Muddling along

Do you get Leonard Pitts Jr.'s column in your local newspaper? It is always a good read. I wish I could express myself the way he does, because I almost always relate to what he has to say. Here is his latest column and it is exactly, exactly how I feel. I've talked about this before, so I won't go into it, but when will people understand that some of us do our best work alone? First this week I heard about Google's new policy about not allowing anyone to work from home, then I heard Cheryl Sandberg interviewed on NPR this week. She is also on the cover of Time magazine this week. She is the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook and has a new book out urging women to embrace success in business. I like that idea, but on the interview she said something like, "welcome to Facebook. You can see we all work in one big room, with no partitions, no offices. We are committed to teamwork..." I couldn't work there. Luckily I don't have to. I have my little studio where I can work by myself, which is all I have ever wanted.

It has been a pretty busy week so far and I have spent a lot of time not by myself, which is good. After all, I love my friends, I don't hate people, I just need some alone time! I went to Sofia's school today and did the Art lesson on the art of the South Pacific Islands. The kids made masks based on the masks of the tribes of Papua New Guinea. It was my favorite lesson so far. Here is Sofia with her mask, in progress. They all did such a great job and really seemed to like the project.

As I was leaving after cleaning up and packing up I discovered one of the little boys from the class sitting with a volunteer Mom out in the hallway, working, with great concentration, on his mask. "He was having trouble focusing with all the other kids," the Mom explained, "he felt like he could work better alone." Wow! I can so relate.

I did manage to get a little solitary quilting in this afternoon. I thought I'd show this.

My plan was to quilt straight lines, on the diagonal in the pavement area. I am doing free motion quilting and have learned that careful as you may be about quilting pretty straight lines, it is easy, especially with diagonal quilting for the angle to begin to slowly change as you move across the space. So I put these strips of blue masking tape along the area to be quilted to help me keep that angle consistent. I don't necessarily stitch right next to the tape, but it is a visual guide that keeps me headed in the right direction. Here it is with some of the quilting done.

And, by the way, this is one of my favorite quilting textures—diagonal lines quilted across horizontal lines. It is a really simple way to express a horizontal plane with depth.