Just a few Midwestern photos

So remember I made that quilt, and I said that it was inspired by Iowa, in particular the farming area where my parents are from and where I spent a lot of time when I was growing up. Well, it was on my mind because I took my vacation there this fall, and went to a harvest festival in the town my grandparents live in. So I thought I’d show you where the inspiration came from.

So yeah, the inspiration is obvious. I can’t really emphasize enough how much my summer and winter trips influenced me while I was growing up. Even my family didn’t know that until I said it on this blog, though. I’m not a particularly communicative person, apparently.

Southeastern Iowa is beautiful. This particular area is close to the Mississippi River, which is my favorite body of water (I’ve even swum parts of it, which I think about now and – ew! snakes! fish! tugboats!), and has, as far as I’m concerned, the best weather ever. And if you think Iowa is fla, it’s really not (cue Dar Williams song the Hills of Iowa).

The fall leaf photos you’re seeing now are from Geode Park maybe 10 minutes from my grandparents. It’s a state park around a lake. It would be a rather forested area if it weren’t for all that farmland, but all that farmland makes that an easy fact to overlook. They have maple trees, obviously, which are my second favorite tree behind aspens. Aspens win because there’s nothing like sitting in an aspen grove on a breezy spring day and listening to the leaves chime. I recommend a porch on a mountainside in an aspen grove in Colorado. Really.

I had a pretty relaxed time – went hiking a couple of times, did some sewing, went shopping with my grandparents, and my aunts and cousin came down over the weekend. There was a parade and lots of food (and the amount of baking was ridiculous). One day I took a trip down in to Illinois to visit where my other grandparents used to live, and where they and many other relatives are now buried. I don’t get many chances to wander around there, but I wanted to show Jeff around, because I have a lot of memories there, too.

I think it’s interesting, as I get older, to think about the things that ended up influencing the way I think about the world now. I’ve lived in a lot of places that I think have influenced me. Yet all the factors seem so disparate, and sometimes I think end up existing in sort of tenuous harmony in my mind. In my adult life I’ve chosen to live in three of North America’s largest cities, yet when my mind seeks artistic inspiration it turns to … pastoral Iowa? Okay. Sure. Maybe if I lived in pastoral Iowa you’d see me drawing my inspiration from Manhattan, then?

In any case, fall in Iowa certainly offers a lot in the way of busy farmers working to get hundreds of acres of grain corn and soybeans in before the first freeze. It was a very wet summer and this put off planting and caused Other Bad Agricultural Things (clearly I’m not a farmer). I visited a stretch on the Illinois side of the Mississippi where the fields had a foot of standing water – anyone remember when it flooded in Iowa? That water hasn’t all gone away months later.

Hey it’s me! I’m big on detailed self-portraits, eh? This is sunset on the Mississippi … it’s about a mile wide here. *sigh* Such a beautiful river. In summer there’s a nice little farmstand on the other side near there.

Now that I’m finally getting to taking care of pictures and trip stuff, and my 65+ backlogged emails, and my office-craft area looks less terrifically and horribly messy, I might actually get back to that crafting thing. Unfortunately, you know what one result of my big House Cleanout was? I found all those pesky clothes I’ve been meaning to mend, hem and alter. Isn’t that just a terrific joy? </sarcasm> I have sworn I will get to some of this though, and not just create new messes, which seems to be what I’m most skilled at.

Until I make it back to the computer, I bid you adieu

Travel Craft

My biggest source of confusion and packing disorder for my week-and-a-half long trip was what crafting projects to bring. It was a difficult decision. There was very limited space, you see.  I could take just two small bags, and I had to bring clothes.  Seriously, I considered mailing myself some supplies.  That’s sad, isn’t it?  A little compulsive, maybe?

I eventually elected to bring a new crochet project, a shirt I wanted to embroider and a pattern and materials for a skirt.  So in went my yarn, my box of all-purpose crafting goodies and tools that I like to carry with me, and a bag of stuff to take to my Grandmother.  Have I mentioned that yarn is bulky?  Yes indeed, Jeff did laugh at me stuffing balls of yarn into an overstuffed suitcase.  I also got rather cross when I couldn’t find my small scissors.

The skirt pattern I took was one I purchased a number of years ago.  I will publish the fruits of that labor soon enough (when it’s entirely done, I have to make adjustments).  I wanted to reap the benefits of my grandmother’s years of sewing expertise.  I mean, I can probably read a pattern, but there’s a lot more to patterns than the reading of them, although I did struggle with the quite irritating waistband of the skirt that I just couldn’t make sense of.  Plus with patterns there’s mostly the fitting of them.  Standard patterns aren’t exactly drawn to fit the Everyday Woman.  Or at least not this one.  I needed help.

I also took a bit embroidery as a nice little set of hand-work to do, but I really didn’t get much done on it.  The shirt needs some adjustment to fit properly to begin with.  Why can’t manufacturers EVER put in bust darts, I ask?  Almost every shirt could benefit from them, but they’re never added.  Anyway, this is a summer shirt, and it’s October, so it predictably didn’t hold my attention.

My crochet project got a lot accomplished by the end of the week.  I’m kind of impressed.  I’ll show you that soon, too.  I’d have thought I’d have gotten less done, because it’s not exactly bulky yarn and it’s only crocheted in half-double-crochet (a denser fabric, thus requiring more stitches and yarn), but I really kept at it.

As you can tell, though, I had a pretty good time just pointing the camera lens out my window on the train.  I’m fascinated by all the things you can see on a train – it’s not always the most picturesque way to travel, but you learn a lot about the places you go through when you travel that way.  I find you learn more about the ways that people actually earn their bread and butter, the things people do on a daily basis and how they live.  Of course, you see a whole lot of train yards, too.

If you’ve ever taken Amtrak from Washington, DC to New York City, you know just how ugly places can get.  Elizabeth, New Jersey by train is one of the most godawful places on the face of the planet.  It’s dirty, and sooty, and it smells funny, and you just know that they only reason the place doesn’t fall apart is that it’s being held together by its own grit.  But in other places you just see the industry they have, which is interesting and not always too gritty – agriculture, dirt and rocks, the rivers and highways, steel melting, petroleum refining, and who knows what else that I didn’t even recognize.

I had a great time on my 11 days of freedom and leisure.  I love the Midwest – I love my family, and their way of life up there, and the first days of crisp weather and fall, and getting out of a city into pasture and fields.  I was lucky to be able to go to the harvest festival they call God’s Portion Day in the town of 300 people that I’ve been visiting all my life, and see old friends and extended relatives.  It was hard, hard, hard to come back to the heat and the city and work and getting up at 6:15 to go run at the gym.  ARGH, I tell you.

I was entranced with the textures and shapes I saw on my 28-hour train rides from Austin to Chicago, and I hope you enjoy them as well.  I talked about them more on Flickr, if you’re interested.

On the road, or rather, tracks

Greetings from the train! I am on vacation this week traveling via Amtrak to visit my grandparents from Iowa. The train is awesome, I don’t get much opportunity down in the southern areas to travel this way.

I find trains very conducive to crafting – I have spent a good 4 hours crocheting and embroidering today and more time reading and sleeping.. I am also lucky to be married to a guy who’s good with tech, so we’re outfitted with movies, TV, portable Internet and video games. Pretty much every massive time-waster invented by modern America.

Wow, the train just did something fairly stomach churning. Next stop is maybe Arkadelphia or something. Happily I don’t have to care where I am because someone else is driving and in a couple of hours after some strenuous Angel-watching and a glass of wine, I will be going to sleep!

Actually, truth is that in addition to the welcome respite traveling this way offers, I find that my most rewarding trips aren’t just about destination. I’d hate to miss all the stuff between point A and point B, which is at least as interesting as the two endpoints. I just like to stop and smell all the flowers.