Out With The Old . . .

2024 has come to an end, and, largely because of the uncertainty created by the political climate, I am anxious about the year to come.  It is a good time to remind myself that in my own small world there is much to be thankful for.  I have a comfortable (if very messy) home, more than plenty to eat, wonderful grandchildren who are thriving, and a very patient and easy going husband.    It is too easy to dwell on the less pleasant aspects of life — the fact that I feel suddenly so much older and more vulnerable physically, the reality of my self-imposed social isolation (also largely political), the chaos of material possessions that need to be somehow organized so that I can work more comfortably — but year’s end is a good time to reflect on the strengths and goals that will help me move forward.  Because, as someone close to me reminds me often, now that we are going to have a felon in the White House, we know that ANYthing is possible and we might as well dream big.

2024 has not been without its accomplishments.  This year I read 137 books.  I finished 34 quilted projects, and hand-embroidered ornaments for each of my grandchildren along with 20 hand-embroidered blocks that will be assembled into a quilted throw.  I also made many pillowcases, a few bags, 3 Christmas tree skirts, and a variety of small projects.    Among the quilts was the “ghost” quilt that I gave the littlest grand, together with the book “The Little Ghost Who Was A Quilt” by Riel Nason.  (in the queue for next year is a second ghost quilt to put away with another copy of the book for potential great-grandchildren.)

In pottery class (so far) I  have created 3 mugs, 2 bowls, about 30 beads, a few little ornaments, and 4 or 5 little relish plates of various shapes and sizes.    I used an old, discolored lace doily that my mother made decades ago as texture on some of the plates.  Not all of my “creations” are glazed yet, so some of them will be next year’s finishes, but they were ready for the kiln before the end of this year.   Of the finished pieces, I put the beads on cords and gave them as necklaces.  Jack asked for, loves, and uses one of the mugs and a bowl.  None of it is perfect -- in fact, none of it is worth showing -- but it has been interesting and something different for me.  Next week the "teacher" who doesn't actually do much teaching has promised that she will show me how to use the wheel, and that will be a new adventure.

There was not a lot of travel, but Jack and I drove around our own state of Michigan for several days and stayed in several small towns to visit quilt shops we had never seen before.  He is getting much more involved in the process, as well as more involved in his own quite remarkable sewing journey, and is talking seriously about buying a small long-arm machine next year.   I am not encouraging him because I think there would be a long learning curve that I am not sure I am prepared for, not to mention the space such a machine would need, but he will (as always) walk his own path in this quest.  I had more plans but less energy this year than I had hoped, but it was not a total loss and I am grateful (and often surprised) to be doing as well as I am.   

And tonight is New Year's Eve.  I have never been to a big, festive New Year celebration and if I ever wished for such, I have definitely gotten over it.  When my kids were very small, I used to set the clock back so that at about 9 pm, past their bedtime, I could declare it a Happy New Year and send them off to sleep.  I suspect Jack and I will celebrate in much the same way.  But first of all we will share my favorite tradition with  my son and his family, the much anticipated chocolate fondue.  Much as I enjoy chocolate and have a fierce sweet tooth, I am most looking forward to time spent with them.  My family puts the "happy" in every year for me.

So good-bye to 2024 and a cautious welcome to 2025.  I wish all of us good health and fortune in the coming year, and hope that all sentient beings will find peace and plenty.  Happy New Year!

2024, rolling to an end

Jack gave me a pottery class for my birthday and I have been dutifully playing in clay for the past few Mondays.  No one there has suggested that I am a natural and so far I have nothing to show for it, because there are so many steps and rests steps and rests in the process before it is finished.  I am doing slab work, not using a wheel yet, and just started to glaze my first efforts.  My instructor seems to discourage wheel use and admits that she does not enjoy it herself but I will try to be sure I get at least a taste of it before my 8 weeks are over.

I did not think I would have a holiday card to send this year because I never got around to scheduling a family photo in time before my older grands went off to university.  But I snapped photos of the two groups while the kids were briefly home for Thanksgiving so my 3-?, 4-year? streak of sending Christmas cards is intact.   People have wondered who "belongs" to whom so I just did the two separate family groups this time.   We get so few cards in return that I know I am only doing it to amuse myself but I do enjoy the excuse to get us all together for photos.

I have been mildly ill too much again this month, with what I assume are mild viruses and vague symptoms that are more annoying than anything.  This week I have been dizzy, for no apparent reason, to the point that I am often holding the wall or grabbing at chairs.  Very unpleasant, enough so that I finally went in to see a physician, who told me it might be nothing, or then again it might be walking pneumonia, or an inner ear infection, or really who knows.  So he treated me for everything he could think of and told me to follow up if I'm not better in a week.    I have way too much to do less than 10 days before Christmas to be anything but better, so fingers crossed.    I suspect that my ill health is my own fault, with too little exercise, too much needless worry, and too much sugar.  At the far end of the family spectrum, my next oldest sibling turns 82 this week and he ran a marathon on his birthday and won a national title for his age group.  It is too bad that I am  not as easily inspired by him as I am by my older, lazier but maybe more introspective brother.   

I was sick for Jack and my 6th anniversary, but at least I did finally finish the hanging with the stars that served as our guest book for our two small family parties.   Finished is better than perfect!

My granddaughter is home from college and we've had one brunch together so far and, if I had not been too dizzy to plan, we would have had another by now.  Her brother comes home next week but he has sent me some wonderful clips of him practicing for his upcoming piano exam.   I will be so happy to see them both over Christmas, but I still have lots of shopping and wrapping and cleaning and sewing projects and planning to get done before then.  Hopefully we will all have a healthy finish to this year!

November 30

 

I was awakened at 3:30 a.m. today by a strange dream where I let my long-gone standard poodle outside at a long-gone house the kids and I used to live in.  She slipped through the gate and said, “happy birthday,” and I woke up surprised that she had remembered.  I also woke up to discover that it was true, I am 75 today.

I am old enough now to realize that birthdays really are a cause for celebration and that becoming 75 is something that is denied to many people.      I am especially lucky in the grand scheme of things, with a comfortable house, a loving husband, a sweet and healthy son, daughter in law and grandchildren, and even all three of my siblings still around to share the journey.  I am often distracted by routine aches, pains, political disappointments and challenges of the day, but let me never forget that I am fortunate indeed.

Sew Sewing

In my sewing ‘world,’ I sent 33 pieces out to be quilted this year.   I also made several bags, many pillow cases and aprons, several christmas tree skirts, and various odds and ends.  I have been trying to go on a ‘fabric fast’ and have restrained myself from going to the last few sales at our local quilt shops, trying to force myself to use up my stash.  Even when I do use fabric I have on hand, I most often need to buy more for backing and binding, so it is a slow process.    I keep sewing, and I definitely haven’t stopped quilting, but I am trying to be more mindful about it.   Here are only a few of my latest projects:

November

 Time has been flying by.   I can’t believe it has been so many months since I posted.  So much has happened, and yet so little.  My big grands are both in college and I am still and always endlessly proud of them.  They are smart and kind and level headed, genuinely good people.  Now that the political world seems to be changing in ways that make me anxious and confused, now that the political future of this country seems so uncertain, I find myself hoping and fearing for them in almost equal measures.  They are the bright lights in my world.

The little grand is changing from a baby to a child and is a frenetic delight.  He brings the wide-eyed sincerity that only a three-year-old possesses, sweet and uncomplicated.  He makes me think so much of my daughter at that age, when everything seemed possible, and makes me yearn for a do-over.  I was never an overly optimistic person, my life didn’t tend in that direction in the early years, but I’ve thought of myself as a realist, so my constantly wishing and reliving her childhood has been something of a surprise.   The funny thing about grief is that it causes constant pain and yet we are loath to give it up.

Nothing very much is new in our small lives, even though it seems like so very much is new in the world.  Jack and I took a quick trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania this summer, and it was more interesting than I expected.  I realized there, learning more about the history of the Civil War, that the seeds of what we are seeing now have been lying dormant, waiting for a chance to grow, all this time.   So the trip was more depressing than refreshing and, because Jack didn’t want to be away from home long, because it was a long way there and back, because all the sights there required driving, and because I am the driver, it was exhausting for me.  I will push harder for a “down” day between the long drives the next time we decide to travel.  We've talked about taking a trip for our anniversary, which is early next month, but we know the weather will be unpredictable so we will probably defer that until late spring if we do it at all.    

It is nearly time for me to feel justified in putting up a Christmas tree, which is something that I look forward to a lot more than Jack does!    I generally get up earlier in the morning than my husband does, and I love sipping my coffee by the light of the tree before the sun comes up.   There is something bittersweet, but soothing, about those little lights.

Jack and I are starting to toy with the idea of downsizing our home in the next two or three years.  I think that means I should probably finish unpacking and organizing from our move here five years ago.  It seems like everywhere I look I see a stack of things I don’t know what to do with.   In that spirit, I am making lists of all the things I should be sorting through, but so far I am  not doing any of it.  Maybe tomorrow!  (Maybe not.)

Sew Sew

 

Where Does It Go?

 My husband commented the other day that the year is already half over, and the realization hit me like a brick. How is it possible that time moves so quickly these days?  I am not complaining, really.   It’s true that I’ve wasted too much of the year with a couple of annoying viruses, but this half year has already brought plenty of joy and I am looking forward to the second half.

In May my gorgeous granddaughter performed for the last time, as a soloist, with our local youth orchestra, and (in my wholly objective opinion) she was brilliant.  (Allegretto maestoso from Concerto in D for Violin by Charles de Beriot)  She was also beautiful, and her confidence on stage makes me so very happy.  I get chills when I hear her or her brother perform and I get pretty nostalgic when I remember back — so many memories, from their first lessons, to their playing as I walked down the aisle at our wedding, to now.   They both amaze me.

Also in May, I finally got to check “see the northern lights” off my bucket list!  We had an amazing display of them right here at home and I am grateful to have seen them.  They are becoming more common at our latitude because of all the recent solar flares, and so there is hope that I  might even get to see them again.

My granddaughter also performed in her final high school musical (yes, she was amazing), and enjoyed all those fun last-year activities before graduating from high school (7th in a class of about 300!) and deciding on the college that she will attend in the fall.  So lots of Big Doings going on in her life and so many fun things for me to watch unfolding.  I am unbelievably proud of her.

My older grandson is home from college for summer break and I’ve already had a few chances to spend time with him and his sister (and his girlfriend) — although let's face it, there is never enough time with any of them.   But it makes me happy to watch him continue to thrive in his double major of music composition and mathematics.    Whatever else goes on, my grandchildren are the light of my life, and I just delight in every bit of it.

The littlest grand continues to develop into his own little person.  He is funny and exhausting and full of love and joy.   I can't wait to see what interests and talents he grows into when he leaves his current adorable phase, which mostly involves spiderman and his declared possession of everything he sees ("mine!")  This year so far has found me feeling old and vulnerable, beset with so many worries about the world and the future, but my personal life is rich and satisfying.   I am a lucky woman indeed.

Moon Shadow

The year is a quarter past already, it is hard to believe!  I am not doing as much sewing as I did at the beginning of the year but I am still making progress.  I have sent in 11 quilts to a longarm service and have received seven of them (and a table runner) back so far.  I have four quilts currently in progress; two mystery quilts, a machine-embroidered quilt, and one with heart-shaped blocks.    The mystery quilts won’t be done for a couple more months since I need to wait for clues, which I receive every two weeks.  The other two should be done more quickly.  I am thinking about joining a subscription purse/bag club where I would receive a kit every three months; I know it is a little more expensive to do it that way, but I am making a real effort to control my ever-growing stash.    I have about another forty projects currently in my queue and seem to add a new one every time I enter a quilt store.

The only 'new news' is that we finally got out for a mini vacation.  My son’s family and Jack and I went to Ohio last weekend, to a hotel near the center of the “band of totality,” to view the eclipse.  I think it is safe to say that we are all very glad that we made the effort, although it was tiring to take such a trip over just a couple of days.   We all spent one night at the hotel, but Jack and I were lucky enough to spend a second night there thanks to my son, who had the foresight to book a second night but then had to cancel.   As it turned out, he and his family had to drive home the same day because of school commitments.  Their normal 3 hour drive ended up taking almost 8 hours because of the heavy eclipse traffic and. although I felt bad for them,  I am so grateful I didn’t have to do that.   

But the experience was a memorable one for all of us and there were no regrets — being with my family is my favorite thing in the world, because nothing is more important to  me than my family.  But seeing the total eclipse was just amazing.  We all saw the eclipse in 2017, but - because of our location this time, chosen by my son — this one lasted quite a bit longer.  We snacked on picnic foods on a quilt that I made for my daughter in law and enjoyed ice cream and being together.  My grandkids both worked on homework and their friend, Vanessa, crocheted.   I gave the girls eclipse bracelets that I thought were pretty.

The weather was perfect, most of the time we were comfortable in just tshirts, donning light jackets as the sun disappeared.   (Here at home today, just 3 days later, I need to wear a winter coat outside.  It is cold again, with wind gusts up to 50 miles per hour.)

When the total eclipse occurred, we all stopped everything to just stare at it in awe.  

Allie, my son’s family dog, was with us and she was moving about and enjoying herself, looking for one comfortable spot after another much of the afternoon.  When the sky went dark, she lay down and went into a deep slumber, as if it were late at night, and she had a hard time waking up for quite some time after the sun started to show again.   

The next eclipse in the contiguous United States won't happen for another 21 years.  It is strange to think that I may not be here to see that one but I know how lucky I've been to see two of them.    Then again, who knows.  Maybe by then 95 will be the new 50!

Time Goes By

It has been over a year now since my daughter Ruth died.  I was touched by the people who remembered; my dear friend Marie Louise, my son Tony, and surprisingly, a former sister in law.  My husband gave me a remembrance charm that I had engraved “no tears today.”  The phrase is a nod to the sticker that Ruth put on her piano keyboard more than 20  years ago, and a reminder of my beautiful optimistic child who lived through so many traumas but who  never gave up hope that things could get better.  Sadness has always been a part of me, but now it feels as if it has made a home; there is no fighting it anymore.

I continue to sew, not as much as I should or could but more than enough.  The three quilts I made for my husband’s three children are finished, labeled, boxed and ready for him to give them at any time.  My mother’s quilt is back from the longarm and ready to bind and label.  My mother sewed beautifully all her life and made most of my clothing when I was young, but only started quilting later in life.  She made her own templates and pieced her quilt tops all by hand and gave several of them away after they were quilted -- all of them to men in the family except for the one she made for my daughter.   Sewing became more difficult as her dementia progressed, and this is the last quilt top she made.  It was packed away in a box and I decided this year that it was time to finish it while I still can.  I am hoping that one of her great grandchildren will treasure it as a family heirloom. 

The first one (of two) picnic quilts is finished and ready for use.  The second one is done and ready to be quilted; I want my daughter in law to have a choice so I am waiting for the second one to be done before I show them to her.    I finished a simple horse-themed quilt top as a gift for the woman who cuts my hair and will have that quilted soon.  And I am making progress on the two “mystery quilts” that I have committed to make.  

Spring is (surely) right around the corner, but there is still snow on the ground and it is still cold, below freezing much of the time.  It is (past) time for me to do some serious spring cleaning so that I will be ready to let the sunshine in!

Moving Right Along While Standing Still

Here it is, nearing the end of February.  I am still staying close to home and not making any effort to keep up with many people.  I have not made any attempt to see anyone but family in almost a year.  I am well enough; experiencing a few annoying but not fatal old-age-female-specific health problems, a chipped tooth, cataracts and hearing problems.  I frequently wish I were someplace warm but am too tired or lazy or disinterested to travel.  So in some ways I am still in a slump of sorts.  But I am still sewing!  

I’ve made a few more simple quilt tops, and I’ve started an embroidery-machine quilt for my daughter in law’s 50th birthday in August.  A machine-embroidered quilt like this one is simple enough to do, although frustrating (machine glitches and thread changes) and time consuming.  But she liked the embroidered quilts I made for her kids during the pandemic, so I  hope she will enjoy this one, too, because I love her very much.  I wish I could think of something special to make for my son, too, so I am still pondering that.

I’ve purchased two “Brown Bag Mystery” quilt packets, for a national quilting project involving numerous small shops.  This is something I‘ve never done before - participants purchase a brown bag of fabric, most of it unseen (except for one clue), without knowing the pattern.  They (and I!) will start receiving clues in March for what to do with the fabric in the packets.  I’ve never done one of these before and hope it will be fun.  I also hope I will actually finish the quilts!  

Meanwhile, all three of the finished quilt tops intended for Jack’s 3 kids and the picnic quilt for my daughter in law are off to the longarm quilter, and I have the other quilt tops that I've finished so far measured, packed and ready to go as soon as the checkbook allows (hoping to find a promo code or sale price, too!)  

I also made another simple tote bag, made less simple by a missing page in the instructions, but finished nonetheless. I have other little odds and ends - a purse strap, pillow cases - ready to finish but need to wait for my "regular" machine to come back from the repair shop, since I’ve got the embroidery machine already in nearly constant use.

In between, I’m working on cutting and designing another simple tumbler quilt with scraps.  I’ve bagged and gotten rid of a large volume of the scraps that had been piling up, but still have more than enough to make a quilt . . . or ten, I suspect.  I have a long list of projects ready to go but seem to keep adding more.

Weather-wise, our false Spring has ended and it is cold again.  The creek out back is glazed with ice but not fully frozen, and the chipmunks are in and out of  hibernation, depending on  how cold the day is.  The squirrels never disappeared this winter, which is unusual but not too surprising as it has been unseasonably warm.   Too cold for me, but not cold enough to freeze the lakes and rivers that usually freeze over for part of the season.  Jack is ill yet again with some kind of respiratory 'bug'; this "up and down" weather has not been friendly for him.   I recall that when I was a child the old family doctor used to say that people get ill in the winter when it isn't cold enough to kill the things that make us sick that time of year.   Old folk wisdom that may lack any firm scientific basis but perhaps created an explanation for what he had seen connected to weather patterns even then.  We have been fortunate in Michigan, spared the extremes that other parts of the world are seeing.  Here, in my little bubble, we are starting to see the green shoots of daffodils, so Spring is surely on its way.