I love working on puzzles: crosswords, acrostics, cryptograms, anything that challenges the mind.  This sense of solving problems also extends to family, community, and the world at large.  In my community, I help to make sure that those in need of quilts get them: flood victims, veterans, children, women's shelters, etc.  I also donate quilts for fund-raising groups: my guilds, schools, San Francisco's Gay Men's Chorus, to name a few.

Quilt-making gives me that outlet to make poetic statements.  Sometimes it's simply a way to provoke a question, such as: "Why is that pig in that quilt?" and the response is: "I date my quilts by the year of the Asian animal - i.e., made in the Year of the Pig."  I may include other literary elements: puns, metaphors, riddles, personal history, rebuses, and plain ole jokes.

I feel as though I've made a successful quilt if it makes people laugh, or if it makes people say, "Hey, that looks like kids made that quilt."  I love kids' art.