In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

A trench my husband dug today as the run was a soggy mess from the rain. Owl or Cami Chicken is to the left. Photo courtesy of my better half. Sometimes a theme attaches itself to a sewing project. Sometimes I go into a quilt with an agenda. And sometimes it's a mix of these notions. The medallion quilt, the first I have made by machine, is both. (Pictures of the progress in the next post, once I complete the current round....) The gray/blue/neutral fabrics lend themselves to winter. Which is coming down with abundance right now all over California. In adding the pink, I wanted to break up, just a little, the gray/blue theme. But I didn't want to diminish the cool sense of.... Detachment? Sorrow? Understated comprehension of bleakness? Yes, I wanted to somehow honor those killed and suffering in Minnesota. Yet all over this planet heartache and injustice rages. But beauty and compassion and love also stand firm, welcoming all those seeking mercy and solace and affection. We can...

I could use this shot as a cover photo for the book, lol. Just a scene, merely to note that while bad things happen and no one blinks, why can't miracles occur similarly....   The actual haircut took ten minutes, the chit-chat minimal. Hannah was no-nonsense during her work, one of the reasons Kym had started going to her over fifteen years ago, after Hannah got her ya-ya’s out living in Santa Rosa, first in attending cosmetology school, then meeting who she would marry, then dragging that man back to her hometown because despite losses, nowhere on God’s green earth was more beautiful and peaceful than the King Range. Hannah had been smart enough to know that Deadfern was the closest she and Connor would get in terms of urban living, and Connor had been wise enough not to argue with her. He worked at the post office, and had weathered a few years with Shauna before she had been moved to delivery. Yet Hannah and Connor were years younger than Kym, had three kids, and after Kym adm...

Gigi from yesterday enjoying a flowerbed inundated with weeds. She's looking pretty pleased with herself, lol. Photo courtesy of my husband. Don't forget the chickens, yet will they forget the sunshine? Sunday afternoon on the getting more soggy by the minute North Coast of California; I just finished adding the round of pinkish-orange Grunge around this developing medallion quilt. I've plotted out the next round, but am unsure how wide the strips will be. Currently the quilt is thirty-nine inches across, and if I add six and a half inch wide slabs of fabric, then I'm looking at a pretty large-ish quilt, with a couple more rounds to go. I'll have to consider this notion, but with over four inches of rain forecast for the next several days, I see myself sewing as often as my tinnitus allows. It will be striking if nothing else. Which has been every other day or so, but what's a little ringing of one's ears when it's super-wet out and cold for our neck of ...

I forgot to write it down. But I still wanted to write a post. Not sure about what, but here it is. It's the kind of post that rings of, well, forgetfulness, lol. Also of gratitude. Maybe a little about chickens? Perhaps. Ruthie continues to behave, and she's been cuddling with Camilla in the evenings when they get ready to go to sleep. That's been adorable! This is the sort of post that emerges, possibly, when I'm WRITING, hahaha! Well, I didn't write today, but I did yesterday, and will do so tomorrow. Miracles, or the eventual occurrence of miracles, make for a great plot device. I don't want to give away from where this idea sprung, but suffice to say I received a miracle, and my heart needed to write a novel about it. Oh that's kind of adorable too. Um, I don't like to put a comma after Oh like in the sentence above because I'm not keen on the long pause that a comma demands. I want the sentence to be read as if Oh is Well or So or Indeed . ...

Ruthie the Barnevelder hen. A not so broody hen notwithstanding.... First an update about that hen. Ruthie is now her name, as now I can tell apart the triplets, whew! Their combs tell the tale; Ruthie has a very small comb (and wattles), while Gigi has the largest. Icey is the third, and her name is made from the initials IC, which stand for irregular comb, as Icey's comb has an odd spike in the center. Fortunately Ruthie has been a well-behaved hen for two days now, and *HOPEFULLY* that spate of broodiness won't be revisited anytime soon. Now, about that novel.... I am still pondering how I can be ever so blessed to craft stories, especially after not writing a complete manuscript for over, ahem, two years! I finished Home and Far Away in mid December 2023, then wrote a quarter of The Enran Chronicles Book Five last June. Yet that incomplete manuscript, while not haunting, remains unfinished. The book I began today is a standalone (WOO HOO, lol...) about miracles. And it ki...

  Miss Broody Hen 2026....   What's been going on lately as I returned home from Silicon Valley.... So much to say, but only forty-six minutes to write before I check on Broody Hen. One of the Barnevelder Triplets has decided to go mildly broody; she doesn't try to bite, though she does growl if approached in her nesting box. She has plucked many feathers, but not down to her actual skin. And when removed from her box, placed in the Broody Hen Condo for an hour, then finding a way to escape she doesn't immediately race back to the coop. She hung out with her sisters, scratching through gravel and dirt near the coop as rain softly began to fall. Then the rain came down hard and I went inside and she went back to the coop, dang chicken! This is our first rodeo with a broody hen. She started this instinctual hoo haa on Friday, hanging out in a nesting box all afternoon. And evening. And sleeping there until at some point on Saturday, the day I drove home, she came out of the b...