Future project thoughts

* I started a few more blocks for the ongoing quilt top yesterday afternoon. The quilt as originally planned is 64" by 80": 20 16" blocks.

Well, I got to thinking: 64" wide is pretty minimal, that's like a twin bed size. And I looked at the "background" fabric I had left, and wondered if I could get more blocks' worth out of it. (I bought extra, and also, I think the pattern intended for you to use it as binding, but I tend to use different things as binding, so....)

I managed to get 16 more blocks' worth out of it, so the quilt will be 6 blocks by 6 blocks - or 96 by 96 inches when done. (That's enough for a double bed with a good deep drape - which you tend to need for a winter quilt)

I may have to forage a bit for a few more fabrics, if I exhaust the floral fabrics I have at home. I want this to be similar to a charm quilt in that each block is made with a different floral.

* Not sure of the NEXT next quilt, but I might use one of the pre-cut sets I have stored up, just to use them up. I have 10" squares of another Moda line of wildflower prints and plans to do a simple squares-with-white-sashing quilt with those.

* I watched "The Secret of Kells" on Saturday. This is an animated movie made by an Irish-Belgian team. It is a fictionalized story of the development of the Book of Kells (an illuminated version of the Gospels). A little Celtic mythology is woven in, as well - recognition that the land used to be pagan, and there is a character who is presumably a fairy.

I will say, for a movie about the Gospels, there was little direct reference made to the faith of the monks. Towards the end, there was the comment about how Brendan (the young man who learned how to do illumination from the old monk Aidan) was one of those who spread "hope through dark times" with a stylized dove flying over the landscape. I suppose the idea was to make it "accessible" for those without that much of a faith background but it did seem a little odd to me.

I will say an interesting theme in the movie: the Abbot was much more concerned with building his wall (which he believed, wrongly, would protect them from the invading Norsemen) than about spreading the Good News - and so he was often at loggerheads with Aidan or with what Brendan (his nephew) wanted. For example: he forbade Brendan from going out into the forest, which provided a source of both inspiration and supplies (oak galls for one of the inks....)

The Abbot lived to regret that: the Norsemen came, they attacked, a few of the monks and the people they were sheltering survived (he believed Brendan to have been killed when the scriptorium was burned, but Brendan and Aidan escaped, and apparently went across Ireland, telling people the Gospel). Eventually Brendan came back and was reunited with his uncle....

but that is an interesting idea, safety vs. going out and helping others.... just, given everything going on in the world. I suppose the idea is that we are called NOT to insist on being safe, but to go out and help where we can.

It's a very interestingly done movie; much more stylized than the "typical" cartoon. I've seen it compared to some of Miyazaki's work but to me it feels more like some of the UPA cartoons of the 40s and 50s, or maybe some of the more-artistic Eastern European work from a little later on.

There is also a cat in it, Aidan's cat (and a remarkably long-lived cat she is, unless it's her offspring that follows the adult Brendan). The cat is named Pangur Ban (there should be a diacritical mark on that second a - the word means "fair")

The character design is interesting; the "fairy" character (her name SOUNDED to me like "Ashley" but it is spelled "Aisling")

*The funny thing is it makes me imagine a design for a "made up" unicorn character in the style of MLP: "Frost Flower," who is white with very, very pale blue-white hair, and pale blue eyes. Her talent is frosting windowpanes in the winter...

I might have to have a go at drawing Frost Flower at some point....