What a great Christmas surprise!  On Chrstmas Eve, my sweet son, Walker, and his lovely fiancee, Anca, arrived with this adorable little fur-ball. 

She's a Lhasa-Poo (that's half lhasa apso, half poodle), and at 12 weeks, she's 4 pounds of pure joy.  We named her Noelle, in honor of the holiday, but that quickly morphed into Nellie.  Now I have to teach her to sit on my lap in the "quilt cave" under my hoop while I'm quilting, just like her predecessor, Mallory, used to do.

On Tuesday, September 29, 2009, our beloved toy poodle, Mallory, left us forever.  She had warmed my lap and my heart for 12 years, and I miss her terribly.

The precious gift our pets give us is unconditional love, so rarely available from our human companions.  No wonder their loss affects us so deeply!

In my sadness, I reached out to my fellow quilters in the Stashbusters group.  I have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from these wonderful women, all of them total strangers to me.

Though Mallory was just a tiny little pooch, losing her has left an enormous hole in my heart.  All the kind expressions of sympathy offered by family, friends, and the quilting community have shown me that there is an infinite supply of love in the world, more than enough to fill that hole, if I just leave my heart open.