The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien was my husbands favorite book when I met him, and remains so to this day over 40 years later. I read it for him in our early marriage, but I found all the battles and male bonding rather dull. When I read War and Peace back then, I skipped all the war scenes, so you can see I was more into personal relationships than old-fashioned swashbuckling romance. When the movie series came out, I reread and saw all the movies with my husband and son... several times...
My favorite character is Sam, Frodo's stalwart friend who stays by his side and becomes the true hero. I love it when simple people like the Hobbits turn out to be the sort of heroes that are needed, not the military or political leaders! The impact of world wars on England is very evident in the series. The people of England were surely true heroes during those embattled days.
My husband's favorite poem from Tolkien is The Road Goes On and he asked me to make a quilt with it. I turned a Tolkien color painting into an embroidery pattern. The completed embroidery sat around for years because I did not know how to finish the quilt. Finally, I just did the simple thing and added a Jenny Beyer border print. I machine quilted the background following the horizontal lines in the fabric. So the quilt is finally finished!!
