A Second String Tulip Started

It takes courage to live through suffering and it takes honesty to observe it.

~ C. S. Lewis

Quilting

The first set of Electric Socket blocks have been on the design wall long enough. After so many supportive comments, I've come to like the craziness, too, but still wanted to play with tulips. Fortunately there are still more blocks waiting to be sewn. Now I'm basically repeating the previous tulip quilt but with a brighter border. The blocks were arranged to flow from yellow to red to blue to green to orange and back to yellow around the border. The yellows in Electric Socket made that quilt shine so they had to be included in this one. Additionally, repeating the Tulip design should help crystallize all the techniques I learned {hopefully without all the mistakes.}

Because the border contains clear, bright strings, the tulips should, too. Compare them with the black tulips in the first String Tulip quilt. 

Green could have been used for the stems but this black and white seemed more fun and made a more emphatic contrast on the blue striped background. Altogether this is a jauntier look for the same layout. Funny what a difference a few strings make.

Reading

So many books are in my queue these days. I'm coming to realize how my "home reading", i.e., those books I've purchased, gets behind. The library has been notifying me daily of yet another hold that's available. After waiting so many months for access, I'm more aware of the queue of readers still waiting. 

The Smallest Lights in the Universe, a memoir by MIT astrophysicist, Sara Seager, recounts her professional development from a young girl awestruck by the sight of a clear night sky to a MacArthur grant recipient and lead of a NASA research team. Soon after becoming tenured at MIT her husband dies of cancer. The story intertwines the search for extraterrestrial life with the equally important ones of search for a meaningful life and search for connections with other lives. She masterfully links images and scenes from one to the other. 

One of her many skills is the ability to explain her projects clearly to amateurs and non-technical readers. She simplifies without speaking down. She also conveys an amazing awareness of other people, why and how she built a family/community of people vital to her life. Definitely a worthwhile read.

Enjoy the day, Ann