Hey you awesome quilter you! Here’s the final book report of the 2024 Season.
These are a couple of cool tools! And pairing them up is so so fun. I love what C&T did here with both card decks and how we can use them in our quilting and related arts. As I’m thinking about this I can see using both to decorate cakes! This would be so fun.
I keep hinting at something fun coming soon and we’re closer. That’s right there’s more than one quilter involved. We’re looking at the middle/end of January.
Word of the Year
This came as something of a surprise, the 2024 Word of the Year:
P l a y
Often my new word of the year will come mid to late November and, until this year I didn’t give this much thought as to the why of it all. That is until writing the blog post on A Quilters Heart. Advent is the beginning of the New Liturgical Year, and I do go around saying Happy New Year to all my friends. And that’s when the Aha! Moment got me showing me this particular why. I love it so much.
My 2023 Word of the Year was Tenacity, oh such a good word. This one surprised me a lot and I think there will be a bit of holding on as it fits with the whole “Learn to Quilt with Reckless Abandon” I share in Color, Thread & Free-Motion Quilting. Way back in the 1990’s as part of the ministry I was in at the time there was a sense of, a desire to, become a Spiritual Director. Through a process I started in formation here in the Diocese of Austin, the blog post on A Quilters Heart shares more. It is here, in this pursuit that Tenacity was most clearly lived out, and where PLAY came to be.
Way back in the dark ages when I was little I would go to the neighborhood park and sing Karen Carpenter songs, sometimes making up my own words. And I’ve also doodled since at least middle school, if not before. Doodling in class or in a meeting is a way of paying attention, and for me it is a way of practicing quilting motifs before stitching them out. I also love to play with words, which sometimes even in this present age, gets me in trouble particularly if you can’t see my face. Sorry people. And in a recent conversation someone asked me if I’d taken theater in school. Nope. I have a gift of creativity and it flows from singing and baking, to cake decorating and quilting, oh and for a long time I made my own cards!
Discovering what PLAY is now will be so much fun. Once upon a time I was going to go into Early Childhood Development and remember something said by Maria Montessori, that children’s play is their work. Somewhere, particularly in our current western culture, we’ve forgotten how to rest and how to play. If we’re not working and achieving something then the perception comes to laziness and lack of ambition. The thing is though, and I’ve experienced this through quilting in particular and other crafts as well, that play and rest are where the best problem solving happens. It is as though we’ve let go of the firmest grip we have and set the problem free to show us the solution. We have time, we make time, to let our brains think.
Play, I think, is where we are freest to discover what we love the most. I love playing with fabric and thread and paper and pens, and reading and writing words and baking. There is learning in everyone of these things and sometimes it’s been downright difficult, and yet there is the PLAY and the rest and the joy in seeing how others respond. Particularly when I make cinnamon rolls.
What is your Word of the Year?
Teri
I stopped doing the word, or resolution, or predictions for the coming year. Where I am in January isn’t any indication of where I will be in the following month, nevermind November!!! Back to flying by the seat of my pants and taking life as it comes!!!
Beth, like you I have come to understand that I am flying by the seat of my pants. With the word of the year, at least for me, there is a lot of room for flying freely.
Fly high and free friend!