In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

Not quite finished, but certainly the last quilt of this year. Books, blog posts, quilts, English paper piecing.... My creative life was awash with words and colour, fabrics and chapters. Not the series I though twelve months ago I would write, but then life turns into the passing of a life and my life took a turn too. Twelve months cannot be summed up within one entry. I could denote the novels written, but I'm still not ready to spring titles from purgatory, lol. What I will say is I plan to release the first installment soon-ish. Like perhaps February. We'll see what happens between now and then. I will also say that spending a year writing was marvelous ; I didn't expect it, allowing these characters and ALL THEIR DRAMA to fill my brain and nerve endings in a manner that eased a tumultuous death in my family. A year ago.... No, I can't go there. Because now is all we have and now is slipping away with every sentence I type. A sample of my sewing/crocheting accomplis...

The photo above was snapped as my hubby and I entered the San Francisco Bay Area, such a lovely weekend spent with family, celebrating Christmas. Suddenly all that hustle and bustle is over; we're back in Humboldt County, where rain fell this morning, high winds experienced, but no loss of power. I've spent today doing laundry, catching up on Christmas cards delivered in our absence, also sewing together a quilt back. Small steps in returning myself to the routine and maybe tomorrow I'll incorporate some editing, woo hoo! The end of the year is nigh, hard to believe 2023 is nearly done. I filled in a second paper calendar this afternoon, which will hang in my office. In reading over letters enclosed in holiday cards, I caught up with several families, lives busy with various activities. Now back at home, I inhale the familiar and embrace tasks basically forgotten while I was away. Granddaughters have a way of doing that, hehehe. I read many books, played board games, did ar...

A new quilt top, especially one so vibrant and spacious, makes me giddy! Mostly made from Anna Maria Horner's Fluent collection, it's splashy and busy and makes me want to sew more quilts with large prints. I have heaps of four and a half inch wide strips tucked away, might cut some of them to seven and a half inches in length and see what comes of them. Christmas is almost here, another reason for joy! We'll be away, spending time with our eldest daughter and her family. I'll be pondering the purpose for the season, as well as reveling in familial thrills; my granddaughters and I will make white chocolate candy this weekend, a family fave since their mum was four years old and in preschool. Her teacher, Ms. Lilly, gave us the recipe, and here it is, easy to make and better to eat! ---------------------------------------------------- 1.5 cups Peanut Butter Crunch cereal 1.5 cups Rice Krispies cereal 1.5 cups mini marshmallows 1.5 cups (or ten ounces) salted mixed nuts ...

For my youngest granddaughter, with special thanks to my better half for his participation in the photography department. Wow, what a couple of writing months it has been! Quilting excursions too, but writing is far more draining, probably because I don't make super-futzy quilts lol. Okay, EPP quilts are pretty involved, but their pace is so much slower than a novel, I don't feel the truly overwhelming sense of AHHHHHH that a book's completion provides. But with the last two quilts of 2023 washed, dried, and gift-wrapped in addition to THE END being ethereally slapped onto my Word document, my goodness I'm feeling.... Um, how do I feel? Well, my right shoulder is bothering me, so I'm not doing any hand-sewing at the moment. I'm pretty full, as we went out for a celebratory breakfast this morning after I finished my novel, and I'm in a chatty blogging mood, although my thoughts are kinda scattered. This book ended up pretty long-ish, currently at 137K. That...

Fascinating from the back, as though a map to an unknown destination. It was an early start today, half a chapter written, then texting with my youngest daughter and enjoying photos of her sunrise a few hours east of us. I woke to clear, starry skies, but clouds have since moved in, rain forecast for the next few days. Maybe in a few days I'll have completed my novel; it's VERY CLOSE to being done, but I said that in a recent post, The End dangling like a carrot merely an arm's length away. Meanwhile I've been stitching together Cornflower blocks each evening. The photo above was snapped last night, what I see as I sew. MANY papers to remove, but I'll deal with that later, lol. I'm also working on another quilt, hehehe, more about that in a day or two. And the last ones for this year are washed and waiting to be given to my granddaughters on Christmas, which is just a little over a week away! I considered today's title right after reading through the sevente...

Truthfully this peanut butter cup was my dessert this evening. The end of my novel is starting to coalesce in the prepping of the last big showdown. Will this character do the right thing or won't they.... Or for this author, more is the query: How will said character react to an unbelievable truth? Some realities are easier to acknowledge than others. Part of writing this story is juxtaposing what seems possible with what is wholly improbable. Love smooths the way for skeptical minds, so does faith. At this Christmas time of year, faith is preeminent alongside a fable that appeals especially to children, but carries far into our culture regardless of faith or skepticism. Jesus and Santa fill hearts and minds in December, but I skipped over Christmas in my book, already enough to consider. Fiction is a flexible thing; truth can be bent, broken, put back together. Truth is fluid, or it's the steel backbone supporting the entire plot. Truth between my characters has become a brea...

Rows of straight-line quilting, oh yeah! Hopping back into my novel has taken a couple of days. The chapter I wrote yesterday ended on quite a revelation that I wasn't quire prepared emotionally or backstorily within said chapter to reveal, ahem. Yet the word count is pushing 120K, whoa! And while it's a first draft, I didn't initially envision this tale to get much beyond the 120sK, although it's fine that it will, and boy let me tell you, it will. How much it will is yet to be determined, but if today's chapter is any indication, there's not much left of this yarn to spin. Which is GREAT because 1) The end of the year is nigh. 2) I'm ready for an extended writing break. 3) We're going away for the Christmas weekend and I'd LOVE to be done with this book before that. 4) Um, all of those combined lol! Of course, as my dad often said, you can want in one hand and cry in the other and see which gets full the fastest. Oh my goodness, I was a young teena...

Looking at this again, I may overhaul the entire thing. Lol. Isn't that often the way, in quilts or novels; the end appears on the horizon, a joyful swell of anticipation and relief that said project is ALMOST DONE. Almost is a word fraught with uncertainty, because until something IS DONE, it's not finished. This is what I thought days ago after completing the forty-second block of my quilt. Number forty-three is nearly wrapped up, and here's its little tale. I had laid out the blocks, as pictured above, but one was missing. Literally moments before snapping that shot I had four spots left and four blocks in my hand. Then suddenly one had slipped away! Frantically we looked around, and for twenty minutes I was convinced another block would need to be stitched. Fortunately I had eight extra squares, an idea for the inner petals, and the assuredness something appropriate would turn up for the center octagon. Picking up all forty-one blocks, I stacked them in order of rows, d...

Eeep, what a fabulous stack of fabrics and paper pieces! We're enjoying a marvelous visit with guests; plenty of walkarounds when the weather is dry, and copious stitching while the rain falls, which was the case yesterday, allowing me to complete the last Cornflower quilt block! Jodi Godfrey's pattern calls for thirty-six blocks, but I went further, upping the total for an additional row. I have truly loved making this particular English paper pieced design, and can't wait to start basting squares so I can sew the whole thing together! When I think about how this quilt began, I return not to one moment of, "Oh yeah, now I'm going to make this pattern." This quilt began far more whimsically, in that I had sewn together a few blocks for the fun of it, set them aside, then maybe two years later in going through my assorted EPP blocks, I decided to go further with this design. A kit was ordered, then began the serious but not speedy work to make this quilt happe...

 A 2020 finish for my eldest that turned out far more beautifully than I could have dreamed; The Seedlings Quilt, pattern by Jodi Godfrey.   The plot for my current novel has been in my brain for ages. Sometimes books are like that, or story ideas, but not always do they come to fruition. This yarn was first spun well over a year ago in the guise of an initial chapter that went nowhere, or so I thought when abandoning it after just twenty-five hundred words. Now many more chapters have been accumulated, the end kinda in sight, or it better be for how the word count has risen, ahem. The writing and plotting have been good, maybe why it's evolved into more than the standard 80-100K book. I'm fine with that, it is just the first draft. But now that I'm reaching The End, I'm starting to wonder how this tale will actually look once I get there. Fortunately I have several days to ponder it, hehehe, as I'm taking off this week from writing to enjoy the presence of dear fri...

The fun of machine quilting! And does it all come together FAST. Not quite like making hay while the sun shines, but when the plumber turns off the water for four hours on a soggy day, this seamstress knows how to make do. It's been a week full of anticipation, not for the plumber mind you, but for dear friends arriving this weekend. I've been sewing a quilt top, pictured below, that I didn't want loose on the guest room design wall, hah! I've caught up on laundry from our sojourn last weekend, tidying here and there, but yesterday having completed that quilt top left today and tomorrow wide open for the kind of cleaning that, well, I basically put off until right before guests arrive. Yeah, that was how I meant to spend today, hip-deep in dusting, mopping, etc, etc, etc. But when the plumber arrives with loads of enthusiasm to fix a few other issues, we said, "SURE THING!" The water was going to be off for four hours anyway, might as well knock off other thin...