Hello there, stitchy buds! I know I've been AWOL for more than a month and hopefully some of you are still checking in here from time to time.  Because - drum roll, please - I'm ready to share a big finish with you!  Last weekend I finally finished my Life Tree Sampler.  (All along I've been calling it Tree of Life, but evidently that's wrong...) Yes folks, after 5 years, it's finally finished.  And that five years doesn't even take into account the time it took me to get the chart (a bit unusual at the time) and silks. 

Jan Houtman's Life Tree Sampler

And if you think the sampler is large, take a gander at the size of the chart.  Eight sheets of large pieces of paper. 

8 pages of charts...And a very tricksy 8 pages at that.

So, what a month.  Sadly, we lost my mother-in-law on Good Friday.  It was quite a shock.  She was 85 years old and in good health and very independent and sound in mind for all of her 85 years.  But then in mid-March she was feeling very breathless and was admitted to the hospital, thinking it was a touch of pneumonia.  Except it wasn't.  It was lung cancer and it took her from us shockingly quickly.  Is it naive to think that even the doctors didn't realize it would be so fast?  They sent her home, giving her 2-3 months to live, so Dave and I moved ourselves to her house to take care of her, but she was gone in ten days.  I'm still reeling. 

Ah well.  Over the years I've poked fun at her in my blog.  And now that she's in heaven, surely she knows I've written about her, but she can't be too upset with me for the things I've written about her here, here, here, and here. She was a good soul.  And look at those smiles.  That's a woman with a sense of humor.  Oh...her favorite comedic actor?  Peter Sellers.  She'd laugh like a nut at the Pink Panther movies.  Gotta love her.  And we all miss her like crazy.