Zeitgeist Apparently

It was great that the journey home from Denmark was short and it went smoothly. It was nice to catch up with the Olympics on the BBC although it had been rather fun to watch handball in a foreign language. It looked like the atmosphere in the stadium was electric and it would seem that London has hosted a very successful Games. Freya was incredibly fortunate to have been invited to London 2012 by Millie's family to see athletics events, including the 4 x 100m relay final with the unstoppable, legendary Jamaican runners on the penultimate day of the Olympics and she had a fantastic time soaking up the atmosphere in the incredible Olympic stadium, especially when the huge crowd celebrated Mo Farrah's gold medal for the 5000m.

 

One of the packages in my pile of unopened mail contained a complimentary copy of C June Barnes' latest book, "Exploring Dimension in Quilt Art". I was a featured artist on pages 114-115 and it felt thrilling to see The Quilted Yurt mentioned in a book, even if it was not my own long overdue publication. I really admire June's three dimensional work and the projects by the other guest artists were truly inspiring.

 

I felt that it was strangely ironic to read that Audrey Critchley had worked on a series of Aboriginal burial posts and that the British Museum has recently been running an exhibition involving textile horse armour while I have been considering two similar endeavours of my own for some time. My new neighbour who is a bona fide artist tried to explain that it was all to do with "Zeitgeist"   meaning "the ideas prevalent in a period and place", rather like collective ideas buzzing around in the ether, I daresay. It has certainly made me rethink what I may choose to work on next. I think I will try to keep very quiet about it but I have a notion that I would like to revisit dwellings as a theme…

 

I organized most of the gear that I will need to take to Birmingham to represent APQS at the Festival of Quilts. There were frantic phone calls and emails to track down the overdue delivery of machines from Ireland, Germany and the USA. They all have to clear customs and arrive here by Monday if I am to leave on time with my hired van. It is far from ideal that they are still in transit at this late stage but I would probably get bored if I had nothing to stress about up until the last minute. I even found time to piece two of the borders that I will add to the Oz version of "Bewitched". I can't do any more to it until I get some more gold lame and get my studio back to normal when I return from FOQ in just over a week's time!