In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

Ice Cream Soda block in progress. While it's awesome to visit with family, home is home for a reason. We're back and happy to be here, and with most things unpacked and laundry spinning, it's time to consider what's next. LOL. But seriously.... My shoulder feels good after several days without sewing. The Alexandria quilt will be my focus this evening. After I finish an Ice Cream Soda block (pictured above) that I started over the weekend. Okay, I did a wee bit of stitching. I supervised (or helped build) Lego constructions. Gingerbread house constructions. Craft constructions. Played several card games, including Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, Pizza , which is MARVELOUS! If you're looking for a last-minute gift for any age, and aren't averse to a cool game of Slap Jack, it's a winner. But SERIOUSLY.... While I didn't do much sewing, I caught up on edits of my next novel, Splitting the Sky . Always great reading a book on one's phone for that published fee...

  SF Bay Area traffic last night. This weekend my hubby and I are back in the SF Bay Area to celebrate our youngest grandgirl's birthday, as well as partake of some early familial Christmastime shenanigans. It's nice to reconnect with beloveds at this time of year, even if only for a few days. Makes all the difference in the world when we go our separate ways, as we all invariably do. When we left Silicon Valley for Humboldt County, there was a compromise. The traffic pictured above was happily jettisoned for California's quiet North Coast. For a small town vibe amid several not tiny enclaves that make up the Fortuna/Eureka/Arcata/McKinleyville corridor along U.S. Route 101. That's where we call home, a Redwood tree-lined mish-mash of locales and folks, banana slugs and brown slugs, deer and other critters. We've lived there now for three years and I LOVE IT. I really do. I also adore my children and grandkids, and none of them live anywhere remotely close. Remote i...

  Current state of Alexandria, missing three hexagon blocks to complete this round. Painstaking also applies to the sudden reemergence of a pinched nerve in my right shoulder, shoot! So yeah, a slight detour from how I was going to wax poetically about prepping to move onto the next phase. Or not. Huh. Didn't see that coming. Nor could I have fathomed what happened to a beloved childhood landmark of mine; early this morning the Bidwell Mansion was destroyed by fire. HEARTBREAKING! Northern California is my birthplace, and I visited the mansion many times in my youth. Makes me ill pondering all that was lost, especially on the heels of the destructive Park Fire that burned Upper Bidwell Park this past summer, and let's not forget the Camp Fire that ravaged Paradise in 2018. Again, I feel queasy considering these events, hard to separate myself from them merely to talk about a quilt. Perhaps what I need to consider is how FLEETING are possessions, even parts of this planet. Ani...

Page one of two.... Certainly time consuming; doing my civic duty these days means more than half-heartedly paying attention to the barest news items. In addition to signing up for American of Conscience Checklist , I'm pondering other avenues of using my voice. Today I wrote down all the Republican U.S. senators, their office phone numbers, and the end year of their terms. You never know when you might need to call an elected representative. I've never been an active activist. I vote, I stay informed in a manner that doesn't push me into lasting depression. I pray. I've signed petitions, made my opinion about the incoming administration pretty damn clear on this blog and other social media accounts. Within my books my feelings are best noted; all people are treated with respect. Page two. I double checked the phone numbers, hopefully they're all correct. I am flummoxed to the level of bigotry and fear that continues to pervade my nation; equally I am aware I will n...

  Peace is the theme for this coming week. Peace, peace.... Easy to wish for others, not always easy to claim for myself, mostly because I'm living with one foot in this realm, another beyond the veil, and corporeal human life these days is....difficult. Not on a health-level, not economic. Not in most face-value manners, so outwardly my life is happy. Fulfilling. Yet.... Yet my nation is fraught with BS politicians and billionaires and it makes me wanna puke. Hard to be peaceful when so much shite is stirred up, so much hypocrisy, so much.... I've already swore once, don't need to belabor the massive wrongs awaiting. Why it's hard to be at peace, that corporeal foot feeling stuck in concrete. But what about my other leg, another possibility? Can I take on faith that all will be well, no matter how futile the outlook seems? Can I seek a different render of the future, perhaps many years from now, maybe beyond my presence, or even tomorrow? How bleak must life have seeme...

Going through a manuscript with a fine-toothed comb, or the equivalent method of revising. Or deciding the next stage of a medallion quilt. Or how to use one's energies to oppose a false democracy. Well OKAY Very Recently Past Me, ahem. Very Recently Past Me (VRPM) seemed to be teetering on the edge of her high horse, but sure, I'll run with this prompt. Uh, yeah.... I'm only hesitant because VRPM made this post because 1) I mostly liked the title in conjunction with editing a new (LOL) book. Not that Give Her My Love: The Hawk Book One is old news, but I do like me a shiny, the shinier (and seemingly more labor intensive) the better. Okay, so that's the main reason for this post. The current round of pink-ish and green hexagons is halfway done, woo hoo! The second reason is.... 2) The above quilt! Or what's emerging as nightly I ecstatically stitch away on Alexandria. OMG I am SO IN LOVE with SEWING this QUILT! I'd been deeply (DEEPLY) concerned if a medallion...