back to no quilty sewing

Well that was a quick turnaround back to no quilty sewing...

The baby chick quilt is where I left it last week:

But the stack of cat carrier cover fabrics looks like this:

Just three more fabrics!  I was hoping to knock these out today, but then I realized the new job will have me working Mondays - my usual grocery shopping, bill paying and blogging day - so that moved to Sunday this week...taking a few hours of my time today.  And THEN we realized my nephew is playing his first football game of the season and his sister is cheering at the game, and since the weather is decent (cool, but not rainy) we're going to go support them.  (And get some stadium goodies for lunch - perhaps the best part!)

So maybe I'll make it through these, maybe not.  I'm not sure how much any of the pieces are and larger pieces, obviously, can take longer.

The bin of finished covers, however...

It's FULL!  I suppose I could organize them differently and squeeze more in, but this way they stay folded neatly instead of trying to fall over.  I should be able to squeeze in the remaining few I make and then I can turn them in.  I haven't chatted with my volunteer yet to see the next direction, but I suppose I can handle that when I hand these over.

This has been the majority of my free time this week, though I only worked two half-shifts at the new job.  I've learned a LOT already, but there is so much to learn and remember.  I know it will become second nature in no time, but when they sat me down with the big book of ALL the procedures, it was a little overwhelming.  But then I realized, if I sat down and wrote procedures for all the things I do around my house every day (details like which cleaner and scrubber to use on a sink and how to organize the canned foods in the cupboard), it would be a thick binder also, but filled with things that I'm so used to doing, I don't even think about them much.  So it will be fine.

I've been reading as well and last week I forgot to update you on the book I finished, so this week there will be two.

Last week I finished this:

I enjoyed this book a lot, but it took me a bit to convince myself I wasn't reading Downton Abbey!  It is set in the same time with a wealthy family and their servants.  There are a lot of similarities, but this book has something of a mystery that weaves throughout the story and keeps you wondering until the very end.  Eventually I got into the story enough that it felt less like the TV show but on paper.

It jumps back and forth in time, with the main character (who early on becomes a ladies maid) telling her story from back when she was in service while she lives in the present, but it wasn't too hard to figure out where in time I was reading.

4.5 stars

And the book I finished just two days ago:

This book had so much potential.  It's the story of a number of slaves in the mid 1800's and I picked it up because I'm always trying to learn and understand time periods I have not lived through and historical fiction is great for that.

First off, there were a TON of characters.  At the end of the book there is a list of many of them, but not nearly all of them.  With a few less pages than 400, new characters were still being introduced within 50 pages of the end.  Characters who had stories being told, not just bit parts.  It made it hard to keep track of who was who since there were so many.

Next, the time periods jumped around a LOT.  At one point 1987 was mentioned.  Yes, 100+ years later.  Characters deaths were outlined on page 30 and they didn't die until around page 300.  (Not an exact page count, but you get the idea.)  Some amount of reminiscing is allowed (and sometimes expected), but this was as if random ideas popped into the authors head and he just wrote them down and didn't bother to edit them later.

Finally, about the time you think you've got a handle on things, someone new enters the story (or a character you haven't heard from in a bit) and you're off into their story, going in a whole other direction.  Eventually you'll circle back, but it's never any sort of linear progress.

There also never seemed to be any overarching story going on, but I can see that (if this book is to be believed - apparently the author did little to no research on the time period) slavery was a lot more complicated than how history books (at least in my day) presented it and I have a broader perspective of what happened.

2 stars.  Saved from fewer because I feel like I learned a little some things about slavery that I didn't know before.

The next book is looking good, but we'll see how far along I get this week.  I'm still doing the two jobs thing and the new job is scheduling me by asking if I can show up the next day.  I'm officially on the schedule starting next week, so that will be nice.  For now, I'm in transition and that's just how things go.  I could tell them I'm busy.  I could have told them I couldn't start until the old job is done.  But anyone who knows me, knows better than that!  The sooner I get started, the sooner I'm trained and not relying on coworkers to tell me where the toilet cleaner lives or whatever.

And once I'm down to just one job and an official schedule, I can settle into the new routine.  Better sooner than later because that baby quilt isn't going to make itself!

Happy quilting!

Katie