What is an Alewife?  It’s a fish!   I’d never heard of them either until we moved to Maine.  I’d probably not ever heard of them until I discovered a gem of a quilt shop called Alewives Fabric and Gifts in Damariscotta Mills (about 45 minutes south of me).  Because they are set back a couple of miles from Route 1, and I’m always racing to somewhere, I’d never been there until my dear friend Kathy invited me along one day.  As I’ve said before, that store is a serious Visa accident waiting to happen!  (and I’ll be totally wicked and tell you that they now have batiks and Amy Butler and Kaffe Fassett and and and for sale online!)  But this is about the fish…and they run in early May (yes, I’m late writing this up!… I knew they were running because a month ago on a trip south I saw a roadside sign and truck selling smoked alewives!)

Kathy did this quilt of the Alewives, who return from the sea, travel up the Great Salt Bay and head upriver at Damariscotta Mills, telling me about the fish ladder. (Kathy blogged about the quilt, I think, but her blog doesn’t have a search box on it so couldn’t find a picture…sorry!)  A fish ladder?  yep…. as you approach the area, you see the area in the above photo.  You can tell the fish are running thanks to a generous supply of cormorants and seagulls lurking for an easy meal.

Then you see the pen used to harvest some of the fish, which are about 10 inches long I’d guess.  The fish are used for lobster trap bait and used to be used as a foodsource.  On the information plaques, it says that for over 200 years it has been a tradition to give widows alewives (salted and cured I’d think….).

The lower portion of the fish ladder…which is basically a stream 24 inches wide or less (about .65 metres) with rocky small falls, rivulets and pools progressing up the hill to the Mills pond and lake at the top of the run…..was wall-to-wall fish:

If you look carefully, you can see both the shadow of the railing (lower right) and all those dark curvy things are alewives.

The next three pictures are close-ups of the information sign.  If you click on the photo it should (?) open up larger so maybe you can read the text.

I was lucky that someone came to purchase some alewives while I was there.  The fish are plentiful, so there is no risk to the fish stocks in harvesting them, and the proceeds from the sales are used for renovations and upkeep of the fish ladder.

First, the guy who works there gets a helper, and they use a sturdy mesh frame attached to two long poles to herd/sweep the wall-to-wall fish into a pen. As you can see on the right, there is a lot of late-spring runoff water tumbling down!

Next:  you see the fish splashing up next to the screen/sweeper:

This shot shows a fair number of the soon-to-be-bait alewives:

Then, the workers crank the pen which tips up.  The fish slide down into the hopper:

Talk about a thundering roar as all those flopping fish thump and twitch their way down the metal ramp/tilt/whatever it is!

And then there are MORE:

Finally, they stop flopping, having spent too long in the air.  They are then scooped into a crate for the waiting lobsterman.

And that’s my fish tale for today!  I love living in a place where people have lived for over 200 years.  For those of you in Europe, it is no big deal, but in the US it means we are among the oldest European-origin communities around.  Cool.

A while back, I shared a tiny tease from Little Brown Bird, a small wholecloth art quilt here.  Well, here is all 16×20 inches (or thereabouts) of it:

I made this quilt as an illustration for my Machine Quilting Unlimited article (July 2009 issue) on Negative space.  I developed the vine motif as part of the illustrative exercises, then decided to put it into use in the quilt.

The fabric is one of my hand-dyes, and is relatively monotone yellow-green.  I quilted it using five shades of green thread (Superior Threads’ 40-wt. polyester, with green Bottom Line — a fine 60-wt polyester — in the bobbin). The darkest shade of green is used in the bird, the next darkest for the straight lines and vine/leaf motif, and the lighter shades to shade/lighten the background.

Here is a detail of the bird:

And here is another of the leaf/vine motif:

If you visit my blog on June 16 (obviously it will not be “live” until the 16th!) blogpost, you can download a free PDF of the leaf/vine motif for use in your own quilting!

Strong Women of the World, rise up, unite, and rejoice!

The Quilt Mavericks are this wonderful, supportive, loving caring group online;  I am fortunate to be a part of it.  Recently, one of our members shared something about her personal life for the first time ever (after living with a horror for 20 years) and asked us for strength and white light… you have to understand that Mav Power is a force to be reckoned with!   When all of us get together, we can conquer and save and love the world.

A number of the members in response shared similar tales of difficulties from their lives, and one of us (who was it?  OK.. it was Leslie!) said we should have  A Strong Women’s Day.  Once it was spoken, it came to be!   Let’s start a movement!

When I first heard Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon / A Prairie Home Broadcast 20-plus years ago, I chuckled at the humor in his closing:  “And that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where the men are good looking, the women are strong, and all the children are above average.”  Of course, that was the point of his humor…. the play on conventional expectations that the man is strong, when in fact it is women who are the ones made of steel and love, who endure the trials of life and still love and care and cope and rejoice.

Fellow Mavs Leslie blogged about strong women, here, as did Deirdre, here and Margi, here, and Cindy here, and Julie here, and Margaret here.

I’d like to choose my friend Linda Wauchope as my strong woman this year.  She died more than a decade ago, but in her final months, she showed me courage beyond anything I have ever seen or touched in my life.  Liver cancer took her when her children were a bit younger than mine are now (mine are 11 and 15); she and her husband were building a new home that she never got to live in.  He accelerated his retirement plans so he could be home with her for the final months of her life.  Watching her waste away with each passing visit was offset by watching her strength of spirit endure to the very end.  After her memorial service at the reception at their old home, I noticed the calendar in the kitchen:  Linda had left notes of when to get the furnace serviced, when to renew this or that policy, annual chores to be done, on every month.

To this day, I often think of her, her irreverent, sassy sense of humor, and think “gee, Linda would get SUCH a kick out of this.”  So Linda, here’s to you my friend!  (The photo above is from about 1990 when we both lived with our husbands in Libreville, Gabon.  We were both US Foreign Service officers, but on leave without pay so our hubbies could pursue their careers.  Her husband was the Ambassador, mine the Deputy Chief of Mission (deputy Ambassador)…  long ago and far away.)

I wrote about Linda two years ago when my quilt, The Tree, was donated to and auctioned for cancer research.  The quilt was dedicated to three people in my life who suffered..and two who died from… cancer:  Linda, my brother Charlie, and Daddy.  The photos got moved out of order when we migrated the blog from blogger to my website, but that post is here.

Lily Kerns, who knows all sorts of computer stuff and teaches it at www.QuiltUniversity.com, shared the following:

Here is a tip you might find useful.

Pencil drawings are often very hard to see  on the web.  If you open the image in any program that uses layers,  copy and then paste the image as a new layer.  Use the Multipy blend function and adjust its intensity if necessary.  This increases the contrast to make it much more visible.  You may need to combine the layers before saving…

You can use a program’s contrast functions to increase its visibility, but the Multiply works better.  I don’t know if you would want to do this yourself for images that come in or just share the information…but for whatever it is worth to you.  <G>

Lily

Thanks Lily!  I’ll try that with my next drawing posts!

The first time I went to International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, was the first year for the Journal Quilt Project.  Two series in particular grabbed me and wouldn’t let me forget them:  Maria Elkins’ feathers and Suzanne Riggio’s rooftops.  You can see Maria’s here, and Suzanne’s here (hers are the second row down in the first “bank” of journal quilts on that page).  To see more of that first year’s journals, click here.  I didn’t know at the time how many glorious quilts Suzanne had already made, and clearly with more to come.

Recently when I posted to the QuiltArt list about my drawing, Suzanne saw my post and must have remembered my San Domenico quilt (here and here plus additional blogposts in late June 2006) and sent me this jpeg of her quilt for St. Mary’s school.  Since she doesn’t have a blog, online album or website, I asked permission to share it with all of you and the quiltart list by posting it here:

What is astonishing is that during the eleven years this quilt was in the making, Suzanne had severe back problems, surgery, is now in a wheelchair, and STILL the art will come out, and come out stupendously well!  I just get goosebumps thinking about the quilt, her affection for her school, her art…the whole kit and kaboodle!

Suzanne wrote to me that the quilt “will live is a two-sided glass case with oak surround in the new atrium at St. Mary’s School.  (The names of the graduates and the history of the school are on the back.)”   The new wing will be dedicated on May 31, with archbishops and all.  I expect there will be MANY looks of awe and dew-y eyes!

Addendum:  some new information from Suzanne:
FYI, St. Mary’s is not my school.  We came to St. Mary’s Church in 1996 from West Virginia (36 years).  I had a solo quilt show at St. Mary’s in 1998, and that was the inspiration for the commission to do a sesquicentennial quilt for their school, due in 2009.  I knew nothing about the school at the time and had to do lots of research.

It was a school started by the School Sisters of Notre Dame who got their start in Bavaria in 1833.  Milwaukee was mostly settled by Germans, especially Bavarians, and was a good place for a “mission.” The sisters continued to sponsor the school until 1913 when the parish took over.  But the sisters continued to teach and administer.  The last SSND principal was Sister Betty–the quilt is dedicated to her.

In the course of my work, I applied for and received a couple of grants from the Wisconsin Arts Board to make this work of art.

The work contains historic stained glass (prismatic foil), maps, buildings then and now, lots of text giving the history, a quartet of kids representing 1859 and 2009, the sacraments kids receive, monstronses, gardens and orchards, sunrises, the names of graduates on the back, and a lot more.

Thanks Suzanne for letting me share this incredible work!  The photo is (theoretically) click-able to view slightly larger.