In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

My Tears of Joy Quilt under which I was sitting this morning, feeling grateful for having sewn it.    I'm currently reading aloud Can't Be Done Alone: The Hawk Book Five . Two chapters in, I came across a couple of paragraphs that made me cry. Below sits the chapter in whole, but I've made those paragraphs bold, because as I read them, I realized some truths about our lives on this planet that don't seem to change, especially when set alongside mathematician Emmy Noether , who left Germany in 1933 after the Nazi government dismissed Jews from university positions, or Edith Eger , a Hungarian/American psychologist and Holocaust survivor. When dictators or those wishing to be dictators frame this or that segment of society as unworthy, they are hoping to instill intrinsic hatred to a degree so their followers will assume no one deserves love and respect. As Eger put it, guards at the concentration camps where she was imprisoned were 'brainwashed', their youths as...

I was fooling myself last week, assuming I could have the rainbow quilt on the living room sofa, all ready for me to hand-quilt. Conveniently I forgot about securing the perimeter, that I prefer to do in our guest room, with said quilt spread out on the bed. That imperative fact somehow slipped my mind, or I blocked it. Either way, for the next few days that precious quilt will loiter in its own space, and eventually it will meander to where I am currently seated, typing this post. One reason I didn't make the quilt sandwich until today was that yesterday I attended a protest/rally to denounce the murders taking place in Minneapolis, as well to honor Keith Porter, killed by ICE in Northridge on New Year's Eve, 2025, and others harmed and slain by ICE in the last year. This protest was announced in our local news and on Reddit late on Saturday afternoon. Less than eighteen hours later over one thousand people stood in front of the Humboldt County Courthouse seeking justice, peac...

A beloved, decades-old recipe for meatballs. Other side of the card is below. Yes, here it is! Really. Um, really. Really!!! Lol. I've had this post on my list to write since I published Straight to the Heart: The Hawk Book Three in September. Yet I waited because I was planning to release Home and Far Away: The Enran Chronicles Book Four relatively soon. Which turned into the end of October, but in our crazy world, what's a few weeks? Hopefully if you have the ability to vote, you have exercised that right. (I'd put while you still can but that sounds dramatic, defeatist, and well, yeah.) Anyways, those plugs out of the way, here is what I think of Draft2Digital's self-publishing routine. It was fine. Really? That's all? I look around, but I don't see Future or Past Me. Past Me is checking the pork meatballs in spaghetti sauce, as I made meatballs but not with beef, trying to keep red meat out of my diverticulosis diet, you know. Future Me is.... She'...

From a UK craft magazine at least twenty years ago, but now it's done! No sewing occurred over the weekend, but I dabbled in other crafts hearkening to my past. Past Me needs some props, for starting the cross-stitching above that I completed with ease. I uncovered this kit a couple of months ago, and in finishing it, I found why I had given up halfway, a mistake made in the pale blue floss. Skirting around that error, I happily stitched trees, then added the backstitching in that bold red. It will be a for a dearheart in a little over a month's time. I then dug out my cross-stitching bag, finding pieces of my creative past long before I dreamed of quilting. Yet working with my hands has mattered for AGES, first in crocheting right after I had my eldest child. Once we moved to Britain I got into cross-stitching, and now in Humboldt County that pastime has emerged with stealth, lol. Not sure how much more I'll do of it, although a HUGE project remains, about on par with my A...

  Roost in the coop. Heads-up: This is about my belief in Christ, America's further descent into authoritarianism, and how those notions weave in and out of my gray matter. Oh, and a little about chickens, quilts, and books. It's Saturday morning. Foggy. Gray. Warm for Humboldt County (Sixty-six degrees Fahrenheit). I wanted to write about the QIP (quilt in progress) in my Go Bag, as I'm prepping said quilt for further Round the World installments. But I also wanted to share the great roost my husband built a couple of days ago for the chickens, although they aren't super keen on it, yet. Only Owl gives it nod, again this morning hopping onto it, then reaching the second rung, then jumping to the floor. One of these days all the chicks will be perched on it, and not that far in the future. Go Bag quilt: Small. Pretty. Peaceful. Necessary. My heart this morning is torn; Washington D.C. is becoming a different city than what I visited a few years ago, what with the admini...