Around Here

 Around here...

My sister Jean is celebrating her birthday today.  I'm so lucky to have such a caring, accepting, and fun-loving sister!  Although she has known her share of sorrow and challenges, I think she is one of the happiest people I know.

Here she is at her 60th birthday party, thrown for her by her very large extended family.

40 years ago Jean married David Rice, who was raising three teenagers on his own from his previous marriage.  Jean was only 24 and we all know how teenagers can stress a relationship, but she and Dave will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary next month.  

I did finish Jean's "travel quilt" in time for her birthday but the poor girl isn't actually going to get it for another week or so since I have to take decent photos of it and show it around to a few of my quilt groups.  

On St. Patrick's Day Ben and I went to a local liquor store for supplies and found a celebration already underway, complete with free Reuben sandwiches.  That's an offer that Ben couldn't refuse.   

Since he had biked twenty miles that afternoon the sandwich didn't ruin his appetite for dinner, which was good since we had wonderful home-cured corn beef at Ray and Paula's. 

And, of course, Guinness. 

I tried my hand at making my own postcards to send to politicians.  My friend Becky told me how much fun she's been having designing her own cards so I decided to give it a try myself.  I don't think postcards are the most effective way of making your views known, but I did have a good time making and sending one about climate change to Scott Pruitt and President Trump.  

I joined in a sew-day to make blocks for comfort quilts that will be given to quilters and friends of quilters who are battling breast cancer.  Together we made 200 pink and white blocks, enough for ten quilts!  

I had a fun time visiting a quilt display which hung for only two hours in the Idea Forge Makerspace at CU on Sunday.  This interesting space has workshops and classes for CU students who want to "make something" as a respite from their school work.   Stephanie Ruyle, a quilter from Denver Metro Modern Quilt Guild offered a quilt making workshop and this exhibit displayed the creations that came out of that class.

The students were there and I got a kick out of talking with them, especially this fellow.

He told me that Stephenie had limited them to using five or six colors and that their quilt could be made with no more than fourteen seams, which isn't very much.  She did this so the students wouldn't be overwhelmed with design choices.  It's a good solution to the problem of having too many choices, which often results in nothing getting done at all.  

I loved the statement Michael wrote about his quilt.  

Isn't that awesome?  I wish I could write statements that are as descriptive, personal, and fun as Michael's.  It's not an easy task!

Paul is enjoying being a sound tech for his school's upcoming spring musical.  This week is "hell week" with rehearsals after school every day running until 8:00 or 9:00.  It's both hard work and exciting.  Next week is spring break so everyone can catch up on their sleep before the show begins the week after.

Paul has learned all the lyrics to the play and likes to play the music for me so I'll be familiar with it when I see the show.  Watching Paul reminds me of my own high school productions and how much fun they were.  (I was in the chorus of Brigadoon and was the prop manager for Blythe Spirit, as well as being in several musical groups.  Music and drama got me through high school, which I otherwise really disliked.) 

Spikey is jealous of how often Fetcher's picture is on this blog.  I told him that the next time he did something cute, I'd include him.  So today he crawled halfway under the door to the deck and stopped.  

 He was half in and half out, which was odd...

...until I saw that Fetcher was sitting outside watching Spikey very carefully!