Unwritten posts...

In my head I have composed at least 5 or 6 different blog posts over the past two weeks. One would have been title ‘intimated through admiration’ and would have talked about how I was struggling trying to quilt a top for Kathleen Loomis. I have always admired her work, and we have become close friends over the years after we met for the first time in a master class at Nancy Crow’s barn. She has entrusted me with two of her gorgeous tops and had given me the freedom to ‘do whatever you want’. When I suggested an idea for the first one, however, she didn’t like that one particularly, suggested something else and I started getting nervous because what she wanted isn’t easy to do on the longarm. I tried, but was thinking I was ruining her top, which resulted in stalled activity on my part. But we resolved the issue, and put off the second top for after the upcoming events that are keeping me very busy into June.

Another post would have been on important life decisions and how they are being taken.  Yet another one on the joy of the reopening of our open air pool which I consider to be the biggest asset of the small town we are living in, but which, as is sensible in German latitudes, closes from September through April, and we must be happy if it reopens on May 1^st already, and we don’t have to wait until the middle of the month. 

Then I went to the Nadelwelt in Karlsruhe and wanted to write about that, but by now I should know that it is virtually impossible to do that while the show is on if I still want to catch a sufficient amount of sleep… 

Plus, there are so many people who report about events like that that I have kind of decided that it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to keep adding to that. But I did teach a class, and I could have reported on how that went, as it was a new class…

In any case, I have been very busy. Also with the preparations for the Textile Art Symposium that will begin on the coming Monday. I collected all the handwritten samples of articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that I will use, and it was fascinating to see people’s reactions. With some articles I had been the person to suggest for some of the participants that they write this particular article. But at the beginning, when only a couple of articles had been chosen, I was thrilled about how people chose ‘their’ article because it meant a lot to them personally. And even in the later stages, when I was suggesting, it turned out that my suggestions coincided with people’s special interests. I had asked a woman from Brazil to write an article in Portuguese, and as she was the last one in the long line, it was article 15 that had not been done before. The article on the right to have and to change a nationality. It turns out she had wanted to do so, give up her Brazilian nationality to become only German to reduce difficulties and bureaucracy. But Brazil does not allow that. Once a Brazilian, you cannot give that up, so she had double citizenship. Brazil does not adhere to the UDHR in this aspect. The woman writing in Hungarian chose article 20, on freedom of press and freedom to assemble, because she thought that was something to vex the current leader. And it continued like that.

People I have been talking to about the project find it interesting. Some did not even know there is such a thing as a Universal Declaration of Human Rights…

Article 1 in Xhosa

I have started stitching and am making progress, although I still don’t know whether I will be able to finish during the week we will be working in the public realm behind the City Hall. And after we had the warmest and driest April since the beginning of weather data recordings it is turning cold, and is supposed to rain next week… Might have to retrieve my ski underwear which I have already packed away for the summer!

Then there are all the things I did not do. But I won't lament about that. Somebody suggested I might have a problem saying 'no', which I had never thought about. Given the fact that my mother claims 'no' was the first word I said I had never thought it might be a problem. And I don't think it is. It is a problem, though, that I think too many things are important and should be paid proper attention. What I need to learn, it seems, is, to find out early enough how much of my personal attention that needs to be.