A Contemplative Life

Guests have gone, a quiet house this evening. Fog rolled in a couple of hours ago and my goodness it's as thick as it was early this morning. Family has landed in their respective domiciles where it's not at all marine-layer-like, lol. Funny how within one state, albeit a large state, the weather and climates can be so different. I think I'll sleep well tonight, pondering how being close to routine still feels a little strange. Hosting several beloveds became immediately normal and now that altered normalcy is quiet, foggy, autumnal. Earlier sunsets and later sunrises get a little lost in the card game shuffle, long chats, and lots of dishes washed. Now it's truly October, very much fall, and with four molting hens to boot, lots of change occurring. Ruthie on the baby perch while Cami looks on. Photo courtesy of my husband from this evening. Cami and Owl are both looking scraggly, Welsummer as well, though she still has tail feathers. Camilla is hinting at the molt, wha...

It's late for me. I'm weary but in the best beloveds are visiting way. And tonight I completed a round on the Peace Round the World quilt. Here's a picture.   I'd love to say more, however I really am about to fall over into my laptop keyboard. Suffice to say it's the last day of September and I'm moving forward with this quilt, YAY! Have a lovely rest of the week out there.... 

Guests are arriving tomorrow for the upcoming week, beloveds dear to my heart. Since I'm the type who (deep) cleans prior to visitors, the last few days have been steeped in, well, cleaning. LOL! Not sure why I have always done it this way, but it works and I'm too old to change. I'm feeling weary tonight, but other than making one bed TOMORROW, the house is looking good. Hopefully I'll sleep well, I've certainly earned a decent rest. Little Owl Chicken from a year ago. She looks so YOUNG! From where I'm seated I can see six chickens scratching at the ground. It's six p.m. and in another hour and fifteen minutes those hens will be heading to the coop, climbing up the roost steps, then settling on the wall. Cami Chicken has lost her tail feathers, but not as aggressively as Ruthie and Gigi, who both appeared like someone had chopped off their backsides! Cami is also acting slightly cowed, Ruthie picking on her in the mornings while they eat breakfast. Pecking...

Ah, another Mandolin quilt is completed. The EPP portion that is, lol. Not that the rest of it is going to be complicated, other than adding to the fleece backing so it's large enough. No batting, as an English paper pieced quilt top is heavier than a machine pieced top, or mine are because I use wide seam allowances, adding to the heft. I'll stitch the top's perimeter onto the fleece, then do some hand-quilting, and BOOM, there's a completed cozy. However... I want to make some notes, just on the very obscure chance I ever start another EPP project. Seven await my attention, ahem, so even pondering another is ridiculous. But I learned A LOT in making this quilt, much of it upon studying the photo above. How chaotic it appears to me, sigh, because I used two different fabrics in constructing the joining blocks, not including the center hexagons. Yet the last Mandolin quilt I made looked, well, dull, what with white joining blocks edging hexagons from a sunflower print. ...

Brave Upon Being and other musings.... I might have to update my WIP page, adding a new playlist that has been evolving over the last few weeks after I inadvertently erased the playlist that had been under that title. That absent playlist still exists on my phone, the erased playlist on my computer. I'm old school that way, what can I say? It's a weird kind of Monday; damp and gray and actually a wee bit chilly. This is our third, no probably fourth straight cloudy day and finally the lack of sun has cast a cool pall on these final days of summer. Technically summer. But summer is an abstract term along the North Coast in Humboldt County because when it's between fifty-eight and sixty-four degrees most of the time, what does summer mean? Summer means LONG stretches of daylight, the possibility of hitting sixty-seven degrees, maybe sixty-nine, and of course mosquitoes until the dragonflies emerge. That's summer. Summer actually lasts until as late as mid-October if the ...

Left corner of the Mandolin quilt attached! No commas required. Oh my goodness, I'm removing HEAPS of commas! Heaps. But it is my way, when writing, to slap a comma here, and here, and here. Not that the and's drip everywhere, but commas, oh my goodness.... And ellipses too, LOL. Lots of those, some of which I have removed. Yet those commas, why do I do this to myself? I think, and I'll leave that comma, it's because as I write I insert internal pauses, both in the prose AND the dialogue. Is that necessary, I'm not sure, but I do it and.... And WHOOPS, there's another comma. Hmmm, gotta have a think on this. Anyway, revisions on Deadfern continue. The Deadfern Miracles , Miracles ala Deadfern. Why Deadfern? I don't know. When I plotted this novel, well, there wasn't a lot of plotting. I've pantsed stories before, but not like this one. This one is unique in many ways, not for all the commas certainly, but in how it meandered through my brain to my ...