Patterns

To end the holiday, I started some patchwork, which will end up as a jacket.  I had some fabric remnants given to me by my elderly mother, and I picked out colours and designs that went well together.  Because it’s inspired by the Victorian crazy patchwork style, my challenge is to ensure that the different fabrics appear random, but are fairly evenly distributed across each piece.

As I went along, I was thinking about my ‘random pattern’, and making connections:  ‘See, if I have this HERE, then I need that THERE, but not there … ‘

I feared I needed more fabric, and the hunt online was harder than I expected.  Mum’s fabric was tastefully collected, and I  couldn’t ruin the thing with cheap, uninspiring ‘ditsy’ prints. I dislike even the word, ditsy! What I was looking for was something the right colour, available almost immediately, and (crucially) that made my heart sing.

I found it! (Eventually.)

The whole exercise made me think of my research. I look at the information I’ve found, and try to find patterns.  When I’m hunting down more detail, again,  I’m looking for the ‘aha! That’s it!’ moment, when something fits into what I know, or hopefully augments it.

Here I have this singer and her repertoire. What did she sing? When? How often? Are there times when she sang more of one genre than another?

I’ve been down so many rabbit holes this week.  If she sang THIS song, then did she know the lyricist (probably not, though their lives had interesting parallels), or did the lyrics mean more to her because of their subject matter? Did she know the individual for whom it was written? She did, at least by name!  (They sang at the same concert.)  Some parallels in their lives, too.  Did she sing the song that was referenced within the song? Yes!  (It’s a bit ‘meta’, I must admit, but I find it interesting.)  It’s just one song, not by a composer I’d expected to encounter,  but the connections are intriguing.

So far, so good.  But there was still the question of another song she sang literally a couple of hundred times. In looking for a pattern, I got myself into a whole new-to-me subject area.  Does it make my heart sing?  I can’t say, yet.  There’s still something I need to know.  It might be significant, or it could be a red herring.

Maybe I should do some more patchwork, to calm myself down.

But there’s another parallel. I may not need quite as much extra fabric as I’ve ordered. (Or as much data …?)