Ups and Downs

Yesterday, when I went to the front porch to retrieve the mail I saw that some of my daffodils had bloomed. It is February and it is way too early for the daffodils but we are having a very mild winter. The daffodils are a sign of new life, lifting my spirits.

Then I reached into the mailbox and pulled out just one letter, my only correspondence of the day. It was a solicitation from a local cemetery to purchase a burial plot. PLOP. My spirits hit the ground. The local cemetery sees me as a potential customer. How depressing.

I put the letter in the trash without opening it and decided to focus on the new life and promise of spring instead. Here is a quilt from my new book, Sashings and Settings - the Basics and Beyond that will be on sale this spring. The setting in this quilt was quite accidental, but worked out to be an excellent way to set 8 blocks into a quilt. Eight blocks is kind of an odd number and this setting fits them perfectly.