Definitely November

Yesterday was as gloomy as a November day can get - chilly, too.  Robin, Marie and I headed to tiny West Topsham, VT, to play Quilt Bingo at Mary's house.  She is closing her online shop and wanted to get rid of all of the fabric she didn't want to keep for her own projects.  I'm curious to know where she keeps her longarm (if she still owns one) as her house didn't seem that big.  

At any rate, the attic where we played was quite cold, and after two hours, we were glad to go home, heavily laden with fabric and other goodies.  I bought a good part of a bolt which will make a couple of backs for $12, and Mary gave everyone three matching yards plus some more in winnings.  I wish I could say I didn't plan to buy any more fabric, but that's impossible!

Here's part of four tubs of fabric a friend from my genealogy group gave me last Sunday.  She has been cleaning her mother's house because her mother now lives in a nursing home.  At one time, the lady made lots of doll and other clothes, so quite a bit of the fabric in these tubs is unusable to me.  

I will take a little at a time to various quilt meetings this winter, and also to the ReStore.  There are silky and large pieces of lacey fabric as well as knits and corduroys.  If I sewed clothes, I would definitely be happier.  The tubs take up a lot of room in our dining room, but I'll chip away at them.  The fourth tub is in the garage because it's even bigger than these.

Sitting next to the tubs are some of the things I'll be taking to the state quilt guild meeting this coming Saturday.  There are two coffee makers and part of a coffee pot for a silent auction, as well as supplies and a quilt rack.   I will put some of the tub fabric into tote bags for giveaway also.  I doubt if I'll take anything for show and tell - all this stuff is enough.

Earlier this week, Paul and I went downtown to visit Marsha at her antique shop's new location.  From there we bought Paul some new boots and then looked at a new monument at Hope Cemetery.  At first, we thought it was a mausoleum, but there is no way that we could find to open it for more bodies.  

It's quite cute, as you can see from this photo of Paul on the porch.  The clapboards and windows are on all four sides.  But there are no birth/death dates of any of the family members.  Future generations will not be happy with that omission.

As you can see, it was a lovely day that day, but it seems that as soon as November came, so did the clouds.  I started quilting a bed-sized scrappy quilt on Friday, and it's just the right activity for these gloomy days.

A day off

Life has been so busy lately, that it's been a while since I last blogged.  I've been involved with the Friends of the Library annual meeting, the state quilt guild's fall meeting, and getting ready for the Genealogy Fair this coming Saturday.   Paul's brother Jim was here from Alabama all of last week, so we did some sightseeing and got together with family members twice.  Yesterday was, finally, a day "off" for me, and I enjoyed it immensely.

The morning started with fusing and cutting some more items for the collage quilt.  I have a lot of floral fabrics to cut for the treetops and am so glad to have those new padded Karen K. Buckley scissors.  I have some of the pieces scattered over my piece, but it will be a while before I am sure where everything will go.  Today I'll drive over to A Quilter's Garden to pick up the scissors I left behind after class.  We were all borrowing items from each other during class, and I couldn't find them when I was packing up.  They are quite sharp, so I was glad when Marie let me know I'd left them behind.  While I'm there, I may end up with a teensy bit more floral fabric, too.

Yesterday morning also found me finishing up the details for posters about the Friends' Light Up the Library project and its accompanying A Christmas Carol play.  They have been sent to the library for artwork and copying.  I wanted to get things out early as the staff is busy training the new director who I had lunch with Monday.  She seems very enthusiastic about our various projects.

After lunch, I made a big batch of oatmeal cookies for Saturday's genealogy fair.  They're to fuel the energy of the volunteers who'll be tabling (yes, that seems to be a verb these days).  We'll have tables for people to find out more about searching for ancestors from various countries and ethnicities, as well as learning how to use online resources.  I'll be introducing our special speakers and filling in at various tables for breaks and lunches.

In the late afternoon, while the furnace man was busy cleaning and getting us ready for winter, I finally found time to read the latest mystery, Home at Night by Paula Munier, a Vermont author who features Mercy, a veteran of the Afghanistan conflice and her dog Elvis.  This one takes place around Halloween so is just right for now.

A little of this and that

 Much of my time has been on the computer over the last week or so.  I've been working on publicity for the Nov. 4 genealogy fair as well as a mailing for the Friends of the Library's annual Light Up the Library program.  We solicit contributions from local businesses and groups to decorate the library with trees, wreaths, and other things during the holidays.  This year it's tricky because all of our downtown business owners suffered some sort of flood damage, with at their businesses or at their homes.  So we're trying to be sensitive in our solicitations.  It's a major fundraiser/raffle for the Friends. 

Last week, I read a couple of mysteries as "palate cleansers" in between copy editing a friend's new novella.  He usually writes creepy stuff, but this is a straight whodunit, which was a relief for me.  It has taken me seven hours to go through on a first pass, and I will now read it through from start to finish again to make sure I didn't miss anything.  By the time I finish Paul's books, I have usually looked at them at least three times and still we find typos in the final work.  So I want Alan's to be in fairly good shape when I turn it back over to him.  This is the first time I've edited anyone else's work besides Paul's, so it took me a while to get comfortable with Alan's writing style.

Today I hope to get the last borders onto Rows Parade.  One of the nine 73" rows is at left, unassembled.  With sashing and borders, it's grown to queen size very rapidly, and that makes it difficult to handle.  I hope to take it to the quilt shop tomorrow to choose a back for it and to give it to Marie to quilt.  Although I received ten yards of unbleached muslin from Paul's sister, I will save it for smaller quilt backs as it's 60" wide.

Family history

 Over my 35+ years as a librarian, I tried to avoid genealogical reference work whenever possible.  But since I've been retired, I've been drawn deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.  Now I run a genealogy club for people in the area.  It's basically a support group of very nice people, all doing our own thing.  Some like to keep expanding their family trees, while others are sorting through family memorabilia to discover clues to ancestry.  We even organized a genealogy "fair" for the community last fall to share what we've learned.  

It's been an interesting journey so far for me.  I've learned that 1/4 of my roots are firmly southeast Asian stemming from many Indonesian foremothers on both sides.  These ladies had no written documents beyond basic data.  Some didn't have family names; others adopted Christian names after marrying Dutch men, schooling or other life events (unknown to me).  It's very typical for people living in colonized parts of the world.   I have become accustomed to almost every branch of my tree dead-ending somewhere on the maternal side.

As a librarian and an amateur writer, finding more branches of the tree isn't as important as finding and writing stories of relatives anyway.  I started with a story about my great-grandmother who went around the world with her second husband, a journalist, back in the 1930s.

That was a lot of fun to research and write about, and my Mom especially loved that there were even newspaper accounts and interviews to include.  I then wrote a story about the summer my brother and I spent with my grandmother and great-grandmother in the Netherlands in 1960.  My brother added some memories from his six year old point of view, which made the writing especially fun.  Next, I tackled a brief biography of my grandfather, an entrepreneur and journalist who spent World War II in Suriname as a political prisoner of the Dutch.  My Mom added some valuable insight on that story, and I need to continue to capture more while I can.  She's 98, has a great memory, and wrote a detailed memoir of her early days.

Talking with my brother about various aspects of family history, I decided to write a biography of my stepfather next.  He was a generous spirit with very strong opinions about politics, right/wrong, cars, sports, and more.  Luckily for me, he had written some memoirs in a class and also given a long speech for his 85th birthday a few years before passing away.  I had also written his obituary before he passed away, making sure to check with him about basic facts.  More research has turned up facts about his life that could be included in what is now a ten page story.  Sorting through and scanning photos to include is the next step in the process before I share the draft with my Mom and siblings.

Who's next?  That remains to be seen.  

Making headway

Yesterday, I got the hang of machine piecing the curved blocks for The Avenue and really started sewing more quickly.  It took a while!  The templates came and are easy to cut as long as I remember to cut the "C" part of the Drunkard's Path a little larger and then trim when sewn to the "D."  The rest is easy.

I still need to get some more black and white background fabrics, but have been judiciously cutting what I have in the meantime.  I was in a quandary about colors when I first started, but the more scrappy trees I make, the more they blend in nicely together.  The stems are hand appliqued, which is nice in the afternoons when I can sit and watch TV or sit on the porch.

My other UFO is still in the "looking at it and wondering what to do" stage.  A friend of my Mom's, Julie, a Colorado quilter, gave me a little batik some years ago.  I shuffled it around and forgot about it until I did a little cleaning in the sewing room.  It's time to make something.  It feels like there's rayon in it, so I'll use some fusible interfacing and keep it small - wallhanging size.  I'll use the tie dyed fabric for a small border or just the binding.  All suggestions welcome!  It is crying out for some hand quilting, too, which will be nice.

I have been knitting about 4 rows a day on my light brown wool sweater, and it's not photogenic, but I am making good progress.  Because it's knit in the round on #4 needles, each row is quite long, and I think I'm on the 4th ball of yarn.  Maybe I'll finish in time for fall.

Today I'm facilitating the genealogy club meeting via Zoom.  It's our first attempt.  We usually meet on Thursday mornings at the library which has been closed for over two months.  We normally take the summers off, but if this works, we may just try to get together once or twice.  Everything (theater, Heritage Festival, library programs, etc.) is cancelled this summer, so it will be nice to see folks again.  I haven't done a lot of data collecting recently, but I have been going through a lot of family photos and writing some family stories which have been really fun.

The Genealogy Fair

Our local genealogy group (it's a club, but it sounds more serious to use "group") held a fair yesterday.  As coordinator of the group, I coordinated the event as well, and our local historical society co-sponsored.  They upgraded their WiFi and let us use the historic building for free, both very important elements.  We had tables set up by country of origin (German, English, Irish, French/French-Canadian) and special interest (Jewish, Enslaved/slave holding, Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org).   

I filled in for a man who had a death in the family at the Family Search table where I was kept quite busy.  I helped a young woman find her grandmother's maiden name so that she could go further with her research.  I had a long chat with a lady who had been adopted and hoped to find relatives via DNA.  And an older lady who had some detailed questions about her Italian ancestors turned out to be the sister of our neighbor, four doors down.  It's always a good feeling to help people, even just a little bit.

Some statewide organizations had literature tables with representatives, there were some displays from members, and we had a kids' table.  I would say 15 of our members helped out and 35 people attended, which is five more than the 30 I said would make it a success.   During clean up, people were saying they'd like to do it again, but, for me, every few years would be just fine.  I will need to delegate more of the prep work next time!  I was tired but happy when I got home, so we had chicken pot pies and applesauce for dinner, my go-to comfort food after a long day. 

"Founding mothers"

Thursday is the monthly meeting of our local genealogy club, which Tim and I started a couple of years ago.  There are about a dozen regular participants, but about 30 on our mailing list and Facebook group.   Everyone has an interesting story to tell, and we have several experts as well as many dabblers like me.   Many of us proceed in fits and starts, as I do, and we get side-tracked sometimes.

Many of our group members are of French-Canadian descent and can trace their roots to les filles du roi, 768 French women who were sent by King Louis XIV between 1663 and 1673 to strengthen his hold on the New World.  Their sole mission:  marry and have children.  Many a young man had gone to Quebec to seek his fortune, including many second or third sons, and many became voyageurs.  The King wanted them to settle down, farm, and have families.  

Something Paulette said at our last meeting piqued my interest (even though I don't have a drop of French-Canadian blood), and I thought the women's stories would make excellent historical fiction.  Lo and behold, I found several series available, including one by Aimie K. Runyan.   The first book of the Daughters of New France series focuses on three women from different circumstances who meet aboard the ship which, after three months at sea, landed in Quebec city.  The details of their voyage, training, courtship, and marriage make interesting reading.  I'm not sure if I will read more in the series which is based on thorough research, but I will pay closer attention when members of our group discuss their forebears.