Today and yesterday, F. was here quilting for the last time before she moves to Montana. We got a lot done and it was extremely entertaining to boot. The previous evening, I had a conversation with my friend B. in which she blamed her lack of quilting on not having anyone to quilt with. I scolded her for a lack of devotion, but I have to admit that my productivity and creativity are definitely lower than when I was in Boston and had scads of people to keep me company and make me use pink.
My ex-husband used to ask what we did in the quilting meetings – like, drink tea? I told him we cursed and talked about sex, which is true. But we also helped each other on design or technical issues, even when our tastes were very different. It was ok to do your own thing.
I did not get such a vibe from the “ladies” at the quilt show here in town when I volunteered. They didn’t seem to know what to do with someone who didn’t already know everyone, and when I couldn’t identify some easy to grok traditional style of quilting as my particular flavor, they didn’t have much to say to me. I know the intergenerational gap is hard to bridge, but my grandfather called me last week to talk about finding a suitable relational database for his genealogy research, so I know it can be done. I felt game to try with the quilt guild people. It didn’t work.
But I’m going to try again. Tomorrow evening is the quilt guild meeting, and I shall attend and see if I can get in the swing of things. They have “bees”, which are groups that meet to sew together, and maybe I could do that. The Art Quilt bee I signed up for last time ended up being a discussion bee held at a non-public transportation-friendly coffeeshop. Ah well. We’ll see if life has improved.