The color of chocolate

Another birthday! Since Janary doesn't have much else to recommend it (what with it being the cold and dark season) it's lucky we have so many birthdays around here. David turned 24 yesterday. When he was little he always asked for a bakery cake, and chose the one with the brightest colors on it. Now that he's all grown up he knows the value of a tasty homemade chocolate cake in which brown is the only color. I fell in love with this gorgeous moda fabric at the quilt show we went to a few months ago. The vendor just had two fat quarters and a one yard piece. I bought what she had, and then did some "selvedge research". It's the first time I've ever looked online for fabric by using the information provided by the manufacturer right on the selvedge.

Just by typing in the words above I was able to find more of this beautiful fabric at the Fat Quarter Shop - they do sell more than just fat quarters! (A fat quarter is a quarter yard cut in actual quarters rather than the traditional linear quarter yard cut, and measures 18 by 22 inches).

I made a lovely scrub jacket for work out of the piece I bought, and plan to use the smaller pieces to make a new purse and tote bag. I would show a photo of the jacket, but *someone* seems to have deleted the photo. Yes, yes, I know, digital photos are easy, and I can take another one, which I will. (But not now.)

Thanks to Ginny for prompting me to come back to blogland. As I told her, my mom is not doing well, and I have spent much of my time off from work visiting with her. She has had to move from the assisted living section to the nursing care section of the place where she lives.

The actual moving of her clothes, furniture, and other posessions was the easy part, although we might not have thought that at the time. She has not adjusted well at all, and the fact that she can neither see nor remember has made it just awful for her.

Anymore I dread phone calls - they're nearly always from Nurse M with dire reports on Mom's latest misadventure. Last night Larry and I drove the 25 mile round trip in the dark and the snow, because Nurse M tells us how agitated and miserable Mom is at night. When we got there she was sleeping peacefully. We stayed for close to an hour, but did not disturb her much needed sleep.

My brain swirls round and round wondering what the best thing would be for Mom. We have considered leaving our cozy nest of 30 years to find a home with a room for Mom, but I cannot afford to quit my job, and I do need to sleep at night.

A song by Mary Baker Eddy came to mind the last time I heard from Nurse M.

The title is "Mother's Evening Prayer" and the fourth verse popped into my thoughts during that call.

"Beneath the shadow of His mighty wing;

In that sweet secret of the narrow way,

Seeking and finding, with the angels sing:

"Lo, I am with you alway," - watch and pray."

The first verse of the same song begins:

"O gentle presence, peace and joy and power;

O Life divine, that owns each waiting hour, . . ."

You can see why I find comfort in these words.

Guilt free lunch

We have three birthdays in our family in January. We are firm believers in "Don't skimp on the cake!" which is my favorite birthday greeting. What with eating all this cake, we need to have some guilt free meals. You can make a very tasty lunch by starting with a piece of flat bread.

Spread it with one tablespoon of low fat sour cream.

Sprinkle 1/8 of a cup of low fat shredded mozerella cheese over the sour cream.

Pile on as much fresh spinach as will fit.

Roll it up and cut in two.

Add a delicious clementine, and you have a guilt free and very nourishing lunch!

Now you can have some birthday cake!

Getting organized

Something about the new year prompts me to get organized. What a mess my desk had become.

Tidying up generated lots of papers to be recycled. One thing always leads to another, and I cleaned the filing cabinet as well, since I could no longer stuff any more papers into the over filled folders.

And then I thought how handy it would be to have a little shelf beside the desk. Mainly because the little shelf sat on top of the printer ever since it was determined to be the wrong size for someone else's project, and - ahem - that person never did anything else with it. Who knew it would take this many tools to install one small shelf?

All done! Thank you, Larry, for the new shelf! In the "after" picture, it's on the right with the camera case and a white box on it.

Happy New Year!

I feel confused. How did it get to be 2011? Really. Wasn't it just 1974?

2010 was a pretty good year, for which I am thankful. Larry and I celebrated our 30th anniversary, and took our first vacation in eleven years. We had a marvelous time! Yes it was Michigan instead of Kauai, and was three days instead of ten, but you have to start somewhere. We loved everything about Saugituck, MI, especially the fact that we got to visit Miss Daisy on the way!

I began knitting again after a very long hiatus, and am delighted with not only the results, (17 snowmen with hats and scarves, 1 Larry sized hat, 1 pig, 1 cat, 2 bunnies, 4 mittens, and 6 socks) but the process as well.

I began crocheting and am still at the beginning stages of wobbley edged dishrags, of which I've made 3, but once again you have to start somewhere.

I ended 2010 at the very same weight I started with, which could be worse. Maintaining is just as hard as losing!

I've enjoyed visiting your blogs, although I have slipped in the posting department. I have found I can get so much more accomplished if I stay away from the computer!

My mom is a big part of my life, as she lives in a nursing home and can no longer see or remember, which is a terrible combination. If she could just see, it would be so much easier to know what is going on. If you can't remember where you are or why you're there, it is very confusing. I visit two or three times a week, and am thankful she is comfortable in body if not in mind, and well cared for. It is very very hard to hear her chatting about things that never happened, changing the past in extraordinary ways.

So far, any of the negative things that have happened in my life have made me better at my job. I can understand and sympathize with patients who have the same conditions. Skin cancer wasn't nearly as scary for me the third time around. I'm thankful for a skilled doctor who removes all traces.

The older I get the faster the time goes, and I know it will be June again in a minute, and I'll be able to swim and take walks in shorts and sandals. I wish you a wonderful 2011.

Christmas is. . .

a time to give thanks.

And a time to remember those who are no longer with us. And a time to bake cookies!

And a time to knit socks for someone you love.

Wishing you and yours all the joys of this Christmas season.

Planning Ahead

This is pretty much the extent of my Christmas sewing this year. An elderly patient at work likes fans, and she always brings the staff a gift, so I make her something every year. This is tiny, to hang on her tree.

Mother Nature has been much better at planning ahead than I have. Look at all the snow she's made, and winter doesn't even start for another three days. I don't recall ever having a blanket of snow covering the windows like this before. Interesting phenomenom! She's been making ice as well.

We've all pitched in the shovel this week.

Wishing you a happy weekend.

The knitting bug

(This is a sweater my mom knit for me a good twenty years ago. Didn't she do amazing work?)

Once upon a time there was a remarkable woman named Judith. The people I knew mostly called her "Mom" or "Mrs. Spearing" or "Judy" but her name was Judith, and she liked to be called Judith. One person even called her "Jutsy" which she didn't like at all, but since it was her own mother, she couldn't do much about it.
Judith had many fine talents. She cooked nourishing and delicious meals for her family, she kept the enormous amount of laundry for her family of six under control at all times, she kept the house in good order, worked at the library, wrote stories, and knit the most amazing things. She made sweaters for everyone in the family, as well as hats, mittens, scarves, shawls, and doll clothes. She made LOTS of socks because her husband liked hand knit socks the best.

She also taught Sunday school, was president of the church for two terms, and rose to the occasion admirably when her daughter needed a purple velvet dress to wear to a high school dance.

(This is the latest sock I made for Larry. It only took nine days! But I still have to make the other one, and finish it before Christmas.)

She passed her love of sewing and knitting on to me, one of her four children. When I was about eight, all the girls in the neighborhood decided to learn to knit. "Mrs. Spearing" kindly provided yarn, needles, and endless patient instruction. When we pulled the yarn too tight and the stitches just wouldn't come off the needles, she would knit a row for us to loosen it up so we could continue. When we came to a difficult part she showed us what to do next. We made countless headbands and doll scarves and blankets, and tried a mitten or two. Then summer came and we took ourselves off to the joy of swimming and bike riding, and put aside our knitting. Mom was probably glad to have the time to go back to her story writing.

Many years went by before I knit anything else, but when I was in high school I decided to knit a sweater. A plain navy blue sweater with no designs or stripes or anything at all to relieve the tedium of knitting back and forth, row after row. Mom kindly finished it for me so as not to waste the yarn, when I declared I had never done anything so boring in my life.

Many years later I had a little child who loved to be read aloud to. Everything we read about he wanted to try, or have me try. Knitting was no exception, and when he was about four I made this scarf for him because we'd been reading a book which included something about knitting.

Many more years went by, and then in early 2010 I got bitten by The Knitting Bug. Wow! I have made 15 snowmen, a cat, a pig, two bunnies, four mittens, and five socks. I have neglected my quilting and especially my blogging, but I have found knitting the perfectly PERFECT portable project.

Now I take it when I visit my mom. She can no longer see to knit, and doesn't remember that she taught all the little neighborhood girls how. She often doesn't know who I am, but I sit beside her knitting while she tells me about a past that never happened. Her quietly brilliant mind has let her down, along with her eyes.

Her four children all have good memories of the things she knew and taught us, and we all have hats and sweaters she made for us.