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 ...

The sunset at Samoa Beach from a few days ago.... Yesterday morning I sat down to write. Which meant first I read over the previous chapter, which took about fifteen or twenty minutes. Maybe fifteen. I had written perhaps two paragraphs, then my computer and monitor died. For seconds I inwardly shrieked. Going to my feet, I turned on the light, which worked. Which was even more frightening; what the heck was wrong? I called for my husband, who is a superhero; he noticed I had inadvertently with my shoe unplugged the power strip my computer and monition are both plugged into. DUDE! The computer turned on fine, my document saved, though not completely. A few sentences from that day's writing were all to remain before the document self-saved everything. For another few seconds I was.... Not terrified, merely slightly downcast. Yet I was also greatly appreciative that everything in the previous chapter I had altered was SAFE. No idea what I had changed, but those changes weren't af...

For the last several days hints of summer have muscled their way through an entrenched marine layer. A couple of hours of sunshine one day, another few hours the next. June Gloom is the theme, and I'm trying to be patient, but.... LOL. I'm very grateful it's not HOT here, and as for the sunshine, well, it'll come back one of these days. Gigi is in the Broody Hen condo and just about everyone else desperately wants in! Photo courtesy of my husband. The chickens don't seem to care; they're a year old today, going about their henny-penny ways, including Gigi going broody again, as well as a few hens molting. Hard to believe it's been a year since they hatched, and a nearly a year since we chose them, brought them home, and began our chicken adventure. The good thing about the marine layer is that I don't have to move their water container in and out of the sun. By the time the sun does come out, where the waterer sits is in the shade, not something I consid...

Diagonal Colours is an apt title for this quilt top/back, what I discovered a few paragraphs below, hehehe. I'm kinda on the last phase of revisions for Can't Be Done Alone: The Hawk Book Five , reading silently instead of out loud, although a few sentences have been murmured, making sure this or that wording is what I wish to convey. When I started this saga over twelve years ago, what I wanted to convey wasn't necessarily magical realism and historical fiction served in a women's fiction sort of way. What emerged was, well, all that and more. This is made from leftovers of a recent Rainbow quilt as well as newly beloved prints from Shell Rummel's beautiful Daybreak collection. Nearly halfway through a long tale, this installment starts to veer in different directions, not merely dealing with Eric's transformations or Lynne dealing with them or her assumed infertility. The chapter I've included below hearkens to other elements of the story, that of faith, ...

I saw these earlier today and snapped them late this afternoon. Reminds me of some of the fabrics I encountered, hehehe. After I finished cutting fabric today, I had some four and a half inch wide strips left, and I put them in a tote notable for four and a half inch wide strips, among other scraps. I carried the tote into the living room with the desire to go through it later. Well, I just did so, and to my delight, what amounts to at least an entire quilt top/back is waiting for me to piece it together. Maybe more like two tops/backs, what with MANY strips as well as two stacks of varied sizes of large scraps, my goodness! It was like revisiting the last five-plus years of my stash, perhaps longer. One particular autumnal-hued piece went into the autumn-6.5" stack to be cut into squares, while another small collection of already cut 4.5" squares went into another tote. Only a few pieces were tossed from prints I don't need, and those pieces were small. Funny to think ho...

Yesterday morning I woke with a rather SORE right shoulder. A pinched nerve kind of shoulder. Sigh.... So the Rainbow quilt has been folded and taken to the office, where it will stay for the next week or two. No hand stitching of any kind for a while, as I let the upper right side of my neck and shoulder rest. It's a drag, but there's worse things in life. Like having a special supper with several friends while fully aware one is going to betray you so viciously, yet there's not a dang thing you can do to prevent it, IF you want the best outcome for everyone else. Hence today is Maundy Thursday, the day when a couple thousand years ago Christ ate the Last Supper with his disciples. So yeah, not hand-sewing for ten days or more is a bummer, but again, not the end of the world. So few safety pins left to remove! My poor hubby is actually in worse shape than me; his back has been iffy for days, then yesterday he lifted something heavy and.... A muscle relaxer has helped, so w...