Worm Lady to the wescue

The trouble with cellphones is Worm Lady can't pull on her tights and cape in a phonebooth that doesn't exist. The signal is beamed into the night sky! I must answer the call tightless! Time to read up on the relationship between worms and water conservation.  I'll be answering calls for the Worm Lady a couple times in coming months. 

Five days into spring break I've mostly stopped doing the pre-K initial consonant sound stutter. Here are some of the highlights of my spring vuh-vuh-vuh vacation.

Wah-wah-wah watch that never worked well made into a pin. Fred gave Effa Dale the  Swiss watch that "never worked well".  At some point the watch was adapted to a pin.  Much later the pin was placed in a cardboard box marked "Locket" inside a safe deposit box, which is why I didn't send it to my brother according to my mother's written instructions years ago.  To make up for it I sent him the coins and bus tokens that were in the same box.

Before I mailed this off to my brother I wondered if there might be a secret treasure map or code underneath the cotton in the box.  Just in case, I pulled it back and found

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Fuh-fuh-fuh 5 toothpicks! Yup. I don't know if the toothpicks had DNA samples or not. Ew.

Welcome to the wonderful world of inheritance, wills, and probate. Everyday is a war-war-warped scavenger hunt. I have been learning about medallion guarantees, P.O.D., and W.R.O.S., plus why Social Security can't change your mailing address if you are dead. I would tell you, but then you wouldn't get to work through all the automated phone menus in either voice or touchtone mode. Maybe Worm Lady should get an automated phone menu, too. Press 1 for vertical-burrowing earthworms preferring cool temperatures. Press 2 for warm-temp vermicomposting red wigglers.

I wanted to finish reading Thomas Mallon's Watergate over the break.  It really brings back that era we mostly wanted to forget, but then we'd be doomed to repeat it.

I had delusions of also reading Matthew Pearl's The Technologists and Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts by Stacy Cordery.  Ruh-ruh right!

Thought I had a couple more weeks to finish the quah-quah-quah baby quilt aka "playmat", but my grandson surprised everybody by arriving this morning.  He is not an afterthought to this post. He is the breaking news. If I don't blog it will be due to turning into one of those mushy blobs of grandmotherly love.

And that's okay.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Forced to eat chocolate ice cream

Dad did not want to awaken from his nap to eat the dip of ice cream, so I had to keep it from going to waste.  Sitting on the uncomfy chair in the corner reading about the Cherokees and the Trail of Tears, I licked the plastic spoon.

Good to get out of the condo with the dripping bathtub faucet after working through an online training course about recognizing child abuse. Dripping faucets are bad.  Catching drips = good.  Using caught drips to refill toilet tank or water houseplants is not such a bad thing.

Child abuse is bad.  Getting credit for doing free online training is good, especially while wearing my jammies and polar bear slippers.  Nuking the leftover spaghetti and meat sauce for breakfast is neither good nor bad.  It is just easy and comforting on the day off from school honoring Martin Luther King.

Moral or immoral? Legal or illegal?  Black/white clarity seems just the stuff of  fabric arrangements for my grandbaby play mat.

In 1977 we considered the world far too doomed to bring a child into.  We fretted about the demise of small towns in the Walmart invasion, acid rain, the inequality in our economic system, the dang military-industrial complex, quality of life issues, whether using a crockpot to make lentil soup was selling out, and the inherent evil of polyester double-knit. We put henna rinses in our hair, grew alfalfa sprouts on the window sill, and gagged down carob chips.  We read Wendell Berry poems.

Carob chips will never be chocolate.  Few puzzles have the answers on the back page.  Being an adult was not what we expected.  It was soooo gray and blurry!

Being a parent was unexpectedly wonderful.  Maybe being a grandparent will be as well.

I'm into cole slaw.  Cabbage.  Down to basics.  Stone Soup!  No frills, except:

Dad eventually awoke to swallow his afternoon meds and drink a 4 oz. protein shake.  His new roommate groaned about cold lotion being applied to his itchy diaper region.

"Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts."

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Wendell Berry (1973)

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Resting places

Cutting and sewing like a mad fiend, I let go of Dad's transition issues.  Dad will have to adjust to having a roommate, and I already feel a bit sorry for the roommate. We had to shoot Dad with a tiny tranquilizer dart Saturday. First time I ever saw Dad tear his hair out for real. The move had him very agitated and aggressive, hitting his aide. When he calmed down he was able to ask me a question with himself in the third person,"What does this mean for Howard?"  It means for Howard that he is still in Texas, still has the same caregivers, and will still be visited daily by that annoying woman who claims to be his daughter!

And so, I sew 2.5" strips around 9" squares. Spray with diluted starch and press seams open. Arrange squares on the living room carpet.  The project is a black/white grandbaby play mat. I have such wonderful memories of my tiny sons doing their first push-ups to better see the pattern of a blanket.  Getting things in focus and tracking movement are big incentives for an infant's development of neck strength and head movement. Yes, babies are looking for faces, but they are building more nuanced visual perception almost from birth. They are imprinting their parents' faces, but also the high contrast patterns around them.

My first square fabric blocks have plenty of pattern and contrast. From a composition standpoint, the layout needs more quiet, solid visual resting places, chances to stand still in the snow and listen to the wind in the pines before following the footprints.  And then my sister texts me reminding it is the seventh anniversary of our mom's death.

What does this mean for CollageMama? Well, she should probably clean and oil her sewing machine. Then she should spend some time in her quiet resting place...


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Sore muscles from ...

...sewing!  Finally finished the comforter/quilt for Dad today, and glad to check that off my Big List.  Spent much of the the day rassling the bulky project around the needle of my little sewing machine.

Be clear, dear reader, this was not wrestling, a sport where varsity and JV teens of assorted bulks in silly uniforms turn red and pin each other to mats for black and white yearbook photos.

Indeed, this was a primitive tussle with a grizzly-ghastly, not a sport.  When I walked into Dad's room he was wearing a teal green sweatshirt, a diaper, and some puke yellow crew socks.  He had thrown off his blankets and was trying to get his waxy, skinny legs out of bed.  "Out" and "off" were muddled in his brain.  He wanted the tv off and the sweatshirt off, therefore he needed to get out of bed.

This sewing was rassling, but I got a hold on it.  The comforter is finished.  Dad seemed interested in the new visual stimulation.  Being done with the project is helping my muscles relax.

ras·sle  (rsl)

intr. & tr.v. ras·sled, ras·sling, ras·sles Nonstandard

To engage in wrestling or wrestle with.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

28,800 beeps

The back-up battery in the fire EXIT sign high above the circulation desk is dead, so something up there is beeping at least once per second.  Once per second for eight hours works out to 28,800 beeps, fifty questions, and a dozen jokes.  "Your popcorn is done!"

Yup, really done.  The building manager will "get right on it" Monday and change the battery.

This must be how Dad and all the other nursing home residents feel with the perpetual beeping of call buttons, fall alerts, and escape attempt beeps around the clock, day after day.  The library staff is alternately zoned out on the beeps or agitated.  We are trapped, just like Dad.

My blood pressure machine squeezes my arm, then beeps.  Again, with the trapping and beeping.

Library reading pressure is on.  My reserved books have come in all at once, and I'm feeling the squeeze.  I have two jobs, and Dad, and beeping, and a half-sewn comforter to finish, and a blood pressure log to keep!  Now I have Stephen King's hefty 11/22/63 begging me to time-travel.

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

We admitted we were powerless over fabric stores

Just when did my therapeutic meanderings between the calico and corduroy cross over to the dark side? It started so innocently, choosing festive fall prints to sew ninety napkins for students, staff, and real family.  The sound of the winding bobbin got my blood rushing. The smell of hot, steamy pressed-open seams was driving me wild!  True, it is difficult descending the dank ladder into the sewer of true sewing addiction when no amount of squinting can get a needle threaded.


© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

My daddy don't tolerate

Lyle Lovett in the player tonight.  Found this cd when I was looking for something else, but it is exactly what I need.

My daddy don't tolerate my assistance eating his ground-up barbecue beef supper with cooked cabbage and a sugar cookie.  He's slapping at me to cease and desist, and trying to push his tray onto the floor.  I know when I'm not welcome.  Adios, I'm out of here.

Brought along Dad's comforter to wash out the spilled tomato juice.  It was just a V8 insult added to aesthetic injury.  My sister had to buy this dreadful star quilt in a hurry at Target when she moved Dad from assisted living to skilled care a year and a half ago.  Countless industrial launderings have only made it uglier.  Something snapped and I pulled the Buick over to toss the comforter in a dumpster.  Dad probably doesn't care, but I can't look at that comforter one more day.



On the good side, a black swallowtail laid eggs on the dill plant in our school garden late this afternoon.  We keep hoping..  I'll take Dad a well-worn bedspread that used to belong to the Woolly Mammoth tomorrow.



© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder

Four Quilt 3 Dog Night

So very cold last night. Outside my window the snow kept making soft plopping sounds. I would half-wake and wonder if these were the sounds of a plomphing, hopping rabbit rustling under the bed. Didn't I put the rabbit back in his cage for the night?

After a particularly scary nightmare about rebuilding a corrugated cardboard wheelchair on the top of a hill during a windstorm, I sat up wide awake. My blankets and quilts had slipped onto the floor leaving me shivering, but the preschool rabbit was safely in his cage.

It was clearly the fault of the CBS sportscaster who proclaimed, "It's raining threes on the University of New Mexico!," during the sad second round basketball game last night. Things didn't go well for the Lobos against the Huskies, and threes seemed to rain in my dream.

Now I have the Three Dog Night version of Paul William's song, "Old Fashioned Love Song" haunting my waking hours. On the good side, I'm remembering the graphic impact of the old-fashioned four-block quilts on display at the IQSC in February through March 28th.

Just an old-fashioned love song
One I'm sure they wrote for you and me
Just an old-fashioned love song
Comin' down in 3-part harmony



© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder

I'm dreaming of a surfer Christmas

I'm glad the Obamas are spending a week or so in Hawaii. I hope the little girls are loving the island fashions. Maybe Michelle is checking out the Hawaiian quilting tradition.


When I was a child our very generous next door neighbor used to bring us Christmas gifts from Hawaii. We loved dressing up in shirts or muu-muus with bold floral patterns, leis and seed bracelets.

The guys behind the post office counter at 8:30 this morning looked like Maytag repairmen. This must be the slowest mail day of the year after a month of postal mania. When I told the man I couldn't stand any more Liberty Bells he was glad to show me some Hawaii statehood surfer stamps. I'm hearing that Hawaii Five-O theme song!

When the International Quilt Study Center opened in Lincoln, Nebraska, I saw my first Hawaiian quilt. It resembled a child's folded cut-out snowflake in red and white, but with island vegetation shapes. As a paper-cutter, I was intrigued. New England missionaries brought the idea of quilting to the Hawaiian natives in the early 1800s, along with new fabrics. There's something wonderful about the quilts that makes me feel a sweet aloha dream must be guaranteed for every user, Presidents included.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Longmont Public Library

Following the signs for the historic downtown, I drove my cute rental car into Longmont, Colorado. It was exciting to spot Long's Peak, but I needed a chance to get oriented and find a restroom. When the sign for the library appeared, I knew it was a good omen.



This is the delightful entrance to the Longmont Public Library, built in 1993. The figures are surveyors, sugar beet farmers, people of Longmont, and railroad trains from 1871-1910. Once inside, I found an even better surprise. Hanging above the lobby was a bookshelf quilt made for the library's centennial in 2007.

We worked with the same basic design to make last year's raffle quilt at my school. I don't have a photo of the finished product, only an early draft I made for the design. Our books were embroidered by students with their names. The Longmont quilt books had the signatures of Colorado authors.



I parked the little blue Ford Focus rental car around the corner by the old Longmont Carnegie Library build in 1912. That building has a new life as the office for a cable access tv channel. The Pierce Carnegie Library in Nebraska where I spent so many childhood hours was built in 1911. I don't know how the Pierce preservation effort is going, or if the building has a new purpose.



The Longmont Public Library brings my library life list to fifty-nine.

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

"Manhunt", quilthunt

This post is for Winnowings. She is making a quilt with Presidential fabric for posterity. She has fabric with portraits of all the presidents through Dubya, but needs a fabric image of Obama.

I like the idea of kids pouring over squares of presidential portraits. We didn't have a quilt, but we had a set of encyclopedias my mom got for buying groceries at Safeway. The P-R volume was our favorite, and it popped open to the presidential portraits due to heavy use for school reports. Back then there had only been thirty-five presidents, and Grover Cleveland only got one portrait. The magical power of this encyclopedia centerfold was the eerie arrangement of presidents who were assassinated. Those presidents all appeared in the same column of the matrix, skipping only one row. In Ouija thinking, we believed the future was foretold for presidents with bad layout positions.

In the past forty years there have many sleepless nights when I tried to reconstruct the page layout of that encyclopedia. How many rows? How many columns? Were the portraits the same size on both pages? How was it the assassinated presidents appeared in a straight line? I just finished listening to Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, a riveting story, but still can't correctly visualize the encyclopedia page.

John F. Kennedy was MY president, as only your third grade Commander In Chief can be. I don't remember Eisenhower, and my preschool students probably won't remember Obama. They don't have enough understanding of current events beyond the playground yet.

Kennedy was MY president, and he wanted ME to help beat the Russians to the moon by achieving the President's Physical Fitness Challenge. JFK and his successor, LBJ, would be checking my progress on chin-ups, sit-ups, the 50-yard dash, and a torture known as the 600-yard run/walk if memory serves me.

I practiced like crazy on a chin-up bar my dad hung in a doorway so I could meet our president's expectations. I was such a short, skinny, wimpy kid, that my effort stunned the PE teacher, even if no one noticed at the White House.

Presidents play an important role in our education. They are equal parts powerful mythology and current events to kids. Each President has the chance to inspire a generation of schoolkids to go beyond what is expected. It's been a long time since our president was also a parent of young children. I'd like President Obama to offer schoolkids a lunchbox challenge for zero-waste lunches that include fresh produce! Someone at the White House will be checking your lunchbox...

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Renewing raindrops

I like this fabric, too. It reminds me that the anticipated storm brings the needed moisture to the soil allowing growth. The storm is not just a sky show.


The brown doesn't work with all the car window blocks. I'm a bit concerned about the fabric fading.


While I was waiting for the clerk to measure and cut the fabric I was subjected to Neil Diamond's 1971 "I Am, I Said." I'd have preferred B. J. Thomas singing "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head," from 1969. Thank heaven it wasn't the 1968 Richard Harris version of "MacArthur Park." I don't think that I could take it, as it took too long to bake it--Even longer than this project has taken!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Flying Purple People Quilter

It's a challenge trying to get a true color in a series of photos from different distances. My camera and photo software have both "helped" me until you wouldn't think this purple batik fabric is the same in all three views.



I bought a little end-of-bolt piece, and the color does work with the car window blocks. The pattern has a rainy feel to it.



I'm just not sure if I'm a purple person!



Sure looks strange to me!--Sheb Wooley, June 1958.
Well bless my soul, rock and roll, flyin' purple people eater
Pigeon-toed, undergrowed, flyin' purple people eater
I like short shorts
Flyin' little people eater
Sure looks strange to me (Purple People?)

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

$295/yard

The air is just faintly crisp. Fall has officially arrived. My creative energy is coming back, but sadly, the hummingbirds have left the patio.

Back to the design problem of the Kansas car window storm quilt blocks. I have decided to use two or three of the blocks as stand-alone wall-hangings to work out design and technical questions. I received some great input on fabric and color options, including using headliner car fabric or trying a batik pattern.

Although I've worked near Kay's Fabric Center in Richardson, Texas for a long time, I'd never visited the store. I don't sew clothes for myself any more, and no longer make childrens' theater or Halloween costumes. Still, I felt like I'd entered Aladdin's cave when I found the incredible designer fabrics in this thirty-eight year-old, family-owned store at 518 W. Arapaho Rd,. Suite 113, Richardson, TX 75080.

Maybe a more timely analogy would be Howard Carter telling Lord Carnarvon that he could see "wonderful things" as he peered into Tut's tomb in 1922. These were fabrics fit for pharoahs, fairy godmothers, overpaid professional athletes, and Mozart's Queen of the Night. King Tut's treasures will be on display at the Dallas Museum of Art beginning this month.

When I reached visual stimulus overload, the store's staff led me on a tactile tour of luxurious wools. Like a tasting of fine wines, this experience took me far beyond my station in life! These fabrics were finer than those sewn for the Emperor's New Clothes. Even my inexperienced fingers could tell the difference between $150/yd. wool and $295/yd. wool. Three and a half yards would make a suit for a normal-sized captain of finance. It could take six or more yards to create a suit for a Dallas Cowboy or Dallas Maverick.

Sadly, I had to admit I was looking for a flat-fold remnant priced near $1.99/yd. to test color and construction techniques for my Kansas blocks. My price range is closer to Laura Ingalls Wilder's dugout on the banks of Plum Creek than Aladdin's jewels or Michael Irvin's closet. It was on up the trail to the sewing/craft chain store for me.


This gray quilting cotton could pass fairly well as the interior of a slightly rusty '96 Buick. It wouldn't detract from the intense colors of a July thunderstorm over lush green Kansas fields.


© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Extreme Okra Arts & Crafts

It's been a tough summer in the school garden. The pepper and tomato plant flowers didn't set. The squirrels ate the tops off the sunflower plants.

The basil and salvia took over their corner, but the real monster is the okra plant. It's taller than I am, and far, FAR wider. The preschool class is drying okra pods to make okragators/pod lizards for fall Open House, but that barely dents the supply of okra.

That's why I'm so excited to discover block-printing with okra to make a flower/star pattern on fabric. This will be the second year for the school to create a quilt to raffle at the spring music festival. It would be very cool if the students could print the fabric for part of the quilt with the bountiful okra.

What kind of child-safe, non-toxic paint or dye could be used that would be fairly permanent? It can't break sewing machine needles when the fabric is pieced and quilted. Please send suggestions!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Speedy rust and sweet popcorn

I need rusty objects, and I need them right now! Sounds like an old East High Spartans cheer for the basketball player named Reckeway. We need a basket and we need it right now! Can't you hear the saddle shoes stomping on the bleachers?

Most of the time the Buick and I try to avoid rust, but I read a story in the latest Quilting Arts magazine about dyeing fabric with rusty metal items. Hauled all my nuts and bolts, old license plates, and other likely suspects out to a bucket of water on the patio. Abracadabra, please and thank you! Make rust! And hurry!

Thanks to having a Class A high school tournament-winning basketball coach for my chemistry teacher, I don't understand any chemical reactions beyond the tendency of Buicks to rust over time. Recently I learned that adding mustard to my homemade salad dressing concoctions keeps them from separating into vinegar and oil teams. Don't have a clue why, but I can usually differentiate between zone and man-to-man defenses.

It's not pop rocket science, but you can now buy microwave sweet kettle korn popcorn by accident or intent. When the preschoolers were served this counterintuitive mid-morning snack, their faces registered their little disapprovals. We may want fast rust, but we don't want sweet popcorn when we're expecting salty.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Two New Windows

Two new Buick "quilt windows" bring the total to sixteen. I still had a lot of the same or very similar dyed fabrics in the big box in the closet, so I've pulled them out and made a heap in the middle of the bedroom floor. The sewing machine is up and running, along with the ironing board. You could call my decor Eclectic Obstacle Course.



The comments from readers were so well-thought out. I'm very awed and grateful that you took the time to write your design ideas for the spacing, configuration, background fabric, and quilting. I definitely won't be stuffing the project back in the box now!



The window blocks need considerable background space around them to breathe. Size is a major consideration, as each block is twenty-seven inches wide, and sixteen inches tall. I tried giving the blocks more space, and arranging them by horizon line and storm development. Unfortunately, I ran out of living room floor!




© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Design tools and toys

About forty years ago my dad gave me this little plastic set of triangle tiles in a box three by three-and-a-half inches. I used a color spectrum set of fine-point felt markers and a package of graph paper from the Ben Franklin 5 & 10 to experiment with four-cornered design. Other times I just doodled while lounging in the backyard treehouse.

Now there's a more sophisticated way to explore quilt-making online. The International Quilt Study Center's Making a Quilt program lets you play around for hours with six basic quilt patterns and endless variations of shading, fabrics, numbers of blocks, and pattern variations. It's fun, but you can't hear the cicadas. You can't feel your skin against the sun-baked boards, or smell the mildewed rope of the bucket dumb waiter. You haven't heard the colored plastic triangles being shifted and rotated in the clear plastic framework. Ants aren't crawling into the oozing sap of the weeping willow tree.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Fingerprints

I was thinking ink in anticipating my fingerprinting appointment. Because my school is also a licensed child day care center we have a new state regulation that all employees and volunteers have an FBI fingerprint check. That is in addition to the DPS background check.

My previous experience with fingerprinting includes Sixties toy detective kits, making fingerprint bunnies, bugs, and monkeys in preschool classes, and the occasional check-cashing thumbprint. I wasn't aware how high tech the process is, and the fabulous images that would appear on the digital screen. Clearly, I don't watch enough police forensics shows and crime thriller movies!

The inaugural exhibition at the International Quilt Study Center included a group of quilts chosen as "expressions of identity". Three of Barbara Watler's art quilts from her fingerprint series were inluded. Each only a yard square, they were still striking enlargements of a single fingerprint. When the biometrics technician rolled my fingerprints and the image appeared on the fifteen inch digital screen, I wanted to have giant copies to use for textile art. Alas, I just had to enjoy the view for a minute.

A few years back I read Panama, by Eric Zencey. It was a very satisfying historical novel. The development of Alphonse Bertillion's classification and identification system for fingerprints played a major part in the story. Look for it at your library.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

IQSC

Stumbling upon a book of Nancy Crow's improvisational quilts over a decade ago got me interested in quilts and art quilts. It was a thrill for me to experience the visual intensity of her quilts in person at the International Quilt Study Center when I was in Lincoln in June.



The building is very attractive. The twelve million dollar facility was privately funded. Contributions from quilting guilds all over the world are recognized on panels on the first level.



The IQSC has two large areas for seminars, bees, or other events. I wish it had more than the two upstairs gallery spaces. The curators have done a nice job incorporating complementary paintings and prints from the Sheldon Art Gallery, and baskets and pottery from the anthropology collections of the Nebraska State Museum to enhance understanding of quilt design and construction.

You can watch the work in the quilt conservation area through a huge window on the first level. Later in the summer the virtual gallery and computerized quilt design programs will come online at the center's website. There are two booths for making audiovisual recordings of quilt stories to be archived. If I made a quilt for a grandchild, for example, I could make a recording about the quilt. In theory, my great-great grandchildren could access that recording in the distant future. You could also record something telling what you know about your great-great grandmother's quilt. I could tell the story of my Kansas storm quilt.

There was an all black quilt from Japan that blew me away, and one from India with a totally different type of stitching. One group of quilts explored the relationship between quiltmaking and scherenschnitte papercutting.

Listening to the comments of the men and women in the gallery was interesting. Obviously, some of them had planned their vacation travel through Lincoln specifically to visit the IQSC. The men visitors were not just humoring their wives. I could tell they were very informed collectors, and one man was definitely a quilter himself. The center will be good for Lincoln's economy.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder