COVID-19 Life: Books & Quilts & More

I have now made four Cherish quilt blocks! Everyone says this strawberry themed block is their favorite so far. 

My husband ordered a signed copy of Stacy Abram's new novel While Justice Sleeps!

New on my NetGalley shelf is

• Still Life by Sarah Winman whose Tin Man I reviewed

Dad planted a spirea in the yard many years ago. This spring it is going to be magnificent!

The farm market has returned to our local park. This week I brought home rhubarb and made strawberry rhubarb short cake!

The fur grandkids are sun lovers. Lately, they have been gathering in the morning to enjoy the sunny spot in the living room. I love seeing these photos of them all together.

Ellie, Gus, and Sunny get along quite well, especially Gus and Sunny who are best buds.

Seen on my walks this week is a fairy garden with a flying pig...

and a naturalized front yard with gigantic Solomon's Seal.

Stay safe. Find your bliss.

Covid-19 Life News

The weather has cooled again, but the chard and spinach we planted is coming up. The pear tree is in blossom and the apple trees are in bud. We have been busy with yard work. 

Covid cases in Michigan are the highest in the nation, and Oakland County has been in the 'red' zone. Our small town of under 12,000 has had over 200 cases in the last month...out of 600 total cases! And most of those are school related.

Meanwhile, people all over the state are acting irresponsibly. 

After being vaccinated, we donned masks and did a few errands, but now are back to delivery. One errand was to mail the First Lady signed handkerchiefs to the presidential libraries. 

Another poetry book I purchased arrived. Made in Detroit by Marge Piercy.

I 

Algonquin Books sent early reviewers a print of the cover of Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenridge. Isn't it a beauty! The book has been much touted and I recommend it.

There is an eagle in town! People have been reporting it lives on a high apartment building downtown. We have seen it on our walks.

This spring, the Mourning Doves have been hanging out in our yard. One particularly likes to sit on the edge of the bird bath! Years ago, when dad had a platform bird feeder, they were constantly in the yard. They liked sitting in the apple tree when the heat pump blew warm air in the winter. But we have not seen them in our yard for quite a few years.

Sunny the Shiba Inu and Gus the cat have really bonded. Sunny loved to play with kitten Gus, and now they are cuddle buddies. Gus was in a tunnel toy and Sunny tried to figure out how to join him!

No bed is too small to share.

Goggle is ending feedburner so anyone who read my blog via email will no longer get it! Goggle+ ended a few years back. I need to find a new way for email following but it is all very complicated. I wonder if its time to just give up on Blogger and blogging, and share via social media. I started blogging in 2008. It's a different world, now.

I have until July 1 to figure it out.

Stay safe. Find your bliss.

Covid-19 Life: Books On the Shelf and Other News

It seems that as soon as I finish a book, another...or two...come in!

Surprise book mail from Sourcebooks is The Engineer's Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood. I entered a giveaway and won it! When engineer Washington Roebling became too ill to work on the Brooklyn Bridge, his wife Emily took over his work.

New on my NetGalley shelf is quit a mix!

• Miss Kopp Investigates by Amy Stewart, the seventh Miss Kopp book
• Letters to a Young Poet: A New translation and Commentary, Rainer Maria Rilke's classic
• Americanon: An Unexpected U.S. History in Thirteen Bestselling Books by Jess McHugh
• Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy whose Migrations I read last year
• After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made by Ben Rhodes
• That Summer by Jennifer Weiner whose Big Summer I read last year
• Eternal,  Lisa Scottoline's first historical fiction novel

I also signed up for a blog tour of A Theater for Dreamers by Polly Sansom; I was a little late and am waiting to hear back from Algonquin about it. It is a novel based on Leonard Cohen's time in Greece.

This week the library book club discussed Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney, who kindly stopped in via Zoom to talk to us. She is a lovely person. My second reading of this book left me more in love with Lillian than ever. One book club member said she didn't want to leave Lillian, and listened to the audiobook again!

I found some lovely tea cups to embroider through the DMC website. Here are two of the six, minus the gold thread embroidery still to come.

Next week we get our second Covid-19 vaccinations! Our later April calendar is filled with missed dentist, eye doctor, and other appointments we put off for a year.

But this last weekend, we got to puppysit our dear Ellie for a day! She is so sweet and gentle. Also, more sociable and less skittish than she was when our son brought her home from the rescue society.

Here is Ellie with Gus at our son's home. Gus loves to rough house with Sunny who is just as rough and playful.

My brother posted this post-winter pic from his cabin pond, which he called 'carnage at the frog pond.' Perhaps this spring we can visit the cabin again. Once the carnage has been cleared up!

Stay safe. Find your bliss.

Covid-19 Life: Vaccination Day!

Thursday I received my first Pfizer vaccination through Henry Ford Health Systems! As the nurse prepared my shot, I was nearly in tears with relief. In three weeks, both my husband and me will have had our second vaccination dose. And in mid-April, we will be able to begin to resume activities we had put on hold. 

We dream of simple things like visits with the dentist and eye doctor, senior hour shopping in the grocery stores, visiting indoors with our son and his girl and the grandpuppies and Gus, visiting our brothers.

The Pandemic is not over, life will not be 'normal' any time soon, and the virus is mutating, but the vaccinations along with double masks will protect us and curtail transmission of the virus.

Overall, life is quiet. We are walking outside every day now. I don't have any hand work prepared....must get on that. I have everything ready to machine quilt a project, but first I am sewing curtains for my brother's tear-drop, retro travel trailer.  He found this cool Alexander Henry fabric.

And this is his trailer!

The Robins are using the heated water bowl for a bird bath! The weather is warmer, 40 degrees today, the snow is melted. In a few weeks we will be able to bring out the hoses and the bird bath. Meantime, Robin is making do.

I bought a new vacuum cleaner because the rubber in my 1990 Royal upright is stiff and won't hold the filter bag. It would come off and the dust collect in the cloth bag! I have mostly hard flooring, but carpet in the living room and some area rugs. So, I bought a Miele canister vac. It is pretty cool!

Book mail from Little, Brown & Company is A Shot in the Moonlight by Ben Montgomery, whose last book, The Man Who Walked Backward, I read.

Bookish First Top February Reviews included my review of the Genome Odyssey! That was exciting.

I am reading April NetGalley books. Currently, The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King, whose on Monet, Mad Enchantment,  I read, and The Sound Between the Notes by Barbara Linn Probst, whose Queen of the Owls I have read, and also BookishFirst memoir Finding Freedom by Erin French. (And I am now about 60% through Barack Obama's memoir A Promised Land.)

After purchasing The Little Women Cookbook I ordered The Secret Garden Cookbook! When I reviewed these books I thought they were charming and the recipes looked very tempting.

I will end with a pic of Sunny and Gus. Moments later, I was told, Gus was chewing on Sunny's neck in play!

And I just love this pic of Ellie and Sunny begging for a walk.

Stay safe. Find your bliss.

Covid-19 Life; Quilts, Books, and Grandpuppies

I have finished Hospital Sketches, the Block of the Month by Barbara Brackman inspired by Louis May Alcott's time as a nurse during the Civil War. There are many amazing versions of these patterns. Everyone finished them off differently. I made a floral vine based on the applique templates, in the style of 19th c. quilts. The quilt is hand appliqued and hand quilted.

I have started the Rebel Girl quilt. But...I decided to applique the records and not piece them. 

I did thread work on the Michigan lighthouses. I need to size the blocks still. And I am looking for the right sky fabric for the central block of the Mackinac Bridge.

New to my NetGalley shelf are:

• Buses Are a Comin': Memoir of a Freedom Rider by Charles Person and Richard Rooker from St. Martin's Press
• Silence Is a Sense by Layla AlAmmar, a Kuwaiti-American writer, from Algonquin Books

New books 'in the mail' include:

• Brooklyn On My Mind: Black Visual Artists from the WPA to the Present by Myrah Brown Green from Schiffer Publications

• A Shot in the Moonlight by Ben Montgomery from Little, Brown and Company

My father's sister, my Aunt Alice, celebrated her 85th birthday party...in isolation. We sent flowers and many friends sent cards. I wrote a blog post about her birthday a few years ago, found here.

Our grandpuppies go to doggie day care a few days a week. Both their parents work from home. Sunny is still very energetic at a year old and needs lots of play. They have their photos taken there.

Ellie is learning to socialize with the other dogs. Sadly, this week she became ill with gastroenteritis and spent an overnight at the vet's. With medicine and fluids, she is back home and doing well. 

Ellie was thrilled when her mom came to pick her up and take her home.

And Sunny eagerly awaited her fur-sister's return.

We do not know what Gus the cat thought about the incident. He keeps his thoughts to himself.

It finally snowed here! We even had to get out the snow blower. 

This photo is from before the snow. For several winters we have put a heated water bowl on the patio for the animals. Usually squirrels come to drink, but this year we have seen many Blue Jay and Cardinals come.

We are still waiting to be contacted about our Covid vaccination. We are signed up through our hospital and our county health department. 

We are a week away from a milestone: it was one year ago on February 2 and 3 that we had family gatherings to celebrate my husband's birthday. Four households met for a dinner one day, and the next day we dined with Gary's brother and wife and our son. 

We know that even with the vaccine we will not be back to old normal again very soon. Especially with new virus strains emerging. I wonder what  the new 'normal' will be like when it comes? One friend suggested she would continue to wear a mask all the time as she has not even had a cold this year.

So many social media friends are writing about burning out, the isolation and loneliness wearing on them. Even for introverts with rich inner lives, a year in isolation is too much. We want to hug our family and friends. We want to share a meal and laugh loudly into the open air so that our joy rings and echos through crowded rooms. 

It is hard. Life is hard. Everything is worth doing is hard. It takes courage to be in this world, and patience, and faith.

Stay safe.

Find your bliss.

WIP Quilts, Books, and News

Winter arrived in Michigan! It has been bitter cold. It's perfect weather to quilt and read.

I completed a project from my weekly quilt group's "free table" exchange. Another quilter had started a twelve block quilt in wool and flannel. The incomplete blocks were given up. I finished the embroidery, cobbled together pieces to complete one block, and machine quilted the project.

I finished the Little Red Riding Hood quilt top. I set the seven 1919 Redwork patterns with other vintage patterns that seemed to fit the story: a basket, strawberries, Grandma's house, bunnies hiding in the woods.

I loved the Little Red Riding Hood prints from Riley Blake. I used two from the collection for the top and have another for the backing. I'll bind the quilt with the red fabric.

 I used perle emrboidery thread for the Redwork.

I decided the Thistle fabric quilt needed a border. Now it is ready!

I won a wonderful gift on American Historical Fiction Facebook Group! The giveaway from Anne Howard Creel included a signed first edition of her new book, a lovely tote bag, and pretty coasters. Anne's book is about a flood, an abused wife, and her step-daughter.

The Sunday paper's Parade magazine highlighted two memoirs I have read and reviewed. The World According to Fannie Davis by Bridgitt Davis (my review will appear tomorrow) and Maid by Stephanie Land, which I reviewed last week.

Books I have on my table include the memoir Lost Without the River by Barbara Hoffbeck Scobie, courtesy of Caitlin Hamiton Marketing & Publicity,

and Make Me A City by Jonathan Carr, a LibraryThing win.

painting by Joyce Gochenour, my mother

For some reason, I have won a record number of books on giveaways! From Goodreads I won That Churchill Woman, Camelot's End by Jon Ward on Kennedy and Carter, Unmarriageable by Sonia Kamal based on Pride and Prejudice, and Northward by Chuck Radda. And I won Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben from LibraryThing. 

I just read and reviewed The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin, a LibraryThing win; look for my review next month. I an also reading an ebook win from Goodreads, Imagine That! by ark Finn about an eight-year-old boy with an active imagination.

My NetGalley shelf is thin because I am going to have cataract surgery in February and March! No more trifocals! I know I won't be able to hand as much reading for a while. I am excited because I am going to get a special lens to correct the astigmatism that has plagued me all my life! 

I am reading The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books about Christopher Columbus's son and his quest to build the largest library; Three Sheets to the Wind about nautical terms that have come into our every day language; and The Road to Grantchester, a prequel to the Grantchester series. 

TBR is The Editor by Stephen Rowley author of Lily and the Octopus, The Life and Death of Aida Hernandez: A Border Story, and The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith whose The Last Painting of Sara DeVos I read.

We have been dog sitting our grandpuppy Ellie! Our son had long days at the office and dropped her off before work and picked her up at the end of the day. 

Ellie is only four months out of the puppy mill. She was dropped off at a vet for putting down! Safe Harbor Animal Rescue in Vermillion Ohio was contacted and now Ellie is a pampered pooch.

She is blossoming into a lovely girl. 

Rescues make the BEST PETS.