The good news is that the first mini from my series of four mini-swaps arrived: a delectible circle of houses from Diana in Virginia for the Kaffe Fasset Mini Quilt Swap. [I’m sending out *this* one.] I immediately placed it on my kitchen table where I can see it every day, crowned by my new Zulu-inspired woven basket I picked up at Visions Quilt Museum.

I think they are a perfect fit.

So why the post’s title?  “Summer Stranglehold” sounds so ominous, like spooky stuff is happening and it’s not even Halloween.  The spooky stuff is the ongoing I-Don’t-Feel-Like-Myself sort of body that I live in these days–it’s sort of mine and sort of not mine: maybe “not mine” because I want my old energy level back–a working brain would be helpful too.  I realize that at a certain age (or sometimes certain stages, like pregancy, or nursing a baby) the body is dragging you around and you are in service to it, rather than the other way around, which is not how I think it should be, in my perfect world.

But I also was struck by how tired I was of the quilty stuff I’d been doing when I made the bee block for my bee-mate and I how I needed to break out a bit to freshen things up.  The idea of Get The Stuff Done had taken priority over Enjoy Making the Stuff.  So it was time for a break. . . a Mental Health and Creative Brain Break  (which I even doubted I could do in my somewhat diminished condition).

So we drove to San Francisco to visit my brother.

I gave myself an assignment:  Notice.

Notice new flavors, new shapes, new landscapes.  Dig into the moment, and not let it go whizzing by, like the cool series of inverted triangles in the curved head of the oil pump, two pictures earlier, which can remind a quilter of this:

(from here)

It was time to break out a bit (thank you, National Park Service, for this apt metaphor).  So the second assignment I gave myself was to Notice Pattern.

The three above photos are snaps taken at my brother’s house.  My sister-in-law is an amazing decorator.

The above is a star and currents map from an exhibit about the Southern Sea inhabitants; all of the above other photos are from the Oakland Museum. (The quilt is from a collection gathered by Eli Leon.)  Then of course, I had to Notice Color, Notice Taste.

Celebrating our 26th Anniversary at Chez Panisse Cafe in Berkeley, California.  A peak experience.

And to Notice Something Unusual.  Like street art.  Because we used to live there and have done everything on the Tourist Top Twenty lists, my sixteen-year-old niece suggested finding murals around San Francisco.  Above is Clarion Alley.  Then we wandered down through the Mission Area of town, finding single murals, before happening onto “Meeting of Styles” where multiple street artists were in the process of painting their art on Lilac and Osage Streets, between 22nd and 24th Avenues.  The link takes you to an interesting video with prominent artists in the area.  I loved watching them hold their rough-drawn sketch with one hand and executing it with a spray can of paint in the other.  Maybe like cutting without a ruler in the improv quilting world?

(from here)

(The last two are the same painting–just a couple of days apart.  The second is from *here.*)

And the last assignment was to carry something home with me that would force me encourage me to keep noticing, such as fabrics from two fabric stores we visited.

My father has a saying, oft repeated: “The place that seems most dangerous is exactly where safety lies.”  It took me a minute, but I finally figured out what this piece of street art said.  In a creative world, perhaps breaking out of the summer stranglehold means being a bit dangerous, leaving careful behind.