25 things about Jan T

Not old really, just mature. Born in January, 1946. That would make me 64 and some months.

I am now officially an aged pensioner!

More grey and faded now, but still have a redhead's good (and bad) points.

Married at 17, separated at 18.

Living 'in sin' at twenty, remarried to my partner 'in sin' at 24.

Widowed at 53.

Married again at 59.

1963 Angela Maree
1966 Veronica Ruth (died in 1994 — inset)
1968 Rachel Irene
1969 Clare Anne
1972 Bernadette Louise

Boy we were busy!

From left to right: Bernadette, Clare, Rachel, me and Angela.

I have two beautiful grand-daughters and four fine grandsons:

Jacob Peter Edwin Rasmussen (mouthful, called Jake. That's him at thirteen)
Harriet Lillian Urquhart
Ariell Bryn Clark (ABC — her monogram's on all sorts!)
Mitchell Harvey
Nolan Harvey
Bradman Harvey
Jay Paul Purdon-Urquhart

They call me Mama (mar-mar).

Aren't I lucky?

Quick-tempered, but just as quick to get over it.

Never sulk.

Shout first, ask questions later.

I can't stand it when people say things that aren't grammatically correct.

John and I went to the shops. OK

He came to the shops with John and I. WRONG!

He came to the shops with John and me. CORRECT!

People were corrected so much as kids that they now don't know what's right.

Billboards and other signs.

Signwriters should be taught to spell!

And journalists.

Here's one of my pet peeves:

its/it's

Its is possessive — ownership of something
Its handle was red.

It's is short for it is.
It's nearly lunchtime.

Rant over!

Baptised as a baby and educated in Catholic schools, I have a deep faith, and have been blessed by God in so many ways.

I can sing, and how!

I have had it said that sitting near me in church is like having an angel singing beside the person.

I'm not bragging, just telling what God gave me.

You have to share your talents, and let them bring joy to others.

I don't practice any more.

When I decided to quit for full time quiltmaking, my accompanist said, "I always thought you were too creative to be an accountant."

Of course, you know creative accountants go to jail!

I have been teaching people things for more than fifty years.

When I was eleven, the nun who was teaching second grade got ill, so I used to teach the littlies, for a while each day.

Same thing happened when I was in high school, I used to take second year English for a month or two when one of the sisters became ill.

I have taught at TAFE — accounting subjects; at patchwork shops; at quilt groups all over Australia; and still in my studio weekly; and now online.

I have written (and had published) four patchwork books, several articles online about quiltmaking and web design.

Patchwork Tshushin from Japan, which has 6 million readers, invited me to write a series of six articles about computers and quilting.

I have been producing websites in Australia since before any one thought that the Internet would be as big as it is now.

I had the first commercial quilting website in Australia in 1995.

One of my sites has been archived by the National Gallery for its cultural significance: QUILTS 2000 — a fundraising site for the Sydney 2000 Paralympics. It was cutting edge design in 1998.

My web design site is affordable web design 4 u

I started quilting in 1983, and am still loving everything about it today.

I make art quilts, bed quilts, and lots in between.

My latest art piece is of two rosellas that visit our yard to pick at the chook food.

The two rosellas are now ready to be applied to the background.

It's still very much in progress, but there's an image of the partly made quilt on my Crazy Patchwork lens.

Bob has five children, two sons from his first marriage whom he never sees, a daughter from that marriage whom we love, and a son and daughter from his second marriage whom we do see.

Bob has seven grandchildren in total. Eight now.

Leah is Adam's lovely bright little girl. That's Leah with a pretty blue tongue!.

She's two now and smart as a whip. She can say some Spanaish words she learned from TV, and is very clever at preschool.

We have a menagerie.

Bob had two canaries and a mini fox terrier called Lucky when I met him. The canaries were bought as a pair, but turned out to be both girls.

We now have twenty two canaries, several quail, two Frizzle bantams called Frizzle and Frazzle — who have flatly refused to lay since Christmas, and Lucky. Lucky was killed in August 2009, and so was one of the bantams.

We now have a tiny seven week old mini foxie called Sammi. That's her killing her 'snake'.

Saxophone!

Such a mellow instrument. He gets better and better, as he now goes to a music school for lessons.

He took it up only about ten years ago, and was not too bad. Now he's good!

Bob and I have a lovely garden, cottage style.

I design it, and use the Esther Dean's No Dig method to grow everything.

Bob mows, weeds and with my supervision does the pruning and reworking. If I didn't supervise, God knows what the shrubs and trees would look like!

This is when I first redesigned the front yard with a quilt style path. It has much more growth now.

I have a book that my dad gave me when I was two — Anne of Green Gables — and I could read when I was two, according to my mother.

I love the written word and my house has books in every room.

My favourite reading matter is about design, interior, web, quilts...

I love to read software books.

Love Adobe Creative Suite software.

Love Electric Quilt Design software — I even teach others how to use that.

Love tinkering with my software to get it working just so.

I even can install hardware.

The quilt on the computer screen in EQ is on the wall and pieces are on the desk.

In 1978, I had an argument with a circular saw, and six months later had the index finger on my left hand removed by a microsurgeon.

When I was being included in a book by an Australian author who had known me for years, the people who were laying out the book said to her, "That girl's only got three fingers!"

She replied, "Don't be stupid, I've known her for years, I've never seen that."

They showed her the photos and she immediately phoned me to repeat the story.

The surgeon did a good job didn't he?

There are three of us, and my mother makes four.

People called us the four girls.

I'm standing, Elizabeth has a bow in her hair and Nicole has the dark velvet ribbon in her dress.

There's only three years and two months from top to bottom.

I have been a teacher, an accountant, an interior decorator, a quilter, an editor, a page layout designer, a web designer, a writer, a columnist, a singer...

What's left?