GOEs and Retreat

My smiling partner for reading the GOEs was Jim Young from Northfield, Minnesota. You can see the papers on his left, and he is typing our paragraph of evaluation for this particular question into his laptop, from whence it magically zips to our supervisor and then to the Editors, and then finally to the candidate's Bishop and Commission on Ministry.

We had an evening and full morning of training for doing the evaluating before we started on Tuesday afternoon. We read and wrote reports on 35 three page essays, finishing by about 1:00 on Thursday afternoon. We sat at this desk together roughly from 9-12am, 1-5pm, and 7-9pm each day. It is certainly a good thing to have a person with whom you work easily! BUT I never left the hotel except to walk between buildings during the four days. I did do some hallway walking on two days.

I managed to get on an earlier than planned plane out of Baltimore, but could not do the same in Detroit. Luckily the snow in Chicago was not yet affecting Grand Rapids, and Charlie picked me up at midnight Thursday.

After a quick packing up of my quilting projects, I drove north to a retreat group on Friday and was set up in my corner by 3 pm.

That afternoon and evening I sewed together 2.5" strips from a swap to make a Scrap Bargello quilt, following the suggestion of Bonnie Hunter that SuperBowl weekend could be celebrated with a "Bargello Bowl". It was fun to think about other women all over the country working on this same idea on Saturday and Sunday. I finished the top about 1 AM Saturday. And Sunday afternoon I put the leftover loops into a neonatal quilt top.

Off and on I worked on the layering and pinning of the Carolina Crossroads sections. And I finished stitching one of them "in the ditch". That top is so busy that I don't think any quilting is really goinig to show up.

One of the reasons going on a quilt retreat is so much fun is the collaborations, or opinion-giving that is going on around the room frequently. Jan Lewis has just laid out the blocks for a "Turning Twenty" quilt and Sandy DeCarlo is giving her reaction to the placements. Carol Kuypers is looking on as she works on her own hand project. You can always get lots of "help" with decisions, but you have the final Veto over it all.

Sara

Exercise: very poor this week, except for the days I walked through airports

Gratitudes:

My OWN bed

Interesting meal conversations

Charlie's chili and Ray's hospitality for the SuperBowl supper