A Contemplative Life

The Warm Hearted quilt neatly folded and resting on the back of the couch.   I so badly want to sew on the Warm Hearted Quilt this evening, but my forearm still has an Aquaphor-covered wound and I don't want to slap a band-aid on it because band-aids of all varieties (plastic or fabric) give me a rash. I did receive good news today that the spot biopsied was benign, which is GREAT! I juxtapose that with a dear friend's youngest son, who is in his forties and suffering from lung cancer. Enduring toxic chemotherapy in the hopes he'll survive long enough so his youngest child, three years old, will remember him. Sigh. We can't plan life other than daft outlines for what we'd love to occur. A week ago, when I had the biopsy, I stitched hearts like all the other days I'd been stitching hearts; I had a piece of gauze taped over the wound and no Aquaphor in sight. Since then, I've done very little sewing on that quilt. This afternoon I managed some Peace Round the ...

Little Camilla in the run from a couple days ago. We went away for a brief sojourn, returning home on what's turned into a warm summer's day. Is it late summer already? It's the twentieth of August, and it feels like summer only began. The chickens are eight weeks old yesterday. They seemed happy to see me this morning, also thrilled to be let into their run, lol. After a day spent shopping for groceries and getting resettled at home, I'm sitting down this evening with the usual thrills; handsewing, baseball, then a visit to the coop to collect the feeder and see if the chickens feel like leaping onto my right forearm. Sometimes life is that simple, sometimes. Sometimes driving to the San Francisco Bay Area so my husband can have successful skin cancer treatment intrudes. That's what happened yesterday. But twenty-some hours later we're home and he's feeling okay, and the chickens have little or no memory of being in their coop for a day. A neighbor checked ...

  The Hunter's Moon, October 2024. Bright moonlight proffers alternative glimpse of the world. Also how catastrophes make one feel like there is no day, only the suffocating darkness. Well, that's a mouthful, notes I made over an hour ago while sitting in the not quite dark living room feasting upon the moonlit landscape. The Hunter's Moon is indeed bright and beautiful in our clear Humboldt sky, and despite being awake since, oh my goodness, three a.m., I was cognizant enough to note a title for today's entry and scribble a couple of sentences for later perusal. So now it's later, which can be qualified because while it's also five thirty (at the time of writing) in the morning, when one is up at three, five thirty seems like mid-day, kind of how the night appeared, not really like night at all. It's currently this twilight-night, that marvelous moon illuminating far beyond what spotlights could achieve. I was up early yesterday (although not so stupid earl...

  A dear friend is enduring similar heartache to mine from earlier this year, a beloved diagnosed with a very serious illness. We chat regularly, having known each other since our England days. That's over two decades ago now, time slipping past at a rate I really don't want to analyze. But right now time is strange, how a year ago my brother-in-law was ailing, how at the beginning of this year he died, and now it's again November, but this year others are where my family was in 2022. Right now my life is focused on writing my novel, still emerging at a rate that makes me wonder for how much longer will the plot keep barreling down Storytelling Hill. Till it's done I guess, or I hope. I'm nearly finished with youngest granddaughter's quilt top, will probably wrap that up tomorrow. We're going away this weekend to celebrate a birthday with our eldest, then will host my sister-in-law who is managing life without her husband. Traumas occasionally last a long ti...

Hexie basted earlier today. Today's title isn't a typo, but how my eldest responded on a family text thread this morning. You could also say it's apropos of how all in my clan are grappling with last week's disturbance in the force. Heads-up: this post may be littered with random well known and intimate familial sayings. Risks take rake omg could well become shorthand for various WTF acronyms. Feel free to adopt any and all that fit your situation. Today's forecast is for continued shivers and the occasional tremble, especially when photos of the recently deceased pop up on one's screensaver. There aren't enough words or pregnant pauses to adequately describe what my crew is attempting to digest, and that doesn't include my sister-in-law, suddenly a widow. I can't fathom her heartache, she can't really either. Says she's not thinking about it much, except when it steals over her. Or I assume that's a drop in the bucket, the writer in me. ...

Hexagon block quilt top photographed in March 2021. The quilt above lives in the Midwest. Initially I made the EPP blocks assuming I would connect them not appliqued on solid squares but sewn together by hand. Yet my hands were achy back in late 2020, so that idea was scuppered for a more friendly version, which actually resulted in a twin being fashioned from excess blocks, call that a win. The photo was taken in our old Silicon Valley backyard not long before we moved to the North Coast. Relatives in Wisconsin were to be the recipients of the quilt, but it wasn't going to live in their Midwestern home; it was going to dwell in Humboldt County where they would visit us when their winters were bitter and ours merely cool. We had our retirement house then, but weren't yet living in it full time. That quilt top was carefully folded, then packed away. Then my husband and I made the big decision to jumpstart retirement living, and all our belongings were placed into boxes, heading ...

A sample of my efforts from this past week, the center of a Myrtle block. Currently Gracious Mysteries , the second novel in my That Which Can Be Remembered series , is available at no cost on Smashwords during their annual End of Year Sale. I had planned to release the final book in the series to immediately coincide with the sale, but I am still away from home and hope to have That Which Can Be Remembered released perhaps on Saturday? Fingers crossed for that publication. This series does take place in a different.... Universe, planet, solar system, you make the call, however their tragedies and triumphs are closely aligned to what we on Earth experience. There is no moon attached to their planet, which isn't a major plot point, but something I paid attention to while writing when a character trekked outside to admire the night skies. Only stars shone, proffering a distinction between our world and that of Brynn, Pollette, Finn, Strivek, Timral, Mo, and the rest. This past week...