Small sewing (amid larger currents)
Last night I worked on a Red Sky at Night block. Small pieces are a little futzy, as well as making sure the perimeter shapes are correctly basted so I don't find myself removing stitches when pressing it flat. One of the differences with this kind of EPP, that will be incorporated into a machine-pieced quilt, is seam allowances can't remain tucked around papers, or shapes once papers are removed. Plenty to consider as many minutes turn into accumulated hand-sewing.
I was pondering other things last night, amid the Golden State Warriors/LA Lakers game that caught my husband's attention. We're grateful for the near-return of basketball, as another lengthy season winds down; the election will have occurred in three weeks, and I am SO READY for that, although I don't anticipate a winner announced immediately. I miss the British manner of elections, where the Prime Minister simply calls for one, and within weeks it's DONE. This summer kind of felt that way when Kamala Harris became the Democratic candidate, and I wonder if others in this nation noted how an abbreviated style behooves the mental stamina of an entire country. If nothing else, the last couple of months has seemed palatable in that regard, for the little of the spectacle I permit. Yet I can't escape it, trying to maintain a positive attitude because it's out of my hands and pointless to fret.
Except I'm writing about it here because I can't wholly expunge it from my brain. Not that I can do more to sway voters to choose Harris than to say she is a FAR MORE CAPABLE CANDIDATE than the alternative, which is an extremely mild way of putting it, in my opinion. I won't go further than that, there's no need. Hardly a more polarizing election has occurred in recent memory, other than the one four years ago, and maybe what happened in 1960 when Americans had to choose between Kennedy and Nixon. The US elected its first Catholic president, which I wrote about in The Hawk. Now that seems tame in comparison.
All those small stitches of last night are adding up to a rather pretty quilt block, despite my initial mild fears that I'd find it tiresome. I really prefer two-inch paper pieces, the shape not so important. And by evening's near-end, I basted additional shapes, taking great care to align them so I wouldn't have to sew them twice. Sometimes surprises happen, for I found myself wondering if I might make another block from this pattern, called Hummingbird. We'll see how I'm feeling after completing another tricky block, maybe I'll be burned out. I'm feeling that way with the election, yet that matters so much more. I'm torn between trying not to stress out while swallowing hard at how incomprehensible I find the Republican party. And being aware that people who don't feel as I do probably wonder why I feel as I do. Or maybe they are so self-assured they don't care. I don't know, because for all the maelstrom, by keeping a low profile, I merely hear this awkward buzz, like the occasional ringing of my tinnitus. It's been bothersome lately because, well, I've been imbibing in caffeine, which I have found does aggravate it. Whatever....
But Whatever only works when the stakes are low. In this American election, the stakes are ENORMOUS. They are also, as I said previously, out of my hands. Such a conundrum, in that worrying about it is futile and thinking I can change it is also futile. Maybe I just needed to note the futility, better than pretending it doesn't exist, the it being a watershed for my country regardless of whoever wins. Our first female president or.... Okay, I can't go there. But maybe in writing that, I've gone far enough, sigh. That's farther than I wished to proceed, on many levels. So yeah, small sewing isn't so bad; it's a challenge, and perhaps is preparing me for what lies ahead for my nation. I don't know, but again in considering all this, my heart feels a little less....strangled. Dang, not the way I want to feel about it at all, but one more time, well, thanks for listening.
