Lotsa BlogVisitors, Progress Report, and Poetry Thursday

I was Site of the Day! Yay!! I was very excited to be chosen as Michele's Site of the Day yesterday and to get all the lovely visitors and comments as a result! Thank you, Michele, and thank you BlogVisitors! I'll be making a point of paying some return BlogVisits over the next couple of days. And for those of you who visited just because you wanted to rather than because Michele sent you, thank you too - LOTS! You know I always love seeing all of you and reading your comments, even when I get behind on replies (which I currently am!). Quilt Progress (or lack thereof!) I've been having One of Those Weeks and am falling behind on things, including seeing my chances of making the Husqvarna Viking contest entry deadline grow increasingly dim. Some quilts go together like they're making themselves and some are a bit more of a struggle. This one seemed like it should have been one of the easy ones, but that hasn't turned out to be the case. I think it'll be good in the end so I still hope to enter it somewhere, but I don't think it'll be done and ready to photograph by the deadline. I'll hold off on sharing in-progress photos a while longer though, just in case I pull a bright shiny miracle out of my ass. I'm ever the optimist! Poetry Thursday I decided to participate in Poetry Thursday again this week. I might as well stop being superstitious about it and email Liz to add me to the list of regulars! Except for the thing that I'm still feeling superstitious. Heh. (I hope Blogger's pathetic excuse for a spellcheck program knows the word "superstitious" because I've just typed it three different ways and NONE of them look right!) (It DID know - Yay! And I'd spelled it wrong all three times! LOL!) Anyway, last week I threw all those things I wrote at you. This week I'd like to share an old favorite that someone else wrote...a poem that has been a favorite of mine for years. I hope you'll indulge me even if you've read it. It's called "High Flight" and was written by an RCAF pilot during World War II. Since then it's become something of an anthem for pilots, and while I'm not a pilot, I do love to fly. Having "flying" as one of my "F is for..." words yesterday made me think of this poem. The very first time I ever read it, the first line grabbed me - "I have slipped the surly bonds of earth". That's exactly what taking off in an airplane feels like to me! Take-off is my favorite part of flying. I love the sensation of speeding down the runway, faster and faster. And then the wheels of the plane leave the ground and it starts to strain upward and you can feel the resistance. You can feel the earth's gravity trying to pull the plane back down, like an enraged lover grabbing your coat and saying "no, you can't leave me". And then, from one breath to the next, the plane breaks free and seems to just float into the air to leave the earth behind for a while and ride the wind. It's a moment of magic for me every time. "High Flight" Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up the long delirious, burning blue, I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or even eagle flew - And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high untresspassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God. Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee No 412 squadron, RCAF Killed 11 December 1941 Daily Art Thang To wind up, here are a couple of different versions of a photograph I took last fall, both of them "messed with" and neither of which have the slightest thing to do with anything else I've talked about today! "Red Twig and Berries #1" "Red Twig and Berries #2