Quiet weekend

We have been very quiet.  Friday we were both recovering from a very poor night's sleep, so, more or less veg'ed out in front of the tv. Ran a couple of errands in the afternoon and ended up at the casino for supper, as nobody wanted to cook.  Yesterday we were still half out of it, so did not much more than laundry, although I spent a fair bit of time catching up on work on the computer.  We had planned to try to attend three quilt shows in the Winnipeg Beach area, but decided to stay home in the air conditioning.  However, today we headed out and saw two of the shows, as the third one was over.  The first was in Matlock and was a very pleasant surprise.  Well organized, well presented, and a good range of work.  They also had a sale room, and planned to be serving a lunch ( at a price)a little later.  Next we went to  Ponehma(sp.).  This was in a small heritage building, that was on a bit of land along with a railway museum.  A  very small, traditional show.  But in a back section was a fabric sale involving an internet store that I had heard about.  The proprietor was one of the students when I taught machine quilting in Selkirk, and we had a nice chat.

There was another display that attracted us.  It is an organization that makes special gowns for babies who die in the hospital, especially those who die close to delivery or are still born.  They use donated wedding dresses to make very special gowns.  Quite lovely, and with lace and beads.  Donated bridesmaid dresses in more masculine colours are used in the gowns for little boys.  The makers keep track and take pictures of the gowns to send to the brides who have donated their dresses.  The gowns are distributed through the Pastoral Care departments at St. Boniface, where the only local NICU is.  Often the parents are in no way prepared either physically or emotionally, to consider burial clothing for their infant. Most parents are given their baby to hold, for a moment, and the gowns are used for this as well. I had heard of the program in the States, but never thought about there being one locally.  Of course, we made a donation.  We also made a donation to the small  Heritage Centre that housed the display.  They were actually raffling a small quilt, but we had no need for another quilt!

So I found some joy today, although not in the usual way.