lauretta's quilt and more

Quick before I have to go to a 6th grade football game...

Not quite two weeks ago, my nephew had his third child - a little girl.  I'd been working on a quilt for her since the Colour Value Mystery quilt along happened many months ago.

I went to my local quilt shop and bought fabrics and then changed my mind a little bit...

The lightest fabric wasn't playing nicely enough.  It ended up being the back of the quilt.

Cutting instructions were given and those went quickly, but I was doing the smallest option.

As a mystery quilt along goes, clues (instructions) were given on a weekly basis, so a little encouragement to get into my sewing room was good.  And I kept up.

Eventually I had blocks...

And then a top!

(With cats, of course.  The colors are super off here.)

Then it sat for a while and when I knew the birth was imminent, I got it onto the longarm.

A little later I got the binding finished and put a label on it.

(These colors are pretty accurate, but being outside probably helped.)

Friday afternoon we dropped it off.  We didn't stay long and didn't even really get to meet little Lauretta (odd spelling to honor a grandma), but they had other family visiting and we know we'll get to see plenty of her soon enough.

The pattern is no longer a mystery (and not just because I showed it to you), but the pattern is available from Canuck Quilter on her website and maybe in your local quilt shop!

In other news this week, I bought a dehydrator.

I've been thinking about this for almost a year.  I purchased some books on dehydrating to make sure I knew what I was getting into and see that I could figure out something more than bananas.

Today I loaded it up on its maiden voyage with tomato slices.  I seasoned them with Italian seasoning and, from what I read, you can eat them like chips, put them on burgers or pizza, or even grind them up into a powder that can go in soups and stews and sauces or even be rehydrated into tomato juice or make ketchup!

I just did about five tomatoes (what I had in the house - it was raining earlier), but tonight (it takes 8-10 hours) we'll see how it went!

In addition, I made and froze pesto.  My basil plant has turned into a bush almost rivalling the tomatoes, so something needed to be done.  I'll use that soon and let you know how it came out.  (I tasted it before freezing, but that's a little different than when you actually cook with it.)

I also finished two books.

This one I have no recollection of adding to my bag of treasures, but I must have.  I accused the hubby of seeding my bag with extras, but he denies it.

Though found in the fiction section, as often happens when you have volunteers sorting, this is non-fiction.  That's okay - I've found some good stuff that way.

This one, not such a good one.  Not awful, but not as good as I'd hoped when I read the blurb.

It is three biographies in one - all women who owned this same palazzo in Venice.  All of them eccentric, but from the description of the building, it was odd as well, so I suppose it attracted a certain type.

I had hoped for more renovation and such, since it was a crumbling mess at the start, but mostly what I got were rich people cheating on their spouses and many failed marriages.  It was a lot like lives of the rich and famous, just with a focus on these three women.

The last was a Guggenheim and she did have a modern art museum there when she lived in it (sharing the space in an odd arrangement), but when she passed away, it was fully converted into a modern art museum.

It took a while to read both because it has a lot of pages, but also because there were sections that were kinda dull.  But for non-fiction, it wasn't awful.  I've read a lot worse!

With that done, the random book chooser got this:

This one was recommended somewhere in my travels on the interwebs and I ordered it with Christmas money last year.  It was a quick read.

But I'm not sure if I liked it or not.

The start is very sad and I almost quit reading.  I wasn't sure my mental state was up to what all happened.  But I kept at it.  It didn't get all those accolades posted on the cover for nothing, right?  And though I often distrust those, I wanted to give the actual people who had mentioned it a fair chance.

It got happier, but it is not a happy book.  Hopeful, yes probably.  And it made me think a little differently about my life and situations I find myself in.

But if we're being honest?  I'm glad it's finished.

I pulled another to start tonight.  It's one many of you will probably recognize, but I'll wait to share until I'm done!

Happy quilting and dehydrating and reading!

Katie