What is it About a Suitcase?

Patchwork Illusions quilt – STACKED AND WRAPPED By Karen Combs

This is a beautiful quilt.  Absolutely no doubt about it.  And it should be; it was made by a real working fiber artist.  Karen Combs is a traveling fiber arts teacher, author and designer.  And this gorgeous work of Karen's hands and heart has been stolen.  This beautiful piece and all its sample-case brethren, along with everything Karen needs to teach a class, were taken through the broken window of her rental car when she taught in New Braunfels, Texas, this weekend.  That suitcase holds a lifetime of Karen's work, and is totally irreplaceable. 

Ask me how I know.

If you live in Texas, or anywhere else where the quilts could have ended up, please, please please, help Karen look for her lost loves.  And keep looking.  The two sweaters I got back were found by a knitter in a thrift store months later, because she never forgot what happened to me.

What a world.  I'm hoping that Karen will receive the love and kindness of her friends and students the way that I did when my samples were stolen.  The Knitters are Good.  And the Quilters are, too. 

Do your magic for dear Karen, won't you?  Send her your love, send her your righteous indignation. Send her your prayers for peace and comfort.  And if you quilt, or know somebody who does, buy a book (or two) from her, because replacing all her work is going to cost a fortune, when she's brave enough to start.  Can you imagine even the cost of a case big enough to hold a quilt collection?  Take it from me: the very best thing you can do to help is to buy books, tools and fabrics from Karen, because without her samples she's likely to lose precious teaching jobs, like I did. 

Click to go shopping at Karen's Store.

Please spread the word to keep a weather eye out for the quilts.  Close ranks around dear Karen like you did for me.  She will learn, like I have, that the power of love is greater than the agony of loss.
 

The Best Poem I Never Read

My mother once looked across a formal dinner table at me and smiled indulgently, in response to something I had just said.  "But you're just not very well-read, Darling," she drawled, sending Phillip, my then-fiancee and intellectual wunderkind into gales of strangled laughter. He believed otherwise, both then and now, or wouldn't have been much interested in a second date, never mind more.  Try not to judge my mom too harshly; she's a woman who, if presented with the Taj Mahal as a potential residence, would smile archly and say "Well, if you like MARBLE all that much...Personally, Ah think it's a little cold." Let's just say my mom's standards were high, in all arenas.  To this day, it's impossible for me or Phillip to quote any work of writing without inserting in air quotes, and "But of course, Ah'm not very well-read".

If you have seen my independently published patterns, you will know that I always include a selection of visual ephemera, and quotations that I find inspirational and germane.  Today I was looking around for such things to augment the Queen Bee pattern, and would you believe it?  I found the perfect poem to express the essence of the design, written by none other than E.B. White:  

Song of the Queen Bee
by E.B White
Published in New Yorker Magazine 1945

"The breeding of the bee," says a United States Department of Agriculture bulletin on artificial insemination, has always been handicapped by the fact that the queen mates in the air with whatever drone she encounters."

When the air is wine and the wind is free
and the morning sits on the lovely lea
and sunlight ripples on every tree
Then love-in-air is the thing for me
I’m a bee,
I’m a ravishing, rollicking, young queen bee,
That's me.
I wish to state that I think it’s great,
Oh, it’s simply rare in the upper air,
It’s the place to pair
With a bee.

Let old geneticists plot and plan,
They’re stuffy people, to a man;
Let gossips whisper behind their fan.
(Oh, she does?
Buzz, buzz, buzz!)
My nuptial flight is sheer delight;
I’m a giddy girl who likes to swirl,
To fly and soar
And fly some more,
I’m a bee.
And I wish to state that I’ll always mate
With whatever drone I encounter.

There’s a kind of a wild and glad elation
In the natural way of insemination;
Who thinks that love is a handicap
Is a fuddydud and a common sap,
For I am a queen and I am a bee,
I’m devil-may-care and I’m fancy-free,
The test tube doesn't appeal to me,
Not me,
I’m a bee.
And I’m here to state that I’ll always mate
With whatever drone I encounter.

Mares and cows, by calculating,
Improve themselves with loveless mating,
Let groundlings breed in the modern fashion,
I’ll stick to the air and the grand old passion;
I may be small and I’m just a bee
But I won’t have science improving me,
Not me,
I’m a bee.
On a day that’s fair with a wind that’s free,
Any old drone is a lad for me.

I’ve no flair for love moderne,
It’s far too studied, far too stern,
I’m just a bee—I’m wild, I’m free,
That’s me.
I can’t afford to be too choosy;
In every queen there’s a touch of floozy,
And it’s simply rare
In the upper air
And I wish to state
That I’ll always mate
With whatever drone I encounter.

Man is a fool for the latest movement,
He broods and broods on race improvement;
What boots it to improve a bee
If it means the end of ecstasy?
(He ought to be there
On a day that’s fair,
Oh, it’s simply rare.
For a bee.)

Man’s so wise he is growing foolish,
Some of his schemes are downright ghoulish;
He owns a bomb that’ll end creation
And he wants to change the sex relation,
He thinks that love is a handicap,
He’s a fuddydud, he’s a simple sap;
Man is a meddler, man’s a boob,
He looks for love in the depths of a tube,
His restless mind is forever ranging,
He thinks he’s advancing as long as he’s changing,
He cracks the atom, he racks his skull,
Man is meddlesome, man is dull,
Man is busy instead of idle,
Man is alarmingly suicidal,
Me, I am a bee.

I am a bee and I simply love it,
I am a bee and I’m darn glad of it,
I am a bee, I know about love:
You go upstairs, you go above,
You do not pause to dine or sup,
The sky won’t wait—it’s a long trip up;
You rise, you soar, you take the blue,
It’s you and me, kid, me and you,
It’s everything, it’s the nearest drone,
It’s never a thing that you find alone.
I’m a bee,
I’m free.

If any old farmer can keep and hive me,
Then any old drone may catch and wife me;
I’m sorry for creatures who cannot pair
On a gorgeous day in the upper air,
I’m sorry for cows that have to boast
Of affairs they’ve had by parcel post,
I’m sorry for a man with his plots and guile,
His test-tube manner, his test-tube smile;
I’ll multiply and I’ll increase
As I always have—by mere caprice;
For I am a queen and I am a bee,
I’m devil-may-care and I’m fancy-free,
Love-in-air is the thing for me,
Oh, it’s simply rare
In the beautiful air,
And I wish to state
That I’ll always mate
With whatever drone I encounter. 

I share it here with you, Gentle Readers, because it really says it all. But of course, I'm just not very well-read...

String + Color

I went over to play at a friend's house last week.  Now, taking time out to play is always a beautiful thing, and doing it with a great friend is even better.  But when the friend is Tina Newton, well, let's just say that Tina knows how to play on a whole other level from most:

"Let's go to the barn and play with dye!" she said. "Okay, if you're going to make me!" I said.  "Go pick out a yarn base."  Were more beautiful words ever spoken?  I pinched myself.  I surveyed the choices:  Socks That Rock (in three wonderful weights), Woobu (wool + bamboo), Marine Silk (seacell with wool and silk)...There is no end to the wonder in string.  I felt like I might have to lay down.  And then I clapped eyes on Silkie Socks That Rock.  It has everything:  The crazy twist of my beloved STR, plus a strand of pure Bombyx silk.  The fluff!  The bounce!  The sparkle of that silk!  I was smitten.  Tina threw piles of it into a bucket to soak...

And then we got out "practice" skeins.  Guess what you get to "practice" on when you play with Tina?  MORE STR.  Lightweight this time.  Tina went straight to the dyepots and picked out three or four, without any hesitation.  She knew exactly what colors she wanted for me.  First we made this:

It's deep, and vibrant, and more than just a little sassy.  But Tina wanted it to be more layered and complicated.

So then we made this one:  

It's moody and mysterious, and super-sexy.  But I said I wanted it to be sparkly, which meant that it needed more light areas.

And this happened next:

This one has just the right balance between depth and sparkle.  And then:

Tina pulled out the Silkie STR and we squirted and squished all the right colors onto all the right places.  I felt a little faint.  And a little bit of what it must be like to be the fabulous Ms. Newton:  This kind of power should not be wielded lightly.

I'm pretty sure the Dyers are going to take over the world.  And when they do, we will all happily do whatever they say, because they know how to make the string beautiful.  And they do it with such generosity and magnificence that the rest of us are just blessed to know them.  

Oh, and in case you're wondering, my very own Blue Moon yarn color is called "Quite Contrary", and you can have it, too.  Just call up and ask for some, on whatever kind of string you like best.  Lucky, Lucky, Lucky Us.