Don't Regret...

"Don’t regret any of your past because at the time it felt right and made you smile." - Anna Dickson

I have been looking at fabrics online, needing some fabrics for the quilt I'm working on now, and this range (Lily Ashby's Tradewinds range), seen on Hancock's page made me smile.  It was instant transportation back to the 60s.  I doodled these kinds of images, I wore these patterns and colours.  I loved being in the midst of that wonderful hippie era.  I wore headbands.  I painted flowers on my face.  I went barefoot.  I loved Indian caftan style dresses in wonderful oriental patterns. It was so good to be alive.

Seeing this fabric came hot on the heels of watching a cable movie yesterday about Woodstock.  All that amazing music. Jefferson Airplane's album "Surrealistic Pillow" was the first album I ever bought for myself..loved 'Somebody to Love' and 'White Rabbit'.  Iconic of that era.

So much that was good...the space age, and after the walk on the moon we all believed we'd soon be tripping space like we now fly from continent to continent. Flowers painted on my face.  Discarding shoes I went barefoot everywhere, I wore headbands, Indian kaftans, silver jewellery, went to crazy parties, danced under blue-light.

Not that then was the be all and end all, Now is great too.  I love so much about now.  The internet, e-books, smartphones, digital cameras, cheap air travel, my lovely modern sewing machine, the availability of so much fabric, the sheer wonder of the availability of the whole world in one way or another.  And so saying, despite now being in Dubai, it's actually only 15 flying hours away from home, half a world away.

But looking back to the 60s, it made me smile.  It felt so very right at the time.  And it makes me smile now...and White Rabbit is playing in the background.

Paradise

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library." 
— Jorge Luis Borges

Saw this quote on Google today, and it resonates with me.  I have books everywhere, on everything.  In front of me right now there is Kaffe Fassett's Spectacular Shapes, Brian Tracy's (a business writer) 'Focal Point', a Country Home Ideas magazine, and that's just on the desk in front of me.  On and in my bedside table there are piles of books, next to the bed are more, and the bookshelves aren't full, they're overflowing...and I cull books whenever I can.  But somehow the piles remain...

And I make resolutions not to buy any more, but to just borrow them from the library or the guild, or my cottage group...but guess what, sometimes I just have to have the book I borrowed, or I can't wait long enough for the library to bring it in, or it's one I just absolutely positively can't live without, like Barb Adams and Alma Allen's recent book 'Country Inn'...I carry that one with me everywhere at the moment, it makes me itch to sew, and to cook.  The pictures are gorgeous, the quilts and their fabrics are beautiful.  

But first I have to finish things, like last week's applique block which is on the sewing machine at present, and two quilts waiting pin-basting and quilting, and all the redwork blocks I'm embroidering hoping to get them done by Christmas.  So, this Wednesday, what I'm most working on, are the redworks...