I thought that I had only left this blog a few months ago but see that I last posted on Aug of 2007. Where has the time gone.....
You may have noticed that the blogs leading up to the last one were busy, in fact, overwhelming... and that's what happened. I took on too much and burned myself out. But I think that I am finally back again. Older and maybe a bit wiser........
Since Aug, 2007, I thought to sit down and write many times but I never seemed to have anything to say once I sat down. The same thing happened when I sat at the sewing machine to quilt.... nothing.....so I took up a past creative outlet. I went back to knitting. Wow!! Has that world ever changed in the time that I was away.....the fibres, colours, pattern choices and so much more....I haven't knit anything earth shattering or breath taking but I have knit myself back to creativity and wholeness......
I did it mostly by knitting for others. I began by knitting socks for myself, then my husband. Soon I was making them for DD and SIL - do you know much yarn it takes to make size 15 socks?? Then I ran across a charity group on Yahoo called C4C - Caring 4 Canadians. I found my charity to knit for. This is a very non-profit group - they collect no money - buy the yarn, etc from their own pockets - pay their own postage - and that's the way they want to keep it. Because it's not about the money raised, or the books to be kept or the organization to be run, but about one person helping another in need.
What do they do? They knit preemie items for Brantford General Hospital, McMaster University Hospital and St. Joseph Hospital. Work with the KW Our Place and Pregnancy Centre as well as teen pregnancy centres in Quebec. We have liasons who work with the Canadian military to make hats, soap savers, cool ties and other items...... The list goes on and on. Why did I chose this as my charity? Because I wanted to do something that I knew would affect someone personally. I wanted what I did to matter to someone and that's how I feel as I knit a preemie hat, a baby blanket or a hat for one of our soldiers serving overseas......and this knitting helped bring me back to creativity......
It's been a bit of a journey but one that had to be made, to learn about balance in our lives, appreciating life's small joys and finding out what is really important in life. Take the time to live life, it sounds trite but it isn't.......

Ah, back to almost normal...

After a very busy summer, I am almost back into the swing of work and sewing/quilting. The distractions were all great ones - an anniversary/graduation celebration and a wedding. But now it's time to get back 'real life'.

This small crazy quilt piece is my July BJP - before the beads are added. This has been an interesting process even thought I am REALLY far behind at this point. I haven't even started June or August and here it is Sept.

I was going to put off starting July - even though I knew exactly what I wanted to do because I didn't have June done - then I remembered Robin saying that there are no BJP police and I jumped the line...... I do know what I want for August and will prepare the base for that one in the next few days. All of the bases will be crazy patched, it's the embellishments and stories that will change.

This is also becoming an ever changing work in progress. Each time I think I have worked through all of the kinks something seems to happen and I am back to re-thinking. Right now I am back to trying to figure out if I want to be able to display these pages as one whole unit or do I want to display them as individual pieces? Initially, I had decided that I wanted to be able to hook them together into a 'whole quilt' using the borders as a form of sashing. The problem is finding a border that will suit the different color that I already have in mind.....and until I figure the single vs the whole out I can't finish the edges......a proverbial Catch 22.
The next blog will have some pix of the piece with some of the beading done and an explanation of the fabric/color choices......

It is with great pride that I introduce you to the beautiful Bride and the handsome Groom!!
I wrote in my previous blog about our daughter Katie getting married this summer. Here she is with her handsome husband Jimmy.
We couldn't be happier for them!!

Where has the summer gone??

In my last post I thought that I had life in hand - I didn't. What I thought were bruised ribs were actually broken ribs and from there an entire new set of problems arose. But all is finally well and I'm back to about as normal as life gets.....



Since that last post I attended the Vermont Quilt Festival.www.vqf.org. This is an annual trek for me - some people go camping I go to Vermont. The show was as wonderful as usual and the time away was rejuvenating.



Once I was back it was time to get into the serious work of having a large party to celebrate our 25th Anniversary. Since our two children had also just graduated from their respective universities we decided that we would celebrate that event as well. Katie received her Honors B.Sc from Western here in Ontario and Mike received his BA from TRU in BC. Whew!! The icing on the cake was the upcoming nuptials of our daughter Katie to Jimmy McLean. Talk about a month of events. All went well and we all had a lot of fun!!

The picture of Katie and Jimmy will appear in the next blog as I am having trouble figuring some of this blogger stuff out.

I am also going to post my BJP in another blog as it too is in another form....this techie stuff is great when you get it but the learning curve can be steep for us non-techies.....

Be right back

Argh!!!


I have decided that bruised ribs are more annoying than serious. They allow you to do mundane stuff - like washing dishes without twinging - but don't allow you to do fun stuff - like crazy quilt patch sewing - pain free. Seems there is a motion in there that I have been totally unaware of before, that pulls on side muscles as I use the rotary cutter and raise and lower the presser foot on the sewing machine.


This wouldn't be really annoying if I weren't signed up for the Bead Journal Project - BJP - http://beadjournalproject.blogspot.com/. And I have my June page all figured out, but I need my base or crazy patch to stitch on.....double argh!! The hand sewing of the beads doesn't bother my ribs, so once I have the base done I'm off to the races.....


I have had a few setbacks to my original focus - which is to try and translate embroidery stitches into beadwork. Seems it's already been done and is in a published book - Embeadery by Margaret Ball. I'm still going ahead but also plan to pick up Margaret's book and see how she approached the stitches. Just seems to re-enforce the feeling that there aren't any truly new ideas out there.....just different interpretations....

Oh, well - that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger......one way or another I will figure this out......