If you’re think­ing any­way, think big

From What Logos Do and How They Do It

The bit at the bot­tom is a marked-off area which I totally did not go into in order to invest­ig­ate how this was con­struc­ted. And I cer­tainly wasn’t tak­ing any pho­to­graphs. Phew.

Liv­ing with someone who makes LEDs do things for fun, I wasn’t overly blown away by this, but the raw data, pas­ted on the wall, was much more interesting.

I’m an ideas per­son, not a doer. I get antsy halfway through and start look­ing for ways to impro­vise. I’m going to hold my Granny entirely respons­ible for this, a woman who once got part­way through a crochet pat­tern I’d sent her before decid­ing she could “make it bet­ter”; a woman who filled my child­hood with cakes covered in blue icing, and recently decided to put  the top­ping dec­or­a­tions into the cake mix, just to see what will hap­pen. It’s just a little bit unfor­tu­nate that some other kind genetic rel­at­ive kindly endowed the curse of deaf­en­ing per­fec­tion­ism on me, mean­ing my brain thinks that if it can’t be per­fect, it shouldn’t be done. These two traits are in no way even remotely compatible.

Quilt­ing is some­thing I’ve alwayswanted to do, but some­thing that seemed way out of my league of crafts. Everything I’ve ever read about quilt­ing makes it seem like the most pre­cise art known to human­kind — some­thing that can only be achieved with a set square, a laser meas­ur­ing device and the most ded­ic­ated devo­tion to detail. I have none of these things. Well, I could prob­ably rustle up a set square from some­where, but I have prob­lems with meas­ur­ing, prob­lems with cut­ting, prob­lems with pre­ci­sions — he per­fec­tion­ist part takes over to the point that when Al tried to talk me through draw­ing a line in a calm and rational way I have to ask him to stop before I have an anxi­ety attack. It’s far, far easier for the internal impro­viser to take over and say “hey! Draw a wig­gly line and call it art!”

This is why I just went for it, and star­ted without either a plan or a clue. Squares were cut at ran­dom, then sewed together at ran­dom. Even the fab­rics were chosen ran­domly from a selec­tion I already had, although there was a minor brain­wave in the fab­ric shop when I remembered that they all shared browns, yel­lows and greens in com­mon, so I got another couple of fab­rics to tie in some other col­ours (a smat­ter­ing of light blue, a humung­ous chunk of Very Bright Yel­low) without hav­ing to buy too much more. Throw­ing the cake top­pers into the mix, if you will. Who knows what might happen?

Now I’ve put the top together, and actu­ally read a bit about quilt­ing, I can see where a plan would have been use­ful, par­tic­u­larly in address­ing some of the imbal­ances in the over­all item — there’s a little too much yel­low here, and that green is per­haps a little too green in nor­mal light (what is it with fab­ric shops and bad light­ing?). But if I’d had to plan, Per­fec­tion­ist Sarah would have kicked in and I’d have been too put off by the daunt­ing task of plan­ning to actu­ally get round to mak­ing any­thing: I’d have the Best Plan Ever, but never any­thing to show for it. Next time, I’ll have some sort of plan before­hand, but try to keep in mind that, actu­ally, the ran­dom­ising and thinking-as-i-go aspect was quite fun to play with.

The next part is the most ter­ri­fy­ing for me: the actual quilt­ing. I gave in and bought a walk­ing foot and guide for my machine, because I’m fairly sure that any machine that seems to be aller­gic to its own bob­bins might throw a little bit of a tan­trum try­ing to go through three lay­ers using a nor­mal foot. I have wad­ding, picked at ran­dom in the fab­ric shop because I didn’t know what I was buy­ing, and now seems to be ridicu­lously thin. I made a trip to the lib­rary which, though small, is pretty heav­ily stocked with tex­tile craft books thanks to the, ah, more gen­teel demo­graphic of the area I live in, and now have a couple of books that I look at in hor­ror, try­ing to digest terms like “layer sand­wich”. I’m still no fur­ther for­ward on how bind­ing magic­ally appears. Do I just cut it? If so, how, and does it mat­ter if my straight line looks like a worm free­styl­ing at a disco or should I hire someone who isn’t aller­gic to accur­acy to do it for me?

At the moment, with the top pieced and hanging over the sofa and the wad­ding still safely wrapped in its bag, I feel really quite scared about mov­ing on, but also excited. Yes, it’s com­pletely squint in places, and I only learnt some tech­nical ideas and time-savers from books when I was already well into the con­struc­tion, but it has been forever since I’ve had a pro­ject I’ve enjoyed so much. Bizar­rely, it has had a pos­it­ive effect on my work­ing day — I’m self-employed, I work from home, so work ten­ded to creep into even­ings when it was easier to work without inter­rup­tion, but now I aim to be all wrapped up by even­ing so that I can work on my quilt (don’t worry, the work’s still get­ting done, just dur­ing the day!). Most nights I’m squirreled away at the kit­chen table by 8pm, sewing.

I’m just scared I’m going to ruin it.

It is spring! I know this because I spent the after­noon sit­ting in a sun­beam in the Botan­ics, feed­ing cashew nuts to squir­rels and won­der­ing who all of the other people in the Botan­ics at 3pm on a week­day were.

(Admit­tedly, it snowed a little when I was on the bus home, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count against spring.)

My fence was not ideal. For a start it had holes through which the chick­ens could – and did – squeeze. I had the bright idea of tack­ing on chicken wire, but as I stood back to admire my handi­work, the chick­ens scrabbled up and over the top.

Fowl play: one man’s year keep­ing chickens

From the Guard­ian, just what I needed to read at the end of a week without any sugar (well, almost):

Sugar, fat and salt make a food com­pel­ling. They stim­u­late neur­ons, cells that trig­ger the brain’s reward sys­tem and release dopam­ine, a chem­ical that motiv­ates our beha­viour and makes us want to eat more. Many of us have what’s called a “bliss point”, at which we get the greatest pleas­ure from sugar, fat or salt. Com­bined in the right way, they make a product indul­gent, high in “hedonic value”.

And yikes:

But it was think­ing cre­at­ively about how to attract more con­sumers that led Star­bucks to the Frap­puccino, the ven­ture cap­it­al­ist told me. Although its stores were crowded early in the day, by after­noon “they were so empty you could roll a bowl­ing ball through them”. The cre­ation of a rich, sweet and com­fort­ing milkshake-like con­coc­tion utterly trans­formed the busi­ness. A Star­bucks Straw­ber­ries & Crème Frap­puccino comes with whipped cream and 18 tea­spoons of sugar: all in all, this “drink” con­tains more cal­or­ies than a personal-size pep­p­er­oni pizza, and more sweet­ness than six scoops of ice-cream.

Com­ing up tomor­row: the chocol­ate chunk short­bread has crack in it.