Hey, Kathy B!

Kathy B, just look what you started!  You showed me the Second Hand Clothes pattern and you must have known I wouldn't be able not to start something!  We had a swap this past fall -- we shared 6" squares and 2" strips and I swapped them all out.  We each ended up with enough squares and a good head-start on the nine-patch blocks.  I wanted to limit my color palette so Honna and I traded some of the yield -- she was leaning towards blues and purples, so it all worked out just fine.  I made my 9-patches as a leader-ender for a month or two.  At a recent quilting day at our church, I got a lot of it assembled and tonight spent another hour sewing rows together.  Another long evening, perhaps later this week, and it should be done and ready for the quilter.  It is a queen size.

On a totally unrelated note, many fellow bloggers are posting wonderful spring photographs.  Daffodils, even.  We're prolly a good four weeks from daffodils here Near Philadelphia.  We have crocus shoots in our front yard and tips of daffs coming up here and there.  A friend in the next town over reports having seen a blooming crocus, but I'm suspicious that she's given to hallucinations.

Last week Joe snipped some forsythia stems and brought them in and over the weekend they burst forth.  We're enjoying them so much.

Tonight he snipped some more.  These are going to school with me tomorrow.  To sit on my desk.

These flowers always make me think of Andrew.  When he was in nursery school, one day he brought home a piece of construction paper on which there were brown stems drawn and wee bits of yellow tissue paper glued on them.  "This is for-this-i-a," he told me proudly and carefully.  Forthisia.  I still have trouble knowing which is actually correct . . . .

And that's what's new, Near Philadelphia.