From Nova Scotia…

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Steve and I are in Canada! We left Halifax this morning and drove mostly south. It was rainy (just like home) and gray. That made the colorful houses stand out even more. And, boy, are there a lot of colorful houses here!

This was the most purplish purple!
Such a vibrant red!
Just like a bumble bee…
Is it going to be all turquoise, or is it going to be that quieter blue?
Subtle blues, all in a row.
Electric blue!
A nice, normal blue.
Not so many brown structures…
If I owned this house, I’d want to scrape and paint. But I don’t so I can just enjoy it’s beauty.
Those are shoes nailed up on the wall!
This orange and pink just almost didn’t work, but there they were, together.
Faded pink…

This sign kept popping up. Reminded me of patchwork…

NovaScotia-PatchworkSigns

And we figured out the the key in the next sign might mean ‘museum’, but what’s up with the @ sign?

NovaScotia-Sign

The forsythia is in bloom here. It bloomed at home weeks ago. I have to say that it is much happier here, up north.

Forsythia

And when was the last time you saw a teeter totter! It is unfortunate that we no longer have them in the states. I used to love teeter-tottering. I suppose that lawsuits made them go away. Canadians know how to live on the edge, right?

TeeterTotter

Speaking of living on the edge, here’s Steve tempting fate :-).

DangerSteve

I must have taken 200 photos today. Amazingly enough, I went through them all, deleting the bad, cropping the good, adding some fixes in Photoshop. It took too long but I’m happy I did it today. I am always happy when I keep up with my photos. I know that if I don’t, I’ll have thousands that will just sit there on my hard drive taking up space.

Digital photos are cheap and easy to take, which makes it easy to let them pile up. But I have noticed that the really good shots, the ones that I go back to, the ones I add to my screensaver, the rare ones that I print—those are the keepers. It’s hard to delete the just-OK shots, but I do it. Daily.

Listening to stories…

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I am working on a new quilt, cutting applique shapes and placing them on the design wall. This is a process that will take days. Longer, since I leave Monday for Nova Scotia to teach at the Mahone Bay Quilt Guild.

I like to listen to stories as I work so I went to the Radiolab site. I listened to a show about a woman whose heartbeat is really loud. It was very good but, warning, if you are one of those people who faint when you get a shot, this is not an episode to listen to when you are driving or operating a rotary cutter. Seriously. I didn’t find it disturbing at all, but then I can look at blood and get shots and not faint.

That same episode had an excellent story with Oliver Sacks. I suppose I should feel happy never to have needed to visit him in his office, but I would really like to know this man. It’s a good listen.

And then I listened to The Living Room. This story dovetails with my last post about talking to strangers except that this is about watching strangers. Specific strangers—on a daily basis. The narrator imagines their lives and gets it all wrong. I almost cried. This story has stuck with me and I think that most of you will be entranced.

Please note, sex is mentioned in a very upfront way in all of these stories, but sex is not the thing.

windows

After listening to The Living Room, I am left with the knowledge that we all imagine what other peoples’ lives are like. And I think that we mostly get it wrong. I don’t know about you, but it makes me feel humble, and more open to hearing what’s going on in other people’s lives.

A color tutorial and a reminder…

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I just sent a newsletter with two news items. If you aren’t on my newsletter list, here’s what you missed:

First, Linda’s current quilt auction ends tomorrow, Friday, May 22, at 12:00 noon, Pacific Time. Click here to go to the auction page.

The other item in the newsletter is a video. When I was at Quilt Market, I spent a lot of time talking to quilt shop owners about my new book, The Quilter’s Practical Guide To Color. I used sets of fat quarters to illustrate one of the more important points in the book. It occurred to me that I should share this information with everyone, so here it is:

If the video isn’t showing up for you, click here.

I am hearing from people who have read the book, telling me that it really is helping them with color. In fact, here’s an excerpt from an email that came to me from Barbara B.:

Becky, I am so glad I was able to get your Color book at Market.  I read it cover to cover yesterday on my travels home from Minneapolis. It is full of great info, explained in a way that will make sense to quilters. I am excited to use it in upcoming classes.

The book is not the least bit intimidating and the concepts are easy to grasp.  The fact that the info is provided in bits, using the practical advice boxes and short paragraphs, is good…

I know that books are expensive and many of you have color books that you rarely open. This one really is different, even if I do say so myself. It is not a book on color theory, it is a book with practical advice on color. Plus, there are 10 quilt patterns included. Eight quilts are pieced, and 2 of these have some applique. There are two quilts that are primarily applique. None of the patterns are difficult and each one teaches something about color and design.

If you are interested and want to order The Quilter’s Practical Guide To Color, click here.

Just talk to people…

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I enjoy solitude, but when I’m out and about I recognize that each and every one of us has a story to tell and I am not shy about talking to people I do not know.

Before I left my Minneapolis hotel this morning, I visited with the nice lady who was the hostess at the restaurant. She was about 70, if I had to guess. We got to talking about the quilters who had been at quilt market and she remarked that the crowd included a lot of younger women this time, and it made her happy.* I hadn’t actually noticed but I realized she was right. How great is that… there are lots of young quilters!

*This non-quilter’s memory was very good, and she was a good observer of people. It’s been 3 years (I think) since quilt market was in Minneapolis. I was impressed.

On my way to the airport, I got to visiting with man who drove my taxi. He had a lovely accent and I asked where he was from. It turns out he was from Ethiopia and he has led a very interesting life. He is a Coptic Christian (this might be a relevant link), and a singer, who traveled to sing in different churches at Easter and Christmas and other holy times. His family was scattered all over the world. He has worked in the tech industry, and I think he still does. Driving a taxi was sort of a side note for him. The drive to the airport could have been longer and I would not have cared because he was an interesting person.

Not long after, I was in an airport restroom, washing my hands next to a young woman who was fixing her head scarf. I mentioned that it looked nice on her and that I’d often wondered how women keep a scarf in place so well on their head. That led to a short conversation about face shapes and how individual women use different scarf-management strategies. We each went away with a sincere smile on our face. We were people, not stereotypes.

Here’s the thing: I talk to strangers—especially ones that are different from me. Most of the time, strangers turn out not to be strange—they are just people I don’t know. Visiting with them makes me more aware of the fact that each of us has an interesting story. We are all more the same than we are different.

A lady I met at the airport on a different trip.

A lady I met at the airport on a different trip.

So the next time you are in a place with someone you don’t know, maybe on an elevator or standing in line, just say something nice. You may be very surprised at how much you enjoy visiting with someone you do not know.

Ready, set, go!

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Quilt market is so interesting! It’s the place where retail and wholesale come together into the big happy family that we are all a part of. It’s all new to Lorna and she is loving it. 
Market is not open yet but I can share some pictures. Here is my booth, at least one side of it. 

  

Lorna and I got to watch Tula Punk in action today. Love her, love her fabric! You are going to love it too! I should have better photos but was slow. This dot, however, is amazing. 

  

   

Some market booths have amazing displays (not mine, but that’s ok). I love the walls of silk flowers at Michael Miller. 

  

And, gotta say, Minneapolis is just full of lovely buildings. If you keep your eyes open you can see so much!

 
And you may as well go inside to see more :-). This is subtle, but lovely. 

  

Can you help this quilter?

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UPDATE: Caron has found a pattern! Yay! So you can either read what I wrote or just skip down to the pretty picture :-).

I got an email from Caron who wrote:

Hi!  I bought this book (The New Applique Sampler) on Amazon.com, but did not notice until I received it, that it was a used book.  Of course, the pattern was not in it.  So disappointed.  I just watched your dvd of Teach You to Applique and wanted to start trying this!  I did check your website, but did not see the pattern for this one. Do you sell just the pattern so I can give this a try??
Thank you so much!!

Amazingly enough, I don’t have the printed copies of the patterns from that book—or from any of our out of print books. There’s only so much room in my house :-). I also don’t have the pattern in a downloadable format.

But the patterns in that book are nice and I would like to help. Caron said she would be very happy for me to post her email address along with her plea for the pattern pages. She said that even if someone has the pattern and could copy it for her, she would be happy to repay their expense.

If you can help, click to email Caron.

Important Side Note: In this case, I believe that it’s OK to make a copy of the patterns for her. She did buy the book in good faith. It is not the same as making copies of a pattern for all your friends so that they don’t have to buy a book—that would be copyright infringement.

And, because it’s pretty, I’m posting another strawberry photo. This is the one I turned in for my homework assignment—a photo on the color ‘red’.