Flowers, Friends and Fish

It is only a little past mid-April and here I am. That's a definite improvement over March.

April has brought lots of changes. With the arrival of warmer weather (although not as warm as we would like) the piles of snow pushed up by the plows in winter has melted from all but the shadiest locations. The ice has finally left Bearspaw Lake, on which our home is located; the geese, who stood around forlornly on the melting ice for a few weeks are happily swimming in the water and have been joined by the ducks - mallards and golden eyes - which spend their summers here. And neighbours have pots of pansies on their doorstep, adding a colourful touch to an otherwise drab landscape.

On the quilting scene, I have put together the backing for a queen-sized quilt which I pieced last fall and am ready to take it to my friend Linda who has offered to let me try and quilt it on her long arm machine. That will be a new experience for me and I'm hoping it will be a positive one.

The preparations for our Guild's 30th anniversary quilt show, sale and banquet in June are well underway, and, as a member of the 30th anniversary committee, I've been attending extra meetings and work days in preparation for those landmark events.

A few of my neighbours expressed an interest in learning to quilt, so six of us meet every other week and with the help of my next door neighbour, who is also a quilter, I am taking them through the learning process a step at a time. We began with simple stitched and folded coasters and have graduated to elongated nine-patch place mats. If they persevere, we will move on to baby/lap quilts and then "the sky's the limit."

And finally, I managed to get back to my own "fun" time and made another quilt in my "Fabulous Fish" series. This one is Number 9 and was made to fulfil a request from a Newfoundland friend for a codfish. A cod is not the most colourful of fish, to put it mildly, so "Grandfather Cod" is rather subdued, as you can see, below. But I'm not finished with the species yet and have plans for my next codfish to be a very colourful mutation.

And that's it for this month.