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unfinished quilt top

When Gwen posted her phenomenal feathered star quilt, it brought back my quilting days from twenty years ago, when we lived in Istanbul. So I went hunting for this one, first upstairs in a dresser, then through several trunks and tubs in the barn. Finally, after tubs of fabric scraps, there it was. Poor neglected thing.

I made several quilts in those days twenty years ago, mostly simple ones to be used daily by my family.

I started piecing this one with fabrics I'd brought with me from the States.

Because I didn't have a sewing machine in Turkey, and I had lots of time on my hands, and because the Turkish women spent afternoons at tea doing handwork, I pieced the quilts by hand.

I don't have anything against machine piecing, but I think I can be more precise with hand piecing.

The border with the white, mauve and blue squares and triangles should be hanging down the edge of the bed. It would make the top look more unified. But I am too lazy to take another set of photos. :-D

I have one more row of border to sew together and onto the quilt top (up there at the head of the bed). Then I can layer it with batting and backing, baste, and start quilting.


Unfortunately, my hands and wrists aren't what they used to be, with all my computer work at the university, so I don't know if I'll ever finish it.


This is our little guest room upstairs, where I spend Sunday afternoons sometimes reading, writing and looking out the window at the farm. We bought the brass bed at a flea market for $20 and painted it.

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caught


The path through the little woods at the back of our five acres shows changes that have transpired through the winter. After the snow has melted, you can see the pine and spruce branches that have broken, fallen and gotten caught by other branches or vines.









Often needles and branches fall onto a neighboring tree of a different species. It's a simple thing, but I never tire of looking at the configurations these couplings make. The unity touches me.






And for a bonus, this pretty evergreen tree (sorry I don't remember the name) was covered with petals from the magnolia tree next to it at one of the gardens at my university.

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the band meridian

Here's hoping the technical difficulties will be resolved soon! I just reloaded the photos, hoping everyone will be able to see them. Blogger, please be well.



Click on photos to enlarge.

My nephew Paul, and his wife and kids came to the farm this weekend for a photo shoot of our son Peter's band Meridian for their new CD. We had SO MUCH FUN! Course it didn't hurt that a lot of photography happened. I followed Paul and the band around snapping my own pictures of the experience.

Mike Z, bass player, also has other talents:


Paul is a great photographer (a graphic designer by profession), and he led the guys through at least 10 scenarios in an hour and a half!

Here is Paul and Manda's third child, Aden, picking a queen anne's lace from last year in the meadow. It made me think about all the photographs we see, and what we don't see outside the frame. What else was going on around that scene, who was there, what was the mood?


The mood for us yesterday was happy, productive, and fun. I loved every minute.


Below, Brian is the lead singer, front. Then drummer Mark, Mike Z, then our son Peter, guitarist, in the back looking away.


They ended up in my studio, which Don and Peter fixed up for me (used to be a chicken coop). The light in there is great. In fact when Peter and Brian had a final photo session while they played, the sound was great too. Maybe it should be a sound studio too!



Aden, Eli and Lydia watched their dad shoot. Have you noticed how comfortable kids are with cameras these days?

If you haven't already, give a listen to Meridian by clicking here. You can also download their new album, "Listen to your breaking heart," which is wonderful, in my humble and unbiased opinion.

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baked oatmeal


Thank you to those who commented in the last post about wabi-sabi. I loved that conversation.

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Shirley at work gave me this recipe. It is delicious, satisfying, and it's handy to bake it, say in the evening, and reheat it through the week. I eat mine heated, with milk poured on. But you can slice and eat it on the go. Add anything to the dry mix that suits you: favorite nuts, blueberries (I'll try them next), other fruit, seeds, wheat germ, whatever.

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Baked Oatmeal:

2 ½ cups long cooking oatmeal ("old fashioned" - not "quick oats")
½ cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg (I leave this out)

1 cup milk
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp almond extract

2 Tbsp butter – melt in pan that you will bake oatmeal in in the oven while it's preheating

Mix dry ingredients in one bowl and wet ingredients in the other and mix together - it will be just moistened.

Bake @ 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes
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wabi . . sabi

Do you know about wabi-sabi

It's a Japanese concept, and like Feng Shui it can't be understood or acquired quickly or easily. It can take a lifetime to start to grasp its meaning.







I'm reading The Wabi-Sabi House: the Japanese art of imperfect beauty, by Robyn Griggs Lawrence.





Wabi is appreciating the aesthetic of "poverty" -
not indigence, but simple, humble, spare, minimalist
living.





Sabi is growing old with grace, having the patina of age, being weathered, rusty.







Together wabi-sabi is about slowing down.

It's about the beauty of things as they are, now, and as they age, valuing imperfection and transience.

It's about honoring material things.

It is uncluttering your space.

It is clean.

It's about authenticity.

It's "removing the huge weight of material concerns
from our lives."

It's doing more with less.

It's in tune with Nature.




Mostly it's about respect.

It's about being considerate of others.

"If you are always thinking of other persons,
you can understand the real wabi-sabi."





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radical & poo-free


Arthur Dove's 'Clouds and Water' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC

Daughter Lesley told me recently about a blog site she found of a small crafty businesswoman who posted a bunch of helpful tips for simple, green cleaning.

I haven't read about house cleaning there yet, but I will. I still have some Clorox Green cleaner to use up.

I did adopt the tips for facial care and shampoo-free hair care. She recommends this site for instructions on the poo-free hair care thing, and this site for the facial care thing.

Facial care:

I'll let you read the particulars at those sites if you're interested, but basically the facial care is merely cleansing your skin with equal parts olive oil and castor oil. Like she says, why would I put anything on my skin I wouldn't put in my mouth? I massage the oil onto my face at the end of the day, then lay a hot washcloth on it for a little facial. When the washcloth begins to cool, I gently clean and rub my face. It feels very soft when I'm done. I used to have flakiness around my chin and nose. Since cleaning my face with these oils, I have none.


Hair care:

The hair cleaning part is a little trickier, and I'm still figuring it out since we all have different hair types, lengths, etc. But since I already only washed my hair every 3 days before this, I was a good candidate to try it, since some people find that it takes a couple of weeks for their hair to adjust and stop generating extra oil, making their hair look greasy. Anyway, one tablespoon baking soda dissolved in warm water, massage into scalp and let sit a minute. Then rinse with a cup or so of water with a tablespoon or two of apple cider vinegar in it. I've done this twice now, and both times my hair was soft, bouncy and shiny. And it did not get the greasiness, thankfully. Please do look at those instructions for answers to questions. It does take some getting used to not having any lather. But that is just a psychological ploy someone taught us, that we need lather and suds to get things clean! Thems are chemicals that create that illusion - SLS and SLFS (sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium laureth sulfate) - YUCK.

As the woman at this site says, shampoo got introduced in the 20th century, it's a detergent, and it strips our hair of natural oils. So, conditioner had to be invented to put the oil back in. Pretty ridiculous, and pretty typical of much of our oh-so-modern world, la-di-da! (who said in a movie "la-di-frickin-da"? Was that Shirley MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment"? Oh! No! It was Chris Farley in "Saturday Night Live.")

It's funny how this feels so radical and new when it's not. I love that.
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blogging & daffodils


I've been blogging for a little more than 2 years. I really love it for the immediate gratification of instant publishing, and especially for the relationships that have begun and developed with friends and other bloggers, including members of my own family. And how fun to have new blogging friends within the last few weeks, since Don began his chicken blog and they came over from there.


Two years ago, almost to the day, I posted these same daffodils and I've been thinking about that this week.



Blogs give us a chance to show the continuity of our lives through personal details. My blog is called Synchronizing, inspired by the little handheld device I use to coordinate my PC work calendar which says "synchronizing" when the data is being shared between the computer and handheld via a port hookup. I thought it was an apt word and concept for what I was going through at the time, which was learning to live in the moment.

Two years later, I'm re-reading Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now because I need reminding. I'm not worried about enlightenment, I don't strive for it. But I need to practice, again, letting go of judgments and labels that separate me from people.

I'm grateful to the daffodils for reminding me that we're all connected, all hooked up under the surface. I also love living on this farm and feeling Nature's cycles infusing me with a new rhythm. Well, I guess it's a very old rhythm, isn't it.
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