HAPPY THANKSGIVING

 

First Thanksgiving away from my Ohio home in over 25 years. I'm here in New Jersey with my parents.  Very thankful that my mother is doing better and things seem to be back to normal.....on the sliding scale of "normal"!!

 

Joe is at our home with the cats and I miss them very much.  Spending my days knitting socks and watching endless football games on TV.  But for the next hour or two I have control of the remote and I'm watching the Macy's Parade.  Turkey in the oven, the smell of Brussels sprouts with bacon roasting away.  Although I am not in my own space I am determined to make this a joyous Thanksgiving for my parents.  My moments of peace and joy will be next week when I'm back at home.

Wishing all of you a pleasant and plentiful Thanksgiving Day.

Winter Wonderland

In a matter of hours we went from this.......

 

....basking in the sun outside.

 

To this........

huddled around the woodstove inside!

 

Outside it became a Winter Wonderland over night!

 

As the temperature continues to drop, I have turned once again to indoor projects.  This lovely quilt is not my own work.  It is a vintage 1930's quilt that I am repairing for a friend.  His grandmother made it.  It is surprisingly similar to a reproduction vintage quilt I have been working on for several decades in the same pattern and colors.

Two rigorous bathes and a new binding brought this beauty back to life.  I took my chance on washing it in my machine.  I hoped that I wouldn't end up with a faded pinky-red tattered blob.  Luckily the original maker was wise enough to wash her pinks and reds before she pieced her quilt.  It looks to me like a larger "bride's quilt" was cut in half to make a child-sized quilt.  Some of the star patterns end rather abruptly at the borders.  Who knows where the other half ended up, but this half now has a new lease on life.

 

Again I turn to Nature and sewing/crafting to ease my anxiety over another planned visit to my parents' house next week for Thanksgiving.  It so horrible of me to say, but I do not even enjoy visiting there anymore.  I am simply useful to them and find no joy in it at all.  I will get to see lovely Pepper the Bengal cat again.  She is always happy to see me.  Well, my parents are happy to see me too, but I find each visit there more and more stressful.  A stair lift device is being installed this week for my mother (much to my father's emotional and financial dismay).  But I suppose this is a fact of aging parents that so many others deal with in their lives.  I am grateful that after 46 days of being entirely bed-ridden, my mother decided to get up and join the world of the living again on October 30.  She told us she would get out of the bed when she was "damn-well ready"...and that she did!  So the rest of us are labeled cry babies and drama queens and all is now right with the world.