Crows have the best curses.

There is nothing funnier than a crow trying to work out just how to crow. There was one particularly silly bird between the dining hall and my room today that would manage a series of perfectly adequate, if muted caws, but would then devolve into this silly squawking/croaking noise, all puffed up like a black bowling ball. We had a lovely conversation, but he wouldn't tell me just why he insisted on talking so unusually. Perhaps he was cussing me out. Who knows?

I wanted to talk about one quilt in particular that I loved at the quilt show, moreso than any of the others. It wasn't that the quilt was the most beautiful (it was), or that it featured delicate and complicated applique (because it totally did): I want to talk about it because the subject chosen is actually near and dear to my heart, and when I walked past it I had to do a double take. Did they really--they did! Some clever, folklore-minded individual chose to make a quilt about Vasalisa and her aunt Baba-Yaga.

This deserves a full-size view, trust me.

For those who haven't read this story it concerns a little girl named Vasalisa who is sent by her wicked step-mother (it's always a wicked stepmother, isn't it?) to fetch some fire from Baba Yaga. She must serve the witch for some time before she is kicked out thanks to her mother's blessing, but is given a skull on a stick with fire in its mouth. Upon her return, the skull incinerates the wicked step-mother, and Vasalisa is adopted by a kindly couple and goes on to marry a prince.

The house with the chicken feet.

The artist, one Eloise Julie Turtlehorse Waldas, must have had a checklist for the parts of the fairy tale. There's a row of grinning skulls, the three horses (red, black, and white, of course), the house, everything is there. It's a really beautiful example of how to compose a quilt, and how to make the medium really work for the story you want to tell. I keep going back and finding other little elements to the story every time I look at it. If the quilt had been for sale, I might have had to coerce the quilter to hand it over, or suffer the consequences. :)

A few more pictures for my Vampires class (hi guys!), and I must go.

Vasalisa.

Some of the skulls. I love how she used spotted
fabric for the light as opposed to the blatantly
obvious flames.

The artist's statement.

Thank you Eloise, I think your quilt should have gotten more than an honorable mention.