Progress on all fronts

I’ll tell the briefer of the good news first. I finished my quilt block at 2:00 a.m., having to actually piece scraps together to make up one of the blocks of fabric needed. When I turned the block in at the meeting this morning I told the chairman of the project about my problem in reading the directions and how I wound up piecing together the bits of fabric I found left over from previous month’s work. Then I proceeded to try to find that pieced block and had to truly hunt for it! She said that was totally o.k. and if I had to search for it that hard, it wouldn’t even be noticeable to anyone. Made me feel a bit better about it.

Here’s the block — I should have moved the Carousel box now that I see it sitting there … ah well (that’s the slide scanner sitting underneath it, and my new/old Singer sewing machine cabinet holding it all. At least I was able to keep all of my kitties facing the right way. 😉 Well, even that depends on how you hold the block or how you would put it together with other blocks. I added a baggie with a good 1/4 yd. of fabric to go with the block so the person who wins the block will have extra fabric to play with. I hoped I’d win, but I didn’t. Ah well, next time! I picked up my packet for next month’s block and it’s far easier than this one was (or the last one was). But that too remains to be seen! LOL This Kitty fabric is actually from SCRUBS, a medical uniform manufacturing company that used to have its factory in El Cajon. I bought it a number of years ago when we lived in San Diego. I have enough extra ‘kitty fabric’ to make one more block like this for myself. I’ll have to use plain black fabric, however, since I don’t have any more of the spotted black (that’s the quilt guild’s fabric that’s provided for each month’s block.) Our program today was put on by two Guild members who brought their own quilts to show. Amazing talent in that group. Some of the quilts looked like oil paintings they were so intricately done.Utterly amazing to someone like myself who thinks of a quilt in terms of squares and triangles. LOL

On to my truly big news of the day. Two days ago I bit the bullet and purchased a monthly subscription to Ancestry.com. I’ve resisted paying for the membership because I felt I shouldn’t have to pay for information that’s out there on the Internet and I should be able to find it for myself and get it for free. Then I thought about the fact that I try to live my life with no regrets and I surely would regret not doing everything I could in order to find my father’s family. So there’s the door — in it I walked. And I did a search for my father’s grandfather, James Robert Allen. I came up with one family tree that looked good right away. I wrote to the man who posted it to Ancestry.com and asked him how he was related to James Robert Allen as that was my great-grandfather’s name. I told him who my grandmother was and when she was born. He wrote back and said, "Your grandmother and my grandmother were sisters. We’re 2nd cousins to one another." Then he sent me eight pages of genealogical history, including photos of some of my great-uncles. One great-uncle bore such a striking resemblance to my own father that I was brought to tears just looking at it on my computer. I knew this was the family that I had been searching for. Now I wait for him to write to me again — I’ve sent him two e-mails, offering to share what I know about his Great-aunt’s life.

You see, in the South, for a long time (and possibly even to this day), people didn’t talk about family members. For the longest time I thought my father’s mother was an only child. He and my mother divorced in 1967, yet remained friends. One day I happened to be at Mom’s when Dad was there (I was married with children by this time) and they were sitting in the kitchen talking about family (almost all of my mother’s  family had moved to San Diego years ago). I happened to mention to Dad I thought his mother was an only child. He jumped and exclaimed, "Who told you that??" He was almost angry. I told him no one ever talked about any aunts or uncles or nieces or nephews, so my sisters and I presumed she was an only child. He said she was one of 13 children. You could have knocked me over with a feather. What I didn’t ask at the time for fear of truly being yelled at, was "Who are these other 12 children and where are they? How come we’ve never heard from them, or wrote TO them, or learned about them at all??" My paternal grandmother was deceased by this time, so the only relatives I had to go to for answers was my father (who never wanted to talk about it) and his older sister, who always said she couldn’t remember, but who did, at one time or another, drop bits and pieces of family history to me in her letters.

My newly-found 2nd cousin had next to no information about my paternal grandmother’s life. He had 1988 as her birth year, and that was wrong. I’ve sent him a bit more information and am awaiting a response from him. I know he’s in Chattanooga, TN, but don’t really know his age, whether he’s still working 9to5 or retired or what. I need to be patient, but this is HUGE and patience is hard to come by at times like these …

I close with love and blessings to all here on OD … be safe, be well, and please be happy. Be sure to tell those you love that you love them. The comments I make at the end of my entries are truly from the heart as the words beyond "Be sure to tell those you love that you love them." come from within me. I don’t question where they come from, it’s the spirit moving within me and reaching out to those I care about. Know you are loved…