Energy

This is what I'm finding out this week--if you don't have to go to work, you have time and energy for playing. I'm not heading for any "goals" this week, I'm letting myself play. (And read. Read and play.)

A new padfolio and lots and lots of snow

Hancocks had the most unusual batik on sale before Christmas, and the second I saw it, I knew it had to be a padfolio for my co-worker, Cindy. She and her husband raise longhorns and she's a fan of a football team in Texas that are called the Horns, I guess, so it just seemed destined to be. Joann's had the most perfect little horn button, too, and I used a leather cord to hold it closed.


It turned out really well, I think. (Ok, some of the cows are upside down, but we don't really need to see that.

The other thing going on for the past couple of weeks is the phenomenal amount of snow we've had. By Sunday morning the snow was up to my hip--3 feet of heavy, wet snow. We had 10" in one night. It's melting now, but more keeps showing up in the forecast. It's dramatic, if nothing else.

More Christmas cards

I finished the rest of the Christmas postcards I'm sending out this winter. Next year I'm hoping to start earlier and get more done. The one on the left is for my mom. They were more simple than I wanted them to be, but I just keep running out of time. (But I'm not going to bemoan my job because I'm feeling more and more lucky that I have one.)

I think that with the week off I have after Christmas I'm going to get started on next year's batch while I'm still in the spirit. I just bought a batch of Transfer Artist Paper and I'm eager to put some different images on next year's batch.

I find myself wondering what things will be like next year. My mother is declining much more quickly now than she had been, and my sister-in-law is still fighting stage 4 lung cancer. So much can change in 12 months. I find myself wanting to appreciate people while they're with me, more than before.
We had a spectacular sunset last week that I just had to share. It's really inspiring, somehow, to see this on a cold winter's evening. It's like the sun sending a "Don't worry--I'm still here!" message.

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.