09 Wednesday Sep 2009
Posted in Favorite Things, Thoughts
True love stories never have endings.
[Richard Bach]
This photo was taken 42 years ago today. He called me this morning to remember our anniversary. He is still the kind gentleman I married so long ago. We haven’t been married since the late 1980s, but we continue to appreciate each other’s friendship.
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy,
they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
[Marcel Proust]
27 Monday Jul 2009
Posted in Other Favorite Sites, Thoughts, Writing
The greater part of our happiness or misery
depends on our dispositions,
and not on our circumstances.
We carry the seeds of the one or the other
about with us in our minds wherever we go.
[Martha Washington]
I receive an email every Monday from the Story Circle Network. It offers three journal writing prompts for the week—it helps get the creative writing juices flowing. The quotation above is one from this week. It struck a cord with me.
Martha lost a young daughter to epilepsy. She lost a young son to disease when he served in the Continental Army at Yorktown. She spent years rarely seeing her husband since he was leading the patriot forces in the Revolutionary War. There were ample reasons for her to be sad and lonely. She shows us that, just because there is a reason, you don’t have to cave in to misery.
Some folks see life as something that happens to them. Other folks understand that they have far more control over their lives than one might think. I find that I am happier when I guard the door to my mind. I filter information. I refocus my thoughts when they go awry. I try to follow Paul’s advice:
…whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,
think on these things.—Philippians 4:8
22 Wednesday Jul 2009
Posted in Favorite Things, Knitting, Quilting, Thoughts
You owe it to everyone you love (including yourself)
to find pockets of tranquility in your busy world.
[Author Unknown]
I’m working on piecing another quilt that I started a couple of decades ago. This one is going to take awhile—a couple of weeks at least. Meanwhile, I’m also gathering patterns, etc. for the fall classes I’m planning to teach at Sarah Jane’s Yarn Shop. Two are coming up in August.
18 Thursday Jun 2009
Posted in Favorite Things, Ongoing Projects, Thoughts
Good friends are like quilts.
They age with you yet never lose their warmth.
My friend, Ruth, is flying to Florida this weekend to celebrate her nephew’s wedding. She’d planned to make a king-sized wedding quilt for the couple ever since last fall. One challenge after another intruded on her plans and time grew short so she let me help her piece the quilt. For two weeks, we worked in a flurry of activity and finished in time.
It has been a long time since I set aside my knitting needles and sewed on a quilt. When I returned from North Carolina, I hurried to Ruth’s to see the finished quilt before she took it away. Wow. The quilting and finishing made it even grander.
This project was not only fun—it was a joy to work on a quilt with my friend.
15 Monday Jun 2009
Posted in Favorite Things, Thoughts, Writing
In every out-thrust headland,
in every curving beach,
in every grain of sand
there is the story of the earth.
[Rachel Carson]
The photo is Battery Buchanan at Fort Fisher. Only part of this North Carolina costal fort remains. The rest has washed into the Atlantic. One of the last battles in the Civil War was fought here. We toured the fort the day we visited friends on the beach near Wilmington. Lovely place. I’ll write more when I return home.
08 Monday Jun 2009
Posted in Favorite Things, Thoughts
If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection
to what we want to get out of life that we give to
the question of what to do with a two weeks’ vacation,
we would be startled at our false standards and
the aimless procession of our busy days.
[Dorothy Canfield Fisher]
Ah. A road trip. I have a feeling that an eight year old boy and a grandmother might be the best possible traveling companions. I’m looking forward to a week of driving through Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina. We’re off to Grandpa’s then to Uncle Jamie and Aunt Bev’s. Hope to visit on the beach as well.
26 Tuesday May 2009
Posted in Favorite Things, Thoughts
Every child comes with the message that
God is not yet discouraged of man.
[Rabindranath Tagore]
My two youngest grandsons are only three months apart in age. Michael (left) is the oldest. I’d love to see them play together but Cole (right) lives so far away. They both are such jolly little lads.
25 Monday May 2009
Posted in Thoughts
We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.
The poem is from World War I, but the tintype is of Sammy Marvel, 1842–1864. He died in the battle of Atlanta on his twenty-second birthday. He was my great-great uncle.
Decoration Day as an event was started shortly after the Civil War but was not celebrated in many southern states until after World War I. When I was a child, it was on May 30 and had become a day when we decorated all our kinfolks’ graves. My family graves are too far away so I decorate the grave of Mother George, a Civil War nurse. She spent the war looking after Indiana troops and died of typhoid fever on her way home at the end of the war. Since I was a military nurse, I have long felt an affinity for her.
14 Thursday May 2009
Posted in Favorite Things, Thoughts
Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do.
Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.
[Alex Haley]
Michael is 18 months old and his brother, Joshua, is 8 years old. I don’t need to mention how old Grandma is, but she loves these lads and their new photo.
20 Monday Apr 2009
Posted in Knitting, Knitting Sites, Thoughts
Watching a complex stitch pattern grow as I knit
silences the voice in my head that tells me to sweep the floor.
I imagine dust bunnies are knitting themselves together under my chair.
[Katherine Misegades, designer]
The mail just came and I received a copy of Debbie Macomber’s newest book, Summer on Blossom Street. This is the fifth book in her Blossom Street series — knitting is a topic that runs through this series. I am excited because she used a quotation from me at the beginning of Chapter 35.
Ms Macomber’s 2009 Newsletter also mentions a new yarn shop in Port Orchard, Washington, named A Good Yarn Shop. Those of you familiar with her books will recognize that as the name of the shop on Blossom Street. I wish I didn’t live a gazillion miles away from there.
Knitting, writing and other joys 