The road ends, but the journey continues...

Tag: Andrew James Murray (Page 2 of 2)

Played Well with Orange

'proud 2bee an honorary Manc' quilt top wip

‘proud 2bee an honorary Manc’ quilt top wip


As mentioned in a previous post, I needed a diversion from my Goat Suite (Saga) and Puffin Grant related tasks. I pulled out my stash of 2½ x ? fabric strips leftover from decades of previous projects and delved into piecing a scrap version of the Dora Quilt.
Happily sewing together strips into blocks I discovered the fabric scraps ordered themselves into a cohesive quilt top based upon print design rather than color.
calico type scraps

a sampling of calico type scraps – oranges galore!


design-print fabric scraps, with bee print in middle

design-print fabric scrap blocks, with bee print in middle


While I got to play around with color possibilities using the color orange, most of the oranges occurred in the calico/flower type scrap fabrics. No matter how I arranged the blocks, those calico/flower prints just didn’t ‘play well’ with the more abstract, thematic and graphic scrap fabric prints.
 
I preferred the non-calico blocks and focused on the bee print fabric scrap. Placing it in the center block of the quilt top, it will be the perfect resting place for my precious Manchester Worker Bee Badge*  pinned in the middle once completed.  A humble gesture by this everyday American standing in solidarity with those affected by that horrific terrorist attack – on children.
madison park quilt kohls

Kohl’s stock photo, not our bedroom!


 
Meanwhile, my taste for something orange had been awakened and needed to be satisfied ASAP. Instead of me creating something orange, I searched for something in a ready-made quilted coverlet. I found a luscious well-constructed one from Kohl’s. On sale, I also used coupons and Kohl’s cash and purchased it for a song…Extra bonus? It looks better than the marketing picture!
 
 
Through it all, the edits on the Goat Suite Saga vignettes are almost completed, the actual musical recording of my Goat Suite is ready to send on to be mastered, and the Final Report for my Puffin Grant got written and in the snail mail.

I am so ready for the New Year – how about you?

Note: Gonna be off-line for a while, so responses to comments might be delayed.
Will see ya in 2018!

* sent to me by my Manc buddy…for basic info on the Manchester Worker Bee as symbolic of the city and as honoring those killed go here

NOMA: what are those round-y, tilted buildings?

Photo seen on my Manc* buddy Andy’s blog
(oh, yes, he’s a published poet, check out his books here – perfect for gift-giving, IMHO)

Manchester Cundall Light4“Whoa, what are those odd round-y tilted buildings?” I asked him in the comment section.

To which he responded with a link to something called NOMA Earth Tubes.
NOMA? What the heck is that?

He further elaborated,
“The atrium is fundamental to the building’s ventilation strategy. Each of its three corners houses one of the building’s vertical service cores. Some 50m3/s of fresh air is sucked into the building from its landscaped forecourt through three giant earth tubes buried beneath the building; this helps temper the air, cooling it in summer and warming it in winter. Air is heated or cooled in a huge basement plant room before giant fans push it up the service cores to the floor plates.”

Huh?
Sufficiently curious, I clicked on his link reference thus beginning a fun google research journey for this lady on a pleasantly cozy, rainy Saturday afternoon. Continue reading

Giving Voice: It Was Children – and – It Was Intentional

Andrew James MurrayMy blogger-poet-friend, Andy, is a native Mancunian. These are excerpts taken from his account of and reactions to this attack of the innocents.
Quote symbolAround the time I went to bed the bomb went off.
I was totally unaware of what had happened until around 3.00am, when my wife woke me. Friends from around the country, indeed the world, had messaged us. Then, bleary eyed, we tried to process just what had happened.
There was footage of the panic; people searching for lost children; a distressed woman rang our local radio station with a horrific account of what she had witnessed; friends of ours announced that they were safe.
The friend of my little girl was at the concert with her family. There were other people attending that we know. My daughter herself was at a concert in that same venue just a couple of weeks ago. The arena can be accessed through the train station which I have been commuting from. Not so long ago I attended the Young Voices competition as a staff member with my children’s school choir. 8,000 children were present that day. Suddenly the horror that regularly unfolds throughout the world was on our doorstep…
…Manchester is no stranger to such atrocities. There was the IRA bomb of 1996 which utterly devastated the town centre. The Manchester we know today rose from the ashes of that day. But back then everybody had been evacuated, miraculously nobody was killed. Last night it was people targeted.

It was children. Continue reading

Poetry Shoutout: "Heading North" by Andrew James Murray

Heading North book coverAndrew James Murray“I am a northern guy. I have lived the whole of my life in the north west of England. I feel northern. It is in my accent. It is in my attitude. It is in my preferences: my favorite season is winter…”

Thus begins Andrew James Murray in the Forward of his new collection of poems, Heading North.
 
This idea of ‘northern-ness’ in a non-American context intrigued me.
A mere 35 miles west of Manchester where Andrew resides lies the infamous town of Liverpool. I never thought of The Beatles as being ‘northern’.
And yet, thinking on this further, it begins to fall into place – this marriage of blue-collar work ethic to the arts and education; a gritty, earthy element evident in both (he)artists’ life-work.
Damp, dark mists surround day-to-day living in the North, where cold light slants in mysterious angles. This is where Andrew draws inspiration. Continue reading

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