Yep, my mama is now official NINETY…. hard to believe eh?  All things considered, she is doing pretty well and, as we both say from time to time, it beats the alternative!  My dear sister-in-law (soul sister) Joyce (my late half-brother T.J. gets the prize for bringing the best person in the family into the family by marrying her back in the 60s) flew out for a weekend from Los Angeles.  It has been 6 or 7 years since she has been able to visit us and see the boys.  She is their absolute favorite relative, she is SOOOOO good to them!  Anyway, we had a wonderful visit….

Joyce arrived on a COLD Friday (it was late January/February temps…. highs in the low 20s, lows down to ten, plus breezy!) evening, and we gave her the evening tour through all 2 blocks of lit-up downtown Camden, passing the lobster-trap-Christmas-tree (topped by our favorite crustacean) in downtown Rockland en route from the small Knox County airport.  I think Joyce was stunned to be in a 9-seat plane!   I guess we are so used to pipsqueak planes that it seems normal…..

This is a LOVELY picture of Joyce in the frigid air outside Quarry Hill, the retirement community where mom lives (it has independent and assisted living areas, a demetia unit and a small nursing care unit, used mostly for folks who get ill but will recover enough to return to their regular apartments).  That light stuff you see in the middle of the photo is not a camera flare…that’s frozen breath!

On Saturday night, we went out to a lovely restaurant, Atlantica, right on Camden Harbor.  I took my camera.  I forgot to use it!  But we had a lovely dinner, all six of us.  The boys were well behaved, and Mom really seemed to enjoy the outing.  The chef was very kind… it is a seafood restaurant, but mom is vegetarian.  When I called to see about reservations he said “no problem, I’d be glad to make a vegetarian plate for her”.  WONDERFUL!

On Sunday, I fixed dinner for us at home:

Then Eli helped out…he is becoming quite the photographer:

If anyone knows, by the way, someplace that still has the fabric I used in the apron, let me know… I’d love to buy another couple yards!

Joyce gave mom a small watercolor of Bermuda, where mom and dad lived (and I was conceived) when she and my brother first met, and where Joyce and T. vacationed.  I gave mom my 2007 journal quilt because it uses a photo she bought in Japan when she lived and worked there in 1946-47 with the US Occupation Army and which she still has on her dresser, of the little girls.  The photos of  Hiroshima are ones I took when Mom and I visited there in 1996…and she loves the quilt:

After gifties, we did a real birthday cake.  Rather than risk setting the house on fire, I used the boys’ birthday candles to make a “90” (I bought each of them a numeral candle for each year, then we double up those 0-9 candles for their teen years–currently the “1” candles are getting a real workout during the teen years).

And one more of mom:

Joyce departed on Monday, one day before the official birthday.  Because it was SO cold, we decided Mom shouldn’t go out, so we took sandwiches and ate with her at Quarry Hill.   I used the timer on my camera to take this picture on mom’s living room sofa:

This:

(The photo is shot through my glasses so you can see how blind I am!) I couldn’t quite believe my eyes, so I put on my glasses and saw THIS!

Yes, my dear sister in law arrived from Los Angeles last night.  I don’t know how many years it has been since she has seen snow, so this unexpected arrival (a day before the forecasts) must be just for her and for today, which is St. Nicholas Day AND Camden’s Christmas by the Sea celebration weekend (the kick off to the holiday season).  Here’s the front porch and yard… just a dusting, but still…yipppeeeee!

So of course, I  had to have my morning tea in this:

the mug Deborah Boschert gave to us Frayed Edges in 2005 (There’s a remarkably similar photo on my Dec. 27, 2005 blogpost!).  What a perfect morning!   More soon….

With abiding thanks…..

That great whoooshing sound you hear is time whizzing by yet again….since the last blogpost, since  summer 2007 when Joshua got hit and was in the hospital, since this past summer when I finally (in the heat of July) finished both Joshua’s and Eli’s quilts. It took FOREVER to get Joshua to let me take a picture, but I so wanted to thank everyone for their kindness and support for all of us!

Within a few days of Joshua getting hit by the jeep (on July 17, 2007…posts start that week), a kind and thoughtful soul on the Janome 6600 yahoo group had a kind and wonderful idea:  instead of sending get well cards, send blocks!  She chose a simple one:  an 8 inch (finished square) surrounded by 2 inch sashing, to finish at 12 inches.  Fabrics:  something a teenaged boy might like, all colors, scrappy.    A friend relayed the post to the QuiltArt e-list, and eventually more than 75 blocks arrived!  Many folks sent extras, including ones special for Eli, since he too was greatly affected by the accident (and he logged more miles than anyone going to the hospital up in Bangor, nearly 90 minutes each way, almost every single day for three weeks as Paul and I traded off spending the night there with Joshua or coming home to care for Eli and the animals).

Here, at long last—all healed and well, is Joshua doing what he loves best, playing guitar, on his quilt.  When I asked him if he wanted  to use sashing or a border he said no, I want as many blocks as possible!  So his quilt is 6 feet by 8 feet, 48 blocks!

Each of the boys picked their favorites, with Joshua requesting all the musical ones, Eli wanting the one with the orca/lobster, the wolves and the soccer balls!  They both love their quilts, and I am so grateful for the kindness and support these blocks represent at a time that was really kinda scary!   It is a jolt when you are told your healthy-until-4 days ago 13-year old son needs a large transfusion because he is so anemic (from internal blood loss from the three broken leg bones and the consequent loss of red-blood-cell-generating bones), and then needs another one.  We knew he would live, but not if he would keep his leg, or how well he would live.  The  thoughts and kindness of so many were a great support to all of us, and especially to Joshua who kept saying “these are for me?!?”  The blocks came from Australia, Singapore, Europe, Scotland, England, Canada, all over the United States, and I mean ALL over….. If the maker hadn’t signed the block, I wrote her name and city/state/country on each block so we can look at the quilt and say, look, this one is from “xxxx.”

And here is Eli on his bed with his quilt, made from 25 blocks.

Cindy Sissler Simms is a maven at Mariner’s Compass blocks, so she sent two awesome ones, which I made into coordinating pillows, one for each boy.  I love the way they turned out…. I machine quilted them simply with the walking foot, proving that sometimes simple is PERFECT!

Again, thank you (which seems so small and not enough) from the bottom of our hearts, hugs, Sarah

And yet another piece!  Amazing what happens when you finally dig out from under the mountain of accumulated work…all the stuff that piles up while life is happening!  One of my favorites in the new crop of small art quilt pieces is  Birch Pond:

I’ve always loved etchings and woodblock prints (even bought a couple books on woodblock print making, tho I’ll likely never make such a thing…but of course the design ideas and visual techniques can always be applied to different media…like quilts!).  Mary Azarian is one of my favorites, and I got the Shepherd Seed Catalog for years just to see her illustrations.  Alas, I can’t find the latter online….the link for Sheperd’s Seeds automatically switches over to White Flower Farm where there are NO seeds listed…Sob!  Anyway, check out her website…the Farm and Field prints are fancier than what was in the catalog, but in the same vein.

So, looking for something fun and easy to do this summer at Maine Quilts, I was thrilled to see that Laura Wasilowski was teaching her Woodcut Quilts class!   Laura’s website is www.artfabrik.com (with a K…sigh).  As part of the class kit fee, we received some of Laura’s lovely hand dyed fabrics and threads, but of course I had to be me and took my pre-fused stash of batiks (well, a selection). This piece varies somewhat from “true” woodcut quilts because the individual leaves are not edged in black, but I can live with that <grin!>.

Here’s a detail:

The 14×14 inch quilt is mounted on 21×21 stretcher bars covered with dark blue batik cloth, clean finished and ready to hang.  It is available for sale at Ducktrap Bay Trading Company (gallery here in Camden, Me. — click on the New Work link under the Galleries column for more info).

I had fun in the class… it was low key and easy paced (a bit slow for a kind Type-A sort like me who is quite experienced, but that happens to me a bit too often….I’m to ready and raring to go!), I learned new stuff, Laura is a well-prepared and entertaining teacher and best of all, I now know some of her tricks so I can let what I learned percolate and come out in a quilt in the future.  Yeah!  My own woodblock prints without having to carve the wood (not that I’d mind learning that, either, but there aren’t enough hours in a lifetime already!).  Cheers!

Amazing… I actually got something done!  The quilted portions of these two pieces, Buoys 1 (Blue) and Buoys 2 (Pink-purple) were made for my local quilt chapter’s 10×10″ challenge.  The challenge was to make a piece based on guild-member Jan P’s husband’s photo.  Dwight’s photo is called Ropes and Buoys, and it was a delight to see the wide range of pieces.  (To see the challenge pieces as displayed at Maine Quilts this past July, click here then scroll nearly halfway down.)  I recently mounted my pieces on batik stretched over stretcher bars (with a base support and batting to make it look good).  They are for sale… directly from me until Wednesday morning then via Ducktrap Bay Trading Company, the local gallery that carries my work.

Here is the Blue Buoys:

and a detail shot which shows the intense quilting and shading with thread:

I wanted to try doing the buoys in totally-not-realistic colors…the ones in the photo were mostly yellow and orange.  While blue and light blue might be a real combination, I can’t imagine I’d ever see any real buoys that are pink and purple (tho there are women lobstermen (???   that sounds weird, but I am pretty sure that they don’t call themselves lobsterers, maybe lobster fishermen, but that has the guy thing too… ???), but decided to try a really wild color combination to play with value and hue.  Here is Buoys #2 (pink – purple):

And the detail of the pink one:

Each piece is 10×10 inches mounted on a 16×16 inch frame (one inch deep); the background fabric  wraps around to the back which is clean finished and ready to hang.  The price for each is $250 plus shipping (if you order from me before Weds., shipping is included, otherwise it will be whatever the gallery charges).