I am teaching Lafayette, LA, right now. The ladies in my classes have been just lovely (and I must say that the food is also wonderful!)

Today one of my students, Cindy, gave me this lovely bag and I really thought I should share it with you. I don't often receive (and I never expect to receive) gifts from students. Cindy is already an accomplished appliquér. She works with a lot of wool, and cotton, and she hooks rugs. She does more but at that point i was just too impressed to remember more.

She said she often makes these bags for teachers. Aazing! That black fabric is waterproof shearling that she said she can't find any more. It feels like velvet and is stretchy. The appliqué is wool. It is now in my purse and will go with me everywhere. Thank you seems insufficient for such a nice present!

Sent from my iPad

Every now and then we get requests from quilters looking for a Piece O' Cake fabric that we no long have in stock. Out of stock fabric is not easily found on ebay or other websites. I thought I'd try adding a list on the blog to see if quilters who desperately need a bit of an old fabric can connect with a quilter who can help them out. You can see the list over there in the right-hand column.

The first person on this list is Kaye who really really needs some of this fabric:

I haven't figured out how to add photos to the list – they have to be part of a blog post. What that means is that you are more likely to get your request on the list if you send me a good photo, not bigger than 1000 pixels wide.

I can't promise to post all requests, but I will try to be helpful. Please let me know when to remove a request from the blog.

…to the sea. If you are old enough you are already singing the lyrics in your head.

Karen Kay Buckley shared a link with friends (and I'm lucky enough to be one) of a webcam focused on a bald eagle nest in the Norfolk Botanical Garden. This photo is dark because I took the screenshot in the waning light of the day. Click here to go to the sight and see the adult and their babies in real time. Daylight is better. I'm not sure what you can see in the dark because I haven't tried that – but I'll bet you don't see much.

Now that I've visited the site I find myself checking in on the birds. How fast we form links to animals, especially baby ones!

It does make one wonder though… where else might a quilter enjoy a real-time webcam? I'd suggest my studio wall but then you might catch me and/or Steve walking in less-than-presentable dress in front of the camera.

The birds are singing, spring has sprung in north Texas and I am quilting like crazy on my new Sweet Sixteen!

In between my manicure (so that my nails look pretty on camera in class this weekend) and mom's pedicure, and two trips to the pharmacy, I am trying to finish this quilt for Spring Market.

You'd think I have lots of time for this but I'm traveling a lot between now and market. I have to finish this quilt, and one small quilt for our next next book, and there are about 10 days total to do it in. I hope that helps to explain the lack of postings :-).

As I sit and quilt, this amaryllis is blooming in the window…

My friend, Helen, gave me a dish with three amaryllis bulbs. The dish is actually a wonderful loaf-sized baking dish that I know we are going to love.

This is a really nice birthday present and I am really enjoying them as I sew and sew and sew…

I'll write more on the Sweet Sixteen later. I'm learning as I go but so far I can say that I LOVE this machine.

How did this happen? Steve's spring break is over and we never got to sleep in! All week it felt exactly like my head was exploding. (FYI: that's an older photo of me and Linda but it captures my mood perfectly.)

To be honest, I know where spring break went – it went into moving Mom and Christy to Sherman. And, oh happy day, it's done. There are a variety of things that we either forgot to move or chose not to move that, as it turns out, they really wanted us to move.

Martha Gragg is handling the estate sale for us and there are a few things that she is able to send from OKC to Sherman like Mom's pens (who knew the jar of pens was meaningful?), and the TV remote (boy I hope it's the right one). Other things, too big or numerous to send, are just going to be in the estate sale.

I admit to waking up in the night with visions of the mess we left behind. Martha was clear, throw nothing away! In fact she went through the trash (stuff we pitched before she got there) and she said she found a lot of 25 cent items. But I feel a bit sad about the house my mom and dad moved into 27 years ago being left so unceremoniously. And then I think of all the folks, all over the world, who have lost everything and I have to just get over myself and move on. At least they have what they have.

And my goodness, they have a lot. I am amazed at what they have managed to squeeze into 1000 square feet. The little bit that is staying at our house is all put away and Steve can once again park in the garage. My house is clean! Oh happy day again!

On a slightly scary note, my mother is driving again. She has a valid license and her doctor said there isn't a good reason to take her license away. The car has been checked out and is good to go. My sister isn't drivng for a while, but she can ride shotgun and help with directions. I was seriously out-voted.

Steve rode with them to Walmart yesterday and assured me that Mom is OK to drive. She can get her smaller walked into and out of the car by herself. And, truthfully, Mom and Christy have way more places to go than I can take them to. They want to drive around town and see what's here at a leisurely pace. I don't have a leisurely pace in me right now (see photo at top of post). I am going with her to the doctor today. I do hope I can do it without clutching the dash.

Last but not least, click here to read Christopher's post on moving day. It made me re-think that day from his perspective. It's easy to forget that events like this effect different people in very different ways.

Oh, one more thing. We are having a sale on felt stuff and earrings! If you don't get our eNewsletter, check out our site. Links to the new stuff are on the home page.

Mom and Christy have moved – more on that later. Instead of writing a long post on the move right now, I thought I'd sharethis email from Charlotte Warr Anderson. Here she is:

"I thought I'd give you all a heads up about Frixion Erasable pens. A student showed me hers at Road to California in January. She drew a line, thin but quite black, and then ironed it and the line totally disappeared. It looked like the coolest thing ever!

So I went in search of these pens, which you can get a Staples. I bought the pack that has three colors in it – black, red and blue. Being quite the skeptic about things that are too good to be true, I read the back of the package. In small print it says: "Do not expose to extreme temperatures (<14degrees F;> 140 degrees F). If pen is exposed to temperature that reaches 140 degrees F the ink will be colorless when writing. To restore color, cool to at least 14 degrees F and the ink will again write in color."

Aha! I said to myself. If you iron the ink it's going to be way over 140 degrees so it's going to disappear. So I took some fabric and scribbled on it with all three colors. Then I ironed it and, sure enough, all the scribbles disappeared. But then I put it in the freezer for about 10 minutes and all the lines reappeared. I left it for about a week and a half while I went travelling and today I tried to wash the ink out. It didn't come out with soap and hard scrubbing and not even after I put rubbing alchohol on it. So then I ironed the piece dry and all the lines disappeared and then it went back to the freezer and all the lines reappeared (perhaps just a bit fainter).

This experiment was enough to persuade me that these pens are too good to be true and even sort of creepy – the ink is always there even if you can't see it. I wouldn't use them on any fabric or quilt you really cared about.

If I had a blog I would have put this on there but since I don't any of you who want to pass on what I've written can feel free to copy and paste this post

Charlotte"

So, there you go. Charlotte did some great research for all of us and so we don't have to. Thank you, Charlotte!