Washington Weekend

Just back from a whirlwind Memorial Day weekend in Washington, D.C., with my daughter C.

The trip out was a small nightmare. When I arrived at the airport, my 6 p.m. departure had been pushed back to nearly 11 p.m. The time kept getting nudged back and back, until the departure was listed as nearly 1 a.m. At this point, I figured the flight was a non-starter. Still can't believe I was first in line to reschedule. But when the flight info is gone from behind the podium, replaced by "Follow us on Facebook", you know your flight is not happening. Ended up going back home and returning to the airport the next afternoon. This time I made it to Washington, but totally wasted a precious vacation day.

I love Washington. It's such an human-scaled, accessible city, with tons and tons of intriguing shops and cafes, not even mentioning the museums, the arts scene, the monuments. But what I love most is the diversity--the passing parade of humanity of every possible ethnicity. It's an enviable richness for any city, and it's the future of America. So exciting.

Highlights (mostly food-oriented):

• Sunday brunch at the Mansion on O Street--several row houses linked together in a warren of hallways, stairways, secret passages, hidden doorways, and crammed full with curios, books, and tschotschkes, all for sale.
  
  

It's an inn, it's a restaurant, it's an antique shop. And oh, the fancy food!

• A visit to the Newseum (well worth the rather hefty admission fee). It included gripping narratives of Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 that were thought-provoking and very immediate.
• Lunch at Layla's in Old Town Alexandria. We ordered a bunch of appetizers and loved everything. Oh, Baba Ganoush, I love thee...

All too soon--back to earth and home. But I'm home for only two days and then off to a long weekend quilt retreat in DeSoto, WI. No airports, security screening, or interminable waits. Yay!

Hours and HOURS in airports and on planes gave me sock knitting time and one new sock is well underway. This isn't interesting fiber news, so I'll spare you yet another sock picture.

Off to pack for the retreat!

The House from Heck

OK, it's done.

Mr. Kathie was Up North last weekend, giving me time to hunker down with the dreaded slice-of-house block. The thinking and planning was done; it was time to swing into action.

I'm reasonably pleased with the block. This kind of extreme detail work is just not my cup of tea. I've gained a new respect for one art quilter friend who has done numerous award-winning cityscape quilts, with incredible detail.

With projects like this, you have two choices--photo-realism or artistic license. This block is only one of 24, and they'll be assembled together and need to work together. And the worst part is that I was working alone here, isolated from everyone else participating. No clue how my effort will fit in OR measure up.

I traced an overlay from lightweight pattern material, so I could check placement of the elements. That helped a lot. And I taped an exact-size blowup to a window to trace the various elements. (Windows--the poor man's light box...) A lot of squinting at relative color value and looking through the wrong end of my dad's old hunting binoculars helped too.

The turquoise line visible is washout marker--an approximation of the final seam line.

At any rate,it's done; one of a kind. You won't be seeing many more projects like this coming from me, I guarantee!

Hello, hello.

Here's a project I've been procrastinating about since last fall. Now we're up against the deadline and I'm torn between obsession and despair.

The Milwaukee Art Quilters meet in a business space of a small publishing company owned by the daughter of one of the members. We've been meeting there for years and decided to make a group quilt as a thank you to the business owner. It's to be a slice-and-dice photo quilt. We have a photo of the owner's house, and it's been sliced into sections. We're all making sections of the house, which will be joined into a fragmented but hopefully still recognizable whole.

Photo-realism/landscape are not my preferred quilt genres, but here I am, struggling with clapboard siding, gingerbread-y Victorian spindles and molding. The vegetation part of the block is pretty much completed,

but the rest... 12 inches square but oh, the dithering about order and method of construction, materials, fabric choices.

Ugh, ugh. Just give me a pile of half-square triangles to make and let me go into my happy space.