By Loretta Humble

Did you ever make a quilt? Did you ever think you would someday? Did you maybe save up pretty scraps of fabric, thinking someday things would slow down and you would really make one?

OK, if you are a guy, you probably haven’t given quilts must thought, and maybe not all younger women have, but I’ll bet if you are a little old lady like me, you’ve either made a bunch of them, or at least meant to when you got around to it.

(READ MORE IN THIS WEEK’S PRINT EDITION OF THE MALAKOFF NEWS, ON STANDS NOW.)

By Loretta Humble

I’m going to write this quick because I am busy, and I am tired. I am tired because I am working hard on something good I can’t tell you about yet. It is one of a number of wonderful things that are happening in this town right now. It is fun to think about them.

The latest of these is the sculpture garden JoAnn Surls and James Surls are creating to honor their husband and father, Joe Surls. You can read the details on the front page of this paper. Believe me, this is very big news. James is a Malakoff boy who went off and made it as big as you can make in the art world. JoAnn already had created a magic place where James grew up, and where

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This is how I blundered into making new friends and coming up with a new project in Kerens last week.

First, if some of you don’t know, I used to be in the online bookselling business. It just kind of happened. I sold a few extra books on Amazon.com, and it worked out so well, I got some more and sold them. It was great fun looking for a book that might have some value. But sometimes I found whole libraries that were for sale at bargain prices, so I would buy them all to get the valuable ones. I filled one storage room, and then bought a storage building and filled it. It was fun until I got so many listed online that sometimes

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(Note to my readers who don’t do Internet and don’t intend to: I’m sorry about this little detour of mine. I promise to shut up about anything Internet for a week or two. I don’t promise, however, to stop talking about de-owning.)

If you have kept up with this column through the years you know once I get on a tear, it is hard for me to shut up about it. My latest one is the whole subject of de-cluttering, de-owning, and simplifying my life. Combine that with my next-to-the-latest obsession, which is social media, and it’s really got me going.

I didn’t like Facebook until I needed it in order to do what I want to do, which is communicate

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I’ve been mostly staying home, kicking back for the last couple of weeks. I cooked goodies for Christmas and fresh turnip greens with turnips and black-eyed peas for New Years, and I’ve planted a lot of daffodils, but mostly I’ve just goofed off. I watched some television shows I’d never seen before. Spellbound, I watched a whole evening of Oddities, where really strange people buy and sell really strange stuff, and Pickers, where a couple of guys travel the country looking in old garages for oddball stuff they can buy and sell and another of Storage Wars, where teams of professional scroungers

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By Loretta Humble

Last Saturday’s Parade Day in Malakoff was an unqualified success. If you were there, you already know that. If you weren’t, you missed something really good. You’ll see some pictures in this paper, I’m sure, and that will give you a little hint of it. Look at those faces. Malakoff was having a real party, and enjoying every minute of it. Whether you were there or not, I hope you will go online and look at the pictures. Even if you are not a computer person, you know somebody that is. Get them to show you. You need

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By Loretta Humble

I’m sorry I skipped last week. Actually, I didn’t skip – I wrote my column. It just didn’t make it to The News. I was having Internet trouble, and when it came on for just a minute, I shot my column to Michael. Trouble was, it wasn’t my column. It was my shopping list. OK, it wasn’t really my shopping list, exactly. It was a list of things I thought we could do on the day of Malakoff’s Christmas Parade to make it a big occasion. The list had basically the same information on it as my column, but it might have been hard to interpret. So here I go, trying one more time, because I really want you to know about this,

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By Loretta Humble

I had a great time this weekend. I went with Carl to a Powwow in Austin. I don’t know what the Indians did at powwows back in the olden days, but what they do now is dress up really fancy with lots of colorful feathers and have lots of dance contests, and also sell lots of arty Indian things from many rented booths. Our friend, Mary Trail, rents one of these booths where she sells lots of native american-type crafts she makes. Carl has been wanting to buy an authentic Native American flute, so that, plus supporting Mary a little, was his excuse for going. My excuse was just that I wanted to get out of town for a couple of days.

We watched the dancing for a while, and I tried to take pictures, but they came out too blurred and too dark. So, if you want to

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