one-a-day plus beauty

Seven ten truth-and-beauty notes for this week:

Quilting A: Playing with fabric.



I'm still loving my quilting lessons. I particularly like the "web" stage when I begin sewing all the carefully laid out pieces and they form this fabulously vivid landscape, little, regular hillocks of colour. Delightful.

Quilting B: Playing with colour.



This quilt came from a lesson where we had to pull colours out of a piece of artwork to create a geometric design. I picked the painting of a faerie garden from a card I received a decade ago and had framed for sentimental reasons. Once I got started I was dismayed that I was making, essentially, a black and green quilt, but in the end it came together. It's really growing on me now.


Airport Transfers

On Tuesday I brought the mother of a friend of mine to the airport, playing surrogate daughter for the morning. Tonight I pick up a friend who's been away for two weeks to tend to all the details surrounding the death of her mother. I love being part of the seemingly chaotic but deeply ordered web of connections that happen at airports. It's why I love how the movie "Love Actually" opens, too.

Green Things

I've been loving the little bit of garden tending that comes with the house-sitting gig I've had for the last several weeks. Growing things is good for the soul.

Ziggy

I have lost one of my greatest playmates, sweet and gleeful R who now lives on the other coast of this vast continent. But I've also gained an exhuberant friend recently in the form of Ziggy, the labradoodle dog adopted by dear friends of mine. Ziggy has the spirit of the toddler charging through his veins and watching him play is a delight through and through.

Sweet Peas

Also part of the house-sitting gig has been the pleasure of picking sweet peas. They are as sweet in fragrance as they are in visual appeal. And sweeter yet when they bring a smile to the face of the one receiving a sweet pea posie. It's been great to be able to share the floral bounty.



Space

Tomorrow I will return to my little West End nest which I hope to love again as I remember loving, once upon a time. It's been delicious to have a beautiful five-bedroom house to call home for the last weeks. It took no time at all to get used to the spacious hallways, landings, skylights, gardens, the dining (=sewing) room, etc. My whole apartment is about the size of the kitchen of this house. May I be as truly thankful for my own little space as I've been for the fabulous big space so graciously provided when I needed room to breathe.