Why is this woman smiling?

Lots of reasons!

First and foremost, I QUIT MY JOB! And what's even better is that I didn't actually quit, I am retiring! I was shocked when I learned that I was eligible, but when we moved here in 1982 I taught European history at the high school on campus, and most of my jobs since then have also been at the University of Illinois. That means they all contributed towards the same retirement program. Suddenly I wouldn't be walking away but would be moving on. I will miss seeing some of my good friends at work, but I plan to keep in touch. Otherwise, it is time for me to go. Does anyone remember "Marvin K. Mooney, will you please go now?" by Dr. Seuss? It ends, "The time had come, so Marvin went." On April 1, the time will come and I will go.

Second, my guild had an auction Thursday. On the premise that one quilter's trash is another quilter's treasure, everyone donated the quilting stuff they didn't want anymore so that others could bid on it. There was a huge pile of quilting magazines and I despaired of trying to flip through to choose those I might want. I picked one up at random and it fell open to this article by Chris Kleppe (American Quilter, Winter 2003):
I love, I am completely fascinated by mosaics and Moorish architecture. I have often wondered how I could make one of those tracery designs into a quilt, but the answer always came up applique, and I am a piecer. Here Kleppe explains how to determine whether a particular design could be pieced using her method. Of the quilts shown in the article, this design is my favorite (there's another quilt overlapping in the upper right):

Third, I am grateful to so many quilters for their help and advice. Yesterday brought another example. A good friend and quilter stopped by yesterday afternoon just as I was finishing laying out AGAIN the quilt that had fallen off my design wall last May.
I love the look and feel of these rich batik flannels, but I didn't have as many blocks as I want and I couldn't find any more fabric. She had some in her stash and drove them over and gave them to me later in the day. How amazingly sweet, I am so very grateful. This is easy piecing, so I will make more blocks and then have something simple to stitch together in odd moments.

And fourth, after a brief shower this morning, the sun is out and our snow is melting! We might reach 50 degrees today and I can't stop smiling as I watch the mountain of dirty snow in our front yard dissolve into beautiful, non-frozen, totally splashable puddles.

I don't do random...

...but I tried to tonight. It should be easy to grab a block and stick it up without any thought as to where it should go -- grab, plop; grab, plop; grab, plop -- but it isn't. I steeled myself and left the blocks where I first put them. But I needed a little control, so if two blocks were obviously wrong together, I avoided putting them next to each other in the first place. That got harder as the wall filled up. I'm going to let this sit a few days and fiddle with the layout after I've given this a chance. I'll need to make a few more blocks, too. Sorry the photo is so dark -- the sun had already gone down before I got the camera out, but the flash really distorted the colors.These flannels are so visually rich and so plush to the touch that I love working with them. I'm keeping this quilt -- can't get enough of it!

Things I've learned:
1 - My perfect quarter-inch seam is only perfect with the weight of cotton fabric I tested it on. This flannel is extremely thick, and my seams were off. Took me awhile to figure out the problem. Fortunately the block is simple and I can just trim them all up.
2- Just because you hate your project one minute doesn't mean you will not love it the next. Recognizing that such changeability is just part of the process is as hard as doing an almost-random layout.