mystery quilt top and just one book

The weather is getting nicer, so that means a little time must be spent outside each day to get the yard looking nice.  I don't spend much time, but it does cut into my fun time...

(But really, I've just spent too much time reading and being lazy this week!)

Thursday the next clue for the mystery quilt came out.  Since it's no longer a mystery, it's no longer a free quilt along, but it has an official name (Evening Light) and the whole pattern can now be purchased from the designer!

What does it look like?

(Salem wants you to see how good she is being and how beautiful she continues to be!)

I'm SO glad I chose to replace the pink floral with the off-white grunge.  I think it would have been a very muddy quilt if I had stayed with my original choice.

I really like it!

Next week is officially borders and I could probably have done them already, but I decided I'd just wait because it does get me in my sewing room at least once a week.  Without it, who knows?

There are a lot of really pretty quilts coming out of this - they're shared in the Quilting with Canuck Quilter facebook page.  It's a private page, but you can ask to join if you want to see what we're all doing!

Lily plopped herself right next to my sewing machine and allowed me to sew around her for a little while.  Here she is giving the "winky eyes" telling me she loves me.  She was actually pretty good even with me working over her.  (Speaking of Lily, she just arrived to ask for my lap while I type...we'll see how long that lasts!)

On the book side of things:

This was EXCELLENT.  Five stars.

Told from the perspective of Death, the story of a young girl living in Germany during World War 2.  (Apparently I was really on a roll with choosing that time period, or perhaps there are just a lot of books available set during that time?)

She picks up a book that is dropped at the funeral of her little brother and thus begins her collection.  The story focuses around the stolen books, but is by no means the whole story.

Unlike many of my recent WWII reads, this one doesn't focus on the horrible things happening beyond the direct realm of this 11-year-old girl.  There are bad things that happen that she sees, but she also plays soccer with her friends and lives her life as best as she can.

Being told by a third party, we get to know what many characters are thinking, and I enjoyed that.  I could see many characters scared to speak out about the atrocities of Hitler and his minions for fear of being targeted themselves, which was scary.

Two random notes:  At the start I kept thinking of the movie Meet Joe Black as it features Death as a main character as well.  A different story, and though the critics seem to have disliked it (even Brad Pitt, who plays Death, seems to have thought he didn't do a good job), I enjoyed it - clearly if it popped into my head these 27 years after its release!

And the second random note: Someone wrote and highlighted all over the copy I purchased.  Yes, it was used.  Yes, I paid little for it.  But it just bugs the bejeezus out of me when people do this and then turn it in to resell.  I don't care if you want to mark up a book you'll keep.  But please, for the love of God, leave it be if you'll not be keeping it.  Sticky notes have existed for like 30 years.  Use those.  Or get a notebook.  To make matters worse, whoever did this clearly was impatient or trying to look intelligent.  They failed at looking smart because their notes were like "what did she do with the bread" and the literal next sentence told us what she did with the bread.  I mostly ignored the notes and highlighting (which I never bothered to see if there was any connection because I wanted to READ THE BOOK, not try to tear it apart), but if I find another UNMARKED copy of this book at a used sale, I'll be purchasing it to replace this monstrosity and then taking this to be recycled where it can do more good.

So yes, you may have teased out that I'll be keeping this book.  I don't keep many, but this is one.

It was a lot of pages (like 550) and I would read a chapter or two and then just sit with it.  It wasn't that I was trying to sort out details or process the story even.  It was just enough that I wanted to let it simmer a bit.  So it took a bit longer to read.

The next book I started a few days ago and it is also quite good.  Again, set during WWII.  Soon I hope to find a light read that is just whimsical and fun, but the random book chooser keeps coming up with these.  (Of course, I not so randomly chose them in the first place, so...)

Anyways...

Happy quilting and reading!

Katie

more mystery quilt, more books

Another fairly unproductive quilty week for me, aside from the mystery quilt...

This week the block parts started coming together to make whole blocks!

Salem got in on the action to help me sew.  Or rather demanded some love.  Either way, I took a break to give her what she wanted and she was on her way.

I expect the next two clues will tell us how to put the quilt top together, but I wonder if there will be some secondary patterns that emerge?

Friday evening my throat started feeling scratchy.  So far, it's not been much  more than that, so I'm hopeful it's just a new allergy or a reaction to smelling the residual fumes from the floors being repolished at work, but I decided to take it super easy yesterday.  Because I could.

Gabby kept me company and made some good biscuits.  (Well, I guess that video isn't going to upload...instead you get this still shot...)

Since she stays in my bedroom (do not fear, this cat has a pretty good setup with all the necessities and a lot of extras - like four cat beds, two window perches, a cat tree and a LOT of toys!), she was excited to spend most of the day with me yesterday.  I read and napped and hoped I'd feel better today.  I don't feel worse, so I guess that's good enough?

Speaking of reading...another two books finished this week!

First up:

Though I found this in the fiction section at a used book sale, this is, in fact, non-fiction.  The story of a young woman who wanted to contribute to the war effort (WWII) and ends up telling the right person at the right time and she is recruited to be a spy, working in Spain.

Spain is a neutral country, so there are people from both sides of the war doing all sorts of things there, and it's a good place to do her job.  Of course she has a job as a cover, but she manages to work her way into much of society of the time and that is also a good place to learn a lot of things.  It is also a good place to meet a rich man who turns out to be in line to inherit the title of Count.  So I'm not sure when she marries him she becomes a princess, but I'm not entirely sure how the titles and structure of such work over in Spain.  (Or anywhere, if we're being honest!)

She does get into a few dangerous situations, but the author admits from the very start that his book is based on a couple of her autobiographies as well as some research, but her stories vary some from one to another, so maybe she wasn't in as much danger, or maybe she can't share all that she did that WAS that dangerous.

In all, it was an interesting story, but there were a lot of name and place drops that didn't help me any.  Maybe to a history buff, they would, but I was more interested in HER story, not the story of the war.  And particularly not in a name-place-date manner, as I've said many times that is why I nearly failed history class in high school.  I don't care to memorize that kind of stuff.  I want the STORY!

Anyways, not bad, not great.

And on to this one...

The blurb says two older women go on a road trip to visit the grave of a famous singer (not sure if she's real or not - never got around to caring enough to look), but turns out it's a tool to tell the story of the women.  More the story of one than the other, it spans most of their lives, as they met early in school and stayed friends throughout.

They both grew up poor and though I believe American-born, their Slavic parents made them stand out as "other."  They married men that weren't what they thought they'd be, had children that turned out to be trouble or are now estranged, and generally didn't have good lives.  One (the driver and instigator) seems boisterous and outgoing, the other seems more timid and introverted, they seem to balance each other out.

But.

(Spoiler alert)

They never actually make it to the grave.

Perhaps that wasn't the point?

In general, not what I was expecting (not entirely) and not what I'd have chosen if I'd known.

But the publisher (Spinsters Ink) has me intrigued, as they choose to publish from underrepresented authors and books featuring underrepresented groups of people - in this case, elderly women.  I thought that was pretty cool.

So two books that were both kinda "meh" this week.  But the one I started next is good.

And one of my blog readers commented that they don't even try to read a book unless it has been given four stars.  That got me thinking about what I read - I go to used book sales and the cover draws me in (or the title) and I read the blurb and decide if it's a yes or no from that.  Definitely a chance to miss out on some good books if I'm not in the mood for their content at the time of shopping, but I also am not interested in rushing out to read what everyone else tells me I should be reading.

So I thought I'd type my ratings into a database and compare them with GoodReads ratings.

You can see here the trendline is that GoodReads and I tend to agree that good books are good (the upward trend line), but it also shows that I'm all over the place compared to them.

So I teased it out a little more and here are comparisons of what I thought were the worst books of the last 15.5 months and what were the best to GoodReads ratings.

Clearly I have a different opinion of what a "good" book is compared to the rating of whatever GoodReads uses.  (And I also compared some of these ratings to the StoryGraph, which is user defined in its ratings and they were quite similar to the Amazon-based values.  Maybe those are also user-generated?)

And clearly I liked a number of books a lot better than the average as well.  But did I rate any of them the same?  Since the star rating can go more than quarter star jumps in GoodReads, it's not as easy to compare, but I did a little visual search and came up with this:

So obviously I agreed on some, but jeez don't ask me what they are.

And now that you've asked, I have to go figure it out...

A few of these are new enough that I've talked about them on my blog.

Okay, enough nerdiness and talk about a book tracker app that I really don't like (it was more user-friendly for this project, so it got used, but I may not be using it much longer because the StoryGraph is so much  more fun!) and time to go snuggle kitties and rest some more.  Let this scratchy throat decide what it's going to become because I'm SICK OF IT!  (It needs to progress into something else or just go away.)

Happy quilting (and reading),

Katie

mystery quilt progress, two books and cat toys

The mystery quilt clues continue!  (There's just a couple of days left to sign up if you want to do this free project - after that you'll have to pay for the pattern and it won't be a mystery any more!)

There were no more dastardly half square (or quarter square) triangles to make and trim this week and we got to put together some of the units we've made in past weeks.  It's starting to look like something and that gets me excited!

You know who wasn't excited?

Lily.

Lily is sad.

She took over the box from my most recent Cat Lady delivery (with some items still in it, of course) and gave me this sad face for the better part of the hour I worked on the units above.  Of course, she took a little time out of her busy schedule of glares and sad looks to chew on the plastic plant in the adorable cat-shaped planter you see peeking out next to her behind and then took additional offence when I told her to stop that.

You can kinda see, behind the units above, my covered wool pressing mat.  I didn't get a full photo of it completed, but I did cover it last week and it worked nicely.  I'll try to remember to get a better photo for the next post.

Also this week I made time to start stuffing the remaining cat toys that have been sitting around here for forever...

(Those empty Cat Lady boxes are the perfect size for so many things - not just my cats!)

I have four boxes filled and a few more in an overflow tub.  Next up I need to add catnip, a bit more stuffing and then sew them shut.  Note to future self: don't cut so many at once!

Lily, of course, got involved here as well...

And of course, I had to tell her to stop eating it this time as well.  (Not our first stuffing rodeo!)  I do have another photo, much like this one, only she's giving me another stink-face, but in an effort to stay on her good side, I've decided to give you a cuter one because I'm not sure I could handle an angry Lily!

Speaking of the cat rescue and my efforts there, I got to see a video of the carrier covers I've made in action.  Here's a screenshot of their video:

(photo credit: Saved By Zade)

The rescue fairly recently purchased and refurbished a veterinary clinic in a nearby town to use for their private spay, neuter and other rescue surgical needs, as well as store supplies and house a small number of rescue kitties (most are in foster care).  Prior to the clinic, kitties were transported for all of these things and the covers were necessary, but with the opening of the clinic, transport decreased.

But then...

A few weeks ago we got some really nasty storms.  A couple of tornados touched down.  The winds and/or tornado got the roof of the shelter.  As soon as it was safe, volunteers (because we're ALL volunteers) were up there getting a tarp down.  Mother nature decided on another nasty storm (this time no twirling winds, but lots of rain and wind still) a few days later and the tarp didn't stand a chance.

Of course, kitties were evacuated first.  (They're all safe and sound.)  Equipment that could go also went.  Plastic sheeting was unfurled by the mile to cover what couldn't go or be moved to a safer space.  And then the fundraising and damage assessment and insurance fun began.  But the damage meant the clinic work came to an immediate halt.

Kitties will now be transported for medical care again.  So that means breaking out the carrier covers.  And while I'm excited for them to be used, I'm so sad about all that has happened to need them.

(And if you feel like donating to help, Saved By Zade website is found here, but you can also find them on Facebook where they have a bigger presence.  Monetary donations are accepted in many forms, but they also have a wishlist on both Amazon and Chewy where you can order specific items they need and they'll be shipped directly to the rescue - they have a non-tornado-damaged delivery address!)

I wasn't there for the removal and tarping, but I have been there twice in the last week to unload truckloads of...

(photo credit: Saved By Zade)

They were able to purchase a LOT of cat food at a huge discount and this is where some of the money that is donated goes.  Of course, once it's in the U-Haul truck and driven to the rescue site, it takes muscles to unload and get it moved into the (useable) clinic space.  By hand.  The setup is not one that allows even a handcart/dolly to do much good, never mind a handy forklift (not that they have one).  The hubby and I were there last Sunday for a few hours for truck #1 and a few hours yesterday for truck #2.  We're really hoping there won't be a truck #3 next week - storage space is GONE and we're kinda tired!  But the kitties are going to be eating well for a while.

(They also got other kinds of food, litter and some medical supplies and I'm so excited for all the kitties this will help, I forget about the aches I have as a result.  I think it was about 7 pallets of items in total.)

Anyways...this took up a bit of my sewing time.  Not that I probably would have been sewing anyways.  Since you all know I'm slacking lately.

Instead I'm reading.  Not a bad hobby, right?  I mean, I could be doing much worse!

This book was on my want to read list because someone somewhere recommended it.  When I got my Christmas gift and spent it on books, this was one.  But I can't figure out where the recommendation came from...usually I save them until I've read them just because I'm like that.  Oh well.

Let's start with that I fairly enjoyed this book, once I got past all the name-dropping that ran through the whole book and stopped trying to figure out/remember who all the names were.

Set in the early days of motion pictures (still silent with musicians providing the music in each theater), a young girl decides she is going to be an actress and just does it.  There are a few key people in places to help her along, but she makes it sound almost like she just walked in and said "here I am" and they said "okay."

She does work hard and is as much a part of the production decisions as many others who are not on the screen but since they're basically making things up as they go along, it makes sense that she was this involved.  And this part, the development of the industry, was more interesting than all the names, though it wasn't as informative as I might have liked.  (The focus was clearly on her.)

Eventually she becomes the star she desires to be, but her personal life is something of a disaster and her generally "good girl" behavior doesn't help much.  And then, after making just a few films with sound, she retires.

From the very start, she talks about the fairies that her Scottish grandmother taught her about, and her collection of miniatures that are for the fairies.  (I'm not sure she fully believes they exist, but has a healthy respect for folklore that may or may not be true.)  Eventually, at the suggestion of her father, she uses some of her movie-making fortune to build a castle to house them.  She hires an architect and designers and a palace is built.  When the stock market crashes, she takes the castle on the road and visits many towns across the US, charging just a dime, and donates the money to charity to help people in need during the depression.

The castle in the blurb is what really made me want to read this.  And it was really just a tool to start most of the chapters, as the actress, in her old age, is telling the story of the castle.  But it quickly lapses into HER history.  Eventually her life catches up to the construction and tour, but it took a while.

And here's the thing: the actress in the book is entirely fictional.  But based on an ACTUAL ACTRESS WHO BUILT A CASTLE and took it on tour.  So here's the part where I go "What the...???"  Let's just say it lost a star in the rating scale for being a false biography of nobody when it could have been an actual biography of someone.  Or at least historical fiction, you know?

But it was interesting and I did enjoy it.

With that, I had high hopes that the next book would live up to expectations.

It did not.

Originally written in German, maybe I just don't get it as well as I should?  The blurb says a young woman loses her boyfriend to complications of a broken leg and then "question a past that has haunted her for years."

Mostly I was trying to figure out what was going on most of the time.  Time seemed to shift and blend.  She seemed angry and anxious.  And I'm still not entirely sure what in her past is haunting her.  (I kinda do, but I can't even really explain it.)  I also don't think she actually questioned it or even faced it or whatever.

I kept reading because it was divided into four parts.  I kept hoping one of them would see her drag herself out of the depression and we'd have a happier ending, or at least some sort of resolution, but it was just another stream of consciousness-style ramble.

After I finished, I read some reviews and a lot of people had positive things to say.  (A few were as confused as I am.)  I guess this one just wasn't for me.

Moving on, I'm partway into the next book and it's okay.  More on that next week.

Lily says I'm done now.

Happy quilting (and reading)!

Katie

a few quilty bits and two books

Every week I say I'm going to sew more, but it seems every week gets away from me and I don't sew much at all..  Juggling hours at work and housework is part of it, but I think I'm just in a where-is-spring? funk, too.

Thursday I didn't have to be to work until quite late (it was, honestly, a ridiculous shift and the boss-lady and I have had a discussion about this, but in the meantime I worked it because I was needed), so when the instructions for the mystery quilt came out early that day, I had time to get it done before work!

Again, these took about an hour, start to finish, including trimming.  I'm getting excited - there are 8 weeks and this is #4, so I expect soon we'll start to see these units come together into blocks!

I also found a tutorial to cover my wool pressing mat.  Since it was leaving icky stuff on my iron a while back, I've quit using it.  I think I'm going to find some fabric I don't much like to try this (that way, if I ruin it, I don't mind and can always make a new one later if it works) because I do like the crisp creases it provides.

(There is a video tutorial linked at the bottom of the blog post I've linked above that explains it a lot better.  But it's really simple.)

So maybe I'll get to that this week?

I also cleaned out my dresser and closet - it's been quite a while - and have a few pairs of jeans that are a little worse for the wear and probably not a good option to send to a charity shop.  Last night I went down a rabbit hole looking for some way to repurpose the good parts and let me tell you there's a lot of stuff out there that looks like a kindergartner made it!

But I came across the cathedral windows denim quilt and remembered that I had wanted to make one of these a while ago, so...  (Now I'll need more jeans to cut up...  I think this is where I got hung up last time!)  We'll see.  Maybe I'll make it, maybe not.

And then there's the reading.

I've been waiting for this book to come out for quite a while.  I pre-ordered a signed copy with my Christmas gift card, but it wasn't actually published until February.  I added it to my stash of books when it finally arrived, hoping its number would be pulled earlier rather than later and it came up last week!

I've enjoyed Alton Brown's cooking shows on TV for years.  I'm a science geek and he teaches the science behind why foods do the things they do, so it was perfect.  Sure, he uses sock puppets and costumed characters to aid his teaching and it maybe seems juvenile, but I remember what he's taught (well, it's been a few years, so maybe less now than way back when), so I think it's doing what he intended.

Then, starting during the lockdown in March of 2020, he and his wife started a YouTube show called Quarantine Kitchen (or some misspelled version of this) and I got to see the rougher side of his wit as they cooked, in their own kitchen in Georgia, with what they had in the fridge.  It is not G-rated, as is his network show, to say the least.  It's streamed live, no editing, no second takes.  There's a lot of silly shenanigans and distractions.  And I enjoyed it.  (Turns out his wife is a better cook than he is - more intuitive!)

So when this book was announced, you'd better believe I was ready for it!

But the book.

Wonderful!

There are a number of chapters, all individual essays I'd guess you'd call them, telling stories of his life from childhood up to just about today.  Though he admits to some embellishment (who wouldn't?!), it did give some glimpses into how he became the person he is today.  And it gave me even more respect for all he has done and what he knows.

My only regret is that I didn't make time (and cough up the money) to go see his live show when it was near me a few years back.  (He's on tour again, but not very close to me this time.)

After flying through that one, it was time for the next random selection:

I seem to have chosen quite a few books set during World War 2...this is another.  (I do enjoy historical fiction, but the random numbers seem to be giving me a lot of this particular time period lately!)

Set in Leningrad (mostly), it is the story of the removal, storage and transportation of painting from The Hermitage museum in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), rushing to beat military actions that will destroy these treasures.  A young woman, Marina, is the main character, and she, prior to the war, worked there as a docent, so she is expected to help with the work.  She works tirelessly and when the museum is (mostly) empty, she and her aunt and uncle (the uncle also works there) - her caretakers as she is an orphan - are allowed to live there where it is safer from bombing attacks on the city.

While she tells of constant hunger, starvation, death, bombing and cold, a fellow docent teaches her to build a "memory palace" where she remembers as many details of each painting that is no longer hanging, in the rooms where they previously hung.  I think this gave her an escape from her shifts watching for whatever dangers might come to the museum and the constant hunger and misery she and the others experienced.

There is a second part of the story, taking place in present day, where Marina is suffering from Alzheimer's and attends the wedding of a granddaughter.  Because of the disease, she slips back into the past regularly and we get the story told in her lapses.  And while this provides some interest, I wasn't at all invested in the wedding story.

In all, it was a pretty good book.

I'm on to the next and most of the way through it.  It's a quick read, but I've had a couple of kinda lazy days where I SHOULD have been doing something more productive, but once the chores are done...well...books!

Speaking of chores....those pillows in the washing machine aren't going to get up and put themselves into the dryer!

Happy quilting!

Katie