April 2007 Journal Quilt - Mindful Moodling

I had surgery on my foot during April 2007,

so while I was restricted and off work,

I had time to sit and stitch

(between pain medicine induced naps).

I had already made a couple of Priority Quilts

for AAQI using my moodling technique,

so it became my technique-of-choice

for April's journal quilt.

Doing ~

simply for the sake of doing ~

no right or wrong,

just the pure joy of stitching.

The quote printed on the tag on the back reads:

"Our society demands constant activity,
constant achievement,
and tireless motion.
Anything done for fun,
anything which serves no logical purpose,
is suspect."

Moodling,
which I learned from Brenda Uleland's book
"If You Want To Write,"
is "a precious gift we have sacrified
in the name of accomplishment."

"Children know how to moodle,
they are natural virtuosos at it.
You never see a child look up
from his blocks to say,
'Man, I really should work on my taxes soon.'"

"You never see a young child stop to question
the motivation of a game or joke."

"Children,
precious moodlers that they are,
have enormous powers of concentration.
All of us were once moodlers,
whether we admit it or not.
But the art of moodling is drummed out of us
pretty quickly.
We put away our imaginary friends.
We close the coloring book.
We become  . . . grownups.
We lose the opportunity to see
a castle in a pile of backyard twigs."