Gratitude and Glimmers #94

Welcome to my post for the month of all things I like and for which I am grateful.  This is out one day after the Thursday usual post time because I didn't want to interfere with this week's instructions for my annual Quilt Along. You can find links to more posts like this one at LeeAnna's blog, Not Afraid of Color. Glimmers are the little things that give me a frisson if you will, of joy or happiness or excitement or all three.

This first one was a definite glimmer when I read it on Instagram.

This next 'like' is yet another example of serendipity, something which never fails to give me a glimmer! I am reading The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland. She is an Australian author, and the book features native flowers of Australia, woven in with a story about Alice, a little girl living with an abusive father who also abuses his wife. I'm about a third of the way through, and Alice has gone to live with her paternal grandmother after her parents die in a fire. Her grandmother runs a flower farm where women from abusive or tragic situations can live and work on the farm. The book is rich with Australian flora and culture, and I've been looking up lots of things, such as a wattle tree (absolutely glorious tree that is a sheer cloud of yellow blossoms, part of the acacia family) and Vegemite. Fascinating history there; I'll let you look it up. Well, one of the things that popped up when I looked it up was a story from just four days prior about our prime minister and the Australia prime minister and Vegemite! I love this story. I am not on X, but you can click the link or the photo below to listen to PM Albanese's speech about Found Coffee in Toronto (founded by dual citizen Australian/Canadian Leighton Walters) and their shipment of Vegemite!

I absolutely adore our magnolia tree at this time of year. I've taken a few photos trying to capture her frothy soft pink blooms. The insides have a yellow point that's surrounded by pink little fuzzies (sorry about no technical terms for the stamens and pistils which are the only two I remember from Biology!)

I read another memoir that features immigrants this past month, not as harrowing a story as Solito, but still eye-opening. The Mango Tree by Annabelle Tometich, daughter of her immigrant mother relates the back story to an incident some of you may recall where a Filipino woman shot with an air rifle at two people who had been in her yard stealing her precious mangoes. Another of the ones I read this past month that I recommend is the fourth instalment of The Thursday Murder Club books by Richard Osman, The Last Devil to Die. Excellent as always. I plan to read his new book, but as is the case, similar to that of fabric, the books to get through never end!

I had a lovely morning this past week at the beach, doing a nice long 4 km walk and then another pleasant 45 minutes of beach glass gathering. Quite the haul! I love the bright blue one, very tiny, that I spied. Lots of turquoise and bright green ones and one lucky stone at the top of the photo just under the shells. I'm picky with shells these days, just pick unusual or, as is the case here, beautiful translucent ones.

Soon to be filled with flowers, that pot

Love the 'cobra chickens' aka Canada geese, using the boat launch!

I love forsythia. This one is spectacular, in one of the neighbourhood cul de sacs along the lake where I walk.

Not once, but twice within a week this past month did we have the joy of meeting up for a meal with Cathy and her husband. This was the second get-together where we met at The Barrel House in Windsor. Cathy had been visiting family in Wisconsin and they were on their way back home to Port Perry which is north of Whitby (which is a little northeast of Toronto). I met Cathy through my blog, getting closer through the Postcard from Sweden quilt along I hosted a few years ago, and then even closer when she wrote to me encouraging me to share my quilt stories with her guild as a speaker. 

I loved visiting Casa Loma on my birthday weekend celebration in Toronto earlier this month. The conservatory was especially gorgeous. 

We went to the aquarium as well which I loved. This underwater tunnel was mesmerizing as well as being a marvel because of the creativity and engineering that went into it. You are inside the tank inside a clear tunnel. 

We also went to The Royal Ontario Museum, which, we both agree, we need to visit at least three to four more times since it is so vast and a brain needs time to absorb all that one sees and learns. In one of the regular displays this particular description of a sheep head fish resonated in view of all the hate directed at trans people. 

The lucky stones, also known as otoliths, that I collect along Lake Erie’s shore come from the sheephead fish. 😉

I love public transportation. We used the Go Train to get downtown from our hotel in Mississauga. So much less stress. I am all for the approved high speed rail (that’s been talked about for decades now) between Windsor and Montreal. After we zipped around the UK from Scotland to England on their rail system, we find it so backward-thinking not to have a high speed or even much-improved passenger rail system in Canada. I know we are a vast country but the corridor between Windsor and actually Quebec Coty makes so much sense. Something like 60% of our GDP and 55% of our population are along this corridor. (MacGyver is my source but he or I will verify this)

I love how my Glowing Hearts quilt turned out. It’s such a glimmer when something I draw either on paper or in EQ comes to life in fabric. You can pick up the pattern, which has instructions for three different quilts from baby to this wallhanging to throw, in my shop SandraJaneQuilts.  

I’ll end with a quote from a new follow on both Instagram and YouTube Shameless Elle. The entire short post is worth the listen. 

 

Near the end she says, “Exposure breeds empathy. And the more that you are exposed to it the more that you care, because it affects you, or it affects the people that are close to you.”