Beth Ferrier’s Blog

In just a few hours I’ll be heading towards six days of teaching in Mississippi, in July. Since my inner child has been playing with matches for many years now, I’ll admit, I’m concerned about the heat. Let’s face it, there’s only so much clothing one can remove and still be street legal.

I’m assuming that folks in the south run from air conditioning to air conditioning the way we northerners run towards the warmth in the dead of winter. Perhaps I’ll even sweat off a few pounds while I’m there (one can hope). Oh, wait, I forgot, I’m going to the civilized south, I mean perspire.

One way or another, I’m really looking forward to my time in Ole Miss. Just last month I was in St. Cloud, MN, in a classroom that overlooked the Mississippi River. This week I’ll be closer to the mouth of the river than ever before. Someday I’d like to see the beginning and the end of the Mississippi. The river has always been a life metaphor for me. It starts out so small, and grows to be strong. While it may wander a bit in the middle it supports life and provides for others. Those who fail to take it seriously end in ruin. And then it finishes in grand style, pouring all it has left into the sea. We could all hope to do so well.

The last things to go in my suitcase are my evening diversions. I must admit that I shudder in horror at the thought of having nothing to do. That’s not to say that I’m incapable of doing nothing (shut up Karen), and after a good day of teaching, sometimes nothing is about all I have left. So I’ve tossed in enough yarn to make two pairs of socks. And I’ve tossed in a piece that I’ve appliqued, along with embroidery floss and beads. And I have three books on my ipod. Hmm, maybe I’d better toss in another skein of yarn, or pull the fabric for another small applique project.

Thank you all for your kind and thoughful comments. Joy Vale’s comment number twelve was called out by the random number generator. As soon as I hear from her I’ll be sending a stack of fat quarters her way.

I’m rather surprised by the number of suggestions that I should take time to rest. Do I look tired? Maybe while I’m out today replacing my coffee maker (which refuses to make coffee no matter how many times I poke the “on” button) I should invest in some concealer.

 Seriously though, I do appreciate the idea that some time off is to be enjoyed, and I have been. I’ve cooked dinner almost every night this week. I’m going to have to find a new project soon or Kent will come to expect this.

It just so happens that November is National Novel Writing Month -NaNoWriMo for short. It’s sort of a way to be accountable to someone, like a good support group, to get us to actually sit still and put all those words we say we’ve always wanted to write down on paper. The goal is 50, 000 words by the end of the month. That’s only about 100 pages, which sounds scary, but it’s really not that much.

I was reminded of NaNo just a couple of days ago so I haven’t had much time to work up a plot, or even a big idea, other than telling a fictionalized version of my own life. So, I started with that, and about 600 words in the writing demons showed up. Demon #1 said, Who cares? How could your little life interest anyone else? What a load of ego that is. Demon #2 said, how dare you think you can write.

I intend to continue to wrestle with the little buggers. I think there might be room for one more story about someone finding her place in the world. So, for November I have three projects: NaNo, a super secret product proposal (oh, it’s so cool it hurts me not to tell you!) and a book proposal for piecing. That ought to be enough to keep me out of the kitchen.

So much of life is a series of overlapping events. Projects ebb and flow around teaching trips and writing deadlines. Holiday and family celebrations pile on top of daily responsiblities, and chores never end.

I’m at one of those delicious moments when everything is done. I’m done teaching for the year and looking forward to three blissful, productive months at home. (Although we did have a good time in Kalamazoo and Northville, didn’t we ladies?)

I’ve completed my responsiblities for More! Hand Applique by Machine. Rumor has it that I’ll see my first copy on Wednesday, and the rest of the shipment should be along shortly.

The last step of Now & Forever has been posted, another block of the month finished. Well, the steps have all been posted, keeping my promise to all who have been working on the quilt (or just collecting the pattern). My quilt is lying in a heap waiting for the final seams and then quilting, but there’s no real deadline for that.

So, the question becomes, what do I do next? That decision is usually dicated by the proximity of the deadline. But instead of running to keep up, I’m at this lovely little moment where I get to decide where I go next.

What will it be? A book on piecing? Another applique book? Should I try my hand at writing fiction? Maybe I should make a quilt for competition. (Or not.) What do you think? Here’s your chance to tell me where to go. Be nice and I’ll draw a name for a stack of fat quarters from my fabric line.

For days now I’ve opened the writing screen for the blog, stared at it blankly, thinking I really need to write something. But what? Life has been blissfully boring, filled with the small details of running a business and a household, daily and mundane.

As Quilt Market approaches, just five short weeks away, preparation for presentations and classes lead the to-do list. Packing and shipping class materials and goodies for the two teaching jobs coming in the next fortnight needs to be handled.

Everything is in a state of almost. The quilt patterns designed to showcase several of Northcott’s new fabric lines are almost ready to be debuted. New workshop projects are almost ready to post on my web page. The new applique book is almost ready to advertise. Summer is almost over.

But not quite. Cover quilts for the patterns need to be made and photographed. Supply lists for the new workshops need to be written before the projects can be posted on the web page. Kit materials for my Quilt Market class are arriving, boxes hunkering in the corner waiting to be divied up, but not quite complete yet.

And summer is not quite over. The days are still warm, the nights blissfully cool for sleeping. The roses are sending up one last round of blooms before retiring for the winter. The apples are almost ready to pick. Exciting things are almost ready to share, but not quite.

In the twelve years since I started Applewood Farm Publications I have been blessed with endless deadlines. Projects for patterns, books, magazines, television appearances all followed one after the other. Teaching jobs lined up, a few at first and then more each year. I’ve been all over the country (so far I’ve been to over half of the states!) and Australia too (wouldn’t I love to go back there!). Pretty cool opportunities, like designing fabric and product development have presented terrific challenges to keep life interesting and busy.

It has been terrific, because it was great fun along with the hard work. All of the heady experiences (Simply Quilts! Twice!) were exciting because I just didn’t believe they were really happening to me. I’m just a quilter, after all, not a televison star, but there I was, on a really-for-real sound stage in Beautiful Downtown Burbank. Who knew?

Quilters have liked my designs well enough to pay good money for the patterns, always a bit of a surprise to me. My background is in science. The only art class I took in college ended with the professor suggesting that science was a good career choice for me. Yet here I am designing little bits of fabric art as if I knew what I was doing.

I love, love, love to teach. (Lectures still make me a little queasy, but I can pull out the quilts and it’s all good.) The novelty of airline travel has long worn off but now that I’ve figured out how to work an mp3 player and download audio books I’m almost looking forward to my next day in midair. (And it doesn’t hurt that I can also sometimes get bumped up to first class where there is enough room for my long legs. It sure is easier to get off the plane if my feet haven’t fallen asleep.) Not much makes me happier than a classroom full of eager students, open to laughter and playing with fabric.

But somewhere along the way I tipped over from being a mom that quilted to a business owner, author and teacher. In the process I found myself giving up a lot of my favorite things. No, I can’t work in the garden today, I have an article due. No, I can’t redecorate the kitchen, I have a book to edit. No, I can’t start in a new direction, this path is too well worn. No, no, no.

For while now (can’t say for sure when it started) I’ve been chafing at my quilted collar. To be perfectly honest I’ve been on the edge of bagging the whole deal more than a few times. Enough already. I want time to sew, bake, garden, read. Put a fork in me baby, I’m so done. Now, the last thing I want to do is whine. I know how blessed I am to have the career I do. My BFF, Karen, would call it “crying hungry with a loaf of bread under my arm.” But have you ever found yourself thinking that, man, this used to be so great, but geesh, what happened?

Luckily, commitments have kept me moving forward. Teaching jobs exhaust my body but replenish my spirit. Writing is a lovely joy, untangling words to capture a picture. Deadlines always have a terrific way of focusing one’s attention, that is for sure.

Since meeting my last deadline at the end of April I have given myself time to do all of the things I’ve missed, and (*gasp*) even do nothing at all. It’s been a time of reconsidering. I’ve been purging my stash, donating the stuff that no longer fits with the kind of quilts I make and reorganizing the stuff I’ve kept. Next I will whittle down and sort my thread stash, and make room for some of the new materials I’d like to use.

It’s been a time of reflection. Where do I want to go next? These weeks without direction have been both a challenge (like putting a type A personality in an empty room for an hour with nothing to do but retie her shoes) and a blessing. I can feel my internal spring gently uncoiling, relaxing. No longer drowned out by the shouting schedule, new ideas are perching nearby, peacefully waiting for my attention. And I want to play with them!

Instead of the no, no, no to distractions winding me tighter and tighter, I feel quietly poised for the next step.

Here in Saginaw it’s been an uncommonly cold and wet spring. Even the most loyal Michiganians have been crotchety about the weather. We had frost again earlier this week! It’s probably a good thing that this cold has slowed me down, I would have been into serious planting mode if not for it.

We never know what we’ll find when the flood waters recede. One year an aluminum canoe was left behind. With no registration marks it was impossible to return. It sat for years in the side yard, waiting for what, I’m not quite sure. It finally found a home with a friend of a friend.

It’s when the water remains only in the low spots that it gets really interesting. Fish become trapped, making for easy pickings for the predator birds. This majestic fellow made an afternoon of it. Quietly perched at the water’s edge, every few minutes his head would snap down and up, another small fish sliding down his gullet. Watching him move, it’s easy to see how science can suggest that herons are ancient birds, a just feather away from being a dinosaur.

Yesterday one of these fellows showed up at my pond. I was so startled to look up from my desk to see the heron at the pond that I jumped out of my seat and scared him off. Since the fish have been in hiding for the better part of the week, I’m guessing that it wasn’t his first visit. I’ve only seen evidence of four of the seven fish. That doesn’t mean that the other three aren’t there, but I’m guessing that at least one of them became sushi.

As the last of the water sinks into the field, large walleye thrash about, no exit in sight. Our dog used to think it was his responsiblity to locate each dead fish and roll in it. He finally learned that rolling in stinky stuff always resulted rejection from his people and a humiliating bath.

This year a band of turkey vultures showed up to clear the field. Huge and ugly as sin, at least a dozen of these buzzards perched on the peak of the neighbor’s barn. From there they took turns swooping over the field, returning to the barn to brag about their finds. Not at all menancing, they looked more like a bunch of frat boys, shouldering their way into line and squawking about their conquests.

While our field has been fallow for some twenty years, our neighbor leases his for planting. It is finally dry and warm enough for planting. As the huge tractor turns over the soil he is escorted by a troop of seagulls, wheeling and diving, feasting on the newly exposed worms.

Today I will fly away to Morris, Il for the Pieces From My Heart Quilt Show. I’ll get to teach two of my favorite classes and there will be vendors. Sounds like a great time to me!

I’ve been thinking a lot about creativity. Students often remark about my creativity as if it’s some magical power. I’d like to debunk that myth.

Let me tell you a little story. Back about fifteen years ago, we had just moved to Saginaw. Some friends from back home had come to visit us. A flyer from community education had arrived in the mail, offering a class on learning how to be creative. I suggested to the group that I really needed to take that class, but it was $75, a lot of money for us, did they think it was worth it?

I think my husband actually hurt himself he was laughing so hard. Our friends also protested that I was the most creative person they’d ever known. When Kent finally was able to pull himself together he said, hey babe, what ever makes you happy. If you need a class to give yourself permission to be creative, then go for it. Or, you can take our word for it and spend the money on fabric.

I’m sure you can guess what I did, a stash has to start somewhere!

So my point, and I do have one, is that creativity is a muscle. We all have it, but to be really useful we have to exercise it. That’s where technique classes come in. It’s hard to be inventive when we’re still mastering our tools.

But more importantly, we have to learn to trust ourselves. Creativity is nothing more than believing that something is  done right simply because we say so.

 Like my favortie Christmas carol, we too are in our deep midwinter, the earth is hard as iron; water, like a stone. The snow keeps falling, snow on snow. It’s been cold, really cold, below zero cold. The snow is fluffy and sparkly in this fridgid weather, and the sunrise is often pink. When the frost clings to the tree branches the meadow takes on an other-worldly guise. I love it when winter is like this.

Lucy and I both find ourselves gazing out at the snowy garden. So beautiful, but not inviting. I’ll admit to thinking that nature is best appreciated through plate glass.

See that poinsettia plant next to Lucy? A gift from my in-laws a year ago, I nearly killed it off last winter. Just in the nick of time I started watering it again. In the spring I cut the branches way back and left it sitting by the french doors in my studio.

It’s always been one of my goals, to bring a poinsettia back into bloom. It’s a simple matter of controling the length of the daylight that the plant gets. Many years I’ve made half hearted attempts, covering the plant and then forgetting it. Putting it into an unused room, and then forgetting it. Or just forgetting it.

Last summer, in my never ending quest for balance in my life I made a promise to myself to leave the studio around six when Kent comes home. I’ve been slowly putting back the things in my life that I put down while I built the business: baking, knitting, reading, gardening, feathering my nest.

Those lovely blooms remind me that seeking balance is its own reward.

What a season this has been! I thought I was being terribly clever, lining up event after event. Book deadline, teaching travel (twice), celebrate birthdays, book deadline, Christmas party for 20, travel, Christmas Day, Christmas party for 30, and then the final book deadline in two days.

I did it, I pulled it off, and I, for the most part, enjoyed it all. Every now and then the enomority of it all would get to me. I’d throw a first rate pity party (which almost always included Pringles) and  then get over myself and get back to work.

In the process I discovered something about myself, something I wonder if I should work to change. I’m never really here, now. I’m so busy checking things off my to do list that I project myself to the end of the event. Ferrier Christmas party, done. Birthday dinner for David and Elaine, done. Book deadline, done. Where was I during the event? Planning how I was going to conquer the next deadline, trying to anticipate the needs of my guests. During dinner I am working out what is left to stage for dessert.

I’m not sure how I’m going to fix this, or if it even needs to be fixed. I don’t much like the idea of being the kind of person who is so driven that they don’t enjoy their lives. I used to be like that, when the boys were really little and I still thought it was possible to be perfect.

But I love my life. All of the good things in my life have come with hard work. In my world, only desserts come on a silver platter (and then only after I’ve been the one to polish the platter and bake the desserts). One of my favorite mottos has always been that luck favors the prepared. Is it really so bad to look ahead, to watch for the curves (and deer) in the road?

So now that the holiday season is winding down it’s time to consider the fresh, new year ahead of us. Wait, wait! Am I projecting again? Am I already so busy looking forward that I’m not where I am? Oh, this is going to be much harder than I thought.

It started innocently enough, as these things do. I found myself at our tiny local airport facing a day of travel with no book. With just one tiny little gift shop as my only source I looked hopefully over the rack of paperbacks. My rule for reading on the road is simple, happy and light in, meaty and deeper out. Books tend to stay with me and it just wouldn’t do for me to arrive at class still engrossed in someone else’s story.

Most of the best sellers before me were crime novels, how depressing. But there, between John Grisham and James Patterson sat this small book, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. Hey, it’s for kids, right? A quick read, and not too challenging, topic wise, how perfect. I’m a big softie, I don’t do spooky or gruesome, but this book was written for teens, even I should be able to handle that.

Well, what can I say? I loved it. Always feeling like an outsider myself, I felt a kinship with Bella immediately. Between flights and layovers (and a nap on the second flight), I devored three quarters of the book before arriving in Virginia Beach.

Quilt with Me, the shop in Windsor, VA that had hired me for this trip reserved a room for me at the lovely Smithfield Inn, owned by the folks who make the hams. My room was beautiful, decadently decorated, and the bed felt like sinking into the best feather bed ever.

After a wonderful dinner with the shopowner, Jackie, and her family, I returned to my room ready to rest and more importantly, finish my book. Just as I was deep into the climax of the story, poor Bella about to be killed by the evil vampire, I heard a ruckus out in the hall.

The innkeeper was conducting a tour. Outside my door I heard her say, “and this is the Sykes Room. It’s the scary one, it’s haunted.” Her voice trailed off before I could hear any more of the story. Haunted? Vampire stories? Dark and stormy night thrashing at my window? “Oh, hell no,” I said to the room, finished the book, sank blissfully into the bed and dreamed of being young and desperately in love.

Fans of the book will love that the next morning I discovered that I would be teaching in a dance studio.

So, in the last week I have devored the remaining books in the series, book two while on retreat, book three for the travel day home. And book four because I had to get these people out of my head so that I could concentrate on the book I’m supposed to be writing.

 I guess what touched me the most about the story was that I remember so well being young and hopelessly in love. Even though it’s been decades, mostly good years, but some very hard, I still see my guy as the seventeen year old that I fell in love with. He will always be that tall, handsome, gentle young man who held me safely in his arms and taught me about unconditional love.