Openings...

One of Heather's best gifts ever was my seam ripper. Is one of those things I would have never bought myself and one of those things I was almost afraid to use. But sewing with her on a Sunday, I learned three things.
One, even if it feels painful, it is always better to undo a seam that has gone wrong, because the result at the end is much, much better.
Two, sometimes, you don't have to pin fabrics to sew them together.
Three, never try to finish a job when you are tired at the end of the evening.
Today, as I use the seam ripper for the third time, I think all of those wounds that I didn't open because of the pain. Today I know, it is better to get the air and sun to heal them and then, sew them nicely. And also,I don't need to have a pinned plan.
So, in honor of the spring and all the lessons learned, I'm taking my sewing outside, and I'm going to seam open all that I sow yesterday, under the sun.

Post office and doubts

So today was the final day to sent the parcel of the Friends Swap. I felt so nervous!!! It was my first swap, and I felt like it was a culminating point of some kind. I enjoyed all the process, meeting my partner, exchanging emails and thinking about the letters and the possible gifts. I made some things "for the first time in my life" for her. I always find that with friends, there are always a lot of things that you do for the first time, and I wanted to infuse the swap with that ideology. I have been really gifted with an amazing partner, and today, for the first time, I felt some doubts: what if what I had thought, made and sent wasn't worthy of her? She can make magic with fabric, and I'm just starting! I didn't want her to feel let down on any way. I hope my parcel makes her smile and feel loved when she receives it. I put all my heart, even if my techniques are not as good as hers. I can't talk too much, because she hasn't received it yet, and even if I wanted, I can't post with photos (partial ones, just to show a color, like a clue) because I have to untangle the mess of photos in my computer first. I am really excited, and it felt really good to go to the post office with my package, thinking about her face when she will open it. Will she like it? Hope so!

Turn the page

Belated page. There has been a lot of action in the house recently, family lost members found, babies, softball games, sewing, knitting, crocheting, friends coming back from long and far trips, other friends moving, government papers to send... So I haven't finished the two books I was reading from the library, and what is worse (or better, as I see it) I started a new one. My sister-in-love brought me Twilight, and I must confess I'm caught!. So, if you please will be patient, tomorrow morning I will make my monthly contribution :)

Turn the page.. Tuesday

Well, I'm posting this on Monday night because tomorrow I have to get in a plane and I won't have time until the night, with a little bit of luck, to read the other pages...
As I have mentioned before, the books chose us. They find us and get their way into our lives.
This book saw me when I was waiting for my student. She was late, and I got to read two chapters before she appeared. She looked curious about what I was reading, I told her about the book, and she secretly bought it for me, my birthday was the next day we had class.
I love the stories that the books in the shelves have.
The book for June is Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford.
As the Panama Hotel owner discovers the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were sent to internment camps during World War !, Henry Lee, widow, father, makes another amazing discovery: The owner shows to the press a Japanese parasol, and opens it, taking Henry to 1940, to Keiko and his first love.
He is convinced that the parasol was hers, and searches the hotel for clues about her family, for his voice, for a long-lost, invaluable object. Set both in 1942 and 1986, the novel goes back and forth, explaining the past, unravelling the present.
But this novel is also made of little moments: of a jasmine smell, a can of pears, a photography never taken...
The story makes us keep reading, and the details, embroider the pleasure of the trip...

Just a quick note: Adrienne, I never made it to my May(d) by me... I got the patterns, though. So maybe, just may(be), I will get to sew the summer clothes before the summer gets here...
As with books, we continue living, but the small moments, the peas getting bigger in the pod, the kiss of a loved one, the sound of rain, is what brings us pleasure. Happy June to all.

Full of memories day

My swap friend send me the link to this giveaway, you have to write about how your perfect quilt shop will be, good luck!
Link: http://yellowbirdart.blogspot.com/2009/05/winners-new-stuff-to-give-away.html

This memorial day, for some reason, is full os memories to me. Maybe it is that is has benn cloudy for days, of that the green in the trees has a magical color, maybe it is because the whole city is silent, even with the Bolder Boulder and rubber duck race... I feel melancholic, i made some "crepes-pancake" with coconut milk and my husband and my dog loved them. I burned the left index finger, I eel like writing, like being silent, just looking out to the quiet trees...

Turn the page... Tuesday

Believe or not, my eye catched the title of the book in the library when I was looking for somethng else. This is the complete title: The delighted States, a Book of Novels, Romances, and Their Unkown Translators, containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents, and Accompanied by Maps, Portraits, Squiggles, Illustrations, and a Variety of Helpful Indexes. The author that came with this title is Adam Thirlwell. And the book hides other suprises too, if you put it upside down and give it a 360 degrees turn, it turns ito the translation of Madesmoille O, a story by vladimir Nabokov, translated by Thirlwell first to the English and then to French.
I'm not trying to scare you, the book is one of hte freshest I have ever seen, it reads like fiction, and as I always say, life is far more interesting than ficition itself. I love the introductory scene, for example, the description of a suitcase, and all the places it has travelled to. Or the story of the first and lost translation of Madam Bovary to the English, made by Flaubert himself and his French tutor, a woman that caused him some problems in stairs and dinners...
This is a novel inside of a novel, and the authors, are sometimes the characters too. Some of the people that inhabits his little atlas are Jorge Luis Borges, Flaubert, Sterne, Tolstoy, James Joyce, Jane Austen, William Hogarth, MIguel de Cervantes, Vladimir Nabokov, Madame Bovary, Alexander the Emperor, Alice in Worderland, Berlin, Kafka and other men and women, main characters, cities, cafes,
This is the story ot the untold stories, of the misteries unveiled, of the relationships and serendipities that formed what we know now as the literary world. The equivalent will be seeing the characters of a circus before they get out of the curtains, but not only that, knowing their parents, their trips, the things that moved them...
The books has a collection of photographs, and some of them, I have never seen before (as Nabokov sunbathing, for example)
This is a little delightful book, or as the author calls it "a description of a milky way, an aurora borealis"

FRIENDS SWAP

I'm so excited to start this Swap!!!!! My friend-swapper lives in a sunny place, and I'm going to learn all her favorite things!!!

A new baby's blanket

My friend Yoli is having a baby!!!! the girl will be with us in the summer, her name will be Jimena. I'm so happy for Yoli, she will be the best mom ever!!! As soon as I got the email with the image of Jimena in her belly, I started this project for her. I'm knitting pink and green squares (both of us love lively colors) and will join them in a quilt-like shape. On the other side, I'm planning on the cherries flannel print, so soft! I will make a bib too, with the flannel, the green fabric for a contrast pocket and the little pink pom-poms around to entertain little Jimena.
Yoli va a ser mama!!!! Jimena nacera en verano. Yoli va a ser la mejor mama del mundo, seguro. Tan pronto como recibi el email con la ecografia de Jimena en su pancita, empece a tejer este edredon para ella. Esta hecho de cuadritos rosa y verde que voy tejiendo por las noches, y por el otro lado pondre la tela de franela verde con cerezas. Voy a hacer un babero tambien con la misma tela los pompones. Seguro que se entretiene ientras come!

Turn the page... Tuesday

Long time ago, I started to keep journals about the books I read. The starting lines (the ones that always get me into further reading), quotes, characters, images... Later on, I started working for a magazine and a bookshop, so reading was an important part of my life. Nowadays, I still keep the journals, I still read. But sometimes, Life happens, at a speed that no device, no matter how modern, can record. That’s what has been happening in my week, and that’s why, I’m late for the Turn the Page... Tuesday. Sorry, I’m normally not like this, but there were so many things in these few days (several mountain lions, classes that ended, classes that started, a lesson on violets, a promise kept... among others) that I wasn’t able to post on Tuesday. Will you forgive me? There it goes, my belated contribution to our reading experiment.

The Guernsey Library and Potato Peel Society
by, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. The Dial Press, New York, 2008. 274 pages.

“Dear Sidney,
Susan Scott is a wonder. We sold over forty copies of the book, which was very pleasant, but much more thrilling from my standpoint was the food. Susan managed to procure ration coupons for icing sugar and real egg for the meringue.”

This is how the book starts, and so does, the first letter. The Guernsey... is an epistolar book, composed only by letters, the common theme of all of them is a love for the written word. Some of the characters publish books, some write them, some are passionate readers. And we enter into their lives in the first person, in that intimate voice that is only tendered in a letter, in the lost art of writing a letter. We discover about love, about how to survive the war years and the years after the war with the maximum amount of joy available. We learn about lovers lost and lovers found, about a pig that shouldn’t be there and about the invention of the organic cake. All of it, with a delicious sense of humor. After having read one or two letters, you feel totally immersed in the times and lives of the characters, and all the surprises are yet to come. I loved this book, since the moment someone left it (intentionally, I hope) in my house, and I saw the stamps and the sea. It was calling me, the way only the books can call.

I am inhabited by books

I'm so excited to participate in this project... Read about it here: http://someofakind.blogspot.com/ ( I know, I know, it would be better if I rememberd how to put a link, but it's always the same, I managed to put one and by the time I need to put another one I already forgot how to do it. Just gime me some time, I will manage to get it again)