moving on

I've had a few days in a row off - enough to have a little down time to relax and THEN get busy on my own projects - and it's been productive!

First, I needed to get those cat carrier covers finished - they were piled (so they stayed nice and flat) on my cutting table.  There were quite a few to be completed, but they don't take a ton of time each.  Just a lot of time when there's a bunch of them together.

This feels so good.  I expect I'll be asked to sew more at some point, but the gal who was coordinating this effort stepped down shortly after she handed over the 14 bolts of fabric.  (I talked with her just a few days ago and found out she'd had a stroke!  She needed to focus on all the healing that goes with that, but I think she may come back and I'm glad,. not only because she is doing so well in her healing (she had zero risk factors, which is crazy), but also because she is so organized!)

So these will get donated the next time we make a run down to the shelter.  Or I know someone who is headed that way.

With that out of of the way, I could allow myself to FINALLY start on the baby quilt that I shopped for a while back.  The fabrics had all been washed and folded somewhat neatly, but needed to be pressed and folded precisely for cutting.

Lily got in on the action.  She wrinkled things up and then attacked my whole arm and tried to kill it when I tried to get her to move.  I turned on an automated toy, trying to get her to leave, but mom's arm was more interesting.  She's a spitfire.

Eventually I did get all the fabric ironed and folded and then I sat down with the pattern.  The eyes, noses, mouths, ears and bodies can all be swapped around to make tons of different monsters, so I needed to decide what I'd do.

The pattern - and I'm so thankful for this - offered a page of all the parts that you could copy and print and clip apart to make a reference.  Until I found that, I wasn't sure how I was going to make this all work, aside from just copying the monsters on the cover, because I wanted to make sure the eyes looked right with the ears and whatnot.

It doesn't look as great here, but since I just used a grey for the bodies where the floral will go, it's going to get a whole lot wilder in real life!  (I also had no purple colored pencils handy, so that one is green for now.)

Today, once chores are done (and blogging!), I get to start!

(Can you spot Salem helping me with the photo above?  She's much gentler and less crazy than her little sister, but she does love to help!)

I did finally (I think) decide on a quilt pattern for my nephew who asked for a new quilt.  I think this quilt at Aunt Em's Quilts will work nicely.  It's fairly easy (though I'm not a huge fan of flying geese) and should go quickly.  Now I just have to decide if I want to try to do it scrappy or go purchase fabric.

And I read just one book this week.  I mean, I started a second one yesterday, but still just finished one.

(book cover is a screenshot from my tracking app - I read a free(!) digital copy)

After reading James, I wanted to read this.  I still don't remember it, so maybe I never read it?

It was not as good.

I'm sorry.  I know it's a classic, but there were sections that went ON and ON and ON and ON and I nearly skipped ahead.

In James I feel like there was more story, even if things didn't always line up with this one (I know some of it is different perspectives, but Tom Sawyer never showed up in James and he took up about the last third of this one).  The story moved along in James, here it got hung up a few times.

And if I didn't really think much of Tom Sawyer from my remembering reading HIS book way back when, I think even less of him now.  (Yes, yes, he's a fictional character, but he's more obviously a controlling con artist in my mind now than he was before.)

It wasn't awful, and I'm glad I read it, but it also took me a week to read because I just didn't want to.  (Written dialect aside - that took a bit to adjust to as well, but I expected/remembered that.)

And with that I'm off to finish the last few chores and get busy sewing...well...cutting at least!

Happy quilting and reading!

Katie

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