Little by Little
Lima Bean's Arm Warmers
Blue & White Dish Cloth
Spring Quilt Pieces
Lima Bean's Arm Warmers - Growing!
Stay-home Day
Stay-home days are my favorite. The quilt back is pieced and everything is packed up to go home with my friend who will machine quilt it for me. It is the first quilt I have sent out for quilting and I am looking forward to seeing how she is inspired to stitch it.
Being nearly done with one quilt means, of course, I must start planning the next one.
A coworker’s mother made sweet lace doilies. When I saw them, I knew I wanted them to be flower blossoms on a green, yellow, and blue spring quilt.
First Draft Sketch
I’ve been gathering fabric for some time.
A few sketches later and I think I have a plan.
It is chilly here today. A good day for thinking about springtime and sunshine and flowers. To help keep warm until those things arrive, I made cheesy potatoes. So delicious.
Now to pull myself away from all of this fabric and work on the Valentine knitting for the larger smallish bears. Fourteen days left, no stitches yet!
An Actual Conversation: In Which Maintaining Visual Contact Would Have Been Helpful
Magic Princess: (facing away, paying close attention to breakfast) What happened in school yesterday ?
Read more…
I’ll Sleep Tomorrow
Today I finished Lady Bug’s socks, made beef stock, poached pears, baked coconut milk chicken with greens, mixed up a sardine salad for lunch tomorrow, finished Lady Bug’s second curtain, and sewed the last seams on the Hello Fall quilt top.
Steroids are weird.
Sewing Night
Oh-so Careful
Sometimes when I most feel like checking out the right choice is to check in. Tonight was like that. A short course of steroids to help with some breathing trouble has me wound up tight. The smallish bears are loud and a little (a lot) hard to be around.
After dinner, Lady Bug was looking a little blue. “Want to work on your curtains?”
She lit up. “Sure!”
Speed Iron!
She helped iron, wound a bobbin, and narrated a play-by-play of everything we did. I was quieter, just doing my best to listen and keep things moving along. She told me how she was a good model and struck her best pose for the camera.
Poser
She told me about viola lessons at school and how one boy never remembers his cello. “Mom,” she said gravely, “we need more dark, low notes. We just have these thin, wimpy, high notes!”
She watched each hem, each seam, announcing, “I’ll sew some of them on the second curtain. I know what to do now.”
Halfway Done!
We only finished one of the pair tonight. I am looking forward to the next sewing night. To hearing more ideas from that sweet girl.
Lady Bug's New Curtain
Three Snapshots
Monday at Talarico House. Waiting for the snowstorm. Keeping warm.
Alike
The clerk at the post office has my uncle’s voice.
I heft my packages onto the counter, hunt in my purse for my wallet.
“Priority?” He says this, like my uncle, using as few words as possible.
I am startled. Every time I am startled.
Why is my uncle at my post office, 1868 miles from his home on the side of the mountain?
I keep meaning to ask the clerk where he is from. Meaning to and not doing.
Maybe they are sharing it.
Only one can use it at a time.
Small sentences.
Long pauses.
Carefully chosen words.
Teaching quietly.
What She Said: Vera Brittain
But after I left school, I soon learnt from my brief experience of the fashionable “set” in Buxton that a family’s estimate of its intrinsic importance is not always associated with qualifications which immediately convert the outsider to the same point of view. – Vera Brittain in Testament of Youth
Midwinter Spring Dreams
Waiting for the flowers. Remembering the warm sun. Breathing in the cold, cold air. Being in winter, knowing spring will come.
Jag Talar Svenska!
Well, almost. It’s definitely a work in progress, but I am happy to say the learning is going well.
Naming Mountains 