I am a novice quilter, having started a few years ago, when I was in treatment for ovarian cancer. After surgery in Ottawa, I had had to move in with my daughter in Owen Sound, for 6 months of chemotherapy. My daughter was doing her residency in rural medicine, and I was often alone in a town where neither she nor I had any friends. I took up quilting after seeing a sign in a local shop window for a quilters guild that offered lessons.I was the only student in the quilting class, and as I lost my hair, those wonderful women wrapped me in friendship as I spent hours creating what would become my first baby quilt.

After chemo, I returned to Ottawa and my role as Resident Friend with the Ottawa Monthly Meeting of Quakers, and continued making quilts for family and friends, in the lovely sun-lit library on the top of our old Victorian Meeting House. Since COVID hit, there has been lots of time to spend alone, under the skylight and listening to CBC and Audible. As a former research technologist, I was inspired by the election microscopy images of the covid molecule that is covered with spikes on the cell surface that cleave to the molecule.