A Proper Posse

I am so lucky because I feel like lightning struck twice. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’d remember my obsession with Tuesdays. Back when I lived in Spain, I had an amazing group of friends who met every Tuesday for a session of crafting, yapping, and general silliness. Our bond, while no longer taking its weekly format, endures to this day.

When I moved to San Francisco, I did not know what was in store for me. I packed up my things into two giant green Correos boxes, and shipped them to the only person I knew in the state of California: my sister’s friend. So, going to a new city, a new job, an unfamiliar country… it all felt a little bit too much to bear without my pals.

But, lo and behold, the gods of friendship smiled upon me once again. Within my first week in San Francisco, I met two of the members of what would turn into a five-person posse. A proper posse.

If you follow my Instagram feed, you might recognize these ladies. Like my Valencian counterpart posse, we tend to meet once a week for a session of non-judgmental support, yapping, and general silliness. We have helped each other through tough times: breakups, surgeries, general malaise. We have celebrated joyous life events: new jobs, new loves, new husbands. We have helped each other move countless times, tracing a frenetic zigzag on the map of the Bay Area with our collective 12 different homes over the years.

And this time, one of us is moving farther away. Don’t get me wrong, this is in the "joyous life event" category, but it’s disguising itself as a sad moment in our lives. In this particular case, we celebrate her new opportunity, her fresh start, her bravery and inner wisdom. But dammit, it’s still sad.

For this special lady, I made a small quilt to take with her on this new journey. I chose the friendship star block, for obvious reasons, and the entire posse helped me with color and fabric choice. But I also love the friendship star because the shape reminds me a little bit of a person walking forward with her head held high, with an air of confidence, of self-assuredness. And what’s more, she is holding on to the people behind her, but she's not looking back.

Go forward, my friend.

(And, just to infuse a little bit more of the city that she loves so much, I took the little quilt out around the neighborhood for a little photo session. And rubbed it up against a nice selection of grimy walls.)

-Ashley

We love you, Larry.