"The rising of the women means the rising of the race."

While I try to stay away from the overtly political on this blog, the universe has been asking for an "Amen" for the last few weeks and I have been trying to comply in my way.  I renewed our day sponsorship for our local public radio station and sent a contribution to Planned Parenthood--freedom of the press and access to health care for women being two very important causes to me.  Dan has also recently finished an incredible book called Half the Sky which makes clear the fact that many women and little girls on this planet still do not have access to education and are not safe in their persons, cared for when they have children, or allowed to make choices that directly affect their lives like who they marry and when.  A PBS special based on the book is due this fall.  It is chilling.  His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said that Western women can rescue the world.  Clearly, we have the power.  We are now the primary breadwinners, can elect a President, we represent the majority of college students, we have found our voices.  We must march on.

(Lyrics to the song "Bread and Roses" by Mimi Fariña)

As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,

A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,

Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,

For the people hear us singing: Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!

As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men,

For they are women's children, and we mother them again.

Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;

Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.

As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead

Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread.

Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.

Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too.

As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,

The rising of the women means the rising of the race.

No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,

But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses, bread and roses.

Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;

Hearts starve as well as bodies; bread and roses, bread and roses.

The lyrics for this song come almost directly from the poem of the same name by James Oppenheim that was inspired by the Lawrence Mill workers..

Missing Mae: Two years

Reading my brother-in-law Dan's Facebook post this morning reminded me that it has been two years since we lost my dear mother-in-law, Mae "Peanuts" Fisher. She was such a remarkably strong presence in all our lives.  That pain of loss has been especially keen in the past months since we also lost Jim's brother, Scott.

Today, in honor of both of them, I'm reminded of Dumbledore's words to Harry Potter when he is missing his parents: "The dead never really leave us." As I walk around my house and my eyes fall on something she sent us or a photograph, I am grateful that both of these sweet, loving, compassionate people were in my life.

Another new baby

Here I go again! There's more of the Robert Kaufman circle fabric for the back and I have a multicolored stripe for the binding.

Sunday in Safety Pin Studio

I'm wishing it was just a little warmer outside on this beautiful, sunny day so that I could be on the screened porch, quilting.  Since Safety Pin Studio is on the southeastern side of the house, it gets lots of sun, so it's the next best place to be.  The new baby quilt should be quilted by the end of the afternoon.

With some of my favorite music playing and sun streaming in the window, it's a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

On Being a Jane Austen Mystery: the real deal

I recently posted a review (read: rant) of P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley in which I mentioned the far better novels of Stephanie Barron.  I've just finished two new ones, Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron and Jane and the Canterbury Tale and I was not disappointed. Not only is Barron the mistress of every facet of Jane Austen's biography and the Regency period, she is also the queen of sparkling dialogue and thrilling mystery plots.

The first book of the series is Jane and the Unpleasantness of Scargrave Manor.  There is a wonderful story on Barron's website about how she came to write this novel.  If you love Jane Austen or mysteries or historical fiction, or all three, treat yourself to one of these gemlike little books.

Elevenses in the studio

Having my elevenses in the studio. Must sew.  More to come.

35 years and counting

Thirty-five years ago today, my dear Jim and I were married in my parents' living room during below zero weather with about two feet of snow on the ground.  We had a lovely dinner at our favorite restaurant, Lucky 32, and he gave me these gorgeous roses, and yes, there are 35 of them.  We celebrated yesterday because he had tech rehearsal today.  Happy anniversary, my darling.  Here's to at least 35 more.

Birthday Bunting

I made some tiny pennants (or bunting as the Brits call them) for my friend, Ramona's birthday.

Here they are all lined up on the ironing board with the iPhone for comparison.  They are just raw cuts that I then stamped letters on and sewed together on a thin piece of ribbon.

These are the stamps that look like typewriter letters.  I made a card, too.  Quilted Librarian is off to school.

Baby quilt update: Top with borders and a peek at the back

The top of the new baby quilt is finished.  That large polka dot fabric is  a Denyse Schmidt design.

This is the backing fabric.  I just love the trucks and construction vehicles.  I grabbed the black on white fabric for binding because it looked like tires to me.  Hopefully, this will be a quilt that will go beyond babyhood.

First New Baby Quilt of 2012

One of the babies I made a quilt for in the past has a new baby brother, so I got busy yesterday.  This is the top chain pieced in rows across.  Next I will sew all the rows together.  Follow this link to some older posts about this Kaffe Fassett African Stripe Baby Quilt pattern. I'll update through the day to report my progress.

Update: 15 January 11:43am

Only five rows to go and the blocks will be all pieced together.

"Death Comes to Pemberley" as a drive-by

Happy New Year, and, yes, I have been MIA, but reader's outrage has brought me back.  I apologize to those of you who are not interested in Jane Austen fan fiction, but I needed a platform, so here goes.  The latest entry in the "what happens after Elizabeth and Darcy get married" varied collection of writing is P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley.  Now I have read many of the other candidates in this pool so I feel that I have some "street cred" to critique this one and let me say that if it had been written by someone without James' reputation as a mystery writer, it never would have seen the light of day.

While not one of my favorite mystery writers, James is a best-selling author whose work sells very well and has been dramatized on the PBS series Mystery--she created detective Adam Dalgliesh. According to an NPR interview with her that I heard, she is also a Jane Austen fan.  That may be, but if you are looking for sparkling, witty dialogue, there is no need to apply here.  Elizabeth is a cipher in the proceedings which focus mainly on Darcy, his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam, and Wickham. As for a mystery, give me Dorothy Sayers or Laurie King any day. Wickham is discovered bloody and crying over the lifeless body of his only friend, Captain Denny.  Oh, he's holding a pistol for good measure, too.  After much time spent detailing the lives of a servant who lives in a cottage in the Pemberley woods, we know where this is headed.  The investigation is hamhanded with lots of obvious mistakes.  (No one thinks to question Lydia and how did Denny and Wickham have a heated argument that she can't know anything about in a coach she was in?)  There is no real detective and the story unfolds more like a treatment than a novel. James can't settle on who is narrating the story. The resolution of the crime is a trite, deux ex machina trick.   The final chapter has more than a faint whiff of the Fitzwilliam Darcy, Esquire triology in its wrapping up of loose ends. ( In canvasing the various reviews of this book, it is apparent that most of these reviewers think that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was the first time someone thought to continue the story of Elizabeth and Darcy!  Really?)

For a mystery with the Jane Austen touch, you cannot beat the brilliant Stephanie Barron and her Jane Austen mysteries. If you are a true Janeite, leave this sleeping dog where it lays.

Christmas quilt is finished

Greetings to all and happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends!  The quilt I made for Mom is finished and will be off to Florida tomorrow.  It is another in a series of "Single Girl" quilts I've made in the last few years and has a warm, fleecy back to keep her warm and cozy.

Here's a close-up of the tag.  You can read about the title here.

I heartily hope you will find time to enjoy this joyous season.  As we age, I think it becomes increasingly difficult to rise above all that there is to be sad or worried about in our personal lives and in the world.  I feel blessed that I am surrounded during the week by lots of little folks who are happy and full of energy. They provide me with a wonderful example to follow.  Happy Holidays.

"Steppdecke für Katz": in the hoop

Thanks to the three-day weekend, I was finally able to get back into the studio to finish the top for the Christmas quilt for Mom.  The photo above is the beginning of the marking process.

I'm still fussing with the Nikon.  About every other photo isn't sharp enough for my taste.

I made a set of plastic templates based on Denyse Schmidt's recommended quilting pattern for this Single Girl patterned quilt.  Not only is it attractive, it's very well designed to catch up every piece in the quilting.  For a quilt that will get lots of handling, that's the best kind IMHO.

Here's the start on the quilting in the early morning light of Sunday.

Treasures from Mary Jo's

I mentioned in an earlier post that I have finally been able to visit the fabled Mary Jo's Cloth Shop in Gastonia, North Carolina.  Let me state that it is all that AND a bag of chips, as Anna would say.  The Japanese-style fabrics above actually came from one of the vendors at the Barnful of Quilts that I visited the same day, but since this is a fabric post, I've included them, too.

The sheer number of fabrics is overwhelming and I limited myself to looking for things for two upcoming baby quilts.  The next time I go, I will take a list.

This is a Robert Kaufman print that I just loved.  One of the babies is a boy and the other a girl so I found inspiration for both.

These darling remnants were less than a dollar each.  Not only is the selection incredible, the prices are 30 to 40 percent less than the average fabric store.

All of these photos were taken with the new Nikon.  I'm still not thrilled with the focus, but I'm getting better.

Thanking my dear veterans

On this Veterans Day, I want to thank all those who fought and are fighting still, but most especially, my own dear veterans.  My father, Dan, is an Army veteran of World War II and at nearly 92, still very active and fit.  In the photo above, taken during World War II, he is standing with his youngest brother, Bobby, in front of their family home in Upper Sandusky, Ohio.  Bobby enlisted right out of high school and became a Marine.  He was wounded in the Pacific campaign.  My father's brother, John Thomas, was also a Marine who was on a carrier in Tokyo Bay the day the Japanese surrendered.  These men and women give the best years of their lives and I am humbled and grateful. Thank you, Dad. Thanks, Uncle Bobby and Uncle Tom.

Coming up for air or Good Lord, it's November already!

The Quilted Librarian has been absent from the cyber realm of late, but we have definitely turned the corner at school in terms of getting things moved where I want them and arranging the library media center the way I want it.  Last week, I actually came home right after school twice!

Last weekend, Jim and I had a wonderful breakfast reunion with my childhood friend, Laurel Lea Schaefer.  We went to Bexley High School, attended the Columbus Junior Theatre (now called the Columbus Children's Theatre), and did lots of plays together.  In 1972, she became Miss America and after she finished the responsibilities of that job, she moved to California.  While we  hadn't seen each other in many years, we always kept in snail mail and email touch, but it was delightful to catch up in person.  Jim took the photo of the two of us above and Laurel took this great shot of Jim and me.

This weekend, Jim and I are enjoying some unstructured time--he's in his study finding music for the play he's directing and I'm finally back in my studio trying to get back on track there.  Hoping you are all enjoying a restful and productive weekend.

Barnful of Quilts 2011 with some new friends

The Internet is an amazing thing.  Thanks to Google+, several art quilters from my area found me and sent me email.  Last Saturday, they invited me to join them on a trip to visit the Barnful of Quilts on the Fox Family Farm in a gorgeous horse barn near historic Waxhaw, North Carolina.  It was a perfect day and the barn and pastures were a perfect backdrop for the beautiful quilts.

This is the barn--lucky horses!

There were llamas to pet and photograph  and one of the vendors featured articles made from the wool, as well.

The quilts displayed along the fence were for sale to benefit Samaritan's Purse, an international relief organization.

The horses vacated their stalls for the vendors.

The rafters were a great place from which to hang large quilts.

The exercise ring was the backdrop for some amazing quilts of the group called Fiber Art Options.  Several of these artists are also members of PAQA-South as are my new friends.

My friends are checking out some of the beautiful work.

After we enjoyed the quilt show, we had some lunch, and then they took me Mary Jo's Cloth Shop in Gastonia.  WOW!  It's overwhelming and the next time I go, I'm making a list.  This fantastic quilt and fabric journey also provided time for us to get acquainted.  It was a lovely Saturday.

Virtual Dialogue with SLIS Students 2011

Last fall, my former IU professor, Dr. Larry Johnson invited me to be a virtual visiting professional for his  online  Library Media Specialist class.  This year he's invited me to participate again.  Since my helper, Sue and I have been making lots of physical changes to the library media center at my new elementary school, I thought I would take some more photographs to share for my introduction to Larry's students, but it's book fair time, so those will have to wait for two weeks.

Larry has started off the discussion with the question, "What is it that people don't get about your job?" Stop by the class blog and check out the discussion as it progresses in the comment area.

"I'm blogging this."

This is what I decided to do with the box of old catalog cards I've been saving.  A little rubber stamp action on the left and then I printed out the QR (quick response) code for the blog's URL on sticker paper and a new business card is born.  Old school meets 21st century!  Since everything I'm talking about during my session at the NCSLMA conference is on the last two blog posts, I'm going to give them out to the attendees.

My presentation was largely a disaster.  Not only was there no Internet connection, but I was assigned to a room that was right next door to the rapper with a microphone, big amplifier, and an electric guitar.  My little group moved upstairs and outside.  They were very sweet and attentive, but I was really disappointed.

I loved Gwyneth Jones' keynote and her presentation on QR codes in the library.  Heather Moorefield-Lang gave a great workshop on bringing the arts into the library.  Dr. Sue Kimmel did some excellent booktalks on multicultural books and I got some helpful information on Google Docs from the last workshop I attended.

Nancy and Joanne, two of my colleagues, held up a sign to gather Guilford Association of School Librarians to the lunch tables. We had a strong presence at the conference, but it helped that we are all less than an hour away and don't have to stay in a hotel overnight.  The economy definitely had a negative effect on attendance, but it was a valuable day for those who were able to attend.

Blogging Basics

A blog (a blended word for web log) is a virtual journal.  Starting a blog is very easy.  Maintaining it, not so much.  If you do want to create a blog, I recommend Blogger, which is free, well supported, and part of the Google platform of Web 2.0 tools.  There are lots of tutorials out there to help you and here's one I particularly like from about.com that lets you look at the process before getting into Google.  Once you have a Google account, you can also use their embedded tutorials.

My blog combines my major avocation, quilting, with my vocation, school librarianship.  While it is weighted more on the side of my avocation and life out of school, you will find the occasional post dealing with books, technology, and school librarianship.  That's the primary plus of a blog for me--I get to control the content.

If you've made the decision to create a blog, the implication is that you want others to read it. A recent post on Mashable, Shane Snow provided seven suggestions for making a blog “stickier,” or more engaging to its readers. It provides a nice scaffold for discussing various features of blogging.

• Tip one suggests making your blog content a combination of original, personal composition and curated links. Last year, I participated in a virtual class discussion for my former IU professor, Dr. Larry Johnson. His Library Media Specialist class asked me questions about being a working school librarian. In this post, I provided a personal introduction for his class that is a mix of stock (personal content) and flow (curated links).

• Personalizing your blog is the second tip. While Shane is referring more to the type of personalization achieved by Amazon.com with their suggestions of things you might enjoy based on what you have purchased in the past, we smaller scale bloggers can still take this one to heart. This is certainly the feature that keeps me coming back to many of the blogs I read. I'm going to give you examples of two of the blogs I read that fall into my miscellaneous category. Attic 24 not only offers great photographs, but wonderful content about the life of its author, a young mother of three in the North of England. Tales of a Junkaholic is almost entirely a photo-chronicle, with little more than captions for the pictures, but Artemis Russell manages to tell the story of her very interesting life as a collector and young wife.

• Repackaging your blog on other social media is tip number three. Facebook has an app called Networked Blogs in which you can register your blog to automatically appear in your status each time you publish a new post. I've learned from my Blog Tracker statistics that FB's Networked Blogs is usually one of my top three referrers.

Twitter has a similar feature that creates an automatic tweet with a tiny url  each time one makes a new post. Back in April of 2009, I posted about Twitter.

• Series posts are Shane's fourth tip. When I blog about my quilting projects, it is often in the form of a series as the work takes weeks or months to complete. Here are a series of posts about making baby quilts and another about making several quilts in the Single Girl pattern. In addition to creating series posts, I often add a small tutorial aspect to these posts that many other quilters find helpful.

• The fifth tip is emailing your blog out to your subscribers. I must confess to never having tried this. I do occasionally post a link to a blog post on a large listserv in which I participate called QuiltArt and that brings me a ton of visitors. I use it sparingly, though, and try to curate the link so that people will be curious about my post and follow the link.

• I feel like the poster girl for tip number six which is linking back internally "like mad." This means providing links to older posts you have published in your current post to get readers to look back through your blog. Here's an example.

• Shane's last tip is suggesting more content. I usually do this with internal linking, too, as you will notice from the examples above.  

I would like to add three suggestions of my own. First, be sure to title your posts because this is the first thing the aggregator picks up. I posted about this here. Labeling or tagging your post is also very important. Blogger provides you with a convenient little box. Labels make your blog more searchable. Secondly, I think tracking your blog is also extremely helpful. To track your blog, there are also several free tools.  I use Blog Tracker by Ice Rocket.  This is a post I did about why tracking is so important.  Finally, answer the people who take the time to leave a comment on your blog.  I have my g-mail account set up to copy me on any comment that's left.  I write an email in response and then copy it to the blog.  Blogger provides various levels of control over comments, too.

As Shane Snow tells us,  people look at blogs to find out information or because they seek entertainment.  Once you have found your voice as a blogger, done a little marketing, and established some consistency of publishing posts, your readers will find you and hopefully stick with you as your blog develops.