Because 2 days is never enough.

I have been enjoying the process of quilting so much more than I had expected. Before I started, when quilting was my fake hobby (along with rockclimbing) and I sat around imagining what I would do, I had envisioned quilting to be a lot of planning and fractions and perfectionism. I thought I would like it for the product. But there’s an element of discovery to it which has been really fun and unexpected. And last night, I finally discovered what my quilt is going to look like.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been thinking a lot about how I write, starting out with some general idea, maybe a character or a scene or a conversation and writing out from there, surprising myself as a plot, a developed character, and ending come into place.

And I realize, this is what I love about cooking, and drawing, and pottery, and even developing projects at work – the blind stumbling, the uncertainty, and then, just around a corner finding that you actually made something you love. Of course, the risk in this is that you can also make plenty of things you hate, and I have piles of embarrassing short stories, lumpy mugs, inedible meals, terrible sweaters, and general craft failures for each victory.

Anyway, it’s probably still too early to declare the quilt a victory. But last night, I pieced together the top and I really love it. It looks NOTHING like what I thought I would make when I signed up for the class. And it looks nothing like what I imagined I might do once I bought the fabric. And it looks nothing like what I was ready to put together when I finished the first big pieces last week (which was overwhelming and terrible and looked like it would belong to someone with a houseboat or a water bed). And that, “nice to meet you, stranger” feeling is, I guess, the fun and astonishing part.

Fabric and tools:

Strips ready to get sewn together:

Squares:

Rows:

Quilt top all assembled (bad lighting, late at night):

Next up is the ultra-laborious hand quilting part of the project.

I’ll probably report back in a year.

I’m eating an apple a day – the sweetest, crunchiest, juiciest apples around. It inspired me to write this haiku.

honey crisp apples

from the farmer’s market

i love to eat you

I’m taking a quilting class at Brooklyn General. And I love it. Heather, my teacher, is all about telling us the rules and reminding us to feel free to pitch them all out the window.

I keep telling Karl that my quilt is “organic.” This is not because of any natural designs and shapes, but because I don’t actually have any kind of plan of what it will be at the end. It’s much more fun this way and closer to the way I approach writing, and cooking, and pottery, and drawing and everything else creative. For a girl with to do list and after to do list, I’m realizing I’m not much for planning things out.

At the same time, I’m completely compulsive about this whole thing. Last weekend I pretty much just quilted all weekend. On Saturday night, Karl went out and I opted to stay in, which meant biking to a 24 hour laundromat to pre-wash my fabric and staying up until 2am sewing and cutting and ironing and seeing what that left me with. Add to that more of the same, plus buying more fabric, and then more. And that’s pretty much where I am right now. I have no idea what I’ll do with the large squares I’ve made, but I think I’ll cut them into smaller squares and go from there.

Of course, I stopped into Purl Patchwork after work this week, after I had bought the main fabrics and sewed my brains out all weekend. My heart broke. These were the colors I wanted. These were the textile designs I yearned for. I started second guessing everything. Bought more fabric, brought it home. Realized it didn’t look right. Wondered what I was thinking choosing so many bright colors. Wrung hands. Is this what one who “goes with the flow” experiences???

I’m a neurotic, doubting, OCD, free spirt.

A tree grows in Brooklyn — and now corn does too. I came upon stalks of wild corn as I walked through the intersection of President (my street) and 6th Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I’m obviously not the only person to notice the two dozen tall stalks. A short article even appeared in the New York Times, which unraveled the mystery of who planted the city corn and why.

The little cornfield is the work of Donnaldson Brown, a 48-year-old trusts and estates lawyer, screenwriter, fiction writer and mother of a 12-year-old son, who planted the seeds in May, fully aware that if they survived, the result would be comedically off-scale for the urban setting.

“It was to subvert expectations,” Ms. Brown, who spent part of her childhood on family farms in Maryland and Texas, said as the cornstalks swayed outside her window, “to put something out of context.”

As people pass on the street, grocery bags in hand, cellphones pressed to their ears, they crane their necks to look up at the stalks, as if Shoeless Joe Jackson might come swaggering out. The cornfield has also become a point of orientation. “We’re a block down from the corn,” a resident will say. “You can’t miss it.”

It reminded me of the recent New Yorker article in which Adam Gopnik prepares a meal from ingredients that are local to New York City. (Foraging in Central Park anyone?) You just never know where food is going to crop up.