All Stacked Up

Does this give you an idea of what I've been up to lately?

Yep. Work. And, I'm afraid, the stacks around my desk don't even look that tidy. Ah, well. It keeps me intellectually active (ahem), I can do this here at home, and it pays for the fabric and such. I should not complain.

Still. There are things I'd rather be doing.

Thanksgiving weekend was lovely and family-filled. We spent Thanksgiving day proper at my brother's house, visiting with him and his wife, my parents, and my sister. We stuffed ourself on a delicious dinner and, as we often do, remembered how my grandma always had gingerale on hand after dinner to ease our bloated tummies.

Over the weekend we also had a visit with Roger's aunt Donna and his cousin Jeanne, two interesting and funny and charming women. Donna and I always talk books...she's an avid reader like me, and we exchange recommendations. She has pointed me toward Lawrence Sanders' McNally series (which I've always avoided fearing it was that obnoxious sexist stuff) but she promises I'll enjoy it.

And speaking of novels, I just ripped through a new corporate thriller novel by Joseph Finder called "Killer Instinct." It's about a normal guy who befriends a fellow he meets when he has a car accident. They strike up a friendship, he gets him a job...and suddenly, things start going great for him at work. His business competition disappears, his rivals have odd problems... Is his new friend making thing happen in the background? It was so fun to read a book I didn't want to put down.

On the quilting front, my friend Janet and I made the trek to Berkeley the other night to attend the show-and-tell meeting of the East Bay Heritage Quilt Guild. It's probably the biggest guild in California, and it has tons of talented quilters (a lot of well-know teachers, as it happens, belong to that guild). And they do something interesting: instead of having show-and-tell at each monthly meeting, they save it up for one special meeting each year. It's very well organized-- each quilter displays her quilts while a speaker reads the quilter's description of the quilt and points out features. It's like an evening-long, moving quilt show! It was very fun and very inspirational. I saw fantastic quilts by Mary Mashuta, Roberta Horton, Lynn Koolish, Ann Rhode, and others. The pictures are not up on the guild's website yet, but check back...they'll be up soon. And you can see the EBHQ pics from a past show and tell while you're there. It was especially fun because I ran into some of my Bishop's Ranch buddies... Pat! Delaine! Nancy! It was well-worth the ninety-minute drive, and of course it gave me and Janet a lovely chunk of time for talking.

I'm making progress on the brown quilt for my MIL... I'm piecing the back (why do I dislike that step so much?) then it'll go on the frame for quilting. Fun ahead!

But now, back to that pile of files...