Embarking upon quite a project

-

 


Okay, maybe two of them, lol. The English paper pieced block above is from Jodi Godfrey's Ice Cream Soda pattern, the large version of the design. The inner and outer fabrics were Christmas gifts from my eldest, the red kites a perfect scrap from my collection. Forty-some blocks are necessary for this quilt, but it's a long-term project that I hope to cajole my grandkids into sharing with me. Or maybe I'll find myself making these beautiful blocks in snippets of spare time, especially since the five missing basted squares have yet to be found.

(Whatever five squares. You can't have traveled far.)

But hand-sewing isn't the only hobby on my mind. Morning edits are going well with my current series, and I've incorporated evening edits into the routine. For months I've been mulling over The Hawk, a book I started over ten years ago, finishing in the spring of 2018. That novel has quite a place in my heart, written during a great shift within my personal life as well as my authorial path. It began as the humble notion of a short story, turning into a multi-part series that kept me grounded as my father endured chemotherapy, then his premature death while both my daughters enjoyed their first pregnancies. Death and life intermingled during the five years I wrote The Hawk, which I completed just weeks before my mother died in 2018. I remain grateful to have reached that story's conclusion before Mom died, because I don't honestly know how I would have returned to a story so steeped in familial connections.

Maybe you're wondering why I'd return to this novel; it's a good question, and is related to quilting. As I started writing The Hawk, I was just dipping my toes into sewing. Yup, ten years ago I made my first quilt. It's crazy when I consider how old my grandchildren are, poignant that my father never knew them and the few years those youngsters shared with my amazing mum. During those five years of marvelous peaks and desolate valleys, I taught myself to make gorgeous quilts while always coming back to a tale that kept stretching itself, and me along with it, to heights and depths previously not experienced. When time permitted, I dived into the story. When I needed a far simpler joy, machine piecing and quilting filled the bill. Ironically I didn't start EPP until right before Mom died, but more about that in the upcoming weeks and months as I focus on those ten years of sewing.

Yet in all honesty, no matter how much I love fashioning quilts, spinning yards of yarns comes first. In revisiting The Hawk, I am not merely editing or revising, but re-releasing the novel close to how it was first published in novel-length segments. Initially the installments were more like novellas, but I've parsed it out to ten books, which is far more inviting than the three-volume version currently available.

Ten books, wow. In five years I wrote ten novels' worth of a saga that originally wasn't more than a good short story plot. But characters and ideas have a way of muscling their agendas into an author's head and my heart certainly needed that fictional outlet. I don't know when I'll release Book One, hopefully in spring. Until that occurs, The Hawk is available as a three-volume collection, if I've piqued your interest. And maybe by then I'll have found those five pesky basted squares. More on that when they turn up!

Popular posts from this blog

Fits, starts, and restarts

-
Image
Two examples from two different skeins of yarn where breaks in the colour scheme occur. Very indicative of my current mood, lol. This is a funny novel, for all the hemming and hawing going on. Never before have I written, then purged scenes with somewhat of an abandon. I truly don't know what to make of it, chalking it up to age, grieving, the weirdly long winter (even though it's spring), or my new computer keyboard, which is small but adequate in a strangely truncated manner. I'm enjoying the writing, but the story keeps veering off on tangents I'm not comfortable with, in that too much is being revealed too soon, bleh. Future and Past Me's are steering clear of this manuscript, perhaps because what came before it was so out of the blue, so cathartic, and this prequel is just as outta my backside as any I've ever written. But I am writing, let me restate that, despite restarting a chapter here and there. I'm not getting much else accomplished, other than s
Read more

Orphan blocks are not like unfinished novels

-
Image
It's a busy day, getting ready for guests that will enlighten our lives for the next week. However my feet are a little weary, so why not ramble here for a bit, giving those dogs a rest as well as set upon a discourse about the above title before I forget why I thought it was important (lol). I don't even know why I first pondered this, maybe an IG poster mentioned them, which made me think of my orphan EPP blocks. I don't have many machine sewn blocks without a home, but plenty of English paper pieced designs linger in a tote, patterns I liked and HAD TO MAKE. I used plenty of them on a Turning Twenty quilt, decorating some plain tone-on-tone prints and that was a great manner in which to employ less than a quarter of what remains, ahem. Oh and I used some on a t-shirt quilt that I made in conjunction with a friend, who had lived in Hawaii for a few years and wanted to put her aged shirts to quilty use. But still many remain, although I have a plan for them, hehehe. I am h
Read more

Following one's heart

-
Image
Fascinating from the back, as though a map to an unknown destination. It was an early start today, half a chapter written, then texting with my youngest daughter and enjoying photos of her sunrise a few hours east of us. I woke to clear, starry skies, but clouds have since moved in, rain forecast for the next few days. Maybe in a few days I'll have completed my novel; it's VERY CLOSE to being done, but I said that in a recent post, The End dangling like a carrot merely an arm's length away. Meanwhile I've been stitching together Cornflower blocks each evening. The photo above was snapped last night, what I see as I sew. MANY papers to remove, but I'll deal with that later, lol. I'm also working on another quilt, hehehe, more about that in a day or two. And the last ones for this year are washed and waiting to be given to my granddaughters on Christmas, which is just a little over a week away! I considered today's title right after reading through the sevente
Read more