In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

Some of this year's fave quilts! I've been pondering this post for a few days. Possibly in that I published novels this year, woot woot! The quilting felt luke-warm until I scrolled through photos, which revealed I'd made ten quilts, all simple patchwork save an English paper pieced finish. Another woot for that, as well as only three of them remaining at my house, lol. 2024 was a year of.... Change. No kidding! I had covid for the first time, which sidelined half of summer. My sewing machine has never been under cover for as many WEEKS as it was, and still is. The defeat of Kamala Harris was, and still is, gut-wrenching, yet the passing of Jimmy Carter could mitigate the agenda of the incoming administration if people choose to honor selflessness and service to others over narcissism and greed. We'll see what happens. Yet this post is not about the future. This entry regales what doesn't go in our Christmas/Hanukkah letter sent to family and friends. To them I ment...

Not quite finished, but certainly the last quilt of this year. Books, blog posts, quilts, English paper piecing.... My creative life was awash with words and colour, fabrics and chapters. Not the series I though twelve months ago I would write, but then life turns into the passing of a life and my life took a turn too. Twelve months cannot be summed up within one entry. I could denote the novels written, but I'm still not ready to spring titles from purgatory, lol. What I will say is I plan to release the first installment soon-ish. Like perhaps February. We'll see what happens between now and then. I will also say that spending a year writing was marvelous ; I didn't expect it, allowing these characters and ALL THEIR DRAMA to fill my brain and nerve endings in a manner that eased a tumultuous death in my family. A year ago.... No, I can't go there. Because now is all we have and now is slipping away with every sentence I type. A sample of my sewing/crocheting accomplis...

The ceramic frog keeps its glass eyes on possible intruders, ha ha ha. It was about one year ago that I returned to blogging about the writing. I can't recall why, perhaps related to getting That Which Can Be Remembered ready for publication. I had been out of the social media loop since the summer of 2018, after my mom died; I had no desire to do more than grieve, then move on, so blogging about the prose fell of the To Do list. Four years later.... Back on the blogging track I went. Then a few months into it, I added my other side gig of quilting to the proceedings. And now a year has passed, full of drama, both fictional and non. Plenty of quilts, a good deal of gardening in 2022 and very little gardening in 2023. The photo above is how a planter looks now, fairly choked with weeds except for the section my husband cleared about a month or more ago. Last year I had heaps of flower seedlings planted there, not that many of them lasted, lol. Our exceedingly wet winter put the kabo...

From left clockwise: a fun diagonal quilt, my granddaugther's EPP classic, seedlings and an EPP hexie. Wow, it's nearly the end of the year, how did that occur? Days tick past, weeks turning into months and suddenly it's time for new calendars, new quilts, new books.... I've been reading through The Earthen Chronicles Book 1 for a few days, starting to feel the sequel forming in my head, a great sensation. You can enjoy the first chapter of that tale at the end of my latest release, That Which Can Be Remembered , now available at major online retailers. Just a little plug for that novel, as well as reminding anyone wishing to get a copy for free of its predecessor Gracious Mysteries to head over to Smashwords , where GM is on sale for two more days during Smashwords' End of Year Sale. However, I am strongly considering making a box set of that series, and all three books would be priced for free. I need a new cover for that publication, we'll see how that co...