Quilts and Books

I haven't shown off any of my finished projects since last spring when I finished the purple and green quilt I'd first begun for my sister . As I look around, it doesn't seem as if I've finished all that much stuff, yet I've been spending a lot more time sewing over the last 6 months than I used to. As is typical for me, I am working on half a dozen thing simultaneously. It's kind of like how I read--a library book here, a book on my phone everywhere, another book on my Kindle over there, and an audio book in the car. Sometimes I feel like a poster child for middle-aged ADD. But I'm managing to be productive. One thing I'm also doing? Hanging out on Instagram. It's where a lot of the other quilters are. I've discovered swaps! Too. Much. Fun. There's more about that below. Anyway, there's proof I've made stuff!! First up is this little backpack. I found the pattern on Craftsy . It's not very big, about 8" x 11...

I've had a few book in Toni Anderson's  Cold Justice series on my Kindle for a while now, and finally read the first one last month. Since the theme this month includes suspense, I had a great excuse to move on to Book 2. And I'm glad I did. I found this book just as engrossing as A Cold Dark Place , with a nice blend of suspense and romance. Cold Pursuit  opens with a bang-- literally. Single mom Vivi is Christmas shopping with her young son, Michael, in a Minneapolis mall when terrorists strike. Also shopping in the mall is an FBI agent who is part of the same Behavioral Analysis Unit as the heroine from ACDP and on leave. Jed is a veteran and immediately goes into combat mode. Vivi hides her son in a small cabinet and quietly goes looking for an escape route. Jed helps Vivi and some others get out and then goes back for Michael. Along the way, SWAT arrives and most of the terrorists are taken out. But one one avoids capture. During the ensuing investigation, it is ...

In no particular order, here are some VERY brief remarks about four recently-read books that I really enjoyed. A Cold Dark Place  by Toni Anderson . If you are squeamish or easily triggered by violence or sexual assault, this is NOT the book for you. But if you like well-written, suspenseful romantic suspense, I do recommend this one. The hero is a hired gun who steps in when the criminal justice system fails. The heroine chose a career in law enforcement specifically to try and find her twin sister who was kidnapped, and never found, when the girls were young. The conflicts were not forced, and very interesting moral questions were raised. To top it off, there was just enough romance. The King's Man  by Elizabeth Kingston . Twitter friend Jessica raved about the audio version of this book, narrated by the incomparable Nicholas Boulton. It's a medieval that features a hero whose life is not really his own (see the title) and a heroine who can fight and lead as well as any...

The Secret Heart  is Erin Satie's debut novel, which is almost hard to believe because it was one of the more polished books I've read in a while. With one book, Satie landed on my auto-buy list. I'm kicking myself that I didn't read it much sooner than this. Caroline Small, the daughter of an impoverished Marquess, knows that if she doesn't marry, and marry well, she and her younger brother face very precarious futures. She happens to be staying at a Duke's estate where an old friend of hers lives as the Duke's ward. There she meets Adam, heir to the dukedom, the man who becomes the focus of Caro's attentions. For marriage to Adam would solve Caro's problems. Caro and Adam each have a secret. Caro dances, having learned ballet from her governess. Adam boxes anonymously, as it would be a huge scandal for the heir to a dukedom to be caught brawling with the lower classes. Rather than spend a lot of time describing the plot I simply want to s...

Well, another month, another TBR failure. So how about some vacation pictures? I just got back from two weeks of driving out to the Rocky Mountains and back. I'm too swamped to write about anything I read, but I can post pictures! We had a picnic lunch next to a prairie dog colony at a state park in Kansas: In Estes Park, CO, two elk wandered into the town square: Mama moose and her baby in Rocky Mountain National Park: Sunset over our campground in Utah: We drove through Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area and stopped to see the views: On the west side of the Grand Tetons are Idaho's wheat fields: Wildflowers spotted along the way. Don't ask--I have no idea of their names: Late afternoon over Lake Yellowstone, a few hundred yards from our campsite: Waiting for Old Faithful to erupt: Beehive Geyser, near Old Faithful: Hello Mr. Bison!! (shot with a zoom lens--I'm not stupid)  Sunset over Yellowstone'...

I'm two weeks late with this and almost considered skipping again, but I liked this book so well that I decided to suck it up and finally write my TBR post. The home page of Ainslie Paton's website , has a little box that says "Favourite Tropes - New Takes" and in that box are pictures of a bunch of her books, including this one, Unsuitable . Unsuitable  is a new take on the "busy executive needs a nanny for his kid" trope by making the executive a woman and the nanny a man. I thought this made Unsuitable  a fun choice for "Favorite Trope" month. Here's the blurb: Can they make trailblazing and homemaking fit, or is love just another gender stereotype?  Audrey broke the glass ceiling. Reece swapped a blue collar for a pink collar job.  She’s a single mum by design. He’s a nanny by choice.  She gets passed over for promotion. He struggles to find a job.  She takes a chance on him. He’s worth more than he knows.  There’s an imbalance of ...

In my February posts about my sister, I mentioned that she gave me a ton of her stuff--fabric, tools, a machine, and lots of partially completed projects. I brought it all home, stacked in the guest room and tried to figure out where to store it all. Gradually, I organized it, re-arranged some of my own stuff, and figured out how to put it away. It was an emotional process and it took months. I didn't always get a lot of sewing done; it was hard to find the energy as I continued to get used to her being gone. A few months before she passed away, Char handed me this particular quilt and insisted that I finish it soon. It's actually a quilt top that I made for her back in 2006. She sent me the pattern and fabric and asked me to make just the top. She was going to use it in the book she was writing. When I was finished I sent her the completed top, the pattern, and the leftover fabric. In the book, it's used to demonstrate a basting technique. So she basted the layers tog...