Ice Stacking on Lake Superior

This is mesmerizing. It was filmed along the shores of Lake Superior near Duluth Minnesota by Dawn M. La Pointe, Radiant Spirit Gallery. 

Is Spring Around the Corner? and other stuff

I saw my first robin of the year when I was on my way home from work Friday afternoon, and have seen them several times since then. And really healthy round ones too! So despite the continued chill and a few very, very light snowflakes this afternoon, maybe things are going to turn around sooner than we thought.

I finally finished sewing the black wool skirt yesterday, and also stitched up another infinity scarf. I've been working on the needlepoint here and there in the evenings when I'm watching the tube, which was how it all began. For sewing now I am switching to the medium blue linen/cotton blouse for spring.

Nancy & Larry

The last time I talked to Nancy on the
phone I was telling her about the needlepoint project and other things that I had completed in the past, including a crib quilt for my nephew Ian 17 years ago. Nancy did the Cat's Meow cross-stitch featured near my blog bio picture. She and her husband Larry live in my hometown of Portage, a suburb of Kalamazoo, Michigan.

I'm not going to go into a long story about my dysfunctional family, but my nephew basically doesn't know me from a hole in the ground since my sister cut me out of her life 15 years ago when he was still a toddler. When she was pregnant with Ian I made a crib quilt as a baby shower gift from my own design. It was a lot of work, but I was really into it and thought it turned out nice.
















Melissa and I have had a difficult relationship our entire lives, and when I was about 3/4 of the way done with it, it dawned on me that she would not like or appreciate it. So I was pleasantly surprised when she called to thank me for it, and she sounded sincere. But in all the baby pictures she sent, that quilt was nowhere to be seen in any of them. To this day I wonder if she gave it away - which come to think of it probably would have been a good thing so that someone else could actually use it.

I pieced both the front and the back, and then hand quilted along the seam lines. That was a bit slow going because I wanted it to be on the seam both front and back. It took some time, but I think it was worth it.

It didn't capture very well in my picture, but I embroidered my "signature" on the back; Aunt P Productions. I got the nickname "P" from my brother Matt when I was young, and when his son Jake was born, I became Aunt P.

Mom

Today was Prince Charles' 65th birthday. It would have been my mom's 80th birthday. She told me the story when I was around 20 of how she remembered when he was born. She was a teenager, and at the time she said it was pretty cool that he was born on her birthday.

Bonnie Prince Charles

Anne McDougal

The picture I took of her above was from 1982. We were on a road trip from my hometown of Kalamazoo Michigan to her hometown of Rochester New York.

I had earned a one week vacation from the job I had, and one of the main events of the trip for my mom was to go to her 25th high school reunion. After the reunion we headed to Vermont and New Hampshire. We were driving in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, which is a little ways southeast of Rochester, and came across this sign.

We immediately pulled over and got out and I got this shot of mom, we could not resist! It was a fun trip; I saw Lake Champlain for the first time, and we went all the way to the Atlantic coast in New Hampshire.

She took a solo trip to Nova Scotia the summer I took driver's ed in high school. I might post about that some other time, I have her pictures and other items from that trip. At her memorial service after she died in 1985, one of her friends told me how brave she felt my mom was at the time to make a trip like that, very independent.

It's something I think about in relation to when she and dad divorced. She said that part of why he left her was that he felt like she wasn't growing enough as a person. And I thought the irony is that after getting divorced I think she actually grew a lot. She and dad were both very smart, well read and into the arts, I'm thankful that I had that environment to grow up in.

Mom 1979

My mom's best friend Nancy Jackson Jones took this picture at the beach on Lake Michigan. She always tanned so beautifully, I wished I had inherited that. I expected my hair to go salt & pepper like hers since I had found my first gray hair at 21, but it was not to be. Like I said before though, I am the product of my parents; I got dad's height and her legs ♥

Mom on honeymoon 1956

Mom 3 or 4 years old