Cookies and Cream

In the new Oreo advertisements there is an ongoing debate about which is the better part of the Oreo, the cookie or the cream.  Of course everyone has their own favorite part and their own opinion on which is best.  My nephew however was able to cut through the chatter and debate with a piece of wisdom that can only come from a child: Both.  The question isn’t cookie or cream, it has to be cookie and cream.  Neither of them is really as good on its own.  The cookie by itself is too bland, the cream is too sweet.  Only when the two come together do we have that classic cookie loved for generations.

This same concept can be used in quilting as well.  There needs to be contrast, light and dark, in every quilt.  True, some quilts will have more contrast than others, but there are still lights, mediums and darks.  Not only does this make the patterns stand out, but it adds interest.  A quilt made only of one color, one hue, and one shade, would not be very interesting to look at, no matter how well the quilt has been pieced.  You need contrast.

In Life we must take the sweet with the sour, the light with the dark, and the good with the bad.  Though sometimes we may wish for a life of more calm tranquility, where things don’t go wrong, shirts don’t get stained, glasses never break, and hearts are never hurt.  But this would be like having just cream with no cookie.  And I think we all know that can only lead to a sticky sweet mess.  Just as we need the light to help us through the times of darkness, we need the darkness to truly appreciate the times of light.  After all, life is like a roller-coaster, without ups and downs, it’s just boring.

Shop Hop and Sesame Street

Over the last few weeks our shop has been participating in something called Shop Hop.  If you are not familiar with Shop Hop, I can only described it as a quilter’s Black Friday sale stretched over two weeks and twelve shops with games and drawings and giveaways and prizes.  It’s crazy, but fun.  What strikes me most about shop hop is how all these different shops can come together and cooperate in a common aim.  This would be almost unheard of in other stores.  One would hardly expect Wal-Mart, K-mart and Target to come together for one massive sale, even on Black Friday.  There is too much competition for there to be any cooperation.

This may be a result of being raised on Sesame Street, but I have often wondered if the spirit of cooperation is more effective then the spirit of competition.  Granted, competition has its place.  It can inspire us to heights that we may not aspire to otherwise.  It’s great to want to do better and it’s great when another person’s successes inspire us to do just that.  The problem comes when we start to mistake those we compete with as an enemy.  This is one reason I have such a hard time with politics.  I can’t help thinking more could get done if politicians spent less time demonizing the other party and more time listening to them.  Maybe it is naive of me, but I think more could get done if they had a spirit of cooperation.  Perhaps they could even find solutions rather than problems.

Even if this idea doesn’t work on a national scale, I still think it can on an individual scale.  How much less road rage would there be if we all realized that we are all trying to get from point A to point B?  How much more could we accomplish if we stop seeing other people’s successes as a threat to our own accomplishments?  How much more tolerance and acceptance would there be if we could see that we are all trying to do our best to make it through in this crazy world?  How would it change our own lives if we saw the people around us as allies instead of enemies?  How would that be?  Maybe it isn’t too late for all of us to learn a little from Sesame Street.

The Hope of Spring

I love spring.  When those first daffodils pop up it is like little drops of sunshine peeking out of the recently frozen ground.  After the long, dark, dreary winter, there is nothing quite as sweat as sunshine, green grass, and flowers.  It’s a symbol of hope, new life and new beginnings.  This is something I think all of us need whether we like winter or not (which I don’t).  We all go through periods of time that are dark and dismal whether literal or figurative.  We all need time to start over again.

Quilters love new beginnings, new ideas and new projects.  This is probably why nearly every quilter has an abundance of UFO’s (un-finished objects) littering their workspaces.  There doesn’t seem to be an end of work, only new beginnings.  As with spring, there is a certain amount of hope in the idea that there is always another project on the horizon.  No matter what happens with our last project, we can start over try again or try something new.

I have found that most things come in cycles: winter to spring, night to day, darkness to light, rain to sunshine, sorrow to joy.  This is something I try to remind myself when I’m feeling down or discouraged, the circle will eventually turn and as certain as spring comes after winter, eventually joy will follow pain.  Happiness is sure to come to all of us in our time.  If we focus on the light, the joy and the spring, we can make it through the periods of winter in our lives.

Art of Creation

There is a great joy in creating.  There is a spark, a type of magic that comes from knowing that you made something.  There is a great deal of satisfaction when you look at something that you created and you know that it exists because of you.  This is the feeling I get when I write a story, when I draw a picture (even though I’m not a great artist) and also when I quilt.  There is something magical about taking raw materials (or actual material as the case may be) and turning it in to something beautiful, something unique, something great.

I think that everyone, in one way or another, feels the impulse to create.  Some create paintings or statues.  Others create skyscrapers.  Every Computer program or app had to be created by someone.  Entire worlds are created in the pages of books.  These things were all created by someone with this same desire to make something, build something, invent something.  The desire to take a simple idea and turn it into something real, something that they can share with everyone else, I think is the most incredible and, perhaps, even divine impulse we have. 

Few of us will ever be famous, or powerful, or greatly influential in the grand scheme of things, but we can still do something great, something no one else can do, in our own little corner of the world.  We can leave our mark on the world.  We can create something.

Gotta Be Me!

There is an old story about an old man and his son taking a mule into the market to be sold.  At first the son sits on the animal and the father walks beside him, but when they hear some ladies talking about how selfish it was for the son to make his elderly father walk, they decide to switch places.  However, it wasn’t long after that that they hear a group of men saying that the father shouldn’t be riding as the son walks.  They then decide that they will both ride.  Unfortunately, the combined weight proves to be too much and as they cross a bridge, all three of them topple into the water.  The father decides that you can’t please everyone, you can just please yourself.

I think too often we bend over backwards trying to live up to other people’s expectations.  We try to conform to whatever “they” say we need to do, or think, or behave.  I can’t help wondering, who made “them” such an expert anyway?

Sometimes at the shop I’ll have customers ask me about the “right” way of doing something: the right way to sew, the right way to quilt, the right way to bind, etc.  Usually questions like this come from someone who is just learning to quilt.  The more you quilt, the more you realize it isn’t a question of the right way or the wrong way.  There are many ways to sew, quilt, or bind a quilt.  The question is, what way works best for you, or sometimes, what works best for this particular project.

My sister, who plays the trumpet, heard once in a lecture that too often musicians will try to play like Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis.  But the world already has a Louis Armstrong and a Miles Davis.  We don’t need any more.  What we need is for musicians to play like themselves.   They have a quality and a talent that only they have.  If they try to play like someone else, they will deny to the world forever of they own style, because no one else can play like they can.

In the same sense, I cannot waste my time trying to be like someone else, even if “they” say that I should.  I have to be me, because if I don’t do it, no one else will, and I will deny forever the world of what I and I alone can bring to it.