Well, the snow mentioned last time did materialize. There was a lot of it, as advertised, and we still have a few patches in the front yard. Our dog loves to roll in the snow it turns out, and still visits the biggest clump to roll around and scratch. It's supposed to rain today and I expect that will be the end of that particular snow.

Even though I've been physically ignoring this blog all month, I've been thinking a lot about Thomas and grief. It's been harder to simply sit down and write because everyone was home, then when vacation was over, people started getting sick and they were home again! It's hard for me to concentrate under those circumstances--maybe I'm becoming more like my ADD sons as I age. And now that I'm finally here, I can't remember what all of those profound thoughts might have been! So I am going to talk about something I'd like to do this year: a Remembrance Day quilt.

My Scottish friend Barbara suggested this project. She has sent me Remembrance Day poppies for the last several years, and goes to the Remembrance Sunday services they hold in the UK, remembering Thomas for herself. This year she sent video of bagpipers. Anyway, while talking about the services, she suggested that I might want to make a poppy quilt, after I told her about the World War I remembrance quilts I saw at the European quilt show in France in September. This led to an online search for patterns, mostly fruitless. However, there is a quilt store in Georgia (USA) that had a Remembrance Day quilt pattern I could download or a kit I could send for--I decided to buy my own fabrics, partly because by the time I'd found the pattern, my friend Debbie had found some poppy printed cotton I could use for some of the flowers. The pattern has "In Flanders Fields" printed on the last page, and I am going to try to figure out a way to put it on the back of the quilt, at least the first verse. My embroidery skills are probably not up to doing the entire poem. The pattern makes a quilt that is about 70 inches square which is a substantial item--my goal is to finish by the county fair in August, but with the grand-daughter coming, it may be August of 2011!

And yes, I do have baby quilts to do. Not only for baby Leah, but one of Thomas's Army friends is expecting multiples and they will need quilts as well.

Making quilts, writing this blog: both positive ways to deal with grief. I don't cry every day any more, though there are tears pretty often. I'm going to keep sewing and writing, and moving forward.