and then there were two!

Two butterflies and two new books read!

They're identical.  I debated moving the fabrics around a little, but decided it was best to just let it be.  To me, the variety would be fun, but to others, it can be jarring (like the one time I put a single yellow leaf in an otherwise all-green leaf quilt!)

I have cut pieces for the two purpley butterflies, but time flew (hahaha) yesterday and I wasn't able to start sewing before work.  Soon I hope!  (Not today - lots to do before work, though the list IS getting smaller.)

And then I read a bunch.

Two from the new batch, but that's now the random book selection goes sometimes.

This book was very good.  A plane full of people goes through some turbulence in a rare-for-its-intensity storm on a Paris to New York flight, but land with a little damage to the plane and some upset stomachs.  In March.

At the start of the book we meet a number of these passengers and learn of their lives.

Three months later, in June, the exact same plane, like a carbon copy, comes through the storm into beautiful sunlight and requests to land.  Same people, same crew, same luggage, everything.  They are rerouted to New Jersey, accompanied to land by military jets and the whole shebang are quarantined at an Air Force base while the powers that be figure out what to do with them.

Scientists, doctors, religious leaders and, of course, government officials are gathered hastily to put together a "what do we do now?" team.  The scientists put together three theories of how this could happen, and the book seems to continue, without directly saying so, supposing one of them is true.  The doctors work with the people.  The religious leaders have a debate that is interesting, but doesn't seem to help.  And the government people?  Well...I guess they make final decisions.

(Funny, though, that the author portrays the American president (author is French) as a buffoon who says little, but what he does say makes an impact.  On me, at least.  Published in 2020, the events take place in 2021, and the president is never named (other world leaders are, as this is an international flight and they need to be alerted to the holding of their citizens), anyone who has been paying attention to things will probably guess who the author assumes will have been reelected by then...)

My only complaint is that there is a LOT of character development for a LOT of characters.  It seems unnecessary, but midway through the book, one of the passengers, an author himself, wonders how many characters an author can get away with introducing before readers are unhappy.  So it seems the author has a good sense of humor.

Eventually things are resolved and we think all is well and life will go on.  And then the last chapter happens...

And then there was this one, I read in a single day, as it's only about 120 pages.

This is the story of Japanese immigrants coming to the US.  The blurb says it's the women, but it includes the whole families, as those develop.

But it is not told as the story of a family (or single character) or two.  Every sentence is a statement of what one person did/saw/had happen.  Each one is different.  Each one is a different experience, but collectively, they form a story of a group of people.

Each chapter deals with a different part of life - the journey over as "picture brides," marriage, parenthood and eventually the evacuation to camps during World War II.

Often it seems sad, but maybe I focused on the sad sentences too much.  Or maybe it was just because coming to a country with such different ways of doing everything made it hard for them and that's what seemed sad.

It was good and made me see some things I hadn't thought about for immigrants and their families.  It didn't go into detail about the camps - it left off with them leaving on trains - but I expect more books have been written about that and this was everything else.

And now I must go finish the cupcakes for a coworkers birthday.  I've done this for a few years now and recently he's taken a keyholder position, but is being worked half to death (we're short-handed in the keyholder division...well, also the non-keyholder division too) and I want even more this year to do something nice for the kid.  I baked them last night, so they just need some icing and fancy-making for toppings.

Happy quilting and reading,

Katie

books and a butterfly

It's been A WEEK!

Then again, so have all of them lately, so I guess we'll just move on...

I DID sew!

Yesterday.

First I had to press and neatly fold all the new fabrics so when I cut pieces they weren't all wonky.

Then I went through my self-drafted pattern and made a list of what to cut for each fabric.  That made it easier - I could cut strips and then subcut those.  And then my fabric wouldn't have all sorts of wonky chunks taken out of it.

And then I had to talk myself into actually sewing.  The pressing and folding and organizing took over an hour, but the background is about 5 yards, so that took some doing.  Freddie "helped."

But I decided to just get going.  The first (half) butterfly took a bit because I was doing it piece-by-piece and I made a few errors that needed correcting.  I wanted to get an idea how long it would take to make one.

Turns out not long.  Even with sewing a few pieces on the wrong place - I was making two halves, mirror-images of each other - and that made for a few oopsies.  Thankfully I caught them before trimming off any corners!

After a little editing of this photo, I got the colors close to right.  What is it with this phone that wants everything to be dull?  I feel like it wants to put an "I took this in 1982 and it's faded" filter on every photo I take.

Anyways, I think this fits the "bright" request.  I wanted that darker blue on the outside, but it was a small piece and wouldn't be enough for two butterflies, so I decided to go inside.  And the two bolder prints kinda get lost in each other from a distance, but they're in there.

The original had a lighter body and dark head there for the body, but I've never seen a butterfly with a multi-colored body/head, so I went with black.  I think it looks just fine, though maybe I need to embroider some antennae?  We'll see how the motivation goes.

Three more of these to complete the arrangement that was most liked, though I'm not sure once I get to that point the verdict will be the same.  I have plenty of background to make a 3x3 butterfly-only layout and can always raid the stash to see what other colors I can make.  Another one to decide as I get there.

Mostly I'm excited that the first one is done, the pattern is working, and it's not as hard as I anticipated.

On to other things:  BOOKS!

The 4th was the annual sale (though they do them quarterly now, this is the biggest one, even if it's not as big as it used to be) and the hubby and I stopped at home to pick up my dad and their wagon before heading in.

It seemed smaller, but it always does.  That doesn't mean there aren't treasures to be found.

I should have take more photos, but, well...

I got everything home and hauled into my bedroom for sorting.  I always think Gabby (the cat that lives up there) will come and help me (because she's a cat and they are curious), but every year she hides like it's the end of the world.

Lily helped, though.  See her in there?  She helped a lot.

Anyways, two paper grocery bags of books - this year a local veterinarian donated reusable fabric shopping bags to reinforce the paper while supplies lasted and I got there early enough - and a hat.

(You can kinda see the hat.  I should go get a better photo.  But I got a hat for free!)

I took everything out, sorted into stacks by size (because that's how I roll and in my mind they fit on the cart better that way), put number labels in each book, wrote the title and number in my notebook, made little papers with their numbers on them to go in the random number jar and then tucked them all onto the cart.  And rolled it back out into the hallway just outside my bedroom door where it lives.

Two books didn't fit.  Oops!  I found the green bucket in my sewing room, nearly empty, and repurposed it for those books, the jar and the book covers.  For now.

But this looks so tidy!

(Salem isn't so happy because the bottom shelf was empty of books - just housing some covers and the jar - and she would get on there and "sneak" into my room when I opened the door.  Now she walks up to it and can't figure out where her spot went.  Not to fear, little one, I read fast!)

Anyways, now I just want to read, read, read and make room for more when the sale at my truly local library happens in October.

How many books did I get?

54

But one I bought twice.  One in each bag.  Ha!  Hopefully it's a good one!  (I'll do my best to remember to mention which one when I read it.)

Otherwise, I don't think there was any overlap from what I already own.

I think.

And since my last post I've finished two books!  (The last one I finished the night of the 3rd, so I started Saturday with a clean slate!  That was finish #42 for 2026.)

Written as letters from the main character to her sister, set during the Civil War, this follows the theme this author seems to use of old-timey women making do without men.  Not a bad thing and I haven't read one of hers in a while, so this is not a complaint.

A young woman's new husband volunteers for the army to fight to save the Union.  She goes to live with his mother on their farm - she's something of a city girl, though in Iowa at the time I'm not sure how big the city really was - and grows into the farming life.  She deals with small-town gossip, vagrants (indirectly) and the town troublemaker, all while making friends and quilts.

It was a good story.  One that has a happy ending and loose ends all tied up.

And then this one:

Another written in the form of letters, but this time to and from a variety of characters.  Set on a fictional island somewhere off the Atlantic coast of the US, named for the man who invented the phrase "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog," they seem to be more literate, or perhaps just wordy, than others.  On their town hall-type building, the sentence above has been glued up, letter by letter, until one day the "Z" falls.  The town council, in their "wisdom," decide that this is a sign from Nollop (the inventor) to stop using that letter.  Punishable by first offence: a warning, second offence: stocks or whipping, and third offence: death or banishment.

And this is where the book makes you go WHAT???????

Even more so when additional letters begin to fall.

The letters between residents (and one non-resident) do not use these letters either, as using them in speaking or writing is punishable.  At first, the residents get creative, using alternate words or phrases to get their message across.  The days of the week are renamed early when "Y" falls.  But by the end of the book...whew!  Phonetic spellings, or near phonetic, are used and it takes a while to figure some of them out.  (I found myself saying things out loud a few times even!)

And yet the councilmembers hold fast to their rules.

Many are exiled.  Commerce is failing.  And there is a group trying, after it is agreed that they will reverse the decision if it can be done, to find another sentence with as few letters yet using the whole alphabet.

And though we don't have letters falling, I feel that some of the nonsense going on in this book with those who make decisions feels all too real in our world right now.  I wonder how timely it would have felt reading it two years ago.  Or longer.

But.

I enjoyed it.  I enjoyed the story (it was sad, but the community sticking together was nice).  I enjoyed the wordplay.  Definitely one of the best I've read this year.

And with that, the chores must continue.  Today has been a doozy and I still have a few to go, plus a doctor appointment before I get to work tonight.  Yikes!

Happy quilting and reading

Katie

sewing quilty stuff!

I sewed some quilty stuff this week!!!!

It all started on Father's Day when my mother-in-law asked if I'd make a quilt for her long-time friend for Christmas this year.  Of course I said yes!  She wants butterflies on it.  Bright colors.

Let the search begin.  I made a separate board on Pinterest for ideas so I could keep them all together and then shared them with my hubby.  He narrowed it down to two.  One was a bunch of single blocks, in bright colors, arranged in a grid/row layout.  Rather basic and it felt juvenile.  But this one...this one was a favorite of all:

The photo quality isn't great (the larger it gets, the worse it gets), but there's a reason: it's a screenshot from nowhere.  The pattern is from Pam Bono, published in probably about 2012, to her newsletter subscribers only.  And I cannot find it ANYwhere.  Believe me, I've looked.  Ebay, Etsy, the google and beyond.

I'd love to actually pay for it, but since I can't seem to even locate a person who has made it and shared a photo in the last 10 years, I guess I'm gonna have to draft this for myself.

THAT was a whole other disaster.  It took a few tries - Ms. Bono is the queen of stitch-and-flip (lost corners), so though her patterns look simple, you have to assemble them log cabin style and lose corners as you go.  But I FINALLY figured it all out Saturday.

Yesterday I got up early, hurried through my regular chores and worked on a test block (well, half block) before I had to go to work.  I had a few errors in my pattern, so I was glad I used fabrics I'm not really in love with to test.

Lily helped in the most unhelpful way possible during all this:

Everything I tried to do, she tried to sit on.  Every space I emptied to use, she moved into.  My sewing room has limited space to start with.  Add in a determined 8-pound terror and you really can't do much without getting bit or at least growled at.  The only thing she respects is the Spicy Dragon (the iron that steams).

I had already been shopping for fabric - the hubby is having issues with his sciatic nerve and wanted to do some walking.  We went to my local quilt shop and he walked around downtown (old-style downtown with shops below and apartments above) and I wasn't quite satisfied, so we headed about 30 minutes south to another shop where he again walked around town while I shopped.

I may add a little more from my stash (or may need to shop a little more), but I think I've got the color scheme down!  I'm going to do two butterflies in each color and make the version of the quilt seen in the top left corner of the photo above.

The butterfly fabric, found in the sale section at my local quilt shop, will be the back.  It didn't guide my fabric colors, but still looks great.  (But if I could have, I would have chosen a more purpley purple, not this reddish one, but it seems true purples are nearly impossible to find.)

I haven't cut into these yet - lots of work shifts this week - but am hoping to dig in over the weekend, where I have three days off in a row!  (I requested the 4th off for family gathering and the infamous book sale, but got the 3rd and 5th off too.  Not sure what I did, but I'll take it!!!)

Of course, I have a fair amount of time to get this done, but new projects are always exciting!

There were also two false alarms for baby quilts since I last posted.  My nephew (the one who has the quilt that I haven't quilted yet...) and his wife were pregnant, but she lost the baby.  She wasn't far along, but they'd been to the doc and heard the heartbeat, so that's sad.  I know they want four kids (they have three), so they'll try again when they're ready.

The second was apparently a false rumor.  A cousin's son eloped and there was rumor that his new wife was pregnant.  I talked to the cousin on Saturday and she told me that was not true.  The pregnancy.  The marriage did happen.

And though it's sad to lose an opportunity to make a quilt, it may be for the better right now since I'm not doing too well in the arena of actually making and finishing quilts.  (Those two I quilted?  Still not bound.)

In other sewing news, I've made a few more carrier covers.  Those, too, have suffered some due to lots of shifts at work.  And the hubby not only being off work the past two weeks, but the second of those two weeks him being a gimpy old man.

Freddie wants you to see how good he is at putting extra love into the covers I've made and folded neatly:

Yep, he's a chonk.  A goofy, loving chonk.

And then there's the reading.  It's gonna look like less, but that will make sense as I get there.

Set at the end of WWII, a father injures his hand and can't work for a while.  His scheming stage-mother wife arranges for their daughters to perform a vaudeville tumbling act to earn money.  The daughters are all quite different and the story is told, alternately, through the eyes of two of them.  It was good, but a lot of it seemed sugar-coated and predictable.

And this photo, though it's just one, represents seven books.  The Chronicles of Narnia are well known and I've read the first (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) as a kid (though I remember little).  Somewhere along the line, I acquired this box set, published in 1974 or so, and had never read it.  When sorting my shelves last year, I added it to my cart, with a single number tab, deciding that when the number was pulled, I could either read one and put the number back for another draw later, or keep reading.  I enjoyed rereading the first, so I kept going.  I read them all.  In chronological order.  Some people say you need to read them in a different order.  I don't think it made any difference except reading the first one first.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was the best and we all know this is about four children finding their way to the world of Narnia through a wardrobe.  They help set the world to rights after an evil queen has turned it to winter.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair were my next favorites, as they also take the children (well, some of them) on epic journeys to meet people and save the world and whatnot.

Prince Caspian and The Horse and his Boy were next as far as my liking them.  Prince Caspian is a long adventure into battle and it gets tedious.  The Horse and his Boy is another adventure of two children, but just wasn't as engaging as other stories.  Maybe I was getting worn out by book 5?

The Magician's Nephew is the story of the creation of Narnia and was interesting, but got long and felt like an alternate Bible story.  (I know, I know.)  And my least favorite was The Last Battle, which is essentially a war story throughout.  It tidies up the world of Narnia at the end, though, and makes it hard for further books to be written.  (I won't spoil it any further than that.)

In all, they were good books and I enjoyed them.  Most of them I read in 24 hours or less.  They're short and they don't use fancy language, but I also didn't feel like things were dumbed down for the sake of kids.  I liked that.

But...there are seven books, so even at one a day, it was a week of reading!

Science nerdy as this one could have been, it was actually interesting.  A few parts got a little tedious, but in general the stories of the two men who invented the Haber-Bosch process of extracting nitrogen from the air to convert into fertilizer or explosives (Haber and Bosch) moved along nicely.  It felt less like non-fiction that I expected.

I'm not entirely sure why I picked this one up, but maybe to change up my usual genre?  Dinah of the Bible is (according to the blurb) mentioned little in that book, but this author has taken what she could find and extrapolated that into a whole life story of this woman, from birth to death.  Set before Christianity, she is the only daughter of her father (who has four wives, none who bear living daughters except her) and a pet of her four "mothers."  She learns to be a midwife from her elders as well as a local woman and that serves her well in the life she leads.  It was interesting and didn't feel like a religious story at all, despite its subject.  Except when they started with the family lineages like the Bible does, then my eyes glazed over and I may have missed something.  (Good thing for the family tree at the beginning!)

I'm working on the next book, about halfway through.  That will make book #41 for this year!  And the book sale is Saturday.  I can't wait!  My book cart is in a sort of shambles for all the books I've removed and I'm forcing myself to let it be messy because the joy of tidying it up and adding more on the 4th is worth it!

Of course, there will also be family stuff on the 4th.  We all gather at my parents every year (assuming they're not off camping somewhere) to celebrate both the nation's birthday and my dad's - his is on the 6th.  It's as good an excuse as any to get together - probably better, actually.

And with that, it's lunchtime, the banana bread is out of the oven and I need to get going.  Working tonight, so I need to make the best use of my time this morning!

Happy quilting and reading,
Katie

nope

In response to my last post (over a month ago) where I questioned if the quilt retreat jump started my quilty mojo:

No.

It did not.

I haven't even fully unpacked my projects from the retreat.

Why?

Quite a few things, actually.

First up, work.  As always.  Lots of shifts.  Lots of hours.  Good paychecks, but little time off means I hoard what I have and don't get as much done as I could.

But there have been some shenanigans afoot there.  Like the purchasing of "Mystery Chick" eggs until a coworker got the one she wanted.

(I got the one I wanted in the process!)

Second, the cat rescue group asked if I'd sew carrier covers for them again.  Remember these?

(photo credit: Saved By Zade)

Well, there's a need again.  And they have a LOT of random sheets running around.  Donations abound, but the fitted ones aren't easy to use, so guess who got them?

Specific sizes were requested, plus two 8 foot by 8 foot box trap covers.

What's a box trap?

Well, I immediately thought of Wile E Coyote and his efforts to get the Road Runner, but can't find any images to share.  But it is what you think it is, I'm sure.

Instead of trying to measure and sew and make sure there are no exposed seams, I headed to my local quilt shop, knowing an extra wide quilt back fabric would be perfect.  Maybe even too big, but that's okay.

This slightly-heavier-than-quilt cotton was in the clearance section.  I snatched up the remainder of the bolt, giving me two covers and some extra.  And the best part?  One of the employees, an animal lover and rescue helper, paid for it.  It was donated.

I'm waiting to hear how it worked.

I asked for this past weekend off, after having worked all weekend, every weekend for the entire month of May (and I think the last weekend of April).  It was GLORIOUS.

I decided to fire up the longarm and test out the repairs and adjustments done in April.

First up was the baby quilt because it was smaller and if I was going to have trouble, I'd rather suffer through something that's about 42"x42" instead of larger.

I should have taken more photos.  I didn't.

I decided to stick with swirls.  They were the most likely to be okay before the repairs, so I figured if it was still off, I'd at least be in a good place.

You know what?

Not one thread break.  Not one problem.

(Except when I ran out of bobbin almost at the end and was kicking myself for not changing it sooner, but sheesh, it's been a while and remembering all the little things was like relearning to ride a bike!)

Yay!

The next day, let's get another one done!

Tara's wedding quilt has been giving me the eyeball for a long time and I was avoiding it because I didn't want to do a poor job.  Time to give the longarm a REAL test and get this loaded.

Again, I should have taken more photos, but I was focused elsewhere.

Only one problem after a bobbin change, and that's where the problems always seem to happen when the machine is otherwise good.  All the other problems were my own - like not being so great at hitting points/corners.  But again, like relearning to ride a bike when you KNOW you were once pretty good.

(I also had an added bonus with this one where the power company texted me as I was loading and told me my power was out.  Now I have a generator, and the longarm would have been on that circuit, but I did, indeed, have power.  I decided to start quilting, figuring it was a fluke.  I got a third done and took a lunch break.  Heated up leftover tacos, sat down with a book and three bites in WHAM! No power.  For 10 minutes.  Thankfully, I had shut down and unplugged the longarm, just in case.)

The baby quilt has the binding sewn on (the machine side), the wedding quilt does not (but it's made and ready).

SO.  I think I'm back in business with the longarm.  Figuratively - I don't quilt for hire.

And this makes me happy and want to quilt more of the languishing quilts.  But, alas, I must go to work later today.

I did really well with reading blogs for a few weeks after the last post, but even that has fallen by the wayside.  I'm just exhausted.  I'll work three or four days in a row, get one day off and then do it over again.  I never realized how nice a two-day weekend was - one day to just chill and catch up and one day to actually do some things.  But I'm gonna start asking for actual weekends off at least once a month since management doesn't seem to care or pay attention.

(And sadly, I know once things slow down at work again, I'll be struggling to get two full shifts a week.  So silly.)

I put a garden in.  A little later than I wanted, but Memorial Day was the first day the hubby and I both had off, so it went in that Monday.  It's doing well and today I added some marigolds.  It's smaller this year, but I don't plan to can tomatoes, so I just put in two plants and some other veggies for eating.

And I've been reading.  As always, it's something easy to pick up and relaxing to do.

So a short recap of those.

Set during WWII (so well after the original fairy tale was invented), two children are hiding from the Nazis in Austria and find a kind-hearted old woman (I think a midwife, but with the medical knowledge of herbs and whatnot as well) and she cares for them until the war is over.  There is an oven.  It saves them.  But it was generally a sad book.

A collection of short stories, all relating in some way to food.  I thought the author was a chef at first, but I don't think so.  Just a writer.  Entertaining, sometimes informative, spanning childhood to adulthood, it was an interesting read.

I think this is the latest from one of our favorite quilty authors, and I actually bought this in a bookstore, new!  But somehow it didn't draw me in like her books used to.  Maybe I expected more than I should have, maybe it was too much reminiscing about previous stories contained in previous books?  It wasn't bad, it just wasn't good enough to make me want to seek out any more of her books.

Another from the shelf of thought-I'd-read books.  This one seemed a little more familiar at the start, but definitely not by the time I got into the meat of it!  Something of a ghost story, but told through the perspective of a ghost hunter.  A ghost hunter who seeks to release the ghosts from the places and people they haunt.  Set in New Orleans, I enjoyed reading about the city as well.

I wanted to like this one, I really did.  A Frankenstein-like idea where a scientist/doctor is trying to prove that things a mother experiences while pregnant will change the physical characteristics of her unborn child.  By doing terrible things to unfortunate pregnant women.  Told through the eyes of one of these women, the story unfolds slowly, though the reader knows more than it seems they should.  And after all the horrors, the happy ending is just too much.

Another one I really wanted to like, but the author seemed to want to be some sort of highfalutin' literary novelist or something.  There is a LOT going on and it's hard to keep track of.  Basically, Edgar Allan Poe dies under strange circumstances and a young lawyer becomes obsessed with figuring out what exactly happened.  He nearly loses his practice, his fiancée and his life (a number of times) in the process of seeking out clues.  And in the end, we are presented with about three different stories, none of which are true because nobody knows.  I didn't expect to actually know, but I also didn't expect to come away so muddle-headed.

And lastly, one that I wasn't even sure what to expect.  I know this author has a reputation regarding religion (though I'm not exactly clear on what it is), but I thought I'd give it a go.  I mean, when you're filling a bag for $10, why not?  And it was good.  Letters from an uncle guiding a tempter working for "Our Father Below" on how to guide humans into behaviors that will win souls for "their side."  Every chapter/letter was intriguing and dealt with different ideas regarding religious beliefs and pitfalls.  I think this would be really interesting to read in-depth, in a group, chapter by chapter.  As it was, I read it in two days.

I'm on to another book already, but with those above, this brings my reading to 30 books already this year!  But...the huge book sale on July 4th is just around the corner, so no time to slack.  I've got to make room on my cart for the incoming hoard!

And with that, I'd better go eat some lunch because I have to be to work in a few hours!

I promise to, again, try to be better about the whole blog thing.  I mean, I can't expect you to keep reading if I'm not reciprocating, right?  And if I'm not writing, well...

Happy quilting and reading,

Katie