travel – OccasionalPiece

Or, We Stayed Home This Christmas.

It certainly wasn’t intentional. We’d been planning this year-end trip with our son for four months. He and his lovely wife Kim were taking their four daughters (and one new son-in-law) to three European cities and invited us to come. Oh, boy, we were thrilled! However, two days before Thanksgiving the Scooby-Doo muscles in my husband’s shoulders (or whatever they’re called) went on strike and he could hardly move. We cancelled our Thanksgiving plans. I forbade him to get out the Christmas boxes. We visited the ER, our doctor (twice), had an MRI, and now he’s in PT. But still, the Christmas trip was a go, albeit tentative.

Here we are, the pose at the beginning airport.

I had my squircles–I was ready!

Here we are at the connecting airport. Still excited, still ready to go with our little passport pouches and all, posing by a nutcracker. Having stayed out of airports for Christmas for many years, I have to say, it was lovely to see all the nice decorations.

We found our gate, sat down just as the airline cancelled the flight to Amsterdam at the gate next to us, and a whole planeload of people went streaming towards the Help Desk, long lines forming. Glad that’s not us, we said, and of course, after two posted delays (mechanical problems), it was us. We went streaming towards the Help Desk at the far end of the terminal, but that only got you a chance to scan the QR code to see the agent (one of three). We grabbed a cup of soup, and after some more time, we were at the top of the list. The options were not good. Because of the Amsterdam cancellation, flights were already full that were leaving. After some time, I looked at my hurting husband, and we both realized we couldn’t complete the trip, given the new (possible, but certainly not probable) itinerary. So much was up in the air, and three hours later, we were too, returning home.

I spent some time looking out the window, the trip so close, yet so far. The plane trouble was “hydraulic problems,” which of course, would cancel the flight.

We welcomed photos of our son and his family as they hit the sights. We went to church two days later and I wept through the service, so incredibly disappointed in missing out on creating memories with this part of our family. We’ve been to all these cities before, but it was the time and experiences with these lovely four young women we would miss.

I have a great church community. By the time we left Christmas Sunday services, we had three invitations to dinner, to help fill this lonely week.

The first was an outside movie night with lots of friends: The Muppets Christmas Carol, one of my favorites. We stayed for a while, grateful for friends and laughing children and pizza, then I took my husband home.

I found this kit I’d purchased some time ago, and thought: no time like the present. I had lots of time, so started cutting. My sisters and daughter began calling me every day.

One of those days in there, I opened up the 2026 calendar book, and started getting that set up. [After my regular calendar planner stopped publishing, I tried out Golden Coil last year and liked it. I made some tweaks to this year’s layout, but am using it again.] I backed up our photo libraries onto a new drive, doing my squircles while I waited. My husband used the heating pad and tried to get better. We talked out what we went through, only now considering options we couldn’t see that night in the airport.

I left the calendar notice on my Phone, but what you can’t see is the word Cancelled after the Ellipsis. And yes, we went to the Dillman home for dinner one night, for a delicious meal of pork roast and potatoes (I brought rolls) with their two young boys, our “adopted” grandsons since our family lives so far away.

More calendar prep, with stickers from my sister Susan. My old calendar had monthly tabs and this one doesn’t, so I add them (click on the right photo to see the tabs).

I went to Michael’s on Christmas Eve to see the new “JoAnn’s stuff.” Waste of time. I did post about it on Instagram where people definitely have something to say.

We stayed in the rest of this day as the rains arrived — something we’ve needed all fall. I made Creamy Tortellini Soup, and we had a quiet night. I figured if I could make it to Christmas dinner at our friends, I might probably stop being weepy.

We head out on a walk on Christmas morning, our neighborhood washed clean by the rain, where I say hello to the lovely Grevillea ‘Superb’ bush. This is at the halfway mark, and it was about now that I stopped aching, knowing my disappointment was but a small thing. Time and perspective help: we have each other and will have other Christmases.

The Giffords host us, two new faces folded into their family table of children and grandchildren; I’m incredibly grateful for this kindness, and they make us feel welcome: no strangers at this meal. We enjoy the true spirit of Christmas as envisioned by Dickens in his Christmas Carol, and as preached in the gospel of Luke.

I finish up the cutting of the quilt later on that night.

Every night I enjoyed the smiles of my family on their trip.

The day after Christmas, another morning walk, then I’m back in the sewing room. I’d cleaned it up, cleared it up before leaving, but now it was time to mess it up again with scraps of fabric, bits of pattern directions pinned to a quilt over my cutting table. Time to thread the machine, plug the iron back in and fire it up.

Would I ever have a chance like this again?

A chance to say to my husband, you are the most important thing in my life and if we need to stay home, we will? A chance to feel the goodness of our friends as they welcomed me into their homes, living the gospel that the Christ child came down to earth to teach? A chance to take a walk in a freshly-washed world and see the amazing beauties all around me?

I hope so.

So often life is not what we expect, and between you and me, it can be hard to shift gears, especially after thinking and dreaming about something for four months. But thank heaven for angels all around me, for creativity which pulls me forward, for counting my blessings which ground me.

I hope you had a Merry Christmas. In the end, I did too.

Haha. This was in one of the airport gift shops.

I’ve now been to the Carrefour Quilt Show in the Alsace area of France three times, and this is start of my third write-up of that amazing experience. The Carrefour Show is like none other: set in four small towns in France (some with castles, like the above photo), in the Val D’Argent, or Silver Valley, where silver was once mined.

The show draws from all over Europe and the quilts are as varied as the quilters in all these different nations. I am often surprised by what I see. I am never disappointed.

This post covers:

Espace Commercial
Venue 1: Theater with its traditional antique quilts
Venue 2: Carrefour Contest, one of three exhibits in that space

I have a main page where I link all the posts, so you can see the ones from before, as well, and see why I have loved going back over the years. Of course, my husband Dave is hugely enthusiastic, too, and he took many of these photos. This year we were able to spend the better part of two days there, and took a zillion photos. That means that when I post — which I will do sporadically over the next while — there will be lots of beautiful quilts to see.

We lodged this time in Colmar, a lovely town that feels medieval, but has all the comforts (like pumpkins with words).

As always, in many places there are reminders of the Great War (WWII) like a tank in the park which we passed by as we walked to get our rental car. We picked that up early on Thursday morning, September 18th, the day the quilt show started, and drove past the castle in the first photo into the Val D’Argent, stopping for some breakfast croissants on the way (it *is* France, after all!).

After being caught in the traffic, we parked near this very old building (1912), picked up our tickets and walked up into the town, seeing store windows all decorated up with quilts (I know it’s hard to see):

Espace Commercial (Shopping and Vendors)

I knew what I wanted to do first: Shopping Area.

Vendor tents are set up along the pathway to the souvenir stand:

Stickers, pen, exhibit book…they don’t have a bag this year, so in we go to the Espace Commercial.

Click to enlarge any photo.

1-My favorite bag place: ABCDaires. I’ve already made the little orange bag in the far corner (see below).

2- Christine, from Chifonie Studio has really lovely jewelry, made from art clay. She also has lots of buttons, and fun decorative pins.

3- Torneria Germans Castels sells wooden things from Germany. This booth had so many cute wooden buttons and fixings.

4- Le Atelier D’Eoie had so many cute things in their booth (they were so friendly, I took two photos of them). I bought a kit for a stuffed animal and a small quilt.

The other photos are crowd shots; I only took photos where I had permission. Here’s the thing: could I have found some of these things in the US? Possible. But I hadn’t ever seen them before and loved how European everything was (duh) and it — as Marie Kondo would say — sparked joy. (And I just love those orange pouches!)

I also loved the booksellers, and I bought a book in French, because why not? Last year I made a purse from a Japanese book, translated into French and it came out just fine. If you click on that link, you can also see a pouch made from the kits from ABCDaires.

On the side of the Espace Commercial, they had these two wooden cutouts: the one of the left celebrating thirty years of the Carrefour Patchwork Show, and the one on the right, a figure that denotes the Alsace region, and is seen everywhere. Okay. To the quilts!

Venue 1: Theater in Sainte Marie-aux-Mines

In case I didn’t mention it, the main town is Sainte Marie-aux-Mines, and that is where we will start. This year, it was all on the bottom floor and the display was traditional, Amish quilts.

The Carrefour organizers bring in scaffolding and partitions to hang the quilts, as it really is set in an old theater. Below is a series of photographs; click to enlarge. I did try to get title cards for every quilt.

Click to enlarge any photo.

Now a slide show. Click on arrows to advance; unfortunately, you cannot click to enlarge the slideshow photos.

After we finished with the downstairs, we went up…we love this staircase!

Peeking through the glass in the locked doors of the balcony, my husband took this photo of the exhibit below.

Venue 2: Osmont Pavilion

The section of the Pavillion where the quilts are hung is one large space, and the quilts “divide” it up. The contest theme this year was Avant Garde, and here is a slide show, with title cards. (Click on arrows to advance; unfortunately, you cannot click to enlarge the slideshow photos.)

We’ll see more of Tania Tanti’s work in another post, as she was a featured artist, but I wanted to say that nothing on this quilt is pieced. She starts with a white piece of cloth and paints her shapes, then quilts them. Details below; click to enlarge.

I found this one to be intriguing, and moving, as it is a tribute to her husband.

I showed you the cut-out close-up first, then the total quilt.

(I did mean to put all these in the slideshow: technical difficulties!)

The quilting on this was so close together, and it sculpted the cloth, moving the eye over the surface.

A tumble of houses, a view to the landscape.

Olga Stang’s work, Monet’s Pond, intrigued me, because of the construction of all those little two-sided squares.

Then they look to have been laid on another cloth, and folded to mimic petals, or vegetation on the Monet’s lily pond. Tiny beads are placed at the intersections.

She believes we’ll all be doing more recycling in the future, and if it turns out like this, it will be a good goal.

As always, I owe a lot of these photographs, as well as the ability to take this trip, to my husband Dave; I’m most grateful to him. There are two more exhibits in this venue, but that will be on the next posting about Carrefour. I’m just now starting to process, to revisit the photographs, to think about my visit. Watch for the next one!