bramble blooms and cat toys

Not much has happened with the Bramble Blooms 2 quilt, but I did get the flower decisions made, flowers cut and pinned and a little sewing done this past week!

I opted to echo the rainbow shapes to make flowers.  I've only sewn down a few of the red arcs and the centers are safety pinned down (because cats) for now - they'll get gathered and pressed before sewing, but for now I just have them secure where I want them to end up.

The reason I got sidetracked on this is cat toys.

As you know, I work with a local cat rescue group and I cut out a bazillion smaller cat toys and then stalled out.  Then I got busy and sewed and turned them all and stalled out.  I had one bout of stuffing and sewing them, but that petered out quickly - that's not the fun part, even if the cats get stoned and bored quickly.

But the hubby and I have also volunteered to help transport pallets of horse bedding pellets - they're wood pellets, but not the kind you burn for heat - that are used at the shelter for litter.  We got the call Tuesday to haul a load today (they plan ahead to get volunteers to help unload).  Which means I'll be AT the shelter today.  What better time to turn over a bunch of cat toys?

(Also, they seem to be ramping up adoption events, and these are free-for-donation (or not) goodies they have on a table in the same area as the kitties.)

Time to get busy.

Salem takes quality control very seriously.  (I know it's her and not Freddie because of the white patch on her chest.)  She got in the box, despite my trying to close it.

As I was sewing on Friday, Freddie helped himself to an appropriate-to-the-day toy.  You can see he also has catnip on his face (I do give them a little as I'm sewing to try to distract them - clearly it didn't work), so it was a good day for this little goofball.  (He abandoned the toy shortly after and I reclaimed it, as it had only been gently used.)

Lily takes stuffing inspection seriously.  She got the boot after trying to eat it, as wet stuffing is not desirable.  (And stuffing in a kitty belly even less desirable.)

A few days later, when the bag was nearly empty, Toby took over stuffing inspection.  I was worried I'd lose a finger to his shenanigans, but he was gentle.  And he was still in the bag when it was empty of all floof.  It was a good cave until evil mom threw it out.  (Because evil mom doesn't want any tragedies.)

The stuffing ran out as the box was full.

This is maybe half of what I cut.  There are maybe 300 in there.  I need another box!

But I'm glad to have made such progress on these and hope to keep myself motivated to finish the remainder of them.  I got another (smaller) bag of stuffing from the rescue group and then will likely need to purchase some.  It's okay.  It's all part of this volunteering job.

I also finished two more books this week.

This book is set in the Massachusetts area about 20 years prior to the Salem witch trials.  (I say this because there were some parts of the book where I wondered if the main character would be accused of being a witch, but then went looking and she was a few years before that became a big thing.)  The Native Americans and English settlers are at odds and raids where captives are taken seem to be fairly frequent and a constant worry.

Mary, the main character, is taken captive, along with her children, when her husband is away on business, along with a number of other people from her small village.  She describes the raid, the forced march to their camp (which moves a lot), her life as a slave to the Native Americans who captured her, and (spoiler alert) her return to her husband after months away.  Some of the things she experiences change her and make her return harder than it seems to be for others, but she also seems to me to be a woman who fit in neither culture well.

Apparently this is based on an actual book that was written by Mary, though I questioned her ability to not only read that well, but also write a book (which led me to worry she'd be accused of being a witch).  The google told me that women of that era often did not know how to do this, but if this is based on a book she wrote, I guess she did?  It also mentioned that writing to make a book was very uncommon, but since she was partnered up with Increase Mather to make it into a cautionary, religious story, I guess that makes some sense.

Some things that caught me off guard were her ability to see that her life as a captive wasn't much better than the lives of those she served.  No one had a lot to eat.  No one had a comfortable life.  I was impressed that she was able to remove herself from the situation enough to see that.  Yet I was disappointed that she mentioned having herbs and such for medicines at her home before being taken captive, but made no effort to find those to help herself, or even her captors once she began to care about them or in an effort to make herself valuable and therefore more likely to be allowed to live.

I enjoyed the book.

Next up:

Oh boy.

Set in 1923 in England, a young woman with a somewhat questionable past, is involved in the women's movement and gets a job working at a questionable clothing manufacturer to expose their unfair practices.

This all sounds good, but on day one she is already trying to get all the dirt, which seems ridiculous.  Anyone who has any knowledge of spying knows you don't go all out the first day.  She seems rather hurried in her efforts, but eventually does get an opportunity to get some information.

As a result (and somewhat in the meantime), the bad guys become aware that she is trouble for them and that ends up putting her in extra danger where men keep rescuing her.

There is a whole other side story of a wealthy, titled couple that eventually all ties in (as you expect it to), though there are little ties all along.  

Oh, and there's a romance.  A 1923 sort of romance, I guess.  Not steamy.  Hand holding.

The idea of the book is good.  The restating of facts, sometimes only a paragraph apart, made it feel like it was written in fits and starts and then not edited or proofread.  Sometimes I had a hard time keeping track of characters, despite their names being used A LOT.

So I had trouble keeping focused on it.  It was easy to put down and get distracted.

Reviews online give it a lot more stars than I do, but it wasn't awful.

I finished this one last night and haven't started the next book, but I hope to get some reading done today.  Between taking care of doggos at work for breakfast and dinner and delivering a pallet of bedding/litter pellets to the shelter at noon.  It's a busy day, but that's okay.  It keeps my mind off all of this stupid snow that keeps coming down and blowing around!

Happy quilting!

Katie