Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Wheelchair races












On Dave and Courtney's wedding day we had a little additional adventure with R and Claire. We went to look around the city while we were waiting for the reception to begin. We visited our state capitol building that had recently been remodeled. No one was around. No one. We walked past a room and saw four wheel chairs just sitting there. Hummmmm..........what would you have done? Exactly! Well, we had the time of our lives having wheel chair races around the room. After reaching the point of exhaustion (it's harder to maneuver those chairs that it appears) we put them back and moved along. No damage done and a great time was had by all.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Quilts galore
















Victoria pieced and hand- quilted this king size quilt in Americana colors. It was beautiful!


















Karen (not in attendance) made this queen size rag quilt for her daughter's bed. Notice that some of the quilt blocks are cut in smaller sizes and add variety to the pattern.















Beverly's children made her this memory quilt for her 40th wedding anniversary. Each family contributed pictures, and each grandchild had his/her own block to decorate. Priceless!














Susan found this quilt abandoned in an old hideaway bed they bought and she rescued it. Isn't it beautiful? It was undoubtedly made from old scraps of fabric or cut from clothing that had worn out.















This quilt was made by Marlene's aunt out of her old wool suits. It was very heavy and warm. It reminds me of the quilts our Grandma Mayme had in her basement bedroom. Those quilts were extremely heavy and very warm, just like this one shown.















This star quilt was hand quilted and purchased at a quilt bazaar.














Each piece of this quilt was hand stitched by Fay, shown holding up the quilt. It's taken her years to sew all the pieces together and now the top is finally ready for hand quilting. All the pieces are made from silk or nylon. It was amazing! Fay is a real quilting expert.




















This quilt is also one owned by Fay. It is a family tree quilt showing her parents as the trunk and each of their children as a major branch. The parent's names are at the bottom and each of the branches represents one of their children. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren are the leaves growing from each branch. It was beautiful!




















Here is another hand-stitched heirloom quilt shown by Jil. It was given to her by her mother who had since passed away. Her six daughters all want to inherit it. I can see why.














This is another heirloom quilt shown by Jil. Isn't it beautiful with the embroidered quilt blocks? I love the pink and white color. We all commented that it is too bad that quilting has become almost a lost art. Quilts add so much to a home.




















Jil's daughter has made a baby quilt for each of her nieces and nephews. This is a rag quilt she made for one of them. She was unable to have children for 10 years, so she spent part of her time making quilts for her nieces and nephews. Now she has four children of her own, but she still loves to make baby quilts and give them as gifts. She showed us several varieties that her daughter has made.

At our last Dust Busters gathering, we shared quilting ideas. Some women have made beautiful quilts and some have been given heirloom quilts from others. The group had some great ideas to share, such as which scissors to use when clipping rag quilts (shown above) and how to use different quilting frames to achieve different results. Some quilts are made by hand, some are tied with yarn, some are hand sewn with yarn, others are machine quilted and some are hand pieced. It was a great evening of sharing ideas for making quilts and showing quilts that have great meaning to some of the women. It was a great gathering of wonderful women.

Women's groups

Since my nest is empty, I have joined two women's groups. This is something I always wanted to do when I got "older" and the time has arrived! One is with my mother-in-law Pat and the other is one I started a few months ago. The group I go to with Pat is called the Cleofon club and no one seems to know what that means or why it is called that. Funny! Anyway, it's been going for about 25 years. Most of the women in the group are Pat's age. They are amazing women and have lead very interesting and productive lives. The rest of this group is made up of women my age who are mostly daughters of the older women. It was very nice of Pat to invite me to join. They meet for lunch one a month at the home of one of the group members and then they have a speaker come and talk to the group. So far these have been the interesting topics and speakers:
- Emma Lou Thayne - poet, author and song writer who wrote the hymn "Where Can I Turn for Peace" in addition to many other amazing books and some wonderful poetry
- Lunch and tour of the Minerva Teichert art collection at the museum of art at BYU
- Margaret Young - author and BYU English professor who has done a lot of research and written three books on the early black members of the church. I bought all three books and plan to read them this fall
- Artist Elspeth Young artwork web site. - She came and did a slide show of her paintings of women from the scriptures. She is working with Camille Fronk Olson (BYU religion professor) on this project and she had some beautiful paintings to share.
- Field trip to the SLC Tabernalce to listen to an organ recital given by Bonnie Goodliffe, Tablernacle Choir organist with a tour of the recently remodeled Tabernacle afterwards. Amazing experience!
- Christmas dinner with spouses and entertainment provided by a very good violinist and pianist.
They took the summer months off and will reconvene next week.

The second group is made up of women who have lived in our Park 8th ward neighborhood over the years. The requirements to join the group is that the women have to be at least 50 years old and have lived in the neighborhood/ward at some point. Many of the members are women/friends I love who have moved to another part of the valley, but everyone knows everyone else. I started the group by sending letters to 22 women asking them if they would like to join a group and meet once a month. Sixteen women responded that they would, and the group got underway five months ago. We meet in the evening since many work. At the meetings, we have a refreshment, visit, and then share our interests, hobbies, talents and such with one another. We made up a list of things we would like to learn about and members of the group will lead the discussions. We charted out the rest of the year and these are the topics: Journal writing ideas, including starting blogs; attending a play together at the SCERA outdoor shell - the King and I; quilting display and sharing of ideas; activities to do with grandchildren; reading to children, good books to share; skin, hair, make-up helps - making the most of what we've got; crocheting and knitting ideas - start a simple project; attending a Christmas program together. So far the meetings have been great and I think that the women really like being involved. We'll meet in our family room most months, unless someone else would like to be the hostess, then we'll travel to another home. I think we can go for years just learning from each other and sharing our hobbies and talents, etc. We'll just keep it simple, but I think it will be a lot of fun. We have talked about naming our group the Dust Busters since none of us seem to collect much dust. I guess it's a type of Red Hat society, but whatever! It's an interesting time of life and I want to make the most of it.

I enjoy meeting with these women and learning some new things together. I love to learn new stuff and be exposed to ideas and different ways of doing things. It should be good in many ways.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Patriot Day, 2008


God Bless America
Words and music by Irving Berlin© Copyright 1938, All Rights Reserved.Used by Permission



"While the storm clouds gather far across the sea, Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free, Let us all be grateful for a land so fair, As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer. "


God Bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Thru the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America,
My home sweet home.
God bless America,
My home sweet home.

See these moving videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJNqep77vBw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZIApwWq1AU&NR=1


Flag rules and regulations link.

Happy Birthday Google!

Happy Birthday to Google! 10 years and counting.

  • Thanks to Google we can publish easily on the Internet through blogging. Without it, it wouldn't be so user friendly.

  • Thanks to Google we have You Tube.

  • Thanks to Google we have Google Maps and Google Earth.



    Check out this article in the DNews.

    "Internet search was considered such a low priority at the time (1998) that Page and Brin couldn't even find anyone willing to pay a couple of million dollars to buy their technology. Instead, they got a $100,000 investment from one of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s co-founders, Andy Bechtolsheim, and filed incorporation papers so they could cash a check made out to Google Inc. In a nod to their geeky roots as children of computer science and math professors, Page and Brin had derived the name from the mathematical term "googol" — a 1 followed by 100 zeros."