Looking Back: A Review of 2012

 I was inspired by my friend Leslie Tucker Jenison, who posted a wonderful series of photographs about  her year. This made me realize that while there were many challenges in 2012 for me and mine, there was alo a great deal of joy and beauty. 

 March: Quilt Alliance board meeting in Nashville, here w/exec director Amy Milne. Due to a hurriance, we were evacuated early!

 

Spring Break: the first of many college visits with my son, Max. Here he is at Amherst.

Work-in-progress: a house quilt for the Hun School gala.

For my birthday in mid-March, I visited the Museum of Art & Design in NYC…

And had lunch with my dear friend Wendy Kwitny.

April: Another trip to NYC, for the opening of an art show with quilts by the fabulous Luke Haynes. Here I am with another Alliance board member, novelist Marie Bostwick.

Grounds for Sculpture is one of the BEST culture treasures of New Jersey.

I went with Gerry DeGeorge, an awesome woman who is married to my husband’s cousin.

June: Yippeee! A book launch party for the revised edition of The Book of New Family Traditions. 

July: A Pasta Potluck lunch on the deck with some girlfriends, all in my magical yoga class.

More college visits: here at Brown in Providence, Rhode Island. A reach school.

 

August: Quilt Alliance board meeting in Nebraska, where we had a wondrous add-on trip to Lincoln, to visit the spectacular International Quilt Study Center. Curator Marin Hanson is on our board.

So many great family memories and sunsets at the Jersey Shore!!!

Good eats, too.

 

September: Quilters Take Manhattan 2.0 was another awesome Alliance event. Here I am with one of our keynote celebs, Denyse Schmidt.

The room was crowded, and the crowd was pumped!

I had two surgeries in September, figuring I might as well pile on the misery to make it shorter. But it was more intense that way. Here with stitches from Mohs surgery to remove skin cancer on my forehead.

Daily walks were part of my “therapy,” and I tried to fashion them into a compelling ritual to increase the likelihood of completion.

October: my recovery weeks were punctuated by a quick trip to LA, to tape a TV segment on Thanksgiving traditions. Here a shot of the hipster hotel they put me up in, close to Santa Monica’s glorious beach.

Late October/early November: Hurricane Sandy is definitely one of the more memorable events of the year. Here we are trying to eat up the ice cream when the power went out. Who knew it would be out an entire week and then some!

December: all year long, I continued to write for multiple magazines and newsletters, often about quilts. Here is one of my favorite quilts of the year, about which I wrote a story for the December issue of The Quilt Life. This is called “infinite Gratitude,” and it is a red and white Dear Jane quilt made for quilt collector Joanna Rose by her niece (with help). Rose’s collection of red and white quilts was displayed at the Park Avenue armory in NYC last year, in the much-buzzed about Infinite Variety show.

To end the year, a sweet photo of my grand babe Lucy (who calls me Queen), at her parents’ home in DC. She is here with darling Luna, a dog owned by my husband’s ex-wife. 

Happy New Year to all!!!! I hope you will check back to this blog occasionally to see how my 2013 is going.