In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

My patches amid what's left of an EPP masterpiece. All that dwells under the re-quilting.... Now back in my stitchy-novelistic realm, I spent late yesterday afternoon and early evening adding another round to the Kawandi-style lap quilt. It's hard, in one way, re-covering this particular cozy because its original design is a gorgeous EPP diamond star pattern. However it's been in disrepair for a long time, sporting patches adding by yours truly, and in desperate need of an overhaul. Kawandi is the perfect vehicle to upcycle it; even if the beautiful English paper piecing is obscured, the quilt itself remains a viable (if not weighty) blanket for many years to come. Decisions about what patches to save, as well as if I choose to salvage any of the EPP, make for slow work in adding new inner rounds. I did half of the current round, then required a break to gather the mental acuity to move forward. Sounds like an apt metaphor for life in general, lol, which is why this post ex...

Shortly after writing the previous post , I decided not to join my daughter and her family on their holiday. It was the best choice, albeit not easy, yet I felt peaceful afterwards, and was glad to have made the decision without further stewing about it. Today I am REALLY GLAD I'm not going because my knee is VERY ACHY. A visit to the orthopedist is in the works, and I'm ready to acquiesce to whatever will fix the issue, which is probably a further tear in the meniscus. The last two days haven't been bad, but I took ibuprofen three hours ago, with no relief. Such is the way of aging, just have to accept the less stellar moments as they emerge. I snapped this a couple of days ago during a break in the rain. To my delight, the nasturtium has bloomed (pictured above), although once again it's raining, which will be the case tomorrow. Which is great for keeping me inside reading through Brave the Skies one more time, a probable release date of next Monday on my calendar. I...

Flags, courage, gardening, and staying the course.... Future Me was hanging around over the weekend, especially on Saturday as I finished my Pride in the Flag flag. She has been conspicuously ABSENT for a good while, since Breathing space . I don't blame her in a way. I've certainly wanted to abscond to distant lands. I do not have the luxury of time travel. She, however, possesses fairy-godlike abilities, usually for which I am grateful. This weekend her presence was minimal, yet soothing, as though she kept the rain from falling until I could photograph Pride on the laundry line. She didn't say much, perhaps our conversations are mostly of an ethereal nature, absorbed like breathing. Sometimes her voice wafts softly, often she snorts sharply. She does a lot of snorting, smirking, eye rolling, as though I'm a truculent child in constant need of being upbraided. Or maybe she's weary of this on-off-on again existence, wishing she could retire to sew or write or garde...

HST stands for half-square triangles, which in my decade of sewing have remain conspicuously absent from the routine. I don't like sewing triangles; I can't control them. They have their own agendas and.... Anyway, in Jodi Godfrey's latest delightful pattern , HSTs and other angular manners of machine sewing figure heavily. I was reading over the clearly written instructions yesterday, when suddenly I found myself cutting squares, drawing a line down the centers of the light fabrics, then.... Well, those pictured above are what I curated before it was time to eat dinner. I spent a good while rummaging through my stash for appropriately unbusy low volume fabrics, of which I don't have many. Then it was a matter of choosing darker prints, then chain-piecing, pressing, and finally trimming to size. The trimming was the biggest hassle, well, right after finding low volume scraps. A few times I nearly walked away, then I'd gaze at my monitor, where the pattern waited, te...

Blackberries are thick, just need time to ripen! I'm home and very glad to be here. Three weeks have passed since I left for a sojourn that ended up being longer away than I had planned. Sometimes life works that way. Re-entering my house, I felt to have been gone for ages, not sure if it was lingering effects of covid, my own age, or something less certain, but truly remarkable. Because I'm still feeling...not displaced, yet an intangible sense of alteration remains, like I didn't merely stay away longer than intended or dealt with a malady. It's like I've started a new chapter of my existence, which sounds alarming and more than a little dramatic, but I am a writer, melodrama part of my stock and trade. It's like a fog has cleared, the mist of thinking I'm a lot younger than I actually am, lol. While hanging out with extended family, I gravitated to my sister-in-law, a dozen years my senior. Definitely three generations of us, but no longer am I among thos...

One example of aging; I have to stitch a dark thread on a dark square during the daytime because at night even with extra lighting, it's still not bright enough for me to see what I'm doing. Recently I had a chat with Future Me about this semi-retired business. She rolled her eyes, smirked, then spoke. "Did you really think you'd remain this ambitious ALL THE REST OF YOUR DAYS?" I cleared my throat, then shrugged my shoulders. "Well no, but...." "But you assumed you would. You know what happens when you assume things, right?" I smirked back. "Yeah, I know." She grunted, then patted my shoulder. "It's okay, you know, to SLOW DOWN. You're not beholden to anyone to produce anything at this date or on that deadline." "No one but me, myself, and I," I said under my breath. Again she grunted. "Look, I don't care how long it takes you to edit a novel or make a quilt or get your backside outside to deal wi...

While visiting my daughter, a social media site informed us that back in Humboldt County a respectable pie establishment was featuring several new items for April. I salivated over the mention of mocha pie, and as they were closed on Monday, Tuesday was the first opportunity for me to taste it. And I did. Delicious! I told my husband we'd need to get back to A Slice of Humboldt Pie before the end of the month, and he agreed. He had the chocolate silk, it's also marvelous. Aside from that, cows returned to our homestead this morning; they had traipsed along a pathway that leads to our property last week while I was away, proffering my hubby plenty of photo ops as well as smiles. Their owner herded them home, but apparently today they decided to make another break for freedom. I grew up around Hereford cattle, so it was a sweet memory to find them munching grass as though they had adopted us. Helping my hubby keep the yard tidy I proffer these amusements in part that the pie tru...

  Creative spoils from last week. A big LOL needs to be attached to that title. I'm home, glad to be here, but in two and a half weeks my hubby and I are getting away to spend time with friends who graced our lives last December. This is a year for travel, at least for me. My better half isn't overly keen on leaving Humboldt County, but I'll take his vacations days and run with them. Blocks up close: Ice Cream Soda. For now I'm ensconced in my residence, maybe even wholly unpacked. Laundry is going, trinkets out and about, including a new (cheap) clock from IKEA that I'll transform into a fabric extravaganza. However, currently I want to extol the virtues of time away from one's routine, EPP blocks sewn in my absence, and how transitory my life feels, not merely because in another two weeks I will again pack a suitcase and kiss my usual existence so long . Hexie Flower, one-inch pieces. It's a fairly long-ish, but thankfully once out of the SF Bay Area uneve...

My latest quilt prepped for basting. Writing science fiction isn't my usual gig, but it is beneficial for stirring within my gray matter questions I rarely ponder, the Why am I here and What does human culture mean in the grand scheme and What if there is life beyond our planet , those sorts of notions. Especially when I wake early and the house is quiet and it's dark outside and for all I know in those brief (or lengthy) minutes perhaps I am alone in this big wide universe, or all that I am is merely a curious soul wishing for answers. Not that I mean to go off on some tangent, lol, but there's life as we all see it, then there's our imaginations or ruminations or whatever one ponders when all the usual flies out the window. My current novel is set in 1971, but a main character is from a distant galaxy, and despite being human, she has little in common with those she now associates. Putting myself in her shoes, I can't help but wish to push the boundaries, as she...

A not-quite-complete Cornflower block, the perfect pictorial example of Past, Present, and Future Me. This past weekend Future Me and I crossed paths, but not in our usual way, her in the distance and me trying to ascertain what she's hoping I'll gather from her scattered pearls of wisdom. This time we practically sat side by side as I chatted with sisters from my various walks of life. Conversations about knee replacements and shoulder surgeries were rife between myself and these marvelous women while Future Me quietly cleared her throat, grasping my hand tightly as though trying to maintain her presence as well as keep my attention focused on so many subjects; precarious health as one ages, gratitude for recovery, thankfulness for friendships, and the knowledge that all of us aren't as young as the grandkids clamoring for our attentions. Future Me tagged along as I went from household to household in my hometown, stealthily admonishing me to revel in these exquisite discu...

View from my bedroom window last night; amid the clouds Venus shines brightly! Right now I am Future Me, not merely due to achy fingers from perhaps a little too much hand stitching last night. Right now it's 2023, but for the last several weeks I have been living in a fictional era twenty years in the past. Phones weren't ubiquitous, which might be the biggest difference, but it is a large one. Yet I'm leaping into modern times with the next installment of my series, aging my characters and placing smart phones front and center. And in this future, time is a bit.... uncertain, both for how much a character has, and what's happening to everyone around them. In the future, which coincides with the present, I'm also facing deconstructing, then reconstructing a manuscript. Some of the descriptive hoo haa I typed in February will be omitted, in that much of this cast has already been introduced. In this now second book, I also gave a 'voice' to those living near...

Records and box sets spilled out, blocking the door to a closet. An unexpected beginning to our day yesterday; at 2.34 am a 6.4 quake roughly stirred us from bed. In all my years dwelling in California, I have never experienced such turbulence, and boy howdy, this one packed a punch. Several striking memories remain, reaching for my bedside phone, but finding it had been tossed to the floor along with a small bookcase. Putting on shoes as a 4.6 aftershock rumbled through. Locating my computer tower on the floor next to my desk (spoiler alert; once power was restored at 8 pm, both my machine and my husband's were just fine!). A large bookshelf was toppled, vinyl albums flung from shelves in the living room, a few dishes scattered on the floor. Several framed photos had fallen, but only two sported cracked glass, one from which I was able to extricate the picture. No structural damage to our knowledge, and we had hot running water and a generator going all day. For all that could hav...

Hand-quilting DONE! Now to start the finishing touches. I arrived home yesterday afternoon, grateful for the time spent with family and equally relieved to be off the road. I do enjoy a journey spent behind the wheel and it goes without saying how much I love being with my children and grandkids. However I am not the spry gal of years before, and I didn't do much once stepping into my house other than eating dinner fixed by my hubby, then managing a little hand-sewing. I plopped into bed shortly after eight p.m. and slept hard all night. Rising early, as is my usual custom, I drank my coffee and tea while chatting with my spouse; darkness enveloped the landscape not only due to when I woke, but that the sun has moved further along the horizon, the middle of September fast approaching. I'd had a grand plan to start a novel this month, but I was kidding myself; not only have I yet to choose an idea, but quilts are muscling their way onto the docket, as well as a much anticipated ...

These calendulas were flattened by a tree but one would never guess from their amazing recovery. Certainly something for me to remember. Last night I was perusing blogs, one of my own long forgotten and a few quilting sites that brought me to where I am today in the sewing. Two quotes gave me plenty of pause for thought, one about fabrics, the other more personal. Yet Sarah Ruiz's statement concerning quilting struck a deep chord, that after a decade she still isn't sure about who or what she wished to be in the quilting world. I SO NEEDED TO READ THAT, although my insecurities are wholly related to the noveling. As a quilter, I am totally an amateur. Sewing triangles scares me, I have no desire to learn partial seams, and y-seams are great only if I can baste paper pieces and sew them by hand. But as an author, jeez Louise.... Yes I write books. And some of them are pretty good, if I might say so myself. However what does a career as an author mean to me, indie or traditional...

A selvedge reminder of what matters most. Lately I've been in a sewing jag- the previously mentioned long-neglected quilt is almost done, heaped on the sofa alongside my granddaughter's quilt; I switch back and forth between them in the evenings, hand-stitching the binding on one, hand-quilting the other respectively. In the mornings I've been working on EPP blocks, nearly wrapping up another in the Cornflower Quilt collection. Yesterday I pulled out my bag of Christmas fabrics, rummaging through them for binding prints; two Christmas coasters require that last element, while six others need to be fashioned into basted mug rug sandwiches. I cut five WOF strips, sewed them into one long piece, pressed it and now it's a matter of putting the walking foot back on the machine, then attaching some binding to whatever is ready for it. This is what I do when I'm not actively working on a novel. Of course there's the garden, but in a way right now it mostly takes care o...

Yesterday afternoon I had planned to finished machine quilting a comforter I started months ago; that poor blanket has NOT been feeling much love, as it lingered on the quilt wall half sewn together, then has languished after I finally got it basted and ran some of it under my machine to stitch together those layers. Instead I spent time in the garden gathering flower seeds; calendula and ornamental poppies, California poppies and Sweet Williams, and marigolds. I have more marigold seeds than, well, sense. I want to scatter them next spring in what will be a wide patch at the back of what used to be a chicken coop. All the while as I harvested seeds, I considered the quilt awaiting my attention. And a book that has been patient for much, much longer. Not that I'm assuming I'll get to that story this autumn; I received a jury summons for the middle of next month that could delay the writing. But if I don't end up serving, I'm still not certain I'm ready to invest mys...

This shot from mid-January taken at Trinidad Head reminds me of the game show as though a sign plugging a holiday in Tahiti... Many years ago I came to the belated realization behind the true concept of a game show that I watched as a kid. That the 'prizes' given away were just solid tokens of advertising for those items. Yet not merely the prizes, but all the products that made up the vast array of 'games' that contestants played to win their booty. Without naming the show, not wishing to give it more than its due, it was an AHA moment. And now when something of a similar sledgehammer upside my head occurs, my husband and I call it a Game Show Kind of Moment . Well, we use the actual name of the program, lol. Today I had one of those concerning the writing. I woke up WAY TOO EARLY, thinking about when to put tomatoes in the garden, where will I plant random baby zinnias, just silly stuff that at two a.m. wasn't conducive to finding sleep. Sometime after three I qui...