In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

  Strange to complete a quilt, yet not share a single photo of it. Yet, as safety pins gathered in their container, I knew the end was near. All those pins pictured above were used in basting this quilt. A few nights ago I took a good look at how full the container was becoming. Yet, it seemed like a finish was days away. Isn't that how life works sometimes? We anticipate or expect this or that to happen far off in the future, like chickens laying eggs, lol. But occasionally we are caught off guard by immediate responses or occurrences, which throw our worlds into realms odd and surprising. That's what this quilt finish is, quite a surprise. Eggs from earlier today. Again we are gobsmacked at how prolific are our hens! A few of my novels have ended that way, in the crafting of a draft. I'm aware The End is nigh, then a chapter emerges and so does a story's All's Well That Ends Well, assuming the tale has a happily ever after. Most of my books do, I like happy ending...

  Creative spoils from last week. A big LOL needs to be attached to that title. I'm home, glad to be here, but in two and a half weeks my hubby and I are getting away to spend time with friends who graced our lives last December. This is a year for travel, at least for me. My better half isn't overly keen on leaving Humboldt County, but I'll take his vacations days and run with them. Blocks up close: Ice Cream Soda. For now I'm ensconced in my residence, maybe even wholly unpacked. Laundry is going, trinkets out and about, including a new (cheap) clock from IKEA that I'll transform into a fabric extravaganza. However, currently I want to extol the virtues of time away from one's routine, EPP blocks sewn in my absence, and how transitory my life feels, not merely because in another two weeks I will again pack a suitcase and kiss my usual existence so long . Hexie Flower, one-inch pieces. It's a fairly long-ish, but thankfully once out of the SF Bay Area uneve...

Snapped at the Pacific Ocean on 1 January, 2024. Listening to a playlist tonight, the title of which is the same as this entry. It starts off with "Passing Through Air" by Kate Bush, which leads to "Edge of Seventeen" and "Stand Back" by Stevie Nicks. Basketball is on, the Knicks and Bulls, a fire popping near where I'm seated. It's a January evening, 2024, a new year having dawned. I read five chapters of my latest manuscript this morning, machine-quilted a lap blanket this afternoon, and now it's time to ponder what all this might mean, if anything, as music plays, a fire sparks, and minutes slip past in the very early stages of the next year of my life. I was thinking about my life, 2024, and how chill this year has begun. Chill as in mellow, also cool, rain and gray skies the norm. Music has been blasting, well, playing at a chill level, for my ears aren't happy if the tunes rawk too loudly, lol. Past Me stares hard, cranking it to 11 w...

Today's pics are ones I took last night, dried flowers collected by the grandgirls and my youngest daughter that adorn our fireplace mantle. These post-Thanksgiving days are...strange. Such a big holiday, then a busy weekend with family, traveling included. Now we're home, yet more alterations await; dear friends are coming on Sunday, staying for the week, yay! I need to prep the house, although not put up Christmas decorations, as there is no time for more than stringing lights on our front fence, so necessary as daylight has diminished sharply. There's also a quilt on the design wall that I put up yesterday and want to stitch together before our guests arrive. I wrote a chapter today, WOO HOO, so missing that element of my life. I adore sharing our home with beloveds; it's also great to return to familiar rhythms that bring me so much peace.     Then I stop myself, realizing how blessed am I to have that peace. This nation is fairly fractured, but not openly waging vi...

I can't wait to sew this together! The writing is going well; I had a big day yesterday, another good smattering of words today. The subject matter is tricky, in that I'm dealing with racial issues set in 1971. But there's the love story too, of which I am giving all due respect to the drawing out of a twosome aching to come together. Stark are the repercussions of a split, hard for a child to grasp why someone so beloved wishes to leave. Not to give away too many spoilers, but my duo is in that holding stage, waiting for someone to make the first move. And sometimes it's not one within the relationship to push things over the edge. Sometimes another character nudges one toward their soulmate. Arranging all these folks to their correct spots is like laying a quilt on the wall. Square by square fabrics are placed, then replaced. By the time I'm a good third of the way along, I start moving down beyond where it's easy to navigate, then I have to rearrange just to ...

Our western view a couple of evenings ago. A month ago I started taking an online course on how to sew angles. I knew that I wasn't going to just dive right into this new element of stitching, filing away each course after a quick read-through of that week's topic. Quickly I realized this course would be something I'd give proper consideration to much further ahead, perhaps early in 2024, what with the end of 2023 zipping right along as though each day signified the end of the world as we know it. I mean, here it is, the fourth of October! Where have the last nine months gone, truly I ask, without delving into the deeper query of what about the last five years, eight years, two freaking decades??? Ahem, okay, calm down Present Me, and focus on the post at hand. Today's post is about accepting how suddenly, a mere month into this course about angles, I really have no aching desire to sew triangles or diamonds or parallelograms unless they are English paper pieced. I don...

A plethora of lovely designs and colours; can't wait to chain-piece these (and free up the cutting mat for something new lol)! A couple of days ago I received an order of fabric; some is for myself but most is for various projects that will go to new homes. I tucked away nearly all the cuts, but opening a mini charm pack, immediately I began to play. And now I need to sew those squares into bigger squares as soon as a free moment emerges. No way am I going to transfer all those designs to the quilt wall or stack them up for another day. Every year I buy a mini charm pack, sometimes Christmas themed, other times from a design that tugs on my heart. I make coasters from them to give to family and friends. I add strips about 1.5" wide for a border, make little mug-rug sandwiches, then machine quilt most of them, a few hand sewn. Slap a binding around them and voila, nice gifts for anytime of year. But not only are gorgeous prints making feel extra blessed; I'm making slow but...

Soon enough this side of the quilt will be safely hidden from view. But it's worth a photo, all those basted then sewn together hexies part of a greater good (kind of like how novels are written and sometimes lives are led). Currently I could use a few more hours in a day; in addition to reading through (and making significant revising gains in) the latest manuscript, I've opened up a published novel from a few years back in the hopes of maybe fashioning a print version. Then there is The Possibility of What If which I am reading through a couple of chapters each evening, searching for typos or other errors that might have squeaked through. It's so nice to peruse a story in eBook form; so far I've only made a few alterations, no glaring mistakes found, whew! And if those three tales weren't enough, I have a quilt screaming for attention (see photo above), plus I finished a Cornflower Quilt block yesterday, with fabric in the post for another quilt for the daughter ...

Having released my novel, I turned a little attention to some EPP...   The days following a novel's release are full of.... Well, I'm still busy with books; I've spent recent mornings reading through Gracious Mysteries , the next installment in this series . I've also pondered what I want to write next, hehehe. I've done laundry, pottered in the garden, worked on some English paper piecing, also taken a lovely drive along Highway 101 not quite as far as Orick but close. I given great consideration to what it means having released another novel; I've been publishing books since 2011, eleven years of poking about with plots and characters, at times wondering why I feel compelled to share these slices of my gray matter as well as chunks of my heart and heaps of my soul. Yet here I am, still at it. Let me tell you why it matters.... Self-publishing is a misnomer; I'm deeply grateful for Smashwords , through which I distribute my stories. I've been blessed w...

17 August 2005; a walled garden in Helmsley, England. Tomorrow we're leaving for a couple of weeks away; admittedly it's strange to think about traveling, but I have purposely kept from my head the less stellar parts of this adventure, concentrating on where we'll be and what we'll do. Which is far from home and not much beyond sightseeing and visiting dear friends. Or I hope that's the outcome; only yesterday I packed a suitcase, not wishing to overstep any bounds by prepping too early in advance. And if things fall through at the last minute, I won't be overly saddened. There's a book to write, tomato plants to get into the ground, quilts to make, that sort of thing. Sipping my morning coffee, I admired the stars, then conjured an essential plot point for the new story. If I'm smart, I'll make some notes, but the folder for this book is at the bottom of luggage, so I'll stash it in my backpack for later perusal. I never did finish Chapter One, ...