In a new Christmas miracle (ahem), I actually got our annual “Christmas” newsletter written, printed, in the envelopes and INTO THE MAIL before Christmas! Some years, this event has occurred the week after Christmas (last year), in early January (several previous years), even February. One year, I thought since I was so late I’d make it an Easter newsletter. That holiday came and went, and by June I decided I was SO LATE I’d just skip it and try to do better the following year. So you can see that this is no small feat! Of course, I will never, ever be able to match my friend Gayle, whose letter and card always arrive shortly after Thanksgiving! I may try, but she’ll always beat me, and I look forward to seeing how early she gets ’em out every year <ggg>.

I thought I’d share some of the newsletter here…. the photo above is the one at the end of the letter and was taken a couple of evenings ago. I probably should have included one of the umpteen-zillion other shots taken trying to get them to sit still and behave…. how many years until they do? At least a dozen I think… For regular readers, you’ll recall all these events, as I think they’ve all been in the blog!

The Smith Family Chronicles, 2007 edition

We are looking forward to 2008, since 2007 has been a roller-coaster-ride. The year started out well, with Joshua coming in 5th in the state in his weight class in middle school wrestling, Eli earning his green belt in Tae Kwon Do (Korean) karate and yellow belt with stripes in Isshinriyu (Okinawan) karate, Paul starting out as a white belt in the Isshinriyu dojo, and Sarah’s quilting career taking off quite nicely. In March we added a new member of the family: the world’s most adorable pug, Pigwidgeon. Eli has always wanted a pug, and for his birthday he got one! ‘Widgeon is named after the hapless Weasley family owl in the Harry Potter series, and he makes EVERYone grin — the whole neighborhood loves him.

Just a few weeks after summer vacation began, things took a decided downturn. Paul had torn something in his shoulder and was scheduled for rotator cuff surgery on Tuesday, July 17th. An hour after Paul’s pre-op appointment on the 16th, Joshua decided to dash to the library. He tore down the hill to the T-intersection at the bottom; when he tried to slow down, the brakes didn’t work properly. He cranked the handlebars to make the right turn as hard as he could, but gravel at the bottom of the hill made things worse and he veered across the yellow line, directly into the front left quarter-panel of a Jeep going the 35 mph speed limit.

Miraculously, and probably with the help of an entire host of angels, he suffered only a severely broken left leg—all three major bones broken, the tib-fib into a compound fracture—a gash on his head (he was NOT!!!! wearing a helmet!) and scrapes and bruises. A friend of Joshua’s who lives near the accident scene heard the crash and called to tell us Joshua had been hit. Paul and Sarah flew down the hill in suspended terror until they saw Joshua sitting up, clutching his left leg, surrounded by helpers including a nurse practitioner who was passing by who was phenomenal—and we don’t even know her name to tell her how much her competence and calm helped us all.
After what seemed like eternity, an ambulance with a patient in the back stopped and dropped off an EMT. The EMT took one look at Joshua and before even kneeling down to examine him, got on her radio to call Life Flight to helicopter Joshua to a regional emergency center since the degree of injury was too much for a local hospital. The poor young woman who hit Joshua was devastated—Paul and I both went over to let her know he would be OK. Later, her dad told us she said her eyes and Joshua’s locked over the hood of the car—terrifying! Fortunately, Joshua only remembers thinking “oh this isn’t gonna be good” as he saw the car approach, and then sitting up and the pain in his leg—he has no recall of being hit.

To make a long story a bit shorter, Joshua endured four surgeries in seven days, including the seven-hour operation two days after the accident to insert a rod into his thigh and apply an “external fixator” to his shinbones. The “ex-fix” was six screws about 6 inches long drilled into his bones, with rods on the outside to keep the bones in position. The pressure from the swelling tissues was so great the surgeons had to do two fasciotomies, basically long slices from knee to ankle on both sides of his shin; without this, the pressure on the tissue would have caused it to turn gangrenous and die. Paul and Sarah rotated spending the night at the hospital: one of us was with Joshua 24/7 for the 3 weeks he was in hospital. Eli was a major trooper throughout this ordeal, and was always helpful and cooperative despite having to ride to and fro for 3 hours nearly every day.

After nearly a week, Joshua slept all day. Between the morphine and other heavy-duty IV drip painkillers and blood loss, he had become severely anemic. He ended up needing two transfusions. After a second week, it was time to close up the fasciotomies, requiring a skin graft from Joshua’s left thigh. Another week of rehab and healing followed. Once the skin graft was pronounced “good to go”, Joshua was released to home, three weeks nearly to the hour after the accident.

August was quiet except for Paul’s surgery and being able to go to the Maine Air Show (in September) and see the Blue Angels aerobatic team—awesome! After two days home, Joshua got fed up with the slowness of the walker and gutted his way to walking with crutches and healed with the speed of youth. Paul’s recovery has been remarkable, amazing his physical therapist and doctor! The local quilters were awesome, several coming to us with meals to feed an army, but instead we ate them with appreciation for their love and compassion. And quilters around the world (on Sarah’s e-lists) sent get-well quilt blocks to Joshua, who will have a huge new quilt as a result.

School began, life assumed some normalcy, and Eli played on his first soccer team. He proved to be a quick study once again—his proud Mom and Dad think he can excel at anything he sets his mind to! And we’re proud he was selected for Horizons, the gifted student program, for the fourth grade. Eli also competed in Maine’s biggest martial-arts tournament as an Isshinryu student and took 2nd out of 26 kids in kata (forms), and 4th out of 26 kids in fighting—way to go Eli! Joshua’s leg hardware came off in early November in his sixth and hopefully final surgery (there could be one more in about a year if the rod inside his femur bothers him and needs to come out). He will heal completely!

Sarah’s quilting is going gangbusters! She had two articles published in Quilting Arts magazine this past year, the top quilting magazine for art quilters. As well: two projects were selected to be in a book to be published in May 2008 called Quilting with Beads, the Frayed Edges (Sarah and four friends) had a month-long show in the gallery space at the beautiful Camden library, and (drum roll please) she got a contract from AQS (one of the three largest quilt publishing houses) to write a book! The book is tentatively titled “Unraveling Threadwork,” and is about using thread on the surface of a quilt: appliqué, embellishment and quilting by machine. She had hoped it would be out in Fall 2008, but the hurly burly of the summer may cause the date to slip. Sarah’s teaching is also taking off, with three big-time teaching gigs in 2008 including at the HUGE AQS Quilt Show in Paducah, Kentucky.

In early December, Sarah traveled to California for her mom’s 89th birthday! We are all hoping that Nana will be able to move to Camden (on the waiting list for the retirement community there) in 2008. Joyce, Sarah’s beloved sister in law, came up from L.A. Sarah’s half-brother Tom J. passed away at the age of nearly 75 in late June, and Sarah had been scheduled to go out in July for the celebration of his life. Joshua’s accident changed those plans, so we were all thrilled that the three remaining “Maleady’s” were able to be together.

So that’s it for a crazy year! We are all looking forward to a less-eventful 2008!

With love, cheer and good will,

Paul, Sarah, Joshua and Eli
And the many critters:
Zeus, Tyger, Hannah, Thumper,
Yeti and ‘Widgeon

Eli, in 4th grade, needed a quick gift for his Secret Santa pal. Paul and Eli went looking for a gift—the girl likes horses, so Eli wanted to buy her a bookmark with a horse. No luck. Apparently nothing with a horse at any store including the toy store (hard to believe, but that’s what they said). So they decided to make cookies. As in mom would make cookies. Ahem. Not. As in, I’m wrapping gifts, making my own stuff, working on dyeing six shirts with Joshua for science class, writing and printing the newsletter, doing legal stuff for mom, etc.

So I offered to make a fabric postcard instead and give it with a mini-easel. A quick Google Images search for horses turned up two that gave the silhouette that I wanted, so I traced them off the computer screen. Eli and I decided to make a field with simple trees on the side (this needed to be made FAST). Once that was done, we decided the smaller of the two horses was the correct size. Out comes the Saral transfer paper to transfer the outlines to the pre-fused cloth.  The photo above is the front of the card (Eli wanted eyes and nostrils, so added them with a pen which, alas, bled a little…)

On the back, Eli did as he was instructed, wrote To Francis, From ? (and it shows the quilting):

I’m rather pleased… it took less than an hour for the whole shebang (using mostly pre-fused fabrics…good to have a little fused stash on hand for quilt emergencies just like this), way less than making a huge batch of cookies! Best of all, Eli reported that Francis was really pleased with her Secret Santa’s gift! Good for Eli for picking something he knew she would like!

On Monday the 17th, Kate, Kathy and I met at Kate’s house in Bowdoinham to share and celebrate the season. As I mentioned earlier, Hannah’s daughter was down with a fever, so she stayed home, and of course our dear Deborah is living on the dark side of the moon a.k.a. Dallas (sorry to all Texans…but you’re a loooonnnnggggg way away from here! it seems that far!). Deborah’s box was delayed in the mail, so I won’t share the goodies that the three of us exchanged, since not everyone has seen their holiday gifties (I will share AFTER Christmas!). We had a wonderful time in Kate’s old (maybe early 1800s?) house, which is remarkably sunny and light. It has the small rooms typical of New England, which hold the heat well yet let in lots of light.

First we shared. Kathy has almost completed the glorious art bed quilt (yes, it is possible to make art for the bed and Kathy has just proved it!). The quilt is a commission for a friend, who wanted the quilt to celebrate the favorite places she and her husband have been in their long marriage, from the Caribbean to Maine, Mexico, New Zealand (I think it was), Newfoundland and beyond. I am in lust:

I shared my Naiads quilt, which alas I can’t share here for a couple of months…sigh… but it was such a thrill to have MADE something that is art!

I loved this view from the dining room:

I loved this view even more… lunch with my friends! The only thing that would have made it better would have been Hannah and Deborah. We had Kate’s panini, my potato-turkey kielbasa soup (thank you Janet! I use that recipe a LOT), and Kathy’s treats for dessert (they involve graham crackers, butter, sugar, chocolate, nuts…heavenly).

Then we decamped to the living room for prezzies under the tree! On the far side of the room is one of my favorite paintings, which Kate did for an art class in college:

On the shelf underneath was this lovely vignette… Kate’s home is filled with these wonderful little suprises and joys… We have so many cats (and cat hair and dust) I don’t do stuff like this, and I should!

Then, goodies made by friends… could it be any better?

You’ll have to wait to see the contents, though… but Kate and Kathy, gifts have already been pressed into joyful service!

Sorry about having been seriously AWOL (absent without leave)…. A week ago I got back from a week just north of San Francisco for my mom’s 89th birthday and have been scrambling ever since (making gifts, wrapping gifts, packaging and mailing gifts…). My dear and wonderful sister-in-law came up from LA (Joyce, my late half-brother’s widow) to Mom’s in the Bay Area, too. It was a wonderful reunion… wish we weren’t so far apart! We need to do that more! I’ll blog about that trip, dyeing fabric (which is the closes I’ve come to quilting in too long a while), and the Frayed Edges December meeting (which DOES involve a quilt…Kathy’s work of wonder!) in the coming week or two…. I expect everyone else is as swamped as I am!

We had a significant Nor’easter on Sunday which added another 8 inches of snow to the nearly 10 on the ground—before the temperature started rising twenty degrees at about 6 pm (from low 20s to 40 at 11 pm!) and it turned to rain, which sank to the bottom of the snow and made the Mid-Coast of Maine a skating rink…sidewalks are hazardous. But the landscape is glorious.

The Frayed Edges are intrepid (and busy) souls, so three of us gathered at Kate’s house in Bowdoinham despite the storm and resulting yuck on the roads–we just drove veeerrrrryyyyy sllllowwwwwlllyyyyyy. Deborah, living near Dallas, was with us in spirit and our hearts, as was Hannah who was home with a sick daughter (bummers for both!). On the way, I snapped these pics of the ice on the trees about a mile from Kate’s… what awesome beauty!

This summer, as many of you have read, Joshua got hit by a car and had a lengthy hospitalization. One kind soul had an idea: make simple blocks to send Joshua to let folks know they were thinking of him…he was floored! They spread the word on the Janome 6500 list, the QuiltArt list, my pattern testers yahoo group and more. Well, we have 73 blocks (ten from Sue Franck!) coming from the length and breadth of not only the US, but also Canada, Australia, Singapore, England, Scotland… amazing!

After many distractions, family upsets, surgeries, healing, laughter and joy, I finally was able to put up nearly 35 of the blocks on the design wall. This is what love looks like:

Cindy Sissler Simms also sent each of the boys a gorgeous Mariner’s Compass block:

Joshua wants a single large bedquilt, which is what that many blocks will make! And thanks to another generous soul (K.McN) from the QuiltArt list, we have a queen sized batt to make that happen, too! Joshua will give Eli some of the blocks, and I’m sure it will take me months to get the tops done and the quilt quilted, but I’ll be sure to let you know when I do. Ilana in Lancaster, Calif., sent Eli a pillowcase with cats and dogs which is well-loved and used already, and the Blockbuster video card was well enjoyed. Rosemary Claus-Grey’s boy with a broken leg mini fiber artwork was on the wall in Joshua’s hospital room, and is on the wall here at home now! The generosity of so many whom we have never even met in person is overwhelming.

We cannot express how much this outpouring of affection and concern means to all of us. Before separating the blocks from the cards and envelopes, I wrote each person’s name, town and state/country on the block, so we can look at each block in the quilt and know who sent it and where it began its journey. Thank you, thank you, thank you, from all of us, with abiding love.