big storm coming in; supposedly two inches tonight, about eight tomorrow, and two more tomorrow night. ten to twelve, the weather says, but we have our doubts. one point is that it seems to be snowing more than they predict, so two inches turns into six to eight; another trend, though, is that it's getting warmer faster, so more of it may be rain, and it may be gone faster.

i hope it's gone faster, or gone altogether, because i'm the driver, and taking four kids to school in the morning, over the rugged james ridge which is about 8700 feet, steep and icy, and a bit colder than everywhere else around. the problem will not be in the morning, when two inches hasn't really had a chance to stick or cause trouble, but more if they have school, and they stay in school until 3 40, and the snow has fallen five or six more, and the plows don't get up on the ridge in time. by that time, the tracks of the trucks will have pushed the snow into ice on the ridge, and i'll be having a hard time both going up and down. i will have groceries, though, and that i suppose will be a relief.

as it is we are getting low, but considering anyway, just staying home from school. actually kind of hoping the school sees trouble, texts us early in the morning, and calls it off. we are running out of milk, but we have dog food and cat food, so we should be able to hole up for an extra day on what we have sitting around. i kind of like this option, but hope i have the school's permission, since it's no fun sitting around when you know you are really supposed to be somewhere.

as of now, 8 30 monday night, the sky is clear and there are stars. we can virtually see the storm coming in from the west, and we know it's going to get colder, and there has been plenty of warning, but i still didn't go out and get milk, or anything else, as i'm kind of traumatized by all the driving, and just wanted to stay and work on the quilt.

the quilt, by the way, is finished. in the sense that of its 224 triangles, i've sewed 223 onto it, and am halfway done with the last one. then i have to put the 56 squares together, sewing them all into one big top. that i figure might take anywhere from a week to a month, unless i get sidetracked. but the last step is getting the batting, and the backing, and the edges, and putting them all together. that also can take anywhere from two weeks to a month. so i could be in for as much as a month or two more, and that's only if i don't get sidetracked; i often do in this stage. it's hard and it takes a lot of space to spread it out and deal with it as a big wide quilt.

it was while making this quilt that i found out that the leverett women were responsible for the first quilt in the colonies. i kid you not. these are not my ancestors, but relatives, as sarah sedgwick, the grand old lady of puritan massachusetts, was considered the originator of this one quilt, along with one of her daughters. now i'm not sure if this is actually possible, for several reasons. one, she died in like 1711, but some people feel that some of the fabrics in it couldn't have come until later. but what happened is this: one of her daughters married a denison, and from there a daughter married a saltonstall, and those saltonstalls were wealthy enough to hang onto stuff and pack it away, so that it would reappear in a museum in a few generations. and that's what happened. today, that quilt, if it truly dates back to beyond 1711, is the oldest surviving quilt from the colonial era.

it's got the same bowtie patterns that mine does, but it has some other things too. in fact it's a little mysterious, in the sense that it's hard to figure out all the particulars of what went into it. as time goes on, i become a little more fascinated with it.

but as for mine, mine is mostly just old jeans and old flannel shirts, with a pure bowtie pattern. it will be the first of three illini shalom quilts, illini in the sense that it will have deep navy blue backing, and orangish ties on the front, and those are illini colors. shalom will be because this one will have a huge, but hard to see, hebrew s in it, like a hebrew peace sign, and it will be obvious to people who know what that is and who look at the quilt from a certain direction. and all three will be like that (as there are three granddaughter recipients, all in illinois), although the shalom may be the whole word in teh second one, sh, l, and m, or whatever. my next job is to look into hebrew, for the second quilt.

the storm brews. i'm getting my oldest son to be cheap on the milk tonight, because a half gallon may have to last a day and a half. as i said, i'm hoping to stay put tomorrow. it could be a very nice storm.