A young girl describes her grandmother's move to a retirement home.

Quilts exemplify precious things: comfort through the warmth they provide; community, since they are often created by groups; and love, given the time and effort they require. With this in mind, legions of kindhearted quilters all over the world choose to donate their labors of love to people in need. Ruth McHaney Danner has gathered fifty-four heartwarming stories of quilters who make their compassion tangible one stitch, square, and quilt at a time. Each story introduces a quilter or group of quilters, ranging from a blind woman in Texas to preschoolers in Australia. Their gifts have the power to make recipients feel cherished and supported, even though they may never meet face-to-face. These wonderfully inspiring stories show that every quilter who has ever wondered, “But what can I do?” can do something to reach out and help others.

Ruby tells the story of Ruby Castle told in snapshots and fleeting glimpses and secret histories, in tales repeated and reinvented by those who fall under the horror film actress's spell: her childhood sweetheart, an antiquarian bookseller with a passion for magical artifacts, the mistress of the poet who was once Castle's lover, a young girl in a future Russia who dreams of the stars. Worlds collide, and the boundaries between the real and the fantastic begin to break down. Is Ruby Castle a living person or a collective fantasy? By the end, the world that Castle created through her films has become dangerously indistinguishable from our own.

Meet Opa and Opa, grandparents who have shared a long life together on their farm. Once they nurtured seven children, a variety of farm animals, and rolling fields with their love and hard work. Now they teach their grandchildren about the wonderful ways you can grow, not only on the farm, but anywhere you live. After fifty years on the same farm, in the same home, Opa and Oma are still growing in life...together.

This handbook for anyone interested in quilting, is full of hints, shortcuts, and practical know-how from experienced quilters. Reading it is like quilting beside an expert quilter and a trusted friend! The quilting experts at The Old Country Store, named "One of the 10 best quilt shops in the United States" by Better Homes and Gardens' Quilt Sampler Magazine, have assembled wisdom from a premiere group of thousands of quilters -- those women who have perfected precise piecing, who know how to prevent thread from knotting, who continually experiment with new batting, new tools, new techniques. From selecting fabric to hand quilting and machine quilting, to embellishments and new technology, this handbook offers candid and clear hints and tricks of the trade that are of value for the novice and experienced quiltmaker alike. Previous edition sold more than 200,000 copies. "This is a collection of tips for those who may not think they need them! Recommended."—Booklist

In this book, Tomas Balkelis explores how the Lithuanian state was created and shaped by the Great War from its onset in 1914 to the last waves of violence in 1923. As the very notion of independent Lithuania was constructed during the war, violence is seen as an essential part of the formation of Lithuanian state, nation, and identity. War was much more than simply the historical context in which the tectonic shift from empire to nation-state took place. It transformed people, policies, institutions, and modes of thought in ways that would continue to shape the nation for decades after the conflict subsided. In telling the story of the post-WWI conflict in Lithuania, War, Revolution, and Nation-Making in Lithuania, 1914-1923 focuses on the soldiers and civilians involved in the conflict, rather than the strategies and acts of politicians, generals, or diplomats. The volume's two main themes are the impact of military, social, and cultural mobilizations on the local population, and different types of violence that were so characteristic of the region throughout the period. The actors in this story are people displaced by war and mobilized for war: refugees, veterans, volunteers, peasant conscripts, POWs, paramilitary fighters, and others who took to guns, not diplomacy, to assert their power. This is the story of how their lives were changed by war and how they shaped the society that emerged after war.