Just Before Christmas

When I'm riding in the car, I look out at the rearview mirror and there is a warning at the bottom that says: "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." Well, Christmas is closer than it appears, too. I still have things to make.

My daughter invited Husband, Son and I to her house for a Christmas Brunch. Sounds interesting. We're to take a gift from each person--okay, that's the theory!-- to exchange. So far, I've made a set of king-size pillow cases of a really nice flannel. (Do I really have to give them away?) I'm working on a set of placemats which will be machine quilted. And I'm planning to make a very nice chef's apron that a guy won't be ashamed to wear.

So most of Christmas is in the rearview mirror, so far as planning is concerned.

The Editted Life

Son pointed out to me this evening that it had been way too long since I'd posted a blog. Well, I'd been busy!

Fall is always busy. It's a time when you have to button up the garden for the winter, plant things to come up in spring, rake leaves and stack them in the compost pile. I've been trying to finish a quilt. Every night when I go to bed, I promise myself I'll work on it the next day. But I'm so discouraged with it. It's beautiful -- ugly is not the problem. It's BIG -- my favorite colors, some of my favorite patterns -- but I have to give it away. Well, I'll have to finish it for Christmas.

I've been writing a book and it has fired my imagination, so I try to work on it every day -- or at least think about it until the scene is firm in my mind before I fire up the computer. That saves me a lot of editting.

It occurs to me that my favorite activities -- gardening, quilting and writing -- all involve as much destruction as construction. I have to pull weeds and plants that have run their season. I cut fabric -- choosing is easy, cutting into it is hard sometimes. And I have to edit what I write.

Sometime life edits me. I can't do what I used to do. physically. I find I don't want to do the things I used to. sometimes I want to do something and it just doesn't work. It's a lesson to be learned.