I finished both the scarf and the toque by the middle of November, but I've been so busy getting other projects finished before Christmas that I haven't blogged about it until now. One of the projects was Tartan Delight, another one of Fabric Cafe's 3-yard quilt patterns. This one is the It's a Snap pattern from the book Pretty Darn Quick. I had purchased the fabric on one of my quilt shop hops. I love tartan fabric and I think it turned out very nice. The recipient suggested blues and greens, and this was the best match I had in my 1 metre/yard collection. I used a royal blue minky dot for the backing. Anise is the pantograph I chose. It was one I received for a pantograph of the month program that I was in briefly, but I haven't used it as it didn't really appeal to me. However, now that I've stitched it out, I do find it rather pretty, though it will likely never be one of my favourites.
I worked on this one at the Lutheran church sew days, but when I got it home and put it up on my design wall to measure for the borders, I thought, "What is wrong?" It definitely did not look right. I finally figured out that I had gotten all the blocks in the correct order in each row, but then I had stitched the rows together in the wrong order. I think I only ended up with two out of the 6 rows in the right place. I gave the stitch ripper a workout that day.
Next up was Higher Ground, using the Stepping Up pattern. I had gotten the pattern as one of the freebies that Fabric Cafe shares. They switch out their freebies every couple of months, so it's a case of you snooze, you lose. But I try to keep up with their pattern giveaways, so I don't lose out. I was kind of loathe to part with this one because the colours and the fabrics are just really awesome, but the recipients loved it. I had to make a few design changes - a couple were deliberate, based on my fabric available (I didn't have quite enough of the navy blue, so had to rearrange fabric placements, and decided to make the mauve border wider). And I accidentally made one too many of one block and one too few of the other, so my rows are arranged slightly differently than the pattern. But it's still a beautiful quilt, in my opinion. I had some mauve minky dot in my stash that I used for the backing and Zoidberg Feathers for the quilting. This is a pantograph that I have used before, but I had to choose something that would work with minky - nothing too dense - and would look good on the quilt top. It's probably one of my favourite designs - it's very pretty and works up relatively quickly. As a matter of fact, I decided that it had the right qualities for stitching up fabrics for bag-making, and I used it for quilting the fabrics for a travel bag for my grandson, seen here on the longarm, and a backpack for my daughter. I was really hoping to get these bags finished, plus a couple more quilts, in time for Christmas, but I just ran out of time. As a matter of fact, I didn't even get all 3 of my Christmas trees up and decorated until Christmas Eve. And other Christmas decorating around the house was pretty sparse. Hopefully, I'll get the bags finished soon and you'll hear more about them then.
I read an excerpt from this book online and thought it sounded rather interesting and decided to put in a request for it through my local library. It came in shortly before Christmas, and after my family left on Christmas Day, I decided to relax by reading it. Briefly, it's the story of the author's family leaving behind their everyday lives when she was a small child, and sailing off on a "remake" of Captain Cook's third voyage. What should have been an awesome adventure turned into years of drudgery, neglect and emotional abuse.
I can't honestly say that I enjoyed it. Don't get me wrong: the author is a good writer, knows how to engage her readers and keep them interested. But her parents were just so aggravating. They were both self-centred, immature, entitiled narcissists who had no business having children. And if they did, the most responsible thing they should have done was leave the children on someone's doorstep. I read the whole book waiting, hoping for them to grow up and behave like responsible adults. But they never did. Picture this: your young daughter experiences a near-fatal accident in a storm that almost destroyed the boat. When you finally get her to a doctor, he explains that she will require surgery, and you respond, "What if we do nothing?" I can barely describe how disgusting I find this couple. They reminde me of those Instagram "influencer" parents that portray their perfect family life to the world, but when the real "behind the scenes" story comes out, it's a very different tale. Too full of themselves, they would never see themselves as child abusers, but that's what they were. They may not have beaten or sexually abused their children, but there are other kinds of abuse: emotional abuse, neglect, failure to provide the necessities of life. That the author not only survived, but went on to get the education she so desperately wanted, had a successful career and a happy marriage and family, is a testament to her persistence and resilience.
But there are a few things that puzzle me in this story. The first one was when she called the "Help Line" while she and her brother were living in Australia. Why was there no follow up? She and her brother had essentially been abandoned by their parents and left to fend for themselves with only quick, brief phone calls when they were in a port from which they could make a call, and very rare visits. Why wasn't this reported to Child Protective Services and an investigation done? I know this was 40-odd years ago and laws/regulations have changed, but still it was an obvious case of neglect. Was it because they were foreigners? Or because they were already teenagers by this time? Surely our obligation to protect children doesn't end because they don't happen to be citizens of the country, or because the author was almost 18? Hmm, I wonder what legal age in Australia was at that time...
The other thing that really puzzles me is Chapter 28, "Fiji: Looking for Wavewalker". Personally, I know nothing about the Fijian culture, but reading this chapter made me feel like I was reading a spy novel, or something. Why did it seem that almost everyone was colluding on keeping the author from finding out what actually happened to the boat? Furthermore, what difference did it make? I was perplexed as to why it was so important to the author to find the boat that was the site of so much anguish, neglect and abuse. She spent time and money travelling to Fiji from England to do so. The only thing I can conclude is that she needed it for closure, and for confirmation that what she went through actually did happen. And maybe I can relate to a certain extent. I know how discombobulated I felt when I discovered that the house I had lived in, in Saskatchewan, had been torn down. It had been a really rough patch in my life and my marriage, and I found it rather disorienting that the house was gone, as if that part of my life had been erased.
Regardless of her reasons, my sympathies are with the author, and I'm glad she's achieved success and happiness in her life. My biggest take-away from this book is how thankful I am for the parents I had. They were definitely not perfect - none of us is - but they were so much better than the author's parents that they weren't even in the same league. Thank you, Lord, for my parents.
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