starting a quilt!

Shifts at work continue to keep me busy, but I had two days off in a row (!!!) last week, so once I got all the chores done that pile up while I'm at work, I actually had time and energy to do something else!

What did I do?

I cut out pieces for the baby quilt!

I had cut the background and a few other parts earlier, but when I had a whole day to play, I cut out all the single pieces from each color to make nine different trucks.

And then I started sewing!!!

After a LOT of lost corners and pieces, I have the trucks looking a little more truck-like.   But those wheels - two per truck and eight lost corners per wheel - I felt like all I was doing was sewing diagonals for a little while.

Each truck will have something different in the bed, so those will just be cut from the stash as I go, but I thought if all I had to do was sew them into the truck when they were done, that would be good.  And some mindless chain-sewing isn't a bad way to spend a rainy day.  (I weeded the garden for a little while and then it POURED on Thursday, so I didn't feel bad about not weeding anything else.)

I have a three-day weekend coming up (I had to ask for the whole weekend off, otherwise the boss thinks one of the weekend days off every now and then counts as a weekend off), so I hope to make more progress then.  But we'll see - depending on the weather, I may be outside a lot.

Speaking of outside - my tomato plants are HUGE!  There are some little cherry-sized green ones on most of the bushes (yes, they're bushes at this point), and a lot of blossoms.  Here's to hoping for a lot to can later this year.

(I should have taken a photo when I was out there reconnecting the hose to water this morning - hubby rolls it up (rather, ties it in knots) when he mows and that was yesterday - but I forgot.  I was too mad at the knots.)

In other sewing news, I pressed and folded and cut another piece of fabric for cat covers...

I think these ambulances are super cute and pretty appropriate.  Of course, my phone thought it should all have a nice orange tint, but it is a pretty turquoise and the reds will be the handle facings.

In addition to sewing, I baked some AMAZING cupcakes on Saturday.  One of the younger guys I work with seems to have never had anyone make any fuss over his birthday - something I didn't know until I brought in cupcakes specifically ON his birthday a few years ago to celebrate with him (who doesn't like free cake on someone else's birthday?) - had a birthday yesterday.  I was planning to make something, but he very humbly approached me Saturday as I was leaving (to run to the store for a cake mix) and asked for something for his birthday.

Well.

I guess I'm not making funfetti cupcakes any more, am I?

So, sitting in the parking lot before heading into the store, I found this recipe for Chocolate Caramel Turtle Cupcakes stashed in my Pinterest file of cupcakes.  (The website takes forever to load (yay ads and pop-ups...), but it is 100% worth it.)

It gives itself five stars.  I might give it more.  (And I'm not a chocolate person and usually decline foods with nuts in them because it's a texture thing.)

Labor-intensive - yes.

Messy - yes.

Worth it - yes!

I did use store-bought chocolate fudge icing and stiffened it up with about a quarter cup of powdered sugar (nope, I didn't measure) so I could pipe it and make it fancy.  And I have no photos, but mine look about like hers.

My kitchen was a bit of a disaster area, but again, totally worth it.

He was very happy.

I'm sure the folks who benefited from this by getting cupcakes also (it did make 24) will also be happy.  I'll be in later today to find out.

And finally, the books I read this week.

Yet another book set during World War 2, but not so focused on the war, so that's good.  And not a "romance" in any way, so that's also good.

A teenage boy at the start of the war, the main character is sent to a Nazi summer camp and is basically indoctrinated into their way of thinking.  But it's fun because he gets to do all sorts of boy stuff - shoot guns, learn navigation, and compete with other boys - so he also has fun and makes some friends.

When the British Air Force bombs the factory his father owns (he makes lightbulbs and I had to giggle when, early in the book, the father intentionally sabotages a LOT of bulbs that are going to German military vehicles - the boy doesn't understand and the father disappears after they figure it out), killing not only his mother, but his two best friends, he sides with the Nazis and joins the military.

Because of his summer camp training, and because his uncle has a boat that he has spent a fair amount of time on, he is selected to join a group of men who will train and pilot single-man submarines and is eventually sent out to find and destroy enemy boats.  He is thrilled and excited until he actually accomplishes the task and then has a real moment of reckoning, which leads him to desert the military as soon as he can.

Then the book DRAGS for a while as he makes his way, on foot, to safer ground.

All this while, I'm expecting something of a boat that runs something out of somewhere illegally.  It takes until the last part of the book to really get there.

I don't want to spoil it, but it takes all of the things that have happened to this young man to add up at once and he becomes a boat runner.  It's a good ending, though sad situations that he enters to do his illegal work.

I mostly enjoyed it, but could have done with less of the trekking hungry, cold and wet through the countryside.

And then this gem:

I liked this one A LOT!

It reminds me some of A Circle of Quiet, which I read back in October of last year.  That one was nonfiction and this one is fiction, but based on the life of a real man who, after being diagnosed with tuberculosis (set 100 years ago), his doctor suggests he move south from his home in Idaho to help with his symptoms.

He buys, sight unseen, a 10-acre plot of land in Alabama, and takes the train there with few belongings, planning to live in the barn that is on the land until he can figure out what else to do.

He doesn't expect to live long (his doctor said maybe a year), so he doesn't make any big plans and, until a hurricane half-destroys the barn and the living area he built within it, I don't think he had any plans to build any other sort of home.

After surviving the hurricane in an old cistern, he decides to dig that out and build a round house on the site.  It won't be large, but he doesn't need or want much.  And 100 years ago, the things a person had (and "needed") were far fewer than we have today.

He builds the home and it becomes a curiosity to the town, but his journey getting there is the story of the book.  Though some of it is surely based on fact (he mentions that he dates the cement blocks he pours for the walls, so I'm guessing that the author was able to use/see those dates), the thoughts of the man are what caught me.  He decided to live deliberately and be present in the now, not worrying about the past or the future as much as he could and, to me, that was a good reminder to enjoy what we have when we have it and not worry about what we might have tomorrow as much.

The life he leads is a poetic one, though I don't think he intends it to be.  He just notices nature and appreciates it.  He does write some poetry, but I don't think he realizes how his life is also such.

It's a fairly quick read, though I did take my time with it a little more than I might have if I hadn't enjoyed it so much.  This one actually might be one I choose to re-read again some day - and that's rare for me!

I've started another book, of course, and it also seems like it is going to be good, but it is VERY different from this one.  (I love it when the books don't all seem the same.)

Time to go get a few more chores done and maybe take a quick nap before work.  Finn, the orange boy, did not let me sleep well last night and I'm tired!

Happy quilting and gardening and reading and baking!
Katie