aunt janna and mini me

Our camera is broken, so I am mining the data base of old photographs. Here is my sister, Janna, and our niece, Faith, on Christmas 2003. As we got ready for church, we noticed they were dressed alike.
The quilt in the background is an anvil pattern I made for my sister, Beth, a while back.

cat quilt

Here is the first cat quilt I made--Catherine is working on a free form style that looks great--check out her progress.
This one is all reds. It is being held by a couple of kids attending Eve's Christmas party. I am chaperone to about fifteen 12-14 year olds who are at this moment using a kareoke machine someone brought along. My husband was able to escape with Seth and Paul was very happy to be invited to a friend's house for a movie. I would go sew but that would be in the attic where I would be too far away from the action and too cold.
The girls are very sophisticated and clueless. The boys are unsophisticated and clueless. They are a good group of kids and I am glad to see them enjoying themselves. And I will be even more glad at 10 pm when they go home.

Oh, good Christmas Story--Seth asked at about age 4 when it would be Christmas Seth, he had enough of Christmas Eve. A similar thing happened when Eve was about that age, she asked our pastor if they could change our church's name from St Pauls to St Eves. Sibling rivalry pops up in the best places.

winter in the city

Now, I grew up on a farm in Iowa, and there is no more beautiful place on earth than that place in Sioux County, but there is a magical beautiful to life in the city too, especially in winter. Here is my house and my gargoyles with tinsel collars.




And here is one of my favorite sites in Chicago in winter--the neighborhood children turn their front steps into sled runs. I had never imagined such a thing before I moved to Chicago.

St Nikolaas Day

Yesterday morning the shoes were filled with chocolates--Seth (8) asked the question we have anticipated, "How come St Nikolaas only came to our house on the block?"
I said we are the only Dutch family on our street, and the other families celebrate their own traditions. Satisfied him for now--the older kids know that whoever questions openly gets only sticks in their shoes.

Beth's Roman Stripe

My sister, Beth, loves to quilt, but her busy teaching and lecturing schedule leaves little time. She fits in quilting one hour a week during her daughter's guitar lesson.
She made this top many (17?) years ago, and for Christmas last year, my mother had it quilted and I did the machine work of the binding. This gave her another hand-work project of getting the binding done over the year.
My mom has had several of my tops quilted as presents for me--a wonderful gift.