CQ4Fun

Usually, as we’ve gone through chapters of this book, I’ve posted on DesertSky Quilting, but this week, I have other things going on there, and this week is more about stitching things, anyway. I’m linking to Jenny’s Week 13 post. Click below.

Jenny’s post from Monday, click above, had some wonderful links to free cross stitch patterns, and brought up several things from the pages read this week in Jane Brocket’s book, The Gentle Art of Domesticity, published in 2008 by Stewart, Tabori and Chang. It’s a beautiful book, in many ways, and gives a lot of good things to think about.

This week’s readings talked about new things we try. They don’t always work out so well, do they? I remember my early twenties in New Jersey. My best friend was a master knitter. My gosh, she could watch TV or a movie in the dark and keep right on knitting complicated cable-stitched sweaters! I thought knitting would be fun, and I had a college assignment to learn something new and keep a journal of the experience. It was supposed to help us realize how hard learning was for children in the classroom. Boy, did it ever, when I picked knitting to learn! Fortunately, I don’t have a picture of what I actually made, but this is sort of what I meant to make.

Now picture that with a thumb longer than the mitten, and cuffs about 4 inches longer than these. Need I say more?

So knitting went away, and I went back to crocheting baby blankets. You would think that being able to quilt, embroider and crochet would be enough for me, but about the time I turned 50, I thought it would be fun to make things like this:

I decided to start small with some free Christmas designs from Helga. That was a good choice! I did three pieces, possibly four. This was the first, and it became the center of a Halloween CQ swap block.

Another was an elf’s legs, and it’s on one side of a two-sided Christmas ornament I hang every year. I don’t remember what’s on the other side. The last one was a train engine, and that’s as far as I got. It drove me crazy! So that was the end of my XS career.

I didn’t carry on with either of those two things, but they don’t keep me from trying other things, and I did learn something from each experience – mainly something about where my limits are. It’s always good to know that.

The other thing Jenny asked was whether we read poetry, and I do, as well as write it. I’ve never been very domestic, so beyond things like the following, I haven’t read domesticity poetry.

 
However, I do love Robert Frost and Langston Hughes. I’m posting one of my favorites, and in a sense, it has something to do with domesticity, with not giving up, with doing.

Mother to Son
by Langston Hughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor.
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So, boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps.
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now,
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.