Last week I went to the Utah Quilt Guild Quilt Festival and had so much fun. I took a couple of classes, attended luncheon lectures by the National Teachers, enjoyed the company of tons of people with our common interest..... got to be with lots of members of my quilt group. I will definetly go again. I'm hooked.

The bonus of the week is I won 1st place in my category of special effects. And when I was leaving I saw Melody Crust (the national teacher expert of embellishing) who is totally intimidating and unapproachable..... so I mustered all my courage and asked her if I could make an appointment for her to look at my quilt and give me feedback. Long story short..... I spent about 45 minutes with her and Paula Nadelstern giving me good ideas of how to improve it for the next show it is going to.

I love quilting.

Happy Birthday, Ken!!

Ken announced, starting today, this year was going to be all about him. Heaven knows he deserves it. However, Annie and I have been basking in the sunlight for so many years, I'm not sure the rays can glow in a different direction. I don't know what brought this on.... I suspect the previous pictures had something to do with it. But wait.... I hope that doesn't mean he won't do the vacuuming.... clean up after dinner.... share his candy bars.... or remember to water the plant out front because I always forget. So at least for today..... this is your day. Happy Birthday!!

Getting Caught Up

I'm trying to get a few of the things that I like, quilted and done. If only I could stay cleaned up. This is a quilt I did for the table. It was a technique we learned at my quilt groups spring retreat. And now it's almost time for our fall one. I even cleared off the table and bought a pedestal candle, so it would look like a grown-up house.

And here it is today. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to keep my quilting projects in one room. I hate being in my quilt room downstairs all the time, especially when Ken is home. I like to listen to him play his quitar while I sew. Don't you think that's a noble enough reason to excuse me from keeping things all neat and tidy?

"Spirits Having A Human Experience"

I have finally finished a quilt I've been working on for 2 years. It is a depiction of a near death experience I had in 1991. I'm sure I'll still be tweeking with a few hairbows and such...

Kim's amazing ability to put form to a concept just unified the whole quilt. I love the rocky path we sometimes travel on in life.

The little Island Seas dude in blue with his dreadlocks is one of my favorite. I've worked on this for so long they all seem like people I have grown to know. Can you say I have no life????

The awesome guy in blue has a hairstyle fashioned on the doo's of Canyon & Auggie. Kenzie girl is the one in pink on the picture above this one.... and I got to style her hair any way I wanted...

I guess I better post about our week with Mackenzie before another week goes by. She declared her terms of visitation right up front. She would not be taking any pictures (I got just a few) since she had to take soooo..... many during the wedding. She also would not be doing her hair....because Mom & Dad make her beautiful every day and she needed a break from being beautiful. So we pretty much honored her requests since we were only going to be in Gma & Gpa mode.

Keatley came down for the week and really helped our week be a pleasant one. She came over at about 9:00 in the morning and stayed until she couldn't take it anymore..... really she was wonderful and we really appreciated all the games she played with Kenzie. I loved Keatley more every morning when I heard Kenzie say..... let's play hide n' seek. Much as I love that girl, I can only take about 5 minutes of that game and she can play for an hour.

She just loves Abbey & I was amazed at how patient Abbey was with her. She considers her another cousin.

The girls had fun cooking. One night they made their own pizza's. And made chocolate chip cookies. Notice the hair in all the pictures.

Some of the other highlights of the week were jumping at the Kangaroo Zoo...... Uncle Paul hosted a campout at his house. They cooked hot dogs in the firepit, went on a hike to the waterfall, and slept in the tent trailer and went swimming at Lindon's new pool with Erica. What fun times. It is really a bonus in life to have a brother that loves kids. Thanks, Paul.

The Wedding

We just got home from Maine..... where Tyler & Lindsay had their wedding. Lindsay gave new meaning to the phrase, beautiful bride. We enjoyed meeting all of her family and especially love having Lindsay as a part of our family.... she brings out the best in little miss kenziken, who just loves her mommy. Who ever dreamed that when Tyler moved alone to Maine with a bed and a TV he would return home with a family. You did good, son.

Kenzie was the perfect little flower girl and did a good job throwing out one petal at a time, even though she was "so nervous"

Ryan and Tyler. Ryan was his best man... and has been his best brother for all of his life. It was so nice to have all of our kids together.

Jana and Andrea.... beautiful sisters. As Mackenzie told Jana.... your eyes are all shiny, it makes you beautiful.

Ryan & Alissa..... just newlyweds themselves.

We all slept the day after on the way home. We will have Mackenzie for the week while Tyler and Lindsay honeymoon in the Florida Keyes.

Round Robin

This year our quilt group did a Round Robin. We had groups of five. Each person brought a quilt block that is the center..... then each month, each block would rotate to a different person who put a border around it. In five months we had then put a border on each block and we had a finished project. Most of them were wall hanging size, but some of them were a little bigger. For mine I printed out one of my favorite sayings and put just a black border around it. It was amazing how creative everyone was and I loved how mine turned out. I'm going to have Kim do some fancy quilting on it and then I'm going to frame it.

One Must Learn To Love
One must learn to love. -- This is what happens to us in music. First one has to learn to hear a figure and melody at all, to detect and distinguish it, to isolate it and delimit it as a separate life. Then it requires some exertion and good will to tolerate it in spite of its strangeness, to be patient with its appearance and expression, and kindhearted about its oddity. Finally there comes a moment when we are used to it, when we wait for it, when we sense that we should miss it if it were missing: and now it continues to compel and enchant us relentlessly until we have become its humble and enraptured lovers who desire nothing better from the world than it and only it.

But that is what happens to us not only in music. That is how we have learned to love all things that we now love. In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fairmindedness, and gentleness with what is strange: gradually, it sheds its veil and turns out to be a new and indescribable beauty. That is its thanks for our hospitality. Even those who love themselves will have learned it in this way; for there is no other way. Love, too, has to be learned.
-– Friedrich Nietzsche