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Well, this is a first! I only finished 3 books this month. There are 2 main reasons. First, I wasted a week trying to force myself to finish Martyr! Then I spent a week being a political junkie. I like politics as a spectator sport so I tend to spent a lot of time watching how all sides react after an election and this year provided much entertainment for me. I don't let politics affect me emotionally so I can watch it in the same way I watched the Dallas Giants game Thursday.....except that the game was pretty bad. Anyway, that's my excuse for only finishing 3 books. But all three books are ones that I'd recommend. I especially enjoyed Hester. What good books have you read? I'm expecting December to be a better book month. I'll have a lot of free time for listening as I work on all the projects I want finished by the end of the year. DNF Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar - I wasn't sure I'd like this but it was on a LOT of recommended reading lists. It was like wandering around with an alcoholic looking for the meaning of life. I couldn't take it.  I Hope You Find Tins Well By Natalie Sue, Read By Nasim Pedrad TLDR: Everyone in the office is hiding something. Jolene is the quiet and antisocial person in the office and she knows that everyone hates her. She can barely get through a day with memories from her past always haunting her. One day IT makes a mistake working on her computer and she now has access to everyone's email boxes and phone logs. She knows that layoffs are coming and she thinks this access may help to save her job. Overall, it's a good story. It's not as comedic as the publisher's summary proposes but it's a good story to remind you that everyone is carrying around some sort of baggage. I'm glad I've been away from the office environment for a while!  Next Year in Havana By Chanel Cleeton, Read By Kyla Garcia and Frankie Maria Corzo TLDR: Good chick lit with a little Cuba history lesson. This is book #1 in the Cuba series. Marisol's beloved grandmother has died and her grandmother left instructions for Marisol to take her ashes back to Cuba for burial. Marisol makes the trip and learns the whole story about her grandmother's family;s escape from Cuba in 1958. The story is told between Elisa's story in 1958 and Marisol's story in 2017. Elise's story unfolds as Marisol uncovers her secrets during the 2017 visit. As a chick lit love story it was good enough. It's the rich Cuban history that makes it a very interesting read.  Hester
By Laurie Lico Albanese, Read By Saskia Maarleveld TLDR: Great imagining of the inspiration for The Scarlet Letter I loved this book! It showed up on several recommended lists and I'm glad I bit on it. This story imagines the inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Isobel Gambel is a very talented seamstress with a hidden "talent". She has synesthesia, a condition where senses have crossover. Words or sounds might have colors, sounds might be felt or feeling something happening to someone else. Isobel sees color in letters and sounds. She and her new husband leave Scotland for Salem, MA and, during the journey, she learns that her apothecary husband is using a little too much of his own medicine. While her husband is out to sea searching out medicines to open his own apothecary shop. While away, she uses her extraordinary needlework skills to try to support herself. Eventually she meets Nathaniel Hawthorne and you can guess what happens next.
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 Here's a little break from postcards. For the past few months I've been slowly trying to use up a stash of Lion Brand Mandala Tweed yarn. It's a very nice, soft yarn and really snuggly for shawls. I bought a lot of it on sale a few years ago and these 3 shawls use up most of what I bought in the color Cats Eye. I have a little bit of yarn left that will go into a scrap blanket. The last step was to add a button to each shawl. Now they are ready to deliver to From The Heart, along with a lot hats, surgery drain bags and some blankets.  I just love the color changes on this yarn.  I think this is my favorite but I like all three and.hopefully, they will bring warmth to someone in need.
The pattern is here and I used a J, 6.0mm hook. We had a nice quiet Thanksgiving at home with Mom and we head to the river to hang out with my favorite dog, Ouiser, for the weekend. I'll be back to finish the postcards Monday.  Yesterday I accomplished exactly 3 things. 1 - I bought the stamps for my Christmas postcards. 2 - I went to Kroger the day before Thanksgiving to buy crackers and basically, parked in the next county. 3 - I spent the rest of the day making 24 star cards. All of the sewing is done! I was totally heads down and focused and listening to a good book.  Chris voted for more sparkle so I sprayed glitter on one as a test. I did this before I sewed the rest of them. Today I'll spray the rest of them and they can sit in the garage and air out for a few days.
Today we will have Thanksgiving dinner with Mom. Tomorrow we will pack up the leftovers and head to the river for a couple of days to play with my favorite dog. On Monday I'll pull out the serger and out edges on all of the cards and commence with writing addresses.  A couple of weeks ago I posted about trying to cut fabric on my Cricut. I was trying to use the regular and bonded fabric blades without much luck. Beth, a reader, commented about the rotary blade and was willing to chat with me a few times. She even shared some photos of things she cut with the rotary blade. So, I ordered it immediately and it arrived yesterday.  I had an idea for my 3rd postcard design and gave it a try. It worked perfectly the first time.  I've got to clean my camera lens, my photos are all a little blurry. I'll see if I can fix that before tomorrow's post. I took the pieces I cut and arranged them on a 4 x 6 card. I tend to plan my postcards on index cards to see if the idea will work.  I liked the plan so I pulled out the big bag of sparkly fabrics.  This is my palette.  Before going to bed last night I got all of the stars cut out. It's so fast with the Cricut!
Yesterday I also got my December birthday cards made but I can't share them until next week after my friend receives her.....but I can tell you that I think they are really cool.  My Grand Niece, Cora, will celebrate her 1st birthday Sunday so I had to get busy and make a card for her. I was on the phone trying to get an airline ticket using a credit from a canceled trip and it was taking FOREVER (45 minutes). Since I was in my sewing room I used the time to sketch out a card idea. Then I pulled my magical bin of prefused fabrics and free-form cut out the shapes. By the end of the call I had this much done.  By the afternoon I had it finished! I'm pretty happy with this little cupcake. it will go in the mail today.  Then I took all of the tree cards outside to spray them with glitter. They will stay in the garage for a couple of days for the VOCs to dissipate a bit. I think they look kind of cool all together. I was really happy to avoid spraying my shoes with glitter.  It was a really beautiful day yesterday so I took time to take a long walk and enjoy the sun.  While I was walking I thought about some design ideas for the December birthday cards. I try to make sure that they don't have any holiday feel to them. I have an idea that I'll be working on today. then I'll get back to the Christmas cards.
 This weekend was a busy one. We had our family Thanksgiving dinner Saturday and we did our Christmas decorating Sunday. In between I got the trees stitched down on 30 cards. They could be done at this point but I felt that they needed more sparkle.  I found this great sparkle spray at Hobby Lobby and it adds just the right amount of sparkle. It does have a high level of VOCs that I'm really allergic to so I couldn't spray the fabric first. I wouldn't have been able to handle ironing the elements onto it because the iron heat would have released a lot of VOC fumes. Instead I decided to finish the front of the card and fuse on the back and then spray the whole thing....outside. They will stay out in the garage a few days for the fumes to subside before I edge them. I need to make one more set of 20 cards but I have to stop Christmas for a day or so to make some December birthday cards. That's what I'll work on today, along with laundry.  We got all of the decorations up yesterday and I added my newest glass ornament to the tree. This is the one I bought at Biltmore before Helene ran us out of Asheville early. I hope it doesn't bring me any bad luck!
 I got all of my trees cut out yesterday and one prototype card put together before I had to leave for a doctor's appointment and a meet-up with friends. I changed out the background fabric and found a way to add glitter to the background so I'm happy to move forward with these. I'll share the details in a post on Monday.
Today we go to my brother's for Thanksgiving with his family and we will have another Thanksgiving dinner Thursday with Mom. Tomorrow we will start decorating but, hopefully, I'll have time to make some good progress on this set of cards.  I had another great sewing day yesterday and got started on this veterans quilt. I had blocks leftover from the Big Blue Quilt and used those as seeds for this little quilt. I needed 24 extra each of light and dark bow ties. I got all the dark ones made yesterday. When we get together again in December I'll continue working on this one.  When I got home I got to work on the second Christmas card design. I used the Cricut to cut tree templates until I got the size of trees that I wanted. The snow will be free form cut. I went through several options for trees and snow and I'm finally happy with using these metallic painted fabrics from my stash. I had purchased some glitter tulle for the snow and that was a huge mistake. I'll never buy glitter anything ever again!  Well, except for glitter heat transfer vinyl. It worked perfect for my stars.  The trees are traced on the back of the fabric and that's where I'll get started today. Later today I have my annual physical follow up appointment followed immediately with drinks with my friends. If there's a habit I need to change I'll just ignore it until tomorrow.
 Yesterday at sewing I got all of these blocks sewn for one veterans quilt. I brought them home to put on the design wall and I'll eventually get this top sewn together. It's actually brighter than it looks in the photo and I think it will look good quilted in red thread. The idea for this one came from Cynthia Brunz. Her blog is so inspiring because she coordinates block drives and quilting for a massive number of donation quilts every year.  Last night I started pulling some things for the next Christmas postcard idea.
Today is another sewing day and I'll start piecing blocks for the other kit that I pulled. That one will only get started today. It will carry over to the December sewing days.  I had lots of errands yesterday but in the evening I got all of the stocking stitched! I have a plan for the second design and I've pulled a bunch of potential ingredients. I might be able to start on them this evening.  But today and tomorrow are primarily for working on veterans quilts. It's sewing days with my quilt club. I'll be working on one of these kits.
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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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