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

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!