In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

From summer 2023. I'm not worried about my nation and Israel attacking Iran. Which is weird but good, in the weird but good category. Yet I spent far more time than usual on my computer reading articles and Wiki pages about the unauthorized bombing, at least America's Congress didn't approve it. I didn't get much sewing done, or any truthfully. I did trash a lot of old photos off my phone, like Cornflower Quilt blocks from three years ago and landscape shots that I don't truly need and videos of deer locking horns, battling for supremacy. Is that what's happening in the Middle East, just some bucks, not young certainly, butting heads trying to prove who has bragging rights in the forest? I don't even know!  I did do my back stretches, including the clamshells and leg lifts! Did four loads of laundry, ahem. Helped one chicken find her sisters. The other crying hen walked away despite sisters arriving, whatever! I found the beautiful photo at the top of this ...

Yesterday I finished arranging this on the design wall. Might start sewing it together later today, a post to write about how machine sewing has made its surprise return to my life, like embracing the impending time change.... I know Daylight Savings Time begins in a little over a week, but recently, like yesterday maybe, I came to the realization that the five weeks it takes for us here on the North Coast to reclaim all that morning sunlight isn't the be-all, end-all as I often believe it is. That this year, instead of whinging how suddenly the mornings are dark again, I'll use that time to get my early a.m. stuff accomplished. Then someone will feed those chickens, lol.... Does the switch from Standard Time to DST bother you? It never previously irritated me until we moved to Humboldt County and I could SEE the morning light; no longer was it obscured by houses in our tightly packed Silicon Valley neighborhood. I don't recall what I thought of it when we lived in the UK, ...

Before I slip into all about writing, let me say that Gigi is no longer broody! She didn't need to be placed onto the wall-shelf last night, and has spent the last two days out with her sisters. Yesterday we received SO MUCH RAIN, over three and a half inches in twenty-four hours. Owl and Nadia were out in the rain MOST OF THE DAY. Camilla joined them for the latter half of the afternoon, and by evening, as a mere drizzle fell from the sky, all eight hens were poking around the grass and gravel as if worms had fallen from heaven. Eight hens preening or chillin' out, sweet chickies! Also, I completed the medallion-Minnesota quilt, but it was TOO WET to hang it out for photos. My husband acquiesced to act as holder, and I'm very happy with it. Right after the photo session, I carefully folded it, and now it's on the stack of finished quilt tops/backs that are beginning to pile up in the closet where my stash lives. Not sure at all when I will get to them, or in what manne...

As I've attached two sides of the border, the third pinned and waiting for maybe tomorrow, here's an excerpt from Can't Be Done Alone: The Hawk Book Five , which I am formatting for a late spring release. I love this exchange between Lynne and Marek, written maybe ten years ago, and wholly relevant for what's happening today, as in Gigi the most recent broody hen has been behaving since we let her out of the Broody Hen Condo before lunch. It's been windy but sunny, good weather for chickens to keep a broody sister busy, and the Warriors beat the Nuggets despite Doris Burke wishing otherwise, lol. And because sometimes we simply have to take things on faith: novels, quilts, hens, etc....  Lynne felt a chill as Marek stopped speaking. Their eyes met, then the pastor nodded. “Please give me Laurie’s address. Do you feel he’ll be there a while?” “I do, or I hope so.” Lynne’s lip trembled. “Actually Marek, I don’t know what to wish for other than God’s will.” “That, ...

And LOADS of other musings like aging and chickens and writing, lol.  On Wednesday, although it feels like AGES ago, I snapped pics of the latest round on the medallion quilt. Later that day I chose the border fabric, then many other items landed on my proverbial plate, a chapter of my new novel completed being one of them, WOO HOO. I left the clouds at the top of this shot because they are quite indicative of the colouring of the quilt, winterish and such. Maybe tomorrow I'll cut the border fabric and truly get this top or back DONE. But there's been no time until now to write about that pretty quilt, or the broody chicken Gigi, who as of this writing has yet to lay an egg today, although she did lay late yesterday afternoon. She's definitely broody, spent some time in the broody hen condo until my husband felt sorry for her and took her into the garden. He let Camilla in too, then other hens, then everyone was shooed out, and Gigi found her way back to the coop. Tomorrow ...