Gratitude & Glimmers #109

Welcome to my post of glimmers (of joy and wonder) and gratitude for the month of July. You can find links to more posts like this one at LeeAnna's blog, Not Afraid of Color.

Peace is the strongest power, yet unrecognised.

--Sri Chimmoy

1. You know my lifelong love of trees. You may recall me talking about that time in 1994 driving through and stopping (for not long enough!) in Cathedral Grove on Vancouver Island. How I wish I could fly out to Vancouver to see this current exhibit about the magic of BC’s ancient forests.

Lifesize model of an 1800-year-old Mother Tree.

2. I read this feel-good story in Tod Maffin’s newsletter. Each week after his ‘essay’ he lists good news stories in various categories. This was in Wild Things, about the cooperation between several organizations on both sides of the Canada/US border. I’m so glad that our Department of Fisheries and Ocean Marine Mammal Unit was able to free Pop Tart.

2. With all the buy Canadian sentiment pulsing across our country from sea to sea to sea, this video, Buy Canadian Food, despite having originally been released in March, is worth a watch if you, like me, missed it at the time. In the same vein, I posted a Haven Greens story in my Instagram stories last night showing how they’ve switched to growing massive amounts of organic lettuce in their greenhouses in King City, Ontario. Yesss! We’ve been buying our lettuce from a Quebec source when available, but will be actively sourcing this company now too.

4. I liked hanging my Glowing Hearts quilt on the front of my house for the week around Canada Day. 

5. I like the recent development that is happening at the Leamington marina. I’m excited for this coffee shop to open. That’s the Pelee Island ferry in the background.😎

Brew on the 42 refers to our latitude, which most Canadians do not even realize: much of southeastern Canada is below the 49th parallel and we are the furthest south where I live!

6. I like this photo that was in the Tourism Windsor/Essex newsletter I get in my inbox. It’s so right to see more equal representation. 

7.  I am not sure I like some of Zora’s agility abilities…

Though she’s hard to stay mad at for long because she’s so cute. 

8. I love taking them to Point Pelee National Park to romp in the water. 

I also love that all Canada’s national parks are free for Canadian citizens again this summer. If you happen to have bought a specific park pass, or, like us, a Discovery Pass which gets you into all of our national parks, then the two months of free entry get added on to the expiry date of your pass! So Canadian. Fair. And I also love that all kids 18 and under can ride free all summer when accompanied by an adult on Via Rail anywhere in Canada.

9. I am so happy that Dayna is back in Michigan as of a few weeks ago. Rufus was literally screaming when she showed up for a surprise visit for his eighth birthday last week.

10. I love attending a variety of genres of free concerts at the Leamington amphitheatre on Seacliff Beach. It’s such a spectacular setting for these live music concerts. 

July 25–the Windsor Symphony Orchestra

11. As for books, the favourite read so far for July is Nita Prose’s The Mystery Guest. This is the second in the murder mysteries about Molly, an autistic maid who works at a fancy hotel in London. I also really enjoyed All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir. I’ve been slowly working my way through The Minisitry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. It is a very different read: facts and statistics about climate as of 2020, the year it was published, economics and politics mixed in with fictional eye witness accounts of climate change tragedies, mixed in with scientific teams’ work and think tanks' (like the imagined Ministry of the title) work to try to save our planet. I’ve got about 70 pages left, and how I wish their solutions, decades into the future at this point in the book, will come to pass.

The kind of ambition that gets you a billion won’t be brooked. It’s a sociopathic thing. There’s nothing rational about it. It’s a man thing, most of the time. although I’ve met women who feel just as entitled.

p. 404

My current read is The Last Mandarin by Louise Penny and Mellissa Fung. Pretty good, about a third of the way through. Once it and Ministry are done I’ll be almost on track for four books a month!

For TV, I’ve also been enjoying Lady Parts on CBC Gem, about a punk rock all Muslim women band, originally a British series. And on Britbox I highly recommend A Woman of Substance and Gone. Although I’ve watched just one episode so far, The Hardacres is shaping up to be pretty good, and it’s been very popular in Britain. Series 2 is coming out in August.

New Quilt Update

If you follow me on Instagram, which is increasingly difficult, not to say most aggravating, these days, then you may have seen a few posts of the new quilt request I am working on. Since I like to track my quilting and bit of life journey here, I’ll show you what I’ve been preoccupied with of late! It started with a screenshot Dayna sent me, a post of cozy room décor that happened to have what looks like a quilt or maybe a printed microfleece blanket artfully draped over the back of a couch.

“Can you make me this quilt?” she texted.

I zoomed in on the photo, seeing that it was basically an Evening Star surrounded by… a TON of HSTs. Gulp.

“Sure!”

Zephyr

I’ve turned to my modest stack of layer cakes, aka 10” squares to get them used up and into quilts. This one is a stack of 14 bought from Connecting Threads several years ago. Inside were 16 squares! This is a Rashida Coleman Hale line by Cotton & Steel supplemented with a few solids.

The impetus for making this quilt is twofold: first, way back in April I made a mental note of the block Yvonne Quilting Jetgirl made for a charity quilt block drive she is a part of, and two, I needed something mindless, fast and satisfying to sew after all the work, mental and sewing, put into the release of my latest pattern, Diamond Baby.

Diamond Baby Pattern Release and Bright Spark Quilt

I have the rights back to release my design that was featured in issue 70 of Make Modern. I am so pleased to release this pattern that can actually put quite a dent in your white, cream and beige strings. May I present Diamond Baby, now on sale in my Etsy shop!

I get a little fizz of a thrill every time I see that photo. So glad I was able to take some pretty great photos of the quilt at Fishermen’s Cove in the Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia.

Celestial Déjà Vu

Déjà vu indeed. If you are having that kind of moment when you see this quilt, your memory is correct! I  one very close to this earlier this year for a Project Quilting challenge. I called the first one Circadian Rhythm. I liked it so much, and I had enough of the Celestial fabric, that I planned to make another.

Besides, I had cut too many triangles for the first one!

A Commissioned Toiletries Bag

You may recall the totebag I made for my friend from my yoga classes. Well, I’ve made her a coordinating toiletries bag in a custom size.

Amongst the lavender (two years old now) and calla lilies (five or six years old now!)

When I gave the tote to her, I asked if she wanted a matching makeup bag, and she said no, she didn’t think so; they were too small for what she needed. I told her I did have a couple of bigger ones in my shop and so she said she’d take a look.

Gratitude & Glimmers #108

Making gratitude your default emotion will single-handedly alter the course of your life.

—Topher Pike

1. A couple of evenings ago I noticed the half moon against rose-lit clouds, so I stepped outside for a better look, and was rewarded with a rose-lit contrail and a couple of swallows flitting around catching bugs. A glimmer indeed!

Welcome to my post of glimmers (of joy and wonder) and gratitude for the month of June. You can find links to more posts like this one at LeeAnna's blog, Not Afraid of Color.