In A Bookish, Quilty Mood

So much has occurred in the last few days, so many times I've wanted to sit at my office computer and write a post about.... Not merely chickens, but the beautiful SUN we enjoyed on Mother's Day, how gorgeous Monday was (more sun and quite warm), and then yesterday with MORE SUN! Please understand that after ten straight days of cloudy weather that was at times chilly, feeling the sun on my face has been a treat beyond explanation, and will give me patience during our summer of marine layer mornings that do eventually break into blue skies. Time to blog has been minimal in part due to those CHICKENS, LOL! Ruthie was her broody self, then on Sunday Icey revealed an outdoor nesting spot, nine eggs having been laid at the base of a camellia tree not far from our house. That dang hen! However... 1) She did reveal her location. 2) It wasn't hard to access. 3) It was easy to dismantle. And 4) She's not broody. She was attached to that spot, I'll say, but how we've dea...

Rainbow side first, sunny and crinkly! Whew, finally wrapped up the last of this cozy! And I'm SO PLEASED with it, I wish it was mine, LOL. Instead it's going to not the original recipient, but someone else much beloved. Still, I do wish it was staying at my house. Next is autumn in shade. Most of these prints are from Stephanie Sliwinski's Foraged, Found, & Hand Me Down collection by Moda.  What does that mean, aching to gift a quilt while desiring its presence close? I guess it means I really like it, both for the fabrics and weight, for the size and stitches inserted, for all it has meant to me since early this year. It's meant: Throw fabrics on the design wall because blank space is boring, then fall in love with what you see, super-excited to hand-sew it together. Use it to make a tutorial, then find the extra layer of batting, consisting of a worn-out flannel sheet, actually makes the hand-quilting a little on the tricky side, but you persevere despite a tired...

I didn't get around to posting this until after lunch, but it was initially written at 6 a.m. this morning....  Our grandsons are visiting this week, so blogging time is curtailed. It's still dark outside, yet frogs are awake, croaking like their lives depended on it. They are quite loud at night; my eldest grandson likes falling asleep to their rhythmic songs. Eldest grandson fashioned this space plane with additions to origami, lol.   My life as a grandmother is SO DIFFERENT, and because these interludes are far and fewish between, I tend to let my being absorb that realm, which before we moved to Humboldt County wasn't so altering, in part the kids were little and they napped, lol. Also that we saw them more often, at their residences, whether it was for several hours at a time or over a few days. Yet who I am has changed too; the sewing isn't paramount, though my youngest grandson wants a turn at the machine, and the writing is less. Less what, I'm not prepared ...

I had planned to use pictures from the Winnie the Pooh quilt for this tutorial, but as I prepped the rainbow quilt, I snapped shots of that process for this post. Heads-up: This is long, lots of photos, and probably more words than you need, but I don't often (if ever because I use tried and true methods borrowed from quilters long before me) write tutorials, so please bear with me on this. However, might I add, not merely in my defense, but to strengthen my belief that if one isn't averse to hand-stitching, that this method, heavily borrowed from Kawandi quilting, is a marvelous manner in which to throw quilting bindings out the window. Okay, having said ALL THAT, here's how I go about securing the perimeter of a quilt! First, make a quilt sandwich just as you normally would, however, the extreme excess backing and batting can be eliminated for this method! Less waste = more materials for future projects, lol. Now, I like to sit for the rest of this procedure, but if you p...

  Roost in the coop. Heads-up: This is about my belief in Christ, America's further descent into authoritarianism, and how those notions weave in and out of my gray matter. Oh, and a little about chickens, quilts, and books. It's Saturday morning. Foggy. Gray. Warm for Humboldt County (Sixty-six degrees Fahrenheit). I wanted to write about the QIP (quilt in progress) in my Go Bag, as I'm prepping said quilt for further Round the World installments. But I also wanted to share the great roost my husband built a couple of days ago for the chickens, although they aren't super keen on it, yet. Only Owl gives it nod, again this morning hopping onto it, then reaching the second rung, then jumping to the floor. One of these days all the chicks will be perched on it, and not that far in the future. Go Bag quilt: Small. Pretty. Peaceful. Necessary. My heart this morning is torn; Washington D.C. is becoming a different city than what I visited a few years ago, what with the admini...

Twenty-eight-year-old Palestinian journalist and videographer Anas Al-Sharif was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday. His team died as well , when their media tent was struck outside the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed he was a member of Hamas, but have offered no proof as validation, which has been strongly denied by Al Jazeera Arabic, his employer. They counter that Israel is smearing him to justify this murder. Today's devotion in God Calling begins like this: Remember no prayer goes unanswered. Remember that the moment a thing seems wrong to you, or a person's actions to be not what you think they should be, at that moment begins your responsibility to pray for those wrongs to be righted, or that person to be different. A few months ago another Gaza photojournalist, Fatima Hassouna , was killed in a manner similar when her family's home was struck by an Israeli missile. She was touted by the IDF as "a Hamas membe...

In reading Straight to the Heart: The Hawk Book Three , I'm astonished at how timely is the message, despite being set in autumn of 1962. Below is a section from Chapter 76, when the Cuban Missile Crisis was in full swing. When he reached the studio, stars twinkled in the sky. Eric could make out the storage building, and turning back, the house blazed with light. Yet, he needed to set something to canvas, although he didn’t wish to work in the sunroom. He wasn’t sure what bubbled inside him, other than a sense of purpose. Perhaps this was how President Kennedy felt, his hands just as tied. Yet Lynne had been right, it was too dark to work. Again gazing upwards, Eric admired the night sky, chuckling at himself. Then he walked around the studio, standing in front of the storage building. Something tugged at him from within, so he pulled the key from his pocket, opened the door, then flipped on the light. There on an easel was the portrait of Marek and Jane. Stepping into the sma...