Sewing (and doing) what I can manage

-

Having turned fifty-nine recently (AHEM), I'm stitching left-handed when I can, or as long as I have the patience to do so. My right shoulder is still niggly despite ibuprofen and being iced several times a day. Although I think it's getting better, but as I use a mouse with my left hand, perhaps sewing will also morph the same.

Aging is better than not, and other than that wonky shoulder I have few complaints. Daylight increases in a marvelous way, and the ground has dried out from our very wet winter. Marigold seeds sown over ten days ago didn't germinate, but the green beans and peas my husband planted are doing well. I have new fabric to use, and have decided it's time to turn a thrift store lap quilt my sister-in-law let me have become the filler for a new Kawandi quilt. That's a decision that needed to be made, because that poor EEP beauty just requires too many repairs, front and back. Now it will form the batting for something NEW, and that's not a bad thing.

This will become quite a heavy lap quilt, but I gave away one of a similar weight, and miss having a small but warm blanket.

I used my machine to fashion the back; I haven't used my sewing machine in many weeks! Which seems as odd as using my left hand to sew, lol. I actually have a machine-pieced quilt in mind, we'll see how that comes along. I'm into woven fabrics after reading this post by Lisa Silva, and while I am planning to make my own version of her GORGEOUS quilt, my aching shoulder requires some time with my butt in the sewing machine chair.

Often I think, "I'm not going to A, B, and C anymore because now I'm going to X, Y, and Z." This applies for novels as well as quilts, as once again I'm knee-deep in a lengthy saga, and after The Hawk, I thought I wouldn't write something so involved again. At the beginning of this year it was all Kawandi quilting, which I still LOVE. Or how nearly twenty years ago when we came back from England, I finished up a bunch of cross stitching projects, promising myself I wouldn't have so many different projects going at once. LOLOL! I won't count how many EPP quilts I have started, and what about the Quilt of Grace that lives on the sofa two feet from where I'm sitting? (With the Mr. Carter heart EPP quilt draped all over it....)

Lots of colour on my couch!

To my right are the books I'm currently reading, although I've finished Letters and Papers From Prison, but I'm using it as a reference to Love Letters From Cell 92, the collected correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his fiancee Maria von Wedemeyer. That book was a birthday gift from my husband, bless him! I just finished Jubal Sackett by Louis L'Amour, which I picked up over a year ago from a thrift shop in honor of my dad, who LOVED Louis L'Amour. Jubal Sackett was pretty good, written in first person, not my favourite POV. I did skim a few sections, but overall I enjoyed it, and now it lives in my collection of books and will be kept forever. Or until I die.


Not that I'm at the end of my days. Hopefully I'm far from it. Still SO MUCH to sew, hahaha, and certainly plenty to write, um..... Yeah. Lots of novel ideas in my brain, maybe one of these days I'll eke out another installment of The Enran Chronicles. I have formatted the next books for The Hawk, and I'll start reading through it, well, one of these days. I'm feeling kinda flitty right now, from fabric project to project, from editing to wanting to write to lots of reading! The puzzle is nearly done, just need to finish the blue section. I don't lament the marigolds that didn't sprout, maybe I'll buy some plants this weekend. There's a May Day protest I want to attend as well. We'll see how everything fits together.

And of course I have chickens on my mind! In four weeks we'll get baby chicks, dude.... Lots to do before that happens, and I had entertained the notion that maybe I would have managed some writing by now. NOPE! I'm still waiting for my Smashwords account to be gobbled up by Draft2Digital. But that's been supplanted by all the sewing I want to accomplish, both in what I've already started and what I'm itching to begin.

Is it silly for me to have so many WIPs of all shapes and sizes going when I'm now a year from sixty? I don't know. Maybe all these commitments will keep me going. Perhaps I'll kick off with more storage totes than is right for one person, not that I'm a hoarder, but I do have several totes and most are, well, full. I don't want to have all these loose ends, I will say that. I have five hexie shirts to make for the granddaughters before the end of the month. I have so much in the way of gifts I wish to bestow, stories to write, cards to make, books to read..... But I'm not in my forties now, I haven't been that young in ages. Yes I'm wiser, or I hope I am. But lately a shiny flashes brightly and I'm off chasing it as fast my fifty-nine-year-old frame can go. Is that good? I don't know.

The Kawandi process has begun!

What I am sure of is that I am NOT BORED. I'm fifty-nine with plenty to do and decent health at my back. Left-handed sewing is slow and awkward, but it's better than not sewing. Editing isn't flashy, but I'm grateful to be dabbling in the writing lifestyle. Smashwords has been a fine gig, but it's time for something new. I might be getting older, but I ain't dead yet. Just need to remember my life doesn't belong to me. It's a cozy little roll in something far bigger. Have a lovely weekend and keep that heart-peace beating!

Popular posts from this blog

I want to be somewhere else

-
Image
I wanted to continue these revisions, but the entry below came first. Heads-up: Bleak post but with strength at the end. Ups and downs; perhaps that's what it's like living under a repressive regime. Not the most uplifting manner in which to begin a post, but at this moment in time it's how I feel. And being honest with oneself is imperative to keeping a grip on sanity, if reality is an effed up kettle of rotten fish. Maybe I should have called my senators already. I could contact my rep, Jared Huffman, because aides do answer those calls. But I'm not steeled enough mentally or emotionally to delve into that arena. This day, I'm barely able to note my name. How do repressed peoples manage during such bleak days? They've been doing it a long damn time, and if that's how my nation ends up, I'll be doing it too. Life goes on; sports and Valentine's Day and whatever else the Big Eastern Syndicate requires. Big Eastern Syndicate is not of my creation; it...
Read more

Blogging or Bluesky

-
Image
  A hunk from my Lavender EPP quilt, currently in progress. Around the first of March, I took an early Lenten sabbatical from Bluesky Social. My account with that form of social media is only from last November, after the election. I didn't abandon a Twitter handle for it, as that type of social media had never been my preferred method of outreach. As you can imagine, I like a LONG manner in which to share my thoughts, smiley face inserted HERE. Yet I was happy to create the account, and enjoyed the camaraderie I met. Giving up Bluesky was in part a Lenten sacrifice, as well as a need to distance myself from the weight of what was happening in America. I fully expected to rejoin the banter once Easter was over. That plan has been discarded, as I will continue my absence from Skeets and a three hundred character limit for posts. That was certainly a hindrance, as often I have far more on my mind, LOL. But what I found most interesting was how I didn't miss that level of social m...
Read more

Red Sky at Night reconsidered

-
Image
Washed and crinkly! My first Kawandi-inspired quilt. Meanwhile zoning from joy to despair (and not quite halfway back again).... So yeah, a new plan for Red Sky at Night . Going to morph some of the EPP blocks into a Kawandi-inspired quilt. Yup, that's what I'm gonna do. I gotta do SOMETHING outrageous that won't land me in jail or further emotional depths. Maybe not outrageous, but unplanned, beautiful. Crafty, but not evil, just saying.... Making the art quilt pictured above, I was truly in THE ZONE OF HAPPINESS. Arranging (and often rearranging) scraps on a fourteen-inch piece of batting underlined with most of a fat quarter, I listened to lots of S artists on my computer; Steely Dan, Stevie Nicks, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Supertramp. Most heartening was Stevie Wonder, especially songs from his 1974 LP Fulfillingness' First Finale . "You Haven't Done Nothin'", pointedly aimed at Richard Nixon, made me smirk. Learning what Elon is trying to do to the Treas...
Read more