A Contemplative Life

Like writing. And laundry, lol! That's when I came up with the idea for this post. Because sometimes we are enthralled with certain activities, even the boring things. Like laundry. Actually the title popped into my head earlier today while I was 1) Doing laundry. And 2) In the middle of writing a chapter. Then of course there's quilting, but lately that's fallen to the back of the pile mostly because I still have a wound on my arm covered in Aquaphor that has stained one shirt to the point it's now for when I eat chili or some other stain-worthy dish. So I can't hand-quilt, though my cranky shoulder is better, whew.... Yet I stare at my collected thread basket in the evenings, thinking back to my, ahem, younger years (BIG LOL) when I could sew at will. For now, quilting isn't what I'm talking about, though if you want you can lump it alongside writing as creative things I love to do. Um, what about blogging, Past Me quips. Oh uh, yeah, I nod, looking around...

Gratuitous chicken photos grace this post. All eight hens enjoyed a field trip yesterday to the garden! (Yes hens, as they are eighteen and a half weeks old, woo hoo!) A few posts ago I wrote an inadvertent and certainly impromptu synopsis for Home and Far Away . It was so cathartic and, well, thrilling to write all that, but the big question was would I employ any of that off the cuff random prose to promote a novel. Well, I used some of it. Hence today's title. Nadia Chicken likes investigating on her own. She's a Barnevelder, and one of my faves. Here's the post.  (Again, as I linked to it right off the bat, lol.) And below is what I actually sent off with the manuscript, all retailers using it. Well, Smashwords proffers a short synopsis first, then you can click for the long version.   Liberating Chelak from reproductive slavery, Sooz and Dardram find themselves in 1971 California on the front yard of widower Richard Lund and his five-year-old daughter Gilly. The ...

Wales, United Kingdom, February 2000. Noth frowned, then wondered why he mattered so much to Sooz. Glancing at Dardram, Noth wasn’t reassured by that man’s slight nod. Gripping the pad, Noth replied to Squee: Any of you have a weapon in case it decides not to let me go? How much of your life do you truly possess, Squee answered. Go on, Squee added, I doubt they’ll keep you more than a minute or two. How much OF our lives do we possess indeed. The writing above is from my fictional WIP, of which I read a few chapters this morning. I'm feeling better emotionally, but I slept like crap, went back to sleep and am now suffering from post-nap BLEH. Even if the nap was from five to seven a.m. However, it's still earlier-ish in the morning, time to write something. I told my husband that writing these posts lightens my heart, my authorial heart . I miss being a writer something fierce! One of these days, I tell myself. It's just a matter of time. Time is kinda on my brain right...

Clockwise from bottom left corner: jewel stars for Alexandria, hexagon blogs for Alexandria, hearts for Mr. Carter quilt. Um, hard to pin down on all aspects of the corporeal plane.... Coming home, whether from a brief holiday or lengthy vacation, means reassessing. And laundry, but that's already underway. While I did the unpacking yesterday, much remains to sort, like all that English paper piecing pictured above, ahem. And books.... Oh my goodness frickin' gracious! I have about as many book notions stirring as EPP projects, oh and don't forget the quilt WIP on the design wall or Kawandi stitching I want to dive into as soon as one single free moment emerges. But, what do I turn to first? This blog, lol. Why? Because I'm waiting to start another load of clothes. And this is singular and easy to complete. And I love blogging, been doing it for nearly twenty years, although not at this site, hehehe. Blogging helps me think. Or I think it does, hah. It certainly helps m...

  My eldest called it the sunflower quilt, maybe that name will stick. I meant to write about this quilt top yesterday, but those HSTs muscled their way to the top of my brain. Yet, this quilt-in-the-making needs some blog love. I started it ages ago, slapping it on the design wall back in April, whoa! That was before summer started, before I got Covid, before, well, before. Sometimes before is recent and sometimes it's ages ago. Right now it feels like far longer than April, maybe for all that's happened in the last four months, not only Covid but twenty-nine times two and a Red Sky at Night, and oh yeah, those half-square triangles which I am ACHING to return to, but first I need to finish this post. Because completing that little quilt top, quite bright and a wee bit busy, has been the catalyst for me returning to sewing. Not that I haven't been stitching; loads of hand-sewing has occurred, including hand-quilting placemats that I assumed I would run under my machine...

  Speckled fabric by Rashida Coleman-Hale: I LOVE this! Years ago I spent the pre-dawn hours seated at my computer working on revisions. I used those moments to slowly grasp a new day as well as fit in necessary edits that allowed me to casually embrace writing without overtaxing my brain. Those were days before I was into English paper piecing, before I became a grandmother. Those were years when I thought I needed to squeeze activity into every spare minute to justify being a stay-at-home spouse even if the most of the kids were out of the house. I still don't like being idle. I'm terrible at meditating, or even watching TV as a relaxing pastime. My oldest grandson finds that hard to comprehend, lol, but I explained that as a kid we only got three channels and television never seemed the be-all end-all. In the last few days, I have returned to those early morning screen hours, but not spent in the office. Instead I'm seated in the living room where the laptop lives, heavi...

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...