Quilter's Weekend

Each Presidents' Day weekend, the Flower Valley Quilt Guild holds a three-day retreat that is devoted to quilting, friendship and lots of chocolate. A few hardy souls stay up all night and others quilt in their jammies. This year, Saturday morning dawned in shades of gray outside as snow flurries fell all day, highlighting the dome of the chapel at the Pallotine Renewal Center, where we always gather.

Inside, the atmosphere is bright and cheerful. This is our work room, 34 sewing machines set up and ready to roll in the conference room of the center. It's empty because everyone is at breakfast, and I'm going to be the last one in the dining room today.


Elsie and Thelmarene are already at work on the special retreat project--a tulip table runner that uses a tricky foldover piecing technique. First we had to cut rows and rows of strips, then turn those into small squares, rectangles and triangles. Elsie, at left, is already piecing hers while Thelmarene is cutting. My work station is just behind Thelmarene; you can recognize it by mom Linville's old green Tupperware celery crisper that I use to hold some of my sewing gear.

Also deep in thought on the other side of the room are Jan and Sandy, who are checking out a personal project Jan brought to work on during the retreat. In the far corner is a group that reportedly stayed up all night sewing on Saturday night.

Twice a day we get called to the dining room for a Cookie and Coffee break. By Saturday afternoon, we had mostly exhausted the snacks we had brought with us, and the sisters' homemade cookies were most welcome. Linda, in the blue jacket, picked this weekend to stop smoking, and everyone tried to cheer her on.

Saturday's snowfall gave way to bright sunshine in the afternoon. This view of some of the 88 acres owned by the religious order is always calming and peaceful. Sometimes we organize a hike for exercise but it was in the low 20s. We stayed inside and got our exercise walking to and from the dining room!

In addition to working on the special project and our own personal projects, we worked together to assemble a friendship quilt to give to Sister Bernadette, who is recovering from open heart surgery. She is usually the one to welcome us to the Center and we missed her this year. We put the blocks together at the 2006 retreat from kits donated by a local quilt shop. This year we added the sashing and took turns sewing rows together. Everyone who worked on it signed a block and one of our members will quilt it this spring. Patricia, at left, was this year's retreat chairman. She did a great job. Next year we'll be back, same weekend, the lucky 34 who get their registration forms in the mail on time.

My tulip table runner is almost finished and I'll put it on the blog soon, I promise. I learned as I signed in to post this that next time I'll have to switch to the new version of Blogger. So we'll have to see how that works.

Snow for Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's day from the snowy Midwest! Our banner by the front step looks bright in the snow but is frozen stiff. Kind of like the rest of the landscape as the wind chill drops to single digits. We had rain, followed by sleet, followed by snow. It looks like we won't get much more than 3 inches of snow, but the radio waves are full of school and business closings, and notices of multiple-car crashes and jacknifed trucks all over the Interstate Highway system. It's always been a mystery to me why St. Louis drivers cannot remember how to drive on ice and snow from one year to the next, but it's pretty much the case around here.

This is only Norm's second foray out to scoop snow today. He went out just as the rain changed over to snow to get the mush off of the driveway and sidewalks while it was still warm enough to move it. It's not supposed to get above freezing here again until Saturday, they say! Our new rainbow spinner was really spinning in the wind. We are looking after our neighbor's house (her enclosed porch in the background) as well as ours while she is on a trip.

Doug says that Norm looks good in cold weather gear such as stocking caps, so this photo is for him. The leather jacket might look familiar, too. We are thinking good thoughts for everyone, but especially three of Norm's brothers--Harold is home from a hospital stay in Denver, Larry is recuperating from a fall on the ice in Colby and Don is contemplating surgery on a shoulder damaged when, by his own account, he tried to take up ice skating lessons in a Garden City alley. Judi's cousin Mike is another victim of ice follies and he is going to have shoulder surgery next month, too. Memo to the rest of the family: I'm trying to keep an eye on Norm but you can see for yourselves--he has this obsession about clearing snow.