another week without sewing

It was another busy week around here.  I had only Friday off this past week and ended up being talked into picking up a shift that day due to a communication issue.  And I've picked up another one tomorrow for the same reason.  (New employee, so trying to cut her some slack until I actually meet her!)

There was also family stuff and I read.

At one of the "family stuff" get togethers, my nephew (the one who just got a baby quilt for his new daughter) asked for a new quilt.  He's gotten a couple from me over the years (not including the baby quilt), but his latest is literally worn away to almost nothing.  So I spent some time perusing patterns.  I haven't settled on anything, but I'm not shooting for any specific date to finish, so I have time to think.

I also read a fair amount.  It's a nice way to wind down after a long shift at work.  (And they're getting LOOONG lately!)

This one has won a lot of awards (look at all those annoying permanent stickers on there!) and that made me wary.  But another quilty blogger mentioned she enjoyed it and I trust someone who is a quilter first and book reviewer second more than the other way around.

So I purchased it new (GASP!) in hardcover (double GASP!) shortly before we left for our up north vacation in August.  Since I read based on a random number system, it didn't make the cut to travel with me (though I thought about changing the system) and it got chosen this past week instead.

I enjoyed it very much.  It is not so full of itself that you have to wade through half-page sentences and 7-syllable words.  There is no need to delve deep into something beyond the story to understand and enjoy the story.  (Though there surely is much you can delve into in addition to enjoying the story.)  And it moved along quickly.

If you haven't already heard, it's the story of Huck Finn told through the eyes of Jim, the slave who travels with Huck.  Though I haven't read Huck Finn in years, I had a vague memory of the story, which may or may not have helped me.  If I had remembered it better, I might have expected too much and rushed through to get to the parts I knew were going to happen.  Or maybe I would have appreciated some of the scenes more seeing them through both sets of eyes.  Maybe I'll read Huck Finn again?

I'm sure there are plenty of literary folks who can do a better job of summing up all the intricacies of the story and all that.  I'm not the person for that.  I enjoyed the book, I saw things through a new perspective and feel like I learned something from that and would definitely tell anyone on the fence about reading it to do so.  Because it was a good story about bad things.

With that being a surprisingly quick read, I was on to this:

Told from the perspective of George Westinghouse's lawyer, this is the story of how Edison sued Westinghouse (312 times) over the design of the light bulb in the late 1800's.

It's historical fiction, so you have to take the conversations with a grain of salt, but the actual framework of the story is true and somewhat crazy at times.

In addition to this (very young, inexperienced) lawyer running around trying to figure out loopholes and make allegiances to make the lawsuits go away, there is a young woman who hires him and eventually becomes something of a love interest.

Tesla is also involved, which I think might have been the reason I put this "maybe" book into the bag for purchase.  He is such a mystery, even to the people who know most about him and I'm fascinated by his crazy genius persona.  (Though to be honest, the book paints Edison as not much different, in his way.)

I enjoyed the book.  The chapters were short, which is nice when you're just trying to read a little at night to wind down and don't have to read 300 pages to hit a good stopping point.  And the story is interesting - I found myself wanting to read just a little more to see what happens next.

Since I finished this last night, I haven't started the next book, but am considering checking if I can get a copy of Huck Finn first...  I have to work in a short bit, so I guess I have a few hours there to contemplate what I want to read when I crawl into bed tonight...

And with that, I'm hoping this coming week will be better on the sewing front.  If things go as the boss wants, I'll be relieved of my shift this coming Friday (to be given to the new girl who I bailed out twice this week) and then I'll have 5 days in a row off!  What to do with such luxury?!?!

Happy quilting and reading!
Katie

not a sewing week

With two weekdays off in a row this week, you'd think I"d have made some headway in sewing those carrier covers, right?

Nope.

The hubby took both those days off and hijacked my "weekend."

I did finish a book...

I think "literary" is the word used for a book like this - it uses fancy sentence structure and just seems a little full of itself at times.  Which usually turns me off.  This time, I didn't feel like I was wading through mud, but rather reading a story.

A middle aged (maybe?) man is searching for his mother.  He has travelled many of the places his father travelled before he met his mother and then after (with her, of course) as well.  Their travels span Mexico (her home), a good part of the United States and finally back to Ireland, where the father is from.

The story finds us with the man and his elderly father where it switches between him caring for his father and the story of his parents before he was born.  Strange that the story is not told by the father, but seems to be remembered by the son (narrator).  Perhaps he is reciting family lore, maybe he is remembering things he learned on his travels looking for his mother (she left when he was a young boy).

I'm halfway through the next and enjoying it thoroughly.  I'll tell you more next week!

In other news, I baked a cake - I had some lemons and yogurt that needed to be used up sooner rather than later - but it was not so wonderful that I'm going to share it.  It was edible, but I'd make some tweaks if I were to make it again.  Which is unlikely because there are 40000000 other recipes out there that if I have lemons and yogurt leftover again, I can use those instead.

And there was work.

A wedding.

A funeral.

Kitty snuggles and reading.

Time to go sew!

Happy quilting and reading and baking things I don't fully share about,

Katie

making headways

I dropped off all the carrier covers you saw in the post from last week, including those not quite done yet - I finished them first.

I pushed myself because I was called on to transport pelleted bedding that the rescue uses for litter - a whole pallet of it - so I knew I'd be at the shelter and it would be convenient.  And then I started work on the last three fabrics from that HUGE stash.

Remember, these were mostly full bolts when I got them, so something like 8-10 yards per fabric.  A LOT to press and fold and cut, but I got this far early in the week.

I debated just trying to get one fabric done for the drop-off, but decided I'd rather just push through these last fabrics.  I'm getting tired of this.  (Thank goodness this batch is almost done, but I'm not fooling myself that there will probably be more eventually!)

I joke that my kitties are putting in a little extra love for the homeless kitties I sew for, but Freddie doesn't seem to be so enthusiastic about it?  I kept moving him and he was none to happy for that.  (I tried to explain what surfaces I needed and he was welcome to one of the three cat beds in the room, or the sofa-chair, but NOOOO!)

But, by Saturday evening, I had all of the handle inserts sewn all the way in!

They all still need to be hemmed all the way around, but I've been scheduled every day Sunday through Wednesday, so it will have to wait till later this week.

And THEN...

I can start a baby quilt!

My niece Adrian is expecting in late March!

She has gotten a baby quilt (no photo on this blog - I'll try to find it for later) and a tween quilt and a grown-up quilt.  Time to roll the tradition into another generation!

(She and the daddy aren't married - yet - so no wedding quilt right now.)

The hubby has called her a monster from day one.  (Her mom gained a fair amount of weight, so my extremely insensitive husband called her Godzilla, which means her offspring is also a monster...he is not always funny outside his head...)

So what else is she going to get but a monster quilt?

The floral will be the monster bodies and the turquoise and pink/purples will be arms, legs, etc.  The black with the flecks will be the background.  And I'm sure my stash will provide for the white and black features as needed.

The monsters themselves are quite tall, so I'll be making just three and then some sort of border to make the quilt taller than wide (or at least square).  Perhaps hearts from the leftover floral?

I have also considered making a second, more traditional, baby quilt for her and giving this one from my husband.  I know she'll love it, but I also don't want to piss off the pregnant lady!  I'll see how well I procrastinate and if something catches my eye that must be made between now and March.

Oh, and it's a girl.  In case the fabrics weren't clear.

And finally, the one book I finished this week...

This author is one that I happened across at a used book sale and knew nothing about him.  But after just one book, I was hooked on his writing style and stories.  So when I've found others at sales, I've snatched them up quickly.  He can be wordy at times, but he does a wonderful job of building the world the story inhabits, so you're sitting right there with the characters and you SEE the trees and water and cars and all of it, just as they do.  It's not a book you want to read quickly, but it does go pretty fast.

This story, though it is of a bartender, is told through the eyes of a 12-year-old son of a bartender and does include his story as well.  Set in a small town in Montana, there are some ups and downs and major changes in the lives of the two main characters (the bartender and his son), but seen through the eyes of a boy, they take on a whole other dimension.  It amazes me how well this author gets kids as narrators.  I know I'm an adult, but I can remember being a kid better when I read his books.

The blurb on the back says something about Francine coming to town and turning things upside down, but she doesn't arrive until the book is half done and she didn't turn it as upside down as I expected.  She definitely changed things, but other characters that showed up sooner also changed the way these two men lived their lives.  Perhaps because the other arrivals were mostly positive changes and hers was a little more chaotic the blurb-writers felt it was more significant?  (But we all know by now that I don't trust blurb-writers much.)

It's been a while since I've put a book down and been frustrated that I had to go do something else (make dinner, go to work, sleep) because I wanted to know what happened next.  It still took me a week to read it, but I was tied up with other things, too.

I have another ready to start as soon as I'm done typing here, but it's got some big shoes to fill!

Happy quilting and reading and all the stuff!

Katie

trying...

I'm trying to get back into a routine, but it's not easy, what with the hubby taking off random Fridays and the constant changes in personnel at work that result in changes in my schedule...

This week I DID get into my sewing room some and worked on cat carrier covers!  I finished the check fabric ones I showed last week...

(Sorry, all you get is the stack photo again!)

And I pressed and cut and started another batch of eight.  (The piece also had enough for eight.)

The design is actually on the diagonal, but with my kinda cockeyed photo here, it's hard to really tell.  That yellow is the facing for the handle hole - sewn down, but not yet turned inside and top-stitched in place.

I had intentions of getting more than this done on Friday, my second of three days in a row off, but the hubby took the day off and we ended up at the apple orchard.  It's okay, though, because that trip resulted in...

Applesauce!

The first batch (half a peck) I did without cinnamon.  The second batch (another half peck), the hubby wanted cinnamon added.  I ended up with eight pints, which is a nice measure for future reference.

The problem?  My canner holds seven jars.  So the last "pint" is actually in a container in the fridge and we'll eat it in the next few days.  The rest of these will go in the pantry for later.  They'll be so yummy on a cold day and way faster than starting from scratch (like I did on Tuesday)...

I finished just one book, but I'm nearly through a second.  What did I finish?

This one was recommended by a gal on Instagram who does a lot of reviews on more literary-type books, but I trusted her.  Hmmm...

It's a version of the Iliad (which I swear I read at least part of in high school, but do not remember it at all, even after asking the google for a synopsis), but told (mostly) through the eyes of the women.

Briseis, in particular, a former princess (?) who, when her city fell, was given to Achilles as a prize.

But a chunk of the story seems to also be told through the eyes of Achilles.

And for anyone who liked it and thought it was fabulous, I'm sorry, but I did not enjoy it.  I didn't feel like there was much depth to the women characters (perhaps the author was leaving that to the expectation that we'd read and dissected and remembered the Iliad?) and the flipping between viewpoints was sometimes difficult.

I wanted to like it.  Some of the storytelling was good.  But in general, I don't feel like I learned much more than women were treated as objects, often worse than dogs.  Their work went unseen but all the while expected.  And most of the men were basically feral.

It was a long time ago.  Maybe that was normal.  (The treatment of less-than-royal women, yes, probably.)  But it was just not...not what I wanted, I guess.  I think I was hoping for more of what the women actually did, day-to-day, with the war efforts as a side story.  Mostly I got Achilles being an ass.

The next book is quite good.  Another random pick from the used sales, but I do get lucky with those at times!  I have about 100 pages left, so I'm sure it will be finished by next week.

And with that, I must be off.  I logged on to quickly pay bills before work, but it seems my bank has chosen RIGHT NOW to do maintenance updates, which means I can't do THAT.  So instead of blogging after work, you get it now!  (And I'll pay bills tonight instead.  In case any of you were actually worried!)

Happy quilting and sewing and canning and reading!

Katie