Beth Ferrier’s Blog

Houston is alive with Quilters. For ten days the streets sparkle with quilters of all ages and sizes, laughing and gabbing. We’re a walking quilt show.

 Quilt Market is the twice yearly opportunity for quilt shop owners to find the latest and greatest new fabrics, patterns and notions. They have a chance to chat with the actual designers of the products, meet the authors of the books and rub elbows with our quilting celebrities.

Today is the last day. I’ve been busy searching for nifty new stuff that will make our quilting lives easier. I’ve been talking with manufacturers about developing the things I want but can’t find. And, oh, the fabric!

We’re about to run out the door for one more day of adventure in Quiltmarketland. I’ve been a good blogger and have been taking lots of pictures.  Wait ’till you see the faces I’ve captured!

But for now, it’s off to shop. It’s a good day.

The manuscript is done. Weeks of writing, organizing, sewing have been distilled down into a couple of boxes. The step outs went out on Monday, a box of  zip top baggies filled with bits and parts, all ready for their big moment with the photographer.

 The words head out today. Piles of paper, checklists, image logs, oh my! All those hours at the keyboard distill down to this little box. The mess left behind is an amazing thing. Every horizontal surface in the studio is piled several layers deep.

Quilts, fabric, threads, piled higher and deeper.

What a disaster! My jobs for today? Pack for Quilt Market in Houston, I leave at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Ship off the manuscript. Get a pedicure and a book to read. And, oh, yeah. Clean up this mess!

Eight days remain before my first draft is due. I must have everything ready and report to the Fedex outlet before five pm one week from tomorrow. I swing between smug confidence that all is going well and abject terror at what I may have grossly overestimated my skills.

 Luckily my family has provided lots of distractions this past week. Living in one’s head for too long is not good for creative work. My sons have graciously stepped up with dramas of their own to get my attention.

 Caleb, who has been suffering with a really bad cold, finally saw the doctor. A chest xray thankfully proved that, while miserable, it was nothing more than a cold. Some really good cough syrup provided the much-needed sleep. My sunny boy has returned.

Jake showed up last Tuesday evening with a nasty infection in his left hand. A small pimple on his index finger on Sunday was now an open wound, red swollen hand and frightening streaks heading up his arm. We packed off to the emergency room.

 Two hours later, after a round of IV antibiotics and a prescription for heavy duty anitibiotics for the next couple of weeks, we left with Jake’s arm in a sling and a diagnosis of MRSA. He’s made four more trips to the family doctor to monitor the condition. He’s made a terrific recovery. While he still needs to remain vigilent for reinfection, for now he has a clean bill of health.

I still can’t show you what I’m working on for the book. Most of it is pretty boring to look at anyway, just words on pages, planning inserts for pictures, unformatting fractions, blah, blah, blah. The quilts aren’t due until December so I’ve delayed most of the fun until after the words are done anyway.

But I can show you how I unwind at the end of the day.

 Knitting is what I do so that I know I’m not working. The first sock was started last Tuesday in the emergency room with Jake. The second sock was started on Saturday night as I watched the old  Alfred Hitchcock movie,Rebecca, with Kent. The pattern, Loksins! can be found here. I made a couple of small changes. I started with an extra repeat of the garter pattern. The heel is stitched out K1, S1 and then purl back instead of just stockinet stitch and grafted the toe instead of gathering. It’s a really pretty pattern and I look forward to making it again.

 What do you do to relax?

 A couple of years ago I needed some serious surgery, requiring that I clear my schedule for several months. I took it as an opportunity to let myself go. Four blissful months without root touch ups, manicures or eyebrow waxing. (Just look at the lenghts I’ll go for my students.)

Even though I am the oldest of six sisters, I have to admit that I totally missed out on the girly gene. At the ripe old age of fifty-one, I  still don’t quite get the whole make up thing. I’ve always considered myself plain (at best). After all, I’m the smart one, not the pretty sister, and I’m mostly okay with that.

When the time came for me to go back on the road I took my sorry self to the mall. The make up store does an excellent job with shaping eyebrows. It says so right on the chalkboard by the door. (I tend to get carried away when I try to do my own eyebrows, the drawn-on eyebrows have been out of favor for a while, even I know that.)

As the lovely young woman applied hot wax to my face (and to think I paid for this) she remarked on what great shape my brows were in considering they had been left to their own devices for so very long. Yes, indeed, they needly hardly any attention at all.

But, she said, while I’m at it, would you like me to pull that whisker on your chin?

Now, I have never considered myself vain. I can go out to the post office or grocery store without makeup, and on a busy day, without even combing my hair. But some how this whole chin whisker thing has me unhinged.

On my way to my last lecture of the year I flipped down the vanity mirror to see if I had anything stuck in my teeth. There on my chin, for all the world to see, were two (two!) whiskers, almost 1/4″ long each! Oh, the humanity! I have more hair on my chin than my youngest son!

Of course I plucked them out. But I had taught a six hour workshop the day before. No wonder the students were quiet, they must have been distracted by the whiskers. You know how hard it is to concentrate when the speaker has spinach in their teeth or mustard on their face or hair growing out of odd places.

I don’t know why this bothers me so. Perhaps it’s the wicked witch syndrome (at least they weren’t growing out of a wart). I don’t think I’m afraid of growing old, I do love my gray hair (and especially all the money I’ve saved not trying to cover it). I’m trying to take the whiskers as a good sign, that perhaps I’m finally on the other side of menopause and my inner child has, at last, used up her matches.

That said, I’m beginning to understand what Betty Davis meant when she said, “getting old ain’t for sissies”.

The hardest thing about writing, for me, is getting started. Every morning I come into the studio, park myself at my desk and then dink around for an hour. I notice that my cuticles are ragged, better shape them up. Might as well rub some oil into them as well for good measure, and some hand creme wouldn’t hurt.

Oh, yeah, I’m supposed to be writing. Hmm.

Let’s check out facebook. Maybe a round of Tetris will get my brain moving, or a couple of hands of solitare while I wait for the coffee to kick in. Time to let the cats in, and they’ll want to be fed. And this would be a good time to decide what we’ll have for dinner.

Okay, back to writing. Time for a pep talk.

When I travel I often get questions as to how I quilt my queen sized quilts on a regular home sewing machine. My answer? “One square at a time.” How do I applique that great big quilt? One flower, one leaf at a time.  And how to write a quilting book? My answer is always, “one word at a time.”

So for the next couple of weeks I will be using my blog for my warm up exercises. My first draft is due three weeks from today. While I think I’m in good shape, I still have a lot of work to do. Writing for the blog is a really good way to get the words flowing.

Now that I’ve bored you to tears with my morning routine it’s time to toss some words into Chapter Three and see what sticks.

In recent years I have been blessed to have the very best students in my classes. I’ve teased my program chairs by thanking them for their excellent screening process. (Once I heard a sharp intake of breath from the class that left me wondering if this was a guild full of cliques and hen parties. I had to quickly set the class straight that this was a feeble attempt at humor. For this group, very feeble.)

At the risk of breaking my arm patting myself on the back, I think part of the reason is that I have grown as a teacher. Right from the start I make it clear that they have come to the classroom to learn MY way, not the RIGHT way.

A while back I had an unruly student and her posse in one of my classes. She sat in the back of the room and rolled her eyes, clucked her tongue and even giggled at my instructions. Clearly, she knew the right way to do everything, and it wasn’t what I was teaching. She and her minions would chatter like middle schoolers as I tried to teach.

If I had been a newer teacher it could have been devastating to my confidence. I think these know-it-alls look for inexperienced teachers to gobble up, like sharks looking for chum.

Instead of being angry or hurt, I feel really sad for this sort of person. I wonder why on earth they spent the money for class fees and materials if they weren’t interested in learning from me. Is their ego so out of whack that it’s worth the money to try to feel superior? And superior to me? I mean, geesh, I really don’t care if you’re superior to me. Lots of folks are. I’m good with that.

All I ask of my students is that they come to class with an open mind. Please just give my techniques a try. Maybe you’ll learn a new strategy for something that’s puzzled you. Maybe it won’t be your favorite new thing. But you’ll have it, you’ll have it in your pocket for the day when what you always do isn’t working.

So, my question to you: what would you like a teacher do with students who disrupt a class? What do you want out of a workshop?