Bring in the Crumbs
I told myself I wasn’t “allowed” to start a new quilt project until I at least got started on the FMQ project that has been in the frame for literally years. I did start looking at it and even quilted a bit, but I was running into the same problem that originally put me into procrastination mode, so I stopped with the intention of doing some research and making a list of things to check. I have a first list of obvious things to do, but I’ve yet to go through it. Maybe this weekend…
In the meantime, I decided to bend the rules regarding new projects. Time to bring in the crumbs!
The last project or two (or three) left me with more crumbs to sew. I thought this time I’d try a different approach, so I sorted the crumbs into color groups.
I had much more green than any other color (mostly from the “Morning Glory” quilt), so I started with that. I’m sewing crumbs together by color, then trimming them down into 5.5″ squares. Later, they’ll be pieced into quilt blocks.
I’m currently thinking of keeping all the crumbs green, but that might change. Here’s what I have so far:
Watercolor, Mixed Media, Etc.
With no big quilt project at the moment, I’ve been doing more with watercolor, instead.
Here’s another of those “paint, then go back over it with ink and dip pen” things. With this one, I was trying some brown ink instead of black. I do like the warmth of the brown ink, sometimes.
And this is more of the same. I had fun making this one!
Just playing around…
Doodled a house based on something I saw online…
Painted it… (Beside it is the floral “reverse coloring book” image from above, before adding ink.)
And then added ink lines.
This is another demonstration of the difference between taking a photo with my phone camera and scanning with our current printer/scanner. There’s a shift in color that I find difficult to correct. Sometimes I prefer the look of the scanned image, anyway. Since this is all just for fun, I’m not too worried about it, either way.
These next two very similar whimsical village paintings were based on another Diane Antone YouTube video.
I drew the two pictures at the same time, then used a slightly different approach to painting each—different colors, mainly.
This was a lot of fun and would be interesting to revisit. You can make such different villages with small changes, and it’s just an easy, entertaining, low-stress subject to doodle.
And then most recently I went back to something inspired by Terry Runyan. It’s collage + dip pen + watercolor pencil + traditional watercolor.
It looks very similar to my first try, because I ended up doodling many of the same plants again. If I want to break new ground, I’m going to have to do some planning/doodling in advance, because when I’m sitting there with the pen in my hand, my mind goes blank and I end up going back to the same handful of ideas!
Still, it was fun to make. I particularly enjoy the collage aspect, choosing which papers to use and where.
Recent Listening
I’ve been listening to an audiobook I heard someone mention in my other listening: Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed, by Maureen Callahan. It’s biographical nonfiction—a genre I’ve only rarely ever read. The few I have read have mostly been about authors, I believe, not politicians. But this one sounded interesting, and I thought maybe it would be an entertaining way to learn more about this period of American history.
In school, we always seemed to cover the more distant past in great detail, while anything more recent than WWII was skimmed over hastily, which is a shame. (Well, assuming the teacher would be unbiased, which would have been more likely when I was in school in the 80s/90s than it would be today…) As important as that older history is, there are many lessons in relatively recent history that are just as valuable and possibly more relevant to an understanding of current events.
Anyway… Thanks to my upbringing, I’ve never understood the obsession with/admiration for the Kennedys, and I don’t know much about them beyond the basics you almost can’t help but absorb as an American adult who sometimes pays attention to politics.
Apparently the book gets some factual details wrong—things that should have been easy to check during editing. This is a shame, as it raises questions as to the accuracy of the rest of the book. It also sometimes feels a bit gossipy, though that may be difficult to avoid, given the nature of the material covered. However, I feel confident that “enough” of it is accurate to present a reasonably fair idea of who many of these people were/are. The meat of the book is not facts, figures, and details, which can be looked up online at any time, but rather the broader picture of the attitudes, values, and behaviors of members of this famous family.
As someone with no illusions about the Kennedys, I’m not surprised that they’re worse than I knew—and that’s just the stuff that’s evidently widely known and accepted as fact. I also have to say that so far in my listening, few of the “women they destroyed” come out looking good, either (as expected, in a book of this kind, perhaps).
All in all, it’s a depressing reminder that the best of us rarely end up in positions of political power, and sometimes even scummy, dishonorable individuals are almost worshipped, if they have the right look, excellent PR, and enough of the media covering for them. Oh, and money or influence—either of their own or from people using them for their own nefarious purposes. That’s the most important ingredient of all! It’s disgusting, honestly. I’m not saying no Kennedy ever did anything good for the country, but no, I don’t believe they deserve the many decades of adoration they’ve enjoyed in our nation, and the notion of “Camelot” makes me barf, quite frankly, especially now that I know the backstory.
I suppose I’ll finish the book, but I have noticed that it puts me in a bad mood! This isn’t the genre for me, clearly.
