In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

For a storm, Christmas, publication, a quilt, the new year.... We received half an inch of rain last night/this morning, but thankfully the predicted winds weren't as wild as forecasters considered. The basement is full of firewood, some in the carport not because it's tremendously cold but if we lose power. Our temps are currently mild. I'm grateful for it. Preparing for Christmas includes some cooking (I made cranberry sauce today, will fix a candy cane ice cream pie tomorrow). Presents I'm responsible for are wrapped, lol. (Paper, tape, scissors, labels, and a few bows are out for my husband, hehehe.) When we lived in the UK we got a gammon (ham) from Marks & Spencers, and ham remains our tradition, alongside garlic/Gruyere cheese scalloped potatoes and peas (my husband LOVES peas). All those ingredients, save red potatoes, have been purchased. Christmas prep also includes LAUNDRY. For some weird reason, I like doing all the laundry before Christmas, so that task...

  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...

I'm quite pleased with this to be wholly honest. So, about the quilting! A few days ago I completed a round of Alexandria, Jodi Godfrey's medallion pattern. Much to go before I sleep with this one, hehehe, but now I am FIRMLY into this project, which is good because of how much remains, ahem, and that I wasn't sure I'd finish it. (Kind of like writing a story, then realizing it was going to be VERY LONG, so instead of writing it quietly, it gets released bits at a time even though the author is nowhere near the end. LOL.) When I gave up on Alexandria, it looked like this. Pretty, but so incomplete. Why did I abandon it? A pinched nerve made hand-stitching impossible in February of 2023, and once I could hand-sew again, for whatever reason, I dove into Cornflower quilt blocks. Alexandria laid on a guest bed, or my work table if the bed was needed. I sort of ignored it, busy with writing and sewing other shinies. Well, I kind of ignored it. I kept stitching the next round...