bluemeadowdesigns

International Weekend

Today is one of those days when I am over tired, but very inspired. Yesterday (Sunday) turned out to be a day full of new friends, old friends, and pizza. I knew it was a great day, when I ran out of hangers for coats in my guest closet.

It started with meeting the 'canners' who are in town. We had lunch with these three young guys who are staying at my parents house this week while they are here with the MCC meat canning truck. They came down to our place for the afternoon...partly so they could all get onto the internet with their own computers. So, Eric is from Pennsylvania (10 miles from where I use to live!) and Josh is from Kansas, and Viktor is from Germany. It was cool watching him and his family speak back and forth through their web cams. A short time later, other friends came down, with the young man who is living with them this year. His name is Mark, and he is from Paraguay. And later that night, Katherine made it down to our house, and she is from Switzerland. So we had a house full of international friends, and I didn't take a picture of any of them! It shows you how involved I was, because I never remember to stop and take a picture when I am having a great time.

As it turned out, everyone who was here had a connection to MCC. What is MCC you ask? It stands for Mennonite Central Committee, and it is a world wide relief organization. My family has been involved in some manor with MCC since I was born. It is a long story, but it is because of MCC that quilting came into my family, and that has lead me this profession.

So, the meat canning truck comes into Winkler once a year, and will process and can about 22,000 cans of pork. The volunteer crew is lead by these three guys, and together we will all work around the clock from Wednesday to Saturday to finish the canning. This is not an environment that is familiar to me, but I am looking forward to working a shift later on this week. Chances are good that I will end up on the night shift again. I hope that I will remember to bring my camera with me this time, and document my time working in a packing plant.

I am also working on a quit top that I hope to finish this week, which will be donated to the MCC quilting room. I will definatly have pictures of that to share with you soon. I decided to make an Ocean Waves quilt this year, and it has turned out to be a really, really fun project.

So, I will talk to you all again soon!
-myra