In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

  SF Bay Area traffic last night. This weekend my hubby and I are back in the SF Bay Area to celebrate our youngest grandgirl's birthday, as well as partake of some early familial Christmastime shenanigans. It's nice to reconnect with beloveds at this time of year, even if only for a few days. Makes all the difference in the world when we go our separate ways, as we all invariably do. When we left Silicon Valley for Humboldt County, there was a compromise. The traffic pictured above was happily jettisoned for California's quiet North Coast. For a small town vibe amid several not tiny enclaves that make up the Fortuna/Eureka/Arcata/McKinleyville corridor along U.S. Route 101. That's where we call home, a Redwood tree-lined mish-mash of locales and folks, banana slugs and brown slugs, deer and other critters. We've lived there now for three years and I LOVE IT. I really do. I also adore my children and grandkids, and none of them live anywhere remotely close. Remote i...

  Loads of Art Gallery fabrics, some linens, a few French fabrics, and one Ruby Star Society print make for a new quilt. Oh wow. This quilt, for my husband, has been completed today. It began.... Ages ago, May 2023. I had to scroll through my pictures folder to find exactly when I began laying 4.5" wide strips on the design wall. Never has one of my machine-pieced quilts languished SO LONG, sigh. And that it's for my hubby adds more guilt to my heart, but now it's done, la la la la la la! A little bit of a close-up. Quilted at the top and bottom of every row, then each strip was hand-quilted, which I enjoyed, but wow, that's a lot of hand-sewing. Ahem. I'm rolling my eyes at myself, but yeah, it's done. Once washed it's not quite as wide (or long) as I had hoped. But it's pretty (and it's FINISHED) and he's happy and no longer does it take up space on the sofa making me cringe for how much time it has taken to complete it. Another kinda close-up...