Valerean

With all the bad news and worry of June behind me, I'd like to focus on my creativity so I can get through summer with some peace and calm. Other than my calendar project I've done no quilting, so I am going to try and coax myself into making the dragon print quilt I talked about back in May. I need to reorganize my yarn stash so I can find specific colors and weights (I want a dedicated shelf or holder for bulky most of all.) This is going to become summer cleaning project #1. I'd like to write some poetry, not to work out my angst but to remember to celebrate the beauty in my life. Time to try this! It's not so much that I need more to do as it's a time when I'm (usually) happiest during the year that I want to enjoy. All the bad news and reasons for worry will be still there whether I angst or not. So why not be happy?

I designed a fat quarter via Spoonflower to print the poem I composed for my pink-only quilt, and it arrived on July 22nd. I thought I'd done the math correctly to get four repeats of the poem (extras in case I mess up with what I have planned for incorporating it into the quilt) but I have a bit of repeat runover on one side, which I will use, no problem. I'm taking a break from piecing the pink-only quilt now as I'm having trouble with my hands again, and want to loosen them up a bit with a small crochet project before I continue sewing. Stayed tuned to see what I do with that.

Writing poems with a free concrete poem generator is fun. :)

Here's one of my homemade idea books. I put these together from thin scrap cardbaord, clothing or calendar inserts for the covers, and newsprint used as wrapping for the pages so I can recycle the paper. Here's an old pencil sketch of mine for a patchwork tote. I also write in them, as I did here while composing the poem for my pink-only quilt. It needs a little more polishing before I get it stamped on fabric. So I can stop pre-publishing months in advance, from this point on there will be two posts publishing per day on the blog until I catch up with myself in September. You don't mind, do you? Ha.

I wrote poetry before I wrote books; I spent about five years of my teens taking refuge in verse. I won awards for my poems, and scared the daylights out of everyone with them, too, I think (which was ultimately the reason I gave it up.) Other choices lead to me becoming a novelist; had I not made them I think I would have instead become a poet. I'm very glad I decided to write books, but sometimes I wonder who I would have been had I traveled the road less taken. That's what I kept thinking as I read In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive by Clementine Von Radics. This is not an easy book of poetry to read. The author was (or is) mentally ill. It's frank to a brutal degree, and howls with pain, and demands answers the poet will likely never get. I saw way too much of myself in the verses, in particular when I was in my Postcards from Hell phase during my parents' divorce. So I don't recommend this if you're feeling fragile; it might smash you to pieces...

I saw this online somewhere and took a screenshot. Beautiful.