Wherein I Befriend a Speckled Hen

Fifteen years ago (gasp! How time flies....) we moved to Florida from the midwest. It had been cold in Minnesota but one compensation was that there was a quilt shop on (almost) every corner! At first glance Florida seemed to have none. Fortunately, that is not the case. It just took me a while to find them! 

And so. October found me back in quilt country, the Northwest this time with, you guessed it! A quilt shop on every corner! I had plenty of "explore alone" time on my visit as The Bean and The GF had to work most days. I could have caught up on reading, but really? With the entire Willamette Valley at my doorstep and Fall colors at their peak? 

 Miss Google and I took to the roads.

Chances of getting lost were slim. In college I took a course in orienteering  which did not in any way prevent me from getting lost regularly for the rest of my life --- until now. Now I have an orienteering device in my pocket way better than those wiggley old compasses. I even know how to use it. And it comes with an imperious female voice that instructs me to make a legal u-turn whenever I look like I'm about to go astray.

Three minutes down the highway, three more on leafy country roads ablaze with red and gold, and we were at our first quilt shop.

The sign was hanging in front of what seemed to be a residence, not a shop, but I soon spotted the quilt shop in a separate building back behind the house.

It was a slow day. Most area quilters were preparing for a big quilt show slated for the coming weekend so the owner, Karen, had plenty of time to chat as she invited me to look around.

 Many of the display quilts on the walls were her own designs, and everywhere my eye fell there was something to marvel at including hens everywhere, speckled or not. 

I felt like a kid in a candy store.

The wide variety of fabric included some of her own lines. She prefers more traditional than wild and modern. 

 The antiques in Karen's shop are a carry-over from her original business - antiques. As she gradually added  more and more fabric, her business morphed into a full-blown quilt shop. Her antiques look perfectly happy in their new life displaying quilts, fabrics and notions. Karen's patterns have been featured in several national quilt magazines and also in a French magazine ---- oo, la, la! I was hanging with the big kids now!

 I resisted the temptation to buy any fabric since I have enough already to open my own quilt shop, but I did find a sweet little vintage fabric panel for a baby alphabet book ---  perfect for my new little grandniece.

  Since the weather forecast was for rain, Karen invited me to come back the next day and spend a few hours sewing. No need to ask twice! The sights of the Willamette Valley would still be there when the sun came back.

Shortly after ten the next morning I pulled in at The Speckled Hen. The day was grey and damp, perfect for sitting and stitching. Karen worked on samples for the shop and I set about making the cloth baby book. The Guinness Book should take note: I actually finished it the same day I started it - unprecedented.

It's no surprise that people who love quilting share many of the same interests. We chatted about everything under the sun - families, quilting, children, travel, grandchildren, cooking, quilting, gardening, quilting again and antiques.

Several times the ping of the doorbell announced the arrival of customers most of whom knew Karen and each other. In addition to whatever they'd come in search of, the chat looped around to how families were doing,  who'd gotten married, who'd had a new grandchild and whose son had a wonderful new job. Phones came out and pictures were shared as grandmas have shared them forever, only now they're using fancy new gadgets!

That's Karen on the left with some old friends who used to help out in her shop.

The friends obligingly took a picture of me and my new friend with one of her designs on the wall behind us.
And a chicken.

It seems like all the quilters I know are gardeners too. Before I left I stopped to drool at the flowers on 

Karen's front porch...

The eye for color and design does seem to carry over from quilting to gardening or possibly the other way around.

The moral of my long, meandering story is - if you're feeling lonely go visit a quilt shop. Chances are good you'll make a new friend. 

As I did.

Driving Through Winter to the Promise of Angels

Sunday was a beautiful day, as I set off on a four hour trek from Buffalo to Albany, to visit oldest son and family. True, it was cold, but the sun shone, and the sky was blue. Naked trees , like sentries, stood guard along the highway, rifles pointing skyward.

Upstate N.Y. appeals to my Irish eyes, and I understand why so many of my countrymen settled here. The rolling hills and green fields, albeit presently fringed with snow, remind me of the green fields of home. The wintry sun gleams off grain silos and farmhouses, and the lovely old red barns make my fingers itch for a pencil or some charcoal.

Lazy jetstreams crisscross the blue, and I wonder , as I always do, where all those people are going.......Black deer on yellow signs leap from the shoulder, shouting their soundless warning, "watch out for us!" And then, the surprise of a black kitten with a white shirt, sitting in a snow-speckled field, head cocked curiously to one side, watching the cars speed by. I sent him a mental message: "Dear little kitten, don't step out here, go back to where you came from."

The ever- present highway patrol were in evidence, hiding in low- slung ditches, waiting to pounce on the heavy of foot. No, they didn't catch me [I'm the gngerbread man...]

Needing to get gas, I took an exit through a tunnel of rock, where five to six foot long icicles hung, far from the reach of the sun......"When icicles hang by the wall , And Dick the shepherd blows his nail...And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail...."

Closer to Albany the trees were more graceful, sporting lacier silhouettes against the dusky pink sky. I took the wrong exit, of course, and got lost. Wouldn't want to tarnish my reputation by getting it right first time.....But, finally arriving, I was rewarded with curly-haired , blue eyed smiles and hugs from two little angels, and who wouldn't travel to the ends of the earth for that?

Weather Wimp

It takes about two and a half hours to fly from Tampa to the Frozen North. Considering the weather we had taken off from, the pilot was hesitant to hit us with the weather we were about to land in, but it's part of his job, so he did . The information included the words "high winds" and "snow flurries", which was greeted with a low rumble of discontent. But what are you gonna do? I dug my high necked woolly sweater and scarf out of my carry-on bag, and broke out in anticipatory goosebumps.

Walking out into the teeth of the icy northern air I was glad I'd remembered my all-encompassing woolly coat, and mad that I'd forgotten gloves. When you live in Tampa, gloves are not at the top of your must-have list. I did have sunglasses, which serve two purposes: protection from the blinding snow glare and from having your eyes bombarded with tiny ice particles.

Frozen fingers fumbled with rental car keys and got me inside, just moments before I turned to a block of ice. With the heat on high I sat, shivering, while body parts thawed. And it occurred to me that my winter coat wasn't the only thing that had been in mothballs for the last five years. My winter driving skills have been in long term storage too.

I inched tentatively out onto the road, wondering if it was icy. The natives were whizzing by at alarming speeds. They knew the roads were dry. I wasn't going to take their word for it though. Better to irk a few natives than to find out about ice the hard way. Confidence grew as I buzzed along. It wasn't so bad after all. Mercifully, I remembered the way to the OC's digs. Where it was warm.

What is the first thing an Irishwoman does after being gone from home for several hours? Puts on the kettle and makes a cup of tea! And he didn't just have Lipton's, he had Barry's, bless his heart. And what does an Irishwoman crave to go with the cup of tea? Company. But one can't have everything, he'd be home by and by. Meantime, safe arrival, in out of the cold, with a cup of hot tea ---no complaints from here!

Oh, to be an Octopus

Hey house! I'm home! Silence. It's me. You know, the troublesome one. The one with the penchant for pissing people off. The one who can't control her blubbering , blithering emotions. It's nice to go gallivanting about the country, but it's even nicer to come home. In Irish they say "Neel aon thinthawn mar dho hinthawn fain" [Please, no groaning from all you Gaeilge scholars out there--the spelling is phonetic so people can make a decent stab at the correct pronunciation....] It literally means "there's no hearth like your own hearth." Chivers marmalade had a label on their jars, a picture of a blazing old fashioned fire in an old fashioned kitchen, with cooking pots hanging over it and a little black cat curled up nearby. It was done in shades of yellow, gold and black and made me want to crawl right into the picture and curl up with the cat. The phrase and the label, though unrelated, always go together in my mind.

So, one more venture into the wild blue yonder, one more safe landing, thank you God, and one more opportunity to see our tax dollars at work. I have yet to see an octopus in an airport security line, even though an octopus is the one creature perfectly designed for the job: a tentacle to hold the purse; another to hold the I.D. card, which must needs be kept outside of the purse due to the neccessity of showing it over and over to security personnel; a tentacle to hang onto the carry on bag; a tentacle to hold the coat, which must be removed, presumably to reassure said security personnel that one does not have dangerous assult rifles strapped to one's person ; yet another tentacle to hold one's boarding pass out for inspection; a couple of tentacles to assist in the neccessary removal of one's shoes, while making sure that all the other tentacles don't lose the run of themselves and forget what it is they're supposed to be holding onto....

And today, the pinnacle of idiocy. Because I did not have it in a ziploc bag, I had to surrender my tube of lip balm which is a hair less than three inches long, but a threat, apparently, to national security. A kind gentleman behind me in line, who was also rolling his eyes at the nonsense, put it in a plastic bag with his own stuff, carried it through the security equipment and returned it to me on the other side. Did the plastic bag neutralize the threat from the lip balm?? I can be quite dense on matters of national security. Maybe I missed something.

The kicker is, stowed in my carry on bag was a truly lethal pair of knitting needles about which I was hassled not at all. Is it just me or is there really something cuckoo about all this?

Hangin' Out in Heaven

One thing that would make me very happy after I die would be to discover that heaven was a library. Note to God: if You like this idea, you can get some pointers for the design by checking out the downtown library in Columbus, where we went this morning. Not only was it heavenly, it was warm. Which, outside, it was not. Florida turns people into weather wimps. If it drops to sixty, we think it's cold. But, back to the warm, heavenly library.

We were on a hunt for a sweater pattern for DD to knit. She wants "simple", I'm trying to encourage " adventurous". Which harks back to her childhood --- "no mommy, please let's NOT turn up this interesting looking side road, and get lost and run out of gas and have to push the car home, again..." She has a talent for exaggeration.....My eyes watered at the number of books available for us to browse through. We selected a "few" and staggered to the childrens' section to peruse them while T, 3 1/2 and B, 2 1/2 played in a childrens' play area that was about the size of our entire library at home. We had to beg and cajole when it was time to leave, they were so absorbed........DD checked out several knitting books, the boys some picture books, and I "Saturday" by Ian Mc Ewan, and "Dancing with Cats", which a good friend raved to me about a few months ago. A cursory glance through it makes me think it was written for crazy people, by crazy people, about crazy people and their crazy cats.............But a library is proof that there is room on earth, and in heaven, for all of us.

Dogged Blogger

Airline travel --not conducive to daily blogging. Up too early, trying to pack enough warm clothes. The bosom of family is a great place to be, but while it warms your heart it doesn't do much for frozen toes. Youngest Son shepherded Addled Mother to correct gate......Waiting in the security lines, AM wondered why she still gets twittery [birds fly, twitter too...... a clue?] after all these years. In the sixties hopped regularly between Dublin [school] and Limerick [home]. Would never have maintained connection with the Old Curmudgeon without frequent traipses through airports.

Back then you weren't required to practically disrobe before they'd allow you on an airplane; they didn't put you in a box and blow air up your skirt; you weren't sqeezed, like a sardine, between you neighbours in the window and aisle seats...........but waiting at the other end today was Liz, and a little blue eyed "rooster"---dotage has it's compensations. Said "rooster" maintained a wide eyed, uncharacteristic silence on the way home, but when I reached back and tickled one sweet little handful of two and a half year old leg, he offered the other.....

And how cool is it to sit down to a delicious meal prepared, without apparent effort, by your firstborn, the child you worried would die in infancy because your cluebag, back then, was SO empty? At the prompting of a clued in friend, I pestered the library for books on making baby food from scratch instead of feeding her from a Gerber jar. In some way I'm too tired to figure out, it reminds me of the ladies who paid me to teach them to play tennis and then became so good they left me in the dust.....but happy. YS will shepherd himself to the correct gate on Wednesday and the OC will drive over............ brain breaking up into garbled gibberish...must wash teeth....sleep......zzzzzzzzz