Mid-year musings

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Chicks we call The Clones as it's a little hard to tell them apart, lol.

Slow quilt stitching, baby chicks, and a new book distributor....

Where has the first half of 2025 gone? I thought this year would slog along, stuck in a lousy government situation, but no. 2025 is speeding past as quickly, if not more so, than the last ten years have zoomed by. Like sand slipping through my fingers is each day, as though I wake, then suddenly it's four p.m., time to do my stretches! I won't ponder that element of my existence, but I can mull over the changes to my life that certainly has NOT remained as it was previously.

Like chickens! LOL. The chicks have had outdoor time the last two days in what will eventually be their run. The first day they practically clung to one another for a good twenty minutes before finally stepping a few inches in their own directions. Today they seemed to recall the grass, the shade (oddly enough they weren't keen on going into the sun), and how much fun they had yesterday. We'll take them out again tomorrow afternoon, what with relatively warm summer temps forecast as a heat dome sits over the West Coast. We certainly didn't plan on becoming chicken tenders (my husband's joke) back in January!

The English paper piecing on this quilt is beautiful, but it's become so worn that I'm making a new top Kawandi-style. Note the patches, some of which I will be saving (and wishing I could save the actual EPP too).

As for quilting, I'm finally getting some traction on recovering (like literally recovering a sofa) a tattered EPP quilt that I did not make, but was a thrift store find years ago by my sister-in-law, who then gave the quilt to me, and I loved it so hard (and washed it so often) it is now falling apart and I'm tired of patching it hither and yon. Yes that's a long sentence, but getting around to working on this quilt has felt equally lengthy in coming, and it could be said that said quilt is merely another hand-stitching project thrown onto the already tall pile of EPP and Kawandi sewing, and you'd be right. Another long sentence, maybe it's a night for extended verbiage. It's late, already past nine p.m., but I'm in a mood to write, having snuck a little regular coffee into my usually decaf brew, plus a fair amount of jasmine tea with lunch, not that jasmine tea has heaps of caffeine, but you get the idea. Maybe unconsciously I knew I needed to be up past my usual bedtime to write this post. Or Future Me knew, and she slipped in the small scoop of regular java so I'd have barely enough wits to craft this entry.

Or something like that.

Anyway.... I barely touch my sewing machine anymore, other than flags I made in spring when I first started going to protests. I was kind of into a hand-stitching groove before 2025 began and that groove has continued, when I have time to stitch. Given the chicks, ahem, sewing time feels squeezed. Or sewing time during the day; stitching time at night remains SOLID. And for that I am VERY GRATEFUL.

Wildflowers that I had to capture because for as unpredictable and at times awful as life feels, beauty remains and we need to appreciate it.

As for Draft2Digital, I'm thankful. For still having a place to publish books. For free. I've solved the missing scene breaks issue. I'm waiting for a new vendor to fall into place (more about that once it's fallen into place). I'm feeling like D2D will be fine. FINE. Um, fine. Just use three hard carriage returns when moving onto a new scene, and all will be...fine.

(Especially since I did write a quarter of the next Enran book last month, WOO HOO!!)

There's more I could say, but I'm starting to yawn, so probably best to close this up. 2025 has been trying. Distressing at times. Yet I live my life doing what I love, creating stories and quilts, going to protests, and now raising chickens. CHICKENS! I truly never saw that coming.

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