In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

Drinking black tea, working on books, making something with fabric etc, etc, etc... Welp, I read aloud three chapters today! Home and Far Away is back underway, lol, and wow it's a relief returning to that realm, not of the novel's setting, merely of my butt in the chair, working on revisions. I'm still adjusting to what I can't eat, like milk in tea and ice cream and cheese, but at least pouring through a manuscript is familiar. And right now, familiar is WONDERFUL. Sorbet is pretty nice too, a decent alternative to my fave Phish Food Ice Cream, sniff. When I enjoyed a bowl of sorbet outside yesterday, seating myself near the chickens, the chickens thought I was there to give them a treat, hahaha! Camilla paced back and forth as though searching for a break in the fence. The rest came and went, then finally all wandered off, realizing I wasn't there to give them anything but vocal attention and to treat myself with something sweet in the odd but marvelous warm Oct...

Written earlier today before the granddaughters woke.   I foresee plenteous machine stitching in the near future. I tried some hand-sewing this week and boy my shoulder was cranky. I am in the treatment pipeline for said right shoulder, but medical stuff is slow as snot these days, yet I am hopeful to be back in my usual routine of nightly hand-stitching as soon as is feasibly possible. (I might sneak in some surreptitious hand-stitching merely to have completed the necessary blocks to snap a photo of Alexandria quilt progress. Not that I am planning to tackle it as soon as I can sew with ease, but one of these days I'll get back to that beauty!) January 2025; the long sides aren't sewn together, but the center is! It's hard wanting to work on something that in the end causes pain. The grandgirls have been using my machines, which stirs within me the desire to don earplugs and headphones and create in a manner that defies belief, when one's belief is that sitting on the...

  Nadia Barnevelder in the mood to pose. All photos courtesy of my husband. As if I'm on the cusp of eighty instead of sixty, ahem.... Well, that's how I felt a few days ago when I considered this post. I've achieved some good sleep in the interim, but I am NOT the woman I was three decades past. This is in regard to spending ten days with my grandsons, finding my energy levels depleted in a weird way that I chalk up to being close to sixty in the general realm. That actually happens next spring, but oh my goodness I felt every one of my fifty-nine years after saying See you later to those adorable grandkids, their mum, and her mother-in-law. Now that I've been home a full week, I am indeed rested and somewhat relaxed in the grand scheme. The previous post notwithstanding or how Washington D.C. is being enveloped in an evil attempt at a dystopian but all too realistic dictatorial takeover, I am not exhausted or feeling extremely aged. The chickens help; I've spent ...

The breaks in the cloud are faint, but cannot be dismissed! The sun isn't shining, a menacing marine layer keeping those of us along the North Coast aching in the gray. However to the southeast a break in the mundane is trying to emerge. This delicious light stirs me to write this post, because despite it being the high days of summer, our landscape has felt like the dark days of late autumn for too damn long. A metaphor perhaps for all that blankets our current world scene? Sure! Big ugly legislation, miserable conditions everywhere we turn, natural disasters wreaking havoc, tender souls wrenched from reality; all these traumas want to strip our joy, leave us bereft. I woke to another gray morning, assuming the flat dull horizon would remain. However peeks of brightness remind me that all is not lost. Goodness prevails. Does this mean the sun and blue sky are about to muscle in, shoving the dreariness aside? No. The marine layer is far too entrenched for that to occur AT THIS MOME...

Brollies in the green colourway; Kaffe Fassett designed this gorgeous fabric, which I am turning into a placemat. Mourning and rejoicing simultaneously, because what else is there to do? At the end of last week, I finally started writing. Kind of a Just Do It! sort of situation, and much to my thrilled relief, I have nearly twelve thousand words accumulated. That's pretty darn fine amid occurrences that feel pretty damn horrific. "Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn." Romans 12.15. Because truly, that's what we're called to do. In the smuggled correspondence with his best friend Eberhard Bethge, imprisoned Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that most of his fellow prisoners only knew whatever emotion was most prevalent; they were frightened if circumstances were poor, greedy when opportunities arose, despairing as though no hope existed. Bonhoeffer sounds a little judgemental here, yet his complaints are valid, in that...

Why stitch a small autumnal coaster when so much else is waiting?  Maybe a better sentence is why do anything when the world seems fraught with unsolvable issues? Or maybe that's too deep to analyze. However, stuff like that has been on my mind, reading most mornings just snippets from Eberhard Bethge's biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was Bethge's friend, mentor, as well as relative through marriage. I could veer off on a faith-based tangent, and perhaps one of these days I will. However right now my granddaughters are visiting, the youngest still in bed and if she wanders down imminently, breakfast will be my agenda for us both. Yet mentioning these musings matters, because they are strongly on my mind. That my faith propels me to be in this world, not out of it, a tenant I've claimed over the years. That as a believer in Christ, I am not of this world, and lately I've discovered how incorrect that is. That sewing a small autumnal coaster in early summer wit...

Youngest grandson's hexie shirt; more about that at the end of the post. This morning as I watched the moon rise and Venus emerge, I was grateful for clear skies and warm tea and the quiet moments in which to appreciate these blessings. A few hours later I learned one my beloveds is in hospital with a serious ailment. The trajectory of how I wanted to present the above treasures now takes a sharp twist, as sweet meets bitter, yet I am undaunted to recount the good while praying for the lesser element. Because this is often how life goes, joys hand in hand with sorrows. How we balance that is another issue altogether. I'm nearing the end of Letters & Papers From Prison , Dietrich Bonhoeffer's last two years of life documented in correspondence between him and those he loved. After the failed assassination attempt on Hitler, the letters dwindle, and I'm reaching that point in the book, but the truths exchanged between Bonhoeffer and his best friend Eberhard Bethge det...

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...

The title says it all. Yes I have shingles, but it's a very mild case and I'm on an anti viral. My knee is achy unless I take ibuprofen. Mandolin blocks are designed, and I left out the fabrics, (pictured above) also used for the Myrtle quilt, which needs four blocks arranged, which I'll sort later today. But not everything makes it onto this blog; in a week I'm supposed to join my eldest daughter's family on holiday. Flight is involved, travel out of our home state. Suddenly my participation is in doubt, especially for how wonky my knee feels this morning. Shingles isn't the issue, or it's not at this moment, lol. More is how feasible is loads of walking when one's meniscus is dodgy. How difficult is life when delightful plans are thrown askew by ailments (and I won't mention an abysmal government); it's not a crisis of MASSIVE proportions, yet I am stymied by what to do, or more rightly I am (not so) patiently waiting until Monday to make a dec...

Top and bottom of Red Sky at Night . I love all that colour! To stand, to breathe, to craft, to make my voice heard. I need to pace myself; it's going to be a long four years. I spent an hour this afternoon sewing on Red Sky at Night . It's funny writing that, because it's not the quilt I thought it was going to be. 2025 isn't the year I assumed before the election, nor could I have conjured the cruelty, backstabbing, and hopelessness that has emerged. Yet I remain making myself heard, sewing and editing and doing dishes. Life must go on. My eldest grandchild will be ten years old soon, where has that decade gone? What will the world be like in 2035? I couldn't have conjured the path America has taken in 2015, but maybe some things are better left unknown. We'll be celebrating with family this weekend, perhaps a bigger deal for us adults than the one turning ten. Probably good to get away for a few days, not that my location will preclude further insults and in...

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...

Upsized, non-diagonal crazy quilt. Uh, sure.... After a book release, some necessary non-writing days are required. So yeah. I haven't done more with the novel-gig than read a few chapters of A Love Story , which actually does need to happen, as I'm planning to publish Book 3 of The Enran Chronicles in March. Have to remind myself of the plot, lol, although losing the plot seems to be America's current theme, however Bishop Mariann Budde is a Christian ROCK STAR, not meaning to belittle her bravery. Sometimes rock stars don't wield guitars or drum sticks you know. Sometimes it's all about the heart. My heart has required non-noveling pastimes, like throwing an obnoxious quilt onto the wall, pictured above. A bunch of smallish cuts I recently acquired hashed/clashed out with solids from my scraps stash, to be embellished with HEARTS! Dangit, why can't anyone in the new administration think with their heart right now? Ahem, Future Me huffs, giving me a slightly u...

Yours truly from summer of 2001. I still have the shirt and canvas bag behind the purse. If I write about calamities, am I hoping to ward them off within my personal life? I'm in a wonky headspace right now. This post was going to be about the sentence above, but I don't feel like analyzing that. I'm.... Meh. Sometimes one just feels meh. A dear friend became a grandmother again this morning, a little girl entering this world that at the time of her conception didn't seem as crappy as it now feels. I'm trying to keep that stiff upper lip, but all my years of living in the UK feel like a dream as this year begins, as so many unknowns linger. I feel like when my mom died in 2018, lost and bewildered with a major case of WHAT THE MUCK! I didn't write for a couple of years, trying to sort out my brain and heart. Therapy helped, time's passage did too, making quilts up the friggin' wazoo because the whole noveling gig was mired in grieving. Maybe that's w...

  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...

Lonely mailbox post. Not in recent memory have I experienced sustained hurricane-level winds until yesterday, as a bomb cyclone sits off North America's West Coast, spinning the atmosphere into an extreme tizzy. We haven't lost power, thank the Lord, although the internet is glitchy, why I'm writing so early in the day. My goodness those winds! Gusting, howling, knocking a large geranium pot from its stand, blowing down a young tree, making the house rattle and keeping my husband and myself on edge all day. I stayed up long past my usual bedtime, listening to the wind, then the rain, which held off until evening. We're in a small rain shadow in our neck of the North Coast, and I'm eager to learn how much rain is in the gauge once there's enough daylight to see (one inch I found). I'm hopeful this weather pattern is the kind that doesn't produce as much rain as forecasters predict; how often is that the case? Yes, it's better to edge toward the worst-...

  This week's Red Sky at Night block, Rolling Star. Green is becoming one of my fave colours. I'm glad it's a new day. Yesterday was....tumultuous. Not because of what you might imagine, but due to rain, memories, and a sense of futility. A decent night's rest alters A LOT. Cups of less than half-caff tea ease the turmoil, and now at 6.13 a.m. I'm feeling able to grasp my life with more than a modicum of relief. PTSD is a funny thing, in the you never know when it's going to strike column. In the how crippling are events from the past you never consider until they have brought you to your knees arena. In the why in the hell am I still bothered by this, that, and the other even though the crap happened over forty years ago element. Hmmm. Fascinating is the human mind, able to slot away shite from one's day-to-day, then BOOM, there is it in a downpour and merely by God's grace there go I into the maelstrom. Suffice to say, being in a car in the middle ...