News, TBR, Quilts

We have been in social isolation but for me it's not been a boon time for reading. It has been hard to concentrate, but I am getting better. Luckily, I read my review books before the last minute.

We have been taking walks around the neighborhood, rarely seeing anyone. There have been dog walkers and some children on bikes, and parents with little ones in strollers. The school across the street is closed down.

But, Spring is showing its face here in S.E. Michigan. The crocus are in bloom, the daylilies and Sedum and daffodils and tulips are growing quickly.

The fitness center is closed, so no working with my coach. The community center is closed and so no visiting with the quilt group. The library is closed so book club is cancelled. The dentist office is closed. The restaurants are closed.

What isn't closed is our kitchen and I have baked a pie and cookies over the last week!

My mother-in-law majored in pie-making and shared this easy recipe with me years ago. Here is the recipe from her recipe book:

I have been making these cookies for close to forty years. I had no chocolate chips in the house so skipped the cocoa powder and substituted butterscotch chips.

I am also practising the piano again. I can almost play as well as I did as a teenager, lol. One music book I pulled out is Herb Alpert songs. I learned them in the summer of 1965, and playing them brings back a lot of memories.

I have finished reading 36 books this year! But of course there are lots more waiting for me.

In the mail:

• The Preserve by Ariel S. Winter. I read the author's novel Barren Cover and my review is quoted in the paperback edition!
• Little Family by Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Home: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Reading Now:

• Pelosi by Molly Ball
• The King of Confidence by Miles Harvey, about the leader of a cult on Michigan's Beaver Island
• Johnny One-Eye: A Tale of the American Revolution by Jerome Charyn
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was the book club read, now cancelled. Since I haven't read it since the 1970s I want to finish it...sometime...

On my NetGalley and Edelweiss shelf:

• The Story of More by Hope Jahren, author of Lab Girl
• The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
• The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move by Sonia Shah
• Chasing Chopin by Annik LaFarge
• The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts
• Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. by Joyce Carol Oates
• How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue, author of Behold the Dreamers
• American Follies by Norman Lock, author of Feast Day of the Cannibals, The Wreckage of Eden, and A Boy in His Winter
• Bronte's Mistress by Finola Austin about Branwell Bronte
• The Truth about Baked Beans: An Edible New England History by Meg Muckenhoupt. (At university, I wrote a paper on the roots of American cooking when colonists had to adapt their traditions to new foods.)  

On my physical bookshelf still to read are review books:

• Simon the Fiddler by Jeanette Jiles
• The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larson, author of Dead Wake 
• Country by Michael Hughes

Not a great photo, but I finished my yellow roses sampler and it is at the machine quilter.

I am working on the hand appliqued borders for my Hospital Sketches quilt. So many talented quilter have shared their completed quilts on the Facebook page run by the quilt designer Barbara Brackman.

I have three blocks of my many-faces-of-Emily Dickinson quilt. The one I am working on now was my first idea, Emily in her white dress and half hidden behind a curtain, looking out at the world.

The worst part of social isolation is not seeing our son, his girlfriend, and the grandpuppies! Sunny is getting SO BIG!

They are patterning social isolation for us.

I am sad to think that next month's book club may be cancelled. We are to read Miracle Creek and have a Skype visit with the author, Angie Kim.

But we all must do what we must. 

Stay home. Read good books. Enjoy your hobbies. Love your family. Stay safe.

WIP, TBR, News

This year I am continuing to work on finishing my UFO projects. I have my Yellow Rose Sampler blocks together and am deciding on the border next. 

I already sewed the Hospital Sketches blocks and am working on an applique border. I have three sides with stem and one flower completed. Also in the pic below are my original Great Gatsby storybook blocks completed so far. I NEED TO FINISH this quilt in 2020!

Last year I started a Dandelion Wine quilt. It looked better in my head. I am not happy with it at all. So I am stalled.

Many years ago when our son was in school I worked on a crayon tinted and embroidered Watership Down quilt. I finally put on a border and am calling it ready to quilt.

My TBR shelf keeps growing! I can't resist...new books...But I know I can handle it. I read eight books in the two weeks of the year.

New on my review shelves are:

• Bronte's Mistress by Finola Austin is a fictional story based on Branwell Bronte's tragic love affair with his employer's wife.
• How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Imbue whose first novel Behold the Dreamers was terrific.
• Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. by Joyce Carol Oates. I read all of her 1960 and 1970 novels and a few later ones. I thought it was time to read her again.

Also on my shelf still

• John Adams Under Fire by Dan Abrams
• Miss Austen by Gil Hornby
• The Sin Eater by Megan Campisi
• Square Haunting by Francesca Wade
• Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest by Ian Zach
• The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
• Paris Never Leaves by Eileen Feldman
• American Follies by Norman Lock
• Beyond the Horizon by Ella Carey
• Country by Michael Hughes

By the time this is posted I will have finished Frida in America by Celia Stahr and Inland by Tea Obhret.

The Sunday, January 19, 2020, Detroit Free Press ran a story of Michigan Notable Books. I was pleased to see I had been able to read and review quite a few!

Women of the Copper Country by Mary Doria Russell
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-women-of-copper-country-by-mary.html
A Good American Family by David Maraniss
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2019/05/a-good-american-familythe-red-scare-and.html

We Hope for Better Things by Erin Bartels

https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2018/12/we-hope-for-better-things-erin-bartels.html

Broke by Jodie Adams Kirshner

https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2019/11/broke-hardship-and-resilience-in-city.html

The World According to Fannie Davis by Bridgett M. Davis

https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-world-according-to-fannie-davis-my.html

My friend Linda makes these wonderful pockets that turn mugs into tool holders and I ordered three.

Our new grandpuppy is named Sunny. Here she is caught in a rare moment of rest. She keeps Ellie running! Sunny is a playful and loving mass of puppy energy. Ellie loves romping in the snow. Sunny's first snow left her perplexed. It was up to her chest!

Meanwhile, Hazel has been finding safe places away from the playful pup.

I received a lovely note from Helen Korngold's nephew's wife thanking me for sharing Helen's diary and for the research about her and her time. "The effort you put into printing the weekly diary entries in aunt Helen's diary was beyond anything we could have imagined--and then to get the additional information from your research gave us an insight into the life and time of the woman we all knew and loved dearly."

I was very touched. I wish I had met Helen, but from the first time I read the first words in the diary I knew she was a fun, intelligent, loving person with great vigor and enthusiasm for life.

2020 Goals, WIP, and TBR

Hello to a new decade! 

I have a full schedule of book reviews coming these next few months and a long list of TBR galleys and books to read!

Right now I am reading the newly published Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, a lovely Goodreads win.

I am also reading biographies Fannie Lou Hamer by Maegan Parker Brooks and Frida in America by Celia Stahr, and Conversations with RBG by Jeffrey Rosen.  Also, Deeds Not Words, art quilts on women's suffrage from Schiffer Publications.

Just arrived in the mail is Country by Michael Hughes.

On my TBR galley shelves are:

• John Adams Under Fire by Dan Abrams
• Miss Austen by Gil Hornby
• The Sin Eater by Megan Campisi
• Square Haunting by Francesca Wade
• Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest by Ian Zach
• The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
• Paris Never Leaves by Eileen Feldman
• American Follies by Norman Lock
• They Called it Camelot by Stephanie Marie Thornton
• Beyond the Horizon by Ella Carey

And, finally in the mail are LibraryThing wins is Inland by Tea Obreht.

My Christmas presents included Dress in the Age of Jane Austen: Regency Fashion by Hillary Davidson.

And The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians by David M. Rubenstein.

My library book club finished up 2019 with A Gentleman in Moscow! This month we are reading Kirk W. Johnson's The Feather Thief and coming up this quarter are dynamite reads--Karen Dionne's The Marsh King's Daughter, Angie Kim's Miracle Creek, and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. 

 I accepted a challenge to finally frame this needlepoint I made in 1973.

This year I am planning to continue to hone down my pile of quilt tops by getting them quilted, and to finish the tops I started, and to make the quilts I bought specific fabric for.

One of those incomplete projects is Love Entwined. I couldn't face the next border. 

Then there is Hospital Sketches and my Yellow Roses Sampler to finish! And the Thicket animals to quilt.

I also want to use stash fabrics. I'm not getting any younger and it's 'use it or lose it'! I love this Eastside Detroit find. I would like to take some of my vintage fabric stash and create something free and awesome along this line.

Our weekly quilt group had two weeks off for the holidays, then I missed a week. But look at what I got this week: a wonderful gal gave me these vintage fabrics, including some feedsacks and a Disney print of Alice and Wonderland!!!

 And on the 'free' table I found these books.

It's been a crazy winter here in Michigan with little snow. This snowman I made years ago is pleading, Let It SNOW.

But it's been cold enough that this squirrel seemed to be at the doorwall begging to be let in.

Our son's girlfriend's cat took over a basket and for Christmas I made her a pillow. Hazel the cat is pleased.

 And we gave our grandpuppy Ellie a Barkbox toy of a mug with squeaky marshmallows, which she took to bed.

The new news is that we will have another grandpuppy soon! Another puppy mill rescue from Safe Harbor, but this one a puppy!

WIP, TBR News

Like many quilters, I have multiple projects going on at once. Some in the design stage, some in the sewing stage, and some waiting for inspiration to know how to finish them. I have two with long-arm quilters as well.

I am trying to finish projects. And trying to check off as read books on my TBR shelf as part of NetGalley's #Reviewathon. 

I have conceded I am no longer able to quilt fast enough to keep up with my quilt tops. I just picked up a quilt from the long-arm quilter. It is BIG. The fabrics were from Dear Stella. Now to bind it off!

For a simple pattern, it was not easy for me. The pattern did not work for directional fabrics and I had to make hard decisions.

 the quilting

 The back

I have made four pillowcases and a throw pillow to go with the quilt. And I am making a throw with the scraps!

Here is my latest quilt top finish! I bought the pattern from Bunny Hill several years ago. When I saw this fabric collection from Connecting Threads it all came together in my head and I love the result. I left it with the long arm quilter today.

I caught up with Barbara Brackman's new block of the month Hospital Sketches on her blog Material Culture. I love applique so these are a joy to make. 

See Barbara's post on the project with photos from some of the marvelous quilters participating here.

I finished the just for fun and play quilt with the Jane Sassaman Folk Tales fabrics. My son loves it and it will go to him.

This little quilt includes an antique quilt block in the center. It will soon be on display at our local library.

I have been requested to make a table runner with this adorable print from JoAnne Fabrics.

The flu has been going around in my family. On my birthday we couldn't have a celebration so I treated myself to a trip to the bookstore and purchased The Overstory by Richard Powers and All the Lives We Ever Lived by Katherine Smyth. I have wanted to read The Overstory since it was a galley but wasn't able to get my hands on it. Smyth's book about reading Virginia Woolf is a good excuse to revisit To The Lighthouse.

I am currently reading

• Cold Warriors by Duncan White. I am learning more about the Cold War history than I ever imagined.
• A Polar Affair by Llyod Spencer Davis, an immensely readable and enjoyable history of the study of Penguins.
• The Long Call by Anne Cleeves, a new detective mystery series
• Threads of Life by Claire Hunter, how through history women have used needlework for self-expression and political power
• We Love Anderson Cooper by R. L. Maizes, a short story collection

I need to get moving for these are all books coming out in late August or September, along with Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petinah Gappah which I have not even started!

Then still on my shelf are the galleys for

• Adventure of the Peculiar Protocol by Nicholas Meyer, a new Sherlock Holmes mystery
• Inventing Tomorrow by Sarah Cole, about H. G. Wells
• Broke by Jodie Adams Kirschner, about the housing crisis in Detroit
• The Book of Science and Antiquities, a novel by Thomas Keneally
• A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler, a novel about racism
• Family Record by Patrick Modiano, a novel about how "history influences identity"
• Blow Out, in which Rachel Maddow takes on the fossil fuel industries

I won another book from LibraryThing

• Mighty Justice: My Life in Civil Rights by Dovey Johnson Roundtree. I just started it--powerful prose and story!

I am still waiting for other LibraryThing wins: Falter by Bill McKibben, Archeology from Space by Sarah Parcak, Country by Michael Hughes, and Inland by Tea Obreht. I have been disappointed that these Early Reviewer wins from January, April, May, and June have not been fulfilled.

And from GoodReads I won

• America is Immigrants by Sara Novic

NetGalley is running a #Reviewathon to encourage readers to plow through those TBR lists. I need to get to work!