Im Back

It has been a while since I have had the opportunity to post.  I hope I have not lost you during this time away.

So first let me update you all on my situation.  I have spent the past three months moving my belongings out of my lost house, one car load at a time.  I removed the very last items just one week before the bank posted the eviction notice on the door.  I am now included in a class action suit against the bank for the way they handled the loan modification process that resulted in the foreclosure action.

Now, on with my life!  Having moved from a 4000 square foot house into a 1500 square foot house, I have "stuff" everywhere.  There are boxes stacked in every room and a path through each room.  I am spending part of each day sorting and finding a place for the things that I want to keep.  I have a growing box of things that will find a new home.

I soon hope to have a work space to continue the drafting of patterns,  the creation of items for sale, and quilting for others.  I am removing the carpet in my studio space, replacing it with laminate floor.  I work on a small section at a time and I am very close to completing the floor.  Once done, it will be time to put the sewing machines up, convert the small closet into storage space for fabric and sewing supplies.

OK, you are now up to date on my life. On to more interesting subjects.

Let me share with you an amazing thing that has happened to me during the past year. 

I am a genealogist and have been working on my family tree for about 40 years.  My Mother and I have been searching for my Gr Gr Grandmother Elizabeth Ann Ray Cobb all that time with no success.  With the invent of the internet and all the people that have volunteered their time to add to the content on http://www.findagrave.com/  I came across a listing for a Cobb cemetery in Baldwin County, Alabama.  From that listing I found a listing for my Gr Gr Grandmothers grave in Clear Springs Cemetery.  There with her are other family members and that started a year of  "collecting" cousins. 

I clicked on the volunteer that posted the memorial for Elizabeth.  She turned out to be a descendant of Elizabeth and James Cobb.  We are third cousins.  I then added the new information in my family tree on http://www.ancestry.com/.  Since then, I have been in contact with a descendant of each of the children, all of them my third cousins.  I also found that the home of Andrew Cobb has been turned into a Bed & Breakfast.  So, we all decided to get together at Andrews old homestead and meet each other. 

The weekend of November 17 and 18, 2011 I traveled to Alabama and hosted all of them that could make to "The Patterson House".  http://www.pattersonhouse-al.com/ 

We had a wonderful time getting to know each other, sharing family stories, researching the court house in Bay Minette and visiting past ancestors at the cemeteries.  We found the grave of our Gr Gr Grandmother.  She is under a cedar tree and the sun never hits her headstone.  It is a lovely, breezy, cool spot. We cleaned the headstone of the moss that completely covered it, visited with her and then took pictures with her.

I took a digital voice recorder and turned it on any time we were talking about family.  I have spent many hours listening again to the lively conversations and transcribing the new information to add to my family tree.

 
The area has changed very little over the past 100 years and it really gave me a good idea what life was like for my recent and distant ancestors.

 They worked in the logging industry, some hauling logs, some in the turpentine stills. One traveled to the coast, returning with sea food selling it along the route home retaining enough to feed their own family when they got home.  What strong people they were.

I met and visited with one second cousin, Catherine, who is currently 92 years old,   What a treasure she is.  I thoroughly enjoyed the day that she came to visit with us.

At the time I was in Alabama, the cotton fields were ready for harvest, something that I have never seen before.  The cotton was pure white, the fields reminiscent of new snow.  These pictures do not do justice to the beauty of these fields.  The cotton today is picked by machine, always leaving a little bit around the edges and a few here and there in the fields, as all types of picking machines do.  I found myself wanting to go into a picked field to collect some of these "left overs" to comb, spin and knit something from "scratch".  But, time did not permit. Perhaps I will go again and include time in the trip to do it.

Now I'm home again, working on my studio.  I can only get a little done at a time, but I'm so anxious to get it ready for sewing,  Stay tuned for the after pictures of my new little abode.