One week

 Well, PH hits another birthday and the kids were all here to help him move through it. 

 His thing is brownies with white frosting - and the snot that I am I will only do this one day a year.  Oh, and his necklace?  We played all the reindeer games so our son's family could feel the glee of tossing raw eggs at each other.

The players were partnered with colored leis and when your egg broke you placed your lei on the grass for your finish line.  Only Ceci had to go inside to clean the broken egg off.

All of this happiness was short one player for the most part.  I had a bit of work done on that toe I broke at the end of November and spent the week being a good girl and staying off as much as possible - in my world.  No pain, no concern except I didn't want to deal with swelling so I was good for the most part. 

The little solar fountain gives me smiles. I'm so easily entertained.  The slightest shade or loss of access to direct sun and it stops. I placed it under a tree.  There are just a few hours in the day that it will spout but when you live in the forest with absolutely NO level ground for a bird bath there are few choices.  I propped my leg up and just watched.

I made up a project basket to be ready for porch sitting while keeping off the foot. 

There was the sewing down of the antique Dresden plates onto feedsack fabric I was gifted

Put a sleeve on the itsy bitsy Civil War swap

and put the binding on the strawberries.  I used a piece of old fabric gifted to me

It looks ready to receive a pie soon!   

But mostly I napped.

 

Pie

I love pie.  My pies are ooey, gooey spill over, packed full, NEVER, EVER made from canned pie filling and sometimes ugly.  But that ugly means it's real, the uglier it looks the better it is.

                                                                          My pies are packed tall

                                                   They need a bib for the spillover in the oven

                                                                 They are boiling over messy and lush.

I will choose pie over cake and cherry or blueberry over any other.  I never, ever order apple pie because everyone, especially bakeries and restaurants make it too sweet for my taste. I never use a recipe, I kind of just dump everything in a bowl, add tapioca for thickener, a bit of butter because everything is better with butter and put them in the oven.  And because of this I never truly know how they're going to turn out. Except for the strawberry pie.  That pie is perfection on a plate.  That pie is the reason God made strawberries.  That pie is a month away.

It's been a long time since I made a pie and this morning I made this one, a black raspberry pie with the  berries I picked last summer. A pie is normal, a homey dessert  and tomorrow we are finally doing something normal once again.  Friends are coming for dinner and I made a normal pie and home made vanilla ice cream for dessert. Doesn't get much more normal and homey than that.

Why Do You Quilt?

 Why do you quilt? 

Friend Laurie and I have  been having a running conversation about crafting, the idea of doing it for the doing, not the selling and feeling the pressure to produce, especially for someone else.  She is making some really amazing small critters and dolls that I have been trying to persuade her to sell.  But no, she said.  She wants to make them for the making's sake, for the comfort it gives her brain and the joy it gives her to give them away to people she wants to give them to. I realized that's part of why I quilt, too.

I've always needed to be doing something with my hands.  Evenings are meant for stitching of some sort. It started with a class in needlepoint, then counted cross stitch then picked up the knitting I learned when I was ten and then took a quilting class to prove to myself I wouldn't like it.

  

Recently I read an article about schoolhouse samplers and the author remarked that the samplers she purchases are damaged, raveling, faded, old, some over 200 years old, and she imagines the girls who made them.  She imagines the child in times, when girls were not given the freedoms of their brothers, as someone who "wants to be seen."  The author said you can learn a lot about a girl from her sampler: her name, age, dates, and sometimes the names of her teacher, school, parents, friends, hometown or village and if you are so inclined you can research the date and learn about the historical context she lived in. You can research the verse she may stitch into her sampler.

                                                                 We just want to be seen.  Now, there's a thought.

     

Quilts can be considered the same. They were made by someone who was trying to creatively make something utilitarian.  Quilts were made to be used. If a quilt is used a lot, it will be used up and then you know it served its true purpose. 

Friend Laurie makes small animals and dolls for joy of making them, naming them, giving them to people she loves, oh, and for having a creative outlet. I make quilts for the same reason.  Our retreat group once talked about this and some were concerned about what will happen to their quilts when they die because their children 'weren't interested in them.'  "And besides," one said, "when I'm gone, I'm gone and I don't care what happens to them."  That friend clearly quilts for the joy it gives her now.

 I don't label my quilts.  I understand the reasoning behind signing quilts.  Many decades ago I knew someone who didn't sign her cross-stitch samplers because, she said, "it looks like you're saying 'Look what I did!' " I clearly remember telling her "you're not showing off, you're taking responsibility for it." But still, I don't sign my quilts.

Maybe I don't sign them because I never intend to show my quilts, nor give them away to people other than my family and they already know I made them. If they are used well they will be used up.

I'm not stopping making quilts as long as my fingers allow it and my stash is as big as it is. Nor am I concerned with what will happen to them when I die.  I know my daughter, daughter-in-law and grand kids will take them.  I make quilts now for the creative enjoyment of it.  When I am gone I will have made quilts that keep my family warm.

 

 

 

Look! See!

 Recently I joined a doll quilt exchange. Theme fabric was Civil War and this is what I received from Joyce in Washington state.  I am so not good at teeny tiny piecing so I can only gawk at a quilt that has points and straight seams.  These hour glass squares measure 1.5 inches finished.  I can't impress upon you enough what a project like this would have done to my disposition.  It's beautiful and it's mine!!!  Thank you Joyce!

Things keep moving

 Time keeps moving and things keep changing with it so we can't become complacent at all.  Life won't let us and truly, these things keep us on our toes and active and involved. 

Our dear little guy, and the youngest of them, just made his First Communion last week.  It was an event we couldn't personally attend because of crowd restrictions but were able the next day to watch on a stream from the church.  Actually, watching it that way we had a perfect vantage point so all was good.

This little guy has a smile that is bigger than he is.  We all break into a big smile when he flashes his.  I tell our son that this smile is going to take this little guy places.  He knows JUST when to flash it and you can't help but fall in.  His sentimental momma made sure he was wearing a tie and tie clip from his great grandpas and carried a rosary from his dad that HE received on HIS First communion that was blessed by the Pope.  With all of those invisible hands on his shoulder he has it made.

This is what we think of Covid and this little one, who is now a decade older than this photo, has Covid. We've all been so lucky so far.  Last fall our son's family had it but were all asymptomatic.  This one had/has it and after a weekend of high fever she is now dealing with the loss of smell and taste and isolation. Oh, and boredom.  Because the Health Department said it was ok, big sister moved out of their house and into ours to keep isolated from her sister.  

For PH, it's that time of year again. It's been cold here these past two weeks and the cool and slightly rainy weather is a grass growing dream.

This is my latest piecing project.  I started this so long ago I truly can't date it. I can measure it in decades.  I had to think back to how long I've been quilting.  Then I realized I pieced the HSTs by hand and the stitches were tiny and even so it was really a long time ago.  Then I realized I had two  ideas tucked into the bag.  The first one was taken from a photo of a tile floor somewhere in Italy.  At the intersection of  the pinwheels there was a small, darker blue square.  I was new, new, new to quilting and thought, "that looks easy" but also new enough to not be sure exactly how to do that darker little accent square without piecing it.  I knew even back then I didn't like the machine. I thought appliqueing the accent piece in the intersection would work but I remember being afraid of applique back then.  Fold it up and put everything away. Years later I saw something else in a magazine and thought, "that looks easy"and folded it up and put it in the bag.  I pulled it all out of the closet last week and decided it's been moved enough.  But I also knew the machine was going to finish these pinwheels.  I will attach a few together and work it with easy idea #2 in sections.  I think it's going to be the prettier of the two easies. 

And so the pile of UFOs grows. 

Happy Day

 My happy day.  The day the garden center opens and very first thing in the morning I go. this place is quite far from here but they have good prices. They are far enough away to make the day feel like an outing in the countryside, which it is.   After a few days hardening off from life in a greenhouse I tip the geraniums out of the hanging baskets, nestle them into my porch pots and it's done. Instant.  I also get a hanging basket for daughter and daughter-in-law and a few little things for fun.  It's always a soul full day, that first day choosing flowers.

Big Week

 What a week!  We haven't had this much activity in months.  Really. Twelve Months.  All fully vaccinated, we safely saw friends on Tuesday evening and on Thursday evening, and Friday morning Friend Laurie was here and it was SO very nice to talk face to face again.  We got so accustomed to doing nothing, we forgot how nice something is.

Then on Friday evening our Adelaide was in the town play (four parts, mind you) and we went opening night. She was in a squirrel costume and had the first spoken part in the play The Trial of Goldilocks. She was really good, if this grandma and grandpa say so themselves!  

       It was so sweet.  After the play her two besties since Kindergarten asked for her autograph!

And today our Charlie was playing a lacrosse game here, from all the way across the state.  Really. A two hour drive for them but an absolute treat for us!

 I joined a swap.  The little quilts are to be no bigger than 24 inches, no smaller than 12.  This is 18.  Civil War fabrics and pattern. This is the Carolina Lily but because I'm not very good at teeny pieces I did just one lily instead of the usual four.  I had this all packed and ready to go ( but thank goodness didn't seal the envelope yet ) when I realized I didn't take a photo for my files.  So, unwrap it, unfold it and snap! 

I need a nap.