did retreat jump start my quilty mojo?

I'm back.  I think...

It's been a few weeks, but I haven't had really anything to share (aside from books) and just took a break.  I haven't been reading blogs much either, but maybe this afternoon I'll get somewhat caught up?

But there's a pile of stuff to share, so settle in!

As the title states, I went to a quilt retreat last week.  It's one my mom runs in a little town a few hours north of here.  She's been doing it for over 20 years, but I haven't gone.  Long story short, this is her last year and I decided I needed to go.  It was fun.

(I didn't take a suitcase full of books, but I did take four - I only read about half of one!)

What did I end up taking?

After flipping through magazines and quilt books, looking for something new, I realized I had a few patterns I had purchased with the desire to make them.  So why was I looking for something else?

Silly girl.

First up is Chic Kisses.  My pattern is actually the cover of a magazine, but the actual pattern from the designer has more pages and better instructions.  How do I know?  There's a really nice video on putting the blocks together and I watched it twice for extra help.

But this block is something else and I decided to make a test block before I went.  You know, magazines can have errors and, well, I wanted to be sure I could tackle this before planning on it being a major part of my week.

I don't have a photo of my block - maybe I'll go snap one, but for now I'm typing - but it was a little bit of a nightmare.

You know, what I need photos...hang on...

Okay, the block - using fabrics I don't much care for:

There's a template (free!) for making the fan blades, so that went faster.  But those curves.  Sew Kind of Wonderful, the designer, has curved rulers for these blocks, which also seem like they make things go faster.

But...

The inner curve and the outer curves are NOT the same.  And the ruler and pattern assume as much.

In the video you can see that it's not quite right, but I went ahead with the test, as written, to see how bad it was.  I mean, the gal said it was great.  It was bad.

How bad?

The seam closer to the center (the yellow) is the "correct" seam - matching edges, using a quarter inch seam allowance.  The outer seam is where I re-sewed after pressing it and figuring out where the seam should actually be so I don't have a toe-catcher overlapping the fans.

Off to the interwebs...

The magazine has stopped publishing, so no errata are available any more.

The google only tells me where to buy the pattern.  I found maybe one person who had made the quilt with no comment about troubles or anything.  Just "woohoo I made it!!!".

Useless.

Plan B - how to figure out curves.

I found this nice video (and I hope it links - it's a series of short videos that I can't seem to figure out how to link to just ONE of them, but here's to hoping) where she talks about making curved blocks and how her pattern wasn't quite what she wanted so she made a better one.  I kinda had an idea how to draft it, but this helped.

And I refigured the curve the arcs needed to be cut.  Traced that onto the arcs and cut with a scissors.  It didn't take THAT much longer, but I was hopping mad about the whole "it looks great" garbage.

Anyways.  Off to retreat with my revised pattern and a pile of fabrics.

I got two blocks done and guess what?  My edit worked!

Pardon the wrinkles - they were packed in a box and hauled home and just found their way out for photos this morning.

I didn't edit the outer curve, as that wasn't as much of a problem.  It probably could have used a little tweaking, but there is no toe-catcher in evidence, so I let it go.

(I did find one other pattern error in the magazine, but it was template-related and I wasn't using templates - but if you are making this quilt and have questions, I'll be happy to answer them!)

They each took the better part of a day, but my mom's retreat is BUSY.  I swear every time I'd just get sewing, the bell would ring to call our attention and it was time to play a game or go eat or do an activity or see a project someone had finished.  (I liked the finished projects and the food was great, but I could probably have done with fewer activities!)

The original pattern calls for 16 of these blocks, but they finish at like 23", so I'm thinking nine blocks will be sufficient for a throw-size quilt.  And, well, seven fewer blocks isn't a bad thing.

We'll see where things go.  I haven't touched my sewing stuff since I got home (not even to really unpack much of it), but I'm hoping the motivation will remain.  I just had a lot to deal with when I got home, in a short time before work shifts started up again!

This was actually the second project I worked on.  The first was a baby quilt.  I had it saved from a magazine, but today found that the designer has it in her etsy shop as a single pattern.   But if we're being honest, the magazine has a single block free on their website and I...well...I used that and did some math...  (Probably would have been a LOT faster and easier without the math, though!)

A week or so before retreat the hubby asked me to make a quilt for a coworker who is expecting his first baby (a boy) in a few months.  He doesn't often ask, so I know when he does it's someone special.  So he helped me select the quilt (he kept picking out stuff that was entirely applique or had 5 billion pieces and I love quilting, but not that much - not for something I'm giving away) and we settled on this one.

This took only about two days and I hadn't cut a single piece beforehand.  It went together fast, but, as I said above, would probably have gone even faster if I'd bought the whole pattern.

It's just four blocks, but takes on a whole new look once you get those together.  I really like it and it makes me think of city streets.  I'm not sure what color to bind with, but I'm leaning towards orange.  If I have enough!

Other retreat things:

some swag and door prize winnings - that pink thing is a seam ripper and it's AWESOME!

And a quilt fairy gift.

I also went to two quilt shops in the area and bought a few things:

The book is more reference/inspiration, but I've seen it before and finally caved and bought it.  The template I've been looking for and was excited to find.  And the yellows will go in the Chic Kisses quilt - my yellow stash was diminished and more golden than I wanted.

It was a fun week.  My sister-in-law went too and we were roomies.  Every single participant was wonderful and friendly.  And my mom...well...she's a little extra sometimes and so I expected it from her, so it was manageable.  A small part of me wishes I could plan for next year, but I know even if it wasn't the last year, each year is a little different and it would never be the same.  

It WAS good to get home to my own bed, my kitties, and my routine.  Washing ALL the spoons upon return was NOT fun...the hubby hates dishes with a passion and we use spoons to scoop wet food out of cans for the cats.  Instead of washing spoons every day or so (he was also eating bologna sandwiches off of paper plates - I cannot stress enough that this was HIS decision, not mine), he just used all the spoons and then sent me a text to complain.  We have plastic spoons, but NOOOOOOO...

Now I'm back to the regular routine with lots of hours at work - it's spring and that means new lawnmowers, fences that need mending, and all that outside fun.  So we're busy and there are plenty of hours to go around.  I guess it's good, though I do get kinda used to the late winter slump and having more days off than on!

Shortly before I left for retreat, I FINALLY got someone out to work on my longarm.  After my debacle a few years ago (where the company that sells and services them told me my money was no good because I didn't buy it new, from them), the hubby got fed up with my cursing the thing and threatening to put it on the side of the road with a "good luck" sign (not "free" because that might imply it was worth something) and called.  He's a manager and forces techs to fit his machines into their schedule all the time at his job, so he figured he could try that here.

And you know what?  The asshats scheduled him right away.  Like, no questions.  Just "does Tuesday work?"  Flabbergasted does not quite cover my reaction.

So the repair guy is like "it's the encoders."  I'd prepped the hubby.  For those of you who don't know, the encoders keep track of where the machine is and how fast it's going.  So the stitch regulator knows how fast to move the needle up and down.  

My stitch regulator is off.  So the encoders being wonky does not make one bit of difference.

It's like telling someone their cruise control in their car is the problem when it won't shift out of first gear and the cruise control isn't on.

I was pretty sure it was the timing.  I'd tried everything else.  I'd even coughed up almost $300 for a timing tool that, because of my machine being older than almost all others of its brand, does not quite work.  (The hubby and I tried to time it - apparently we got close.)

Anyways, this is also what the folks told me when I tried to get a tech out the first time.  I argued, but they argued back.

So.

It took three men to confirm that it WAS NOT THE ENCODERS.

It was the timing.

There were a few other things he adjusted (why not do the whole spa treatment once I'm paying for a service call, right?), but the timing was the problem.

And he showed us how to modify the tool to use it.  But my hubby took the day off to host the event and participated enough that he feels like he could time it without the tool.

Due to life and work and all whatever, I haven't actually loaded a quilt and used it yet, but I did fool around with a test piece and it is no longer skipping stitches and tying unplanned knots.  Here's to hoping the first quilt isn't a disaster.

But I'm kinda keeping the repair under my hat as far as my mom is concerned because I don't like quilting her stuff.  I don't do it often and I don't offer.  I don't quilt for others very often and usually it's a charity quilt or something.  It's just a lot of extra stress I don't want.  My quilting is good enough for me, but might not be for others and I'm not going there.

Last but not least are the books...10 of them since I last posted.  I'll try to keep their info short...

Quite good.  Historical fiction set during the development of penicillin as a drug.  The doctors developing it, a newspaper reporter covering it and a mysterious death that may or may not be associated with it.  Enjoyable and sciencey without being too technical.

Also pretty good.  A man who lost his musical gift in his late teens, striving to practice his talent back while teaching at university takes on a promising young boy as a student.  It helps him find his way back, but also gives him perspective about how his talent may not be all he needs.  The cat on the cover arrives very late in the book.

Surprisingly good, but LOOONG.  Recommended by another quilty blogger quite some time ago, this is the story of four people who moved north during the migration of blacks from the south into the north.  It's nonfiction, but the stories are interesting enough that it isn't dry or boring (which is why it was surprising to be as good as it was).  The four people head for different cities, end up in different places and have quite different experiences, but it made me think about how easy my life is and appreciate it more.

Also good.  Quick and enjoyable.  Maisie Dobbs is a young woman striking out on her own as a private investigator, though she relies on her instinct and intuition to guide her, more so than a man might do, or perhaps might be expected.  She is hired to find out if a wife is cheating on her husband, but what she finds leads her to encourage the husband to be more present in the relationship.  That ties into a secondary story that helps us learn about her past.  There are other books in this series (this is the first) and I expect they are all of similar nature and wouldn't turn them down if they came across my path.

Quite good.  A Russian teenage girl, living with her mother (the concubine of the title), in a European city within China, meets a Chinese boy and they have an immediate bond.  He is fighting the current Chinese leadership, which puts him in danger, and her love for him puts her in danger as well.  There are a variety of European nationalities living within this city and many of them come into the story in surprising ways to help the two teens.  The mother figures into the story less than you'd expect, considering the title and we never see her quite as a concubine...

Good.  Nonfiction (though I didn't realize that until I read the blurb closer).  A woman from Michigan travels with a relief aid group to Kabul to help people in war-destroyed Afghanistan.  The rest of her group all have medical skills, she is a hairdresser who took an emergency response class a year before and wanted to do something.  She is the black sheep of the group, finds herself bored and goes out to meet locals.  She gets herself into some scrapes, but really does see the people and city better than anyone else in her group.  And ends up, over the course of a number of years and visits, develops and beauty school for women to attend.  Her goal is to give them skills to help support their families when everything is very uncertain in the country.  Reading a little more about the book after I finished put some of her actions in a less positive light, but I truly believe this woman meant well and worked hard to do what she believed in.

Good but dragged a little in places.  Set mostly during the Korean war, in Korea, we see a family trying to survive.  They were wealthy and governed a large piece of land - one that was split when the country was divided into North and South Korea.  The wealth is lost and the family struggles, but they survive bombings and raids.  The book starts and ends with a young woman, an American-born daughter of this family, who travels to find her family and find more meaning in her painting career.  Her story was much less interesting than that of her mother and grandparents and uncles.  A war that doesn't have nearly as many books about it, too...

Pretty good.  Fiction, but based on the real-life Daisy of F. Scott Fitzgerald.  She is a rich girl with no sense of the real world, meets a poor-ish boy who she finds annoying (he doesn't know all the proper rules of the wealthy) but then pines over him.  Drags him along for a while, then dumps him when she finds something shinier.  And when the poor boy becomes a famous writer, he's all new and shiny again, but he knows better now and keeps her at a distance.  I think the Daisy character made me mad enough that the whole book felt less good than it was.

Terrible.  Recommended for no one.  I didn't even finish it.  Three parts:  Part one is childhood.  He's a shit, but maybe it's that kid he's hanging out with.  Part two is teenage years:  He's still making questionable choices, but maybe it's because he's a teenager and boys will be boys.  Part three is post-college:  He's clearly mentally disturbed.  I think he has three personalities.  I think he spent some time in a mental hospital.  I give up.  I kept hoping it would have a plot.  I kept hoping he'd get "better."  I kept hoping for something.  I read 400 pages and I'm sorry I didn't quit 300 pages earlier.

Very good.  Sad.  A woman, while mourning the loss of her best friend's daughter, is accused of abusing a boy at school (she's an elementary school nurse) and is wrongly jailed based on something she said that was misinterpreted while having what was probably a mental breakdown.  The first and third part of the book are her story.  The first is the loss of the daughter, the third is post-jail.  The middle is her husband's story of life without her, visiting her and raising their two daughters.  Her writing reminds me a lot of favorite author Barbara Kingsolver and I enjoyed the book a lot, even with the heavy story.

I finished this last one last night, so nothing to report about the next one...

The Soloist and A Map of the World came from my actual bookshelves and, again, were books I thought I'd read, but once I got into them, realized I hadn't.  I'm glad I kept both.  They were both worth reading.

And so I think that's all I have to share.

Time for lunch!

Happy quilting and reading,

Katie

no quilting, three books and maybe a plan?

I haven't touched my sewing stuff in two weeks.  I just don't have the motivation, and aside from some tops that need quilted, I don't really have any projects to work on.

But that retreat is coming soon and I think I might have a few ideas for what to do.  I haven't looked into the patterns yet, and it will likely require some shopping to get all I need, but I might have a plan.

(The hubby joked that I could just go with a suitcase full of books, and honestly, that sounds like more fun lately.  But since it's a QUILT retreat, I suppose I'd better QUILT!)

In addition to work (the store manager is back after a two month medical leave due to a really nasty car accident right after Christmas, so I think my hours will be cut back again) and the usual chores and whatnot, I've been reading.  It's so easy to just pick up a book and snuggle under a quilt with a kitty.

It's also a nice break from the real world.  I quit Facebook and Instagram a few weeks ago and though I miss knowing some stuff that's going on in the world (outside of local news on the TV), and seeing stuff friends post about kids and pets, I do feel like I'm less stressed about life in general.  I haven't deleted the accounts...yet...

So the books:

This one...  I mentioned two weeks ago, after I had started it, that it was making an effort to fill the big role of "literary fiction" and it just got worse.

The story (or stories) are interesting.  An older man, a survivor of the horrors put upon Jewish people during World War II, tells some of his life story.  How his parents gave him to a neighbor to hide while they were taken to camps and how he became loyal to this woman caring for him.  But also of his time in "the resistance" which I don't clearly understand what it was, but mostly he just refers to his friends he met there and keeps in touch with now.  His career as a ghost writer for a wealthy man.  And short passages from the book he is writing for himself that he will publish as himself.  And an elderly woman he is called to meet after she has been in an accident.

So all of that, in chronological order, could have been okay.  Some of it was awful and scary and a reminder of how terrible humans can be to each other.  Some of it was a reminder how humans can be good to each other as well.

But it was not in any sort of order.  And it didn't jump at chapters.  It jumped at paragraphs.  You never knew if you were reading the story of 10-year-old narrator or old man narrator.  And the excerpts from his book also got tangled.

It started out with promise.  It ended in me just trying to make it through.

This is one that was recommended by my virology podcast folks and tells the story of a number of folks doing the behind-the-scenes work during the early days of COVID.  How the pandemic preparedness plan had been cut and the budget sent elsewhere.  How the team of scientists were basically making things up as they went along, going on gut instincts because there was no data to work with.

There are a lot of people in this story and it took quite a while for their stories to merge and them to work together, but that was satisfying.  (I knew it was coming, but still satisfying.)  But what struck me most was that these people were incredibly intelligent but also seemed real and relatable.  So often we think of scientists who work on these big deal projects as being untouchable, but this book did a lot to make them regular people.  I liked that.

And it seems like it might be a dry, fact-filled reference book.  It has a lot of facts, but it was actually a fairly quick read.  Maybe some of that has to do with my science background and interest in the topic, but it was still surprisingly good.

I actually ordered this one a while back with one of the gift cards I got for Christmas and it is good enough (but also reference-y enough) that I'm keeping it.

And the last one - I did not pick this intentionally to follow the last one, but it was a good chaser.

This one has been on my shelf a while and is another I THOUGHT I'd read, but I have not.  I would have remembered this one.

I've read and enjoyed "The Hot Zone" and watched the movie as well.  So I was pretty sure I'd like this book - the author writes a good medical thriller!  This one was good, but also awful in parts.

Let me explain.  This is a fictional event, but a LOT of what goes on is not.  There are VERY graphic descriptions of an autopsy.  Which is bad.  Worse is the description of the victims of the virus and the symptom that makes them self-cannibalize.  That description there is enough to be off-putting.  But he goes into detail and the medical examiner who gets infected...good God, I had to keep reading for a while that night just to try to flush that out of my brain for fear of nightmares.

And medical stuff (blood and guts) don't usually bother me.

(Movies where they shoot and shoot and shoot and blood flies everywhere are not my jam, though.  That's a whole other blood and guts.)

But.  It was good.

So there is a virus that is causing some nasty symptoms and certain death and a few high up science people think it's not just new, but someone is behind it.  Written in 1997, the technology to do this has become much more likely and doable in the years since, but back then it was still scary.

Anyways, a small team is built to look into it.  The team grows as evidence mounts and cases increase.  Surprisingly, the team seems to all get along quite well and there are no egos to navigate, which is probably the most fictional part of this whole book!

Of course, there is a nut job behind the virus and, as with so many of these folks, he believes there are too many humans and we're ruining the planet.  (Perhaps a spoiler, but not a really important one - you kinda know it's human-made even before you start.)

And, in true medical thriller fashion, there is a high-stakes chase in there.  Reminds me of Robin Cook novels there.

By the end, most things are wrapped up nicely, but not entirely.  Which is somewhat unsatisfying, but at least it's not a REAL virus like in the book I read previously! 

So two good ones and one slog.  Not bad.

Of course, I'm into the next one and it's pretty good, though sometimes I want to go slap the author.  And her proofreader.  But that's a story for later.

Time to go take care of a few more chores and then get going.  We're headed out to see my parents for lunch - thanks to weather and life in general, I don't think we've seen them since Christmas and I'm hoping the snow we got yesterday afternoon that turned our roads into sheets of ice (you'd think it was an ice storm, not an inch of snow!) will be melted and the roads cleaned up by the time we have to leave.

Happy quilting and reading!

Katie

adrian's baby quilt

I missed blogging last week, but this week I have a finished quilt to share.  No photos of the finish, though...I got too eager today in packing it up for the shower and forgot!

But I'll tell the story anyways and you'll see the top, which isn't much different than the finished quilt.

My niece Adrian is due at the end of next month and my hubby has ALWAYS called her "monster" because when her mom was pregnant with her she gained a fair amount of weight.  He called her mom Godzilla.  And Godzilla apparently has a daughter in one movie or another, called Godzuki.  So he called her Godzuki, which shortened into Zuki, which eventually he just changed to Monster.

(It may be lost on him that calling a pregnant lady Godzilla is a bad choice, but it is NOT lost on me.  Years later, it's kinda funny, but she isn't exactly on board with it, so we keep the nickname on the down low!)

So what are you going to make for a pregnant young woman that your husband calls Monster all the time?  Yes, of course, a monster quilt!

A few years back, I found this pattern and, with her in mind, purchased it.  (The designer doesn't have it available on their website, so you can shop here, at a somewhat local quilt shop of mine instead, if you need a copy for yourself!)  When searching through my patterns at home, I found it - I'd forgotten I had it!

So off to my actually local (the one I linked above is about an hour away) quilt shop and purchased the fabrics to make flowered monsters.  I mean, it's for a baby girl, so that makes sense, right?  And the three tone-on-tone-ish prints are the arms and legs.  The black with dots is the background.  A little more space-like, but whatever.  That was last October.

The pattern has a nice coloring sheet inside, which helps since there are at least three of each body section (ears, eyes, nose, mouth, arms/torso/feet) and you can mix and match them all.

I actually copied, cut and pasted and then colored so I knew what I was supposed to be doing.  (Note Salem highlighting the stack of fabrics at the top edge!)

In November I started cutting and sewing.  The pattern is confusing in parts, but there are a LOT of pieces and their corresponding numbers to keep track of.  I sewed a few things wrong, but not many.  In general, though, this pattern is marked as "moderate" skill level...the actual sewing isn't difficult (confident beginner, I'd say), but the instructions require the mind and organizational skill of a seasoned engineer.  I'm a microbiologist and it didn't quite cut it.  There was some swearing and hair pulling.

But then the monsters started emerging...

...nope, wait, that's a Freddie.

And then the project stalled out a little bit.  I decided to try to get a quilt done for my nephew for Christmas (it's still not done) and let this one sit.  Well...

In January, I realized my deadline was drawing near (the shower was earlier today), so I needed to get back to this quilt (the top for the nephew was done at this point, too)...

The monsters being tall and skinny meant there needed to be some effort to get the quilt closer to square and I decided flowered hearts would be just the ticket.  (I could also have done the colored prints, but that might have required more math than I wanted to do at the time...)

And then I had a top!

I pieced the back using the floral (figuring it was less likely to get used later) and a little of the black to make sure it was large enough to fit on the longarm.  (It's about 45x45.)

Lily "helped."

It sat a few more weeks and I put it on the longarm last weekend.  And fought and fought and fought with it.  The first pass was great.  The second and third were horrendous.  I hate that it's so temperamental.  But I got it done.  And bound.  And given away.  All without any additional photographs.

(Oops!)

As I said, the shower was earlier today, but that was CHAOS.  It was a couple's shower and there were people there from ages less than a year to close to 80.  Men and women.  LOTS of them.  And they asked that we don't wrap the gifts (nope, mine went in a gift bag...no way am I gonna let everybody and their slimy toddler put their hands on this), as they'd rather display them than spend time opening them.  Call me old fashioned, but I thought that kinda odd and maybe a little rude.  Also, seeing what the mom-to-be gets is always fun for me.

So I don't know if she's even opened it yet.  I suppose the hubby is going to get a call or text because she will know it's his fault this pattern was chosen.  And she'll give him crap for it.  (He didn't attend the shower - the May men are adamant that baby showers are not for men...)

In other news, I read three books (and a half) in the past two weeks.

Set in sorta present-day Barcelona, a young-ish man inherits his aunt's farm/estate (he lives in the US) and travels there to sort it out.  He wasn't even aware that she was alive (his father told him she died at 16) and he wants to unravel the mystery of why.

Of course, there are bad guys who want the land for questionable purposes and they try to unalive him, he falls in love with a beautiful local reporter and other things you'd never expect in real life.  But it was interesting at least.

The title refers to an old time punishment - there was a king somewhere who was given many lions as gifts from visiting royals and it got to a point where he had many.  And prisoners were sent to "walk the lions" - I think the book refers to it as a reward, but I'm not sure it was...  I'm not sure how this lines up with the story in the book, but sometimes I guess I can just be extra thick?

This was another that was on my shelf and I thought I'd read, but don't remember it if I have.  Another I'm glad I kept and gave that chance to!

This one is set in the 1920s, on the east coast of the US.  An elderly man has requested the presence of his lawyer to draw up a new will, as he will be remarrying at the request of his dead wife.  His children think it's a sham, as his wife has been dead many years and the woman he is to marry has a niece who claims to be talking with the dead wife.

Sounds fishy, right?

It flips back in time to when the lawyer and son were younger men (in their 20's or so), as there is a connection between the new wife and the lawyer, though the son doesn't know it.  As the story unfolds, we see more and more connections between all the characters and, at the fairly predictable end, we see all of them.

It was a good, quick read.

And lastly, the worst book I've read so far this year.  The year is young, but I suspect this one will stay near the top of that disgraceful list for a while.

While promoted as the story of Anna Freud, son of famous Sigmund, it is more about him than anything else.  Somewhat told through her eyes, it is still less of her than him.  I have no idea if she had friends as a child, no idea where or how she was educated outside of reading his research, only how she interacted with him.  As she gets older, we do learn a little more about her own life, but it is always overshadowed by his need for her, or at least her perception of this, and her return to assist him in one way or another.

But I will say that he, Sigmund, looms large as an asshat.  I know a little of his work, but to read it in this book, why he wasn't burned at the stake is beyond me.  I guess we've learned a lot since his theories, but still.  Maddening.  Father of mansplaining.

I've started another, but it's another "literary" choice that is working hard to fill it's big britches.  And causing me no shortness of frustrations.

Anyways. Time to go finish dinner.

Lily snuggled me this way for about 3 minutes the other night.  She's a daddy's girl, so if I get any love, it's short lived.  I'll take it!  (She growled her way under that quilt - it was touching her, but she wanted under it, so I guess what else is there to do but yell at it?  She is quite the opinionated little princess.)

Happy quilting!
Katie

even less!

Last week saw little sewing.  This week saw none.

To be fair, I did hit the sewing room, looking for projects.  I'm going to a retreat in April (I think I've mentioned this) and am trying to decide what to take with me.  Since I don't have much for UFOs, that means I have to come up with something new.  And I'm struggling.

I've been through a number of my quilt books and nothing sparked interest.  I've been through a number of older magazines (I purged a lot a long time ago, keeping only those I thought had something I might make someday) and have found nearly nothing.  And those I've found seem dauntingly complicated.

UGH.

What to do?

Read.

Book number one for the week was a good read.

Set in about the 1970's, a young man (high school age) shoots two local hoodlums after they break into his house.  The trial isn't going well and he manages to break out of the small-town jail and takes off.

The story is mostly about the rest of his family, though.  His father, a local janitor who seems to perform miracle-like oddities, soon loses his job after the crime and the two younger siblings (a boy and a girl - the boy, Reuben, being the book's narrator, both pre-teens) struggle with returning to school.  (No mother.)

So the father packs them up in the newly-inherited (a whole other story) Airstream trailer and heads west (from Minnesota) in search of the fugitive son.

The sister is an aspiring writer, hyperfocused on American Westerns, and the book is peppered with her writings as she tries out stories on Reuben but the whole book seems to have a bit of a Western flavor.  The kids see it as an adventure more than anything, though there are moments when it gets real, too.

A lot of quirky characters pepper the story, perhaps more than other books, but it made it more enjoyable to read.  And my only complaint is that it got a little long about 3/4 of the way through.  I just wanted to see if the things I thought would happen would happen!  So I guess some of that is my impatience.

This book was one that, when I went through my bookshelves, I kept.  I thought I'd read it, but couldn't remember it from the blurb, so when I added books to my reading cart, this was one that made the transfer.  I read the whole thing and it never rang any bells (I kinda expected it to) and I'm very glad I didn't just add it to the donate pile.  It's there now - not quite good enough to earn a permanent spot back on the shelf, but definitely a good read.

And then I moved on:

This book is nearly 500 pages and I blew through it in 3 days.  It is that good.  The best I've read so far this year.  My only complaint is that parts of the story are retold by different narrators, but you always get more information with the additional narrator, so it wasn't a bad thing.

Set in the 1940's and 1950's in Barcelona (author is Spanish and the book has been translated), a boy is given a book that turns out to be both very good and very rare.  Word that he has this book spreads (his father is a bookseller) and offers to purchase it for ridiculous amounts of money are made.  The boy, sensing something is not what it seems, holds onto the book and decides to investigate.  He would like to read more by this author, but something also draws him to find out more about the author also.

Early on he learns that someone is acquiring every book by this author and burning them.  We don't know why, we don't know who.  But apparently a whole warehouse was set on fire years ago to help with this effort.

As the years go by, he has hidden the book in a safe space and goes on with his life, though this is always in the background.  Fast forward about 10 years and his search is truly renewed and takes him to strange places and he meets an odd variety of people, all with some knowledge, but all with some stock in the book or knowledge of the author, so you never know who is telling the truth and who is protecting it.

By the end, many of his questions are answered, but I'm still not sure WHY the books were being destroyed.  Maybe I was supposed to read between the lines (I have a theory)?

There are a few more books in this series and I may seek them out, but I'm almost afraid - will they be as good?  And this one, by itself, tells a whole story.  I feel like the characters are all left in a solid place and at an ending.  So we'll see.

I've started another book (as if you needed to question that!) and so far it's enjoyable.  Another that was on the bookshelf that I THOUGHT I'd read, but 50-some pages in and it's also not seeming familiar.

I promise I'll sew something soon.  The baby quilt is due in just under two weeks (not the baby - just the quilt for the shower) and the wedding quilt that I made and then stalled on may be needed sooner rather than later (family stuff, so they may just do a courthouse wedding).

And here's a photo of Freddie on the day we got him, a little over 7 years ago.  I think his head is bigger now than all of him was back then!

Happy quilting and reading!

Katie