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This month I have an abbreviated book list. With our travel schedule I had to schedule this post early so missed at least 1 book. I've also had more social time this month and spent way too much time on Youtube. So I only have 3 finished books in addition to two below that I spent way too much time with before giving up. As I write this I'm reading an interesting book called, The Nix. I'll have that review next month. DNF: Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo - I listened to this for half the book and just gave up. I expected an interesting generational story from a culture different from mine. What I got was a boring family with normal drama and one character obsessed with sex. Even the "gifted" character wasn't all that gifted. I wasted days on this book because I kept procrastinating reading it. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - This book is a novel about the Biafra war in Nigeria in the 1960's. It's got great reviews but, honestly, it was too slow for me and the characters were flat.  The Berry Pickers By Amanda Peters, Read By Aaliya Warbus and Jordan Waunch In July 1962 a young Native girl named Ruthie, disappears from a blueberry fiend in Maine where her family are seasonal pickers. Then a young girl named Norma is raised in another part of Maine. She has recurring dreams that confuse her and, as she grows older, she questions her heritage since she looks so different from her overprotective parents. The story is quite predictable but also compelling. It explores the themes of loss, guilt, blame and finding truth. I think this book would work best being read. The female narration really harmed the storytelling. She sounded childish all through the book even though we follow her into her 50's. Her narrations was also slow and kind of flat. But the story is good.  The River We Remember By William Kent Krueger, Read By CJ Wilson I know that 2024 is going to be a good book year when I got this book off hold at the library. William Kent Krueger is my favorite contemporary author. The story takes place in 1958 in rural Minnesota. On Memorial Day the body of Jimmy Quinn, a wealthy landowner, is found in the Alabaster River. Sheriff Brody Dern is in charge of the investigation. The town gossip quickly identifies Noah Bluestone, a Native WWII veteran, as the suspected murderer. The truth is much more complex. What follows is a book rich in small town characters, post-war PTSD, teen coming-of-age, power and abuse through money and love stories. I will say that this isn't my favorite if his stand-alone books but it's still better than 90% of the books I read.  Someone Else's Shoes
By Jojo Moyes, Read By Daisy Ridley I picked up this book on recommendation from Carole. I've read two of her other books and both of those were historical fiction. This one is a novel that is kind of a cross between the movies Trading Places and Thelma and Louise. Sam Kemp is having a tough time in her life. Her new boss is targeting her and her husband is suffering from crippling depression and doesn't want to deal with it. One day she goes to the gym and accidentally picks up the wrong gym bag. In the bag are Nisha Cantor's red crocodile Christian Louboutin heels. When she tries them on for a work meeting she gains a newfound confidence. Meanwhile, Nisha's very wealthy husband has decided that she's reached her sell-by date and cuts her off without warning. She doesn't have clothes, money, a place to live or her red shoes. It was kind a fun romp and written specifically for women as all the "bad" characters are men. But it's not shallow. It explores some complex relationship situations and the importance of real frienship.  I thought I'd schedule in a quick post of the status of all of my crochet projects as of Saturday, before we left. This is the donation shawl and you can see that I'm at the point where the shawl falls straight from the shoulders. I've finished 2 skeins and am ready to start a third.  I rotate between my projects each time I sit down to work on them. They each use different hook sizes and stitches and rotating them seems to help prevent too much strain on my hands. This is my summer vest and is up next in the rotation.  This is a donation baby quilt and I made a lot of progress on it during 2 football games last weekend. We watched at a friend's house and I took this with me. It works up really fast and I think it's looking pretty cute. If I have enough yarn, it will have a border.  Here's a close up of the yarn and fan stitches. While we are on our trip I have brought yarn to work on chemo hats for donation.
 I had some free time on Saturday so I decided to focus and get the blue quilt top done. The border blocks were already together so I just had to put them together and attach them for the final border. This quilt, whenever it's done, will by about 96" square. It's a big one! After I finish quilting Red Sunset I will need to pump out a lot of veterans quilts before I can do this one, but I'd like to have it done by May. I really love this quilt and I'd absolutely consider making it again.  I have a lot of leftover blocks and I've decided to set them aside for later to make more blocks and use these for a veterans quilt. The next time I make up a bunch of veterans quilts I'll kit up this one. I think it would make a really nice veterans quilt.
I hope that as you are reading this that we are on a nice hike in Arizona.  I only had a few hours of crafting yesterday. I had to go to my brother's to get him to trim some hinges for me. Our cabinets have some really cheap hinges that break regularly. It's not a problem, I have a bag of replacement hinges and they are easy to replace, except on the bathroom cabinets. It seems that the cabinet maker trimmed the edge of the hinges so they would fit around the inside trim. My brother makes knives and axes so had a lot of really cool tools. He was able to trim 4 of them for me in just a few minutes. Now I have a stash of 3 for the bathroom cabinet. After that was accomplished and my cabinet door reinstalled, I got down to some sewing. I gathered the blocks off the floor and stacked them with my favorite clips. I remember when these came out and I thought they were a gimmick. I try to stay away from new sewing tools but I did eventually get some of these and I use them all the time. I love them.  I got all of the blocks sewn together but they still need pressing.  This will give you an idea of what the border will look like. I think it's a really cool quilt and I'd consider making another. It's a perfect pattern for monochromatic scraps. The one in the book is in pinks.
This weekend is all about preparing for our trip Sunday. Next week I expect that I may only have my Audiobook and January summary posts. I might have a weekend summary post Monday if I actually do anything blog worthy. Otherwise, will not be posting daily on vacation. I'll see you February 5th!  Tuesday evening it was time to start quilting the big wide open spaces of the Red Sunset quilt. I decided on feathers. My feathers aren't perfect but each time I do them, they get better.  I just can't emphasize enough how much Bethanne Nemesh's Feather Fiesta class helped me. I learned how to do feather branches and really improved my feather shapes.  When the quilt is on the bed I don't think this quilting will show so much. That's how I want it. I felt like having bold quilting thread would compete with all of the pieced elements.  Here it is from the back and the feather quilting really shows up a lot more than the photo implies. The thread is maroon colored and really shows on the back. The next time I quilt feathers I want to work on making better spines. Looking up close, my spines are a little messy. No one sleeping under this quilt will notice, but I do.
All-in-all, I'm really happy with it. I think I'm about halfway done with the quilt now. I'll make some more progress before we leave for vacation and should finish the quilting the week we get back.  I know this looks the same as a few days ago but it is different because it's all sewn together now! I had a lot of errands yesterday that included getting my new glasses, so I didn't have a lot of time left.But it was enough to finish putting the center of this quilt together. I really love it.  Next up are the border blocks. They are value reversed from the center blocks. I'll start sewing these together this week but today I'm going to head to the basement for some quilting time.  When I made the blocks for this quilt I made lots of extra ones so there are probably some placemats in here!
This week I have some new Reflections fabrics for you. These fabrics are so much fun to make. I'm never quite sure how they will turn out and I'm always surprised. But first! I'll be away January 28 - February 3. Orders placed after January 28 will be shipped February 4. New Reflections Azura Reflections are streaky fabrics originally designed for landscape elements. They are great for water and sky elements and there are other colors that are great for trees and foliage. They are sold by the yard. I have 5 new ones for you this week. Azura is in streaky light blues.  Cascata Cascata is in black with dark and medium blue. It's perfect for a night time lake.  Roland Roland has dark and medium green with bright green highlights.  Solari Solari is in shades of butter and golden brown. This one would make a beautiful golden sunset.  Tiree Tiree is in shades of brown and would be great for tree trunks, and wood plank elements. There are lots of other Reflections designs that you can check out in the shop. Fabric of the Week Purple Passion Stash Pack is 20% off through Sunday The fabric of the week this week is the Purple Passion Stash Pack. It contains 10 fat eighths of fabric in a variety of purple colors and textures. This Pack is 20% off through Sunday.
 I didn't do a ot of making this weekend because there was more socializing than normal. It was all good! On Friday I had lunch with my Mom and cousin and then drinks with my girlfriends from work. There were errands in between. Sunday was watching football with a friend in Charlottesville. Saturday was my "making day". During the football games I worked on my summer sweater. It's kind of a vest that I want to wear over tank tops. I like how the colors of this yarn are working out. I wear lots of dull greens, blues and grays so this should work well for me.  I wanted to get in some quilting time so I decided that I'd start with the areas that I wanted to quilt in blue. These are the smallest areas and I knew I could get them done this weekend and give me some small sense of accomplishment. There are 4 of these stars. All of the spikey motifs in the quilt will get simple outline quilting so that they puff on the quilt.  There are 8 of these sections. I quilted feathers because there's a very large area that will be feathered and I wanted the feathers to repeated somewhere else.  Here's that section from the back.
That's all I have for today. This week is going to be busy preparing for a trip we're taking this weekend. We're going to escape to somewhere sunny and warm for a week and I can't wait. Here's a hint to where we're going: we're going to hike, visit some old graves in a dead town and visit a modern monument to ecohubris.  I keep a crochet bag with hat materials ready by the front door for any time that I think I'll be out somewhere sitting and waiting. I mostly take it to quilt club meetings and appointments and that's what happened yesterday. I took Mom to an appointment and had a good hour or so to relax, listen to my book and do some crochet. This one will be a chemo hat for a man.  In the afternoon I went to the basement and started making some decisions about the quilting on the Red Sunset quilt. I do that by spending hours on the internet looking at the beautiful quilting that other people do and then I take a lot of chalk to the quilt to work out some ideas. In the end I generally revert to the stuff I like doing: feathers, some ruler work and a little free-motion. I think I have the plan set, more or less.  Because I've stabilized the quilt with all of the SID quilting, I can start the design quilting anywhere. I decided to start with the areas where I want to use blue thread. I've decided that I want all the spikey areas to really stand out so they will get minimal quilting like this. It's not much, but it's a start. I have officially stopped procrastinating.  Since I finished the big blanket project I decided last night that I'd start a new donation baby blanket so I've started swatching.
This weekend we're going to watch football with a friend one day but otherwise I'll be quilting, crocheting, working on the blue quilt and stocking wood.  I made the first one of these blankets for Chris is 2021. I loved the yarn and pattern so much that I bought the yarn (on clearance) in almost every color available. This one is for Chris' best friend, Win. I call it "the dude blanket" because, except for one, they have all been made for men in my life. One for Chris, one for each of my 3 brothers and one for my cousin's husband. I decided to break with tradition and give one of them to my doctor, a female, to thank her for everything she's done for me and Chris. The colors of that one were pale grays, purples and a little pink so it definitely had a feminine feel. I have one in the closet yet to gift but I'm sure it will find the perfect home soon.  Here's the full view of the last one. It finished to 48" x 66". I'm a little bothered by the solid looking rows at the bottom but that's how the yarn came out of the skein. Win will not notice. Hopefully it will just be his nap blanket. He has a couple of my quilts that he says he likes so hopefully he will like this too.
Here are the details: Cascade Cartwheel Yarn, 7 balls, Pattern from BagODay Crochet, pattern repeat is 8 stitches plus 3 I used a K hook and chained 147 stitches (with an L hook) These were a lot of fun to make and I could do them blind by the end. The patterns works up quickly and has a great texture. I'd happily use it again. I have a few more balls of this yarn but not enough for a big blanket. I expect that I will turn them into a couple of wheelchair lap blankets. But I'm going to rest this yarn for a while and start a new donation baby blanket. In other news, I think I finally have a quilting plan for Red Sunset and hope to get started on it today after I go to craft group at the library. |
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I'm Vicki Welsh and I've been making things as long as I can remember. I used to be a garment maker but transitioned to quilts about 20 years ago. Currently I'm into fabric dyeing, quilting, Zentangle, fabric postcards, fused glass and mosaic. I document my adventures here. Categories
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