Saturday, April 21, 2012

Wildflowers and spring meeting of AQG


Nature seems to be waking up from a deep sleep.  The peepers are making noise in the swamps.  I have heard them twice but do not go out of a night to hear them but as we drive around we pass swampy areas and can hear them.  Their noise is pretty, silvery and ear piercing.  If that is a mating call, they are surely loud enough, perhaps even drown out any response they may be getting.
I looked out our front window to see some fuzzy white spots in the grass.  Went down to look closer and see that they are possibly small violet type flowers.  In spite of the efforts of the fellow who mowed this week, these fragile and very delicate little flowers have come up without any input from any human that I can discern.  I also noticed that with the warm weather we have been having, the dandelions are popping up everywhere.  They are bright yellow, and in spite of what they say at quilting, the yellow does not take over but is moderated politely by the green grass all around it.
This weekend is the big spring luncheon put on by Arizona Quilters Guild.  We did a lot of leg work trying to find a venue that would accommodate about 1200 persons which is what they expected would attend.  Prescott is pretty small and not used to having such large numbers attend such an event, except that the Resort will be able to accommodate large numbers and charge fees accordingly.  At first the AQG balked at the fees of the Resort, and other venues looked good, but even with  reasonable prices for the catering and event charges, they could not accommodate a large crowd.  So the Resort got the nod and the Yavapai Indians are happy to take the money for the outing.  It is sad that the AQG could not get enough people to hire a bus for transportation from the valley up to Prescott so it makes one wonder if there will be enough attendees at the luncheon to cover even a portion of the cost of the Resort.  Only time will tell.  With our guild defecting, and possibly other guilds likewise defecting from the mother organization, it looks like the demise of AQG.  AQG was started by Mrs. Laurene Sinema many years ago and it seemed like a good idea but then as time progressed, the board made some unwise decisions and the guild began its downward slide, culminating with the expulsion of the President during the 2010-2011 year and the succession of the president elect who then began to (apparently) embezzle the funds and upon being discovered he stepped down and the guild was in a shambles.  Lynn Kough stepped up to the plate but it appears sadly to be too little too late.  The idea of the guild being in existence was a good one, but it could have been a better idea and held more credence in the quilting world if they had offered juried status for serious quilters.  This would have lent some credence to the quilting efforts of the serious quilters, and added to their resume and entry into higher competitions would be a bonus.  On the other hand, quilting has been the ‘poor country cousin’ in the art world and not considered art at all.  However, I dare any of the painters and sculptors to try their hand at quilting – it is more than just stitching two pieces of fabric together – it calls upon skills that need geometry, accuracy in cutting, color sense, design understanding and the list goes on.
Even though I am on a mission, I am still connected to the quilt world but not active in it.  I have a project with me that I was told I could work on after digitizing was over for the day, but I am so tired at the end of the day that I have done little with my project – so it just sits there and invites me to participate when time permits and comforts my soul when I touch the fabric.  We are, after all, tactile people.
At the archives (Friday) I discovered that the cradle is broken.  One of the springs needs to be replaced and Peter said he would replace it on Monday.  He has become happy again, even bellicose at times.  I guess this is the way of the artist in him.  I do hope that he remains ‘up’ because when he is ‘down’ life is not good at the archives. 
Jeff has brought in the last 6 volumes of Hancock County and I asked him for the indexes to this particular county.  He brought up some of the largest books I have ever seen in my life and there is no way they are ever going to fit under the cradle…………..ooooooh that means right page/left page capture and that takes a lifetime,  or so it seems.

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