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Once again, completely understand why so many are leaving Twitter. You can find CoF on Bluesky too - @craigatcof.bsky.social

Welcome to Bluesky, Reeves & Susan! They did confirm this on Twitter.

https://bsky.app/profile/reevesgabrels.bsky.social

1. Euronews-Redaktionen protestieren gegen ihren neuen Chef Claus Strunz (uebermedien.de, Stefan Niggemeier) Stefan Niggemeier fasst die Diskussionen um den neuen Euronews-Chef Claus Strunz, Ex-Mitglied der “Bild”-Chefredaktion, zusammen. Mitarbeiterinnen, Mitarbeiter und Gewerkschaften in Lyon und Brüssel würfen Strunz vor, die Prinzipien der Neutralität und Unparteilichkeit zu verletzen, insbesondere durch öffentliche Pro-Trump-Äußerungen und politische Eingriffe in die […]

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $52.66 million grant to fund a major infrastructure upgrade to the Simons Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile. Upgrades are expected to take about five years; the resulting facility will be known as the Advanced Simons Observatory (ASO).

This is the second round of Princeton Alliance for Collaborative Research (PACRI) projects partnering HBCU and Princeton researchers.

Scientists have long known that magnetic fields probably extract energy from spinning black holes — they just didn’t know how.

Decision informed by report of the CPUC Committee on Naming.

“Close Encounters: Facing the Bomb in a New Nuclear Age” is on display at SPIA’s Bernstein Gallery through Oct. 25. 

In the Class of 2028, 71.5% of students qualify for financial aid and 21.7% of the class are lower-income students eligible for federal Pell grants.

The Martin A. Dale '53 Fellowship provides grants for Princeton seniors to spend the year after graduation on "an independent project of extraordinary merit." Juliette Carbonnier and Collin Riggins are the latest recipients.

Download links (Spotify, YouTube, Apple) here. Learn more about the Pagan History Project here.

I started this project in October, 2014, so I would have a nice handwork project while traveling for a month in Europe. I love it!!!

A bunch of pre-cut threads and trims, a small package of mixed seed beads/buttons/sequins, a folded piece of felt with various sizes of needles, embroidery scissors, Sue Spargo's book, and 16 wool chicks already stitched to the background wool fit very nicely into a 12 x 9 inch zippered, mesh bag.... perfect to tuck into my backpack! I stitched on the airplanes, in people's homes, and with my beady/quilty friends! At the end of the month, 8 chicks were finished. You can see them here.


Since then, I've been busy making a Travel Diary quilt, and starting another very challenging "Shimmer" quilt, which will be the subject of the next post. However, once in a while, the Chicks are just the right break from machine sewing. Working on them makes me happy and peaceful.


The new ones are in this post... As you can see in the photo below, I still have 2 chicks to embellish, plus one that might need something more.


When all of them are finished, it will be time to decide what to do with them. My idea so far is to make them into a small wall quilt, hand quilting around the chicks, maybe adding a few flowers between some of the chicks.  I'll wait to decide, keeping all options open until the chicks are finished.


Most of the chicks are girls, but so far 3 of them seem to have a bit of testosterone...  can you tell which ones are the boys? You'll need to click on the above picture of all 16 to enlarge it enough to find the boys. If you feel like making a guess, let's give them numbers starting at the top left with 1 and going across row by row. As you can probably tell, the one below is definitely a girly girl!

By the way, the lace trim on the above chick is vintage lace from LaDonne Weinland, an Etsy vendor. It was white, which was too "strong" a color for this piece. So I painted dye on it!!! These are the pieces I painted. To give you an idea of scale, the lace is just under 1/4" wide. The chick, from the bottoms of her feet to the top of her crown, is exactly 3 inches tall.

Threads! 

People ask me where I got all the threads I use for these chicks. Here are some answers...

Variegated pearl cotton. I'd estimate that over half the stitches (all the beaks and feet, most of the edge stitches, tails, and top-knots) are pearl cotton, size 8 or 12. I like using threads that are subtly variegated. DMC and Valdani are two brands of pearl cotton that come in a ball for $5 to $7 per ball. I have purchased some Valdani balls from Sue Spargo and some from this site.

But most of my perle cotton comes from African Folklore Embroidery ... Leora Raikin, the owner, packages hand-dyed, variegated, pearl cotton on cards of three colors, each color about 10 yards in length, for $5.  She has a HUGE selection, from which you can have 24 colors for only $40!!! I love the colors, the subtle changes of colors in the variegation, and the quality of the thread. Here's a page that shows her colors in size 8 pearl cotton... mind boggling!

My photo does not show the full amount you get... only how it is packaged, 3 colors to a card!

Embroidery floss.  For finer stitches and details, I often switch to regular embroidery floss. Again I gravitate toward the variegated colors. DMC has put out a lot of new variegated skeins in recent years. If you have an older supply of solid colors, you might want to check out DMC's 24 new colors. Here's an Etsy seller that offers them. Or, if you are in the Seattle area, Nancy's Sewing Basket (on Queen Anne hill) stocks all of them. They are much more subtle than previous DMC variegated floss choices, more like hand-dyed. Anchor has also added nice options to their line.




I also buy hand-dyed embroidery floss when I see a skein that appeals to me. Again, I like the subtlety of it.

Other threads. Sue Spargo offers a line of variegated silk threads in beautiful colors, which she calls Silken Pearl. I bought some of them from her during the class, and have enjoyed using them. The sheen of the silk is a lovely contrast to the more matte quality of the pearl cotton.

In her book, Sue recommends using a wool thread to applique the wool chicks to the background wool. Since it is quite expensive, I used 60 weight cotton applique/sewing thread by Metler, which I already had in a range of colors. It works fine. If I didn't already have the Metler thread, I probably would have bought a set of Genziana wool threads on bobbins on Etsy, here. This wool thread is a bit too fine for embellishment work, but it's great for wool applique.

Novelty yarns, metallic threads, chenille, dazzle threads, etc. all have their occasional use as well. As I tend to like more matte and less bling, I don't often use these threads. But it's fun to experiment with them. I did use chenille on one of the above chicks... can you find it?

All 16 chicks are finished now, and I've started quilting the piece!!! I'm quilting by hand, using a single strand of non-mercerized (not shiny) thread (Anchor brand), which is about the same weight as size 12 pearl cotton. This is how it looks so far...

While I contemplate how to proceed with the quilting, I thought it might be helpful to share some of the design process with you, especially since a few readers have said they might want to try something like this.

Learning the Stitches - Which Ones to Use and Where to Use Them

Sue Spargo's book, Creative Stitching, was very important in my design process. I didn't know most of the stitches when I started this piece. The instructions in the book are easy to follow, and I was able to learn all that I wanted from the book. More than learning the stitches, the photos in the book allowed me to see how she uses the stitches to embellish her wool applique shapes. Also, she writes about the threads and needles she uses. I followed her suggestions for needles, but did not use many of the threads she mentions.


Layout the Shapes

The wool is felted. I bought already felted (correct term is actually "fulled") wool. But you can make your own by washing wool fabric and drying it in the dryer. Here are some useful instructions for fulling wool fabric.

The first step is to cut out the chicks from felted wool fabrics. (Although I made chicks, the shape could be anything... butterflies, flowers, circles, donkeys...) I used 16 different colors, making each chick a different color. I used "chick colors" for some of the wings; others are from a bag of wool scraps I bought at the La Conner Quilt Festival.

I used 60 wt. cotton sewing thread to applique the chicks to the background fabric. Use a thread color that matches the chick color as closely as possible. Although it's a bit shiny, a single strand of embroidery floss would also work for this task.

Starting to Embellish the Chicks

When I finished appliqueing the chicks to the background wool, they just looked like blobs, barely recognizable as chicks. This is not inspirational for starting to embellish! I found that in order to even want to start, I needed to make them more real, more chick-like. So I gave them all eyes, all 16 of them. That helped a lot, but still they didn't feel real. So I gave them all feet, and then beaks. So as not to get bored, I changed thread color for both beaks and feet. Some of the eyes are made with a button; some with a flower-shaped bead; some with a disc-shaped bead. When all of them had eyes, feet, and beaks, finally they began to be chicks, and I was ready to start!!!

Even so... starting is daunting. I used the same method I use (and teach) for bead embroidery... If you've taken a class from me you've heard me say, "Pick up a bead you love, and sew it on somewhere." That's what I did... picked up a thread I loved, picked a stitch that interested me from Sue's book, picked a chick color that appealed to me at that moment, and started practicing the stitch.

When I finished, I just did the same thing again. Sometimes it was the same chick, sometimes I chose a different chick. I kept picking a thread I liked, usually one I hadn't previously used, a stitch I wanted to learn or really liked, and a chick that seemed "to like" the chosen thread color.

After a while, some of the chicks were fully embellished. Once I learned the stitches and had experimented with various threads, I tended to work on one chick until it was finished. But if  when I got stuck, and couldn't think what to do next with a particular chick, I just moved along to some other chick that appealed to me at that moment.


Another way to get started

If you feel a bit timid about starting, you could make a pincushion, such as I did, shown below. It doesn't take a lot of time or materials, and can give you both practice (particularly in making beaks and feet) and confidence.

Personality

I can't help but think of the chicks as youngsters, maybe early teens, with emerging personalities... each, as I work on it, starts to have a story which plays out in my head while I stitch. Once the story begins, it's easier to choose stitches, design motifs, and threads which further develop the story or personality of that chick. Thinking about the chick's personality and background story, keeps me from getting bored, and makes it really fun to work on the piece.


Thread Hints

I already wrote about threads, adding it to the bottom the previous post (or, scroll down one more post).

What's Next?

As usual, I don't know. I take it one step at a time, trying not to figure it all out before I start. I do what I know to do. If there isn't anything I know to do, then I wait... wait for an idea, for inspiration, for a solution... wait until I know what to do next, but only the next thing... I try to ignore the question of what comes after the next thing. That's what I'm doing now... waiting to know what the next step in the quilting process will be.

A week of finishing!!! Oh my, it feels good to finish things, doesn't it?!

Last October, I started the applique process, stitching chick bodies and wings cut from felled wool onto the wool background fabric. Seven months later, 16 chicks, embroidered with threads and beads, run free! Please click the picture to enlarge it, so you can enjoy the fanciful details.

If you are new to this process, you can see the various steps and pictures of the chicks on these posts. Of course, they are inspired by Sue Spargo's exhibit at the La Conner Quilt Museum, by her book, Creative Stitching, and by taking a one-day class from her to get me going. Along the way, other books, embroideries, and drawings also inspired me.


As you might guess, most of the chicks have at least a few beads. Here is one with the main motif embroidered with beads.


And, here is one with just a few beads, the center of the "flowers," and one with no beads at all.

Also note that I've quilted the piece with Danish Flower Thread in a shade which closely matches the background color.

At first, I thought it would be pleasing to embellish the areas between the chicks with flowers, vines, and leaves using three close shades of the background color. Here is an example.


It looks OK when you look at just four chicks with the flower/vine motif in the center. But when I had finished 6 of the areas (sorry no photo), some of them with larger spaces and larger vines/leaves, it looked too busy. It took away from the chicks. I couldn't tell if I was supposed to look at the chicks or the flowers. So I picked out the vines and leaves, leaving just the flowers, which weren't such a distraction.


After sewing on the binding, the chicks seemed to need a little warming around them. So I added a line of stem stitch in variegated pearl-cotton in a magenta color. It pleases me!


Oh, and one more thing... This is a quilt, designed to hang on the wall, with lots of details to enjoy as you view it up close. But what happens to wool felt when it is out in the open? MOTH DAMAGE and DUST are the enemies. My solution? Find, buy, or have somebody make a wall-mounted display case, with a hinged door. Hang the quilt inside the case, which remains closed except when somebody wants to take a closer look. The above, found on the internet, is close to what I have in mind, with a white background of course.


What's next in chick-land? Well, my dear niece just got married... Here is the start of her wedding gift... I'll post a finished photo soon.

Oh dear, busy me, four months since I've posted here. Lots of quilting, a little beading, some travels, and recently several sets of house guests have made "retirement" a bit of a joke. For now, since the La Conner Quilt Festival is just around the corner (October 2-4), my subject is one small exhibition on the first floor at the Museum, which is currently up, and will remain through the Festival.

Last year at the Festival (and again this year!) Sue Spargo taught workshops on her wool applique embroidery methods. Those of us who were lucky enough to get in were invited by the Museum to exhibit our finished pieces. These marvelous creations are the subject of this post. Uneven lighting makes it difficult to get good photos, so please forgive poor color or tone on some of these photos.

In case you are unfamiliar with Sue's work, below is an example of her work. Students in her class could choose to make chicks, circles, or flowers. Most chose the chicks. Eight of her students are showing their work in the current exhibit.

My vote for the most awesome-creative piece goes to Bunny Starbuck for She Has Flown the Coop! Here it is:

Having put my chicks all in neat rows similar to Sue's example, I find it amazing that Bunny's mind took the idea and made a whole different story of it... a coop full of chicks, with two in line on the roof ready to follow the one already in the air. Don't you just love the way the lines divide the space?!




Note Bunny's use of whispy yarn to suggest little chick feathers, her use of snaps for eyes, the one chick turned full front, the one with a bead-tassled braid and glasses, and the one with beaded loop fringe and a gathered yellow ribbon (?) yo-yo. I love them! I'm in awe, Bunny!

Below is Chicks on Parade by Dorie Benson. It's so fun the way they are so close together, with two of them going in a different direction, just as you might see in a little cluster of chicks. If you click the photo to enlarge it, you can see some of Dorie's excellent stitching and hand quilting!

The next one is Chicks by Glenys Baker, who not only did all 36 chicks but also made a second quilt featuring circles (shown further down). Awesome work, Glenys!

And next is Birds of a Feather Can Dance Together by Lorraine Jones. The fun of the title is matched by the fun of Lorraine's embellishments, including her border treatment. (You'll have to see this one in person, because the light from a table lamp, made the lower corner of the photo look terrible.)

I guess most of us like to "swim the other way," as you can see in the next piece, Chickadees, by Carrie Unick. I thought many of Corrie's embellishments were especially fun and creative, so I've also included a couple of detail photos.



Last of the chicks is my piece, simply named Chicks. It was so much fun, that I made another small piece (also in the exhibition), shown at the top of this post. Both are displayed in shadow-box type frames to protect them from dust and moth damage.
Glenys Baker, in one year, made not only a 36-chicks quilt (shown above), but also a 48-circles quilt, Circles. How she keeps thinking of new embellishment variations I can't imagine. Yet each of her circles is completely unique! Her choice of border fabrics is perfect for the quilt, complimenting the flow of color among the circles.


I love the fun color combinations and the way the beads enhance her embroidery on Nancy Anders' Bodacious Blooms, a joyful wall quilt if ever there was one! (Again, I couldn't quite get the color right in the photo, so you'll just have to go to the Museum to see it in person.)


The name of Roberta Roberts' flower quilt, Memories, invites us to look closely at the flower with three ladybugs. I don't know the story, but I can tell there is one here... and I love that. Her embellishments are varied and fun as well.



There you have it... 10 quilts by 8 students who learned some methods of wool applique and embroidery from Sue Spargo, last year at the La Conner Quilt Festival. I'm so grateful to be one of them!

Jacques R. Fresco, the emeritus Damon B. Pfeiffer Professor in the Life Sciences and an emeritus professor of molecular biology, died on Dec. 5. He served on Princeton's faculty for 53 years before retiring in July 2013.

Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa, a Princeton alumna and current Hodder Fellow who's a composer, vocalist and scholar, has come full circle since the day she sat in a McCarter audience 10 years ago and made a wish to one day be up on that stage. 

“Chigumadzi argues that within the liberal international order, it is “reasonable” and “workable” to struggle to end apartheid and racial segregation, while it is “unreasonable” and “unworkable” to struggle to end settler colonialism and indigenous land dispossession. In arguing that apartheid is overrepresented in the International Left’s racial discourse and historiography, Chigumadzi draws from generations of Black South African political activists, philosophers, and historians—most notably from the Pan Africanist-Black Consciousness Tradition. These traditions critique apartheid’s relatively short 54 years of institutionalized racial segregation as the paradigmatic historical framework for analyzing South Africa’s three centuries of settler colonialism and land dispossession. Drawing from this black radical critique, Chigumadzi rejects the liberal notion that apartheid’s end is the object of liberation struggle, and, instead asserts the centrality of the struggle for the return of indigenous lands.” Dr. Panashe Chigumadzi is an award-winning writer and Assistant Professor of African History at Brandeis University. Chigumadzi holds a doctorate from Harvard University’s Department of African and African American Studies, and a masters in African Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Free and open to the public. Jacques Schwarz-Bart is a recording artist with seven albums to his name, as well as a composer and educator. His collaborations include work with Roy Hargrove, Danilo Pérez, John Scofield, Erykah Badu, and many others. In 2005, he released his first project as a leader, Sone Ka-La, which revisits his native Guadeloupean music through the prism of jazz and won worldwide critical acclaim. His latest release, Jazz Racine Haiti, made him an ambassador for a school of modern jazz rooted in voodoo music. He teaches at The Berklee College of Music while keeping up a steady touring schedule.

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values are presented annually at a select list of universities around the world. The University Center serves as host to these lectures at Princeton, in which an eminent scholar from philosophy, religion, the humanities, sciences, creative arts or learned professions, or a person eminent in political or social life, is invited to present a series of lectures reflecting upon scholarly and scientific learning relating to “the entire range of values pertinent to the human condition." Tanner Lectures on Human Values: Randall L. Kennedy (Harvard Law School): "In Praise of Racial Liberalism: Lecture II-How Can We Achieve It?" Randall Kennedy's lectures will posit the ends and means suitable currently for advancing the cause of racial justice in America. Lecture one will focus on aims: what should racial "justice" mean today? Lecture two will focus on strategy: what are optimal ways of proceeding in a polarized polity in which racial prejudices and resentments constitute significant impediments to needed reforms. Lecture II: How Can We Achieve It? About the speaker Randall L. Kennedy is Michael R. Klein Professor of Law, Harvard Law School. He attended Princeton University, '77, and Yale Law School. He clerked for Judge J. Skelly Wright and for Justice Thurgood Marshall. A member of the bars of the District of Columbia and the United States Supreme Court, he is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is "Say it Loud! On Race, Law, Culture and History." Commentators: Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University

REEES/Slavic Grad Film Series Bordenlens: Queer Outlines of Geography and Gender Organized by Sofia Guerra Sponsored by the Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, the Humanities Council, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. All Films Shown with English Subtitles

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values are presented annually at a select list of universities around the world. The University Center serves as host to these lectures at Princeton, in which an eminent scholar from philosophy, religion, the humanities, sciences, creative arts or learned professions, or a person eminent in political or social life, is invited to present a series of lectures reflecting upon scholarly and scientific learning relating to “the entire range of values pertinent to the human condition." Tanner Lectures on Human Values: Randall L. Kennedy (Harvard Law School): "In Praise of Racial Liberalism: Lecture I: What Does Racial Justice Mean Today?" Randall Kennedy's lectures will posit the ends and means suitable currently for advancing the cause of racial justice in America. Lecture one will focus on aims: what should racial "justice" mean today? Lecture two will focus on strategy: what are optimal ways of proceeding in a polarized polity in which racial prejudices and resentments constitute significant impediments to needed reforms. Lecture I: What Does Racial Justice Mean Today? About the speaker Randall L. Kennedy is Michael R. Klein Professor of Law, Harvard Law School. He attended Princeton University, '77, and Yale Law School. He clerked for Judge J. Skelly Wright and for Justice Thurgood Marshall. A member of the bars of the District of Columbia and the United States Supreme Court, he is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is "Say it Loud! On Race, Law, Culture and History." Commentators: Elizabeth Anderson, John Dewey Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Michigan Elizabeth Hinton, Professor of History, African American Studies & Law, Yale University

Mathilde Bédouet's 'Summer 96' qualified for the Oscars by winning the prestigious César Award, France's equivalent of the Academy Award.

The project is from Mattel Films, Shadowmachine, Jennifer Lopez’s Nuyorican Productions, and actor-producer Anthony Ramos.

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In the early 18th century, English criminal Jonathan Wild maintained a highly organized gang of thieves and long escaped punishment by posing as an instrument of justice and helping the authorities catch other criminals independent of, or rebellious to, his control. One such criminal was Blake, who was arrested after a burglary. He was tried, convicted, and hanged. What other notorious criminal—Blake's partner in crime—escaped from prison when Blake attacked a witness at his trial?

Dear RSS Ground users, Due to the recent changes in LinkedIn developers documentation and specifications, some of the remote LinkedIn account management options require a substantial update. For this reason and at this moment RSS Ground LinkedIn Poster can only make posts to your personal feed. Posting to specific company pages is not currently available. However, […]

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Several days ago, eBay Partner Network reported about an issue with EPN links.  When someone clicks affiliate eBay link using Facebook app on iOS or Android, the click cannot be tracked. eBay has created a workaround to fix this issue. You need to append your eBay links before publishing them to Facebook. The only thing […]

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Customers are asked to do a mandatory battery check over safety concerns, and to reach out to Canyon if they are affected
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We all know the struggle – sometimes, no matter how hard we hit the gym or watch our diet, there’s that stubborn tummy bulge that just won’t budge. But don’t worry, we’ve got your back (or should I say, your front?)!  Today, we’re diving into the world of tummy control shapewear, those magical pieces that ... Read more

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Imagine slipping into a tranquil space, the soft aroma of essential oils filling the air, as the world outside slowly fades away. For many, this is the sanctuary sought after a long week of work or dealing with chronic pain. In that moment, whether it’s the gentle caress of a Swedish massage or the deep ... Read more

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Jet lag is a common issue for anyone crossing multiple time zones. While various remedies exist, massage therapy stands out as an effective, natural method to help the body adjust and recover. This guide explores how this therapy can be utilized to alleviate the symptoms of jet lag, offering practical tips and techniques that can ... Read more

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As the country’s civil war decimated elephant populations, the proportion of tuskless females rose dramatically. A new study explains why the tuskless trend continued in peacetime.

The familiar sky we see today wasn’t always blue.

Ronan credits her parents and the filmmakers she worked with as a child for keeping acting fun. She stars as a woman struggling with addiction in The Outrun and as a World War II mother in Blitz.

Artzi, with his vast experience performing for soldiers and civilians through Israel's wars, had said, "I've never seen pain like in this war."

Natural Bonds is not only a home for animals, however: It is also a home for people. 

Their movies feature lush cinematography (whether in color or black-and-white), passionate romances that are all the more affecting because the characters are so very British.