Christmas Almost Here

Mr. & Mr. Claus have dropped by the neighborhood, Christmas cards have been trickling in . . .

. . .and just today this lovely floral arrangement arrived from my niece back east as I was shoveling the 7 inches of snow that fell overnight from my walkway! What a wonderful surprise to brighten my week!

With the baby quilt and books finished and sent on their way, I've been working on my own Christmas card list, on the home stretch. I've not bother with much decoration (yet), just hanging a few pewter snowflakes and silver stars and getting out this pillow which has a holiday feel to it. It's made from a test block for an antique reproduction quilt I was commissioned to make; the block is called forbidden fruit tree and is machine quilted. I also have one that looks like an appliqued poinsettia (although it is actually a variation on a coxcomb block from the 1800's).

As I stared at the autumn-themed wallhanging in my livingroom, the spot where I rotate quilts in and out, I couldn't think of a holiday-themed wallhanging to replace it with. Could that be? I think perhaps. Then I thought of this quilt in blues made in 1995 (and hand quilted), and decided since so many people DO decorate with blue at Christmas time, this would have to do.

It's called "Life's Waters" and has inscribed on the back:

"While we attempt to regiment our lives, uncontrollable events color our emotions murky dark to flashing bright and swirl beneath the routine like waters under a bridge."

'95 was the year the job that brought us to Wisconsin started to go south and an offer my husband couldn't refuse emerged. We'd been less than 2 years in a house we had built on 6 acres in the country and loved so much. To take the job meant selling and moving from what we thought would be our dream place until retirement. No wonder I was waxing philosophical as I finished up this quilt that suddenly looked like a bridge over water.

So not exactly a Christmas quilt but I am enjoying having it out again and remembering the lovely loft studio where it was made before the move. And it's been another year of uncontrollable events that I've learned to be philosophical about. No wonder I haven't been able to stop reading this quotation since I ran across it not too long ago. I hope it brings year end peace to you as it has to me.

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination. C.S. Lewis

Happy holidays to all, no matter how you celebrate or in what clime!