Doing: Yesterday it rained on and off all day. The house smelled of apples from the buckets and bags in the utility room. So I made 3 pies for the freezer (with plans to make more today) and a crumble for us to enjoy after dinner. And honestly, is there anything nicer than warm crumble with a scoop of ice cream, in this case Kawartha Dairy’s wonderful Tragically Chip? Yesterday there wasn’t.
Making: I’ve been piecing together a quilt, horizontal strips, and yesterday (after the pies), I sewed sashing to the strips after working out the simple arithmetic of how to make the best use of the indigo-dyed sheets I’d put aside for this quilt. I have a big one for the backing and I had some of the first one left, the one I’d used for the strips, and what I had wasn’t ideal for the sashing — the lengths were short and it meant a fair bit of cobbling together. But it really doesn’t matter. My quilts are very much a reflection of my limited sewing skills and if I need to measure 3 times, cut once, then re-measure, and cut again, so be it. I hung the completed top on the clothesline between showers and I love how the indigo-dyed strips and sashing actually echo the sky on a bright day. Looking at it, I have the uncanny sense of swimming under the clouds and also within them, as I do on the days when the clouds are reflected in the lake’s surface.
Listening: I have been listening to as many recordings of Paco de Lucia (my favourite guitarist) playing the Concierto de Aranjuez. I don’t know, there’s something so deeply yearning about the adagio, and when Paco played it, he would allow a tiny moment for the heart to catch up with the music, and I am listening, my own heart caught in the strings, the oboe, the pauses, the hesitations. This morning, swimming, I was watching the moon in the western sky, a whole note hung in the bars of high contrails, and yes, it was almost exactly that.
Thinking: About words, how sometimes a word will enter your imagination, and take you to unexpected places. On my desk, Seamus Heaney’s Seeing Things, open to “Squarings”, and these lines:
Sand-bed, they said. And gravel-bed. Before
I knew river shallows or river pleasures
I knew the ore of longing in those words.
And I held the word “river” in my own mind, I hold it now, remembering my father packing the car for a camping trip and telling us we would see the Sturgeon River, where his school friend had once dived from a bridge, and never came up, and how it became a haunting, a story I’ve remembered ever since, the boy with pale skin sinking, caught in reeds, mud, the unforgiving bed of the river, and the boys on the bridge waiting.
First, I love, love, LOVE the new quilt. Nicely-done! About the crumble, Ice cream is delish, of course, but have you tried it with warm custard? (Bird’s.) Another lovely post! pp
When I lived in London in 1977, we had custard with most desserts (or puddings)! I prefer ice cream or just cream with pie but love Birds in the trifle my husband makes for Christmas dinner every year! And I am going to love doing the quilting on this new piece, stretched out over the winter. Thanks for your kind words.
Oooooh! How does one acquire an invitation to dessert on Christmas day at your home? 😉
Oh, and Theresa, you will post a pic (and tale) of the quilt once you’ve finished, please?
I’ll probably post little updates as I go along. I have been quilting for nearly 40 years (ineptly) but I’m always so delighted by each state — the layers coming together, the texture developing, and how each quilt sort of “asks” something of me.
I think I need to branch out more with my quilts. I quite like yours. I don’t start quilting until it’s too cold to be outside. The days just seem to slip away with busy making work. Today it’s painting a room downstairs after the flood.
I wonder if people quilt for different reasons? Some like the mathematical possibilities, some are really patient when doing intricate piecing, and some are maybe more like me: I think I am always trying to work towards an idea or a memory or a sensation. I almost never get there but I love the process! And I love the luxury of winter hours by the woodstove, quilt in a hoop, stitching my long meadering trails and spirals.
Thanks for supporting the Kawarthas, where I live. But have to say, I prefer the Moose Tracks ice cream.
Now in Scotland, I just ate an apple and rhubarb crumble with custard.
And I bet it was good! I worked in London for a bit in a halfway house for psychiatric patients when I was in my early 20s and the cook was always quitting. I’d be asked to fill in. Crumbles and slab cakes were about the only desserts I knew how to make and I remember I either made custard to go with them or opened tins of Nestles cream and dumped it in a bowl. No one complained!
The sad story reminded me of the son of local people who was killed when driving a semi in Alberta, approaching a bridge with no time to stop; people were standing on it and to avoid them he swerved into the river. His body has never been found. His action was heroic, but … such tragedies in this world stick in our minds don’t they. -Kate
They do stick in our minds. I’ll never forget my father telling us that story, perhaps 65 years ago, and how he’d kept it close too. Boys who’d cycled to the river from Beverley, then on the outskirts of Edmonton, to swim and have ice-cream, and how one of them never returned.