Sunday, April 22, 2012

Sunday Sundry 4-22-12

Let's pop the lid on another edition of Sunday Sundry, shall we?  It's been awhile.

Friends, I have spent a good deal of my spare time this past week trying to piece together something other than a quilt.

I've been doing some genealogy work, and it's led down some interesting trails, one that leads all the way back to the middle ages and a place called Shropshire in England.  Does anyone who reads this happen to live near there or have visited?  It looks like an entirely lovely place, there on the border of Wales.  Of course, things must have been somewhat less than lovely when the ancestor decided to shove off across the pond around the mid seventeenth century.

Whittington Castle, Shropshire (photo credit)
I have had some crazy dreams in the midst of this research.  One night, after clicking back and back and back and back on an ancestral line on the internet, I dreamed I was part of a relay team, but the hitch was that we had to run a 13-mile course backwards—as in literally running backwards.  If you turned around and ran any of it the normal way, you would be disqualified.  Speed was not as important in this race as was just doing it properly.  

Now, I am not a runner in waking life, never have been, but this navigating the course backwards thing?  I thought, I can do this!  In my dream, the other members of my team disappeared one by one, dropped out, or maybe got disqualified, I don't know.  As for me, I was into this running backwards thing and really putting the miles behind (in front of?) me.  It felt kind of...awesome.

But back in the here-and-now, in my non-REM hours, I am eager to move forward. On Monday, I am due to have a couple of relatives drop by who are also researching our family history.  The plan is to share what each of us has, and I am hoping to pass the baton, as it were, to the more willing and able.  This work is fascinating, but I'd rather be sewing and working on things for which the finish line is in sight.  First, though, I'm going to have to clean up the paperwork strewn across my sewing table, ironing board, and numerous other surfaces in the sewing room.  I can't even see my cutting mat at the moment, and that's a bit disturbing.

A pair of mallards dropped in for a visit.
It's been sort of cool and dreary this week, but the sun shone today and Norm and I needed to get out of the house.  We went for a drive to a Goodwill about a half hour away, where I spotted this. 

In all honesty, my first thought was that it was rather fugly, albeit in an interesting kind of way, which prompted me to turn it over and look for a mark.

Haeger!  I should have known.  It had a layer of schmutz and spider poo on it, but it cleaned up nicely, and now I think its true beauty shines through.  I mean, just look at that gorgeous glaze.  No, seriously, the glaze.  It'll take your mind off the stuff that looks like brain matter.

I thought it was perhaps a cookie jar, but on finding this grouping on flickr, it appears that it was part of a canister set.  I intend to look it up in one of my Haeger reference books, but that's another thing buried somewhere around here that I need to excavate.

I've also been in the mood to find some good, new (to me) music.  What are you listening to these days?

6 comments:

Sara said...

Good Luck with the genealogy findings with your family!

I went to the grand opening for our Goodwill the other day and got some clothes for my 4 yr old son and a cute blouse for myself. I will be returning on a quiet day though to say the least!;)

Sarah Craig said...

Good luck digging out! It is a shame that you can't see your cutting board - something's just not right with the world! And I wish my Goodwill was as uninformed as yours appears to be - we never get good stuff like that!

Karen said...

Is the hidden cutting mat due to your cool thrifted finds? You find the best stuff!

piecemealquilts said...

My grandmother was into genealogy and I have a couple of enormous three ring binders full of information about that side of the family. One line was well documented, as it traced back to a line of Saxon kings - I'm descended from a guy named Ethelred the Unready! My biggest regret is that there's very little information about the women. They mostly just appear and give birth.

As for new music, have you heard of Tab Benoit? He came to the dinner theater where I work and now I can't stop listening to his CDs. Cajun blues - very good! I've had his Medicine album in my car CD player for the past five weeks.

Diane said...

You find the neatest things at thrift shops!

Elizabeth said...

Spider poo? I hadn't ever thought about a spider's bowel habits, but as the book says, "everyone poops." I thought that was a really funny, quirky thing to say.

Anyway, that vase cleaned up nicely! The glaze is really beautiful.

Love your view out the window! Those mallards are awesome.

And I hope you were able to piece together a few more details about your ancestry!

xo -E