It all went by so fast...

One moment they're babies and the next they're ready to go out on their own. (And what a nice person he's grown up to be!)

The Annual Quilting Weekend

Last weekend was our annual quilting weekend. It starts with a trip to the quilt show in Spokane and then a weekend of quilting and laughing. This year we didn't take pictures, but we had a wonderful time. All three of us were working on Christmas presents of one sort or another. I decided that since I send so few Christmas presents anymore, I might as well send fabric postcards instead, so people I still send to have something homemade. My free motion quilting could use some work, but I loved the way the Christmas trees turned out.

There's something about free motion quilting that I seem to have to practice each time before I use it. I'm usually really "tight" until I've done it on three or four pieces and then I loosen up a bit.

Anyway, it was a fun weekend and we had several episodes of laughing until we couldn't talk, and tears came from our eyes. That's the mark of a great weekend.

For Kathleen

I got a chance to see my brother and his family this weekend. I've mentioned, before, that my sister-in-law, Kathleen, has stage 4 lung cancer, so I made her a quilt and wanted to get it to her. As I told her, I couldn't give her a hug every day, but I could make her the softest, warmest thing to wrap around her that I could. I made a rag quilt out of flannel and while it's not the most beautiful thing I've ever made, it has as much love in it as the quilt I made for their wedding years ago.


She took a turn for the worse after we left this weekend and is in the hospital after surgeons cut a second opening in the sac around her heart to allow fluid to drain. I'm just heartbroken for her, for her two 12 year old sons and for my brother. (Who's a big, brave guy on the outside and a marshmallow on the inside.)

As my brother told me this weekend, "Live every day as if it were your last." She had no symptoms in June, was at stage 3 in July, and stage 4 by August. Tell people you love them. Do what brings you joy. Look at the colors around you. Tell children that they're wonderful. Laugh. Don't waste a single moment.

A Great Read

I shouldn't be so contrary. I really shouldn't. I have missed the pleasure of this wonderful book for the past ten years.

The subtitle on the edition I read said, "The enchanting novel of love, loss and the power of possibilities." It is about all of those and it is enchanting. It was a very popular book when it came out ten years ago--so popular that I resisted reading it just because everybody else was. What a marvelous book.

Sabine, a former magician's assistant for Parsifal, is left after his death picking up the pieces and putting together the details of a life before he was a magician that he never told her about. He was gay, but they shared their lives for more than 20 years, finally marrying after his lover died. Parsifal died a short time later, and Sabine inherited his family, along with his worldly possessions.

It's uplifting, funny, touching. Definitely worth a read. Ann Patchett is a gifted storyteller.