Doug Weaver

Don’t spit into the well. You might have to drink from it later.
- Yiddish proverb

So we got Julia’s new Mrs. Bobbins cartoon on Monday. We always do at the start of the week, and, like you, we look forward to being surprised by what she comes up with next.

Wombat love: Imagine a cute thimble on this cutie.This one, though, had me scratching my head. Diane, too. If you’ve seen it, posted yesterday, it shows Mrs. Bobbins licking her quilt block, commenting to Mr. Bobbins that a bit of spit is as important to a quilt as blood, sweat and tears.

Spit on a quilt? I had no idea. We asked Edie to confirm. She explained that, yes, spit is good for getting out blood if you prick your finger while sewing.

Ahh … made sense! Though later, as I pondered writing this post, I found the Yiddish proverb, above. So, do all quilters wash their quilts once they’re done, knowing they – or someone else – might be sleeping under it later?! Or not? I wonder ….

Okay, now this could be strange. I’m a firm believer that sometimes coincidence isn’t always random … that Jo Ann's quilt: Did Aunt Rose make it? odd, unexpected things can coincide for a reason. Blame my Presbyterian upbringing, I suppose. Plus it’s fun to think about the possibility.

So it was weird that I received an email from Jo Ann Groves, who is our production guru here at The Kansas City Star and responsible for fine-tuning those beautiful photographs and artwork that you see in our books.

She had read my blog item about my great aunt and her quilts.

“Just read your Aunt Rose post,” she wrote. “I was born in Windsor and given a little baby quilt from one of my parents’ neighbor ladies (don’t remember the name.)

We all have relatives now gone that we never knew, right? In my case it was Aunt Rose.

Now, Aunt Rose wasn't my aunt per se. No, she was the sister of my grandfather, Luther Abraham Weaver. So she was my great aunt. Growing up, she, L.A. and brother Harrison lived in a small house in Windsor, Mo., which if you don't know is just south of Knob Knoster.

(Okay, that probably doesn't help much. Just know that Knob Knoster – a great name! – is the home of Whiteman Air Force Base, which houses the nation's B-2 bombers. No typical small town, eh?)

As I was growing up, I'd hear family members talk of "Aunt Rose" and mainly in the context of her quilts. You see, Rose's father, Easton, a farmer, died when she was only 6. Her brothers would go on to get degrees at the University of Missouri. But Rose hung back in Windsor to help her mother do quilts and embroidery to make ends meet.

Bill's QuiltIt had been years since I'd thought of Rose. But a couple of weekends ago, I was at the family cabin in Michigan. And my sister, Mary Ann, had brought along a quilt to keep warm. (The cabin's heat isn't the best.) I spied the quilt, and Mary Ann reminded me that it was a gift from Aunt Rose.

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – Random thoughts about quilting while (and after) flying at 30,000 feet:

Sky quilts

Readers of this blog have commented about how Midwestern farm fields viewed from high above look like quilt blocks. And that is truly so. But I am struck as we
Doug and the quilt: Getting closer ...get ready to land in Traverse City, Michigan, how the north woods, aflame in fall colors, represent their own patchwork of vivid patterns.

Traverse City is a northern Michigan town on the south end of Traverse Bay, which connects to Lake Michigan. I’m up here tending to some family business. Bursts of red, orange and yellow pop through the evergreens, all the way up to the sandy border of the crystal-blue bay.

No, this “sky quilt” is not symmetrical like the farm fields of Missouri. But it’s a quilt nonetheless … a soft collision of vivid designs and hues, bunched and gathered, warm to the eye’s touch.

TULSA - I love a good cornfield. I'm Missouri-raised, and the Show-Me State grows a good deal of the stuff. I also cut my journalist's teeth in Springfield, Ill., amid the tall cornfields (and rambunctious politics) of central Illinois. There, I even grew some stalks in my backyard.

I also am a fan of the film "Field of Dreams" and Stephen King's book, "The Starnd." Both use cornfields as metaphorical landscapes for life's bigger questions.

So when Maggie Bonanomi, author of her latest Kansas City Star book Nature’s Offerings stopped in the other day to drop off her book's projects to display at Fall Market this week, I showed more than the usual interest.

Sygenta Quilt signThat's because Maggie - who lives a rural existence outside Lexington, Mo. - handed me a photograph she took showing one of those metal signs on green posts staked between highway and cornfield identifying what kind of seed or pesticide was used on that patch of ground.

I was in heaven.

Last night, it’s like the Pearly Gates opened wide and there before me, on the big-screen TV, emerged the ultimate Project Runway for us ink-stained wretches who still love the newspaper business.

Irina Shabayeva: Oh, the stories her trenchcoat could tell!“This challenge is right up your alley, daddy!” texted my daughter Meghan from her Tulsa apartment.

“Oh … my … gosh,” I thought, as it began to sink in.

Project Runway is going to make dresses out of newspapers!!

Okay, I promise this'll be the last blog for awhile about Project Runway. But I must. And before I get to what was created – pretty cool! – the mysterious run-up was a hoot. Tim Gunn, master mentor to the striving designers, let drop only that this week’s challenge had to do with “black and white.”

Now that I’ve been around quilts for a decade or so, it’s not surprising my “quilt alert” radar seems always on.

Scene from "The Proposal"It’s certainly not a curse … although it can be a bit maddening. Like the time I began seeing quilt patterns in architecture.

So I’m at the movies the other day, seeing “The Proposal,” which stars Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. I’m a fan of Bullock’s. I know some movie-goers can’t stand her, but I’ve liked her ever since she and Keanu Reeves paired off in the 1994 thriller “Speed,” about the bus careening through L.A. streets with a bomb on board. (I’m planning to miss her latest, though … “All About Steve.” It looks dorky.)

Anyway, “The Proposal” was a pretty good flick – nice Alaskan scenery, good plot, funny lines. The plot premise: She’s a primo book editor in New York but an office tyrant. She’s also Canadian on the edge of losing her visa status – so she forces her young assistant to marry her to avoid deportation.

Ahh, man. Fame can be so fleeting. Ari Fish: Out of water? Yes, but ...

I’m reminded of The Beatles classic, “Hello Goodbye.”

“I don’t know why you say goodbye,
I say hello.”

(Check out the boys in their Sgt. Pepper outfits – flash from the past! )

Anyway, my subject today is Project Runway, the cable TV show that's moved from Bravo to the Lifetime channel. Readers of PDish know I’m a fan. I won’t bore you with why that is, though it is connected to quilting. (You can check out past blogs if you’d like.) But at last the new season started on Thursday.

Emotionally, I had some skin in this game. Ari Fish, one of the contestants, is a Kansas Citian and a recent grad of the Kansas City Art Institute.

Just ask the staff. Now is not the time to be hitting me up for extra funds.

You see, right now, “expense” is my least-favorite word Our same booth: Minus the crate!here at the office. Call me cheap. I’m okay with that. I once knew a newspaper columnist who would switch out his razor blade every six months. He’s my hero.

Indeed, right now, I’m so cheap that if I owned a hearing aid it’d run on solar batteries. I’m so cheap that I’d pay a dollar for a widget at the Dollar Store but only if I got change back.

Okay, not my jokes. But I share the sentiments.

Like most companies across the country – and most households, too – we’re trying to watch our spending here at Kansas City Star Quilts. Although our quilt-publishing business continues to do very well – thank you! – other parts of our business and our parent company’s business are doing so-so.

Good morning!: Coffee helps usher in the day.EMPIRE, Mich. -- As they say around here, I’m “Up North” as I write this, on vacation. Specifically on Glen Lake in the northwest corner of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, near Traverse City.

It’s tough duty … right, like winning the lottery is tough duty. If it wasn’t for the cougar and bear sightings, not to mention long winters, I’d ask my boss if I could work from here year-round. Unfortunately, as long as I have a boss, that’s not likely to happen.

But don't get me wrong. I very much appreciate my job, given the tough cuts our own newspaper company has faced, plus the economic troubles here in hard-hit Michigan. Retailing is tough everywhere right now. But the quilt biz continues to be strong. So I count my blessings!

In honor of the Wolverine state, though, I thought I’d offer some Michigan musings: