Liebster Awards

Circle of Ravens, wool felt, felted specialty yarns, machine quilted.  Lisa Quintana

Ok...so I'm a little behind the times.  The other day, Lisa Ellis nominated me for a Liebster award.  Ordinarily, I'd hop right in and post right away...OK, so I'm fooling myself....I usually give things like this a lot of thought....Not because I'm a procrastinator, and I know I am and I'm working on that, but that I don't really take things like this lightly.

So...if you don't want to read on and find out my thoughts about internet memes, here's the deal:

This award is given to bloggers that inspire you and have less than 200 followers.  I admit, I had to look up the ones I first thought of and see how many followers they had...a few, I was very surprised to see that they didn't have MORE followers.  I love the name as Liebster has the connotation of an object of love.   

Here are the particulars:

As part of the tradition it is passed along to 5 bloggers that have motivated and inspired.
To accept the award you must:
1. Link back to the person who gave it to you and thank them.
2. Post the award to your blog.
3. Give the award to 5 bloggers with less than 200 followers that you appreciate and value.
4. Leave a comment on the 5 blogs to let them know that they have been offered this award.

1.  Sherrie Spangler from Sherrie Loves Color  Sherrie is a quilter from Gig Harbor, WA and like me, she DOES love color.  She also loves nature and she posts interesting things and photographs from her poking around Puget Sound.  I'd love to go tidal pool wading with her because I love those kind of things too.  In addition, if you have never been to the Pacific Northwest, you get a pretty good feel for it from her blog.  I do know the PNW as I often go out there to visit my sister.  She and her guild also have made gajillions of quilts for cancer patients...and they are really cool ones, not the dogs that no one could figure out what to do with.

2.  Del Thomas at Del Quilts.  If you follow my blog, you'll know Del.  She sometimes comments, but earlier this year I wrote a blog post about her.  Del is a great photographer and art quilter, but best of all, she has a heart of gold and has done a tremendous amount to further art quilting.  She has a collection of art quilts and she highlights them on  her blog as well as with photographs and observations she makes...particularly with her canine friend, Corky the Poodle Prince who borrows Del every once in a while to take on adventures. I quite frankly couldn't believe that Del didn't have more than 200 followers.

3.  Elizabeth Barton at Art, Quilts and Cogitations thereon.  Elizabeth is one of the best writers about design, theory and art quilting in general.  She is concise, thoughtful, and you can tell she's brilliant.  I really love her art quilts... Like Del, I was dumbfounded when I realized that she hadn't hit the 200 mark for followers.

4.  Terry Jarrard-Diamond at Studio 24-7.  Terry is another person who tips in at 174, but I thought surely would have more followers.  Terry offers great examples in art quilting, both from her own hand as well as shows she has frequented and people she knows.  She is very giving with evaluations of materials and in gathering information and disseminating it.  Thanks to her, I encouraged a friend to buy a Kalorik Steam center, and now I own one too.  Lots of good information and just good reading. 

5.  Vivien Zepf is a great person with a wonderful eye and she combines those in to some pretty cool art quilts and photographs.  Because she serves as an editor for the Studio Art Quilt Associates Journal, and is a busy mother to three kids, sometimes she's a little sporadic in her posts, but her blog Seven Pines Designs is one I really enjoy.  Sometimes I giggle as it sometimes seems like we lead parallel lives. 

6.  And I give you a bonus as I couldn't leave him out.  Mark Nofsinger has a blog called Shady Character. I've "known" Mark a long time....He is one of my buddies from the Orchid Forum on garden web.  Mark is an avid gardener and foodie who lives in Wisconsin....Mark shares thoughts on growing things, birding, and great recipes.  In addition, he's either a landscape designer, or a landscape architect....I forget which!  

I took a while to do this as I actually went through my whole list of blogs that I follow..considering all of them.  In addition, I remember someone once saying to me "I don't do memes."  Ok...I admit it, I didn't know what a meme was...and I was afraid it was Me! Me!...But, being the inveterate researcher, I looked it up.  

The Liebster Award, and other blog awards, are great examples of meme (pronounced "meem" ).  A meme is (according to wiki-pedia)  "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."^[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.^[3]

I think that's a pretty cool idea...and I can't really find a problem with it.  In fact....I think it has great potential for a series of art quilts!

Hope you enjoy...I have to get back to putting my sewing room back to rights after emptying it and re-furbishing it from top to bottom....and it has to be done ASAP as dear daughter needs her room back this Friday.  YIKES!