Summing up 2008

Here's one way to sum up 2008: measure yourself against this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."

I think so.  Mostly.  Enough.

Here's another: a mosaic of favourite photos from 2008.

Thank you for reading my blog during 2008 - Happy New Year!

Christmas playlist

What with iTunes and the little cassette gadget which lets the iPod play through the car's stereo system, I got to thinking about putting together a playlist of Christmas music to accompany the Christmas travelling hither and yon.

The challenge I've always found with Christmas music on CD is that I don't like all of any CD.  Every choral carol one has five selections that must have pleased the choirmaster, but which make you want to skid past to the cheerful familiarity of Hark the Herald Angels Sing.  They may be tricky/clever/musically intricate, but they're not Christmassy enough.  Maybe my tastes aren't refined enough.  Hey, I'm allowed!  So this house has a pile of Christmas CDs, but cherrypicking is the preference (unless it's Handel's Messiah).

Ah, but between iTunes and the iTunes store, cherrypicking is easier than it's ever been.  Forget buying whole CDs - just buy the tracks you like.  So between these and the CDs I already have, I assembled a Christmas 2008 playlist.  It's a tad eclectic, on reflection, including traditional carols by traditional choirs, crooner Christmas songs (very fifties), Messiah (the Combined Church Choirs CD of highlights) and Frank Kelly's Christmas Countdown (you surely know that one - the Irish monologue spoofing the twelve days of Christmas, which begins, "Dear Nola...").  And a couple of versions of favourite things, because I couldn't decide which to choose.  Or because, in the case of In the Bleak Midwinter, Sarah McLachlan's version and the choral version are entirely different from each other and both wonderful.

Ah.  All the stuff we like.  It's playing now on the iPod dock.  And here's a screenshot of most of it...

My favourite Christmas carol is Once in Royal David's City, as sung by King's College Choir.  Beginning with a single boy's voice, and building (through every verse, thank you, not abbreviated) to a swelling finish with choir and church and all.  Lovely stuff. 

It bewilders me at Christmas church services when the minister tries to 'ring the changes' and chooses unfamiliar/lesser known Christmas carols/hymns.  Can't they see that people WANT to sing the old favourites that you don't sing at other times of the year.  I've been in some Christmas Day services where the singing has been embarrassingly thin because people don't know the hymn or tune.  Were it Hark the Herald, or O Little Town of Bethlehem (all theologically sound, as far as I'm aware), the joyful noise would be exactly that.  Ah well.  Lessons and Carols seems like the best way to construct a Christmas church service, to me.  No less powerful for the familiarity of the Bible passages and the music.

What's your favourite Christmas music?

And yes, there are Australian Christmas carols and Christmas songs.  Those CDs get played and enjoyed separately to the general list above.

Summer fruit

0812 summer fruit
Originally uploaded by rooruu

Isabelle blogged the other day about buying mangoes as a Christmas treat for her son - I'd send you some of these if I could, but I don't think they'd last the trip well from Australia to Scotland....

They don't taste like soap.  You smell them before you taste them, even just as you walk past the greengrocer you can smell them, sweet in the air.  Eating them is a messy summer treat, the flesh slippery with juice, your fingers dripping - eat them outside in the sun (or prepare them genteely and eat the pieces with a fork from a glass dish - but you still have to watch out for drips).

Scraps

So I excavated the box of scraps (strips and squares, mostly, some strips a tad erratic) left over from various quilts and patchwork projects over the last year.  Is it sad, that I can look at any of them and tell you which quilt or project they were in?  No, I don't think so.  It's good to remember and reminisce (and it would have been smart to take a photo at this point, but I didn't think of it).

I'd started assembling some blocks with them.  So I did a quick bit of designing to work out how many blocks I'd need, then kept sewing.  Sew, press, trim, sew some more.  I made 54 blocks and the pile of scraps looked barely dented.....

Right, then. I did another quick bit of designing.  Hmmmm.  Over 80 blocks required for this idea.  That oughta dent it....  Sew, press, trim, sew some more, repeat....

It has.  The box of scraps is almost empty, and the 80 blocks are close to being completed.  Not sure if there will be time on Christmas Eve/Day to assemble either quilt, but there's always Boxing Day.  It's been really fun to use the scraps, instead of letting them fester and do nothing.  I had idea#3 lined up and ready to go, but I'll need to wait for more scraps to accumulate.

Oh, and in case you wondered, the last few days have also included Christmas shopping, breakfast in a rather nice caf (forgot to photograph my spinach/feta/pumpkin frittata with salad, dressing and chutney, but trust me, it was very very good), various appointments (I'm responsible for getting my hairdresser addicted to Diana Gabaldon books, ha!) and so forth and so on.  But not work, because I'm on holidays, hurrah hooray.

Thanks for the nice welcome back comments from Taph and Fran and Janelly and Candy!

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Caught up...

...well, a little.  A few quilting projects completed, as you can see, and I had fun with NaNoWriMo, and well, the end of the year is always and ever busy at work.

As I've been editing photos and composing posts, Handel's Messiah has been on the CD player - from beginning to end.  My favourite Christmas music, bar none.  It's some years since I sang it (although for about ten years I did, as part of a community choir performance at the Sydney Town Hall) but it never fails to be beautiful, wonderful, inspiring music.

Now I have some entrancing scraps and partly made scrap blocks excavated from the sewing room, and I'm going to play....

Oh, and the photo in the blog banner is not photoshopped.  Just a fortuitous location for their retail endeavours!  I could have used a prettier photo of ornaments and lights, but there's a raw authenticity about that one, a casualness that's maybe more part of summer and Christmas here in Australia.  I doubt that water pistols are part of Christmas Day if you have snow, but if it's summer, and you arm the kids and uncles...there is fun to be had indeed.  I've had winter Christmases, and summer ones, and they each have their own individual flavour.  Mince pies, for instance: lovely in winter, heavy and less welcome in summer.  But here, now, the shops have cherries and mangoes, grapes and other fruit, and at night the cicadas sing under the fairy lights.

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Quiltlet detail

0812 quiltlet detail
Originally uploaded by rooruu

This is the L quiltlet from the series I'm doing for Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine - it will be published in vol. 17 no. 12, which has an applique theme. The fabrics you see are from a Fig Tree Quilts range for Moda, called Cornucopia; the Clover yoyo makers do make yoyo (Suffolk Puffs) a cinch to make.

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Quilt detail

0812 quilt detail
Originally uploaded by rooruu

This project was for Australian Country Threads, and will be published next year (I know I keep saying this, but the lead time is up to five months, so there's a bit of a gap between me finishing/handing it in, and you getting to see the magazines!). The fabrics you see here are from Charisma by Chez Moi for Moda, a range with beautiful colours and patterns.

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Quilt detail

0812 quilt detail
Originally uploaded by rooruu

The editor of Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine challenged me to make a quilt from no more than three fabrics with a major component of recycled material. Yikes (I can't do a shirt quilt, which are always fun!). This is a detail from the quilt I made - I had it commercially quilted as I wanted an allover pattern on it for texture. See what it looks like in Australian Patchwork and Quilting vol. 17 no. 11 next year!

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Quiltlet detail

0812 quiltlet detail
Originally uploaded by rooruu

This is a detail of the K quiltlet, which will be published in Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine vol. 17 no. 11 next year. I hadn't done any embroidery for a while, so it was fun to play.

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Ikea bird lights

0812 Ikea bird lights
Originally uploaded by rooruu

Everything else has been so busy that there hasn't been a lot of Christmas decorating going on around here. There's a string of fairy lights around the verandah that come on every night, and I did invest in these bird lights from Ikea. They're LED, battery powered, and came in several colours - blue, white, orange, yellow. Ikea's had some great little individual LED lights like this over the last few years - dragonflies, hearts - just fun (and safer than tealights, if you're not in the room all the time). They also have small strings of battery powered fairy lights, very handy to wear when wearing fairy lights is called for...

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Quilt detail

0812 quilt detail
Originally uploaded by rooruu

This is a before-quilting picture - I had this one machine quilted with a lovely butterfly design (Hermione Agee of Lorien Quilting has great designs - ask your machine quilter about them). This one's a present for a little girl at Christmas (she likes butterflies) and will be in Handmade magazine next year.

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Birthday candles

0812 birthday candles
Originally uploaded by rooruu

At a birthday party for someone rather older than two, I caught this picture, intrigued by the way in which the wax had melted.

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Quiltlet: E is for Echuca

0812 Quiltlet: E is for Echuca
Originally uploaded by rooruu

This is the fifth in the series of quiltlets (little quilts) I'm making for Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine. Echuca is in vol. 17 no. 5. I liked the energy in this one of the sashing and plaid fabric and the mix of reproduction and modern fabrics; the conversational fabric in the centre of the blocks took some cutting (it was an overall scatter in a multitude of directions) but it's worked out well.

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Jacaranda

0812 jacaranda
Originally uploaded by rooruu

The jacarandas were magnificent this year - they're such a beautiful tree. With some that seem to have particularly intense lavender blossoms, you feel as though you're walking through lavenderblue air as you walk under them.

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Catching up...

I remember once reading a theory that domestic machinery converses, only we can't hear it...

just after the modem died, I picked up my digital camera.  It started, but then froze.  And a sinister rattle was evident...

Yes, said the lady in the shop, it will take three to four weeks to return to you after being repaired or replaced under warranty (thus cutting it very fine with Christmas in prospect).

So the modem died, and the camera, and it was all fun and games to get them sorted.  I especially appreciated Optus replacing the modem at no charge, and then charging me for it, and only admitting this after I asked them the second time... as I said, fun and games to get it sorted.

But now it's holidays, the modem's working, the camera's back (I missed it!) and I'll bung in a few posts here to catch up.

Did you miss me?  I kept reading your blogs and missed blogging.  It will be good to re-establish the habit.  The amusing thing is that the blog's stats haven't changed much - this blog seems to gather a bunch of traffic from googlers, more so than regular readers.   But Isabelle's nice comment on the modem's return (isn't it good to have term finished?????) reminded me that there are regular readers out there..

Kiva: Martha and Khoen

See this field, and this wonderfully cheerful man?

This is Mr Khoen Khiev , and he's going to grow jasmine there.  For my work Christmas cards this year, I took out two Kiva loans and included information about one or the other in each card, with a note.  The one with Khoen said:

Your gift

will grow jasmine in Cambodia.

To show how grateful I am for your work and help this year, I’ve made a Kiva loan

that will be as productive

and appreciated as you are.

Here's some more information about him:


Mr. Khoeun Khiev, 55, and his wife, Mrs. Heng Sok, 50, live along the Tonle Basac River, a tributary of the nearby Mekong River, about 15 kilometers from Phnom Penh. They were married in 1978 during the Pol Pot regime and have four children: one son and three daughters. Three of their children have full-time employment and the youngest daughter studies in a local school. Khoeun and his wife have been growing jasmine flowers for ten years. In addition to farming jasmine, he is also a fisherman. The couple grow jasmine on their farmland near the house and sell the flowers in the Phnom Penh market. Khoeun is requesting a loan of $700. He will use some of it to purchase a water pump and pipe for farming. With the remainder, he will buy more jasmine trees to plant on his new plot of farmland.



The other loan was to Martha:

I chose this one for the particularly office people at work, because of the stationery.  Here's more about Martha Luz Chogas de Melendez :




Martha belongs to the Nuevo Eden (New Eden) Communal Bank, located on #441 Jr. Aguaytia, Yarinacocha district, Coronel Portillo province, Ucayali department. She is 49 years old, is the mother of 2 grown-up children ans she is married. Her husband works as a professional photographer. With the first loan that she received from Manuela Ramos of 300 soles (Peruvian currency) she decided to invested in selling stationery and school supplies.
Currently, she is dedicated to sell stationery and school supplies and has a copy machine at home. This business provide her earnings that allow her to pay her loan back on time.
With this loan of 2,000 soles (Peruvian currency), which will be paid back in 4 months, Martha will buy 6 boxes of ballpoint pens, 4 dozen notebooks, 3 dozens of luster paper, fixing the copy machine, etc.
Martha feels happy with everything that she has been able to accomplish. Thanks to the support of the communal bank her economic stability has improved.


And my card said:

Your gift will buy stationery and fix a copier in Peru.

To show how grateful I am for your work and help this year, I’ve made a Kiva loan

that will be as productive

and appreciated as you are.

There's another group of friends with whom a Christmas present exchange takes place - next year, we're planning that each of the four of us will choose a favourite charity and make a donation to that instead of exchanging gifts.


My Kiva portfolio is growing! - these are the seventh and eighth loans I've made.  Once I've put money in, I don't take it out when it's repaid, but reinvest in another Kiva entrepreneur.  Most of my loans have focused on textiles, since that's a particular interest for me, but there are so many great possibilities... there's a permanent Kiva link over on the sidebar, so do take a look.  I hope that some of those to whom I gave Christmas cards consider investing in Kiva too.  It's been a good thing to discover in 2008.

The modem has landed...

...after a saga and a half. Or indeed, a minimum of 2 3/4 sagas with a cherry on top. At least.

More later.