As I was coming up the where I’d started this round of quilting, I wondered if I’d be running out of thread again. I waited and waited and waited and then I was back to where I’d started. I took out the bobbin and the rest as they say is history!

Well, not history, because there’s still more quilting to do, but closer to the end!

My co-worker Rich posted this link, and I have to admit I’ve been thinking: this all seems too rehearsed, too formulaic, we’re too good at processing this horrific story, this shooting in Aurora. Frankly, even if meant tongue in cheek, this has been in my head, that each event like this should be so horrible that it stops us. There should not be this feeling of familiarity.

Make this awful thing
become not a normal one
Keep it frightening.

Make it so scary
that you would lay it all down
for what’s the right thing.

Stop the empty words
What you know is the right thing
must shine as the truth.

Gather the others
Stand tall with them at your side
Use the strength of all.

I just put in bobbin #10. I’m about halfway around the brown area, doing about half of its width in this pass.

I started listening to The Martian Chronicles today. Frankenstein is actually the next after Dracula but I wanted a break from that type of story. I am always amazed and in wonder over Bradbury’s writings and am enjoying the tale so far, not quite half way into it.

Thanks to Rosemary who’s my neighbor in Western Mass and taking the class for typing out the list of readings:

• Grimm — Children’s and Household Tales
• Carroll — Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
• Stoker — Dracula
• Shelley — Frankenstein
• Hawthorne & Poe — Stories and Poems (Hawthorne’s Mosses from an Old Manse includes “The Birthmark,” “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” and “The Artist of the Beautiful” and his Twice-Told Tales includes “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment”; The Portable Poe includes all the suggested Poe stories and poems
• Wells — The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, “The Country of the Blind,” “The Star”
• Burroughs & Gilman — A Princess of Mars & Herland
• Bradbury — The Martian Chronicles
• LeGuin — The Left Hand of Darkness
• Doctorow — Little Brother

Somedays I think – you could be making more progress… – but I know that it goes along at a pace, as long as you keep working at it, until it’s finally done.

Part of that process is to come up occasionally for air. Tonight it was for bobbin, cleaning and oiling and new needle. I confess I got distracted by videos for the online class and my brain never really got back to quilting. I did clean the tabletop. And change my facebook profile picture. You know, important stuff.

Among the other important stuff is that bit of time to hang up your in-progress work and look at it. Sometimes I feel like this part of the game is a whole dollop of infatuation and I can barely stand to leave my WIP or stop looking at it, thinking about it.

Draping it over a handy rod and peering at it is good though. I think it helps know what to do next. It helps show the whole picture rather than the handful of square inches between my hands under the needle.

All good. Now it’s time to turn out the lights and go to sleep.

I was waiting for this bobbin to run out – the machine sounded like it could use a pit stop with oil change, I mean cleaning and oiling. Now it’s all clean and oiled and new needle and sounds like a champ.

On to number nine!

In the last couple hours, I got an email from the coursera folks with links to my pre-course info. There were four videos by my teacher – very interesting stuff about how the class will work and what the purpose is of the writing exercises. We submit, four other students read, rate and comment and you get to read four essays of other randomized students. Oh dear.

Sounds like the course will technically start on Thursday so having finished Dracula, I will buckle down and read the first book: Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm, translated by Lucy Crane and illustrated by Walter Crane. Eeks!