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* Observant readers will notice that the Delectable Mountains Block is not yet sewn, so expect another post about that soon.
In Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park, Fanny's sailor brother visits while on shore leave and regales the family with the rigors of life at sea. Henry Crawford, a wealthy loafer, reflects as he listens... He longed to have been at sea, and seen and done and suffered as much. His heart was warmed, his fancy fired, and he felt the highest respect for a lad who, before he was twenty, had gone through such bodily hardships and given such proofs of mind. The glory of heroism, of usefulness, of exertion, of endurance, made his own habits of selfish indulgence appear in shameful contrast; and he wished he had been a William Price, distinguishing himself and working his way to fortune and consequence with so much self-respect and happy ardour, instead of what he was! He toys with these fantasies for a few minutes, before someone mentions hunting, and he finds is "as well to be a man of fortune"!
Per Austen's delicate genius, she tucks deeper meaning into the syntax of her sentences than the nouns or verbs: savor the careful past-perfects in this paragraph. Henry Crawford doesn't actually want to experience privations or work hard or prove his mettle; he wants to "have done" so! In the past. He doesn't want to build character, he wants to be on the other side of that building project, looking back with self-congratulation at what a fine man he's made of himself. I was originally calling this quilt "Pick-Up Sticks/Acid Trip", but as I work on it, my pick-up sticks inspiration is fading, while the acid trip associations are getting stronger.
Anyway, I'm calling it the Acid Trip quilt, now. Here are the posts, so far:
1. String Piecing (Pick-up Sticks/Acid Trip) 2. Pick-up Sticks/Acid Trip coming along |
Karen Roy
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