Hello

The thought of starting a blog is mind-numbingly terrifying. How do you introduce yourself to the world? Actually, before that, why should you? Then it dawned on me that not once have I ever gone back and looked at the first post of any blog I've ever followed. That took some of the pressure off... some. Since I also had to write an "About" page for my website, I decided to use the same text for my first post. So: hello, world.

Me with my great-grandmother (roughly 1973)
Way back when Internet was mainly dial-up and dinosaurs roamed the earth, my friend, Leslie, and I decided to run away. We started our escape by holing up in a friend's cabin in North Waterford, Maine; me to work on writing the Great American Novel and Leslie to re-find her self after a divorce.My mother, in her wisdom, realized that I didn't have enough on my plate and asked that I take all of my great-grandmother's handwritten diaries and type them into an electronic format of some sort. As it turned out, she was correct since you are reading this now rather than watching me being interviewed by Oprah.Since my great-grandmother, Mrs. Irene Driver, died when I was very young, the above picture is exactly how I remember her.

First quilt

We would regularly leave our dusty town in New Mexico to go to the even dustier town of Lubbock, TX to visit her at the nursing home and she always had a quilt over her lap; so In order to get myself psyched up for the daunting task, I decided to make a quilt. It was a mess. The process was long and tedious; so when I finished, I put it in the closet and set to work on the diaries, swearing off sewing.By the time I reached 1915, she was quite prolific, I dragged the quilt out of the closet and reevaluated my work. It was still awful, but I began noticing things I could have done differently - and that was the end of my indifference. By the time Irene cast her vote in the 1920 election, I had made my second quilt and was hooked. That was 13 years ago and while the writing thing is slow moving, I now have four very well used sewing machines and a fabric stash that would make anyone green with envy.I love quilting and hope you enjoy my quilts even half as much as I enjoy making them.