Depth Wakerobin Buzzword

Hey, this one works just fine for me.  I have been winging it for years now because I am always disappointed when I plan and things don't turn out the way I had envisioned.  Winging it allows changes and diversions as you go, and if you keep it to yourself no one will know there wasn't a plan!


So, instead of planning, today I am gonna wing it to the grocery store, wing it to the studio and work on the printing project I started yesterday (which, BTW, was 'winged-as-I-go!), and wing it this afternoon on my house checking assignment.  

A Completely Free(!) Tried and True Lesson from Sandy

Back many years ago when I was doing a lot of teaching I had a class called 'Quilting By The Seat of Your Pants' that was pretty successful.  All I did was direct students imaginations away from the way they had always worked and to try new ideas.  This is extremely hard for women for some reason-  when you remove their 'system', all hell breaks loose.  They feel threatened, they feel victimized, they are disoriented and on and on-  and folks, I am talking about QUILTS here, not brain surgery.  In one exercise I had everyone write down one line on what they wanted to do next to the piece in front of them (a small unfinished exercise we had worked on previously).  I had everybody hand their 'plan' to the person to the left and instructed them to implement that new idea into their own work.  MUTINY!  They whined, they wept, they argued, but I could usually get them to understand it was a stretching exercise, not a destruction exercise and they would grumble along for a few minutes until they saw the new possibilities show themselves.  They were forced to wing-it and that isn't how they always did things, so it was a brain drain to actually get hijacked into a new thought process.  BUT in the end they got it when they found that they had broken a few of their self-inflicted barriers.

You can fool just about anyone, but the easiest one to fool is yourself.  Richard Feynman

This little exercise arose from my son who approached everything, every idea with 'whaif...?', which was really his way of seeing new possibilities.  'WHAT IF..." became a rallying cry with him-  everything was put through this sieve, and we got so we could anticipate the next 'whaif...?' by the glazed look in his eyes.  We always countered with one of his own questions: 'And what if your hair turned green?'  The lesson I learned from this 4 year old was how to implement free association, and even to this day, 30 years down the road I can hear his voice, 'Mommy, what if...?'  He taught me well, and I always thought it was well worth passing on.


Also yesterday I got an email from my daughter who sent me this picture of the quilt I made for her room before she was born.  It saw many years with her, and now resides in her kids room but yesterday she noticed a blank spot with tell-tale thread ends.  The thing is neither one of us can really remember what was there-  we think it may have been a sheep, and it looks like somebody (ahem) might have had a grand time picking said sheep off the background.  It is no where to be found.  I cannot find the only picture I had of this 1975 quilt, probably a victim of the last computer crash.  So, one of these days I will round up my granddaughter (who doesn't seem to be the culprit) and we will together make a new sheep and I'll sew him in place.

When I made it I hoped it would be loved by my daughter, never considered that it would hang with my grandkids too!  Don't you love the (ick) 1975 green?  It was the remainder of some fabric I had bought for a maternity top, a great percentage of polyester back then and I think it's indestructible, it certainly hasn't faded a bit!