poppies Archives - The Green Sheep

Kathy and I met in 2010 at the Susan G. Komen fundraiser (sponsored by the Arlington Heights Jr. Women’s League) where I submitted “Life is a Gift (the poppies blanket).” She made the winning bid and went home with the poppies.

We’ve kept in touch, and in June she emailed me and confessed that she had been eyeing “Going to the Beach” here on The Green Sheep blog. Kathy grew up in southwest Michigan — so lakes, dunes, beach grass, and sunlit sailboats are in her blood. I had to tell her that the beach blanket had gone to a young newlywed couple and wasn’t available — but that I would love to try my hand at another along the same theme.

Here, just in time for the lazy, warm days of late summer, is “Going to the Beach II,” with its inquisitive gull wondering who else is coming to the lake on such a lovely day.

Thank you, Kathy, for giving me such an enjoyable project!

“Going to the Beach II” (Size: 70″ x 80″)

The blanket has already gone to a good home.

A friend invited me to create a blanket for a breast cancer fundraiser her town’s junior women’s league put on this spring (with proceeds going to the Susan G. Komen Foundation and to the local hospital). As I pondered what to make for it, these colorful poppies against their quiet background kept coming to my mind. Any difficult diagnosis brings some heaviness — that’s the gray-green background, like dark clouds. But it can also bring a change of outlook on life and life’s many gifts, ones we so easily take for granted. And those, of course, are the poppies. A tribute, too, to my sweet mom and my sweet mom-in-law, both of whom have battled breast cancer.