Favourite Things Friday: John Denver

Ladies and gentlemen, with us tonight is one of the good guys of contemporary music, Mr. John Denver. –Kermit the Frog

There is something about John Denver's music that I just love. His voice is so pure and his songs are so passionate. His music is just beautiful. One of my favorite songs of all time just happens to be by John Denver, Annie's Song. I have it in my iPod and it is one of my most listened to songs; I don't think I will ever get tired of listening to it. The lyrics are incredibly romantic. Can you imagine your significant other writing something like this for you?
Come let me love you
Let me give my life to you
Let me drown in your laughter
Let me die in your arms
Let me lay down beside you
Let me always be with you
Come let me love you
Come love me again.



In the movie, My Best Friend's Wedding, Annie's Song gets a little cameo when three boys suck in some helium from the balloons and then sing it in three-part harmony. So fun!


OK, so I know I went a little overboard in this post with the YouTube videos, but I really wanted to share my favorites and Playlist doesn't work for international visitors. So, feel free to pick and choose which of the videos you watch. I really love these next two songs, Country Boy and Take Me Home, Country Roads. They are also in my most played section on my iPod.




And here is some fun with the Muppets. John Denver did a couple of different specials with the Muppets and it was always a lot of fun. I have the John Denver and the Muppets Christmas CD and love it {yep, it is on my iPod, too}. Here are a couple of non-Christmas clips. These are both so much fun! I think my favorite is the singing Foxglove .




And I couldn't resist John Denver & Julie Andrews singing Edelweiss. The harmony he sings is so beautiful.


Thanks, John, for adding a little beauty to the world.

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Bradbury 13: A Sound of Thunder

I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room. –Ray Bradbury

I apologize for the interruption to my regularly scheduled Bradbury 13 post last Wednesday. It was a bit of a last minute decision. I was busy doing a week of giveaways and since I was organizing prizes and posts for the giveaway, I decided to take a week off of Bradbury because even though I had the skeleton written out, I wanted to do a little more reading up on this story and flesh out my post a bit more. I wanted to do the story justice because it is in my top three.

A Sound of Thunder was first published in Collier's Weekly magazine in 1952. It was included in The Golden Apples of the Sun in 1953, which has since been reprinted in several different forms and under several different titles and is now called A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories. A Sound of Thunder has since become the most reprinted science fiction story of all time {I know, Bradbury isn't, strictly speaking, a science fiction writer. Most of his stories are more fantasy, but he is billed as sci-fi, so I'm going with it}. I've tried to keep my reviews fairly spoiler-free, but this story is popular enough that I think that most everyone is familiar with it, so I'm including a summary this time. In this story, a group of time travelers go on a safari back to the time of the dinosaurs to kill the ultimate game. The time travel agency has taken every precaution to insure that nothing it disturbed by the time travelers. They've erected a path that hovers above the ground to keep from disturbing the environment. They carefully choose which animals they will hunt, arriving just moments before they animal is about to die of natural causes. They leave no evidence of their presence, because who knows what the consequence will be if they make even a minor change to the way things were. However, in this trip something goes wrong. The hunter is frightened by the enormity of the dinosaur and in his haste to return to the time machine, he steps off the path and steps on a butterfly. When the group returns to the present, things are different from how they left them.

I had to wonder if the term butterfly effect comes from this story. The premise is that one tiny change in conditions in the present {or past, if it were possible} has a huge effect on the future. Mathematicians and scientists were exploring cause and effect in the 1890's. But it wasn't until somewhere around 1972 that the actual term came about, and it was used in conjunction with Edward Lorenz's experiments with computer weather models. So, somewhere in the middle lies Bradbury's most excellent A Sound of Thunder, which is, in my option, largely responsible for the term and concept.

A Sound of Thunder
They wiped the blood from their helmets. The monster lay a hill of solid flesh. Within it, you could hear the sighs and murmurs as the furthest chambers died, the organs malfuctioning, liquids running a final instant from pocket to sack to spleen, everything shutting off, closing up. Forever.

My Rating:
The curious thing about life is its endless possibilities. What you do in this moment, in a very real way, determines what you will be doing in a week, a year, a decade. It also influences the people around you. I often think about moments in my life were things may have taken a different direction if I had done things differently and wonder what it would be like if I had chosen a different path. If I were to hop in a time machine and tell my former self to do things differently, would I return to something better, or would I come back to find things much worse than I left them?

Air Date: May 21, 1984

Narrator:
Paul Frees

Cast:
Max Robinson
Bryce Chamberlain
Jay Bernard
Jeff Raider
Duane Hyatt
Jennifer Olafsen

Music:
Roger Hoffman
Greg Hansen

Production Assistant:
Patrick Mead

Associate Producer:
Jeff Raider

Created, Produced, Directed:
Mike McDonough

Executive Producer:
Dean Van Uitert

Audio Clip of A Sound of Thunder

Buy A Sound of Thunder mp3

Buy Bradbury 13 Audio CDs

Seven Quilts in Six Months: Can It Be Done?

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential. –Ellen Goodman

I'd originally planned this post for on or very shortly after January 1^st, but a really bad case of the stomach flu combined with a huge amount first-of-the-month billing at work combined and caused a hiccup in my posting mojo. Nevertheless, I think the quote I began this post with is still in relevant, as New Year's resolutions are still fresh on everyone's minds. I know I'm still thinking about the goals I've set for myself. Some I'm still struggling with, some I'm getting a handle on and other's I've needed to modify. But self-improvement and forward motion and sewing finishes are still in focus.

A little over a month ago {has it really been that long ?}, I signed up for Myra's Ph.D Quilt Challenge. And I took it as an opportunity, not to beat myself up for all the things I've started and not finished, but to evaluate my huge stack of half-done projects. I saw it as a positive way to prioritize and complete some of those fabulous projects that had captured my imagination and then I'd been sidetracked from {most likely with other fabulous new projects that captured my imagination}. I was conservative in my commitment, knowing there were a few other big things I wanted to do during this time, and I pledged to complete three of my half-done quilts; my Snowball quilt, my Pinwheel Sampler and my Woman's Work quilt. After I'd made my commitment, I made a list of just how many quilts I have in progress and another list of things I really want to do but haven't started yet, and decided I'd better up the ante. I'm committing to finish seven quilts {some started already, some, not so much} by the end of June.

Over the past 10 days, I've finished 8 projects {some blogged about already and some yet to be blogged about}. These were all projects that I had cut and were ready to start on, or almost all cut out and were just sitting, waiting for me to get back to them. And it felt really good to get back to them and get them finished. None of them were quilts, but as soon as I finished the last of the projects that have been sitting, all cut out and ready to go for a good five months, I started working on Mr. Bug's Navy T-Shirt quilt. It was originally going to be for his birthday which is two days before Christmas. Nevermind that I decided to make it for him a week before his birthday, when I still had all the Christmas shopping and sewing left to do. I made a mistake {I think it was my subconscious trying to take some of the pre-Christmas pressure off} and ordered the wrong fabric and so that quilt was put on hold until the fabric could be exchanged.

I made a lot of progress with Mr. Bug's quilt this weekend. The top half is all put together and the bottom half is ready to be put together. I had it laid out on the living room floor up on my design wall and I asked him what he thought of it. He said it was nice, but I could tell by the look on his face that he wasn't in love with it. So we talked about it and decided to make a few changes {which requires a huge amount of frog stitching }. Mr. Bug pulled out a couple of other t-shirts {that were packed away in an old trunk, instead of in the closet with his other things} and I'm going to switch out a couple of t-shirt blocks that aren't as meaningful as these other shirts. He also pulled out his old uniforms, the everyday 'work' clothes and his dress uniforms with patches and insignias and ensigns and medals on them. I'm going to make the sashing out of his dungaree work shirts. And I'm going to add a panel for his patches and insignias and ensigns and things. Even though it will take me as long to pull everything apart as it did to put it together, I think that making these changes will make the quilt more meaningful. It will be a quilt of things that he wore every day in his travels around the world. And making something really special for Mr. Bug it what I really want to do.

I'd hoped to have at least one Ph.D. quilt finished this month. I've officially added Mr. Bug's quilt to my list, bumping the number of Ph.D's from three to four to finish by the end of June. And as if that wasn't enough, there are three new quilts that I haven't started yet that I need {or want, I'm not sure which it is } to make before winter's end. One of those quilts is for my Grandpa, who many not have too many more winters left in him.

I'm not sure where to proceed from here. Last night, the thought of all that unpicking had me ready to jump ship on the Navy T-shirt quilt and move on to something else. I'm pretty sure that the design I have in mind for my Grandpa's quilt will go together pretty quickly, which is really tempting because I could very possibly have his quilt done before the month is out. I'm planning on making a stop at JoAnn's after work to find the perfect fabric for the pinwheels, border, binding and back to compliment the Moda Marbles Jelly Roll I'll be using for the striped blocks. But in contrast to that, this morning I've already thrown some of Mr. Bug's work clothes in the wash {instead of a load of darks } and I'm thinking about teaching him how to unpick stitches while I work on cutting things up.

As it stands right now, here is the list of quilts I'd like to finish by the end of June, listed kind of in order of preference for sewing time.
New – Grandpa's quilt
Ph.D – Mr. Bug's Navy T-Shirt Memory quilt
New – Stacked Coins quilt {I'm going to use some of my Frolic left-overs for this}
New – Polka-Dot quilt {I'm going to use my Go! Drunkard's Path dies and this quilt design}
Ph.D – Pinwheel Sampler quilt
Ph.D – Snowball quilt
Ph.D – Woman's Work quilt

I think I've got a small case of Obsessive Creative Disorder . It is interesting how, even though I am anxious and excited to get those Ph.D quilts done, the new projects have snuck right in there and taken top priority. I think I'm going to have to institute a No New Projects policy*.

{* New quilts already on the list are exempt from the rule.}

Abbey Bag Finishes

I'm in therapy and sewing is cheaper than a psychiatrist. –Unknown

I've done some pretty serious sewing during the past 10 days. I wasn't sure how to catalog my finishes, since the things I was working on were for my Week of Giveaways. In the end, I decided that I'd post the giveaway first and then do a separate, follow-up post to catalog the items I've finished. As part of my marathon, I whipped up a couple of really cute Abbey Bag pincushion/scrap holder combos. These are really fun to put together. I think my favorite part is making the covered buttons for the top of the pincushion.

I've had the fabrics for both of these cut out and sitting in a stack on the end of the love seat in my living room sewing studio since the middle of summer. I used up all of the scraps from the Apples & Pears aprons I did early last spring and had enough to make three bags from that. I made one up right away and gave it to my friend, Pink. The other two went into a pile. But since I was really in the groove with choosing fun color combinations, I pulled out some red scraps and got pieces cut for another Abbey Bag. Most of the reds were left over from LadyBug's High School Musical Quilt. And then I got distracted with other new and shiny projects and these sat. So, it was really fun to {almost} completely clear away a pile and get some Projects In Progress finished {I still have one Apples & Pears Abbey Bag cut out and waiting, but that is a project for another day}. Hooray for two more January finishes!

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Sabbath Songs: I Feel My Savior's Love

If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.

These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.

This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
–John 15: 10—12