OneHankyQuilter sails off with Captain Hornblower

Margo Takacs Marshall always wanted some of her ashes to end up on the ocean.

Born in landlocked Hungary, she fell in love with the big blue ocean when she read the very first book in the Captain Hornblower series in the late 1930s , as a small child.

She always delighted in telling the story of the school librarian not believing that such a young (girl) reader, with English as her second language to boot, could possibly read such an adult (and male-oriented) book so quickly.

She was marched off to her teachers, before all concerned agreed she could and had read the Hornblower book and wanted more books of adventures on the sea.

When she and her husband Rowland rounded a corner, on a 1955 trip out into the country from their home at the edge of the town of Dartmouth, and saw the open ocean 10 feet from Highway 207 in  the community of Seaforth ,they instantly fell in love with that view.

They resolved this is where they wanted to live and to die.

So, on a wild and windy day in November, some of Margo's ashes were sent off into that ocean she loved so much.

The peak of high tide on Wednesday November 24th 2010 was 9:30 AM - the retreating tide, as that water fell down to its lowest point, would hopefully take the boat containing some of her ashes far out to sea.

But late Tuesday afternoon it began to rain and pick up in wind - and it got worse and worse throughout the night.

Thankfully just before dawn the rain stopped and the wind calmed a bit.

Family members and friends - her husband Rowland, son Michael, granddaughter Rachel,co-mother-in-law Bev Leal, daughter-in-law Rebecca and family friends Leslie Savoy and a cat called ORANGE gathered at the very very end of Seaforth's Causeway Road - where land meets open ocean.

A ceremony was held, starting with the reading of Psalm 23, prayers, and ending in the singing of the hymn Amazing Grace.

Pictures were taken of the group and the boat bearing Margo's ashes.

It had a rose from Margo's garden - she loved her garden like a child - and a sail of her quilting material - she loved her quilts like her children.

She also loved animals - cats in particular - and it was very nice for Orange to hang about the fringes, uninvited but welcome.

Leslie arrived to take some more pictures - for Facebook and for distant friends and relatives.

As the boat drifted off in the waves and the wind, as a final gesture ,we all threw in red (Margo's favorite color) carnations on behalf of relatives who could only be there in spirit....

If you click on any picture it gets big enough to see all the details - the movie also needs a click to start.

the last words MARGO wrote were about quilting

Margo Takacs Marshall 1928-2010

My mom, Margo Takacs Marshall, passed away a month ago, around 1 pm, September 19th 2010.

She began feeling she might have had a mini-stroke two months earlier on July 12th.

Then at 1 pm, September 12th, two months later, she distinctly felt unwell and told my father " I think I have had (a full) stroke".

 Then she went off to the hospital in an ambulance and died exactly a week later.

Mom had kept a diary on yearly calendars, as many women do, for dozens of years.

Recently, I noticed that her very last entry she ever got to write was this :

"Quilting" ( her regular weekly quilting session with others at the rural community hall across the road) - and then in a much worse handwriting "very unwell".

Mom noticed the effects of her ongoing stroke, not when she felt very unwell - something she often was for the last 50 years of her life, but only when her writing got noticeably bad.

By the time I first saw my mom,the morning of the next day, she opened one eye (unseeing) and momentarily stared at the direction of my voice - just that once during the whole week, just that first time.

Most of the family did not even get that brief response.

So I feel that for me and most of my family, we weren't really there when mom started having her stroke and was still lucid.

 This handwritten note on her diary is the last we 'saw' of the mom we all knew, before she lapsed into a total stupor.

It is a small bit of writing but very precious to me.

And how appropriate that the last thing mom ever wrote was about quilting - for the last 40 years she had defined herself first and foremost, not as a mother or spouse or gardener but rather as a quilter .

 And it was as a 'quilter' that Margo died in harness, doing what she loved most....

"I'm Still Here": Quilting together a wonderful life despite severe chronic illnesses

I am Margo Takacs Marshall's oldest child and a co- author of this blog with her.

I am planning a PDF Ebook of lots of color photos of Mom's non-hankie quilts, together with comments on each from her family and friends.

The title will be as above.

Here's the story behind that choice for a title.

In 1962, when Mom was 34, she was told by her three doctors that she's never live beyond 35.

When she was 70, that is twice 35 (35x2=70), she had a birthday celebration.

During it, Mom recounted that at 70, ie twice 35,  her three doctors, not much older than her, were " all gone" , but she added, "I'm still here !"

Her new doctors thought she would be dead on Monday,then on Tuesday then on Wednesday -- after that they gave up.

Sunday AM, she was "still here" .

Without her normally heavy meds, her heart, lungs and kidneys were still going strong, even after a "massive, massive stroke" destroyed half her brain.

After a lifetime of heart and kidney disease, she was still going strong.

During that almost half century of extra life, Mom was never really free of pain or disability for very long, but she carved out time to raise a family of five, do much volunteer work, garden, bird watch, animal-save, read,read read - and quilt.

At the age of 80, she became an author of an unique approach to featuring individual hankies as the centre piece of a medallion quilt, each quilt and hanky telling a story.

This afternoon, Mom's body finally went south but her spirit, and her quilts live on - are "still here" .....

Margo Oct 15 1928 -Sept 19 2010

Hannah Hauxwell's story inspiring to all women

I am fascinated by the story of Hannah Hauxwell, the women from the High Fell country in North Yorkshire on the border with Durham (the High Pennines) ,who struggled to operate a farm by herself with no money, running water or electricity.

Like my daughter in law, she got her water with a bucket from a stream -first breaking the ice cover in the winter, as the weather up there ( in northern Britain and well above sea level) was like a winter in rural Nova Scotia.

For years she struggled on in dire poverty and all alone, after her parents and uncle died.

I saw the TV documentaries on Hannah back in the 1970s ("Too Long a Winter") and now I want to read all the new books on her - and maybe own the new DVD on her life.

By the by, she is a little bit older than me and still alive and spry - living more comfortable in a small village (Cotherstone) near her farm (Low Birk Hatt Farm) - of which part has become an international wildlife site.

My son, himself an avid blogger, wants me to do a quilt about Hannah Hauxwell ... and I just might !

AVA JANE a marvelous young blogger

I do not blog as much as my son, Michael ( see his new blog

 " MO goes PO") but I did read and enjoy the work of the young cub reporter AVA JANE writing for the blog, 

"EVERGREEN NOVA SCOTIA").

She reads well, spells well - and clearly, writes well !

Two Aussie Sisters hope to revive HANKIES' heyday !

Here's a uplifting HANKY story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Barbara Cloud:

"Can Australian sisters bring back hanky's heyday?"

Jennifer Moran from Brisbane and Angela Galgut from Sydney, wrote to Barbara after they spotted one of her columns about how important hankies once were to ladies, rather like white gloves were once essential nightwear.

I can recall how important hankies once were to both men and women - and by men I mean boys from about 14 upwards, who once loved to wear sports jackets - complete with highly visible hanky.

People routinely gave each other hankies - the conscripts at my brother's WWII basic training army camp all got hankies, named after the camp, as a keepsake of their hard slug there.

Hardly sissy stuff - and hankies were part of it!

I will write more on this soon - off to play cards with my daughter-in-law, after she gave me a new deck of cards with safety tips for seniors on each card.....

Rowland warns us of a "Warming Earth"

My husband, Rowland, is a visual artist and poet.

I do quilts - he paints - in acrylics mostly - and pulls prints - and even creates sculpture.

He often attaches short poems to his art and makes them into

handmade and bound 'artistbooks'.

His latest is called "Warming Earth" and is on his virtual art studio site, " Rowland's Seaforth Art Studio ".

My son, Michael, posted the texts and images for Rowland on the site.

Michael made the pictures interestingly different than the originals and much better than what Staples made of them, when they made photographic prints of them.

I think the original art was the best by far, but they are certainly different on the web site - almost glow in the dark coloring...

But go see for yourself.

New images of my hanky quilts added to my website

I have added about twenty high quality images of my hanky quilts to my website, OneHankyQuiltmaking.

Enjoy !