Gabby doesn't get much time here on the blog, but she was being so sweet last night, I snagged this photo. She moved, so it's not as cute as it COULD have been, but it's still good.
Okay, let's move on to what you're really here for: quilt stuff!
Progress was made on the trucks. Now they're ready for their loads of whatever and then I can sew the top to the bottom. There are nine of these and I'm quite glad to be done with them. Particularly after I had to unsew and resew some parts yesterday.
This was also a project this week. I've had this "done" for a few years. But apparently, in my haste to finish, or maybe my focus to figure out different motifs to put inside each circle, I managed to miss the diagonals put into the ring pieces on not one, not two, but THREE of the circles. Not the whole circle, just part of it. (They were too big to do an entire circle on the longarm, so I had to do them in parts, which is how I missed some.)
So I threaded up the little machine with the same thread, lengthened the stitches to accommodate for a lack of walking foot (this machine doesn't have the bar to attach it to, but it's fine...it never worked all that well for me anyways when I had a machine just like this WITH the bar, and the stitching I had to do was in short stretches anyways) and got ready to work out my arms good.
It didn't take long and only a few swear words when I kept snapping the presser foot down when trying to shove a little more quilt under the arm so I could quilt a straight diagonal in the direction I wanted it to go.
Now Single Girl is truly finished.
I spent a chunk of time outside again, mostly trying to get the "flower bed" next to the house cleaned up a little more. You think you've got it under control and a week later Mother Nature tells you otherwise. Or you just turn around and realize you got the tall weeds, but now there are SHORTER weeds to be pulled.
It's not done, but it's better.
And then there's the reading. I feel like I spent more time reading than this one book proves, but it's okay.
This book was quite good. I believe I'd read some talk about it a while back, but you never know...it seems the more hype a book gets, the less likely I am to enjoy it.
The story of a young girl (it spans about 12 years of her life, though there are some big jumps in there), the daughter of a drug addict and a meth maker (who also I'm pretty sure uses some illicit substances), Wavy tries to make her way in the world.
She grows up young and is making meatloaf at 8 - from a recipe (I'm not sure I even knew how to turn on the oven at that age!), and manages to handle a lot of things while the adults around her (all of them) fail her over and over.
Except Kellen. He's in his early 20's when she meets him and they form a bond that she isn't able to find with anyone else. He takes care of her and her younger brother when and how he can, though he is not the product of a happy home either.
Eventually the relationship turns romantic (I kept expecting it, so I'm guessing you would, too, so it's not really a spoiler) and, of course, this delves into the world of relations with a minor and I'm sure that set the world on fire when it was published. (The interview with the author at the end, she acknowledges this, but wanted to explore the nuances of consent and I'm bungling the description, but she intentionally wrote it this way to make us think about it, not just get mad.)
She is often put into awful situations, but has resilience to survive. And tries to make the best decisions for her and her brother. Surrounded by such chaos and negativity, she manages to make her way out of it and not become part of it, making this book a lot more hopeful than you might imagine.
I was glad I finished it early in the day so I could have the evening to ponder and settle with the ending (and the whole book) instead of going right to bed. (I read a lot at night.)
Now I'm more than halfway through the next book and it's pretty good, too. I'll have more to share next week!
Happy quilting and weeding and reading!
Katie
Katie
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