Beth Ferrier’s Blog

It started innocently enough, as these things do. I found myself at our tiny local airport facing a day of travel with no book. With just one tiny little gift shop as my only source I looked hopefully over the rack of paperbacks. My rule for reading on the road is simple, happy and light in, meaty and deeper out. Books tend to stay with me and it just wouldn’t do for me to arrive at class still engrossed in someone else’s story.

Most of the best sellers before me were crime novels, how depressing. But there, between John Grisham and James Patterson sat this small book, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. Hey, it’s for kids, right? A quick read, and not too challenging, topic wise, how perfect. I’m a big softie, I don’t do spooky or gruesome, but this book was written for teens, even I should be able to handle that.

Well, what can I say? I loved it. Always feeling like an outsider myself, I felt a kinship with Bella immediately. Between flights and layovers (and a nap on the second flight), I devored three quarters of the book before arriving in Virginia Beach.

Quilt with Me, the shop in Windsor, VA that had hired me for this trip reserved a room for me at the lovely Smithfield Inn, owned by the folks who make the hams. My room was beautiful, decadently decorated, and the bed felt like sinking into the best feather bed ever.

After a wonderful dinner with the shopowner, Jackie, and her family, I returned to my room ready to rest and more importantly, finish my book. Just as I was deep into the climax of the story, poor Bella about to be killed by the evil vampire, I heard a ruckus out in the hall.

The innkeeper was conducting a tour. Outside my door I heard her say, “and this is the Sykes Room. It’s the scary one, it’s haunted.” Her voice trailed off before I could hear any more of the story. Haunted? Vampire stories? Dark and stormy night thrashing at my window? “Oh, hell no,” I said to the room, finished the book, sank blissfully into the bed and dreamed of being young and desperately in love.

Fans of the book will love that the next morning I discovered that I would be teaching in a dance studio.

So, in the last week I have devored the remaining books in the series, book two while on retreat, book three for the travel day home. And book four because I had to get these people out of my head so that I could concentrate on the book I’m supposed to be writing.

 I guess what touched me the most about the story was that I remember so well being young and hopelessly in love. Even though it’s been decades, mostly good years, but some very hard, I still see my guy as the seventeen year old that I fell in love with. He will always be that tall, handsome, gentle young man who held me safely in his arms and taught me about unconditional love.

It’s been a busy few months, filled with writing, teaching and travel. Word just came from the publisher that they are happy with the manuscript. I can finally breathe air all the way to the bottom of my lungs.

I’m just home from a retreat, sort of quilty, sort of professional. Some old friends of mine who are also in the quilting industry get together once a year to kick around both business and personal issues. We laugh until our sides ache. We cry together over our losses. Some of us sew until the machine catches fire, some work on quiet projects and some of us just relax and read and regroup.

It is easy to underestimate the power of kinship. Few things are more comforting than confessing a terrible transgression only to find heads nodding with understanding. Misery really does love company and in times when our worlds have gone crazy it’s nice to know that we’re still normal.

It’s wonderful to be back home, done with my professional travel for the year. I love to teach, don’t get me wrong, but home is always where I long to be. It’s time to tidy up the studio and dive into those last few projects for the new book. How lovely that most of what’s left to do involves playing with fabrics and thread!

But for today, all is quiet. We’re having our first measurable snowfall. The heavy gray clouds hang low, falling snow muffles the sounds of progress. Like the inside of a cocoon, soft and white and quiet, we wait.

If it weren’t for deadlines I wouldn’t know when I was done. For the past three weeks I have been slaying deadlines. Deadlines that I knew about, deadlines I’d forgotten about and deadlines I didn’t even know I had.

The manuscript is off to the publisher. Every now and then I remember that someone is reading it. That someone is reading it with a critical eye, because that’s her job. She’s deciding what’s good, what could be better and what needs to go. I spend a moment or two thinking good thoughts, sending hopeful thoughts to hold the words up while they are under scrutiny. And then I am blissfully distracted by the next deadline.

And then there was the deadline to finish a quilt using my fabric line for McCall’s quilting magazine. The top has been finished for a very long time. Some how I misread a deadline and discovered that I had a week less than I had planned for to finish the quilting. Thank goodness a friend of a friend is a fabulous long arm quilter and she was willing to let me take cuts in line. She did an exquisite job. The issue with my quilt will be on the newsstands in February.

Out of the blue a new deadline presented itself. On the first day of Quilt Market an email arrived from the organizer of one of the biggest quilt conferences in the country, an invitation to teach. Oh good golly! But I couldn’t say yes because I was already booked for those days. Oh lordy me. For the first time ever I asked a guild if they were able to change their dates so I could teach for both groups. After several days of holding my breath (good thing blue skin looks nice with my gray hair), this wonderful and delightful guild was willing to shift their dates to a week later. Yippiee!

I spent several days filling out all of the paperwork for class descriptions, supply lists and establishing kit prices. The forms were sent off a day early, another deadline was conquered!

So, now I’m working on the deadline that I knew I had. December 9th. The day that all of the sample quilts are due. A deadline that involves sewing. A happy deadline. And after that, I may even be able to work on something that I can show on the blog.