Helen Kelley Patchworks

May, 2005:  I’ve been having mouse trouble. Not the kitchen cupboard kind but the computer kind. I finally got tired of its balky temperament and unscrewed the back. The insides looked just like the feed dogs on my sewing machine, packed with lint. I thought, “I can do this” and got out my sewing machine tools. With my mini brush and needle-nosed tweezers, I pulled out the trash and dusted it out. Now my mouse is behaving itself beautifully.

The moral of the story: if you can run a sewing machine, you can do anything.

My granddaughter, Else, asked me if I knew about the Chaos Theory.

It says (for you technical people) that any seemingly disordered system actually has an underlying order in its apparently random data.

Or (for us ordinary people), if it looks like chaos, you just haven’t figured out its pattern yet. Sounds right to me!

May, 2005 – A lovely Danish lady found lengths of exquisite Hardanger lace in an antique shop in Denmark and gave them to me. She felt they should be made into “something” for a church, and I was the person to do it. I am working it into a cross banner. The job has proven to be far more difficult than I ever imagined. Sewing new fabric onto antique lace is like putting new wine into old wine skins. It’s taken me months. I feel like I have been sewing on it forever and ever. Amen.

May, 2005 – I am organizing fabric from my stash for a Crazy quilt. There is fabric all over the floor and on chairs and tables. My daughter came into my workroom and commented, “Mom, this is chaos.”

I beg to differ. My workroom is not in Chaos. It is in Controlled Disorder. Dante said that the gates of hell are marked, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” Chaos has that element of hopelessness. But, I know what and where everything is, and MORE importantly, I have hope.