Winking Butterfly, Consumerism, and Good Food

I'm so glad to see that a few people were encouraged or inspired by my little quilt blocks. I'm happy to be transparent about the fact that I was certainly not born knowing how to do any of this, and am just struggling through it as best I can. I also wish there were more craftsters out there who were more open about their challenges - I might learn more about techniques to improve from them that way.

My mother-in-law shared a little quilt block tutorial with me from another blog, so I tried that out yesterday and thought I'd pass it along if any of you were so inspired that you would really like to give a block a try for yourself. Here's the butterfly block tutorial. This was entirely do-able and I think the finished product is pretty fun, I kind of want to do several of the same block over again! Here's now mine turned out:

I still can't quite manage to get all my corners sharp, and the little creature feels lopsided a bit to the right - but that kind of gives it a little character, so I'm not too upset about it. I've decided it feels like its winking at me - so its my "winking butterfly."

I found out today that my grandmother's aunt was quite the avid quilter. I am looking forward to a trip home in a few weeks so that I can see some of her pieces. How amazing would it be if I could make anything that my family would feel like would be worth saving for several generations? Isn't it ironic how we live in a culture that is so much more obsessed with consuming goods, and yet we are so less likely to have any goods that last or hold significant meaning? I guess we have chosen quantity over quality. I am glad I have some significant treasures in my possession like my salt shaker display case, hand-crafted by my grandfather, my gorgeous Christmas stocking needlepointed by my mother, baby blankets knit for my baby-to-be by my grandmother, and loads of purses made by my mother-in-law.

I don't consider myself a hugely materialistic person, but the need for a new wardrobe that fits an expanding belly has forced me to the mall more often than usual lately. It is strange how that can open a flood gate of a really different lifestyle or approach to using my credit card. Thank goodness my husband  was self-aware to catch us in the act, so now I can try to curb this lust for spending a bit before it gets too out of control. I'm also immensely grateful to my friend, Gladys, mother of 4, who just gave me a huge box of her maternity clothes. She increased my wearable wardrobe six-fold in one swift blessing and effectively nipped in the bud my major excuse to get out and spend. It's as if she quenched this thirst that had taken over me.

For someone who is as fashion-challenged as myself, I wonder whether I could consider trying to shop for or try on all these maternity outfits - having to envision a belly even greater than the one I'm carrying around right now, figuring out what tops can go with which pants, debating what counts as "fitting" with this weird new body shape and what colors actually work with my skin tone (which evolves on a daily basis depending on how much of this San Diego sun I get exposed to) - might count as expending creative energy? It certainly requires more effort from me than the average woman, I would assume. I blame 13 years of uniforms for depriving me of these basic life lessons.

In other creative activity news for this week, I tried a mushroom bolognese recipe from the Oct. issue of Cooking Light and was just thrilled with how it turned out, even though I cut a handful of corners. I long for the day when I can afford to buy fresh pasta instead of just bulk spaghetti from Costco. Growing up, my family would host dinner parties where we all made our own pasta from scratch. These were SO much fun - and I've enjoyed throwing a few of these myself. I wish I had the energy to make my pasta fresh for myself more often, but its a pretty huge production for a regular practice. I am also looking forward to making some dips for Manny's cousin's baby shower this weekend. In our little party planning meeting, the group actually requested that I make our 7-layer dip Manny and I have made for a few other family gatherings. I don't know if a dish of mine has ever been requested before, it was a strange ego rush! Its a very simple dish, and yet an art to execute at the same time as its one of the few things I make without ever having used a recipe and it comes out with a unique flavor balance every time.

Something to show

One step foreword, two steps back. I set out to make a quilt for my baby girl a few weeks ago, and realized I had much to learn before I should set out to design and execute my own quilt, having no prior experience. So, on wise counsel, I found a few quilt block patterns and pieced them together as practice. It took me ages to pick fabric, cut all the pieces, and piece it all together, but after much ado, I have a little something to show for my efforts in this new little hobby. Here are my first finished quilt projects:

Chicago Geese

Four-Four Time

As you can see, they are hardly perfect. I'm glad I did some practice pieces before diving into a more important project. I have some room for growth in choosing fabrics, sewing triangles so that all the corners are sharp, sewing straight lines, and I'm sure many other areas. But I also learned some good lessons. It was a fun challenge to figure out the order in which to piece things together. I think my corners got better over time. And chain-stitching [piecing several of the same cut together without in one line of stitching] was a fun skill I picked up from a book and applied during this process - it sure made things go faster! 

Rolling Pinwheel

Diamond Cross

I found these quilt block patterns for free online. While I can't seem to re-find the website I got them from, I do have a pdf if anyone is interested, so let me know your and I'll be happy to send it to you if you'd like to give some of these a try as well. 

At the same time that I've been getting into this actual sewing, I've been checking out a few books on quilting. For my baby, I want to make a quilt that illustrates where she's come from and represents the amazing people with diverse gifts and traits that have been invested into her genes. I found a book called Create Your Family Quilt by Barbara Brackman. It has you use state quilt blocks and symbols to compose a quilt design that represents your geographic history. It seemed like a fun approach to the idea of honoring our family's past, so I played around with a few design options using this program  that comes on a CD with the book. 

My weakness of indecisiveness and struggling to make a clear dominant piece in a design really comes through on the first quilt design:

Road from Pennsylvania to Maine

Despite this design's chaos, it does manage to represent what I know about my maternal line to present and even into the future - my grandmother's great-grandfather originating in Pennsylvania; moving to Ohio, where he was a professor; moving his kids to a Texas ranch after his wife passed; then my move out to California and our pending journey to Maine. There are blocks and motifs representing each of those states. It is sort of interesting to me that my great-great-great grandfather and I book-end 5 generations that stay put in Texas, to cover territory in several states. He sounds like such an interesting man, to go from being a professor, becoming a widower, and then moving his kids to a big open piece of land in foreign territory to raise his kids alone - what a drastic transformation. 

I got much simpler and manageable with the other two designs, perhaps still beyond my ambition or courage to actually attempt as a real live quilt, but fun to put together and experiment with:

I loved being able to incorporate bluebonnets [TX state flower] into a design. I was also excited to find block designs for pine trees, which apparently represent Maine, but bring back fond memories of the forests on my grandfather's ranch when I was growing up - they beautifully tie together my past and my future.

Back to Work (sort of)

I am having a grand time enjoying my freedom to be artistic, relaxed, and exploratory lately. I’ve already fulfilled my goal of 2-4 creative activities for the week, and the week is barely half way over.

Sunday: I used my new slow cooker to experiment with a recipe passed on from my cousin Robin for pulled pork sandwiches. I just slow-cooked it in root beer for 8 hours (that tip I got off a website), then drained it, and slow-cooked it in BBQ sauce for about another hour.  It sounded too easy and good to be true, and it turned out even better than it sounded. My husband loves me even more now, and my cousin too – by extension. I would gladly welcome any good slow cooker recipes any of y’all have (Kerby Johnson, that especially means you!).

Monday: I spent almost an hour shopping for fabrics to start practicing some quilting blocks – holy cow there are a lot of fun fabrics out there. This new hobby is going to totally drain my allowance budget, I have no doubt! As invigorating it was to consider patterns and colors, I did have to face the reality that I haven’t quite grown out of the black/white/grey training my father drilled into me – so matching colors is a skill I just never developed. I wonder if this is something that can start growing this late in life? Does the 30 minutes I spent lost trying to get to and from the craft store count as “exploring” and therefore more creative energy? Perhaps not – but I hope I learned something about the area. Monday night I tried a new recipe for Korean meatballs – easy and YUM, again, points with husband.

Tuesday: I was happy as a clam starting to cut into my new fabric to get my little quilting pieces for about 2 hours [I am VERY slow, that was only 1/3 of the cutting I needed to do]. That night, I tried the third new recipe of the week – loaded baked potato soup. It was like mashed potatoes, baked potato, and soup all in one – triple win. Thank you Cooking Light!

So that’s already five creative activities . . . I don’t know if I set my goal too low, or I’m just extra ambitious because I only just started, probably the later, let’s see how long I can keep this up.

But as much as I’m having a good time with all this relaxing freedom, it also feels good to get back to using some creative skills that feel more like “work.” The other part of my day Tuesday was that I spent six hours actually using my professional skills, helping some folks who are starting a new nonprofit here in San Diego with some visioneering and planning around their mission, activities, funding strategies, community organizing strategies, etc. It was one of the first days since I graduated from my MSW where I felt like, “hey, I can actually put some of that stuff I learned to good use!” Considering all the time and money and heart I invested in the past two years of my life, this was a good feeling.  

In moving away from Berkeley, and having served my maximum number of terms, I just rotated off the board of Project Peace East Bay, a nonprofit I was part of helping to get started in the Bay Area. My friend, Faith Gong, is the Executive Director there, and she brought the organization to a point such that when I left, I felt really great about where the organization was headed, and therefore, as if maybe we’d done some worthwhile work in building the organization over the past five years. I did not always feel so positive about my work with the org, so it was a really nice note to end on. Thanks Faith (and Project Peace board/staff)!

I am really thankful for that last note, because otherwise, I probably would have avoided offering to help with Balsamea (this new nonprofit in San Diego).  But this nonprofit is starting a charter school for inner city kids and building a community center to provide services and raise up leaders from the local community, which is comprised largely of refugees from all around the world. I just got a credential to be a school social worker, and a degree to be a culturally responsive urban community organizer – so I’m feeling like I could be a good fit here. Furthermore, two books I’ve read/am reading recently have primed me to get excited about the specific context of this work: Shame of the Nation, by Jonathan Kozol [nonfiction about the huge needs for inner city public schools]  

and Little Bee, by Chris Cleaver [novel about a refugee from Africa] .  Not to mention, all the people I’ve met so far that are involved in the project are incredible. I’ve definitely discovered some new heroes! I feel quite a-buzz with the questions this work is raising for me as a social worker, as a citizen, as a Christian . . . but I will have to save some of that for another post on another day, as my head is still just swimming and my thoughts aren’t quite clear enough just yet. Stay tuned as I wrestle out some of those complications. Again, I am glad that I decided to step out of my comfort zone to get involved and get “back to work.”

Let the Quilting Begin . . . please . . . now . . . soon . . .

Inside my comfort zone: doing things I already know how to do

Outside of my comfort zone: attempting to use a skill that I do not yet have

Anyone ever see “How to Make an American Quilt”? I read this book and saw this movie when I was young (15 years ago to be precise), and ever since have been obsessed with the idea of making my own quilt(s). The closest I can remember to ever actually following through on that inspiration was years after the muse struck me, the summer after my freshman year of college, when I spent a week with my soon-to-be-roommate, Emily.

I spent a week of the summer hanging out at her house. This week involved some beach time, a trip to Disneyland, SO many movies, but most memorably, the décor preparation for “The Sitting Room.” The Sitting Room was to be our most awesome dorm abode, to provide ample, shnazy, comfy places for people to sit and enjoy our hospitality. We dreamed that week of movie nights, game nights, and general merriment that comes from packing more college students in a 10X10 space than fire codes should allow. As it turned out – that year far surpassed our wildest dreams and even went on to involve some non-seated activities, most notably including the inception of the breeding of the popularity of a line dance to a remix of Cotton-Eyed-Joe. [Where DID you come from?] Anyways . . . as we visioneered our residence, we could not fathom that anyone would be enjoying our hospitality if we asked them to simply sit on our uncomfortable dorm carpeting, which thinly covered a very firm concrete flooring. So in addition to shopping for a great, cheap, blue IKEA love seat, we set out on a mission to quilt a plethora of entertaining pillows. Yes – I did say entertaining pillows. We decorated our pillows with all manner of inside jokes and FRIENDS one-liners, so that the pillows could serve as cushioning, game pieces, or just a good laugh. I don’t think we ever would have won any awards for craftsmanship or stitching – but those pillows served us well – and the B3 Sitting Room will go down in history [at least Emily’s and mine rendition of history] as some of the greatest 100 square feet on this planet.

remnants of "Sitting Room" pillows

I recently revisited this quilting dream of mine, and my super-supportive husband responded to my musings by buying me my very first ever sewing machine as a birthday gift. [Marriage Counseling Sidebar: I think one of my more important elements of making a marriage thrive is supporting one another’s dreams in any way you can. I learned this from my mother, who has helped my father start three of his own businesses, and I have been blessed enough to marry a man who lives this out in our own marriage all the time.] So, with my creative energy all ablaze, and with my first sewing pattern in hand, I saw down to my little sewing machine to start my very first project. I turned on my Netflix-watch-instantly and hit play on “How to Make an American Quilt,” to begin my journey, serenaded by the movie that planted the dream in my heart. Frankly, I was thoroughly unimpressed. I do not recommend this movie anymore. I think my sophistication in movie watching has evolved a bit since I was a kid. Not to mention, they barely show quilts, or how to make them, at all. I was quite disappointed. It did not work in the movie’s favor that all the while, I was struggling to figure out how to work this machine that is so simple, and yet besting me all the same. But, as you know by my last post, I did struggle through and complete my little project, and am not so broken by the challenge as to damper my enthusiasm to start into another one. It is time for me to start really learning how to quilt!

I’m pregnant with my first little one and am hoping I to make her a little quilt so she will know how much I love her already and am thinking of her and how special she is to me and our whole family. When my mother was pregnant with me, she needle pointed this beautiful Christmas stocking, which we use to this day. I’m not sure my quilt will be quite so grand, but I’m at least attempting a similar gesture.

[Parenting sidebar: I anticipate that the majority of my parenting efforts will be analogous to this attempt – I will remember how amazing my mother was at X, attempt to live up to her, and only manage to execute a mere shadow of her mothering-greatness. I am prepared for this inevitable disappointment, but also grateful to have had a mother who ALWAYS sets the bar so high, that way my daughter will hopefully still have a pretty good mom]

Thing is, I still don’t know how to quilt. I’ve dreamed up a little pattern, but am now taking several steps back to try to learn actually how to make a pattern, and then another step back to learn how to cut the fabric, and then another step back to figure out how to measure and buy the fabric [apparently they will look at me funny if I go in and ask for a 33 inch by 10 inch piece of fabric], and then another step back to learn how to read a pattern and plan out how to execute it step-by-step, etc. Many thanks to my mother-in-law, Nora, who gave me an hour-long consultation on the quilting process yesterday afternoon, it scares me to think what I would have created if I had just tried to do this on my own. So, despite all my enthusiasm and the image I had in my head of sitting down with my machine the moment I got it and starting in on my baby’s quilt, I’m finding I need to invest much more time and patience into figuring out how to do this right. Nonetheless, each step of the way is calling for creative energies that have been very fun to expend. Stay tuned, as progress might actually start moving forward someday soon . . .

Call for input: I need to practice quilting by using some quilting block patterns, anyone have some handy or have good advice for a novice quilter?

Food for thought: What childhood goals or dreams have you neglected or pursued?

Inspiration

Inside my comfort zone: smiling at moments of inspiration and then going about my merry way; keeping my personal goals to myself so that no one will bother me if I stray off my path

Out of my comfort zone: following where inspiration leads; sharing my goals and efforts publicly so that others will keep me on track

Isn’t the feeling of being inspired exhilarating? Many of the moments I can recall feeling most alive are moments when I felt inspired:

• Visiting with a woman in a nursing home: she told me I should pursue a career in counseling and laid out a series of actions I should take to get there. I followed her instructions and got myself a degree and a new career.
• Attending Beth Moore bible studies: I used to do this before I moved away from home, and it always made me feel inspired to immerse myself in the Word of God more.
• Traveling abroad, like my friend Robin when she went to Costa Rica: I was humbled by her courage and inspired to push myself to do something similar, so I went to study abroad in Sri Lanka. It was one of the harder 6-week-periods of my life, but a period I’m always finding new reasons to be grateful for.

Of course not all inspiration leads to positive outcomes or good ideas, like last night, when my husband and I cooked some homemade pot-stickers and fried rice. As we ate the fruits of our labor, we both felt inspired to keep eating it, non-stop, into infinity. That would not have been good. And of course, we don’t always follow our inspirations. Sometimes we do not follow our inspirations because they are not good ideas, like the above, or perhaps because they are of the sort that occurs to us when we wake up at 2am and makes absolutely no sense by morning. But we often don’t follow our inspirations because we do not have the courage or resolve to branch out of our comfort zones into unpredictable, unknown, unsafe territories. And yet, reaching out of our comfort zones is often what yields great rewards of personal growth.

Today, I was inspired by one of my best friends, Emily, to set a goal for myself and put that goal out there publicly so I would be held accountable to it. Submitting myself to this accountability will be an act outside my comfort zone, which is scary, but I hope it will yield some of that growth. I have learned, several times over, how creativity – like many skills – is like a muscle that strengthens or atrophies based on use or lack there of. I’ve never actually disciplined myself to stay creative on a regular basis. I just finished a masters degree, moved to a new city, and am due with my first baby in a few months. So I’m not working, not looking for a job, not taking classes, and the baby isn’t here yet consuming my every moment and drop of energy. If ever I had time and space to be creative, it is now. So, I would like to aim to cultivate a commitment to creativity.

Because we live in a quantitative world, and I’ll just find a way to cheat if I don’t quantify this – I‘ll set the goal of engaging in 2-4 creative activities [as defined by at least 30 minutes of creative energy expended] by end of day Saturday each week and reporting on my efforts on this blog. [allowing myself a grace period when the baby I am currently expecting arrives – I might have to revisit this commitment altogether at that time]

For the sake of this project at least, I’ll use the term “creativity” and “creative energy” quite loosely. This might involve creativity in a more traditional sense, such as an art project, doing some writing (say, for a blog entry?), experimenting with a new recipe. But I might also include various types of exploration, be it exploring something new in this town I’ve just moved to, exploring an idea by reflecting on something I read or see, or exploring an activity that might usually be somewhat uncomfortable for me (this gives me a ton of options, as I’m an introverted homebody). A few examples of ways I’ve started to do this recently already:

• I made my first sewing project with my new sewing machine
• I prepared a presentation and handouts about my thesis research for an upcoming conference
• I experimented with a new recipe on my new slow cooker
• I went into a cave along the San Diego coast
• I read a book about choosing a baby name based on phonetics and rhythm then “analyzed” all my baby name ideas based on these criteria [haven’t figured out what her name will be, but it will be poetic if I can help it]

I welcome your participation in my project. I’ll try to pose some questions for you to respond to when I can. I’d generally love to hear about ways you have seen the fruits of your own creative pursuits. I’ll also welcome ideas for creative pursuits I should consider – though I make no promises to execute every idea proposed.

My parents instilled in my sister and me a strong value for regularly reaching outside of one’s comfort zone and pursuing creativity. They are both incredibly creative people. My mother teaches, writes, cooks, entertains, and is always dabbling in fascinating crafty creations. My father is an entrepreneur, photographer, artist, and most recently a lavender farmer. My father is the king of show-and-tell, always sharing his creations with the people around him. His birthday is coming up (September 19), so for his birthday, I would like to dedicate this project to him, as my own, public, show-and-tell attempt to cultivate creativity. [ironically, while my father is many things, a reader is hardly the adjective many would use first to describe him, so I don’t anticipate that he will be following this blog, but I hope he appreciates the gesture nonetheless] Happy Birthday Dad! Thank you for inspiring so often through your art, your courage, and your passion. Other readers, you can see his show-and-tell, and join me in wishing him a happy birthday by visiting his facebook page and sharing a birthday greeting.

Food for thought (or discussion if you care to share by posting a comment!): What people or experiences have inspired you? When has inspiration lead you out of your comfort zone – how did it turn out?