Update!!

I was glad to see Paula's e-mail this morning about making an entry to the blog.  It's a good idea and a worthy goal for each of us to make entries and regular intervals.  We are separated by so many miles and time zones.  I think the blog brings us much closer together. 

Like Paula, I'm busy working on this year's Voyage Art Quilts.  I have two pretty much finished and the last two are designed and ready to put together.  My goal is to finish them before the first of December--because the first two weeks in December I'll be appearing in another play.  This time I'm playing the Mother Superior in "Agnes of God".  We started rehearsals two weeks ago and we are well into developing our characters.  I'm trying to relax about learning my lines (and I have alot of them).  As I have found with all of the other plays in which I have appeared, the lines just seem to be there because of the rehearsal process.  Sure, I have to make a conscious effort to memorize, but it's amazing how much of the play is just "in my head".  People always ask how we remember so many lines, but the play is about telling a story and that what the dialogue does--especially when you take the time to get to know your character.  Not being Catholic, I had a great deal of research to do about nuns and convent life.  I'm lucky because the girl who is playing Agnes, Megan Holcomb, is a devout Catholic.  Megan and her mother took me with them to the Easter vigil at a convent located about 30 miles west of Surprise.  The convent is for a contemplative order of nuns and they are in the process of building the convent and the church.  Because they are a contemplative order, they spend their time in prayer and meditation and remain quite isolated from the outside world.  The convent itself is sitting in a beautiful spot in the middle of the desert west of Phoenix and the end of a six-mile dirt road.  The Easter vigil was beautiful and fascinating and I was able to meet two of the nuns which was a real honor, since I've never met a nun.  I was so impressed by the solitude and peace that they have chosen for themselves.

The next day, Easter Sunday, I was slammed back into my own reality when our puppy, Ziggy, broke one of his front toes as he bounded out of his crate.  He spent a month in a cast that covered his whole right front leg and which he couldn't get wet.  We had to cover his cast with a plastic bag every time he got a drink of water (he's notoriously sloppy with his drinking) and every time he went outside to do his business.  We made it through, though, and Ziggy is a happy, healthy 18-month-old Airedale Terrier puppy.  Here is a picture of Ziggy with his cast.  I made the green cover out of windbreaker fabric and he has one of his "boots" on to protect the bottom of his cast. 


My stepson, Jeremy, is a tattoo artist living in Oregon.  He and his wife and their two sons just moved to Hood River, Oregon, which is a small town right on the Columbia River about 40 miles from Portland.  They moved just as the big wildfires were starting right across the river from Hood River.  We were very worried about them, but they didn't have to evacuate and after a couple of weeks the fires passed them by.  We will travel to Hood River in a few days

to go to our oldest grandson's fourth birthday party and then it's back to Surprise where I will dive into quilting and back into rehearsing for my play.

I'm really enjoying working on this year's Voyage quilts.  It took me some time to come up with a series of quilts about "Freedom", but I think my quilts will express that theme quite well.  I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's quilts!