Greetings from Montevideo, from Alison Schwabe, Aussie quiltmaker

One thing that I always notice about people is their hands, and another is any jewellery they are wearing. These fabulous fingernails and jewellery were on the hand of the woman sitting next to DH at the lunch counter yesterday, down at Mercado del Puerto. She apparently has a nails business over in Buenos Aries. Dear Daughter would love this lot....

I was asked to provide a quilt as a guest artist in a weavers exhibition themed on Tree of Life, opening here next week. Over the many months since I was first asked, I have been thinking of Jose Gurvich, a famous Uruguayan painter designer and ceramicist of the deconstructivist school. A friend took me to an exhibition of his ceramics a year or two back, wonderful primal pieces many of them covered with little symbols and 3-d little living things, people, animals, fish, all kinds of things, exquisite. ...bought a book about him which is delightful to read. So, I thought, well the tree of life, with Adam and Eve, the first two humans, and the leaves and fruits to hold the symbols of life, the serpent lurking etc.

Communication with the organiser over along period had been a little intermittent and complicated by language assumptions and difficulties so that what seemed a distant deadline became urgent and then three more days even more so, on account of a public holiday monday. Typical Uruguay though.... you just have to go with the flow. So I did. On tuesday I made the decision to start all over, and was thinking calico/muslin background, paint it again, but better . But on wednesday morning I sat bolt upright in bed and thought 'BLACK...Eureka!' and, further, for once, had plenty on hand. I did a few little testing samples, realised black marker pen on organza over black would be fabulous , and achieved the bonding and fusing wednesday which makes me a new bonding fan, thursday sewed around all the edges of organza that were beginning to lift a little !!!!! and so by thursday night, ie 24 hours ago, began quilting, continuing into the wee small hours this morning, and after a few hours sleep I put on the the binding and sleeve, did the hand sewing and finishing off while the book selection discussions were on, brought it back, signed and put it on its rod, in a bag and finally got it, paperwork, spanish and english versions of my statement, price, contact info etc etc all to the delivery point downtown, with just 10 minutes to spare... hurtling through pouring rain and late friday traffic with a taxi driver who understood my need get there and balanced that with incredibly good driving in bad conditions. Why was it important to me to do this and just about knock myself out over it just days before we head off up to the US ? ... because I said I would, and because who knows where this invite may lead, and heck, I just love last minute pressure ! For pressure, this piece ranks up there with 'Lilydale' juried into Paducah the year the theme was triangles ?1991? Anyway, the decision to do a last minute effort and make that deadline was made just after Xmas with the deadline merely 3 weeks away... I told the family take care, talk amongst themselves quietly in the background, I was going to be busy a while. From GO to WHOA that quilt, 84inches by, what, 68 or so ? took two weeks to make. And, years later, I still love it... that's the test IMHO .

This is the first version of Arbol de la Vida, the Tree of Life, painted in a freat flurry in february, but something intervened, and mentally I abandoned it, and with good reason, I think ..... so when the deadline loomed I had to toss up whether to do something or anything with this before quilting it, or start all over again with the basic idea. Following are details of the one I did complete, and finally, the full view of Arbol de la Vida, as presented for exhibition. Maybe I needed this total failure to force me to look at the whole idea again. Properly.

Leaves showing some of the symbols I used depicting aspects of Life 

and Adam, the hunk..... 

Eve, obviously... 

detail of leaves and serpent.... 

The Tree of Life, or Arbol de la Vida.... full view of version two, which has turned me into a fusing fan for ever, giving quick results under pressure of a deadline brought forward, at the last minute, by three days so that the comfortably do-able became an uncomfortable last minute miracle. approx 1m x 1.25m

Well, today, sunday, I did manage some quilting, and now we are down to 32 squares.... but yesterday was one in which we found ourselves 'out', pretty well all day entertaining an english visitor. Well a bit of touring around Montevideo on a saturday always includes lunch at the mercado del puerto - which did go on a bit, then round to some of the touristy shops and areas he can visit this week at his leisure - and at his suggestion, just a quick little nip into the casino which is apparently one of his fav things to do to relax. Well, I don't mind the slots, and we hadn't been into a casino, anywhere, for years - DH did well in a small way on the blackjack table, I made quite a few pesos on the slots, and Peter was happy with what he won also on blackjack - anyway several hours later I managed to extricate them- end of long but fun day- but of course at 11pm things are only just starting to kick along in Uruguay ...

Juan, who for many years has cooked on one side or the other at our fav parrilla, laughed heartily the day I told him we have always thought he looked like Saddam Hussein.

Yours truly with english visitor Peter, and Yamandu, who was also there again on saturday. One thing I have not been able to capture with my camera on either of the times we have met is the transistor radio in leather case, hanging by a long strap from the shoulder. The holder around his scarf is silver with the head of Artigas, liberator of the country, and whose bust is Everywhere.

Claudio, whom I call the bird man - waved from the other side when he saw my camera, came over and posed - pity my photo doesn'¡t quite do him justice. His wooden mobiles of flying geese or swans, are beautifully crafted, as I said in an earlier post. He carries a bunch in his bag over his shoulder, and when he's sold them all he adjourns to the Bar Penguinos behind him...

The front facade of the of the HQ of the fleet - Edificio del Armada Nacional - this is one of my favourite buildings here.

The communications tower of the building which is the HQ of the national fleet, down in the port area, just across the road from mercado del puerto 

But instead of quilting, today I whipped up a couple of quick gourmet-from-scratch recipes and had some friends around to lunch. It went well, although the lead up included finding I'd bought strawberry flavoured yoghurt instead of plain for the dressing for the cucumber. Leftovers ensure dinner tonight is no problem, so I will do some more quilting later. There is still rain around - a wet saturday might see the whole thing finished.... but the Tree of Life thing hasn't gone away after all, and I have to fit that in, and present it ready for hanging on the morning of monday 16th, ie barely 10 days away - and right now I'm wondering whether to ditch what I have done and re-do the surface design before quilting, or plough on, but not happily - there is about a 30 - 48 hour window of time in which to make this decision. Gut feeling tells me it would be a better thing to do a new surface design ... and I will publish either one or two pics when done, I promise! One thing successful procrastinators like myself need to be able to do is pull a rabbit out of the hat at the last minute.

Not bad considering the several interruptions - 36 squares added to the total makes this the handquilting halfway mark. But it's book club this morning, and that will take up to lunchtime, so it will be afternoon before I am quilting today - but on the other hand, DH is away for the night, so there will be more time without interruption later, too. I have just read Alexandra Fuller's "Let's Not Go to the Dogs Tonight" A white African childhood coloured by the alcoholic mother - a dysfunctional family in the turmoil of history - sounds terrible but is fascinating and really well written without maudlin longing for a doomed way of life - that of white farmers in black Africa.

This is coming along nicely - but with still 2/3 (ie 100 squares) hand quilting to go, though, this is where I find it hard to hold concentration and plough on to finish this part of the work - and it's where recorded books really come into their own. Although I read "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel a couple of years a go, that is long enough ago for so much of the book to be new and freshly enjoyed. An english visitor on the weekend, familiar with things like quilting bees and guilds, asked did I have a circle of quilters here - the short answer is no , and mostly I don't miss that, but with the qualification that at such times, just quilting your way through a couple of hours of quilt-based yackety yack, is another good way to get through the work with apparent ease and no loss of focus. It struck me this morning that if there were a way to record the several online chat/email groups I belong to, that would be a perfect background, too. In each of them, there are several writers whose opinions I always find interesting and sometimes provocative, but always worthwhile. So, now I am off to go quilt some more squares - today's challenge is to see how many I can do in what I estimate will be at least 6 hours spent 'at the frame'. No, actually that is misleading - I sit in my art deco bridge chair, divinely comfortable, with my quilting 'hoop'/rectangle and quilt resting on the down-adjusted ironing board, needles thread and scissors to the right hand side at the end. Good light pouring in all round me...and so endeth today's epistle.

Yamandu, a gaucho who was there and spent some time dodging my camera before coming over introducing himself and posing...these men cut very fine figures on or off horseback, with wonderful posture and elegant dress. It's a great sight to see a parade of hundreds of them riding along to a rodeo ground... 

Our preferred place to sit is up at the counter where we can watch the food being cooked over the fire amid frantic activity with one cook on each side, waiters rushing past grabbing plates, juggling several up an arm, almost never dropping anything or colliding with each other. 

.....sitting on the opposite side of the counter around the huge two sided cooking fire, this guy spent AGES talking on his phone, with his hand over his mouth. My long distance eyesight is good, but I can't read lips, but he clearly did not want to assume anything - curious - I hope our policeman had him under his eye....

Lunch at the Port - means this place - the Mercado del Puerto. Actually down in the port area, opposite the imposing art deco building office of the National Fleet - (which I will show another time - one of my favs.) Walking in from the street you find yourself in this cavernous place which feels like an ancient railway station, which it is. Destined for possibly Paraguay or Bolivia, at the time the prefabricated parts for this station arrived in Montevideo by ship from ?UK? whoever ordered it was not able to pay for it, the country involved being actively engaged in one of the many civil wars that went on in this region in the mid nineteenth century. So it was off-loaded here, and erected as a market - there is no station attached - in time port workers came here to eat at cafes and bars which multiplied and grew, today it is open days and some nights, there are twenty or more restaurants, several bars, a few galleries, lots of craft vendors and several artists, one or two of which are very good. It is THE place to lunch on the weekends, very crowded, noisy, lots of entertainment planned and incidental - from a urugauayan brass band playing brasilian music, to the drumming troup that always come through, a very old guy with a guitar who sings not so well (Virginia says she and her friends have always paid for him to take a rest, telling him he has been siniging so hard he must be exhausted, ie go away....) Every time we go there is always the guy I call The Birdman - who makes and sells beautifully crafted plywood flying geese mobiles, of which I must have bought at least 10 down the years for prices ranging from US$20 - $40... depending... I bought one on my very frist visit way back in 1988. Then there is a ventriloquist who sings risque songs, loudly and awfully, and wheels his cd player and large amps around on a cart - real noise pollution. We haven't seen the imposing man in a grey overcoat who sings opera, for some time. Each week we try to wear at least one pair of shoes between us that need cleaning - this wonderful service is performed by an itinerant shoe cleaner who has been there for years, too. There's a particular policeman, always there, now you see him now you don't, always looking, just always working his way through the crowd, avoiding direct eye contact with anyone, gun on hip - national security says my friend Virginia, who clearly knows him quite well.... he stoppped by our table the other day for a chat with her, and let loose a smile we had never seen before.