Up, Up and Away

Heading out the door for the airport on our way to Russia and Ukraine! Tell you all about it when we return the end of July, until then, happy sewing everyone!

New Book

Wish I could say I've been sewing but this is as close as I've got. This is the new book by the mother/daughter team of Pam and Nicky Lintott. Their first book was just great so I bought this one from Amazon sight unseen, so far I do not think it is going to disappoint.

This one from the book is called Damask Rose, so pretty and feminine. Just one jelly roll, four fat quarters and fabric for binding.

This is another winner, Hidden Stars. I made this one year using Christmas fabrics and a starry-beige for the stars. All in all, there are eighteen projects in the books using jelly rolls, layer cakes and/or charm squares.

This is what has been occupying my free time, getting ready for a vacation. I keep second guessing what to bring for weather so different from here (Florida). And to compound the problem, we are flying a local airline (once we get to where we are going) that puts strict weight restrictions on all luggage. Don't you just hate that when you get somewhere and you ended up leaving something out you should have brought?
Well, decisions must be made as we leave tomorrow. Be sure to come back the end of July as I plan on having a giveaway, maybe with something from our vacation to Russia.

July Fourth

Still no sewing going on here, plenty of running errands, shopping and general planning for another upcoming trip though. I hope you all have a wonderful and safe July 4th and hope to post again before I leave.

Just came across this nice essay in the LA Times that pretty much says it best,

"Each Fourth of July is celebrated in the time-honored way -- fireworks, parades, cookouts and, oh yes, recommitment to the fine principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence: those "self-evident" truths and "unalienable" rights.

It is curious, however, that so much of the inherited lore around the Fourth of July is based in misapprehension.

For starters, the day itself, July 4, isn't exactly America's Independence Day. John Adams believed that July 2 would become the significant day in the new republic's calendar of celebration. That's because it was on July 2, 1776, that delegates from the 13 Colonies at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in fact voted to proclaim independence from King George III and his ministers.

What happened two days later? A decision to make the July 2 decision public. The delegates gave the statement they'd agreed on to a printer, and the "broadsides" he published carried the July 4 date.

Not surprisingly perhaps, the physical document revered as the Declaration of Independence, a vellum scroll kept in the National Archives in Washington with 57 signatures proudly sitting at its foot, has no claim on being the unique founding document. It was hand-copied later. As to the signatures of those who pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor, they were added later still -- some were inscribed by new congressional delegates, men who hadn't even been in the room on July 2.

Moreover, although generations of American schoolchildren have learned that the declaration's author was Thomas Jefferson, this is also a slightly inaccurate portrayal of the facts. Jefferson did indeed draft the text, but others in the Continental Congress had their own views about the best form of words to use. The last paragraph, for example, containing the words "that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free independent states," was in fact penned by another Virginian, Richard Henry Lee.

In 1776, there was no public proclamation, no formal "declaration" read to the Colonists on either July 2 or July 4. And the news that resolutions against the king had been adopted could of course only travel at the speed of the fastest horse and rider. Therefore, the celebration of any selected day as the birth of the nation could only ever be a convenient fiction.

Nevertheless, in 1777, the members of the Continental Congress did decide to note July 4 by not meeting. A small and very low-key celebration was mounted, and everyone went to church. There was some talk of muskets being fired, but gunpowder was in short supply as the Colonies were at war.

Each subsequent year, celebrations were held in towns and cities, and each began to develop traditions for observing the day. The text of the declaration was read aloud. Dinners were held, often in the open air, with elaborate toasts, commonly 13 in number representing the original Colonies. Fireworks were from early on a feature of the day. Parades of the local great and good took place in town squares. By the time of the 50th anniversary in 1826, the traditions of the public celebration were fully established.

Perhaps it is best to see the Fourth of July as a story that, although not strictly speaking true, nevertheless conveys a belief: that the nation came into being on a particular day in 1776, signed, sealed and delivered. And each and every Fourth of July, as if for the first time, the story is both celebrated and instantiated, "America" -- by simple force of a declaration -- is founded again.

Today most of you will take the day off, put some hot dogs on the grill and open a few cans of beer. Some, like the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1992, will unfurl the Stars and Stripes and sing "Happy Birthday." But however one chooses to celebrate independence, may it also be remembered that the birthday of the nation, and the declaratory act that founded it, created and continues to create an architecture of belief. In 1776, it had the power to change the world. For good or ill, it still does." ~ Peter de Bolla