as expected...

After a whirlwind week of sewing, it should be no surprise that I did next to no sewing this week.

What I did was hand-sewing.

Thanks to another blogger, I found a sew-along with weekly prompts to guide intuitive stitching and though I'm a few weeks behind, I think I'm going to have some fun...

Gone Rustic releases a video once a week with the prompt, thoughts about how to interpret it, but also just a general ramble about projects she is working on, highlights of previous prompts and such.  There is a Facebook group you can join, but it's not public.

So the first prompt - remember, I'm a little late - was "noble."

And I thought, being a science geek, it would be fun to try to interpret this in a sciencey way.  But I was struggling with ideas (someone else had already done noble gasses, so I didn't want to copy that!) and the interwebs led me to The Royal Society, a group of scientists that dates back to the 1600's, so I thought that was cool, but what else to do with that?

And I turned up a Wikipedia page with this crest:

That's pretty cool, but I can't stitch all that, can I?  I mean, in a reasonable time and I don't want to spend weeks on each weekly prompt.  I'm already behind!

And then I saw what those words at the bottom meant:

Do you see it?

"Take nobody's word for it."

SOLD!

So I screenshotted the crest and went looking for my printer-ready treated paper...

Yep, did that in 2018.  Let's see how it works?

Well, aside from my black ink cartridge dying, it's good!

So let's just work with the color the printer gave us.  This isn't meant to be an exercise in frustration, just fun stitching.

A little actual frustration later (I tried putting batting behind the crest and doing blanket stitches to hold it down and that got all wonky before I was even halfway around), I have the crest stitched to some tea dyed tea towel (hahahahahaha) fabric and a few question marks to represent that science asks questions and is not just a book of answers.

In fact, in my searches, the website Understanding Science, in a search summary (that I cannot find on their actual website), says this:

"Science is a collection of facts.  Correction: Science is both a body of knowledge and the process for building that knowledge."

I like this very much.

And it was at this point that I realized the word was "noble" not "royal."  I stomped out of my sewing room, mad at myself.  Not wanting to continue.  Debating just throwing this out and starting over.  Or quitting altogether.

I calmed down and decided it was fine.  It may be the wrong word, but there are no rules saying that I will be kicked out of the group for this error.  So I'm leaving it.

I haven't moved onto the next word (round) or the word after that (curve) and I think the next word after that is circle, but I haven't checked for sure yet.  Too many shifts at work this weekend.

But I'll get there.  Maybe.

(I do have the rest of that tea towel partly chopped up, so I guess I'd better do something with it!)

And that's it for sewing.

I did finish one book:

I've read at least one book by this author in the past and remembered enjoying it, so I snagged this one.  It's more historical fiction than I expected, but it wasn't bad.

Set in the first third of the 1800's, it follows the life of a real young woman (Sarah Grimke, and though it's based on her life, the actual events are mostly fiction) and a slave (Handful) on the plantation where she grew up.  Generally two separate stories, though they overlap in the first years quite a bit, as Handful is given to Sarah on her 12th birthday.

It works through how Sarah is opposed to owning people, how slavery has caused her to have a sometimes pronounced stutter, and her journey to become the abolitionist history knows her to be.  It was an interesting journey and not an easy one.

Also we see Handful grow up and struggle to be a person, not a thing.  While I think her owners were kinder to her than some, I absolutely don't agree that owning a person is acceptable.  And I was rooting for her every chance she got to rebel and grow.

It was a good book, but reading it in the world today was hard.  I see the videos and it scares me.  It scares me to speak out.  But it also scares me what I might lose, too.  And lately there have been a rash of people saying if you don't speak out against this, you're saying you agree by staying silent.  (I feel a little bullied by that, but....)  So in my little corner - I do not condone masked bullies shooting people in the streets, regardless of their so-called crimes.  I do not condone taking children.  I do not agree with a good portion of what my government is doing currently.

I don't have all the facts.  I'll never have all the facts.  But I want to feel safe in my country and right now, even just typing this worries me.  Will they come for me, too?

So with that, I'm going to go find myself some lunch and head to work.

Happy quilting,

Katie

PS  No one I've linked to should be assumed agrees with anything I've said.  This is all me.

PPS  We had super cold weather here and my washing machine water lines froze.  Thankfully no burst pipes, but we had an interesting setup to try to slowly unfreeze them.  Ugh.  Winter can see itself out now!

two tops!

One would think with that title for a post I sewed a ton this week, but really, I got most of it done in two days.  I mean, I guess they were long stretches of sewing, but still...

After posting last week, I headed up to the sewing room to make some hearts for the baby quilt for my niece - something to make it taller.

I finished them, but you wouldn't know because did I take a photo?  Nope!

And then Monday, I didn't have to be to work till later in the day (shorter shifts lately due to a reduced staffing budget due to slower sales this time of year), and at first I told myself I'd just get the hearts sewn into rows.

And then I decided to just get the monsters into a row.

And then I decided to just go ahead and sew the heart rows to the monster rows.  I'd decide borders later.

And then I sewed one of the sashings for between the monsters and hearts to the wrong side of the hearts, so it became an outside border.  So I decided to add all the borders (though they might have been a little wider top and bottom had I not made the error).

The floral looks a little muddy when you see it from more of a distance, but the colors are looking fairly true here.  It's around 45" square.  It still feels like it's wider than it is tall, but the photo doesn't lie!

And then I stalled out for a good part of the week.  Read.  Napped.  Worked.  Spent too much time scrolling on my phone.

And then yesterday, I decided it was TIME to do something productive, so I made myself go into the sewing room and piece the back for this quilt.

ALL the cats wanted to help.  I had to move them a number of times and offended Freddie because I touched his paw (he was sunning himself) with the fabric as I tried to work around him.  He can be very prissy that way sometimes.

I had a fair amount of the floral, so that is in the center of the back and then I bordered it top and bottom with the black.  I was going to cut binding first, but I think I want to use the black (not enough of the floral left) and will need the parts cut off from the back after quilting, so that will have to wait.

And then, I was on a roll, so let's start putting those 36 blocks together for the quilt for my nephew!

16 inch blocks start out big and just get worse when you have multiples under the needle.  And there were a number of points to match in each block, so when I got to the LOOOOONG seams, it took a lot of pins.

But I got to the point where I knew I had just five long seams to go and I powered through.  (The hubby was patiently waiting for me to finish so we could go get dinner - I cooked every night this week and he wanted "real food" - cue the eyeroll!)

Around 5pm, I had a top!

I have no place to lay this out to get a good photo - even the clothesline (if it wasn't -200 degrees outside) isn't tall enough.  This is a large queen/small king size quilt, but since he has a queen bed and I wanted it to be useable with no fighting for a fair share, I erred on the side of bigger.

But honestly, as I was sewing and sewing and sewing all those geese, I kept wondering if I had miscalculated and actually sewed TWO quilts.  I'm glad I hadn't, but had a plan for the extra one if it happened.

I need to get a back for this, so I'll see what my local quilt shop has for wide backs so I can be lazy and not piece it.  But we'll see.  Usually those are kinda boring and I tend towards wilder backs.  Tomorrow.

So today my sewing room is empty of ongoing projects.  Or at least if I ignore a few older UFOs it is.  So we're ignoring them.

I have a quilt retreat coming up in April, so it's time now to shift gears and figure out what I'll be taking for that.  Probably at least one new project, but hopefully from the stash, so that will require some work.  I'd like to take the project(s) with pieces already cut, so that's where the real work comes in.

And then there's the books!

This is the one I referred to last week as "...good..." because it's just a little different, but in a good way.

It feels very much like an autobiography, but it is not.  I had to keep telling myself that this is not the story of the author but one from his mind.

The main character is an upper-middle-class man in his mid 40's who loses his parents in a horrible car crash.  He lives somewhere near the east coast (I can't remember) and they live in Montana.  He needs to go out to settle the estate - sell the farm and all that - and plans to drive out with his sister who will not fly.

When he arrives at his sister's house, she convinces him to take her guru with him instead - she is into all that spiritual stuff and he is very much not.  She would like to give her portion of the estate to this guru to set up a spiritual center there and so he agrees to take him.

The road trip that ensues is a bit comical, as the guru seems to have little knowledge of the country and the main character feels it his obligation to teach him.  But it seems the guru always has the last laugh - a lesson in the dangers of assuming things, I guess.

But along the way, the main character, who claims he has always felt a little on the edge of figuring out what his sister feels with her meditations and whatnot, manages to actually learn something about it and experience it as the guru challenges him back.

In that way it was a feel-good book.  You saw the main character grow a bit and learn about himself and become a more patient man.  Or at least he was trying to and able to maintain it somewhat around this strange man his sister sent him with.

And then I got to the last quarter of the book and got mad.  There are spoilers coming, so if you don't want to know, scroll down until you see the photo of the next book.

They arrive in Montana to find his sister there.  She flew.  She overcame her fear.

She is pregnant.  With the guru's baby.  They want to keep the parents home and live there and create the spiritual center on the land and raise their child there.

And it all felt like a forced road trip to make the main character get to know his future brother-in-law (I'm not sure they'll marry, but you get the gist) before the niece is born.  It was all a trick.  And that made me mad.  The book wasn't about what I thought it was about at all.

Or maybe it was.  But the revelation ruined it.  It lost like a whole star in my rating scale.

Anyways, I'm trying to focus on the better parts.  And then I read another book.

I bought this one with gift money a year ago and it finally came up in the random selection, so I was excited to read it.  Someone had recommended it somewhere online, so it was a better bet than the random selection at used book sales, right?

The blurb on the back is fairly cryptic.  Something happens and lives are changed forever.  That could describe a lot of books, right?  I found a blurb inside, as well, prefacing the readers guide discussion questions (that I detest - stop wasting paper) that was more descriptive and would have been a better sell for the back of the book.

But anyways, this one also kinda made me mad.

Set in the 60's in the Netherlands, after losing both of their parents in years past, three siblings are trying to get along and stay in touch and one brings his new girlfriend to lunch.  She seems like a flake and when said brother needs to travel for work, he asks if girlfriend can stay with sister in their childhood home, where she currently lives.  Reluctantly she agrees.

They don't get along.  Sister is uptight and afraid, girlfriend is more fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants and of course that makes for some tense moments.  In another book, they'd be funny, but told from the perspective of sister, they are not.  You feel her struggle and frustration.

And then comes the [more spoilers ahead] romance.  Between sister and girlfriend.  I'm not opposed to the fact of the romance, I'm opposed to a book that was shortlisted for a huge prize like The Booker Award to spend so many pages on sex scenes.  (I read up on the award to make sure I wasn't missing something and it's a literary award to be sure, so I'm still baffled.)

And then the inevitable truth that we, as readers, suspected, about the true relationship of girlfriend to the home.  That may spoil it, too, but I had a feeling about it from early on in the book, so you probably will too...

The story (minus the romance) was interesting - something I'd not thought about regarding houses during world war two.  And I suppose I learned something there.

But again with the books nominated for awards, this further cemented my theory that they are not for me.  Reading sex scenes, regardless of their participants, is not my jam.  And though I'm sure that's not what earned the nomination, it's what ruined the book for me.

Onward.  Started a new one last night.  Familiar author and so far (about 50 pages in) good.

Time to go throw the hubby's new pants in the dryer (he finally talked himself into buying more - I think the outing with other managers last week where he realized he had exactly ONE pair of pants that didn't have holes worn/burned into them or bleach stains covering them was the breaking point).  Of course, they all need washed before he wears them, so I guess I'll be thankful that I don't have to do it by hand.

Happy quilting and reading!
Katie

blocks!

I sewed a lot this week!

I went from individual geese to double geese - the big stack you see here.

Pressing took forever on each step, but I got it done.

(Sewing also seemed to take forever...)

And then the double geese were sewn into half-blocks.

And then...

Whole blocks!

36 of them!

They're quite large, but if you want a queen-sized quilt, you need a lot of blocks or large blocks (or, what it seems here, both).

I may put this one on hold for a bit and get the baby quilt done first.  The shower is about a month away, so I need to make sure it's done in time and right now I just have three individual monsters.

We'll see where the day takes me.

I had a couple of days off this week (which lead to the sewing marathons), but one of them started out with a little headache that, by the end of the day, was a big headache.

Toby to the rescue!  He's so funny that he starts out a little wary of his surroundings (who might pounce him - when no one is likely to pounce him) and eventually relaxes and turns himself half upside down like this and purrs himself silly.

The headache took a few more days to finally be gone, which is odd for me, but I'm glad it's gone.  They're probably only second to sore throats for pains I detest.

I finished one two books - I've been trying to be more mindful and reading instead of scrolling, but some days it goes better than others...

The second book (I published this and then went WAIT):

To be honest, when this one was chosen by the random number jar, I was skeptical.  Somehow it just seemed like it wasn't going to be good.  I can't really explain why - just looking at it?  Maybe it was the blurb?

And then I saw that it was from a publisher that generally has a religious spin somewhere in the book.  Not an overbearing theme (from past books I've read), but enough.  (I need to be better about checking publishers, I guess?)

So that didn't help.

But I'll give it a go.  I'm nothing if not stubborn.

And I got about 200 pages in (it's 350 pages) before it hit.  I thought I'd escaped it, but nope.  It went on for a bit and I was getting to a point where I might give it up (because if I wanted a religious preachy book, I'd read that instead of a novel), and it quit.  Yay!

So the story...

Actually, two stories.

First, there are the pirates in the 1600's, in the Caribbean, doing their pirate things.  Oh, wait, they're PRIVATEERS.  Sure, sure.

The captain takes a ship full of people headed to slavery and somehow one young man (about 15) ends up staying on with him to also be a pirate...ahem...privateer.

Second, there are the treasure hunters in modern day Key West, looking for a ship that said captain sailed.  Of course they find a ship (not a spoiler because seriously what else would the book be about then?).

Both stories have younger men dealing with father relationship issues and that's where the religious part comes in.  Both fathers have careers that keep them church-adjacent.  I could have done without all that part, but the pirate stories were interesting and the treasure hunting part was informative (lots of info about diving and careful grid surveys and whatnot).

So in all, it was a decent book.

The first book (yes, out of order, but as noted above, I realized after hitting publish that I had another book to share, so we're gonna roll with it):

This one was much better, though it also flips between two stories.  Sort of.

Story one is present day - a recent college grad is chasing an obituary for an old eccentric man who passed away in his home.  The elderly man was a professor at the college he attended, so he starts there.  And it just gets weirder and weirder.  Unfriendly "acquaintances," mob-style threats and pleas from others to just let it go.  Of course he doesn't.  His curiosity goes way beyond writing the obit, but that's what makes the story.

Story two is actually a bunch of stories...  There are a number of objects, I think that were owned by the recently deceased professor, that have some magical life-extending properties - alchemy they call it.  And these are the stories of the objects, or maybe just descriptions of them, where they came from and where they were last known to reside.

Through the book you learn more of the professor, slowly, and finally at the end it all sort of comes together.  Some is still left for the reader to ponder, but there is a sense of closure.

I enjoyed it.

And I started another last night and it's...good...

Time to go figure out what the day holds!  No work today at least!

Happy quilting and reading!
Katie

a new year, but nothing much new

I'm not one to buy into all the hype of the changing of the calendar...I see it and sometimes catch myself starting to lean into it, but then realize how silly it is.  I rarely make a year-long goal stick and I'd rather just keep plugging along with whatever I like to do, as time permits.

(Yes, yes, sometimes I do jump in.  Often I regret it.)

But I do like to look back at the year and see all I've accomplished also.  Last week I shared with you a photo-version of my best book of the year.  Because printing those is costly (and it seems my printer is ALWAYS out of colored ink), I did a physical bracket in my book journal - something I started just before the end of 2024 and did manage to keep up with all year.

As I said, the end result was the same as the shorter one, but a few things did get shifted here - I started with the best two each month and went from there.  If you look close, you can see how I really messed things up - I should have drafted in pencil first!

In general, I read quite a few really good books last year, but I can say that for any year.  When you read 76 books in a year, it's hard for ALL of them to be bad!

I mentioned that perhaps I'd do a bracket for the worst, but then started reading this disaster:

And it won hands-down.

If you've heard of the movie "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy", the face on the cover might be familiar.  It's the fictional story of a news anchor in about the 1980's and it's ridiculous, as you'd expect from lead actor Will Ferrell.  The movie is funny, often in an uncomfortable way, but my hubby and I laughed through it, so when this book came out, I got it for him.

He claims to have read it.  He who rarely reads anything not on his phone from a social media app.  I doubt he finished it.  I nearly didn't.

The book is exactly like the pompous, ignorant man of the movie.  Random thoughts, sexist comments and outrageous boasting make for a difficult read.  It was a waste of paper.

I had hoped it would be more coherent.  I had hoped it would be funny.

I know it was meant to be comedy, but I'll take Calvin and Hobbes any day over this absolute piece of garbage.

It is by far the worst thing I have read in my life.  And I've read a lot of chemistry textbooks.

The best I can say for it is that I finished it.  It was my last book of 2025.  I started a new one on the first and am nearly through it.  I'm trying to be better about reading and not scrolling on my phone, but that's not a resolution for the new year, it's just something I periodically do because I realize I'm spending too much time on my phone.

With my book journal (which I started because I have two bookcases of books and cannot for the life of me remember what half of them are about, though I'm sure I actually read them - and the blurbs are useless - thinking this might help me later determine what a book was about with more accuracy than a blurb written by someone who often seems to have not actually read the book) I decided to keep track of where the authors are from and where the story takes place.  So I printed some maps.

This was kind of fun, but I got tired of it.  Sometimes figuring out where the author is from was difficult because they lived a lot of places or it wasn't readily available.  Sometimes deciding where the story was set was hard because it moved around a lot or was in a country that no longer exists.

So this is not something I'll continue, though it was fun to get to color in new places every so often!  (As I was doing it, I debated new ways of keeping track of multiple books that take place in the same state/country, but it just wasn't fun enough overall to put the effort into doing it again.)

So I purchased a new composition book (that has 20 fewer pages than the one I got last year - thanks shrinkflation!) and wrote in all the books I currently have on my cart.  But first...I pulled the books from my shelves - the ones that sounded interesting, that I think I may have read, and so didn't go in the purge of last year - and added them onto my cart, complete with numbers to be selected.  I haven't decided what I'll do if I figure out I'm sure I've read a book from that category, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

I debated about a new composition book versus just continuing this one until it's gone, but decided a fresh book with a new listing of my books at the front (I added to the list in the first one, with tabs to help me find them faster when the spilled onto pages midway through - and will again) would be a nice way to start the year.

The book journal itself sometimes was a little tough to get myself to do, but I made it through the year and do like the idea of having a little summary of my own going forward.

As for quilting, of course I'm going to keep doing that!  And this weekend (4 days off in a row - we've hit slow season at work, which means more days off for me...less pay, too, but I knew it was coming) I managed to find time to sew!

I'm making the second half of the flying geese for the quilt for my nephew.  I'd sewn the first sets of squares onto the larger squares, but wanted to cut just one and make sure the geese were going to come out right.  It looked a little sketchy and I'd rather rip seams for 72 blocks than go buy more fabric.  And that's where I stalled out.  Somehow getting out the iron and scissors and sitting down to actually check it was too much for my holiday-nearly-full-time-working-candy-making-present-shopping brain to handle.

I had planned sewing for Friday, but by the time I got chores done and delivered a last-minute pallet of bedding pellets to the cat rescue (they were running out and could we go today please?!?), my day had totally gotten away from me.  But Saturday?

Sew like the wind.

Salem helped.  Here she is snoozervising, complete with her adorable little snores.  (She's not overweight, but does snore...so I keep that in mind and maybe later in life we'll have some extra health issues to deal with.  Maybe she just sleeps in weird positions.  It doesn't matter.  She's my princess forever and we'll take care of her no matter what.)

Anyways, after quite a few hours of sewing and then a few more ironing (whose idea was it to make this quilt with so many long stretches of doing the same thing over and over again?!), I had all the geese made - just in time to go make dinner last night!

Today these geese will unite as one and become quarters of blocks.  Of course, I need to stop typing and go take a shower and then it will probably be about lunchtime, so later today, but I still have one more day off after today!!!

(I also have to convince myself that this needs to be done and not go read more of my book!)

And with that, I should get going.  I want to revamp my blog list (you can see it on the desktop site, but it's not on the mobile version thanks to blogger), but that may not look any different to any of you, just me!  And THEN I can go sew.

Happy quilting (FINALLY!),

Katie