A man in jeans, T shirt and baseball cap, stood in the Washington Metro. He took out his violin, threw some loose change into his violin case and began to play.  It was rush hour, 7.51am.

The violinist began with Bach’s Chaconne, one of the composer’s most complex pieces.

63 people passed by before someone acknowledged the violinist. The man turned his head only briefly though, then hurried on.

The second person to notice the violinist was a woman who tossed him a dollar note.

A three year old wanted to stop and watch but his mother pulled him away. Every time a child walked by, he or she wanted to stay but the parent scooted them on.

In 45 minutes, 1070 people walked by. 7 people stopped for at least a minute. 27 gave money. The musician collected $37.

The violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the finest classical musicians in the world playing on his violin worth $3.5 million.

Three days earlier, he had played in the Symphony Hall in Boston – the average price of a seat was $100.

Joshua Bell’s performance was an experiment set up by the Washington Post to observe perception, context and priorities. “In a banal setting, at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?” The Post goes on to say: “If we can’t take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that — then what else are we missing?”

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Literacy Empowers People.

Shadow Forest Authors gets books to places where children are most disadvantaged. If you are a published author, please consider donating a copy of your book to one of the named beneficiaries. One small act can make a world of difference.

From Shadow Forest Authors website:

Our mission at SFA, to encourage every author worldwide and from every genre to donate just one copy of their title to fill a void in reading materials and get both paperback books and e-books where they are urgently needed. Authors and supporters standing together to make a difference, our humble shadows speaking volumes.

This is a photo of me with Len Quon, founder of the Millennium Dragon as we wait to join in the Moomba procession. Moomba is held each Labour Day. In Len's hand is the Pearl of Wisdom which he waves in front of the dragon to entice him to follow.

Here I am standing in front of the banner which always leads the parade.

If you want to see how big the Millennium Dragon is, you can visit him at the Chinese Museum in Melbourne.

http://www.chinesemuseum.com.au/whatson.html

I haven’t made a patchwork quilt since my daughter was a baby. It was heaps of work and in the end, I only made a quilt the size of  a cot.

The other day, while I was walking my dog in the park, I went inside a shop that sold everything related to patchwork. I only went in to browse, but my eye was drawn to a shelf in the corner of the shop where rows of gorgeous Japanese prints were lined up. They were sumptuous. I would even call them delicious – like looking at a plateful of the most beautiful chocolates. I wanted to buy them all.

I came out of the shop with a meter each of my  6  favourite patterns, a new pair of scissors, a reel of cotton, a sheet of plastic to make a template, and lots of inspiration.

I plunged in headfirst, like I do when I write a novel, without any overall plan. After several days of trial and error I came up with the squares that you see in the photos below. Once all the squares are sewn together, I will put batting inside, then a backing material. After that comes the quilting where you stitch through all the layers of fabric.

The individual squares laid in a similar way to how the finished quilt will look.

The beautiful material I will use for the back of my quilt.