TChem: to allay your Homer-esque drooling, it sounds as though Fricke wheels will still be available months/years from now (not sure what J's employment time-line is).

The owner of the shop (umm...Linda? I'm bad at remembering names) said the only less-expensive wheel was one a person could build themself out of PVC pipe (apparently there are plans out there) but that it's "not very aesthetic" and she also thinks the Fricke works better. (They're handmade by a guy in, IIRC, Oregon.)

If I were buying a wheel (I'm not; I don't have time for another craft obsession. As it is, I look at the quilt in the frame and keep saying "I need to find time to finish that"), it would probably be a Fricke.

Sunday, I spent part of the day working on the pinwheel quilt. It's almost done - I will probably finish it this afternoon and then post a photo. And I'm reminded of something about piecing quilts: you get to a point, usually about halfway through sewing the blocks, where you look at them and think you've made a BIG mistake in color choice, that the colors are fighting with each other, and the finished quilt will look bad. I've learned to just work through it, as nine times out of ten when you start sewing the blocks together they settle down nicely and look a lot better. That's what's happening with this quilt: the black and green no longer have quite the screaming go-go dancer vibe they once did.

I also washed up the last few months' accumulation of quilt fabric while sewing. I've got the poppy (not POOPY) fabrics ready to go. I splurged and bought enough of the big big print to use as a backing. It's funny - that sort of orangey red is not a color I'd normally pick - especially not with black and the sort of dull yellow that's used with it. And I'd definitely not wear those colors. But I LOVE this fabric. And I LOVE all the fabrics I've picked to go with the fabrics from that line. The colors just feed my soul. And I can imagine in the winter, when it's 40* out and horizontal rain, and I come home after a long day of work, that seeing the finished quilt will feed my soul.

I also washed up the Denyse Schmidt fabrics I bought, I'm going to make a "Tumbler" quilt (a simple one-patch pattern, so-called because the shape of the patch is kind of like a tumbler [glass] in profile). I'm plotting a way to rotary cut all the pieces - if I have a ruler that's got the right angles on its sides it will be easy. I can even press off all the fat quarters, stack them in groups, and cut multiples at once. (Cutting is the worst part of quilting). I actually think I'm going to start this before the poppy quilt; I like the idea of cutting all 357 (or however many) pieces that I need, taking an afternoon to lay them out on the floor, and then making "stacks" so I can sew a few pieces of a row together whenever I feel like doing a bit of sewing. And the nice thing about one-patch quilts: they grow very fast because each seam you sew makes the quilt bigger. It's not quite like block quilts, where you make all your fiddly little blocks, and then have to square them up, and THEN after you've done all that, you can see the quilt grow.

I admit that sometimes I have a bit of a crisis-of-faith while working on the quilts. I look at the quilts I have planned - look at all the fabric I've accumulated over the years, and I go, "this is ridiculous. You do not need 37 different quilts. It is rarely cold enough to even need more than one quilt at a time. You have quilts you haven't even used yet." But then again - I remind myself that I have a colleague who is an unpublished poet. He does not "need" all of the poems he has written. They are, arguably, even less "practical" than the quilts I make. But he writes them, because he needs to.

And really - the joy I feel when I'm sewing or knitting or quilting or planning a new project is enough to make me forget those "practical" concerns. (For me, it's really not so much the having as it is the making.) I've tried to explain it to my colleague - I've alluded to that "I need to express myself in ways that are non-verbal." I'm not sure that he gets it but I try to tell myself that what I am doing is as valuable to me as his writing is to him. Or as painting is to someone who paints a lot (but doesn't do it as a "professional" artist or who doesn't sell their paintings). I don't think I could sell the stuff I make; even doing things on commission would feel too much like work. I've given things I've made as gifts and they've generally been well-received. But I'm not sure I'd want to sell them - especially not in a group-show type of situation, where I'd have to hear all the critiques and all the comments-made-on-my-work-as-if-I-weren't-there, or the people who would say "I wouldn't pay $X for THAT." I guess part of it is that I'm good enough at criticizing myself that I don't really invite people to do it for me, at least not in this realm of my life.