TO BEGIN,

begin.

                                                                                          William Wordsworth

You're all encouraging me with your comments on Facebook!

BE YOURSELF BECAUSE...

...everyone else is already taken.

(Oscar Wilde)

I can't remember exactly where I took this photograph of work on a quilt, but it was in an exhibition somewhere in Scotland.

GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS

To hold this little book in your hands is to imagine you are holding a beautiful poetry book and indeed, the writing looks and reads like a collection of poetry but, it is very much a novel.

There are three voices in the book, the father, his two young sons and the crow who moves in to the home until he is no longer needed.

Buy it and treasure this jewel.

CLEVER GIRL

In the middle of this book and loving it.  The principal character was born around the same year as I (1951), and the book chronicles her life from childhood to middle-age.  The chapters are like mini essays with the 'happenings' of the particular period finished at the end with a poignant observation about her thoughts on looking back at that particular period.  She captures the essence of the periods she writes about.  "Listen to this David!" and I read him a passage.  "Wasn't it just like that?"...

"...People forget that in 1966 there were still bomb sites:  it took a long time to stitch back together that fabric of our cities ripped open by the war - or rather, not to stitch it back at all, but to tear the fabric out and throw it away and put something different in its place...Sometimes I'm nostalgic now for that old intricate decay, as if it was a vanished subtler style, overlaid by the banality of making over and smartening up that came later.  My mother never was nostalgic.  She got out the minute she had the chance..."

An edit to this post...

There was a note at the end of this book which said that two of the chapters had been published by the New Yorker as short stories, something I picked up while reading - a certain completeness about the chapters.

FLANNEL QUILT

Finished this flannel quilt recently.  It's been lying in a box for years as I felt it was a bit small and didn't have much material left that matched to make it bigger.  Anyhoo, dug out what I had and with a bit of playing around, managed to get enough bibs and bobs to put two more rows on the bottom and side.

Took up to Robyn's to tack it for quilting and she suggested tying it, which we proceeded to do.  All that was left for me to do was come home, go through the scraps and get enough to make the binding.

David loves it!  When I'm sitting quilting in the evening, he puts on his beanie and drapes the quilt around his shoulders.  Because I'm covered in a heavy quilt, quilting, I get a bit hot and turn off the heating!

WINTER SUN

David doing some music practice on the side verandah.

IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR GREER...

...she's in Tel Aviv.