The Ponte Vedra Recorder | Page 50

50 Community Columns Ponte Vedra Recorder · October 29, 2015 UFOs in the Quilting World SHORT TAKES St. Johns County Youth Basketball Clinics The St. Johns County Parks and Recreation Department is offering instructional basketball clinics to teach fundamentals of the sport including basic skills, sportsmanship, and team building, and prepare players for the March 2016 Youth Basketball League. Clinic practices and scrimmages will be held from Nov. 16 through Jan. 30. Practices will take place at the Ketterlinus Gym, 60 Orange St., St. Augustine and scrimmages will be held at the Solomon Calhoun Center, 1300 Duval St., St. Augustine. Registration is $30 for the duration of the clinic and will continue through Nov. 13. Forms can be found online at www.sjcfl.us/Recreation/Youth/basketballclinic.aspx. Registration for the recreational basketball league will be posted in January 2016. For additional information, call (904) 209-0377 or (904) 209-0386. Same Great Content, New FREE Site! Our website is being rebuilt from the ground up With more photos, easier navigation, and more Use your tablet or phone to browse on the go Share links with friends and family E-edition of each week’s newspaper Easy-to-access breaking news stories Submit your calendar listings and comments Visit pontevedrarecorder.com on Thursday, September 10, to see our BRAND NEW WEBSITE Bonnie Talley Quiltlady Having just returned from Florence, Italy, that is Michelangelo country, I believe I now know about the greatest UFO on the planet. UFO in quilting language means Un-Finished Objects. I think Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pieta, pictured here, is the classiest UFO to be found anywhere. It is housed in Sforza Castle in Milan, Italy. The castle itself is awesome. For ones of you not as familiar as you should be about this famous sculpturer, let me clue you in. Michelangelo was born in the Republic of Florence on March 6, 1475 and grew to be the greatest sculpturer, architect, and artist of his time. At the age of 22 he began work on the first Pieta that is now to be seen in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. While in Florence we visited museums that housed several of his works. Seeing the colossal statue of David that he carved in 1504 is breath taking. He started the Rondanini Pieta in 1550 and worked on it until the last days of his life. The sculpture is of the Virgin Mary mourning over the body of Christ. He hacked at the block of marble until his dying days. He died on February 18, 1564 at the age of 88, leaving the Rondanini Pieta unfinished. The picture of the full Pieta and the complete life of Michelangelo may be found on Google. Driving from Milan to Florence we saw acres and acres of cut marble and granite ready for export. Some of the finest stone is found in that area. When quilters get together, they tend to discuss their UFOs anytime they get the chance. Their UFOs are their “unfinished objects” known as quilting projects. Some quilters have numerous UFOs but I have only a couple that I really want to finish in this lifetime! I have always tried to finish any quilting project while it is important to me. Once I put it away, it is hard to take it out and work on it again. Lesson learned. On Oct. 22, the Ocean Wave Quilters Guild met for an afternoon of cutting and doing the beginning sewing on the beautiful “heart pillows” that they will complete on Feb. 11, 2016 at the “Work Your Heart Out” day at The Plantation dining room in Ponte Vedra. The quilters along with residential members of The Plantation will finish the pillows by stuffing them with polyester fiberfil and finishing sewing the side seam. Once finished the pillows are delivered to the Hospice facilities of North Florida. This project has been ongoing since 2007. Every year more and more people pitch in to help with this worthy project. Hopefully, after your reading this article, you will put the date on your 2016 calendar to be a helper. No sewing experience is needed. More about this will be in future articles. The Ocean Wave Quilters Guild meets the second Friday of every month at the The Players Community Center on Landrum Ln., off CR-210, at 10:00 – 12:00. Visit them anytime. You’ll be so welcome! Subscribe to the Recorder! Call (904) 285-8831.