I had no trouble naming this quilt. It came to me with the same ease that made me know I had to make it.
I thought it might be one of the quilts that I would make for Linda. But her plans changed and I’ll be making less quilts for her than I thought. And this quilt isn’t right for the couple I will be making a quilt, this size for. That one will have solid colors and geometric patterns if any.
So Dancing With The Dragonflies will be for sale once I finish it. It’s about 75″x90″ and will be $450 + shipping.
And I’m close to getting it done. I completed the design of the front of it today.
That red and blue fabric on the bottom is a Colonial Revival print from the 1970s. And did I have fun finishing off the top of the quilt.
The big red flower in the top right corner of the quilt. And you can see another strip of that Colonial Revival fabric above the 1030s red striped brown fabric.
I was thinking about the name and how it just came to me.
My friend Emily gave me that dragonfly a few years ago. I used some of it to make potholders, and had these last scraps for a while. That middle square came together easily, the dance came when I wanted to bring the dragonflies and the surrounding colors to an unexpected place.
And I feel like I did that, using a wide range of vintage and contemporary fabrics.
This quilt feels like dancing to me.
Not dancing alone, but in the way I have learned to Bellydance. A collaboration, a give and take, and back and forth. And of course improv, working with what you have and moving things around to make something beautiful.
Shirley Jackson’s books, and her Poe Award at the Bennington Museum.
Two museums in one week. I feel blessed.
I wanted to get to the Bennington Museum while their Haunted Vermont exhibit was still up. It runs through December, so there was plenty time, but I often miss an exhibit thinking just that.
What I mostly wanted to see was the Shirley Jackson exhibit included in the show.
It was small, a collection of her books both hardcover and paperback, a letter she had written saying at the end that the cat took her pen. Some of her cat sculptures, an old phonograph that she claimed played a certain song by itself and the typed pages of one of her stories.
One of Jackson’s typed pages from a story with corrections.
We were teenagers when my sister who told me about Shirley Jackson’s book We Have Always Lived In The Castle. After that I started reading her short stories. I’ve read The Haunting Of Hill House at different times in my life and every time I see something about myself in it that I hadn’t before. It was only a few years ago that I discovered Jackson’s writings about family and her own life.
Her stories seem timeless to me even though they are often set in a particular time and place. Her writing is simple and direct, yet her ideas complex and insightful.
Victorian Hair Jewelry
One of my favorite galleries in the Museum is the room filled with glass cases and small artifacts from everyday life.
I am always stunned by the intricacy and detail of the Victorian hair jewelry. And I never get tired of looking at the sewing notions from the same period.
A tape measure, thimble and needle holder.
I don’t know how practical the pin cushion is, but it’s pretty sweet.
Pin cushion
Every time I’ve visited the museum, the gallery on the first floor has an exhibit about present day Vermont. That’s where I saw the needlework by Ray Materson which speaks to the public image of Vermont as a wholesome place compared to the reality of it’s problems with drugs and poverty.
As small as it is, (only about 2 inch high), it makes a big impact. It pulled me out of the past into the true horrors of today.
The dead tomato plants came out easy. Pulling up the weeds and unraveling the morning glory vines took more effort.
I wasn’t just putting my garden to bed as I have in years past, this year, like last, I was also planting garlic. Last year my friend Kat gave me the garlic bulbs. The garlic she and her husband had been growing for years.
Today I was planting cloves from two of the biggest garlic bulbs I harvested in July.
As I used my pitchfork to turn the soil it wasn’t only roots and rocks that came up but there was a small potato too. It surfaced as if the soil was a wave, the potato floating on top of it. I reached down and gently took it, an offering from the earth.
When it happened again, I got down on my hands and knees and using my fingers like a rake, plunged them into the earth. I gently wiggled my fingers, feeling for more potatoes.
And there were more. Lots more.
I got pretty good at being able to feel the difference between rocks and potatoes. What I didn’t expect was the round fuzzy black thing, slightly bigger than a golf ball, that landed in the palm of my hand.
Softer than a potato, the spines tickled and as I looked closer, I saw the deep red stripes.
Then it moved.
As I watched the red striped, black fuzzy ball expanded and contracted as if it was breathing. My first thought was that it was a sea urchin. I know that makes no sense, but that’s what it looked like to me.
I stared in wonder until I saw it wasn’t a ball at all, but a caterpillar curled into a spiral. It was the long black spines that made it look like a sphere.
I put the caterpillar back in earth where I found and hoped I hadn’t disturbed it too much. Later I would look it up and find out that it was a Giant Leopard Moth Caterpillar. They hibernate over the winter and become Giant Leopard Moths. A white moth with black markings and 3″ wingspan.
Some of the potatoes were as big a marbles, a few the size and shape of the antique darning egg Jon gave me a few years ago. I lined them up on the cover of the composter.
I thought I had dug up all the potatoes I grew over the summer. I pulled out the plants months ago. But here were these unexpected gifts, these jewels, just waiting to be found.
The potatoes I dug up today.
There were two plants I didn’t pull out of my garden. The kale I planted in the spring has been growing all summer and now, with the colder weather is more tasty than ever. I also left the nasturtium in the ground. Those orange flowers are too pretty to pluck.
I put the garlic in the back of the garden this year. I covered it with donkey manure, then with straw from the chicken coop (more manure in the chicken poop) and topped it with leaves.
Working around the kale and nasturtiums I put manure and leaves in the rest of the garden then covered it with cardboard to keep the weeds down in the spring.
I also moved the composter which was right next to my garden.
The chipmunks that Zip has his eye on have done a wonderful job of emptying the composter of all the good food scraps.
But they also made a tunnel into my garden from the composter. They took over a couple of square feet in the corner of the garden, filling it with everything they weren’t interested in. Egg shells peach pits, avocado skins… as if it was their very own composter. They also ate all the onions I planted which were in that two foot square.
My vegetable garden ready for the winter
My vegetable garden is small and I don’t rely on it for food. What I do get always seems like a miracle to me.
I’m finding there are some things I enjoy growing and garlic and potatoes are two of them. We are fortunate enough to live in a place where fresh vegetable are abundant. So my vegetable garden is more about learning how to grow different vegetable and which do well for me ( garlic, zucchini, potatoes, cauliflower and greens) and which don’t (cucumbers and broccoli).
I’m thinking that next year I’ll plant some herbs for tea. Garlic will be a staple and even though we don’t eat a lot of potatoes, I do love growing them and digging them up.
This all may change by the time the spring comes. But that’s one of the joys of having gardens. When the fall comes and they are all dying it time to think about what I will do next year.
I looked at Kathy’s woodland animal pillow shams laid out on my studio floor and wondered what to do next.
I knew I needed to start filling in the spaces between them, but where to start? I pulled out the fabrics I thought would work and started placing them around the pillow shams.
When I realized I was getting too bogged down with planning, I picked them all back up. Then I put a single square of teal fabric where I had no doubt it should be.
This I know, I thought. So this is where I’ll start.
It is different starting with four big pieces of fabric with strong images on them. They have to relate to each other, to be cohesive. So having them laid out where they will be on the quilt is important to the overall design.
But I also want a feeling of spontaneity. I want to the quilt to ask some questions. And for me that comes when I balance my thinking mind with feeling and intuition.
The woods were fluttering with moths and oozing with slugs.
The path I mowed in the spring to the Gulley Bridge and stone wall, is thick with grasses and bushes taller than me. I gather the morning’s rain from them as they brush up against me. My boots sink in mud, wade through fern-covered marsh, soak in the rushing tannin-colored streams.
The woods are dark, wet, and comforting.
I lean my hand on the big old hickory and when I take it away a tiny slug is sliding across my finger. I place my finger near a small slug traversing a mushroom. It pulls in its antennas, then reaches them out again, testing my finger.
But the slug decides against it and curls its body under the mushroom instead.
I walk further and there is a thin slug hanging about an inch and a half long, hanging by its tail from what looks like a spider’s silk. I think to free it, but then wonder how the slug could have gotten there.
The strand is attached to a low-hanging maple leaf. I squat resting on my heels and watch as the slug twirls and spirals as it dangles. I can see that the thread it is hanging from is growing longer, though, like watching a clock, I can’t see it happening.
And I wonder if the strand isn’t a spider’s but one made by the slug. A quick way to travel perhaps?
I hold a stick near the slug’s head thinking it may attach itself to it, but instead, it pulls in its antenna and stops descending.
Zinnia is walking under the swaying slug and I think it must be frightened. So I call the dogs and sit on a log three feet away. I’ll be still and watch it from a distance, give it space. I sit for a while, but it doesn’t seem to move. I turn my head for just a moment, and when I look back, the slug and the strand are gone.
I can’t find it on the forest floor. But it doesn’t matter.
The slug got to where it was going and I got to witness something I’d never seen before. Something I didn’t even know was a possibility.
I finished designing my Sperry Flour Sack quilt this afternoon.
I feel like I’m in the zone making these quilts. In a way, it’s like when I’m making a batch of potholders. I have all the fabric laid out in front of me and it’s just a matter of figuring out how the pieces fit together.
And almost magically, I keep finding more fabric in my stash that will work even though I missed it the first time around.
I’ve been collecting all the scraps from the two quilts I made already in a box. I think they will be the beginning of the next quilt. I’ll either sew them together or sew them into a design with a neutral piece of fabric between them.
But I won’t start that until tomorrow. I need to keep some space in between the quilts.
I’m thinking I may design all five quilts then back and tack them all. But I’ll see how it goes, I may run dry and need a bigger break between quilts.
Jon and I went to Second Hand Rose, the thrift shop in Schuylerville about a half hour from the farm. I got some large pieces of fabric that can be used for quilt backings.
Jon took a lot of photos of the shop that really capture the feel of the place (you can see them here). It’s a special place, jam-packed with stuff. I picture the colors and patterns I’m looking for in my mind then seek them out. Most of the fabric and clothing in the shop is $2.
The music threw me off a bit. It was an old mix of county and oldies. When Seasons In the Sun came on (can’t remember the last time I heard that song) I couldn’t stop myself from singing along. It brought me back in time, I kept picturing the transistor radio I got one year for my birthday.
Cauliflower growing in my garden
Unlike the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a lot of rain this weekend. My vegetable garden seems to have flourished overnight. I cut the garlic scapes from my garlic plants. I was thinking of making them into pesto or just using them in a stir fry.
I also harvested some stinging nettle leaves from the barnyard. Someone (probably Lulu or Fanny) had eaten them all down. But they have grown back, so I thought I should get them before anyone else does.
I plucked off the top few leaves and will keep doing that all summer. I dry the leaves for tea on a rack in my office/guestroom. It’s the perfect room for drying herbs, hot all summer, and away from any prying animals.
Last year was the first time I made nettle tea from the plants on the farm and it lasted me all winter. It really does help with my allergies. I’ll also dry the mint for tea. It has a fresh taste that can bring me back to summer on the coldest winter days.
The dahlia’s are also coming up. But most of the seeds I planted in my back porch garden didn’t grow. That means I won’t have any Zinnia’s or big marigolds in the late summer and fall. It’s hard to imagine my garden without them.
But every year is different and my gardens are always changing and evolving. Maybe the seeds I planted in the front lawn will grow this year instead.
I put on my boots, my summer hat, and sprayed myself with tick repellent. The sun was hot and the temperature in the low sixties. I thought about walking on my neighbor’s path, but I’d have to drive there even though it’s just around the corner and didn’t feel like getting in the car.
I walked paying little attention to the dogs, feeling my feet on the ground and my head becoming lighter. I walked without thinking and when I came to one of the biggest trees that I know, the one with three thick branches that curve out like a cupped hand, I sat down beneath it, my back leaning against its wide trunk.
I closed my eyes and let go.
I don’t know how long I sat there, but not more than ten minutes. I opened my eyes when Fate pressed her body against my arm. Then I kissed her head and got up.
I passed a decaying stump alive with vibrant green moss, a hollowed-out home for some small animal. Insects that were otherwise invisible to me bounced light off their wings. Like a magic trick, they appeared to me for only a moment then were gone just as quickly.
Then I saw the bones.
Just a small section of a deer’s spine, they glowed milky in the sunlight. I’ve seen lots of deer bones on my walks. But what was different about these was how clean they were and how there were places where they still came together.
There was something about the way they fit together like pieces in a puzzle, but still had space between them.
The hay was in the feeders, the sheep, and donkeys munching away. Fate, in her border collie crouch, begged to be told to “get the sheep”. I headed towards the pole barn to muck it out and there were Kitty and Anne, looking a little at odds, but alive and well.
Now I doubted myself. I didn’t think I opened the coop before coming into the barnyard, but…
So I checked, I went to the gate and looked at chicken coop. The door was closed as I thought it would be.
That meant that Kitty and Anne spent the night outside the coop. Which is unprecedented.
I remembered taking to Jon on the way home from bellydancing, he was on his way out to close up the coop. It was after 8 pm, already dark for some time. There was no reason to believe the three hens weren’t already roosting safely in the chicken coop.
Next thing I did was check tohe coop to make sure White Hen was there. She was as usual, but she did look a bit confused.
Back in the barnyard, Kitty and Anne followed me to the gate.
I couldn’t understand what made them spend the night in the barn until I saw them go to the place where they always squeezed under the gate. Then I saw that the gate was lower to the ground than it was the day before.
Yesterday, Mike our handyman, came to the farm when Jon and I were at the Eye Doctors to cut up the fallen limb from the birch tree. He also fixed the gates, leveling them out so there was no longer a gap big enough for Fate to squeeze under.
Turns out it’s not big enough for the hens to go under either.
Kitty and Anne must have been in the barnyard when Mike fixed the gate. White Hen was probably in the coop laying an egg. When Mike left, the hens had no way of getting out of the barnyard.
I didn’t notice the difference in the gate until I saw that the Hens couldn’t get under it.
With a little proding, Kitty and Anne followed me through the gate where White Hens was calling to them from the other side.
Chickens fall into a stupor when it gets dark. There have been times when I’ve found one of the hens roosting under the coop. They have no defenses when this happens and it’s easy for me to pick them up and put them in the coop. It’s also easy for the to become prey to a fox, fisher or owl when they are in this state.
But Kitty and Anne were savvy enough to find safe shelter for the night.
I imagine they stayed in the pole barn, safe in the company of the sheep and donkeys. Beside Anne’s muddy wing, both hens seemed fine and went about their business looking for insects to eat the rest of the day.
I’m thinking of cutting a small hole in the fence so they can go into the barnyard. There’s lots of good eating for them there and they help keep down the insect population including ticks.
Even though I know the hens didn’t get into the barnyard today, tonight, when I close up the chicken coop, I’ll peek inside, just to make sure the are three hens roosting.
The donkeys didn’t come out to eat this morning, but the sheep didn’t mind the snow a bit.
The lights flickered as I walked into the house after feeding the animals. They went out, then came back on again. Then they went out for good.
I had a feeling we might lose power when I went out with the dogs and two big branches had fallen from the maples. The snow, though not deep, was so wet it melted in my shovel. So I was shoveling slush. The lower branches on the maples were so heavy with snow, they all but touched the ground
National Grid didn’t have an estimated time that the power would be back as they usually do. The storm is a big one with expected outages all around us. We knew it could be a while, maybe even into the next day before we had electricity again.
We’d gotten the generator a year or so ago but never used it. We decided today we would.
Even though there were only a few inches of snow it was hard to wheel the generator (which is a lot heavier than I thought) through it from the barn to the house. Once I shoveled a path, it was easier, but even though the distance between the buildings isn’t far, I had to stop a few times to catch my breath.
Once I got it to the outlet on the outside of the house, I found that I couldn’t plug it in.
It’s not a regular plug and the outlet is in an awkward position. My clothes were soaked through by the time I gave up and Jon called Mike (who helps us with everything on the farm from plowing to putting down sheep).
He was conveniently just a few minutes away and stopped by to help.
I was glad to have him there because, even though I had instructions, I’d never turned on the generator before. After Mike showed me the sequence of buttons to push and the levers to switch on both the generator and the electrical box on the outside of the house, I wrote it all down with drawings. Then I went over it again and again in my head, seeing it all in my mind till I could do it without thinking.
It was a joy to hear the growl of the generator out our living room window.
All the lights were turned off, but I was able to make tea and cook eggs on our electric stove and have running water. We didn’t have to haul water from the pond to flush the toilet or be careful about opening the refrigerator. The woodstoves keep us warm and with fifteen gallons of gas in the barn, Jon and I had a sense of security that allowed us to relax and enjoy being offline all morning.
We were even able to offer the warmth of our home to a friend who lives nearby and doesn’t have a generator.
About six hours later, the power came back on. I knew just how to turn off the generator (picturing it in my mind had worked) and because the snow was still coming down, we decided to leave the generator where it was and just throw a cover over it once it cooled down.
It’s possible the power will go out again with predictions of more snow and wind. It feels good to be ready for it.
