Posts tagged ‘quilts’

Ellie Marie & Her Quilt

Welcome to the Pieceable Kingdom!  Today marks the launch of my new website, timed to coincide with Imbolc, or Candlemas.  In Celtic tradition, early February heralds the beginning of spring.  As darkness begins to give way to longer days, the first lambs are born, and snowdrops break through the frozen soil, intrepid and delicate symbols of renewed life.

This is a season of initiation, and for me, one of gratitude. Every new project deserves a caring midwife, and no one could have brought Pieceable Kingdom into the world with more creativity and patience than Christine Stoll.  Christine and I have been friends for more than a decade, and have supported each other through countless changes in our lives.  What joy it has been to watch my friend embrace her creativity.  What luck to have her design my website!

The last year has been one of reconnection for me, and I am grateful to Purrfect Pals for inspiring me to bring all I can to work on behalf of cats once again.  This wonderful organization is doing rescue work the right way, and I look forward to many collaborative projects.  I am especially appreciative of John Bartlett, foster dad to more than thirty litters of kittens, the most recent ones on the screen of computers around the world.  John’s generosity reminded me that every act of interspecies kindness ripples out in all directions.

And finally, I would like to thank a special cat.  When I first stumbled into the Critter Room last year, John was fostering the Scientist Family.  Every one of them captured my imagination, but none more than mother Marie (Curie).  Still very much a kitten herself, she was rescued from the street by a concerned couple, had 4 kittens, and raised them on camera until they were old enough to be put up for adoption.

Before it was her turn to be adopted, Marie went back to Purrfect Pals for some much-needed rest and recuperation.  As a way to wish her well, I made a quilt, which accompanied her a few months later into her forever home.  And what a perfect home she found.  Ellie Marie, as she is now known, has brought great happiness into the life of her new person, a lovely woman whose husband of 57 years had recently passed away.  This is what she says about Ellie Marie: “She is such a cuddle bug. She jumps up on my lap and rubs her face on mine and hums me all the secret cat songs she knows, and she knows a lot.”

And this, my friends, is just the beginning of secret cat songs in the Pieceable Kingdom.  Thank you for listening to them with me.