This just in! International Award winner in the family!

So what's new? My daughter, Naomi, has just won a top prize at the International Quilt Festival in Houston. This is a very, very big deal in the fiber arts world.

Here's the link to the winning quilts:
http://www.quilts.org/winners.html

Her prize, The Future of Quilting, is so appropriate. She is truly innovative and one of the youngest world class quilters. I'm so happy for her! Actually, for Naomi, being the best is nothing new. She's won huge awards before and will do it again.

What you will not be seeing this year

You nor I will be seeing this in 2010. We had our enormous maple tree pruned last winter. I practically cried all day as they hacked away at it, leaving nothing but a shell. Then we had a very  hot summer and drought. So my beautiful tree couldn't make the comeback the landscape service had promised. The maple tree that was the glory of the neighborhood will be very sparse this year.

We're also having our fall color early because of the drought and heat. And I'm guessing it won't last long. Such is life. The good thing about it is you don't have to wait for the chilly weather to see the gorgeous leaves. We took a mini-fall color tour yesterday in my convertible. It's not full color here but it's coming along. Strange, but really fun to see it all with the top down.

I'm back from my writers' conference and it was a very mixed experience. You hear an awful lot of doom and gloom at these kinds of meetings. On the other hand, I got some very positive feedback on two manuscripts. And some good advice. And some wonderful signed books for the grandchildren. And  a critique group. Yes! An electronic critique group came out of the experience. That was worth the whole trip.

And, Michael and I have tickets now for Thanksgiving week. We'll be enjoying lovely and absolutely unpredictable Texas weather. I'm looking forward to the best birthday ever on Thanksgiving Day.

LIfe is a test

The picture? Oldest grandchild CE with a big project on her hands. So, I"ve obviously bitten off more than I can chew since I haven't blogged for two weeks. That's some kind of record, I think.

I am enjoying the college teaching. My students are delightful, fresh-faced young'uns who try hard in class. It is a new and time-consuming project.

My shops are going and I continue to acquire new stuff which I now must process, take photos of, list and sell.

I've got a really big writing conference coming up in two weeks. I'll be getting critiques on both my big projects, my Louisiana 1950s novel and the chapter book my daughter MF and I are working on. And another critique activity in November.

And trying to do church work and housework, keeping in touch with my large family, and trying to make things easy for Michael.  And the headaches continue. Yesterday I went to church to play the organ with a headache. I went home, slept for an hour an fifteen minutes and returned to church to do choir practice.

So here's my take on all of this:

As much as I love the teaching, I don't think I can stand another email like the one I got last week. $138 dollar plane ticket to Dallas, TX, direct from our local airport, not Philly or Newark. It was $180 with taxes and fees, but still. That's from Wilkes-Barre! And I had to pass them up because of the classes I'm teaching. You have to leave on a Thursday and reutrn on a Tuesday. Since I teach TTH that would mean a whole week of classes. Can't do it.

I think the shops are out of hand too. I've been acquiring a lot of stock because I'm pretty sure the garage sale season is about over. So my profit/loss margin makes it look like it's not worth it. But, then I find something like I did this weekend and I want to continue. I now own four patterns from the 1890s. A couple of Butterick, a Ladies' Home Journal and a mail order. I won't keep them, but it is a wonder to hold them in my hands. It's miraculous to read the instructions and find out how ladies from that era put things together. These are patterns my great-grandmothers would have used. At that same sale, I also bought a box of old music for me. This is not to sell. I played for hours on Saturday and Sunday. My faves are the three dance music folios from the teens, twenties and thirties. They were meant for dance classes. They're piano versions of popular songs of the day. But there's also sheet music from some of my favorite old songs from all eras: "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You," "The Girl from Ipanema," "Change Partners," "Catch a Falling Star," and so on. Hundreds of pages of music for 25.00. So the estate saleing and garage sale shopping will probably continue.

So that comes down to the writing. This is not out of hand and it's not keeping me from flying to Dallas. Far from it. I could really use a quick flight so that Morgan and I could talk over our book. And I could most of my family, minus the Provo group.

Bottom line. More writing, less shopkeeping, and serious consideration of whether I continue community college teaching (if they even offer me the chance!).

First Day of School

Welp, if you liked the first day of school with the smell of new pencils, paper and books, then you should become a teacher. You get to participate in first days of school even when you've finished school yourself.

I start college teaching again today with a class of English at Luzerne County Community College. Should be interesting. This is an introductory class so the students will be mostly brand new to the college experience. Sort of like teaching freshmen in high school. Goggle-eyed and overwhelmed. I'm trying to use as many sentence fragments as possible in this post. Fighting a never-ending battle against them from this day forward. (Or so I'm told.) What are the chances of me getting a class full of people who already know what a complete sentence is? Not too good. First spelling words of the day? "A lot." I don't know why "alot" bugs me more than any other misspelling. Just does. We'll tackle "their, there, there's, theirs, its and it's" once they find their feet. Oh, and definitely do "definately." Enough fragments for ya?

Paradigm Shift

Okay, I think I'm going through a paradigm shift. When you have small children at home (or when you teach high school), you don't have the luxury of time to think about the deeper philosophical underpinnings of your life. So many hours of your day are spoken for. But fortunately, or unfortunately, when you are self employed and alone most of the time, you do have time to think about the essence of your life. I've been thinking a lot about this young lady in the photo, trying to remember what it was she had planned for her life and what she felt she could accomplish.

So I'm rethinking what I do in life and even who I am. This is downright scary but I think it's also a necessary part of a well-lived life. Part of my problem is that three of my most important roles in life are on long distance mode--mother, daughter, grandmother. This is hard. I wish it were otherwise. What I am left with is a lot of time and the choices on how to use this time.

I am hoping for a bright, sparkling new me to emerge any day now. And I'm just enough of an optimist to believe this is possible. We can change our direction in life. But for now, the growing pains are excruciating.

That Was the Week That Was

Several things have happened this week. One, and probably most importantly, I am gainfully employed. Just a part-time job, but it's a start. I'll be teaching an English class as an adjust professor at Luzerne County Community College. Should be fun. It will be good to get back to teaching again.

Secondly, I managed to get off a packet that will be critiqued at the next SCBWI conference in Philly. My middle grade novel is on its way.

Thirdly, I decided that if I sold vintage patterns and vintage fabric, I should try to make something myself. This is an early 1960s blouse pattern, old sizing. I think it came out well.

I'm sure many other things happened this week, but those are the biggies that come to mind.

No matter what the week may bring, some things never change. Every single day: I miss my children, I miss my grandchildren, I miss my parents, I miss my sons-in-law, I miss Texas, I wish my house were better organized. On the other hand, every single day: I love the beautiful place we live in, I listen to or play beautiful music, I read something amazing, I write something. A very good life, in fact.

The New Monitor Times Two

I had to share this picture story. Be sure and click on it to see all the details. It was a little large for my scanner but I think you'll get the idea.

I found a set of Dick and Jane pre-primers at an estate sale a while ago. And I've been seeing on Etsy an artist who makes cute collages out of photos like these. Her shop is named Cabin. So I offered them to her as a special order and she decided she wanted them. So off they go. But I did dearly love looking at them.

Now about the monitor. My computer has been lousy lately. Freezes all the time. Programs not responding. Long time booting up. Can't even turn it off sometimes. And the display. All flicker-y and annoying. Come to find out a big part of the problem was the monitor which has just given out. Blackness and void. That's all I could get on Friday. So Michael and I went to Best Buy to look around and by a fluke managed to get a 22" inch LG monitor for 150 bucks. Long but boring story. Anyways, we get the thing home and it's fabulous. The computer is running much better (it's still not fixed but we're saving that adventure for next week) and the picture is awesome. But the monitor has one dead pixel. A tiny green dot that annoyingly stayed lit all the time. So we packed up the enormous thing (which weighs almost nothing though) and back to Best Buy we went on Saturday. The good news is that the new monitor is working great. The bad news is that the computer is still sick.

I did a few estate sales on Saturday even though I'm overstocked. I found this: A sixties cotton number that stops traffic. I pulled it out of the car to show Michael and a lady walking by with her son backed up and turned around to come look at it. It really is cute.

And then today a friend who goes to auctions and looks for stuff for me sold me a box of stuff (nothing like doing business on a Sunday in the church parking lot) including old fabric, aprons and sunbonnets. Very old stuff. So I'm really overstocked now.

The best news is that my middle grade novel has a really rough first draft finished. Fun! Now once I get a solid rewrite I am truly sending this thing out. I think this may be the book that will finally get me published.