One year...

Today marks the one year anniversary of Mom's passing. What a long year it has been. How I miss our shopping excursions, lunch dates, stitching, sewing and crocheting afternoons, and most of all our long conversations and those silly times when we'd giggle uncontrollably like a couple of schoolgirls.

I have a planter of beautiful hyacinths on the front porch. I will always think of mom when I see and smell hyacinths. She loved them and loved to have fresh flowers in the house from her garden. I didn't realize it at the time but she taught me a lot of classic poetry as I was growing up. One of my favorites that she quoted often:

When thou of fortune be bereft
And in thy stores there be but left
Two loaves, sell one and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed the soul.

Random musings

Yesterday was a wonderful day. A nice early lunch with two of my best friends started the day. There are so many trite sayings about friendship but many accurate thoughts too. I like "when friends meet, hearts warm." My heart was truly warmed yesterday.

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In the evening hubby and I attended a chocolate class. I learned more in two hours about cacao beans, harvesting, fermenting, cleaning, roasting, hulling, grinding and conching than I thought I'd ever know. We learned about the different growers, different places the beans are grown, and different chocolate makers. Finally we got to sample several fine chocolates (after initially sampling a bad to mediocre bar). It was fascinating to note the different look, aroma, texture and feel of these dark chocolate bars. I'll never look at chocolate the same way again and my buying habits will reflect that. It was a fun evening with my honey.

This morning we woke up to snow yet again. My poor purple primrose is struggling under the weight of the snow. I know that given a few hours the snow will melt and the flower will be more beautiful and vibrant than ever. Sometimes I feel weighed down with heavy burdens too but have to remember that if I bear them well, I too will feel better in the end and hopefully will have learned and applied the lesson intended. As the flower needs the water from the snow, so I need the humility and faith that come from trials.

National Quilting Day

In honor of National Quilting Day I decided to work on one of my many quilt WIP (11 full-size and lap-size in various stages at last count). This is a sampler quilt I'm working on with a Yuku group I'm involved with. I'm supposed to have 10 blocks done by now so I'm behind here too. Sigh. This is really quite a pretty Christmas line in soft mauves, greens and blues. The colors don't show well in this picture. I still don't know how I'm going to sash and finish it.

I wish I would have had time today to start and complete a project such as this
http://nqaquilts.org/free-projects/files/2011NQDayProject.pdf but unfortunately things like work and housework get in the way of quilting sometimes (often). I'm saving this pattern though and plan to do it down the road.

145

I finally finished the center block of my lap size Christmas quilt. There are 145 pieces of fabric in there (yes, I counted!) and it is roughly 22.5 inches square. It's not perfect but it's done. I'll be glad when the top is finished so I can get it off to my quilter. The plan is to artfully drape it over my couch during the Christmas season. Of course, I'll have to leave the artful draping to someone else!

It's hard for me to work off-season on seasonal projects (i.e. Christmas projects in April, 4th of July projects in October, etc.) but that's the only way to get them done so that I can display them in their correct season. Now I need to get busy on some Christmas cross stitch pictures.

Woohoo!

In like a lion

I wanted to wake up to this.




Instead I woke up to this.



Sigh. Oh well, the sun is shining, the sky is blue and the snow is melting. Again.

Snow on snow

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

-Christina Rossetti



After a long Utah winter it sometimes seems that spring will never come. We have teasers where all the snow melts and there are a few glorious days and then wham, another storm flies in. I will admit that a pristine snowfall is glorious. The world is clean and beautiful for a short time and there's a hush over everything.



There is hope though that spring will appear. A crocus was spotted two weeks ago on a trip into Ogden and yesterday the snow had melted enough in the garden spot for Doug to plant his peas! Warmer weather must be just around the corner and it won't be long until we are enjoying those fresh peas.

Love never ends

This silly little celtic knot cross stitch piece has been hanging on my cork board for just over a year. I began it in the final few weeks of my mom's life. I needed something portable and easy to take with me as I sat by her side at her home and then at the care center. She enjoyed watching me work on it although diabetes had robbed her of much of her vision and she was no longer able to stitch, sew or even crochet. I finished it up right before she passed away but then haven't been able to make myself do anything with it.

It's been a hard week here and I've missed having her to talk things out with. I went down to my "happy room" today to try and find a project to work on that would get me out of the depressed mood. I saw the celtic knot hanging there and decided today was the day to finish it into something.

As I looked at it, I realized that the knot is continuous with no beginning and no end, it is eternal and endless. I'm grateful to know that family relationships can be that way too and to know that I'll see my mom again someday. And so now when I look at the knot I don't see a memory of her death, but rather a symbol of neverending love.