Connecticut and Back

All this week Trish and I have been in a storytelling workshop we conduct three times each year in Madison, Connecticut.

We did leave home a day early on our drive up so that we could go to the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Show in Hampton, Virginia, on the way.  We shopped, looked at quilts, and joined some of Trish’s treasured friends from Roanoke while we were there.

We are each working on quilts right now that are made of hexagons.  Hers is made of about a million small ones that build up to larger diamonds.  Mine is simple and uses larger hexagons. I call it Joe’s Garden based on my daddy’s garden and made of rows of vegetable fabric.

Shopping for fabric (you can never have too much!) at the quilt show.

We got on to Connecticut on Sunday afternoon to meet our workshop group at Mercy Center in Madison.  Mercy Center is a lovely small retreat center on the shores of Long Island Sound, a former convent now maintained by the Sisters of Mercy Order for small conferences and retreats.

Very serious workshop participants!

One highlight of the week is going in to New Haven on Wednesday evening where I do an evening of storytelling at the New Haven Friends Meeting.  It is such a good time because many workshop attendees from past years come and it makes for a kind of small reunion.

Bill Graustein, our host for the week, introduces our evening of storytelling.

When the week was over we drove down to Goldsboro, NC, where our son Greg and his wife, Annette are stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.  Of their three children, Mallory, Lucas, and Jake, it is almost Jake’s birthday...so we got to deliver presents and watch excitement!

Counting down to an important birthday.

Today we will take the ferry home and be surprised by the work done on the house while we were gone.  It is getting closer!

The return of Daylight Saving Time and the Full Worm mega-moon remind us that spring is indeed on the way.