When we walked into the the Gathering Fabric quilt store in Woodinville, we found some really gorgeous fabric neither of us had ever seen before. The designer, Julie Paschkis, had recently spent some time at the store and her story was fascinating.

Paschkis had been an artist and a children’s book illustrator for much of her career when one of the founders of In the Beginning Fabrics, an artisan fabric line, called her out of the blue and asked if she’d ever considered designing fabric.

Her response? “This is the call I’ve been waiting for all my life!” Or something to that effect. If she’d been recounting that response to a publisher, not a fabric store owner, her take on that might have been a bit different. Still, it was a heartening story of creative success.

Fortune favors the prepared. If a gallery or a boutique saw some of my metalsmithing, or a publisher saw a snippet of my writing, and said “I love it, I want more!” I’d be stuck. I am NOT prepared for the universe to drop fortune in my lap right now. Are you?

I think I need to work on that.

I got married a couple of months after college and settled down. I was a good wife, supportive and enabling, tolerating it all and cleaning up messes as soon as they were made. I earned a good living and used it to support the family.

I had my first baby three years after the wedding, and my second three years after that, both on schedule. I was a devoted mom, putting my kids first and working long hours to both support them and spend quality time with them.

I finally divorced my ex-husband after nine years of his compulsive financial irresponsibility, not for myself, but when I began to feel my children’s safety and security were threatened by it. It cost me my faith.

A couple of years later I married Bryan, who I adored and tried to be an exemplary wife to. He was conservative, responsible, kind and loving and I tried to take care of him and the boys in every way. I was a good wife and mom, I had a good job, and constantly strove to be conservative and respectable and not rock the boat.

Then a year ago I lost Bryan, and with it a large part of my identity – wife. Loved one. Partner in a stable, responsible home. Instead, I had to try to figure out who I was, when I wasn’t busy taking care of everyone and trying to meet everyone else’s standards as wife, mom, employee, daughter.

Who am I? I am still a caretaking, nurturing type – that hasn’t changed. There’s nothing I like better than truly helping someone, preferably behind the scenes, with a hug, some long term support, an act of love, or anonymous generosity.

I am not, however, quite the good girl I’ve tried to pass myself off as for so many years. I do like to rock the boat. I firmly believe that “What the hell?” is often the right decision, and that I would, indeed, like to give ‘em something to talk about. I’m creative and artistic. Passionate about what I believe in. Very geeky. A little bit edgy and nihilistic. And more than a little bit hedonistic.

In the process of growing up a little this past year, I got healthier and set some interesting fitness goals. I changed the way I dress, a little curvier and punkier, becoming a shoe & jewelry addict in the process. I pierced my ears a few times and now wear colorful jewelry. I got my first tattoo, an ankle bracelet memorial.

The tattoo, in particular, is an interesting rejection of the good girl ethos. When I grew up, only sailors and bikers had tattoos. They were just not commonly worn, especially by women. Now, of course, for younger generations, body modification is a frequent rite of passage. As an artist, as a bit of a rebel, as a woman seeking beauty and meaning in my life, the act of permanently inking my skin with something significant is an important freedom for me.

So, here’s to shedding the old, ill-fitting good girl skin and finding one that fits better! I wish all of you a similar epiphany on your journey.

This fall I decided I wanted to make a fabric art/quilted wall hanging for over my fireplace because I couldn’t find one I wanted. It had to be attractive, but relatively easy. After lots of looking at designs, I chose the below one, from an excellent book, Color: The Quilter’s Guide, by Christine Barnes.

I decided to do it on a much smaller, wall-hanging scale, and had help analyzing the design and selecting the fabrics. Still, I screwed up – but I’m going to share that with y’all, so you can learn from a newbie’s design mistakes.

I liked the asymmetrical setting, the broken wall, on the original design. I liked the way it popped and combined strip quilting with crazy quilting. I didn’t care so much for the plain brown setting fabric, nor for the blue/brown combination. I also like pattern – even subtle pattern that reads as solid from a distance – so I was determined to add my own spin on the design.

We figured we needed a range of dark fabrics for the crazy quilt blocks, light & bright fabrics for the intervening strips, and a near-solid for the backing.

That’s what I did – but my end result was far too *busy* – colorful, heavily patterned, and middle-value. Below are pictures of the finished crazy quilt strips (I cheated and used a technique called “crazy 9-patch”) and the fabric I had selected for the strips & backing. It just plain doesn’t work together.

The burgundy/brown/gold scheme of the crazy 9-patch squares looks like a totally different quilt from the green and orange backing fabric.

What I need to do from here, I think, is shop. Isn’t that the answer to everything? Each individual set works well on its own, just not together. The crazy 9-patch strips would work fine with more neutral, earth-toned solid, light-valued strip fabric setting them off. And the green/orange fabrics would be very pretty as setting and strip separators for calmer, sunny, neutral quilt blocks.

What did work well was the amazing antique Singer Featherweight on long-term, permanent loan to me from my wonderful mother. After all these decades – it was probably made before WWII – it still ticks along like clockwork and made stitching up the first section of this project a breeze.

1. Go to the theater and see some good shows. It doesn’t have to be a Vegas-only experience!
   FAIL. Although Cats, Rent, Fiddler on the Roof and Wicked are all coming to Seattle next year, so I have lots of opportunity coming up.
    

2. Get a pedicure once a month even in winter – and splurge on the extended foot massage.
   FAIL.
    

3. Listen to new music every month.
   I did this, actually, with the help of iTunes and exposure to new stuff via Wii Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
    

4. Spend less time at work and more time with friends and family.
   Epic FAIL. Sigh. A couple of colleagues and I are supporting each other on this in 2009.
    

5. Do something creative every week just for the joy of it, e.g. make jewelry, write, paint, garden, do a home project, or a web project.
   FAIL. But I did complete NaNoWriMo again.
    

6. Take more naps.
   FAIL. I hardly took any naps last year, although I’ve done a bit more in the last month.

One out of six is 16%, not exactly stellar performance. Apparently even non-resolutions are not for me.

Happy New Year!

I suppose the answer to that question depends on your perspective, whether you’re the censorer or the censoree.

My son is writing a paper on censorship – Merriam Webster defines it: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable ; also : to suppress or delete as objectionable . We also talked about what it is not – media bias, religious freedom, children’s rights, copyright or criminal law issues. Janiece had a good post on the subject today, too.

Tonight, at the dinner table we talked about some fairly major examples of controversial, often-criticized censorship.

• The banning of books from our curriculum, school & public libraries.
• China’s harsh censorship and prohibition of external information, including the Internet, print, video and audio media.
• The Islamic world’s prohibition of media, styles, and cultural influences that are considered to be Western.
• The MPAA, PMRC and ESR ratings and restrictions on movie, record and game content.
• The FCC’s restrictions and penalties on tv and radio content deemed obscene or objectionable.
• Private or public funding tied to restrictions on public information, for example, sex education in the schools.

We also discussed whether there were any instances where censorship was perhaps appropriate and justifiable in western culture. The only examples I could think of were:

• The revelation of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity by White House staffer Lewis Libby.
• Restrictions and penalties for volatile or harassing speech in the workplace.
• Restrictions, controls and removal of speech in a privately-owned forum. See my blog comment terms and conditions for an example.

Can you think of examples of justifiable or acceptable censorship in today’s society? No extra points for actually requiring me to apply censorship according to above terms and conditions.

_____________________

As Blink, Sophie, and Not-Sophie communed, the room lit with an odd, flashing light. “What’s that?” said Sophie, frightened by yet another sudden, odd change in surroundings.

“It is I.” a voice rumbled.

“I?” said Blink, peeved rather than frightened.

“I am that which is. I am the power over all telling. And I have a need to communicate with you three.”

“Well, we can hardly simply call you ‘I’,” growled Not-Sophie, as she began scanning through the dreadnought sensors Blink had returned to her bidding, “that’s going to get confusing, isn’t it? Don’t you have a proper name of some sort?” Not-Sophie looked around for the source of the light. “And just where the hell are you, anyway?”

“I am here, and there, and all about,” intoned the voice, “and no where, at the same time. It is true that some have called me…”

“God?” interrupted Blink, skeptically.

A rumble filled the room that felt like thunder, but somehow non-threatening. A chuckle, the three realized.

“Hardly,” said the voice with some irony, and with considerably less pomposity. “Who would want to be that? All that worshipful crap, everyone so bloody convinced they have it exactly right, and no one coming close. No thank you. Some have called me ‘The Narrator’. Now shut up and let me finish.” A soft throat clearing sound echoed through the room, and the voice continued, returning to its more senatorial tone. “You three obviously need direction. You’ve been mucking about, and never quite seem to get to the point of dissipating the threat to your planet. I’m here to put you on the right track.”

“Well that’s good news,” said Blink with hard-edged sarcasm, “we’ve got yet another source of truth here to help us. Lovely, that.”

“BE SILENT!” the Narrator’s rumble took on a tone of menace. “Or I’ll turn you into something more unpleasant that a multi-limbed intelligent furball that likes to lick people and eat out of dumpsters.” After a brief pause, the voice said thoughtfully, nearly in a whisper, “though off-hand, I can’t imagine what that would be.”

“Now then,” the Narrator continued, “where was I? Oh yes. You three need to start cooperating more. No more bloody fighting, splitting off into different tangents, nearly blowing one another up, infecting each other with bugs and viruses and whatnot. Don’t you see the power you have?”

“You mean the power of my ship?” Not-Sophie asked, somewhat mollified.

“You mean the power of my mind?” Blink thought, he thought to himself.

“You mean whatever it was that made everybody think I’d be a good killing machine brain even though I’m a cute skin-kneed little preteen girl?” said Sophie meekly.

“No, no, and no.” The Narrator responded, enjoying Blink’s dismay at his thoughts being overheard. “I mean you have the power of three. Three is a magic number. Yes it is. It has been so throughout history. You speak of the divine…the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Id, Ego, and Superego. Kirk, Spock and McCoy, for crying out loud. Even Luke, Leia and Han. The three of you together are unbeatable. You have the power of mind, body, and soul. Use it. Look at that weak character over there.” The light seemed to shift, and a Tregethan appeared in the room, seemingly spotlighted by The Narrator’s light.

“Faaaaaarthuuuum,” the Tregethan screamed heavenward, with exasperation, then looked wildly about, “what the hell are you doing to my quarters!? Where’s my skull rubber!?”

“He’s pathetic.” The Narrator continued. “You probably wouldn’t even have to join forces to defeat him. Yet, if you simply mold your minds together, as you have started to do in the past, you will have absolute power over him. Try it!”

Blink, Sophie and Not-Sophie exchanged glances. “Worth a shot,” said Blink, giving his closest equivalent of a shrug, for a multi-limbed furball, “let’s try it.”

The three closed their eyes, and made mental contact. “Now what?” they asked.

“Focus on the Tregethan.” The Narrator instructed. “Then decide quickly on what you’d like to happen to it.”

In a trice, with a loud splat, the Tregethan blowed up. Real Good.

The three broke contact, and looked about at the pieces of Tregethan, which, while all about, hadn’t mussed them in the least. “That,” said Not Sophie, voice rising, “was – freaking – AWESOME!”

“Indeed,” said The Narrator, “you are powerful. And fast too. Well done. I will leave it to you, then. Go on, figure out what else you want to do. I can’t be bothered to hold your hand for the entire rest of it.”

The light went out. The Narrator was gone. Blink, Sophie and Not Sophie looked at one another, and considered their next move.

Part 1: Nathan
Part 2: Shawn
Part 3: MWT
Part 4: Eric
Part 5: Matt Warnock
Part 6: Jeri
Part 7: Saqib
Part 8: Michelle K.
Part 9:Vince
Part 10: Kimberly-Ann
Part 11: Tom
Part 12: Kate
Part 13: Justin
Part 14: Bryan (below)
Part 15: Tania
Part 16: Charles

—————————–

And here’s my alleged contribution:

Sophie from Shinola, Part 14:

Farthum Bardabuff was not having a good day. At all.

First, any day the tactical officer had to actually speak to the Supreme Councilor was by definition a bad day. Have the SC yell at him only made it worse. But the worst, the worst of all, was dealing with indoctrinated warships, especially the new ones.

“Bardabuff to warship WA-11. Come in 11.”

A few crackles of static. Nothing else.

“WA-11! Report!” Nothing came through the speakers on Farthum’s console. Once again Farthum cursed the Military Procurement office’s unending quest-to-screw-up-through- better-use-of-low-bidder-contract shenanigans.

Farthum was well aware that WA-11 was going to be a challenge. While the hunter-seeker droid’s report indicated the mind it had appropriated for WA-11 was exceptional, and would be a gifted destroyer of worlds, some of the readings were, well, eccentric. WA class cyber warships, armed to their metal-polyplastic teeth with everything from laser disrupters to, well, metal-polyplastic teeth, were a very efficient means of sterilizing troublesome life forms off colonizable worlds. Trouble was, to make them that good, they were loaded with the stolen intelligence of a lifeform; it was thought to be best that the lifeform was one from the world about to be wiped out. That might have had more to do with the innate cruelty of Farthum’s race, rather than actual results, but it was how it was done. The resulting AI tended to get a little batty just before making the planetary kill.

WA-11, however didn’t seem like it was hesitant. Just weird. Somehow the blasted thing had gotten into some old entertainment files while charging after the hunter-seeker transfer. The HS droid must have been watching old Earth tapes on its off time.

Farthum gulped a deep intake of the liquid oxygen which surrounded his body. Calm, I have to be calm, he thought. 11 was still functioning, and the readouts showed the warship was near striking distance to the target. The computer schematic on his console showed the ship charging up for the attack. But Farthum had no control, and that worried him greatly, especially since his ship was still nearby. “11,” he said intensely into the com, knowing from early calibration of the ship that by throwing in a few key words he could trigger a response, “I think I’m entitled to answers about the mission. I think I’m entitled to the truth this time.”

“You can’t handle the truth!” 11 screamed over the com. “I don’t give a DAMN about what you think you’re entitled to.”

“WA-11, cut the figgle crap. What’s your status?”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Clarify, 11.”

“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

“Surely you can tell me more than that, 11. Turn on your visual receptors.”

“Receptors on. And don’t call me Shirley.”

Farthum could see the target, or at least what WA-11 was labeling “the target”. But while roughly round, the “target” was not a planet. It was a multi-limbed creature with short fur and limpid, intellegent eyes. “Sophie,” Farthum heard the target saying through the com, “what’s wrong? Why are you shivering?” By the buzzes and clicks coming from Farthum’s monitoring console, he knew that 11 was charging weapons, readying for the kill. The tac officer could tell, however, that 11 was confused, a confusion he shared hundred-fold.

———————

Tania is next.

Last summer, he saved up enough money from his lawn mowing to buy the game console of his dreams. Instead, he chose to buy himself a digital camera – a high-end point-and-shoot Canon S3. He uses it a lot, often taking 1,000 shots a day using different settings, and ends up with some really good images.

His school photography club is having an art show at a coffee shop downtown this month. Zach has three pictures on display. I was privileged to attend the artists’ reception with him last week.

Seeing his work framed and hung, contending very favorably with that of much more experienced photographers, was wonderful. He received lots of positive feedback at the event.

The club is primarily senior girls, and Zach is a fairly geeky sophomore boy. It was amusing to walk in, see all the girls cheerfully say hi, and watch him turn a hundred shades of red. Poor Zach.

I’ll probably buy one – or more – of his photos, just to support him and hang on our wall. Yes, I could print them out (again) for nearly free, but this teaches him copyright, pride in his work and the value of a unique piece of art.

On another subject entirely, work is wild and woolly this week, and I’m not finding any time to get online, write, or visit others’ sites. This too will pass. I hope.

Picture courtesy of Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m plenty afraid of failure. I’m a perfectionist par excellence, hate to make the slightest mistake, find criticism quite painful, and abhor spending time doing things I am bad at, like golf and softball.

I wonder, though, why I’m so adept at self-sabotage. I know plenty of other folks who suffer from this too, women in particular, although I don’t know how significant my anecdotal evidence is. I just happen to be close friends with more women than men.

So why is it that I start something new – say, writing short short fiction – and when I establish that it’s something I enjoy and might be able to do really well, I stop as if I’ve run into a wall?

The same applies to metalsmithing. I invest enough time and dollars on the subject to know that I love doing it, and demonstrate the ability to make some interesting and very wearable pieces, and then I just stop using my workshop.

Five or six years ago, I embarked on a highly disciplined diet and exercise program and lost about 80 lbs. (I needed to take off an additional 40 or so after that, but was still in the best health ever in the last 20 years.) And then, again, I ran into an invisible wall and made no further progress. In the years since, to my very great grief and regret, I’ve gained half of that back.

I can sure lay the excuse of time on the table. As a working wife and mom, I’m a constant multi-tasker and it’s difficult to find time to focus undivided attention on any one endeavor. I have to be really honest with myself, though – that’s not it! Exercise, discipline, creative projects can be fit in… we all spend our time and energy, like our money, where our priorities are. Or in this case, where our comfort zone is.

There’s something in me that’s at complete odds with my desire to excel, be extraordinary, accomplish tangible things. It’s as if I hold a flawed schema that tells myself I can’t possibly deserve success, so I need to stop now before a) I disappoint myself in a big way, and b) the world finds out how flawed I really am.

And so, I muddle along in mediocrity, dysfunctionally shutting myself down when I start thinking I can do anything special.

I need to figure out how to break through that wall.