Penelope the Third

I'm about sick of reading books, classics or no. So I made another Penelope doll. Penelope is a pattern designed in the 1980s by Colette Wolff of Platypus Patterns, a name sacred to cloth dollmakers. She is to be outfitted and wardrobed and bestowed on a small grand-niece. As you see, a first skirt is done; a fleece poncho is on the cutting table. Since she's going to a modern young lady, she shall have a modern ensemble.

A Child of Air

The final poem in A Child's Garden of Verses, and one of my favorites:


To Any Reader

As from the house your mother sees

You playing round the garden trees,

So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent.
He does not hear; he will not look,
Nor yet be lured out of this book
For, long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.

                   --Robert Louis Stevenson

Winner Take Nothing: Finished After 42 Years

This is the copy of Winner Take Nothing I bought around 1969 and never read--somehow it survived while many better-loved possessions slipped away. Inside the back cover I wrote my name in trying-to-be-grown-up cursive, with my address and junior high school.

Back then, as I have said, I wanted to own books, especially books by authors whose names were famous and had a majestic sound. Shakespeare. Chaucer. Hemingway. Steinbeck. James Fenimore Cooper. Some fatalistic mood must have attracted me to this title and I seriously intended to read it.

But now the idea of trying to read it at age 12 is comical. I wouldn't have had any idea of what was going on in most of these stories, and not just because of all the French in them. For example, there's "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" in which a boy tries to castrate himself: at 12 I didn't know what castration was and the dictionary definition could not have enlightened me. Nor would the subtler events of "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" meant much to me: I'd have read that the man was old, deaf, and alone with as little response as I'd also read, around the same time, that Allie Caulfield had died--would have seen them as random details to fill in the story and then wondered, coming to its end, why it didn't make much sense to me.

So I'm glad that in my ignorance I left Winner Take Nothing alone. Or I could be kind and say wasn't it very wise of my younger self to leave it alone, but save it on the shelf these many years, awaiting le jour convenable for understanding it better, and also, a little French?

Cooper's Deerslayer: finished after 43 years

In the farmhouse where my grandparents lived, there was an attic with a small book closet at one end. The only light was a naked light bulb protruding from a sloping gable; the only way to turn it on was to step into the darkness and grope blindly upward for the pull-string. My sister and I did not frequent it--there were many less scary places to play.

But around age 11 or 12, when I began wanting, badly, to own books, I visited the old book closet to see what treasure it might yield. It was still unnerving--the crowded orange-crate shelves tipped and crooked, dusty books slipping off them into more dust, and creepy unseen creatures, real or imagined, retreating as the light tinked on. But it was also rewarding. Right out in front was a green-backed set of novels-- the Leatherstocking Saga of James Fenimore Cooper, still standing in order: The Deerslayer. The Last of The Mohicans. The Pathfinder. The Pioneers. The Prairie. Very excited, I gathered them up and took them downstairs to ask Grandpa if I could have them.

I found him in his big blue chair by the lace-curtained front window and waited while he looked the books over, wiped a little dust off them, checked the title--"Hmmh!"--of each one. Perhaps he was thinking how little leisure time farming chores had left him for reading the books under his own roof, for they lived not only in the attic book room but in almost every room in the house. And then he said, "Take 'em home!"

And I'm sure he must have said something funny about them, too, and made me laugh, if only I could remember it, because that's what he did so often: he'd find us doing something unremarkable, like gazing up at the stars, (because they were so much brighter up north, in the country, in the cold) and he'd just casually pay out a remark-- "Well, don't let the night fall on you," --and then wander off and be manifestly thinking about something else while you were still cracking up at the crazy unexpectedness of him.

The Deerslayer had been tortured: mice had nibbled or scratched away a wedge of pages--you couldn't read a whole line of text until after the third chapter. My mother was not excited about having it in the house. But I wasn't so fastidious: it was a book! One of a matched set of books! By a famous author! They got the best spot on my own bookshelf, which by coincidence was also an orange crate, but painted and sturdy, and I have treasured them from that day to this.

Though I had to buy a new copy of Deerslayer when I finally decided to read it this year, both the stories and those particular books are precious to me. As I was reading, just a few hours ago, the very exciting ending of the story, I pictured my aunts, my uncles and my father, all departed now, reading it before me and telling me with that sly half-smile they all shared, "Yes, this is the good part."

The Story of the Fabric of Life

December 15, 2006

The first job in organizing the sewing room mess is to deal with the fabric. This is not a strategic choice, it is a defining choice. If I don't re-bond with this fabric, then I have to stop calling myself a quilter. Many hundreds of dollars were spent on it, so pitching it and rebuilding another stash is not an option. Either I love this fabric and yearn to work with it, or I give up the idea entirely and clear it all out. Heaven knows I could use the space for other activities, such as walking and sitting.

I used to make a lot of quilts and wall-hangings, I even used to work in a quilt store. But when my son was born in 2000, there wasn't so much time available for sewing. Then in 2004 I started grad school to get my librarianship degree, and there was no time at all for sewing. I buckled the Bernina into its case and moved it off the desk top.

Now grad school is completed and my son is old enough to amuse himself near by me, if I don't mind a few Power Rangers, Spidermen, and Sponge Bobs underfoot. So I can quilt now--but it's been a long time. Do I still want to? Do I still have the fire in the belly for quiltmaking? The answer is spilling out of these fifteen or so large tubs spread around the room.

So I open up a tub as big as a cedar chest and begin.

The colors, sorted long ago, are now all mixed up. Big pieces smush the littler ones so that all are wrinkled. I pull out about 20 pieces at a time, smooth them and sort them by size. I iron the little pieces and sort them by color, to be put in their own ziplock bags. Everything 1/8 of a yard or under goes into them. The larger pieces go by color into fresh new plastic baskets.

It feels very soothing to be working quietly in this way. For a few weeks, I get up half an hour earlier in the morning to spend awhile here. After many mornings, the first tub is finished and I start the next.
Other times of the day, after work especially, I listen to podcasts of Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac" while ironing and sorting this pile that seemingly never diminishes. But when my son is with me, he won't listen to "that guy," so we put on Christmas music cds, often hitting the "repeat" button on Alvin and the Chipmunks' Christmas Song. He also likes Fleetwood Mac and a disk of Halloween tunes, so we get a break from the Chipmunks.

Sorting through the fabric brings back many memories... This piece I bought at that quilt store just over the Kentucky border, that one came from a store up north that had a wonderful Samoyed named "Winston" and my daughter got to pet him while I shopped. I remember the collections some pieces came from, and how excited we were when they arrived at the shop: the first Smithsonian collection, the first one from Country Threads, a new Jinny Beyer, the Hoffmans that always just flew off the bolt.

They also bring back memories of what I made with them and what I dreamed of making with them. I always had more ideas than time. When my daughter Emily was young, I let her use my fabric to make scrunchies for her hair or various doll accessories. Sometimes I run across a piece of fabric that bears her mark (a hole cut out of the exact middle) and I have to show it to somebody so we can laugh.

And sometimes I come across some complete mysteries: there's a hunk cut off this piece, but what on earth did I make with it? And what happened to it? A few things I sold, many more I gave away. I guess I've forgotten them.

My only records are rags.... Well, if I stay a quilter, I'll keep better records. After all, I'm a librarian now.