There was a time not so very long ago when I had moved to Washington, that I figured out a few slick subway train transfers within the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which is called “WMATA” for short, which sound’s like something Tony Spaghetti’s big brother says to the pipsqueak who’s lookin’ at him funny:
“Ey, yew! Yeah, yew, kid. You keep lookin’ at me and my brotha like that, I’ma wamata ya right in ya gavone face. Capishe?”
Anyway, there I am in Washington, and I’m stepping out from the Red Line to Shady Grove to the Gallery Place/Chinatown station because I need to transfer to the Green; you can catch the Green Line there, as well as the Yellow Line. As I did that, I recalled how I know the NYC Metro 6 line pretty well and the Q, and that I used to take the 1 train up to the Upper West Side to get to The Yarn Company to sew because there was no room to sew in the tiny, tiny, I-hate-you tiny apartment I was living in with Yuri.
A few weeks after the WMATA moment, thinking deeply about two cities’ subway systems, I was in Chicago for a weekend and, wow, I know the train system here like the back of my hand, which, after at least thirty years (do two-year-olds consider the backs of their hands?) I know pretty well.
All these train maps in my head and the solid knowledge I have of navigating them came together and I felt like a monkey swinging from one big vine. Shoop! The L train in Manhattan that crosses the Lower East Side over to the west side. Shoop! Down from Cleveland Park in DC to get the Orange Line to Eastern Market. And then, that first, peaceful ride on Chicago’s Orange Line to go to Midway to catch a flight, knowing I’d be coming back on the same tracks.
The other day, though, I went down into the lower level of the Chase building because I thought there was a post office down there; I realized when I couldn’t find the post office that I was thinking of a post office in the basement of a building in Penn Quarter in DC. That was weird.
Unidentified man with unidentified object that is too cute to be human, puppy, or kitten. Photo: Me, carefully.
My mom is in town for the lighting of the first (or “beta”) test of The Wabash Lights. We had plans to meet at the new Maggie Daley Park Ice Skating Ribbon. Mom and I love to skate; we both love it enough and are good enough to have our own skates. Stand in line for rentals? Not these girls. We just lace up and go.
Mom lost her phone, though (first time in her life), so she had to deal with that this afternoon. The last time we communicated was earlier in the day via email; as of then, the plan stood. So I went to the Ribbon at the appointed time, but no Mom. I couldn’t call her. She couldn’t call me. So I skated by myself until she showed up. For an hour, with no headphones, no pal to chat with, I skated round and round that magnificent ribbon. It’s less of a “view” you get than a “movie” you get on that thing. You get a moving picture and you’re the thing moving and the air is crisp as can be. The city of Chicago is the sky below the sky and the endless blue of Lake Michigan rounds out the whole world. They did a really, really good job with this thing.
I love this city so much. The Ribbon is one more reason to be a jerk about how much better this city is than any other city now or ever. But what I really want to talk about is that baby.
There is good in the world. Because nothing could be cuter or more wonderful than this baby. Strapped tight into its little snuggly, winging around on its dad’s back as he deftly — and carefully, I assure you — maneuvered the Ribbon, this baby is everything. I have other pictures. I tried so hard to not be weird, but I had to take pictures of this baby. This is the best one I got, I think. I’m on Instagram, so follow me for more of the Perfect Ribbon Baby images that I cannot stop looking at. You will not be disappointed.
The accessory pattern: tote, wristlet, and plucky headscarf.
In 1870, a Scottish immigrant named James McCall — odd, because “McCall” doesn’t sound Scottish — put out an “illustrated guide” to a pair of gloves he was manufacturing. The McCall’s pattern was born.
Fast forward nearly 150 years, and I’m posting a picture of a McCall’s pattern on a phantasmagorical thing called the Internet. What would James McCall think? He’d probably go look at the books and see how his company was doing and whether or not it was being publicly traded. (I think it is, but it’s confusing.)
When the Small Wonders line was shown to the nice people at McCall’s by the fine folks at Springs Creative, they liked it a lot. In fact, they were immediately inspired. They felt the line could be put to use in their business. When making garments and the sewn accessory, larger-scale prints may be harder to work with for folks who don’t do these things on a professional level. Matching seams becomes a bit trickier; a large flower gets chopped in half and suddenly looks like something from Little Shop of Horrors and you just hope no one looks at you from the back. A toile can give fits. A damask languishes in the stash. Projects stall.
The small print is a lovely choice for an apron, say, or a painfully adorable romper outfit for a baby, because these problems cannot occur. Besides, tulips are cute. So McCall’s and Springs joined together and I worked with McCall’s to create an 8-piece pattern line for sewists. These are bag, accessory, and clothing patterns and I’m so pleased with them because I know you will be, also. And I’ve never claimed I was a garment-sewing person; I’m not, though I’ve made bags in my day. No, I’m just the fabric designer and pored over patterns until I found the ones that fit the best. It’s interesting to note that these are the first patterns McCall’s has produced for independent retailers in…ever.
Today, I’m giving away a 3-pack of these patterns — which, again, are available only at local quilt shops and independent online retailers like Fabric Depot, Missouri Star, etc. The 3-pack goes to Ms. Lou, who made an adorable bag of her own from the China group of Small Wonders. I think you’ll like the bag patterns you’ll be receiving in the mail soon, friend. You’re getting the pattern above, plus the painfully adorable romper outfit, plus the girl dress with matching doll dress one.*
Congratulations, Ms. Lou. Send me your mailing address (smallwonderswednesday @ gmail) — and you keep totin’.
*I was never the girl with a dress that matched my doll. So I’m passing my pain onto the world to fix. Everything always works out.
Welcome to today’s existential pain. Date + Scan: Me
Earlier today, I flung onto my couch and slammed my knee right where the two cushions come together in the center of it. I had never hurt my knee flinging before, so I investigated. Ah. There was a big ballpoint pen in there and I had landed straight on it.
The pen wasn’t all that was in the couch. As I looked, I realized that I was looking at 1.5 years of other people’s couch cushion stuff. Don’t worry; there wasn’t anything wet. Just a peanut, some hair. A quarter. Pink fibers from a pink blanket. That damned pen.
And I found pink post-it note with my handwriting on it. It said “AUG 29th”, a date important enough to be singled out for its own neon pink post-it note to be stuck someplace where I’d see it. The post-it has to be at least three years old. Because on August 29th, 2015, I was in Washington, D.C. On August 29th, 2014, I was in New York City. This note has to be from 2013 or 2012; I got the couch in 2011 but I’m pretty sure I’ve cleaned the couch since then.
Being a dedicated journal-keeper, I have the luxury — or the bad luck — of going back to the books. I write in my journal a lot, but it’s not every single last day that I write; there are days I don’t. But it appears I have entries on August 29th, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. I thought I’d pull one line from each for you. I think each line sums up pretty nicely what my life was like that summer, if not that year. Note: “dumping” was what I called it when my ileostomy would just dump liter after liter of liquid/fluid out of my ostomy and I couldn’t get it “stopped up,” if you will. It sucked when that happened and I would get extremely tired and dehydrated.
August 29th, 2011: “But my stomach flips inside me like a fish and I’m dumping today; can’t fill the hole, the hole. It’s probably good I’m going to Iowa to film TV.”
August 29th, 2012: “I’m putting myself on a white wine diet.”
August 29th, 2013: “The reality of love is pile-driving me and the wind that it has knocked out of me is stale in comparison to the air we breathe in bed. He cannot be unmagical to me. He cannot be wrong.”
August 29th, 2014: “Day by day. Meal by meal. Cooky by warm cooky. Earnest conversation by earnest conversation.”
August 29th, 2015: “The summer isn’t quite over, but everyone is assuming the close. I so look forward to the fall, even if the Autumn Dread grips me possibly tighter than ever. Statistically, I should have an easy year in that respect; 2012 and 2013 were both heavy with hospital in the fall. Can every autumn be a crisis?”
When something like this post-it happens, I realize that it’s so painful to have these books. But they’re my life. Literally: they are my life. If I go, they go. If they go, I probably will, too.
Each post on PaperGirl is paired with a single image. Every once in awhile I’ll use a picture or photo I took or doctored myself, but most of the time I get my images from Wikipedia. More specifically, I find them in Wikipedia’s image repository, WikiCommons. There are 30 million images at WikiCommons; naturally, this number is growing every second because the Internet has only just begun to live.
Every image at WikiCommons is in the public domain. This is great, because it’s actually illegal to post a picture in a blog that you don’t have permission to post. You think no one cares, you think it’s not a big deal to just use the image, but it actually is a problem. Aside from it being ethically dubious, you actually can get stomped for it and fined — sometimes a lot. I had one close call a couple years ago and decided better safe than sorry: I’d play by the rules and only use public domain images for the blog.
Let me tell you: it ain’t easy. WikiCommons is my go-to source and man, is there ever some junk up in WikiCommons. Because like Wikipedia, anyone can edit, upload, and contribute to the Commons — and people edit, upload, and contribute weird, pointless, bizarre, unappetizing, scary, unidentifiable things. The search engine is strange, or maybe it’s how the contributors tag the photos, I’m not sure, but when you hit “search” for something, just sit back and wait to be confused. No, really; go to WikiCommons and search “baby rattle.” You’ll get an old drawing of a baby with a rattle, a sound file of a baby rattle, a picture of a coiled rattlesnake — presumably a young one — several posters of birds, and a scanned copy of the Guantanamo Bay Gazette. The upside is that you can use all those files free of charge. As many times as you want. Forever.
The other day I was looking for something totally unrelated and I found the wonderful card illustration up top. That’s also what can happen with WikiCommons: you’re sifting through underexposed, amateur pictures from a wedding in 1981 in deep Slovakia and bam — a snapshot of a kid and his grandpa fishing in Thailand that takes your breath away. This is a valentine from 1904, which as we can see was a leap year. My friends, this is my early valentine to you. How cool is this? (We’re in a leap year, you know.) I’ll allow an outside link today so you can make sure to get to this image; it’s very fortunate that this image comes in a really big size: click to download the biggest size you can (a 3,857, 2, 309 dpi) and perhaps pass it on to someone you love this year.
Thanks, WikiCommons. And I’ve been donating $10 each month for several years, so please stop emailing me about the pledge drive.
I’m under the weather. I’m body-achy, I’ve got heavy-head-on-necky, and my eyeballs are dry. I’m serious, they’re dry. I continually require drops. What can it mean?
Perhaps the two-hour walk I took yesterday evening pushed me into this. The night was colder than I anticipated. I had been out earlier and it wasn’t too bad, but the temperature had dropped. Not realizing this, I made a suboptimal coat decision.
I needed to walk. I had no destination, just the desire to get out, move my legs. Sometimes I work all day and realize at 7pm that I haven’t gone anywhere but from my desk to the kitchen to the couch and back. This doesn’t bother me, usually. But a brutal nightmare woke me from my power nap that afternoon and the hours following that were just weird. I felt weird, I felt sad. A walk seemed the thing to do, so I grabbed my wallet and my favorite tote bag and hit Wabash Avenue.
Nietzsche said that the best thoughts are conceived while walking. I think he was right on that one; the rhythm of your feet helps sort things out up top. I was sorting out but not liking what piles were forming and actually going deeper into my funk…when the glowing lights of a Staples store shone in the distance and I immediately felt one-thousand times better.
I love office supplies. I squeal when I unscrew a fresh bottle of Wite-Out. I can’t talk about PaperMate felt-tip pens or I’ll need a hanky. The small, sturdy boxes with staples inside. Paperclips! Folders of all colors and styles: hanging, tabbed, pocket, no-pocket, etc. Tabs. All the tabs. Stickers. My mother says that if you love office supplies, you’ll love making quilts. I think the converse is true, as well: if you make quilts, you probably love office supplies. My little sister and I used to play “School” up in the toy room on the farm. I thought about that as I floated through the aisles last night. This is the difference between kids and adults. We do not play “Work” after we get home.
As a rule, I don’t shop for entertainment. When I go into a store, I’m there for a reason, for an errand. But last night, I needed to go up and down the aisles, touch office supplies, and select some to put into my handbasket. An hour before closing, it was pretty much just me and the two employees in the store and they couldn’t have cared less about me. I had the place to myself. I studied paper. I deliberated over the thin highlighters or the thick ones. I considered purchasing a slim spiral folder with the bend-back cover that I don’t need but might need soon. I put that back, barely.
It helped. Sometimes I resist taking a walk because taking a walk for no reason, by myself, can seem sort of pathetic. But that’s silly. Walking is a noble thing to do. Even if the chill I got made me sickly, the walk snapped me out of myself, which is what I needed. It snapped me out of myself and into Staples and here I am.
Hotcakes. Photo: A mysterious hotcake hanging around the booth.
Sorry about yesterday. I was found not guilty of being a witch, but I can’t say the same about my friend Goody. She’s… Well, she really is a witch, so I guess justice was done.
Back to the fun. See those totebags up there? They exist only in my memory and in the hands of the few who grabbed one at Fall Quilt Market a few months ago. What you see above is a limited edition item, like a 45” of an early Beatles record only released in Kuala Lumpur. I’m telling you, I had to scrounge to find one to offer as this week’s prize.
The Heart Plus. Cute World Piece icons. Feminine, but masculine with the canvas and all. Sexy stuff, even though my name is on it. You could cross that out and write your name. It’s your bag, baby. For a price.
If you’re familiar with my quilts, you know I love quilt blocks. Scroll down 4-5 pictures on my Facebook page and you’ll see a quilt top I recently finished that proves it. (I’m planning to do 9,000 more kaleidoscope quilts in the future because good heavens, so gorgeous. The next one will be with — wait for it — the Small Wonders line, India specifically.)
You don’t have to make a kaleidoscope quilt to win the tote, don’t worry. You don’t even have to make a kaleidoscope block, which would be four quadrants or more, by the way. But make a quilt block using Small Wonders — France, China, South America, USA, Netherlands, or India — and email me a picture. I’ll pick a winner, and you’ll be the envy of your guild when you walk in all fancy with your tote. “Oh, this totebag?” you’ll say, nonchalant. “I almost forgot which one I grabbed. Where are the cookie bars?”
**Important! I never use a single group when I make quilts. I mix. That’s why I have all this pre-washed fabric! So you don’t have to use only Small Wonders. Butat least one of the fabrics needs to be SM, okay? It’s gotta highlight the fabric or you might be shooting yourself in the pincushion. Ouch!
Email me a picture of your block at smallwonderswednesday @ gmail.com. Winner picked in two weeks, and I’ll post your block on my Facebook page and your totebag will be delivered via Pajamagram. The cool thing about this contest is that you might really, really love that block and you’re already one block down.
*Actual prize may or may not be delivered via Pajamagram.
Until we meet again, this picture of a fan at Fall Market. She was stealing that totebag. Because they were a limited edition. HINT, HINT. Photo: Me + Samsung
I’m being eaten by tigers in Siberia!
No, I’m being tried as a witch in Roanoke!
No, I’m Harry Houdini’s assistant and have actually been sawn in half!
Small Wonders Wednesday is happening tomorrow instead of today because clearly, I am not well. Thanks for your patience. Tomorrow’s promotional post will be worth the wait.
I have been making a lot of pesto lately. Most of the items in my fridge right now are just vehicles for this pesto. I learned how to make it in Iowa City when I worked at The Motley Cow Cafe my last two years in college. I’m drumming up a PaperGirl mini-series on that experience. High-stakes drama, bodice-ripping, love triangles, salmon papillote — fascinating times. (Jeff, I remain ashamed about Charlottesville.)
Not long ago, Claus was coming over for dinner. I texted him to please pick up pine nuts because I was going to make my pesto and had forgotten that important ingredient. But the text was not received; Claus did not bring a single pine nut with him. I huffed and puffed; the man, much like me, neverturns on his phone. I got my coat and went to get the dang nuts myself, when he said, “Let’s just eat something else.” No! Pesto! Then I realized I had walnuts in the pantry. Wasn’t walnut pesto a thing? I seemed to remember that it was.
It’s a thing, all right — and to my taste, walnut pesto is far superior to pine nut pesto. I’ll never go back. Pine nuts grind down almost to butter, while walnuts retain some body. Pesto is supposed to be a paste, sure, but walnuts lend a fantastic texture. That night, necessity was the mother of realization, and I’d like to share my excitement. This recipe is similar to my Cheesy Biscuits For All recipe, which is to say it’s rough — but I stand by it 100%. If you prefer a more precise recipe, may I show you something in life-altering chocolate cake?
PaperGirl Pesto
*You’ll need a food processor to make this.*
Ingredients A big thing of basil from the produce section of the grocery store Olive oil (a lot) A passel of raw, whole walnuts (make sure they’re not old — old nuts are so gross) Couple shallots Decent-sized clove of garlic, if you like garlic Parmesan cheese (a big hunk of it and don’t use the powdered stuff! Don’t even have that stuff in your fridge! Buy a hunk of Parmesan cheese for your fridge and grate it onto your food fresh! It’s such a small thing and it makes such a big difference in life! Got it? Okay, good!) Kosher salt Cracked black pepper
NOTE: “But how many cups of walnuts is in a passel?? And how much cheese? What does “a lot” mean?? This is madness.” I don’t know the answers to your questions. Really, I don’t. But I don’t have to know, and neither do you. Just look at pictures of pesto. Think about how pesto tastes. Pesto is mostly nuts and basil, right? Right. And it’s oily. And it’s got a savory, almost onion-y flavor, and the tang of the Parmesan. Think on these things and then just go with your sense. It’s ratios. You’ll know what to do.
Directions 1. Fill a big bowl with water and float the basil in it. The dirt, sand, etc. will fall down to the bottom of the bowl. I don’t know if I have to do it this way, but when I wash basil in a colander, it gets depressed. Shake off water, blot with a paper towel.
2. In a pan on the stove, roast the nuts on a low heat. You don’t want to actually toast your walnuts, just “release the aroma” of them, as they say in Fancy Food Blogs That Don’t Know I Exist. Set aside. Don’t burn those nuts. Yuck.
3. Dice up those shallots. Same with garlic. Get olive oil in pan. Roast your shallots and garlic. People will come into the kitchen and ask you what you’re making. Say, “Go away. I’m doing something for the first time. I’ll let you know if it works out.” When the shallots and/or onion are translucent, set aside.
4. Pick stems off basil. Throw stems out, throw the leaves in a food processor. Put shallot and/or garlic mush in food processor, too. Dump in your walnuts.
5. Oh, I forgot to tell you: get that hunk of Parmesan and grate it. You can have too much Parm in your pesto, so don’t go overboard, here. And remember that Parm tastes salty, so when you add salt to your green sludge, go easy on it. You can’t unsalt.
6. Pour some olive oil into the food processor bowl with all the other stuff in there already. You’ll be surprised how much oil is in pesto. Because you don’t want crumbled green stuff; you want a paste. You want to spread this stuff on bread, or steak, or on someone’s face. Smooth. Almost creamy. So pour it in, baby.
7. Salt and pepper. See #5 for a word about salt. Now hit the button and watch the green sludge begin to blend and swirl.
8. Unlock the bowl, stick a finger in there. What do you think? Do you have nuts left? Do you need to put more in? Is it smooth enough? Is it amazing? Yeah! You did it! It’s tough to un-salt, and it’s hard to put more basil in your pesto if you’re out, and yeah, you might’ve put too much oil in this time but you can pour some of that off and with enough wine, no one will notice. But I bet you did pretty well your first time out!
There are $100 bills inside each of these Welsh cakes. Photo: Wikipedia
When I sew, I listen to podcasts or no-eyeballs-needed television.
I’m impressed by people who can sew and watch Empire at the same time. The last time I tried to stitch while watching television with a plot (a cheap plot, even!) was years ago. I got dizzy snapping my head up to see what was going on then snapping it back down to make sure I didn’t sew my hand. But like a bonobo ape, it’s good for me to see fellow creatures from time to time, even if I’m in isolation. So if I’m sewing for many hours I’ll use my laptop as a TV and watch Hoarders or Kitchen Nightmares or The Profit.These shows require nothing of me. They have no plot, the structure is always the same. It’s the visual equivalent of white noise and I like it.
Looking for something mindless but tired of The Biggest Loser, today I found The Great British Bake Off on the list of shows Netflix wants me to watch. I like baking. I like British people. I like shows where talented people compete against each other to make pencil skirts, houses, crudite, etc. I clicked on the show and semi-watched many episodes while I pressed and snipped.
The show is really adorable. It’s a reality gameshow that pits amateur British bakers against each other to see who will win the title of Star Baker. There are two lady hosts, a stern main judge (a Tom Colicchio-type from Top Chef) and the head/celebrity judge, legendary English baker Mary Berry. The contestants are all gentle and kind, just as bakers ought to be; no one is growling or rolling their eyes at their competitors. Everyone’s just trying their best in the Florentine challenge, hoping for a win in the savory biscuit episode. The show is filmed in a pretty bakery tent set in the English countryside, Union Jack bunting tied up with string, bobbing in the breeze. Nobody even talks about winning. Seriously, they just bake beautiful things. When someone is eliminated they’re very British about it and leave their rolling pin (or whatever it is) on the table and give a “Cheerio!” to us.
But Mary Berry is the best part. She’s in her seventies, I think. Coiffed to perfection. Expensive neck scarves. Perfect manicure. When she tastes a contestant’s work, she nibbles it, brow furrowed and then says things like,“You formed the dough ’round a tin, then? Perfect. Just lovely. It’s quite difficult to do pinwheel biscuits and get them tight ’round the center; bit like a Swiss Roll, isn’t it?”
Or: “Bit soft in the middle, isn’t it? But good effort.” Or: “I think it’s enchanting and I love the brandy snaps she’s got there on the roof. Scrumptious!”
I was glad I looked up when Mary learned a contestant had used store-bought fondant instead of making it himself. She positively darkened. The contestant is no longer in the running for Star Baker. The Great British Bake Off is going to be tough for me; it’s not something to which I want to give my undivided attention, but there’s too much frosting and spongecake happening on the screen to look away for too long. I’ll try again tomorrow evening and see if I can sew an accurate quarter-inch seam while it’s on.
And, in the spirit of sugar and bakery items, I am suddenly forced to confess that I keep a jar of Pillsbury FunFetti frosting in my fridge and frequently have to replace it. Because I eat it. With a spoon. Sometimes.
A horse asks two children for directions in Montreal. Photo: Wikipedia
I’d like to start my “I’m going to Canada!” announcement by saying hi to my only-but-who-needs-anyone-else Canadian friend, Cheryl Arkison. Hi, Cheryl Arkison! I’m coming to Canada! Unfortunately, your country is enormous and there’s no way I can drop by for a cup of tea. I’m going toward Ottawa; you live in Calgary. I looked up how far away Ottawa is from Calgary. It’s two-thousand miles! Google Maps tells you to go through Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota to get there! Who does that?!
Indeed, I’m going to Canada in a few weeks for six or seven days. It’s high time I visited my neighbors to the cold, cold north, and I’m thinking about moving there. It’ll be easy: I’ll rent my apartment, sign a lease (sight-unseen), ship some boxes. What could go wrong?
My end-of-February trip to Canada is partly for business, partly for the pleasure of high-fiving Canada. Many years ago I went to visit a college chum who lived in Seattle. We drove up to Vancouver and I remember being freaked out by the large number of heroin addicts on a street downtown, but I also remember cobblestone streets and friendly people walking them. It was rainy, but no more than Seattle, and Seattle doesn’t have Stanley Park, which has something to do with a governor and the Stanley Cup because hockey.
This is a car trip, not an airplane one, so that will be neat, especially if there are bears! Our route will hit Niagara Falls, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal; after our final stop on the tour, we’ll turn around and come back to Chicago, which may feel temperate after our journey through a country closer to Antartica.
Cheryl, I wrote an entire paragraph about how I wasn’t going to trot out references to maple syrup, Mounties, the Canadian accent, etc., but then remembered I shouldn’t write checks my you-know-what can’t cash and I can’t cash my checks because you guys have different money.
Me, not so much. Perhaps because of the story below. Photo: Wikipedia
Starting when I was in fourth grade, my sisters, my mom and I were on our own. Divorce had axed our family and as my sisters and I picked splinters out of our hair, Mom went about basically gut-rehabbing — by herself — my Aunt Katherine and late Uncle Rodney’s house in town. The house wasn’t habitable for months and we couldn’t go back to the family farm, so we stayed with friends until we could move in. I still remember the smell of paint when we finally slept in the house on Jefferson Street. I will always love the smell of fresh paint.
Our home was constantly full of people. Rebecca was in elementary school and had her best friends over for sleepovers; I was in junior high and not a total social leper so I was able to entertain; Hannah was in high school and her crew was large and left-of-center, so there were usually interesting conversations going on in the kitchen and the backyard because the kitchen had a fridge and the backyard had a hammock.
The dinner table was big enough for us and at least three friends. But when Mom wasn’t on a business trip (I go on these same trips today, something I never anticipated and cannot imagine doing with three daughters at home) so most of the time it was just the four of us. We talked and talked and shared all the stories from school and Mom’s trips. We laughed, we fought. Hannah did this thing where she’d steal Rebecca’s milk when Biccy wasn’t looking and it drove my little sister crazy. Again and again, Hannah would steal her milk and finally had to stop when Rebecca got big enough to successfully execute sororicide.* But there was another kind of dinner.
My family is a reading family, but we weren’t allowed to read at the table. But there would be times when Mom would call us all to dinner and all of us — Mom included — would put down whatever book we were engrossed in and loaf to the dinner table, reluctant to stop reading. Those nights, we weren’t interested in talking because we were still thinking about our books. The table would be pretty quiet. Then Mom would look at us, slurping pasta. We’d look at Mom, drinking her milk. She’d smile and whisper in a mischievous way:
“Let’s just read!”
We’d whoop and all run for our books and finish dinner together in silence, turning pages, until we were full.
*It’s true. There’s a word for murdering your sister. Share it with any fifteen-year-old in your life who has a ten-year-old sister. She’ll love it.
She looks lovely, there, slowly going insane. “Ophelia” by John William Waterhouse, 1889.
A handsome German philosophy professor reminded me recently that “Europeans work so that we can live. Americans live to work.” I reminded him that Americans were the reason the Allies won the war and I patted him on the shoulder.
It’s true, though. I’m up here in Door County and though I’ve had a string of hours here and there of feeling a world away from responsibility and labor, I come back from this world and feel anxious I was away so long. This is not a quality I admire in myself. Writer Annie Dillard once said, “How you spend your days is how you spend your life.” Consider that: How you spend your days is how you spend your life.
I spend my days working toward some sort of floating cloud of satisfaction. Here are three accomplishments that didn’t satisfy me enough to say, “I got to the cloud and I’m good.”
1. Going to the senior prom with a popular guy
Jed, you basically made senior year for me and it’s okay you didn’t kiss me. You were really tall, so maybe that’s why. You could’ve hurt your back. It’s cool. 2. Graduating from college
I was even valedictorian of my department, which just gave me bragging rights and excruciating pressure to give a good speech at commencement. I didn’t knock it out of the park, but it’s cool. 3. Making Quilty the show and being editor of Quilty magazine.
I left the magazine and it closed, but it’s cool.
There are many more examples. The worst part is that doctors, the media, our grandmothers, our German philosophy professors, they all tell us that stress is bad and that we should relax, take time off. I am getting better at this; the road trip this summer was good for me, very good. But the pressure to relax is twisted.
Here at thirty-six years old, I have discovered that one slice of relaxation and non-work — just one slice — per day is possible. Tea in the morning with no computer. Eating lunch at the table or on the couch in silence: no radio, TV, or Internet allowed. Taking a walk with a German philosophy professor. This way, I can say that how I spend my days is how I spend my life: busy, but with breaks.
The designer in me wears glasses. Photo: Springs Creative
Today is Small Wonders Wednesday, and that means there are parties happening all over the world, many which begin at dawn and last for three days. The Small Wonders festivals draw 100,000+ people at a time and there are vendors, concerts, and dozens of food trucks. None of this is true, but we’re working on it.
Nope, Small Wonders Wednesday means giveaways, contests, prizes, things like that, all related to a beautiful line of fabric featuring archival prints from the Civil War-era to the Depression-era, from the 1870s to the 1970s and back. The line is Small Wonders: all small-scale prints that are as irresistible as that bag of Dove chocolates in your desk drawer. The first group is “World Piece” and features tiny icons and prints representing those continents/countries on cotton fabric. You can get the fabric at your LQS or online at many fine online fabric retailers.
All the fabric in the world won’t do you much good if you don’t have a beautiful sewing machine, though. Well, you could win one. We’re in the first month of the Small Wonders BabyLock Quilt Contest. A BabyLock Lyric is yours if yours is the winning quilt — and you get a bunch more really, really great prizes for that 1st place spot. But if you’re runner up, you’re still showered with prizes. The 3rd place winners get goodie bags, too, so there are opportunities for winning all over the place. Entries opened January 1st and will close March 31st. Entries are coming in, but you’ve got plenty of time to whip something up. Win or not, you will have a great time playing with the fabric and you’ll have a quilt at the end of your efforts.
I’m interested in the guy in the background who looks like he’s about to mow down his livestock with a wood-chopping axe. 1820’s illustration courtesy Wikipedia.
I’m in Door County and will stay for about a week. There are many fun things to see and do up here. The last time I was at our family’s lake house there was a wedding taking place. There are no weddings going on right now because a) no one is engaged and b) hypothermia is real.
Washington Island is cold this time of year. Right now it’s five degrees outside. The Island has a year-round population of 660, which means 660 people don’t think a winter this cold and snowy is that big of a deal, though I think the number is misleading: there have to be some folks who take off for Daytona Beach for, say, the months of January and February. They’d still count as year-round, probably.
But cold and the ice make beautiful air and beautiful pictures, and that I’m here at all proves I like that air and those pictures a lot. When a bright sun shines off a subzero Lake Michigan and you’re on the puffy couch, with tea, counting swans, you don’t mind that you have to wear two coats later and pull on actual long underwear if you want to go on a walk.
Today, I fell through the ice on the lake and that was not great. When I say I “fell through the ice,” I mean that I fell through the ice. And when I say I fell through the ice, I meant that I took one step, then another step, then fell through the ice. I was not submerged. But I went down and I felt water. I was walking on the table rocks at the shore and, like an idiot, pranced over to look at a plant completely encased in ice that looked like glass and did not picture in my mind what the ground is like when it is not covered in ice, itself: big rocks with lots of spaces between them. In the summer, water is flowing around these rocks. Ergo, in winter, ice around the rocks. Ice that will surely be varying levels of thickness.
I’m okay. No blood, just sputtering. And don’t worry, I wasn’t alone. Claus was with me. When he heard the crash-splash, he ran to make sure I was okay but he didn’t come too far out on the ice. He could see I was going to make it. And I did; I made it back into the house and then I made minestrone and everything was fine.
Dancers at a rave. Experimental photograph by Rick Doble courtesy Wikipedia.
When I was in high school, my older sister and I snuck out of the house and went to raves in Des Moines.
My mom knows now. We told her years later that Hannah and I would wait till she and Rebecca (our younger sister) were asleep then open a second floor bedroom window and jump to the ground below. I did that in platform heels, once. Youth is not only wasted on the young, it gifts and forgives and protects the young. I should’ve broken my ankle or my neck. Instead, I just went, “Did you see that?! Did I get a grass stain on my butt? No? Okay, let’s go!”
Raves, for those who were not in high school, college, or the club kid scene in Manhattan in the mid-90s, were just dance parties. It was the music that distinguished them from a bunny hop or a prom or a Sadie Hawkins dance. At raves, this newfangled “techno” music was blasted through giant speakers. Techno — and I’m ashamed to reduce it down so far but it’s late — is an electronic music melange of Chicago house, jazz, deep African rhythms, and the concept that in late-capitalist America, the Body and the Machine are pretty close to becoming the same thing. But it’s got a catchy beat! And you can dance to it! (Seriously: you can really, really dance to it. I learned to dance to it, in fact, and I feel like I can actually cut a rug to most genres of music and I owe this to Fatboy Slim.)
My hometown of Winterset, IA, had a population of 5,000. Des Moines was the closest city and close enough: a 45-minute drive got you downtown. Me, my sister, and our friends — who had snuck out of their houses — had the audacity to take my grandmother’s white station wagon to Des Moines about once a month to dance at a rave. I named my grandma’s station wagon Honky. Honky served us well. We got like eight people in that thing and never had a flat tire.
We didn’t do drugs. We didn’t even drink. I did a little drinking in high school, but that was always at high school parties on level-B roads. The raves, they were for dancing. We got lost in the music. We got lost in a community that wasn’t our own — and most of us didn’t fit too well in ours and we needed to know that there were other communities that existed. We could be different people at raves; perhaps it’s more accurate that we could truly be ourselves. Though we didn’t use the word at the time, we were fabulous. Oh, we were wearing glittery shirts and way too much eye makeup, so I don’t mean we were fabulous. But these infiltrators, these refugees, these desperate, giddy teenagers were fabulous. You bet your hotpants.
The NBC news affiliate came one night to do a story on this crazy youth movement (?) called “rave parties.” I waved to the camera and my friend Justin and I booty-shaked with renewed vigor from atop the bank of speakers, waving and sticking out our tongues in a rebel sort of way, many, many years before Miley Cyrus was born. That clip of us made the news. I saw the report myself at the five-o’clock broadcast. Guess who watched the ten-o’clock broadcast diligently, every night, in bed? Marianne Fons.
That night, Hannah and I went to say goodnight to Mom, just because “We love you, Mom! We just wanted to see how your day was!” We placed our bodies in front of the TV screen till we heard the report was over.
So far away those lives are, now. But the news archives. They live forever.
I come this night with a true tale of a dinner party, a doorknob, pants, and great distress. I got permission from my friend to tell this story.
Not so long ago, I attended a get-together at my friend Nathan’s* house. Dinner was served, there was plenty of wine. Everyone around the table had interesting jobs, so we talked about those. We discussed books. I often look around and can’t believe I’m an adult. I get bills in my mailbox and I think, “I get bills. And I paythem. I have kitchen utensils. I can get myself showered and to the airport on time.” I can’t believe I do these things on my own. At this dinner party, I had that feeling. I was listening intently to someone discussing their recent trip to Bangkok, took a sip of red wine, and thought, “Fons, you are pulling this off.”
Between dinner and dessert, my friend excused herself to go to the ladies’ room upstairs. Keeping tabs on how long people spend in the bathroom is weird, so I didn’t do that exactly, but it did cross my mind at one point that my friend had been upstairs longer than a typical bathroom visit takes. But before I was officially considering it, she came down and everyone had fruit.
I stuck around after the other guests left to help with dishes, and that was when Nathan and I learned what had happened up there. “Did you notice how long I was gone?” Sally asked. I told her that I kinda noticed, but it wasn’t weird or anything.
“Oh, it was weird, all right,” she said. “As I was leaving the bathroom, the door swung closed behind me and my pantloop got caught on the doorknob. Have you seen that thing? It’s this weird curlique doorknob. I twisted around to free myself, but I guess I went the wrong way somehow, because I made it worse. Like, the twist got twisted and I was stuck. I was stuck on door to the bathroom.”
I brought a dish towel to my chest. “Sally no.”
“Yes,” she said, and our eyes got big and mirth began to well up in us and Nathan stopped loading the dishwasher. “I was twisting this way and that way, just trying to get free. I was up there the whole time, stuck on the door! I could hear you all downstairs, laughing and clinking glasses. I’m telling you: I was really stuck. I was moving back and forth and the door was banging… I thought the only thing I was going to be able to do would be try to take my pants off but I couldn’t do that, either — I mean, how was that gonna happen?” We were weak with laughter. Sally squeaked, “Could you hear me? Could you hear me like, rustling?”
I shook my head and wiped tears from my eyes. Poor, poor Sally, dangling like a fish on a hook, only feet above the civilized dinner party, thrashing silently, trying not to curse, Sally — a woman of faith — prayed for divine intervention. We imagined her sweating, pulling, pushing, all in shame, desperate to solve a very strange, very immediate problem.
“Just when I was about to call down, ‘Hey, Mary, can you come up here for just a sec?’ and make it sound real casual, like I wanted to show you a new dress I bought or something, just that moment, I untangled it. I kind of fell forward, but I caught myself.”
I haven’t known Sally too long, but I foresee good things. And as getting one’s pant loop hooked to a doorknob is something that does not happen to grownups very often, I may be able to avoid these “I am an adult” realizations if I hang out with her more. Done.
Are you in the market for a bed? I’d love to sell you one. If you’re one of the two scam artists who tried to rob me this week, I’d love to poke you in the eye, which is the PaperGirl way of saying: [REDACTED] you.
I have a beautiful oak bed I need to sell. The bed is modern minimalist in style. Oak. Gorgeous, deep brown finish. Low to the ground. A fantastic bed. I got it on Overstock for a head-slappingly good price and I have the receipt to prove it. But that’s not all. I have a dreamy, cloud-like mattress to sell, as well. It’s a Charles P. Rogers “Estate 5000,” which clearly means it’s good. These things were purchased and used by me for exactly three months while I was in Washington, D.C. Remember, all my furniture was here in Chicago. The first months I was in D.C. I rented furnished apartments; when I moved into the Kennedy Warren, furnishing was on me. I needed a place to sleep, so I bought the bed and mattress.
I came home, though, so now I have these enormous objects in my hallway. They must go. I made cute signs and posted them on my building’s bulletin board, but that was three weeks ago and no bites. So, Monday evening, I posted an ad on Craigslist. Together, the bed and mattress are worth many hundreds of dollars, which is important to note because my experience with Craigslist would’ve been different if I was selling a collection of half-grown Chia Pets for four dollars.
Immediately, I got emails and texts from people who said they wanted to buy my stuff. I was thrilled! I communicated with the one guy — not a great speller, incidentally — who wanted the mattress and a gal who wanted the bed. Strangely, they both were out of town and told me they’d have a mover come get the furniture. Seemed reasonable. One offered to PayPal me. That seemed fine. PayPal is safe. One said she’d do a cashier’s check, which was okay with me, too. Those are legit. I’d love to tell you I was unsure about either of them, but I wasn’t. I was excited to sell my stuff and reclaim my hallway.
Clicking to edit an ad on my Craigslist page, I clicked the “Avoid Scams & Fraud” tab. Everything they warned against was happening to me: text messages with bad spelling, asking for my PayPal account number, the cashier’s check option (Craigslist says these are always, always fake), and the employing of a third party (e.g., a mover, a friend.) I felt sick. I was totally playing into scam artists’ hands. Once I understood what was happening, I texted each person back and said, “You’re trying to steal from me. I’m not interested in speaking with you. Good luck.” No response from either “buyer” since then; I have the hunch I was right.
I’ve had my purse stolen. I’ve had two bicycles taken. And my car was towed once by legendarily evil Lincoln Towing Service in Chicago, which is a kind of larceny. The feeling one gets when one has been suckered, or fooled, or taken advantage of, or relieved of personal belongings without consent is a feeling akin to having a nightmare. Because like a nightmare, when you’re stolen from — or about to be stolen from — you’re disoriented; you’re confused; it’s spooky; there’s a kind of dread and vulnerability present; there are boogie men.
When I blogged about my condo up available for rent last summer, it worked: I got tenants. Maybe this will work, then: I am selling a bed and a mattress. Facebook message me if interested.
In the block above, I’ve used five different fabrics from my Small Wonders “World Piece” line. (NOTE: The green solid is not from the line, so that one doesn’t count.)
The first person to correctly identify the fabrics I used and emails their answers to me at smallwonderswednesday@gmail.com gets this totes adorbs baby quilt from my China line. The quilt was made by me in November, with quilting and binding love from sweet D.C. Carla. Hi, Carla!
I had to pre-wash all the blocks I made, so don’t judge the wrinkles! I’m going to quilt that out.
Good Luck,
Mary + Pendennis
I’m stoked about this quilt, which I’m calling, “Twinkle.”
Today, I’m giving away a gorgeous baby quilt that uses the China line from my Small Wonders “World Piece” collection. Pendennis is modeling it here. It’s yours if you can solve the puzzle that I’ll be posting in the next hour.
The first person to solve the puzzle and email me the correct answers at smallwonderswednesday@gmail.com will get the baby quilt! This is your fair warning and the teaser, I guess, so you can get your engines ready. No purchase necessary — but if you’re familiar with the line, you’re smart. That’s the only clue I’m giving!
Good luck, and I’ll be watching the email box.
xo,
Mary + Pendennis
He loves it!Closeup of the darling Log Cabin blocks.Pendennis says it’s gonna be hard to let this go, but it’s the right thing to do.
I was up in the laundry room this evening and the joint was really hopping. I was continuing my pre-wash odyssey (I’m close) while a couple other people were laundering regular things, like underpants. After a bit, it was down to me and a pretty lady named Catherine who appeared to be in her early fifties or so. We got to chatting about what we do for a living.
Catherine has worked for many years in the children’s department of a bookstore, which means she is my new favorite person. Learning of Catherine’s job, memories of my favorite childhood books came flooding back: The Pokey Little Puppy. The Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day. Anything/everything Pooh. Anything/everything Shel Silverstein. Sideways Stories from Wayside School. Phantom Tollbooth. The Secret Garden. Anne of Green Gables. It felt so good to think of those books.
And then Catherine said something that instantly changed my entire winter.
“You know what I’ve been doing recently?” she said, soft-spoken and sweet like she needs to be to fit my children’s-bookstore-lady archetype. “I’ve been listening to audio recordings of children’s classics. It’s really wonderful. Treasure Island. Black Beauty. Little Women.” She smiled at me. “I’d recommend that to anyone, especially you, if you like to listen to books while you make your quilts.”
It would’ve been rude for me to run out of the laundry room at that moment so that I could get back into my living room and load up Treasure Island, Black Beauty, Hatchet, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and other A-listers in the genre. So I didn’t do that. But they’re all cued up — and while I folded three batches of fabric, I began with Treasure Island, which I have never read. I couldn’t wait.
Guess how good Treasure Island is? It was hard to break away to sit down with my computer, to be honest. Catherine and I didn’t exchange info, so unless I see her again she won’t know how much I appreciated our conversation. Maybe I’ll just go into the laundry room around this time next week and just bellow, “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum” until she comes and I can tell her she is very inspiring when she washes socks.
Here’s what my life is like: working, traveling, writing, sleeping, running errands, hanging out with Claus. Many of you will find that list is roughly your life, too, except for the Claus part — I hope. It’s a busy kind of life, but it’s important to not lose sight of what’s really important. Community. Relationships. Friendships.
I talk to friends and family in my life and write sincere emails, comment on posts, and send/receive funny texts and things. I have people I love and I assume these people love me at least a little bit or they wouldn’t send me .gifs of dogs getting blowouts. There are catch-up calls with long-distance friends from time to time, but those are often months apart. Even years apart in some cases.
The problem (and I hope this is not a problem for you) is that I don’t hang out with people much. When someone asks me to do this or that fun thing, I’m out of town. When I’m home for a spell and want to get together (in the past year or so I was never, ever home for a spell but that’s another story) other people are on vacation. Or they have a commitment, or they have a baby. So it’s all texts and emails and it’s better than nothing.
But then I need a friend and there’s no one there. “There” like on my couch “there.” One friend would be fantastic; I don’t even let myself dream of a whole crew coming over and hanging out just because. It used to be like that. In high school, in college, people just dropped by, and your whole world was your relatively tiny campus, so it was easier to have a close community. If you were going through something, sometimes you wished you could isolate and think for five minutes, but nope, there’s The Fons coming in in her leather jacket going, “Eeyyyyy!”
This has to change for me, this lack of real-life peeps in my life who I see on a regular basis.
When I come home from a teaching trip, I can’t keep doing what I’ve been doing for a long time, now: flop, bake things, write things, work on the next thing. I have to call people. People who are in town, not six states away. There’s a once-a-month sewing group that my (fabulous, steadfast, now longtime) friend Heather hosts. I love going to sewing group and even if I’m bushed, I need to go to sewing group. And I have to connect with and follow through with new friends from sewing group. I need to make friend dates and keep them. I need more women in my life and I need them in my house, not just on my text message screen. If I can go to someone else’s house, great. Not only will new relationships form, hopefully, I enjoy seeing the inside of people’s homes.
The great news is that it’s already begun. In fact, I began Mission: Peeps almost two months ago. I’m happy to report it’s working. You just have to say yes to things. For me — an introvert who likes activities that are usually done on one’s own, e.g., writing, sewing, bathing — it’s a challenge to say yes. But I need people around me like anyone else and I’m not going to stay stuck in a place that on a really bad day, has an echo.
There were fish, sharks, fish, strange plants, and 1.5 millions of gallons of water at the aquarium. In response to the Shedd, I’d like to post a poem I worked out this summer. It’s longer than most of my poems, but I hope you will read through it today and when someone asks you, “Did you read any poetry this week?” You can say, “Yes, I did.”
I much prefer a mountain range, which strikes me as more traversable; The ocean just strikes you with waves.
The “treasures of the sea,” to me, Are going silver (such foolish gold) Not proof of some grand, courageous adventure, Just wet and old.
We are to find an endless blue (or anything endless) a reflecting pool? This is madness and all madness should frighten you.
For lurking under sunset fire, just beyond the lovers’ sighs Are beasts with coal black eyes blind with only one own-only mind: survive
And longer than you, laughs the whale; Killer, indeed, and with a tail to crush you, As you clap and wave and save your photo.
All combers, Mind the suck down — that human-sized sucking sound; So much chum and lunchmeat now, First for the mighty maw that spied you (what’s red and white and red rolled over?) Blood becomes you ‘till you’re dispersed in that vast, mast-hungry pool adrift on the waves that lulled you Back when Cabo was not the site of your grisly end; The fishes catch the tissue last and any flecks of left eye that’s left — Are you finally out of the office
Further below, in depths we cannot fathom deep — translucents sleep Why they wake at all A question we ne’er allow to ask; Preferring such questions as: “Shall we take the pink umbrella, dear?” “Is Carol bringing Jake?”
The sea does not care The sea does not love Carol
But for heaven’s sake!” the swimmers scream, “Death’s not all the ocean! Think of schools and dolphin, Think of shells and oyster feasts!”
Please
A grinning manatee emerging from misty black is a heart attack — You’d mess your pants and your electric fan; And if walls of undulating weeds or tangerine clowns are cool to you Fix them in your mind for five minutes down the line these lives, too, are over;
Such is the lifespan of sea color And what a drag!
The cleverest trick the ocean ever played Was convincing us of her placidity
There’s chaos in the drink — A jungle reversed, inverted earth Primeval monster bedlam, Time and zero memory locked in loggerheaded war; What in heaven’s name are you out there for
The sea does not love you
The sea married herself a long, long time ago and she’s kept a tight ship ever since
See how she takes out the garbage
See how she freezes her food See how she sweeps the floor See how she claps herself on the back, see how she races herself at the shore, one more touch, one more touch, one more touch, one more
A teenage couple looks out on Chicago from the SkyDeck. Photo: Me
While in the admission line for the Adler Planetarium on New Year’s Day, Claus and I looked at a pamphlet advertising something called the Chicago CityPass. For $96 bucks, you can buy a book of tickets to five of Chicago’s best art/culture destinations for half the cost if you were to buy tickets for all of them separately. The catch is that you have to use your book of tickets within nine days, which means you have nine days to see: The Field Museum, The Shedd Aquarium, SkyDeck Chicago, The Museum of Science & Industry or 360 Chicago, The Adler Planetarium or The Art Institute.
It’s lousy they make you pick between The Art Institute and the Planetarium, both of them being potentially life-changing experiences if you’re on a family vacation and you’re six. “Look, Denny: it’s either stars or art. Make up your mind or we’re getting in the car and going back to your Aunt Rita’s. I need a bathroom.”
Claus and I went to the SkyDeck on Tuesday. The SkyDeck is the observatory on the top floor of the Willis née Sears Tower. It’s strange that I like flying so much; airplanes hang out at 30,000 feet or so. The Willis Tower is 1,450 in the sky and I hated being up there. I got nauseated. I got dizzy. And then I had to “face my fears” and step out onto “The Ledge.”
The Ledge is a clear glass box that extends 4.3 feet out from the tower. You’re supposed to walk out into the box and stand there. Stand in a 4-sided glass box 1,450 feet in the air. There’s nothing under your feet but a clear glass shelf. I do not ride amusement park rides. I do not sky dive. And The Ledge? I did not want to do it.
“You have to do it Mary,” Claus said. When he says “Mary” it sounds so nice, like, “Mah-rie” and this is dangerous.
“Absolutely not,” I said. I was feeling queasy again and wanted to go back to the gift shop to discern why they were selling those monkey toys with the velcro hands that hang around your neck. How was that a relevant Willis Tower gift shop item? Plus, the gift shop is at the center of the observatory, so I was safer there.
“Oh, come on, Mah-rie. Face your feers.”
I hate it when Claus or anyone else says that because then I have to. What, I’m going to live this life without facing at least half of my fears? Damnit! People laughed at me because I had to stick one toe at a time into the cube. Inch by inch, I made it out there, took one look left, one right, one out, and one down past my feet (oh sweet mercy) then immediately nose-dived back to what now seemed like safety. Relativity is a cruel mistress.
We checked the SkyDeck off the CityPass. Tomorrow: The Shedd Aquarium.
That’s not Small Wonders fabric! What can it mean?
As many of you know, my fabric line, Small Wonders, launched in October. Small Wonders focuses on small-scale prints, which every quilter needs in her stash for a number of reasons. You can see the story on Small Wonders in this pretty video.
On this inaugural Small Wonders Wednesday (this will be a “thing” for the next seven weeks), I present to you the first of many giveaways! But I’m not giving away Small Wonders fabric. What?!
I have twelve (12) bundles of fabric like the ones above and one (1) kit from my days as a magazine editor. I got free stuff from time to time; not for the show itself, but goodies for various promotional reasons, plus freebies I picked up at Quilt Market, too. Very cool, but I’m out of room now that I have so much of my own line.
So:
For the first thirteen (13) people who contact me with a scan, phone picture, or attachment of a receipt showing they spent at least $20.00 on Small Wonders fabric get one of these fat bundles of fabric!It’s all brand new, it’s all complete, and these babies are from the fabric companies you know and love.Basically, you’re getting more than double your money for Small Wonders plus the free fabric, all of which you will adore. You can scan a receipt from your local quilt shop (!!) or show something from an online shop like Missouri Star or Fabric.com.
Send your name and receipt to SmallWondersWednesday@gmail.com as quick like a bunny and you’ll get one of the prizes! This giveaway will last for 24 hours, so you’ve got till 3pm CST to go shopping.
I’ll snap a screenshot of the email box so I have proof of the winners. I play no favorites. Good luck, friends!
