*4 Sandhill Cranes in our field
*hearing many flocks of cranes calling as they flew north for the night, lots of sparrows chirping from the hedge, and a Great Horned Owl calling at twilight
*a single red Christmas ornament on an evergreen tree outside the window at the dentist office
*snow-covered mountains
*watching cranes land in a field
*a cute, colorful rug with an animal alphabet for my office
On Saturday, I helped to make a quilt. One of the organizations I volunteer with, Hawks Aloft, makes a fundraising quilt every year. The director is a well-known quilter who teaches quilting classes, and she designs the quilt. Then a team of volunteers makes the quilt top. About half the people who help make the quilt are quilters, and the other half of us are not. I am not. So those of us who are not quilters make the simpler parts of the quilt, making the same blocks over and over, usually the ones that go around the border. We usually all go up to the director's cabin in the mountains to make the quilt, so there are about 12 of us there from Friday night until Sunday morning, sleeping 4 to a bedroom and taking turns cooking for the group. This year, there was too much snow in the mountains, so we worked at someone's house instead. The cabin is fun, but having the one-day event at someone's house was better in some ways, because I got a good night's sleep before the work began, I got to eat my regular breakfast, and I only had to worry about 2 meals.
I have always taken food with me to the retreat. Before I stopped eating gluten, all I really worried about was adequate protein. I would take almond milk and Restore to drink when I got up, because breakfast was never within an hour. I'd also take some protein, like grilled chicken, in case a meal was low on protein. Id' eat whatever was served and supplement the protein. But now that I don't eat gluten, I have to take a lot more backup food. This year, we only ate two meals at the retreat, and I took alternative foods for both meals. I was able to eat the lunch that was served, but the dinner had gluten in it, so I ate the salad and my own chicken and brown rice. If I were still eating gluten, all the food would have worked well enough for me.
The quilt is beautiful. It took longer than usual this time. It's really big and there were a lot of blocks to make for the border. It seemed like billions, so we started calling it the Sagan quilt. You can see the quilt if you go to the Hawks Aloft facebook page. I made a lot of the pieces that have little turquoise triangles on them. They had alternating small tan and turquoise triangles, and then a big tan triangle. It's so wonderful to be able to take part in making something so beautiful. We sell raffle tickets all year, and it's cool to be able to tell people that I helped make it when I'm selling tickets at an event.
Allison