Greetings, I’m beginning this blog with a confession. I spent too many hours of precious free time during my working years shopping in antique stores. Many items ended up packed in boxes and now have little value for resale.
Early in March 2020 it became widely recognized across the United States that we needed to make dramatic changes in every part of our lives to reduce the spread of COVID 19. Many of us began to shelter at home. I looked at my house with a more-than-usual critical eye and tried to declutter.
I had planned to fly to Ireland the third week in March and realized the trip had to be cancelled about the same time that the United States started closing her borders and flights were cancelled. Ireland also closed her borders to tourists at that time.
I was disappointed to miss this opportunity, just as many others across the world also had to change plans, and began to deal with days, weeks, and now months for some of us, in the confines of our homes.
One of my ways of coping with so much time alone has been to rearrange the furniture several times. It felt like I traveled when I return to a room that looked different than it did or I went to a different part of the house.
I’m lucky to live outside city limits in a rural county where I have a couple of horses and board a few more. It has been easy for me to be outside and be socially distant from others at the same time. My heart goes out to those without the “outdoors” option.
During multiple furniture re-arranging, and feeding the horses in my care, I hit on the idea of having a horse (representative) in every room of the house. I framed photos of horses, found tucked-away equine paintings, and discovered other horse-connected ephemera purchased and forgotten.
I was also working on a quilt top with several large plain-colored squares last winter and felt it needed some embellishment. I was re-reading Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt at the same time. Considering I was now sheltering at home and thinking about equines, I made use of the time to applique horses and other items mentioned in Black Elk’s dream to the quilt top.
The “horse in every room” project helped to pass the time during the winter pandemic months. Both the project and the quilt are nearly finished and will be concluded with addition of one more horse item for the back porch and quilting the top (pictured) to its back.
LLZ Ranch 