FLag Quilt Wall Hanging

On January 2 I signed up with a quilt group doing a series of small to medium sized quilts using the fabrics from designer Kaye England. I have many of Kaye England’s books and patterns, I love her stuff. I have even taken a class given by her. She makes quilting fun.

The third Saturday of the month I’m to go to Quilter’s Corner, a local quilt shop, and view, get instructions, purchase the kit and eat a goodie. This 3rd Saturday I was in Redding and a 98 year old birthday girl’s party, so 4th Sunday I was at the shop to get my kit, a flag wall hanging, 13″x19″, in red, cream, and blue.

On January 19, I met with my good friend, Shirley and my Singer Featherweight sewing machine, at her house and we both cut out, pieced, and sandwiched our wall hangings. Now the flags are ready to be quilted next week.

I’m thinking I will quilt in the ditch for the stripes,  a simple cross-hatch in the borders and sew shiny star buttons on the blue piece.

Don’t you wish you could have joined us?

The recipe for the goodies served is for

Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars

3 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, 2 sticks butter softened, 1/2 cup peanut butter crunchy, 2 slightly beten eggs 1 cup grape jam ( or your favorite flavor.

Combine all dry ingredients, cut in the butter and peanut butter until coarse like meal. Mix in eggs and stir well. Press half of the mixture in a greased 9×13 pan, spread all the jelly and crumble the remaining dough over the top. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.  ( I haven’t tried it)

Published in: on January 20, 2011 at 12:01 pm  Leave a Comment  

Genesis 4-6

Okay, I didn’t check the list last night and so overlooked chapter 7,  so will add it on todays’ list.

Thoughts:

Genesis 4:7  If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. . . . . .I must accept the consequences of my own actions, decisions and attitude. No body really makes me do anything, I choose. If I make a wrong decision, result is mine, I may suffer for it and I hope I will learn from it.  If I make a right decision, I’ll prosper.

Genesis 6:9  These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
In the margin I have written:  perfect with what God had required. God doesn’t ask any more than that, to do the best we can, with what we know God would have us do.

Published in: on January 19, 2011 at 4:18 pm  Leave a Comment  

Genesis 1-3

I’ve joined a challenge to read the Bible through chronologically. I have read the Bible completely in the distant past. It is time to read it again and this method is intriguing.  I’ll be posting comments on the others posts, hopefully I receive comments back.

Genesis 1-3

Genesis 1
Verse 1 … In the beginning GOD
I receive such comfort knowing God is at the beginning.
John 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was
not any thing  made that was made.
Since God is my beginning, the foundation of my life. I am secure. No matter what happens in all the remaining 1485 pages of my Bible and in my life.
Verses 2,3,9, 11 are a picture of my life before God, without form, void, and in darkness. Then God moved and I received light and a foundation and could then bring forth good fruit.

I am thankful for beginnings in God.

You’ll find another reader at:

http://giftedthroughgrace.wordpress.com

Published in: on January 18, 2011 at 1:19 am  Leave a Comment  

A word for 2011

I’ve read other blogs that find a word to be their theme for the new year.

Combining that thought with the message Sunday Morning

What are you going to “leave behind,” so you can move closer to God?

What negative attitudes, and actions of the flesh are putting you at distance from God and spiritual liveliness?

If there is to be any spiritual success in drawing closer to God as we go into 2011, “the flesh” will have to be left behind while we  ask God to search us, examine us, to prepare our souls as we draw closer to the judgment day of God

What would you like to see change in 2011? “One” definition of “insanity” is to want something different, yet still doing the same thing over and over again. We cannot often control our surroundings or environment,  but we are given control of our desires, actions, and attitudes. If  we want to change; we must  examine ourselves to find that which is displeasing to God and  leave it off, and/or change to draw closer to Him.

If you have had hurtful circumstance(s) happen to you,..what are you going to leave behind,..so you can move forward?

What  needs to be overcome in 2011, that you did in 2010?  All souls have some regrets of humanity. If we desire to draw closer to God, and want to see more  spiritually prosperity. We all need to leave some things behind.

What are you going to leave behind in 2011?

So back to my first statement, a word for 2011 – I keep thinking about ‘health‘. I have a physical health issue I keep ignoring, like maybe it will just go away. It hasn’t. I need to face my health and accept its needs.

3John 1:2  Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. John desired prosperity, physically as well as spiritually, for those to whom he was writing.

I want to prosper, too, spiritually by laying aside weights that beset me, physically, by caring for myself, and financially by being a good steward of what God has provided.

A toast for the New Year  —  HEALTH for the glory of God!

 

Published in: on January 18, 2011 at 12:31 am  Leave a Comment  

A New Year

This how I began this blog; it seems fitting still for this New Year

 

Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease,
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

John G. Whittier

And a scripture:

Isaiah 26:3
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace,
whose mind is stayed on thee:
because he trusteth in thee. KJV

Published in: on January 3, 2011 at 2:11 pm  Leave a Comment  

The Old Paths and An Old Sewing Machine

This afternoon I sat down for the first time with a 1930-35 Singer Featherweight Sewing machine, a Christmas present from my husband. It is a simple machine – beautiful to me for its simplicity. It sews forward and reverse with just a flip of a lever: down for forward and up for reverse. It came with assorted feet for different sewing techniques; I could identify a rufflier, a zipper foot , and narrow turn hemmer and some feet I’ve never seen before.
As I began to wind the bobbin and thread the machine; I thought of how many women, yea, men who have gone through these same motions, over this, through that , thread goes from right to left through the needle’s eye.
I wondered:
How many miles of thread have flowed through the needle’s eye
Of the hands guiding fabric under the presser foot
Of the items created wedding dresses, aprons, pillow cases, baby clothes, work shirts, school clothes, Sunday best and, of course, quilts
Of the piles and piles of mending
Of the seamstress….what were her thoughts joy, anticipation, grief, weariness?
Did she pray for the ones wearing the clothing?
Did she sing songs of joy?
Did she sew through her tears?

The phrase from the Bible “the old paths” came to mind and I found it in Jeremiah 6:16
Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.

The old paths        The good way

Many times I check Clarke’s Commentary with this verse I found this:
There is an excellent sermon on these words in the works of our first poet, Geoffrey Chaucer; it is among the Canterbury Tales, and is called Chaucer’s Tale. The text, I find, was read by him as it appears in my old MS. Bible: – Standith upon weies and seeth, and asketh of the olde pathes; What is the good weie? and goth in it, and gee schul fynden refreschimg to your soulis. The soul needs rest; it can only find this by walking in the good way. The good way is that which has been trodden by the saints from the beginning: it is the old way, the way of faith and holiness. Believe, Love, Obey; be holy, and be happy. This is the way; let us inquire for it, and walk in it. But these bad people said, We will not walk in it. Then they took another way, walked over the precipice, and fell into the bottomless pit; where, instead of rest, they find: – – a fiery deluge, fed With ever-burning sulfur, unconsumed.

I remembered family and friends who walked in the old paths, who walked in the good way and remembered being encouraged and blessed by their examples.

As I continued to sew my little project of binding Christmas placemats recycled from a table runner purchased from the thrift shop – I set myself to add to the miles of thread and cloth guided under the presser foot and to follow those gone before on the old paths.

Published in: on December 19, 2010 at 6:40 pm  Leave a Comment  

Truth in ‘ill-matched threads’

Life as Art: ill-matched threads

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads of her life, and weaves them gratefully into a single cloth…..

Rainer Maria Rilke

That line of poetry has been rolling over and over in my head for a week now. It speaks to me for obvious reasons as a maker of textiles, but the sharper truth is that I have a great number of ill-matched threads in my life, and I struggle – often neither gratefully nor gracefully – to reconcile them.

The demands and the joys of motherhood, the imperative to make us a living with a complete lack of sovereignty over my workspace, laughter and play and muddy feet and carpets and elderly cats with bladder issues. Etcetera.

The hope I find here, though, is possibility. I have been guilty at times of assuming that the best I can achieve with the threads available to me is a skewed and lumpy rag, fit only to be hidden under the sink for private and menial use. I’ve wished for different threads, felt ashamed to hold mine up alongside the smooth, glittering perfection of others. I’ve managed little sections of silky loveliness, only to feel despair and frustration when all that’s left to continue with that day is a kinked and prickly hemp twine.

The hope I hold on to is the image of the weaver (and it might just as well be knitting, crochet, or any other means of creating cloth), not judging her threads, grateful to have them as they are, using her creative soul and skill and ingenuity to work them into a unique and lovely textile; a sturdy, yet flexible cloth with fascinating textures and mesmerising eddies of colour. A cloth that is, like any great art, exactly what it needs to be – no more, no less.

received from http://impulsivearts.typepad.com/knitting/2010/06/life-as-art-illmatched-threads.html Thank you.

How often I feel like this, that what I have to work with doesn’t really amount to much. This woman had only a box of ointment, yet she did what she could, regardless of how others judged.

Mark 14:3-9  And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her. And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me. For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always. She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the  burying. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.

bold/underlining mine

This is what we are responsible for: doing what we can with what we have for the glory of God.

PS  This is the only post I’ve read from Knitting on Impluse, so I don’t know any other content of the blog.

Published in: on June 16, 2010 at 11:45 pm  Leave a Comment  
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43 Things about Us, A Work in Progress

This may take awhile to put together.  Statements are not in any order,  just how they came to mind.

1. We were both born in California about 30 miles apart, Selma for him and Fresno for me.

2. I have never lived more than 4 hours away from Fresno, He spent 2 years in Portland, Oregon for college.

3. He is 8 years 2 1/2 months older than I am. It has never seemed to make a difference, I have felt old all my life.

4. He has spent    years in college, I have taken 6 classes.

5. We have had 9 addresses, Shaver Lake, Rancho cordova, 3 different spots in Carmichael,  Sacramento, 3 more different spots in Carmichael.

6. We have 5 children, 3 girls, 2 boys; 2 daughters-in-law; 9 grandchildren 7 boys, 2 girls (we’re kind of light on girls)

7. We have had numerous dogs, most notable: Buddy, the beagle; Charlie, a black-faced shepherd; Rosie, the escape-artist basset; and not least, Silky Dude, a long-haired mini doxie.

8. Cats, we’ve had a few. He would say a few too many. Sir Thomas Dooley, a Siamese mix, we’ve had the longest of any cat, Taco, a black cat, Digit, my first multi-toed cat(I think he had just 6 on each front foot), and my favorite, Seymore Toes, the cat with 27 toes, he loves me!

9. Cars, I think this is the right order of ownership; jeep, ’63 Pontiac, Banana Dodge Van, chevy van, Suburban, green chevy truck, Buick Park Avenue, Suburban,  seems like there was an odd truck thrown in here or there. We drove my dad’s ranchero,These are the ones I mostly drove.

10. We moved to Carmichael , July 4, 1968, and really don’t want to live any place different.

11. We both garden, me in pots flowers, that seem to dry out faster than I expect them to, He in the dirt perfectly.

12. His favorite flower – tulips,  mine – yellow roses

13. He does things habitually. I do things whenever I feel like it.

14. He a morning person, yep, I’m a night owl (just not wise).

15.  He reads political news religiously, I could not care less about politics. In fact, I just sign my ballot, he fills in the blanks.

16. Neither one of us wears a watch.

17. His phone is always on,  I’m doing better at having my phone on since we don’t have a land line.

18. He usually lets me drive.

19.  We both love traveling in our rv.

20.  He has gone mainly vegetarian, I still love my beef.

21. As of October 20, 2010, we are living cozily in a 27 Komfort trailer.

22. We both are saved and sanctified, and are determined to give the Lord thanks for all He does for us.

23. We both have 4 living siblings, he- 2 brothers and 2 sisters; me-4 brothers.

24. In 2007, we traveled across country for 53 days and visited 32 states.

25.

Published in: on June 16, 2010 at 9:18 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Wishing to Wish

I received this:

“My room of 6

“Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass…it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.”

My room of 6
I am supposed to pick 6 women who have touched my life and who I think might participate. I think that if this group of women were ever to be in a room together, there is nothing that would be impossible. I hope I chose the right six. Please send this back to me.
Remember to make a wish before you read the quotation.”

I thought ‘make a wish’ and I went blank. It was as if I forgotten how  to wish or dream. Where am I if I forget how to wish? Under what cloud am I living, kinda like the little kid in Peanuts who walked around with a dark cloud over his head?

I would start to wish. . .  and then think:

but that couldn’t happen

there is no use in thinking about that

these last months have taken care of that

I don’t usually forward stuff, but I might have if . . . I could have been able to wish for something.

Published in: on May 26, 2010 at 6:58 pm  Comments (1)  
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Through Four Year Old Eyes

These are the earliest two memories I have. These are mine, I don’t remember them from a picture because there were no pictures of these events.I don’t know which one happened first. I was 4 years old. We lived at Morro Bay in a trailer park, my dad worked on the steam plant as an iron worker. At least three uncles worked there also, Uncle Billy Ripley, Uncle Cecil Ripley, and Uncle Richard Topper (we all lived at the same trailer park).
I started kindergarten in Morro Bay. My mom and I went to the school to meet the teacher and see my new classroom. The teacher showed me around the room pointing out all the toys. She told me I could play with ‘the’ doll. The doll was a walking doll and about 3 ft high. I was excited! But I never got to play with the doll.  Someone always got to her first. Looking back I realize I was a very timid and careful child,  but I always have felt that the teacher lied to me.

Next memory: All the uncles, my dad, and their friends went deep sea fishing. When they got back they had gunney sacks full of fish. One friend, named Shorty asked me if I wanted some M & M’s. I said yes. He opened his hand and it was full of fish eyes.

Wonder why I have trouble trusting sometimes?

Published in: on May 19, 2010 at 6:08 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Playing House

Last week ( I think) we gave Uncle B a white wood cabinet for his kitchen. He lives in a very old house with very little storage. The cabinet is now his pantry. Part of what went in the pantry came from wood shelves in the breakfast nook. I asked him if I could move the shelves to the opposite wall, which would give access to the windows. He didn’t care. So today I played house in his kitchen washing shelves and dishes, window seats and the floor, and starting to rearrange a widower’s kitchen. I’m tired. I hope he can find what he wants. I’ll go back again tomorrow and try to do some more damage.

Published in: on May 18, 2010 at 5:12 pm  Comments (1)  
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Tomorrows in Jesus Hands

When I was about 15-16 years old, my Dad and I sang ‘I don’t know who holds tomorrow, but I know who holds my hand,’ as a special for church.  It is a precious memory for me.

That was many years ago and I really didn’t know what the song meant. I hadn’t had to trust for myself that Jesus really did hold tomorrow. Now after going through some tomorrows that were really dark, I know, I believe, I am trusting that Jesus to continue to hold my tomorrows, today.

I Know Who Holds My Hand

I don’t know about tomorrow;
I just live from day to day.
I don’t borrow from its sunshine
For its skies may turn to grey.
I don’t worry o’er the future,
For I know what Jesus said.
And today I’ll walk beside Him,
For He knows what lies ahead.

Many things about tomorrow
I don’t seem to understand
But I know who holds tomorrow
And I know who holds my hand.

Every step is getting brighter
As the golden stairs I climb;
Every burden’s getting lighter,
Every cloud is silver-lined.
There the sun is always shining,
There no tear will dim the eye;
At the ending of the rainbow
Where the mountains touch the sky.

I don’t know about tomorrow;
It may bring me poverty.
But the one who feeds the sparrow,
Is the one who stands by me.
And the path that is my portion
May be through the flame or flood;
But His presence goes before me
And I’m covered with His blood.

Malachi 3:6  For I am the LORD, I change not; 
Hebrews 13:8  Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

Published in: on May 17, 2010 at 1:33 pm  Comments (1)  
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Sorting and Packing

Many years ago, my mother moved from Fresno, CA to Mt. Vernon , Illinois to Naples, Florida;  she went through her years of McCall’s Needlework magazines and ripped pages out that she wanted to keep because she couldn’t take the whole stack with her. I thought that was sacrilegious; I had spent hours in those magazines. They were the bible of needleworkers.

Today I finished going through 12-15 years worth of Knitting magazines ripping out pages I wanted to keep for the very same reason; magazines are too bulky and I don’t have enough room to keep them.

I wonder what did my mother think about while she ripped? Was she focused as I was on the probability of really making the item for which I saved the directions; . . . slipping the pages into page protectors that would finally find a home in a three-ring binder.

I may never make many of the items I have saved, but when I look at the binder I will remember the stack of magazines on the shelf and the enjoyment of dreaming about making or trying every one.

Published in: on May 16, 2010 at 9:55 pm  Leave a Comment  
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I Will Trust

Many days have passed since I have written here.

I cannot begin to describe the roller coaster ride I have been on.

Closing our business.

Selling our stuff.

Bankrupting our credit.

Learning to lean.

Accepting new ideas.

Trying to put them into practice.

Knowing that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

I bless His name!

I continue to trust His wisdom and ordering of my steps.

Published in: on May 13, 2010 at 1:05 pm  Leave a Comment  

Reminder

Reminder

I didn’t write “See
a squirrel run across an
electrical wire outside
your second story window
so you can catch your
breath in awe
on my list of to-do’s
I was much more practical

“See art”
“Explore sites”
“photograph memories”
rather than
“be in wonder
of what shows up”

It took a
childhood unconditional
companion to remind me

–Julie Jordan Scott, © 2010

Published in: on April 27, 2010 at 10:02 am  Leave a Comment  
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