scary to contemplate…

Now, if they start offering bundled samples of collections as I found at Let’s Quilt above for the reasons I mentioned, I will be in serious trouble.  Because I will buy them all. Seriously.

Cool Cottons block

Oh, I almost forgot.  Cool Cotton’s block was also a clever take on a rather traditional pattern… and since the feature fabric was one quite unlike the fabrics they carry, the complementary fabrics they chose were different from most.

Overview

Although my mom and I got pretty exhausted a couple of times while shop hopping, we had a great time.

I think this is a really terrific marketing idea. As I mentioned, I’d never been to most of the stores and wouldn’t have gone without this organized activity. I have to say, if everyone behaved as my mom and I did, it must have been great for business.  For example, I spent $593.18 that I would not have spent otherwise. I didn’t dare ask for my mom’s total, but she was close on my heels if she didn’t get past me!

There could be more quality control on the block patterns. They were all different sizes, which made putting them together more than a challenge! Some of the instructions were very clear and well documented. Others were not.  Those should be easy things to fix!

As the photos suggest, I already made up all my blocks.  I didn’t have enough to put into a traditional quilt, so I made a table runner I can use for a holiday decoration (the unquilted pieced top partially shown below stretched out on my cutting table).

Marie's 2009 Sew Oregon Shop Hop table runner

WSBG reviews The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

World’s Smallest Book Group thinks Sebastian Barry’s writing is beautiful. We were all enraptured by the words and how they went together. We love it when that happens!

This is the story of a woman’s life told through the diaries of two people, one written by the woman herself as she reaches 100, having spent several decades in a mental institution.  Along the way, it reveals much about the story of Ireland and its civil war…especially the role of the very powerful and corrupt Catholic Church that seems to have a hand in everything. As we know, the church took very dim view of women.  Tragically, this woman paid a very high price for that.

It’s really a sort of mystery…a psychiatrist is trying to figure out what put Roseanne into the institution as he tries to figure out where she should go when it closes down. Near the end of the book, we were in for a bit of a shock.  Well, Joyce and I were. Reba and Darcy were savvy enough to figure out the surprise before it was revealed.  But I was gobsmacked! Wow!

Joyce and I dearly loved the book.  Reba and Darcy weren’t quite so taken with the story, but we all agreed about the beauty of the writing.

If you like reading about the long long reach of injustice, you will enjoy this book.  I think it’s critically important to read stories like this… because these things happened to women.  And still do.  May we never forget or look the other way. I very highly recommend it.

Chapter 2: Asking Why

Asking Why

 

It is natural – and essential – to wonder why children are born with things like spina bifida.  There are two ways to ask the question.  When I first asked, “Why did this happen?” it was a question for science.  I initially turned to medical researchers and epidemiologists for answers.

Wondering why this was to be Blaine’s particular destiny, his karma, came later.

At first I just wanted to know why it happened at a cellular level.  What biological message directed the spine to stop growing.  What particular mechanism had gone awry.

I soon learned that researchers had decided that neural tube defects like spina bifida are partly genetic, because there is a higher incidence within families.  I discovered that once a mother has a child with spina bifida, her future children are more likely to have it as well.

But researchers had also observed a very puzzling geographic pattern.  Spina bifida occurs at much higher rates in some parts of the world, and at distinctly lower rates in others.

Some epidemiologists noticed that births of children with neural tube defects are not evenly spread through time.  Clusters of births – in both space and time – are frequently recorded.

I felt a certain irony when I discovered that my child had been born with something with such a fascinating geography.

My college and graduate degrees had been in geography, and while I was pregnant, I had been teaching geography at Portland State University.  Looking at how things are distributed through space has always fascinated me.  I think it is responsible for the “outside looking in” view I tend to adopt, and is even why I frequently try to imagine seeing the earth through the eyes of an alien.  One of my earliest memories is gazing awestruck at the deep and vast night sky that appeared through slices in the fir trees of southern Oregon, thinking how small and remote are both a child and her planet in a space that reaches so far.  As a 10-year-old living at the edge of the woods along the South Umpqua River, I had surveyed, and then mapped on butcher paper, the 200 or so acres that surrounded our house.

Through college, and especially while in graduate school, I had become accustomed to questionable looks and derisive comments when I revealed the subject of my major.  “There’s a Ph.D. in geography!” more than one person marveled, “I mean, after you learn all the states and capitals, what else is there to do?”  I tried, but didn’t always succeed, in using a lighthearted tone when I replied that we move on to memorizing county seats.

In college, while living in an inner city neighborhood in what was the second most populous metropolitan area in the country, I studied urban geography.  I returned to Oregon for graduate school, and immersed myself in cultural geography, studying how culture is spread through time and space, specializing in the geography of China.  I wanted to learn about a culture that was as different as could be from my own.  I selected China because at the time it was the only major region of the world where one could not purchase Coca-cola.

During and after leaving graduate school, I examined how and why humans have changed the landscapes we have inhabited.  I looked at vegetation patterns in Oregon, and had done a year-long study of trees immigrants had introduced into Oregon.  For several years I taught a very popular course on the geography of Portland.  In fact, I had begun writing a book about Portland’s environment, explaining how the natural world had been changed by the people who have lived here.

But the truth was, I had my own nagging doubts about devoting one’s life to studying geography.  I found myself wondering, “In the scheme of things, how much does this really matter?”  Although I could justify my intellectual curiosity in the subject, my life’s work needed a better reason for being.

While I was pregnant, I was invited to participate in a study that was trying to figure out why the rates of certain kinds of cancer were higher in some parts of Portland than others.  If we could solve this geographic puzzle, we might be able to figure out the cause of the disease, and eliminate it.  This is one way a geographer could save lives, I thought.  It meant I could keep doing geography, because it mattered after all.

And then my son was born with a hole in his back, and nobody knew why.  Even while I struggled to realize what had happened, and begin to understand it, I started asking questions.  Within a few days, I knew I had happened upon a startling geographic enigma.

One study found astonishingly high rates in southern Wales, and in Northern Ireland.  In the United States, proportionally more children are born with spina bifida on the east coast than the west.

For a time, people thought it might be caused by a fungus that grows on potatoes.  One researcher questioned a possible link with vegetables in the brassica family – including broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts – that contain goitrin.  My heart skipped several beats when I read that, because I remembered that shortly before I became pregnant, I had begun to get violently ill every time I ate broccoli, a vegetable that up until then had been my favorite.

When a large percentage of children with spina bifida were born to workers in tire factories in England, researchers questioned whether it was caused by a chemical added during the manufacturing process.

Several scientists had attempted to explore the causes of spina bifida.  When I read the studies, they seemed incomplete.  Either they had too little data, or the data was unreliable.  There were too many variables, and no way to isolate them.  The studies were retrospective, and since nobody knew exactly when exactly what went wrong, no one really knew what questions to ask and when to ask them.  It seemed to me all the researchers had given up too quickly.  Solving this riddle would require a massive amount of very carefully selected data.  It would be an enormous undertaking.  It could take a lifetime.

Clearly, I was the one to undertake this task.  I would combine the skills and training of a geographer, with the commitment and determination of a mother.  I understood that this was to be my destiny, my life’s work.  I did not shrink from my task, this was to be a crusade.

With Blaine snuggled in his pack, I made several trips to the Medical School Library at Oregon Health Sciences University.  I looked over the card catalog and medical indexes, and tracked down every relevant article I could find in the stacks.  I had to use a medical dictionary to understand some of them

First I needed to understand to what extent spina bifida was genetic, and to what extent it was not.  It couldn’t be entirely genetic, I reasoned, because there are such striking differences in the incidence of births over time.  The rate varies over decades, and is even higher during certain seasons of the year.  If it were merely genetic, wouldn’t the rate be constant?

Blaine was but three months old when I made an appointment to meet with the man who several had identified as Portland’s leading neonatal geneticist.  I spent hours developing a long list of questions to put to him, and hoped to convince him to help me undertake an investigation.

Finally, the day arrived I was to meet with Dr. Gerald Prescott at Oregon Health Science University’s spina bifida clinic.  Blaine was snuggled in his usual position in the baby carrier tied to my chest when we took an early bus downtown.  It was a partly overcast but pleasant autumn day, and we made the most of it, strolling along the sidewalks of the transit mall and surrounding blocks.  We sat for a while on a bench under the majestic elm trees that surround Portland’s downtown library, smiling at dozens of others who were also out enjoying the day.

I was rather amused, knowing that the people who smiled back at us were seeing us as typical mother and her child.  They couldn’t tell that Blaine was paralyzed.  And they didn’t begin to suspect they were looking at the mother who, because of the son who clung to her bosom, was at that moment preparing to take the first step along a path that would lead to a major medical breakthrough.

Soon both Blaine and I began to feel the ravenous hunger that can suddenly strike an infant and nursing mother, so we stepped into the Chinese restaurant across the street for a bite to eat.  Blaine settled in for his midday meal, and I ordered fried rice.  As I sipped tea, I reviewed the list of questions I had prepared for the geneticist.  I was especially curious about how much genetic information had been collected about families who had a child with spina bifida.  I wondered why no one had asked to look at my genes since Blaine was born.

The waitress delivered the fried rice, and I continued scrutinizing my notes as I began to eat.  I daydreamed about how a research study might be designed that would find the missing link, the key to this mysterious and elusive puzzle.

There has to be an answer, I vowed.  I reminded myself that we may not know what causes spina bifida only because no geographer has taken on the problem.  I looked down and saw that Blaine had fallen asleep at my breast.

Maybe what’s important is not where the child was born, I thought.  I cracked open the fortune cookie, and began to nibble on the crunchy shell.  Maybe we need to look at the place conception occurred.  Maybe it was something momentarily present in the environment when the sperm and egg united.  Or maybe it has to do with where the mothers spent their early lives, when their reproductive organs were forming.

Or maybe it’s not the mother at all.  I fingered the tiny slip of paper I had pulled from inside the cookie.  Maybe it’s something to do with the father’s background.

I glanced at my watch and noticed it was nearing time to catch the next bus up Marquam Hill to the clinic.  If the geneticist can help me understand what part of this puzzle is genetic, I thought, then I can discover what geographic factors might be involved.  First, I’ll have to figure out what data to collect.  And where I can collect it.  I straightened out the fortune and looked at the message printed on it.

Suddenly I felt as if I had received an electric shock, strong enough to lift my every hair from my skin.  Blaine awoke with a start.  I closed my eyes, shook my head, and looked at the fortune again.  Something slowly crawled all the way up my spine.

I looked down at Blaine and said the words aloud to him.  “Man can cure disease,” I read, “but not fate.”

Another not-disappointing trip to Cape Disappointment

We were more than a day late getting away due to international differences between American and German wiring. But after some frank and productive diplomacy, we were on our way.

Did we ever need a vacation?!? And not just to recover from the frantic rush to get ready for vacation. It’s been a year since just the two of us (and dogs) got away together.  Back to Cape Disappointment State Park we went, for the fifth (?) year.

One reason we like this place so much is watching Pippi and Poppi running free on the beach.  There’s also great flat bike riding and quite a lot of history and art on display.

"Free at last, free at last..."

"Thank god almighty, I'm free at last!"

"Look at that, we even got the old man running with us!"

Meanwhile, back at the campsite, we mostly sat around reading, watching the campfire and staring into space.  When we stepped back a bit, we saw a cozy little scene, both inside and out…

The weather was wonderful, basically just shirtsleeve weather, no wind, just perfect for lounging about…

And then we watched the moon rise over Toaster Moon… and be reflected in Toaster Moon.

And pronounced it the perfect moment of the trip.

WSBG reviews The Cave by Jose Saramago

Okay, I’ll just say it.  World’s Smallest Book Group LOVES Jose Saramago. And we totally LOVED this book!  What a master!! You should immediately go out and read it. I’m not kidding.  Right now. That’s okay, I’ll wait…

Oh, you’re back?  So we were right, huh? I KNEW you would love it too…

So the book is about a man in his mid-60s who has been a potter all his life. He has a little pottery studio at his home in the countryside outside a large city.  The city has a number of zones (all fairly grim) but the center of it all is The Center.  I imagined it as a Mall of America kind of place… everything is artificial and controlled and ordered and big brother is watching every move everyone makes. The son in law is a security guard at the Center and when he gets a promotion to residential guard, the family can move to the Center.  Much of the book describes the evolving status of the family’s economic circumstances and their consequences. 

The characters are so  interesting and real. We so loved the old man and his daughter.  And the dog

And the writing. Ahhhhh, it is so beautiful and satsifying.  It draws you in ever so gently, then carries you up and down along the little waves that carry water along a river, now up, then down just a little, then tipping slightly to the left, enough to notice but not enough to throw you over, it’s best if you let yourself be carried, trust that the words will take you where you need to go…

Let me show you what I mean, I’m going to just open to a random page and copy one random sentence so you can see for yourself:

Cipriano Algor shrugged as if so say that he wasn’t interested and said again that he was going to have a wash, but he did not move, he did not take the step that would carry him out of the kitchen, a debate was going on inside his head between two potters, one was arguing that it was our duty to behave naturally under all circumstances, that if someone is kind enough to bring us a cake covered with an embroidered napkin, it is only right and proper to ask whom one should thank for this unexpected generosity, and if, in reply, we are told to guess, it would look most suspicious if we pretended not to hear, these little games played in families and in society are not of great importance, no one is going to draw hasty conclusions if we guess correctly, mainly because the number of people who might give us a cake is never going to be that large, indeed often there might be only one, that, at least, is what one of the potters was saying, but the other replied that he was not prepared to play the part of fall guy in some silly circus game of riddles, that is was precisely because he did know the name of the person who had brought the cake that he would not say it, and also because the worst thing about conclusions, at lest in some cases, is not that they might occasionally be hasty, but that they are precisely that, conclusions.

The family does in fact end up moving to the Center. It is truly a horrifying place.  Then there is a cave discovered, and it changes everything.  You’ll see.

Yes, the cave is a reference to Plato’s cave.  Made me wish I remembered my college Humanities class better, I wrote a paper about Plato’s cave.  There are also echoes of Kafka in the places in the story.  And props to the translator: Margaret Jull Costa.

I will leave it at that. Except for this: Jose Saramago is a masterful writer and thinker. He totally deserved that Nobel Prize for Literature.  This is the third Saramago book we’ve read in book group (also read All the Names and Blindness). After discussing The Cave, we decided that WSBG will read a Saramago book every year forevermore.

I can’t wait!

Three girls on the Willamette

Me, my mom, sister Sarah

 

My mom just turned 80!  My brothers and sister and their families met up on the bank of the Willamette River in Eugene for lunch and cake to celebrate. I gave my mom the quilt she taught me how to make as a tribute to her.  There’s a picture of her opening it below.

That's son Blaine on the right and sister-in-law Tammie in back.

And then my new camera ran out of memory (pretty sneaky the way the card that comes with the camera has essentially no room on it!)  So I have no more illustrations…

 

But it was so awesome to celebrate the day with my mom and that she has made it to 80! She had surgery for colon cancer when she was 47, so for a while I worried that I wouldn’t have a mom left when I reached my present age.  So glad she made it!  She is not without health challenges, but she is awesome and not a day goes by without her adding stitches to another quilt. They are works of art!

Happy Birthday MOM!  And many more….

What are we looking for?

It’s always interesting to see the search terms people use to end up visiting my blog. All time high: “stiletto boots” because I remarked on how unexpected a sighting they were at Web 2.0 last year. I gotta admit: I’m really curious to know what would prompt one to enter that term in the search box. I mean, it’s pretty… uh…. specific? Is that the word I’m looking for?

 I also get a lot of quilters looking for one block wonder quilts… and gardeners looking for certain plants.  And then there are the outliers… check it out for yourself.  Fascinating!

My new quilts

They’re finally ready for show and tell.  Four of them. Seriously. I have four finished quilts in my possession.  Unreal!

Here they are:

This pattern is called Attic Windows. I spent a very long time (and even more coin) collecting fabrics for this little project.  The idea is this: there are four-pane windows all across the quilt.  Each four-pane window has a view with a theme… See if you can make out where the windows are, how many there are, and what the theme of each is.

This is the One Block Wonder I described making in an earlier post, but now all quilted with binding!

I don’t know what to call this one.  It was mainly an excuse to buy a bunch of Kaffe Fassett fabric, with a little Jane Sassaman thrown in.  I do love me some bright colors!  This is one of those easy going quilts that you pretty much make up as you go along… It goes pretty fast and is a lot of fun.

And here is the Stack & Whack I made when my mom showed me the technique.  It’s finally quilted and has binding.  Ready for a new home, I think!

It felt so good to get these finished, some of them started their lives several years ago.  I’m trying not to get this far behind ever again.

Did I mention I was writing a book?

Please note the use of past tense.  Was writing. No new words for quite a while.  

I was really hot on this book thing for quite some time. Started it in a writing group led by Susan Stanley (love her!). Even got so far as to have 20 of my best friends over for a reading out loud session.

But here’s the funny thing: once I got in a real relationship and felt happy, I stopped writing. I would hate to think one has to be unhappy or unfulfilled or miserable to write. But apparently it helps.

So here’s what I’ve decided to do… I’m going to post chapters as blog entries.  Not even going to read them over first to make sure I still agree with what I wrote. It’s an experiment. I have no idea where this will lead. But I’m hoping this helps me figure out what to do next.

So here’s the introduction:

THE BOOK

INTRODUCTION

By Marie Deatherage

October 15, 2003

 

Sometimes when I come upon a scene, I like to imagine what I would think if I were an alien from another world, and this is the first exposure I have to the earth and its inhabitants.  I try to envision whether there would be any way to make sense of what I see, or whether the scene would drive me to turn heel and flee to my spaceship, without a backward glance.

I often do this when watching television – certain music videos, for instance.  Or Beavis and Butthead.  American Gladiators.  A Current Affair.

I try on my alien identity now.  I am standing next to a wall, looking across a vast room.  It is utterly quiet.  This silence is dense and heavy.  If you were to stretch your arms in front of you and lift your palms upward, you would feel this silence flow thickly through your fingers.

The room I am surveying is not empty.  Indeed, it is filled with several hundred people who are seated in pairs, across from one another, at row after row of tables covered with white linen.  The several hundred heads are bent.  The faces of those I can see from my vantage have gazes intently fixed on a section of the table in front of them.  Now and then, someone on one side of the table reaches out to move a small object, then hits a rectangular box in a slapping motion.  It makes a distinctive clicking noise that interrupts the silence for a glancing moment, but does not break it.

It is not hard for me to feel like an alien here.  All the heads I see are male.  They take no notice of me, nor any of the other spectators scattered around the room’s edge.  I think those I am watching must find their world entirely contained in what they see in front of them.

I sidle along the wall, and he comes into view.  That’s him.  Four rows in, six tables down, facing me from the far side.  My sweet son.

Three days ago we traveled the breadth of the country, departing from our home in Portland, Oregon, by early morning light, changing planes in Chicago, then arriving in Philadelphia well into the evening.  We have come here so Blaine can compete in the Chess World Open, a tournament that attracts hundreds of chess players, from every continent, some among the best in the world.

When I look out across this room, I see that Blaine is in their midst.  At this moment, he has left me behind and is of their world.  His gaze is as intense, his movements as sure.  Though he has lost more games than he has won at this point in the tournament, he plays on, determined to do his best.  I can see the courage and strength in his face from here.

I don’t see my sob coming.  It nearly erupts, but I manage to choke it back, clamping it inside so it doesn’t crack the room’s spell.  My eyes are stinging with tears, and I have sagged into the wall.  This view, this place, this moment . . . they overwhelm me.

I would have thought this is the last place on earth we would ever be.

❏

I am aware that over the past two days Blaine has become known to everyone here.  Not because of his chess prowess; his rating is rather modest among this group. Not because he is still a child – there are children even younger and smaller than Blaine competing with these adults.  It’s because of another kind of difference.

Even though Blaine is nearly 14 years old at this moment, he is closer to the size of a typical six year old.  The hole we found in his back when he was born, and the anomalies in his brain that accompanied it, have diminished his body.  He weighs only 55 pounds, and is not yet four feet tall.

I hear Blaine referred to by tournament officials, not by name, but as “the boy in the wheelchair.”  I can see it in the eyes and faces all around us.  These are not hostile expressions.  They are simply surprised.  Blaine is just so unexpected.

I have noticed that when we leave home, and move beyond the circle of people who know us, Blaine’s wheelchair puts him in a world alien to most people.  And because I am his mother, it carries me along to a different place as well.  It’s been a while since we were among so many strangers.  I had forgotten that when people first lay eyes on us, maybe they feel a little like aliens looking at earthlings for the first time.

❏

I leave the room and walk directly to the bright glass doors at the end of a long dim hallway.  I step outside and now I am alone.  I let my tears flow, and begin to feel soothed.  Someone walks by, and sees that I am crying.  I nearly call out, wanting to explain my tears so they will not be misunderstood.  This is not sorrow running down my cheeks.  I am giving thanks.  These tears are blessing this moment, my life.  I wonder if the man walking by could possibly know what I mean when I say that?

If I could explain this moment, and this life, would I be understood?  When we invite others to look inside this experience – into the world where Blaine and I dwell – what do they see?  Can they get here from there?

Ever since I arrived in this strange and compelling world, I have been moved to try to understand it.  Why did this happen?  What does it mean?  Will Blaine and I be able to survive here?  How will I know what to do?

Although I am still searching for answers to most of these questions, as soon as Blaine was born, I knew there was no going back to where I came from.  Knowing what I know now, I would not return if I could.  This is where I belong.

Until my own son was born, I had no idea that children are born with gaping holes in their spines.  I had no idea that infants, who have lived only a few weeks, can be found to have leukemia, until my brother’s son was diagnosed when he was three months old.  I didn’t know that children who have not seen their second birthday can have terminal cancer, until Blaine shared a hospital room with a tiny, pale girl whose stomach, liver and intestines had been consumed by the disease.  I didn’t know that someone in the last stages of Alzheimer’s disease curls up in the fetal position and can’t move, until I spent the morning visiting a friend who was caring for her elderly mother so she could die at home.

I had no idea what amazing challenges children and families face, until I began facing them myself.  Learning these things changed me.  I can’t imagine not knowing them, and wonder how I knew what was real before I did.

I know parents who tell me they are glad their children have disabilities, and really mean it.  I am not one of them.  These parents tell me that from their experience, they have learned what matters in life, how to be patient, how to live in the present.  And although I have learned and changed immeasurably from having my son, it is too high a price to think his disability was the cost of my wisdom.  Blaine’s disability has caused him real suffering.  I can think of nothing, for example, that would be worth a child – eyes stricken with terror and panic – desperately gasping for breath while being weaned off a ventilator following surgery, or worth a mother helplessly watching her child endure it.  There is nothing worth the horror- and pain-filled screams of a tiny infant having cells of bone marrow withdrawn from his spinal cord through a large gauge needle, or worth his parents biting their thumbs to stop their own screams while listening from a nearby room.

So while we did not – and would not – choose this fate, we embrace it.  Blaine’s disability does not define him, and yet his spare and twisted body is part of who he is and what he knows.  Although I confess I have always preferred – no! insisted upon – viewing Blaine as a regular kid, one of the gang, the truth is his disability makes him different.  It makes me different.  It makes a difference.

I have tried to look this difference in the eye.  What are you?  I demand.  What is your business here?

Partly I search for meaning so I can face this life we lead.  I want to have the will, the courage, the strength that it takes to do this.  I don’t want to fail my son.  I don’t want to fail myself.  

I also want to help people who are outside our world look in.  I have watched many people encounter Blaine and me over the past 14 years.  Some people stop stock still in the middle of the frozen food aisle in the supermarket and openly stare.  Others think I don’t notice when they quickly look away.

Sometimes when people see us I can tell they feel only pity.  There was the woman walking I overheard ask her companions as they walked by in the park one afternoon, “Did you see that pathetic little thing back there?”  My own curiosity made me turn to look, expecting to find a dead puppy.  But there was nothing to see but my joyously laughing child, wearing short leg braces, while his father was pushing him in a swing.

And there are others, like the woman in the parking lot at the neighborhood Safeway who, on the basis of watching me put Blaine in his wheelchair after unloading it from the back of the car, came over to tell me how much she admired me, what a brave little mother I was, what a wonderful person heading for heaven I was.

I try to find words that will help these people understand me and my life.  Sometimes I find them, but more often I don’t until several hours have passed and we have all gone home.

While I struggle to explain, searching for words that will convey what I want others to learn, Blaine goes about changing the world, simply showing people what they need to know.

One day when Blaine was just a few years old, we were strolling near Saturday Market in downtown Portland.  A dirty and bedraggled-looking street person staggered up to Blaine, stopped, pointed to him, and asked, “What’s wrong with him?”

I explained that nothing was wrong with him, but if he wanted to know why Blaine was in a wheelchair, it was because he was born with an incomplete spine and spinal cord.

When I finished speaking, the man grunted in reply.  “Hhhnnnn.  I guess he woulda been better off dead.”  At which point, Blaine reached out, took the man’s hand, and kissed it.

I was torn between feeling sorry for the guy, pitying his ignorance and lack of social graces, and wanting to slap him for saying something like that in front of my child, who heard every word.

As I watched Blaine kiss his hand, the man’s face softened, and he stared at Blaine in awe.  I wondered when this man had last been kissed.  I wondered when he had last received a kind and tender touch.  I wondered if anyone but Blaine would have given them to him.

As we continued on up the street, the man stood hollering after us.  “That’s a wonderful boy you have there,” he yelled. “Take good care of him.”

❏

Part of taking good care of him has been believing that Blaine might live, that he could survive each day as it passed.  When Blaine was a few days old, I begged the social worker who visited my bedside to introduce me to a family whose baby had lived and grown, so that I could see with my own eyes that it was possible.  

Part of taking good care of him has been believing in myself, and acknowledging my own survival and growth.  The first time I laid eyes on another child with spina bifida, when Blaine was a few weeks old, my heart choked on bitter tears.  She was six years old, and had just returned home from one of her first days of school.  Her mother helped her get out of her wheelchair, and Rachel dragged her body along the floor behind her.  All I could think was that she looked exactly like the litter of kittens our cat had when I was ten, the litter that got distemper.  And I remembered that we did the only thing that anyone I knew did to kittens with distemper back then.  We put them out of their misery.  As we rode home on the bus that afternoon, my arms wrapped a protective mantle around Blaine, and I promised him that he would not be like those kittens, because he would be able to walk, the doctors had said so.

Before two years had passed I came to realize that Blaine could only move by dragging his body on the floor just like Rachel.  By then I had forgotten about the kittens.  A few weeks after he got his first wheelchair when he was two, Blaine and I were shopping at the supermarket near our home, where we were nearly daily customers.  As we moved down the fruit and vegetable aisle, I became aware that people were staring at us.  “Oh, my God,” I immediately concluded, “I’ll bet the seat of my pants are split, or I sat in something disgusting-looking.”  Then a wave of astonished discovery hit me.  “Oh, my God,” I marveled. “They’re staring at Blaine’s wheelchair.  They’ve probably never seen one so tiny.”

I had completely forgotten that he had one.

Part of taking good care of Blaine has been not believing specialists when they wrote in their reports that Blaine was “developmentally delayed” and “mentally retarded.”  It has meant acknowledging he was the best reader in his class, it meant nominating him for the Talented and Gifted Program when he was in kindergarten, and it meant teaching him basic chess moves and letting him beat me every time we played when he was five.

❏

And now we are here, at the premiere public chess event in the world.  A few months ago, Blaine competed in a statewide tournament in Oregon, and with a boy from Roseburg – whose mother had been a friend of mine when we both lived along a remote part of the South Umpqua River in southwest Oregon in grade school – became Oregon’s Eighth Grade Chess Champion.  A few weeks later, his father took him to the National Elementary Chess Championship in Chicago, where Blaine’s score ranked fourth in the nation.  A man who has a lot more money than Blaine and I heard of my son’s success, and wanted to make it possible for him to compete at this world class level.  A few weeks ago he came to our home and gave us a check that is paying for our entire trip.

I walk back into the room where Blaine’s game continues, and take my place against the wall.  As I stand here, watching Blaine play his heart out, witnessing his awe and delight as he collects autographs from the many Grandmasters who are here from all over the world, I know that our generous friend will never fully understand what he has done for Blaine and me.

Blaine’s joy is complete, and pure and simple – he dreamed of this, and now his dream has come true.  He is merely astonished at his luck, in meeting this man who has made his dream come to life.  The truth is, I never dared dream of this, but standing here, something is coming to life in me as well.  Not until this moment have I really grasped what I have learned, and what I have lived.  If we hadn’t come, I might never have known.

From this wall, I can see there is a story here.  It is Blaine’s, and it is mine.  And standing here, I understand that I must tell it.  What follows is what I know, and how I came to know it. 

WSBG reviews Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

This is a good book for a book group to read because it provides so much fodder for discussion.

It’s about how what we think makes us happy really doesn’t. Mostly because humans are not very good at imagining the future when we rely on our own imaginations to do so. (Because we base our imagined future too much on what we feel in the present.)

We are, however, amazingly good at rationalizing, which means we can pretty much decide to be happy pretty much whenever we want to if only we understand ourselves better.

We also have an uncanny ability to remember dramatic events and generalize them so we believe them to be typical. (That’s why we are convinced we always pick the slowest moving line at the checkout stand.)

There are so many interesting things in this book, including some that are really useful, like helping you understand why you don’t order what you really want when you are dining with others and why we can’t think of the name of one song while another is playing.

We generally enjoyed reading the book, although we had a couple of quibbles. We got a little annoyed with the author’s unrelenting attempts at humor (what Darcy so accurately labeled his “preciousness”). And we think he made a mistake by asserting that humans are the only species that predict the future.

In that case, Reba wants to know why chimpanzees store up rocks to throw at humans?

When will humans learn? Every time they claim that some behavior (e.g., tool making, language) is unique to their species, somebody discovers an exception.

So I think I’ve finally got it:  Humans are the only species constantly searching for a unique trait that distinguishes them from all other species.