the chicks have legs!

The chicks for the baby quilt finally ALL have legs!

I laid these out first thing this morning to spritz the blue lines out from behind the legs.  The cats promptly ran through them.  They're fairly straight again, but since they need to be pressed anyways, I'm not too worried.

My plan is that these are first on the list today - assuming they are dry and the blue is gone.

(If they're not dry, I will make more cat toy labels and work on that mountain - also on the list, but I want to get this moved forward, too.)

Other than making a list of all the projects I have going and a checklist for each (I have so much, it's overwhelming, and somehow making the list made it easier - bonus, I get to check things off!) and gathering fabrics for the Ho quilt and hanging the quilts my evil fur-kids pulled off the wall, I haven't spent much time in my sewing room this week.

Speaking of the Ho quilt.  I went through my stash and found reds and greens for the letters.  I'm still struggling with the "grey" listed in the pattern for trees.  I did find a holly print that might work.  I'll worry about that later.  And I promise photos of fabrics soon.

Other happenings - FOMO (fear of missing out) finally got the better of me, and with making more money being full-time, I could afford the Cat Lady Box subscription.  Though I didn't take a photo of the first (black cat theme!) box, I did get a photo of Freddie, one of my resident black cats, acting like a derp while playing with a wand toy that came in the box...

The box can come with cat toys or not.  You know I chose the toys, right?  I mean, even before seeing this, you knew.  The little stuffed cat at his feet is also a toy, but I let him choose which toy and he loves string toys, so he chose that one.  (It's got a little paw with feathers on the end, but he went for the string first...I found the feathers laying around the room later.)

And then there's the books.

I finished on Monday, this:

In short, this is an epic adventure of Chinese mythic creature Monkey.  It contains his origin story, a long life-changing journey, and finally his becoming a Buddha.  It is considered a classic, and I do like to sprinkle classics into my reading, but this...well...apparently epic classics are not my thing.  (Don't hurt me, but I read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy and felt the same about them.)  Basically, you spend 300 pages getting there, 5 getting home and maybe 1 reaping the rewards.

I did, however, learn some about Chinese culture and beliefs, so I'll consider it a win there.  And the story itself wasn't bad, just long.

Next up, I stayed up late last night to finish this one for you!

Set in 1845, this is the story of a widowed "old" woman (she eventually reveals she is in her early 30's) who finds herself at the scene of a murder and, through a convoluted turn of events, decides to solve it.  And, spoiler alert, does.  Or at least seems to - the book leaves us with the policeman and coroner heading off to make sure her conclusions are correct.

Though the book wasn't bad, it just didn't...I don't know.  Her relationship with her servants seems off, her constant referral to herself as old (and I'm picturing someone in their 60's or older until she told me otherwise), and a side story about her need to remarry just...I don't know.  I felt like the characters had no past or future, they just were.  There was no why she was widowed, no why her housekeeper was cranky, no why the guy she maybe would marry was so awful.

And then, without any parsing of details to let us in on things, BAM, we had a murderer.

It wasn't bad.  It wasn't good.  Not an author I'll seek out again.

Here's to hoping the new book is better...

Time to go sew some chicks together!

Happy quilting!

Katie