All the smartie pants people who Know Stuff say we’ll be shuffling through covid for quite some time, and that we just need to practice keeping going. So my usual at this time of year is a round-up of quilts, a way to say, well I wasn’t quite a total slouch in 2021. Evidence follows.

I made nineteen quilts:

Here’s the listing in my Quilt Index–300 Quilts. I thought the photo above of me at our Guild Meeting, wearing a mask and holding the 19th finish (A Tiny Spritz of Elements) was appropriate. We’re back to virtual meetings for the next three months with the Omicron Covid-19 outbreak.

I spent a lot of the time at the computer, writing up eleven new patterns. Sometimes I’d write a Pattern Lite pattern, then keep adding things until it became a full pattern. That happened with Flowering Snowball growing up into Blossom. Others were old patterns, previously released, that needed extensive revision and clarification.

I took only TWO loads to the thrift store, and then they wouldn’t accept a couple of pieces of small furniture. I cooked so much the first year of the pandemic, that I was more hit-and-miss this year, but still averaging 3-4 home-cooked meals a week. We are partial to Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese and whatever can be found in the open-this-bag-and-cook-it aisle of the grocery store.

If I take into account all the “ifs” (Covid-19 rates, masking, health, how the world is turning), I’ll be at Road to take a class and see my quilts in January. Ditto for February’s QuiltCon in Phoenix. Beyond that, you’ll find me in my sewing room, stitching away, writing some more patterns, keeping a difficult balance.

If you are new to this blog, you can find out more about me by reading another Happy Old Year Ending post.

Happy 2022. Happy Quilting!

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World

BY RICHARD WILBUR

A favorite poem from grad school, it is thumbtacked over my washer. My wash doesn’t hang out on the lines between buildings, nor does it ever look like angels, but I think we all are trying to keep a difficult balance.

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul   
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple   
As false dawn.
                     Outside the open window   
The morning air is all awash with angels.

    Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,   
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.   
Now they are rising together in calm swells   
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear   
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

    Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving   
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden   
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
                                             The soul shrinks

    From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,
And cries,
               “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,   
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”

    Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,   
The soul descends once more in bitter love   
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,   
    “Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;   
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,   
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating   
Of dark habits,
                      keeping their difficult balance.”