what. a. week.

This week has been so busy, I haven't even hardly had time to read!

But I did squeak in a little kitty sewing...

Oh, wait, sewing FOR the kitties, not WITH the kitties...

(but both happened)

This stack is the eight carrier covers I was working on last week.  I managed to complete them this week, but that is all the time I've spent in the sewing room.  (Five shifts in a row - open, then close, then open, then close, then open - took a lot out of me and left me little time for anything else, let alone something fun.)

But there you have a little proof of sewing!

I also haven't read much, but this last book was pretty heavy.

True to Oprah's picks, this one was not a fun read.  She tends to choose books that force you to see parts of the world and parts of human character that are not widely discussed or even realized.  Generally I don't choose picks of hers, but there this one was...in the stash...

It is a collection of short stories (some shorter than others), all set in Africa, but all over the continent.  They all feature children.  Children in distress.  The blurb speaks of the resilience of children and I suppose that is true, but what really stood out to me was the helplessness of children in the situations adults put them into.

Reading took a while because there was some dialect that took a bit to get into (the conversation bits, the actual text was fine) and, for me, it was a slower read overall.

It wasn't a bad book, but it also wasn't uplifting.  None of the stories ended happily.  (Though they all ended predictably and realistically.)

The book title is an instruction given to one of the children in one of the stories.

I've moved on to the next book, but it's a classic, and you know how slow those can sometimes be - this one is no exception.  Also, I'm so tired at night, I read about one chapter (about 10 pages) and my eyes are closing on their own.  The next week or so looks to be about as busy (today is my first day off and I won't have another until Thursday, then maybe not again till the following Wednesday if I pick up a shift from a coworker), but I'm okay with it all.  Life gets busy sometimes!

Happy quilting!

Katie