Black Friday?

 I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends. Mr Wazoo and I stayed home, watched the Packers win and had a sumptuous prime rib dinner. I had never cooked a rib roast before, and was nervous about getting it right. The five pound roast will feed us another four days, I think! Everything turned out well and Thanksgiving was good.

I have been doing some repairs lately as well as making two memory quilts for a family whose mother (and grandma) passed. They provided dresses from the lady's school-teaching days, and I went to work.

This is the first quilt. I used the BQ-2 pattern to show off the fabrics from the dresses.

The panto is a simple leaf and swirl pattern so the quits are very soft.

The backing on this one is a floral from my stash.

The other quilt has solid sage green background with the same floral for the sashings. Both are bound and finished, but I still need to take a picture of the green one. I'll get a photo of both the green quilt and the last repair when I am in the studio this afternoon.

The deer are emboldened to the point they just stand there and stare at us when we go outside to shoo them from the garden. Even Penny's frenzied barking doesn't move them. Now that it is hunting season, I fear their blasé attitude will make them easy targets. We'll see how many of our 12 deer herd survive.

Rosalyn Carter died this week. My first husband and I worked on Jimmy's campaign in Wisconsin back in 1976. The campaign workers all went to the airport to greet him when he came to Madison, and we took up positions along the fence out on the tarmac. This was pre-9/11, so people were able to meet planes either outside or at the inside gate. Jimmy came along, shaking hands and greeting people, when he stopped and spoke to our daughter, Amy. He asked her what her name was and told her he had a little girl named Amy, too. He thanked us for our support and kept moving along the line of supporters. A secret service guy came along behind Jimmy and got our names and address, and we figured that was it. 

The next day, we were on the front page of the evening paper! I am holding Amy (you can only see my hair behind her) and my husband is at the left of us holding my 3 month old son. Later, we received an invitation to lunch with Rosalyn at a restaurant downtown, and I went. I got to sit at her table and was too gobsmacked to speak the entire time. She was a beautiful, soft spoken and friendly woman. There was nothing haughty about her, and she put us all at ease. I was only 23 at the time with a full time job and two small children. The whole brush with greatness was surreal. We were then invited to the election night party in Milwaukee, and went to that, as well. I asked Jimmy to sign the original photo the paper sent to us. It has been framed and is somewhere in a box in the garage. Carter won Wisconsin by 1.68 points and went on to be president. It was the only presidential campaign I worked for. I have followed the Carters endeavors since then, impressed with their honesty and hard work for the less fortunate of the world. Rosalyn's death marks the end of a kinder, gentler time in the United States. I am very sad about that.