Quilts and Quilting

Monday Minute -- Sleeping with a Night Light

The Monday Minute
Quilts ~ Inspiration ~ Lifestyle ~ with Nancy Kirk

February 11, 2008

SLEEPING WITH A NIGHT LIGHT I was talking to another heart by-pass survivor recently and she mentioned that she likes sleeping with a night light. Later when her husband comes to bed he turns it off and if she wakes in the night she feels afraid. Now this was a woman of "a certain age" as I am myself. She was embarrassed about her need for the light and her fear. But I understood completely. One of the things that happens if you survive a life-threatening surgery, event, or illness, is that you feel fragile. For all the years of your adolescence and adulthood, you felt strong and capable and only afraid of real terrors - like the first time your teenager stays out all night, or ice on the streets. Then all of a sudden, you feel fragile and that almost any pain or unexplained twitch becomes a "oh no, am I going to have another heart attack?" And at night, you look for comfort and reassurance. The thing I reminded my friend, is that in the hospital - the last place she felt "safe" - there was always a light on at night. And people moving around. And a call button in case anything really went wrong. I also was very tuned into the fact that there were always people talking - in low voices, but still talking all night. So when I got out of the hospital, I started going to sleep with the TV on - poker tournaments, re-runs of old shows, and DVDs of The West Wing with four episodes in a row. The thing is, I usually fall asleep in the first five minutes. It was well into 2007 before I knew who won the 2006 World Series of Poker. I saw the beginning of the final table about 30 times, but never the end. But falling asleep with hundreds of people milling around a casino in Las Vegas and commentators in the background, makes me feel safe. Other nights, I listen to the end of season 3 of West Wing. Josh brings Donna moose meat from Helsinki. I don't really know what happens at the end of the episode. I saw it many years ago when it was first on the air, but these days I hit the seven minute mark and fall asleep with the busting sounds of an imaginary White House substituting for the safety of the cardiac ward. Safety is all an illusion, obviously. Night lights don't make us safe. Neither does television, or a special pillow or a stuffed animal - even a real one for that matter. But we surround ourselves with illusions of safety, because there really are some monsters in the closet. I turn my television on each morning and make sure they are showing ads on the Today Show. I used to watch reruns of one of my old favorite shows, "Murder She Wrote." Then one day, my son called from college and said "Mom, are you watching TV?" I said "Yes, why." "Mom!!!" he said "They just flew a plane into the World Trade Center." We all learned that morning that if they are not showing ads on the national news, something major, and probably awful, has happened. So now I turn on the TV first thing in the morning tuned to The Today Show or another news show. As soon as an ad comes on, I know it's safe to get on with my day. Of course that's an illusion, too. Because awful things can happen any time of the day, not just first thing in the morning, but I like the illusion and it lets me get on with my day. Fear is a funny thing. Sometimes it is a real emotion, in reaction to real dangers. But most of the time it's a fake feeling, brought on by our overactive imaginations. Safety, real safety, comes from facing life as it comes. The only resolution for fear is to do it anyway - whatever it is you are afraid of. It's almost certainly not going to be as bad as you think, and if it turns out to be that bad, worrying about it ahead of time will only make it worse. In the meantime, if a night light makes you feel safer, plug it in. If nothing else, it will help you get to the bathroom safely. This is Nancy Kirk, with your Monday Minute.

www.kirkcollection.com

Update on The BIG Little Book of Thank You Notes

When I finished the manuscript, I thought it would be a simple matter to get it to the printer and back ready to ship.  WRONG!

It turns out that other people actually take weekends and holidays off -- now why didn't I think of that?

Then, they needed a few more sentences I hadn't written.

Then it turned out the old ISBN numbers I had were the wrong number of digits -- the whole system changed between the time I started the book and when I finished.

But there is hope that soon we will be at the final moment of YES!  Soon.  I'll let you know as soon as I have a final ship date.

Nancy Kirk
The Kirk Collection
www.kirkcollection.com

Letting Go and Holding On

The Monday Minute
Quilts ~ Inspiration ~ Lifestyle ~ with Nancy Kirk

February 4, 2008

LETTING GO AND HOLDING ON I sure like working with smart people. Not only are they interesting to talk with, but inevitably, I learn something. And I have to admit, I love learning new things. Sometimes I learn new things about the world. Sometimes I learn about how people live, and often, I learn something about myself. The last few days were full of learning. I was doing quilt appraisals at the Stuhr Museum. I always learn things from the antique quilts I appraise - made by smart women who lived long ago. In addition to a good contemporary quilt show, the museum did a special exhibit of antique quilts from their collection and each one had a special surprise - in the fabrics, construction, design or history. But I always learn more from the people, the staff at the museum, the vendors, the customers - even fellow travelers staying at the same motel. I love talking with people about their passions. I learned about customer service. I learned about ethanol and the price of corn and how farm land prices are going through the roof because of the high corn prices, at the same time that houses in town are dropping in value. I learned there is a new class of migrant workers -- engineers and millwrights and other professionals -- who move from city to city building power plants and new ethanol processing plants. (One woman said, "I still say it's just a great big still.") I had dinner with a friend who is a quilter, designer, historian, pianist, composer, country singer, house renovator and antique dealer and wonders why she doesn't have time to get everything done - it was like looking in a mirror, except for the music part. I gave her some great advice - now if I can just take the same advice myself! Then today, I met with my executive coach, a very smart man named Dan Weber. He has been helping me with the process of redefining my business to support my life so I don't have to redefine my life to support my business. One of the sticking points has been what to do with left over inventory and some of the activities of The Kirk Collection that were based on what Bill, my late husband, used to do. While I've tried to focus on my strengths of writing, teaching and speaking, there is still all this "stuff" in my life - hundreds of books, an archive of over 10,000 pieces of vintage fabric, and shelves full of "miscellaneous" things. It's a weight I keep dragging along, and the weight of it seems to keep me from moving forward on things I really want to do. Dan suggested that there is a four-part sequence I need to follow - letting go, holding on, taking on and moving on. The first - letting go - seems the hardest. It means letting go of stuff, letting go of ideas that once were important, letting go of activities that don't hold meaning any more, and for me, letting go of parts of the business Bill used to do or that he felt were important. And of course, in a way, it feels like having to let go of Bill - or his memory. But then, Dan said, I need to decide what to hold on to. These will mainly be values, principles, relationships and memories. So I can keep the values of honoring quilts and quilt makers, the principles of customer service and satisfaction, the friendships developed from work and outside of work and the memories of building the business with Bill. What many people don't know, is that Bill started the Kirk Collection when we adopted Ben, and I only joined the business full-time three years later. Dan said once I get the lists made of what I'm letting go and what I'm holding on to, I can make a judgment about what I can take on. But until I clear some room in my mind, my creativity and my schedule, there is no room for anything new. That could be why it's been so frustrating trying to make a new long-range plan, because nothing else can squeeze into my life right now until I make a place by clearing something else out. He promised that once I get through steps one through three, I will be able to get to number four - moving on. I'm not quite there yet, but I'll get there. And there will be a lot less stuff in my house when I do. There will be fewer items on my calendar when I do. There will be more time for friends, and good books, and my kids, and dancing. There will be more time for prayer and volunteering. There will be more time to be healthy. There might be time to play bridge again. There might even be time for a vacation some time. But only if it is somewhere with room service! Dan said there needs to be a big payoff to make it worth letting go of things. I'm finding it's kind of fun to make a list of rewards for doing such hard work. Your list may be different from mine, but I encourage you to make a list of the things you'd like to have in your life that you don't have now - experiences, relationships, activities - and then think about what you can let go to make room for them. I'm not saying it's going to be easy - only that it will be worth it. This is Nancy Kirk with your Monday Minute. NOTE:  To reach Dan Weber, go to Peak Pathways (www.peakpathways.com)

www.kirkcollection.com

Chicken Little Was Right

The Monday Minute
Quilts ~ Inspiration ~ Lifestyle ~ with Nancy Kirk

January 28, 2008

WHERE'S CHICKEN LITTLE NOW THAT WE NEED HER? The headlines in this weekend's paper proved that Chicken Little was right - the sky is falling - literally. Somewhere up there is a spy satellite about the size of a city bus which isn't working any more. And it's about to fall - on us. Or so we are led to believe. Apparently it's one of thousands of non-working pieces of space garbage orbiting around the planet. And at some point, Isaac Newton's Law of Gravity is going to come into play, and all the garbage is going to come home to where it started -- here. We have created garbage for thousands of years without giving much thought to what we were going to do with it. We've always had lots of land around where we could bury our garbage, even if it was full of awful stuff like chemicals, medical waste, or radioactive parts. We figured if we just buried it somewhere without many people it would be out of sight, out of mind and all would be well. In recent years, there have been a lot more people around, and they have moved into many of the formerly wide open spaces. And these people who live "out there" don't want our garbage in their back yards any more than we do. And now it's falling out of the sky, and it could land in just about anyone's back yard. I know there are some very smart people who are working on trying to make sure this bus sized satellite doesn't hit Omaha - or wherever you live either. I'm not sure exactly what they have in mind - it's a secret spy satellite so they aren't really telling anyone. The news does say they want to make sure it doesn't fall somewhere where it could end up in the wrong hands. Somehow I think we need to go back to the things we learned in pre-school and kindergarten - when you're done with your toys, pick them up and put them away. This assumes that the grown-ups in the room have created a shelf or toy box to use for the putting away portion of the day. So often we start things without thinking about how we are going to put them away at the end of the day. We usually start things with really good intentions. We start new projects without thinking about how they are going to end. We start quilts without planning a place to stash them in progress, and sometimes without a place to put them after they are done. We create medicines and save millions of lives, without thinking about where the unused pills will be buried and what happens when they dissolve into the water supply. We build computers and televisions and millions of electronic gadgets filled with toxic chemicals, heavy metals and even radioactive substances, and then when they become obsolete, wonder how we are going to dispose of them. We send hardware into outer space, but rarely with a foolproof plan for bringing them back to earth safely. Everything seems to be going green these days, which is a hopeful sign. Little kids are learning about protecting the environment in kindergarten these days, so learning to pick up our toys at the end of the day may have a whole new meaning for the kids coming up. I hope so. I want Chicken Little to be a silly, old hen who is worrying about absolutely nothing. I don't want the sky to fall, in my neighborhood or anyone else's neighborhood. I want all the smart people in the world to decide that garbage collection and disposal is a really important issue. Not just the stuff they pick up from my house on Tuesday morning. But all the stuff we create without thinking about the consequences when we use it up, make something newer or figure out it wasn't a good idea in the first place. Give a cheer for the garbage collectors of the world. They will be some of the most important people in our future. This is Nancy Kirk with your Monday Minute.

www.kirkcollection.com

Monday Minute -- Learning from the Turtle

The Monday Minute
Quilts ~ Inspiration ~ Lifestyle ~ with Nancy Kirk

January 21, 2008

LEARNING FROM THE TURTLE A good friend of mine moved to another state recently and called last night, telling me how homesick she is feeling. She loves her new job, the condo she is renting is nice, there is all the fresh fruit in the world (think Florida), plus there is no snow and we just got hit with another storm today. But nothing feels like "home" for her yet. The water tastes different. The TV stations have different names and none of the channels are on the same numbers on the cable box. The newspaper doesn't look familiar and the comics are different from the ones she liked at "home." Old friends are not available for a quick burger after work. So it just doesn't feel like "home". Moving is considered the third most stressful experience in life - right after death of a spouse and divorce, and I think the stress levels get higher the older we get and the more set in our ways. I've reached the point in life where I don't even go to new stores for Christmas shopping because I don't want the stress of learning my way around a new store. I get upset when they rearrange my neighborhood grocery store. I know that's silly in many ways, but it's still true. I know a big move is coming fairly soon. I have a 17 room house with two people as permanent residents, and one of my daughter's friends in the spare room. But it's still a big place to manage, and it is completely full - of stuff. My stuff, my late husband's stuff, business stuff, my daughter's stuff, and just a little bit of my son's stuff - he finally moved his pre-college clothes and two car loads of other miscellaneous stuff out during Christmas. I can't move really soon, because I have to deal with the stuff first, but within the next couple of years, some serious downsizing is in my future as my daughter finishes school and moves into her own space. It means letting go and going through a grieving process, for a part of my life which is finished or finishing now. It brings up lots of great memories and some sad ones - a lot of life has happened in this house. We moved here the day we got our son, Ben. His adoption caseworker brought him to the old house and we put his small bag of things on the moving van with ours and all moved together to this house - he was 4 and next week he celebrates his 25th birthday. We brought Jessica home to this house - she was seven months old. She has never lived anywhere else. When we first looked at the house, we knew we were planning to adopt and would need more room. We never expected 17 rooms, but when we walked in, we knew it was our house and made a full price offer within 30 minutes. We lived through Bill's cancer in this house, and when his life was done I held his hand while he died in this house. The thing we have to learn from the turtle is that the real home goes with us, no matter where we go. Home is a state of mind, not a structure or a city or a country. Home is made up of the memories and experiences of the past, and the way we meld them into our experience of the present. I heard a wonderful folk singer many years ago who wrote hauntingly beautiful songs about home. During the performance, she told us of the home where she grew up in Appalachia, up a hollow with no electricity or plumbing, but filled with a big family and lots of love and music. She had been writing about that place for many years after she moved away and was spending her life touring and performing. She had the chance to go back "home" after her parents died, and she was so excited to visit that log cabin and finally "go home". When she got there, she found the town was all electric, they had city water and sewage and when she went to see her home, it was an empty lot - the cabin had been torn down many years before. She realized the home she had been singing about all those years really existed inside her head -- and she could always carry that home with her no matter where she lived. When I move, I know I may have to learn new station numbers on the cable box, maybe a new newspaper depending on where I move, and how to live with a lot less stuff. People facing a move to a senior living center or nursing home may have to leave behind all their furniture, books, art work, beloved pets. Downsizing will hard, moving be will be hard and I'm sure there will be grieving involved. I just hope I remember the turtle, and that my real "home" goes with me wherever I go. This is Nancy Kirk with your Monday Minute.

www.kirkcollection.com

Six Lessons Learned While Standing in Line

The Monday Minute


SIX LESSONS LEARNED WHILE STANDING IN LINE

For the first time in many years I ventured out on Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving when the Christmas shopping season officially kicks off. For those outside the United States I should probably explain that Black Friday is a good thing, not a day of mourning - it represents the day most retailers become profitable for the year or "in the black."

Over the past 20 years or so it has become a day which starts earlier and earlier with some Malls now opening at midnight on Thanksgiving night. In Omaha we haven't gone quite that crazy - our big stores opened at 5 a.m. I got to the first one a little after 6 - one of the big office supply stores to pick up some computer accessories for stocking stuffers. Then the second store - no lines, no problems.

Then I went to Nebraska Furniture Mart, the largest furniture store in the country. Big mistake - huge! Well, not really because their Friday morning bargains were truly bargains and after shopping for an hour, I got in one of the 20 checkout lines which stretched from one side of the store to the other. It was almost four hours before I inched my way to the cash register. Here are six lessons I learned on the way:

• I was very smart to go to the bathroom before I started shopping. : )
  
• When the line goes at a perpendicular to the main traffic aisles, everyone who is still shopping wants to cross in front of you. Life is easier if you just leave three feet between you and the person in front of you. Fewer people bump into you if they can move freely.
  
• Time goes faster if you sing Christmas Carols under your breath - it reminds you why you got up this early and helps you forget how much your feet hurt.
  
• You can do your full cardiac warm-up routine standing in line. Actually in four hours you can do it many times - my rehab nurses will be proud.
  
• Smiles go a long way when everyone is getting irritated. If you sympathize with the people around you whose feet hurt as much as yours they feel better and so do you.
  
• The person behind you hasn't learned all these valuable lessons and spends the whole time complaining that our line moves the slowest, people must be cutting in, the store needs better staff and on and on. Other than a nod of sympathy, what can you do? My final solution came when we finally made it to the cashier's desk. I told the woman behind me to take my place and check out first. It cost me another two minutes but made her think she had won the lottery.

The Christmas season offers lots of opportunities for stress - long lines, tired feet, the conflict between generous impulses and budget realities - I could go on and on. But it also offers wonderful opportunities to give little gifts of the season.

• You can let someone ahead of you in line or allow a driver to exit from a crowded parking lot.
  
• You can smile at a tired cashier who has been hearing about long lines all day.
  
• You can give a call to a neighbor when you are heading to the store to see if she needs anything.
  
• You can take some neighborhood kids downtown to see the Christmas lights one evening.
  
• You can carve out an hour to visit someone you know who is in a nursing home.
  
• Give a quarter to every bell ringer you pass - keep some change handy just for this. It's not much, but it will make you feel good and it helps fill the kettles.

You can add a lot of Christmas spirit for not much effort and almost no money. Do you have some other ideas? I'd love to hear what you've found to do to keep up your Christmas spirit. Nothing should cost more than a quarter or take more than an hour. Think you can find 29 things for the next 29 days? Send me your ideas and we'll publish as many as we can in a future Minute.

This is Nancy Kirk with your Monday Minute.

Happy Thanksgiving

At Thanksgiving we pause for a moment to count our blessings.

Consider yourself counted.

Nancy Kirk
www.kirkcollection.com

Crazy for Redwork

Ayako Nakabayashi, our intern from Tokyo, flew home this morning.  But she left with a new passion for redwork -- and blue work, and lots of American patchwork traditions.

For Christmas I gave her a copy of Pennies from Heaven, the CD with 90 historic redwork designs.  She had never done embroidery before, but had done hand-stitching for years, so she was a quick study and had her first bloc done in about four hours.  All I had to do was show her how to take the stitches to the outside when going around a corner.  And of course, the trick of couching the occasional wayward thread when you try to make a circle too small for your stitch length.

Once she got going, she raided the fabric stash upstairs and put together wonderful collections of my Civil War fabrics, mixed with Australian hand-dyes, mixed with bold African fabrics I had collected over the years to create the crazy patch sashing in the Crazy for Redwork design and outside borders.  It was great to watch someone else reinterpret not only my pattern but my fabrics!

I'll post the results here as soon as I download the photos.

Nancy Kirk
The Kirk Collection
www.kirkcollection.com

To the Grinch Who Stole Our Christmas Tree

Christmas Eve, 2005

An Open Letter to the Grinch Who Stole Our Christmas Tree:

We came home the Saturday before Christmas and found that someone had stolen our Christmas tree from the back yard. It was still bundled up in the netting from the Christmas tree farm where Jessie had tramped out in the snow with the guy who had the saw to cut it down.

It wasn’t a very big tree, but it was a pretty one and we had planned to add the lights and decorations Saturday night. It was sitting out in the yard for a while because a lot of other things were happening – my son was in a car accident (he’s ok but the car was totaled); my mother had a stroke and was in the hospital for nine days and then had to transfer to a nursing home; my cell phone was stolen in the midst of those two emergencies which made life tricky for a few days; and on the good side Jessie started her new college class two weeks ago and our Japanese intern, Ayako Nakabayashi, arrived from Tokyo to spend three months with us.

But someone stole the Christmas tree – someone who obviously needed a tree more than we did. I feel sorry for them – I’d hate to look at my tree on Christmas morning and know it was stolen.

What they don’t understand is that a Christmas tree is just a symbol – it’s not Christmas. Evergreen trees are symbols of eternal life. They provide shelter in the winter to the small creatures who stay around here for the winter. Like the Christmas lights, and images of Santa Claus, and candles and manger scenes, the tree was just a reminder of why we celebrate Christmas.

So to the Grinch, all I can say is – you don’t get it. We don’t need a tree to celebrate Christmas this year. We’re going to the nursing home today to have a little Christmas party with my mother. Her new roommate has no family, no kids, no grandkids – just someone who holds her power of attorney. So we decided to adopt her into the family on the principle that no one can have too many Grandmas.

Tonight we’re pulling out the frog. The frog is a bent wire flower arranger we used to use at our father’s house in Connecticut. One year when we got home for the holidays too late to get a Christmas tree, we draped lights on the frog and called it Christmas. So we’re bringing the frog out of the basement and putting the lights on tonight.

Tomorrow it will preside over the pile of presents. I’m not quite sure how we will explain all this to our Japanese intern who doesn’t speak much English!

Christmas isn’t always what we expect. Things don’t go quite as we planned. Sometimes it can be just plain awful with medical issues, grief and sadness.

These are the times we have to remember that we are not asked to be merry at Christmas, we are asked to be joyful. Joyful as we celebrate the birth of Christ. Joyful that God is with us.

And when things are at their most stressful, I remind myself that at least I’m not fifteen, unmarried, nine months pregnant and riding a donkey to Bethlehem!

God bless you, whoever you are, who stole our Christmas tree, for helping remind me why we got the tree in the first place. God Bless Us, Every One!

Counting Our Blessings

At Thanksgiving time I always like to pause for a moment to count my blessings.  I actually try to do this every day, by keeping a gratitude journal.  Whenever possible I start the day typing in my gratitude journal.  Kind of like a private blog.  My list of things I'm grateful for usually includes something about the new day, my kids and other family, my interest in life, friends, the new kitten, orders for products, the wherewithal to pay the day's bills -- whatever is on my mind that day I try to approach with an attitude of gratitude.

We are to "give thanks for all things."  It's hard sometimes, when you feel yucky, to give thanks for heart problems, but it quickly brings to mind all the rehab nurses and all the doctors who are taking care of me and all the medicine I have access to.  It can be hard to give thanks for the arthritis in my knees which causes a stabbing pain when I get up in the morning.  But when I remember to give thanks for the pain in my knee I almost invariably encounter someone who has lost their leg.

So I hope, as we come to Thanksgiving, that you find yourself as thankful as I feel today, that I am surrounded by people who love me, that I have people in my life to love, and have friends and customers and quilters who visit my website and read this blog on occasion.

Happy Thanksgving!

Nancy Kirk
The Kirk Collection
www.kirkcollection.com