I give thanks that I have a family I love, that I am healthy and happy, and that I'm only 55. As I see it I'm early 3rd quarter – if I live to be 100 I'm not much past half way. Good thing because there is still so very much to do!

I don't know about you, but we worked our asses off for four solid days. Actually, I'm up 4 pounds so I only wish I had worked some of it off. There you go. It's possible that the very fine Thanksgiving dinner was more calorie-rich than I thought it would be.

So, what did we do? Wednesday when Steve got out of class he, mom, and I went to Twin Oaks to buy trees and shrubs. The pickup was seriously loaded and I didn't take a photo. Oh well. The Shumard red oak was the biggest of the bunch. Steve dug a 24" x 24" x 24" hole in black clay which is not easy work.

It looks really good!

The wheel barrow in the foreground is full of liriope that I dug up so that I could plant the two Knock-Out rose bushes. I dug up more the next day so that I could move some chrysanthemums to make room for another bush.

Steve planted crepe myrtles and an abelia at the side of the house. They will look really good in a year or so.

In the back I planted some bushes. And the grass that got dug up in the front I planted in the bare spot in the back. The previous owner had a storage shed that is oh-so-gone now. Mom had topsoil put in. There is a big 'bare spot' that you can't see off to the right to fill.

In Mom's bitty back yard there's now a weeping yaupon. The one I planted 17 years ago is amazing now.

And we planted a Chinese pistache and an Oklahoma redbud that I didn't take pictures of. And a Texas redbud near the driveway. I've gotta say that when Mom was telling me what all she wanted to plant I was skeptical that it would all fit AND look good. She was right. Looks good and it all should fit as it grows. Mom is going to live in a forest if everything lives.

The rest of our weekend was spent getting out and putting up Mom's Christmas stuff, my Christmas stuff, and our outside lights (not a huge deal, we throw red lights at a big bush, a small tree, and a tree trunk), cleaning house and a whole lot of other small stuff.

Steve put in a mug rack for Mom yesterday and today. This is a built-in shelf for coffee mugs. Mom and I and Christy are/were all very much into fun mugs. With a mug rack they are on display and easy to grab. I should take a photo… Let me know if you want one.

Elanor spent the night last night. She is such a girl!!! I did her nails. We watched a movie, had popcorn. She went to bed and slept all night. Got up in a good mood. Was generally easy and pleasant all day long. She spent much of today with Mom, baking and visiting. I gotta tell you, Jack is way more work at this stage than Elanor.

I worked on real business today (which is why Elanor was with Mom). Didn't get to what I thought I would but I did put a new pattern up on the site. I'm not exactly telling everyone yet but if you've read this far you might as well know what's new, right? Click here to see. I'll probably do a separate blog post and newsletter on this later. 

Other things I'm recently thankful for… Mom got a speeding ticket on Wednesday. You'd think I'd be upset, but I'm not. She was going the speed I would go in the very same spot, she just got the ticket. I'm thankful to know she's keeping up with traffic and not driving 10 miles below the speed limit. Tomorrow I get to call and see how much her ticket is, and possibly signing her up for a defensive driving class. Should be interesting.

Steve bent the passenger door and front quarter panel on his truck. There is this 3' tall post that sticks up in the grocery store parking lot. He was parked by it but forgot about it when he went to leave. Oops. Again – this is something I can see myself doing so I'm thankful he did it for me. It's so much easier to get over it when he does it.

You know, I've realized even more this holiday than most, that Steve and I are not 'rest-ers'. When we have time off, we have projects. We did it again for the last four days. Honestly, it makes back-to-work-Monday look sort of peaceful. I don't dread the work-week! I'm happy and thankful looking back at a long weekend well-spent.

In classes and lectures, and in our books, Linda and I both stress the importance of designing your quilt on a design wall. I'm working on a quilt for a new book and I thought I would share the background with you.

I started with an unusual yard of fabric designed by Yoshiko Jinzenji for Yuwa. It was expensive and I've held onto it for a long time. I should have taken a photo before I cut it up but if you click here you can see a dress made out of a similar fabric by this designer.

I had to cut the yard up and add to it to have big enough backgrounds. The quiet fabric in each of the blocks is the Yuwa fabric.

This is quilt with three vertical panels. Each panel has 3 14" x 14" finished blocks. The three panels are currently separated with a narrow strip of that way cool light-to-dark dot fabric designed by Katie Pasquini for Marcus Brothers. I don't know how old (or new) it is. You can see a wider strip of this fabric on the right. Before I cut strips for the two sides I want to get the applique fabric up on the wall.

Just for grins, here's what it looks like without the vertical sashing:

I know what the applique design is and I have an good idea of how the applique is going to look on these backgrounds. But I'm not going to know for sure how it all looks together until it's all up on the wall. What I'm looking for at this point is an interesting background that feels balanced. What that light-to-dark sashing does for the composition is to weight it – lighter and a bit airier at the top, darker and heavier at the bottom. I like that. And it's interesting that it takes so little of that fabric to do the trick.

The other thing I'd like to point out is that it's important to buy those expensive weird fabrics that you love when you see them. I sincerely wish I'd bought more of that original fabric. I'm going on a (probably futile) fabric hunt for more of it. Or something similar…

It's been a long time since I reared butterflies so I was surprised to learn that now is the time they emerge from the chrysalis. Elanor's art teacher set her up with the proper plastic habitat and the un-hatched butterflies. She took care of them and then got to watch them emerge a few days ago. She brought them to our yard to set them free. Here they are in the box…

Elanor works to get the box open…

We thought once the lid was off they would fly away…

Nope, they just hung on to the box lid, upside-down. We weren't quite sure what to do so the lid went back on the box. Then we noticed the little door in the top of the box and we opened it and left it open.

We got tired of waiting and went inside. When we checked again about 30 minutes later, both butterflies were gone. 

I zoomed in on the butterfly in the photo and noticed this one's little fingers. I know they aren't really fingers but, still, I am once again amazed at the clarity of a good digital photo. (Click the photo and you'll see an enlarged version of this image.) Really, a good camera can make any of us look like a decent photographer.

I've spent the last 1.5 hours in circular conversations with various customer service people at AT&T and now I have a headache. And I'm very, very cranky. This is mom's phone. It's a pretty shade of red and that is the only good thing I can say about it.

This phone has never worked well for her and lately it has hardly worked at all. The AT&T folks told her it was a simple phone (perfect for her!) when she bought it. It's not. I'm pretty tech-savvy and I can't figure out how to turn off the music (which comes on by itself at odd times). I suppose I'm way spoiled by my iPhone but seriously, if I can't figure this stupid phone out how can I expect mom too?

It should be easy to use but, especially for mom, there are just too many things that happen when you push the various buttons. She needs a plain phone. Her physician (and my friend), Helen Schulze, told her she needed a Jitterbug. Now, not later. I heartily agree. It looks perfect. AT&T has nothing remotely like it. 

So this afternoon I went to the AT&T store in Sherman and the poor kid (JT) who helped me (and he was nice) got stuck with an increasingly irritated me. The thing is, mom's phone really doesn't turn on half the time. I've seen it not work. She has tried to call and couldn't. It's defective.

She has 4 months left on her contract and the best they could do was sell her a slightly simpler phone than this one and extend her contract for 2 more years. Even if she decided the new phone wouldn't work for her and she returned in the allotted 30 day return window of opportunity, she'd still have a 2 year contract. I hate AT&T!

I talked to the onsite supervisor. JT (who was still pleasant and trying to be helpful), called it in and talked to another supervisor, who then passed it off to another supervisor. The end result is – tough luck. The phone doesn't work, if she wants out she can pay a $75 cancellation fee. Have a nice day. 

AT&T has phones for the disabled and they let me talk to that representative. Guess what? The 'special' phone for someone that needs a simple phone is the same one I had already told them wouldn't work. I about lost it.

I left the store with mom's defective phone. She said, OK, let's cancel it and just pay the fee. So I called them and darned if that person didn't try to talk me into the 'simple' phone. I didn't swear and I did try to be nice but I'll bet I sounded as incredibly irritated as I was. And still am. But it's cancelled now.

Cell companies, cable companies… they get away with this stuff because there's not a lot of options for us as consumers. I would move to Verizon in a heartbeat after today. Does anyone know how Verizon coverage is in Sherman, TX? And can anyone tell me if their customer service is any better or would I be trading the devil I know for pretty much the same devil? If I do switch, I will have to wait until my contract is up and Steve and I would both have to have new iPhones that worked on the Verizon network but I'm mad enough that that looks like an OK option. I'm tired of rewarding AT&T with my money.

So, deep breath, and back to work.

I had heard about the tentmakers of Cairo but I never learned more about them. Bonnie McCaffery's newest vidcast is about these skilled craftsmen. 

I don't have a lot of time to 'watch' my computer but I found this to be well worth the time. The men, the tentmakers, are appliquers. The 'tents' that they are making were traditionally fabric art pieces that hung in an actual tent. The inside of a tent could be covered with these lovely works of art. As the culture changed, so did the art. Now the tentmakers make their art to hang on walls.

As an appliquer, I was amazed at the way they work from a sketch drawn on the background fabric and even more stunned at the speed at which they work. Lightning fast, warp-speed stitching! 

These men have been 'tentmaking' for many, many hours every day for many years. Their skill-level is stunning. I don't think I want to stitch for as many hours as it would take for me to be able to sew as fast as they do. I'm happy to find peace in stitching at a slightly slower pace. But I do very much appreciate what they do. 

This is Bonnie's 64th vidcast so there are many more to watch. Click here to go to the page with more of Bonnie's vidcasts.

Craigslist works. I'm late to Craig's List but I at least knew about it because Christopher has bought and sold there for years. I had not.

Mom decided a week or so ago that the time had come to make the Mustang go away. Seriously, does this look like a car that a 79-year-old with bad knees and a fused back should be driving? No. She could hardly get in and out of it! I drove it for a day and I could not believe that she had been getting in and out of it for so long. I felt sort of like a bad daughter.

Rather than asking Chris to list it for me, I decided to go on Craig's List myself. It was amazingly fast and easy. I started my account. I built an ad. Poof. Done in less than 15 minutes (that didn't include the time to take and crop the photos but that didn't take long either.)

We had three emails within an hour, none of which panned out. But today there was an email and (poof again) the car is gone and mom has cash. Steve did go to the bank first to find out how you can tell if a $100 bill is real or bogus. He checked each one.

So – word to those who have something to sell – go to craigslist.com and tap into the market of those who want to buy in your locale. It's fast and easy and it really really works!

PS – Mom got a bit misty-eyed to see the Mustang go. It was Christy's car and she did love it. We have a history in our family of taking 'car pictures'. These are really leaving-Mom's-house pictures, next to the car.

I cannot believe I don't have Christy next to her Mustang, but I don't. Can't get one now. (FYI – you should remember to gracefully pose for those pictures that you want to be there when you are gone.) Anyway… here's a sample 'car pic' from 1993:

I had a perm. Oh my. The kids were little. My brother was still speaking to me! (His wife still does speak to me and his baby daughter is 19 now.) Those were the days. I have lots of car pics from OKC and they bring back so many memories. We always huddled and smiled by the car before driving away. It was a good tradition. I need to remember to start snapping pics before we drive the kids to the airport to go home.