about - personal stuff

quiltmaking | photocrafting | crafting & needlework | bibliography | resumé | personal stuff

I was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland…and one of these days, I’ll be making my own Baltimore Album quilt that reﬂects my wildly eccentric family life! I’m a big fan of Maryland crabs when they’re in season, Barry Levinson movies, Western High School---a public high school that is still all-girls. For undergraduate school, I attended Cedar Crest College in Allentown, PA (all girls...notice a pattern here?). You go, girls!

All the women in my family have been artsy craftsy. My grandmother taught me how to paint, my mother and older sister taught me sewing and knitting. Thrift and persnickety style meant we made a lot of our clothes. Not wanting to compete with the grandmother who painted, the mother who pots, and the sister who sews, knits, beads, and more, I took up less common pursuits like furniture reﬁnishing, macrame, and weaving. After several years, the loom that took up most of my living room sported an empty warp more often than not. Rather than succumb to the guilt, I sold the loom and now work on small, quick-fused, free-motion machine-quilted wall hangings…when I can get to them. And I dream about all the quilts I want to make when professional and family obligations subside.

I love teaching religious school at my synagogue---5th grade and intermediate Hebrew, with the occasional craft project, natch!

Most of my volunteer work revolves around social action through the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), a non-profit, non-partisan organization inspired by Jewish values. I’m proud to serve as the Pennsylvania Public Affairs Chair and as a member of the National Board. I am involved with advocacy campaigns for NCJW, the League of Women Voters, Planned Parenthood, and other organizations. I manage to insert creativity into my volunteer work, working on handwork at meetings, making quilts for charity auctions, and baking mandelbrot from a family recipe to sweeten the "ask" when I visit with my legislators to advocate for issues of importance for women, children, and families.

My hubby and son are also highly inventive. Carl (Harrington) is a creative thinker, a marketing guru who consults for consumer product companies and non-proﬁts. He works on an on-going outdoor sculpture, adding found objects to it as old ones fall off. Sam Levie Harrington is a double major: product design and innovation, plus mechanical engineering. He attends Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute (which I hope to learn to spell correctly before he graduates in May ‘08), in upstate NY, near where my mother-in-law (another creative talent!) lives. We all love to travel, go to the beach, hike in the woods, and eat desserts.

So, now that you know more about me than you ever wanted to know, let me get acquainted with you! Even better, invite me to meet you and your guild sisters! Just click on the “contact me” link at the far left.