Now, don’t get me wrong. I am keenly aware that the act of raising a child is a supremely creative one, contributing to the future of the world by advancing the next generation. And I truly enjoy every moment of my time with Juliette and I do not begrudge anything that she requires of me. But really, there isn’t much of any “me” time left any more. Maybe an hour or so after we put her to bed, if that isn’t taken up with bottles or cleaning the kitchen or finally getting a chance to check e-mail or what have you, or just simply laying down because I am too tired from a busy day. Let’s be honest – an inquisitive one-year-old on the verge of walking is a handful even for two people and requires “all hands on deck!” most of the time.

So why is it exactly this time (and over the past glorious year) that I have found my creativity welling up inside of me demanding an outlet. I was sure that I had lost my quilt mojo until I cleaned out my studio a few months ago and unpacked all my fabrics into shelving units. And I swear I could sit and knit for days on end if I but had the time. And my recent trip to the Minnesota Quilters annual convention in St. Cloud inspired me in ways that I didn’t expect and for which I was not prepared.

The other night, I must have woken at least a half-dozen times, and each time immediately thinking about a quilt I want to make or am in the process of making. And last night, after dinner, there was a part of me that felt like I was going to explode if I didn’t get into that studio and work on some quilt, any quilt, just sit and sew. I did manage to get a quilt pattern picked out for Juliette, the Crazy Eights pattern I have used before that calls for 8 fat quarters, and I got the first round of cutting completed, the strips that is. I have to cut those down into their various components to start piecing.

And when I was done with that, I put together a quilt sandwich of plain muslin to practice some of the stuff I was re-reading in the Easy Machine Quilting book I am reviewing. I convinced myself that I really do need the Easy Quilter frame I saw at the MQ show. That frame made it so much easier and faster to do graceful and smooth curves and so on. My head has been swimming recently with:

Voyager 17 – http://www.hinterberg.com/voyager-stretch.aspx

Nolting FunQuilter – http://www.funquilter.com/

Bailey Home Quilter – http://www.baileyssewingcenter.com/bahoqupro15.html

Handi Quilter 16 – http://www.handiquilter.com/shop/product/simply-sixteen/

Innova 18 – http://www.abminternational.com/innova-long-arm-quilting-machine.php

Pfaff Grand Quilter 18.8 – http://www.pfaffusa.com/18574.html

Prodigy – http://www.prodigyquilter.com/

Homesteader – http://www.thequiltingsolution.com/homesteader.html

Quilt Easy frame – http://www.shirleyssewingstuff.com/quilt/quilt_easy.html
http://www.sewingmachineoutlet.com/qejukiquiltcombo.htm

SuperQuilter Proflex frame – http://www.superquilter.com/

I wish I had both the money and the space to buy one of these. Honestly, what I really want is the Gammill Vision 18 or the APQS Lenni model, but I don’t have enough of space or money for either. A guy can dream, can’t he? In the meantime, I’ll do my best with the money and space I have to improve my own quilting skills so I can do more of my own quilting. I’ve always said that the was the part I didn’t like, so that is why I don’t do it. That’s only partially true. The reason I don’t like doing the quilting is because I’ve never found a way that I could do it sufficiently well enough to please myself. I’m hoping the Easy Quilter frame will go a long way in convincing me otherwise. I think it will. I can’t wait to find out for sure, but it will likely be several more weeks before I can get it. Oh, well, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Still, I’m something of an immediate gratification kinda guy.

I woke up this morning with a sense that the darkest clouds had passed.  I finished re-reading Rabbi Kushner’s book yesterday afternoon and sat down and had a good cry (again).  And the tears felt like they cleaned out the corners of my soul that were still hurting.  But you know what, I cannot maintain any animosity toward Jennifer.  Oh, trust me, I have tried to work up a good head of steam – to get good and angry and go on an emotional tear, but it just isn’t coming. Mostly, I think, because I feel so sad for her.   Is it any wonder she didn’t want to go through it all alone?  Maybe Harald was right.  Maybe our job was to be Jennifer’s parents for five months, not the parent to her baby.  I have no doubt that she never consciously intended to end this the way it did, but I also think didn’t or couldn’t know what she herself was feeling and wanting, and so there was no way she could be honest with others if she couldn’t be honest with herself.  And I think “How can you practice or teach what you have never known?” I feel great pity for the little girl we thought would be ours.  I hope Jennifer is able to make some immediate and miraculous changes, but in my heart I only have a  prayer of blessing for both of them.

No one can ever take away the good things that happened to us over the past five months.  Those times of immense joy, hopeful expectation – those were all very real and they remain with us.  And although we knew we were cared for and loved, perhaps the greatest gift we have experienced is the genuine and extraordinary outpouring of care and affection and true love that we have seen demonstrated for us again and again and again.  That our friends, neighbors and loved ones have grieved along side us has kept us from feeling alone.  And far from being tested, my faith has been strong, because I have felt the indwelling presence of the Spirit so much the past five days.  I have no doubt that God sent the Great Comforter to be with us, and that has given my soul such a feeling of respite.

This morning I went to the Mercy Hospital maternity web site so see if there were pictures of Savannah (Jennifer’s chosen name) and there were, under Jennifer’s name and the birth date of April 2nd.  And it was really OK looking at them.  I downloaded all the birth day pictures from my camera and ordered them sent to Jennifer from the Target site.  Those pictures don’t belong to us any more.  I unpacked my hospital bag and put everything away.  It felt good to do all these things.  I feel like washing clothes, and cleaning off my desk of accumulated mail, and just getting our home back in order.  And I think I will take Beulah for a walk today.  It is far too nice to stay cooped up inside all day.

I know I will never be the same after what has happened.  How could I be?  But I am not immobilized.  I can move again.  I can put one foot in front of another and do the things that need to be done. I am very much alive.  And I belong here.  This is the poem that has been ruminating in my gut for days:

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Today, I sit with my pointy sticks, taking stitch after stitch – the clicking is a blessed distraction and activity.  And I think of Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, and hope she will once again comfort me and bring my soul to the point of song.  It was episode 21, Secret Water, of Brenda Dayne’s podcast last year that helped me so much when we experienced the prior adoption loss and today I am grateful I already knew about it.  Perhaps one day soon I can sing this hymn and mean it:

HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING

My life flows on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentation.
I hear the real, thought far off hymn
That hails the new creation
Above the tumult and the strife,
I hear the music ringing;
It sounds an echo in my soul
How can I keep from singing?

What through the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth, it liveth.
What through the darkness round me close,
Songs in the night it giveth.
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that rock I’m clinging.
Since love is lord of Heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?

When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
And hear their death-knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near,
How can I keep from singing?
In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging.
When friends by shame are undefiled,
How can I keep from singing?

Mercury went retrograde on January 11th and won’t stop the retrograde motion until February 1st, reaching a full return on February 14th.  Whew!

I KNEW there was something going on with communications and thinking, but no one here had mentioned it and I kept forgetting to check it out.

The next retrograde period begins on May 7th and will continue until May 31st, achieving a full return on June 14th.

There is another period in September and another one in December.

So hang on, everyone, things are about to settle down and straighten out in a few more days!  If you don’t know what it means to have Mercury go in retrograde motion, here is a good page that explains what it’s all about.

As for the show itself, while there were obvious highlights, some of the show left me a bit cold. And I bought one, count it, ONE piece of fabric during the entire time I was there. I bought some tools I thought were cool, especially the specially-created presser foot for sewing drunkard’s path curves without pins or matching. I’m excited to try that. And I got a great book of vintage apron patterns that I am anxious to make up. But most of the quilts left me flat. Here are some (but by no means all) of the quilts that I thought were remarkable.

Ellen Anne Eddy’s work is as remarkable as she herself is. How can this piece not blow your mind as to the possibilities that await those who have the clarity to follow their own vision?

This was Sue Rutford’s journal quilt and this picture doesn’t nearly do it justice. You had to get up close and really look at it to see what a wonderful and unique piece of work it was.

This quilt just made my soul smile. It is so exhuberant!

Again with the happy-happy, joy-joy.

My Wisconsin quilting buddies at the show, from L to R, Joan, me, Sharyn, Wendy, Carol, Pat, Jayne, and Nancy.

On Thursday night I realized I had spent more time in my sewing room over the past week than I have the whole time since we’ve moved in. That was startling. Earlier in the week I had unpacked some boxes from the garage that were still on shelves from the move and found some things that were presonally meaningful to me (along with some old crap I’m only too glad to let go of). It was surprising to me how much of my soul had been sitting taped up inside a box in the garage and although I try not to be too attached to material things, it felt good to have some artifacts of my life and sentimental objects back in my sewing room where they belonged. After all, they are markers of where I have been, physically and otherwise, and how I have become the person that I am today. I decided to move the picture of my grandma that was in the downstairs den into my sewing room as well, so that I would see her smiling at me whenever I was sewing in there. And I bought myself a new candle for my sewing room too. I was trying to figure out which Yankee Candle to get when I picked up the honeysuckle one, and it immediately reminded me of that innocent time in my youth when I would go into my grandma’s front yard with my cousin and we would laugh in the summer heat and pick those honeysuckle blossoms and suck the sweet nectar from the bottoms of them. Finally, I got rid of all the “junk”, i.e. non-sewing stuff, that had been accumulating in there and put it somewhere else. And I even bought a new clock radio for the room so I could plug my iPod into it and listen to my music or Podcasts while I am in there. And the radio is color coordinated with my iPod – how cool is that? All of this made a profound difference in how I feel about the place. Now I actually LIKE going in there!

I took Friday off since it was the last day of Harald’s vacation and Good Friday. We ran errands, putzed around the house, etc. I took a vacuum to the sewing room to get rid of dust bunnies and cobwebs – and I do mean that literally! Then the desire overtook me to scrub the floor clean in my sewing room. And I mean the old-fashioned way. Getting down on your hands and knees with a scrub brush, two pails of water, one soapy and one clear, and some rags. And I mean I scrubbed that floor so good you could EAT off of them when I was done! It took a day or two for the Pine-Sol scent to dissipate. And an hour after I started I was exhausted, but it was *so* worth it. When that room was clean, it felt like I had managed to clean out a dim and dusty part of my psyche as well. Maybe sometimes my surroundings really are a reflection of my inner life.

The weekend was so busy I didn’t get the borders put on the French braid, but I will get to that this week. But who can complain about getting to eat homemade coconut cake all weekend? Harald has turned into quite the active little baker and I for one am loving it. He got a hold of a Deen brothers recipe for coconut cake and all I will tell you I can hardly wait to get home tonight and eat the last leftover piece. We had a beautiful Easter service at church yesterday and a truly lovely dinner afterwards. Despite the snow that fell since Thursday, hope springs anew. Now if only spring would spring, we’d be all set.

You know you’re a real Minnesota when …. you take the dog out for the last piddle of the morning before heading off to work and while standing out in the yard waiting for her to do her business you find yourself thinking …

Well, it is 9 below out, and I suppose I should be lamenting how cold it is like so many others are, but the sun is out and the wind is calm and it’s really quite a nice winter morning, don-chya-no!

So, thereyago. We will leave for another day my favorite Minnestoa-ism which is “fer cute!” (And if you are from Minnesota, you know exactly what that means and how to use it.

That is what I would tell you if I could.

Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn’t hurt the untroubled spirit either.

When I say properly practiced, I mean executed in a relaxed manner, without anxiety, strain, or tension, but with confidence, inventiveness, pleasure and ultimate pride.

If you hate to knit, why, bless you, don’t; follow your secret heart and take up something else. But if you start out knitting with enjoyment, you will probably continue in this pleasant path.

Consider the agreeable material and tools.

. . . . . . .

Really, all you need to become a good knitter are wool, needles, hands, and slightly below-average intelligence. Of course superior intelligence, such as yours and mine, is an advantage.

Now, really, how can you not love this woman?

Who ever though that such a “little piece of paper” could have such enormous real and symbolic importance in one’s life? It took four years of serious hard work, from August, 2003 to June, 2007, to earn this degree – plus about 10 years before that of taking one class at a time here and there to get rid of my core curriculum requirements. Well, never mind that now. I have it. I stuck with it until I got it done. I can’t tell you how proud I am of myself for sticking with it until I was done this time. This time, I knew it was now or never. Making a big commitment to oneself and then seeing that commitment through to the end brings an immeasurable amount of self-esteem.