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: Books & Quilts

I decided to try some creative background ideas at the Mackinac Bridge block. I got the idea while waiting for the ophthalmologist in an examination room with nothing to do but look at the desk top home page image. I liked the way the artist put together colors for sky and water.

I layered various fabrics for the sky. For the water, I inserted a darker fabric into the lighter blue and then pleated them.

And I finished the first Cherish quilt block.

Book mail this week included

• The Artist Colony by Joanna Fitzpatrick from Caitlin Hamilton Summie Marketing and She Writes Press

• The Ground Breaking: An American City and its Search for Justice by Scott Ellsworth from Dutton Books via a Goodreads giveaway

And from LibraryThing came a Revell Books advanced reading copy 

• The Nature of Small Things by Susie Finkbeiner

New on my NetGalley shelf:

• Legends of the North Cascades by Jonathan Evison, courtesy of Algonquin Books
• The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson by Robert S. Levine
• In the Shadow of the Empress: The Defiant Lives of Maria Theresa, Mother of Marie Antoinette, and Her Daughters by Nancy Goldstone
• Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout, continuing Lucy Barton's story

Last of all, for Mother's Day my son gifted me Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Our son and his girl and Ellie and Sunny spent the day with us and my hubby made his spaghetti sauce and meatballs. The doggies were thrilled, especially Sunny who has only been at our house three times since adoption because of Covid. 

My husband has missed grocery shopping (unlike me) and has twice ventured out to a store in the last month. 

I am working on preparing the Cherish Quilt pieces for English paper piecing this summer. I hope to use up some of my stash!

Sunny looking out our window. The pups left footprints on the deep carpet.
Like the footprints they leave in our hearts, our son added.

Stay safe. Find your bliss.

Covid-19 Life: Quilts, Books, and Spring Flowers

Happy May Day!

The trees in the neighborhood are in full bloom.

Including the crab apple in our front yard.

I have completed the second block in Barbara Brackman's Ladies Aid Sampler Quilt, the cow under the tree. Which to me looked like Ferdinand the Bull so I gave him a flower to smell.

A friend shared some teapot embroidery patterns to add to the tea cups I embroidered.

And I showed the Water Lily quilt to the quilt group when we met at the park.

Water Lily quilt by Nancy A. Bekofske

I picked up a few books at the library (they are still closed to the public, they leave the books outside on a table.) Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny is set in Michigan's Up North town of Boyne City. It was a great read, warm and charming and funny. And The Chanel Sisters by Judith Little whose Wickwythe Hall I read last year.

New on my NetGalley shelf:

The Heron's Cry by Anne Cleeves, second in the Detective Venn series; read my review of The Long Call here

Talk to Me by T. C. Boyle in which a chimp has been taught to talk in sign language

My brother and his girlfriend are walking the North Country Trail across Michigan. Last weekend's threatening clouds produced some dramatic photographs as they crossed Kalamazoo County.

And Book Club Cook Book win book A Hundred Suns by Karin Tanabe arrived.

My quilt friend Theresa Nielson shared a 1925 baby book with me and I was able to track down the family on Ancestry, with help from Newspapers.com. The family is excited to be reunited with this terrific heirloom. It included photographs and hair snippets and newspaper articles.

The vintage art work was adorable.

My family and close friends have all received their second vaccination shots. It is a relief, especially as Michigan continues to have the highest case numbers. One in eleven people in our county have had the virus. Our small town of under 12,000 has had 747 cases and 23 deaths, a huge increase in cases this spring as it exploded in the schools.

The missed doctor appointments have been made up. And today my husband donned his mask and went grocery shopping. He missed it. I prefer Shipt!

This week saw the passing of astronaut Michael Collins, who was part of the Apollo 11 crew. Many years ago I made a quilt for the mission which I called When Dreams Came True. For as a girl, we all dreamed of going to outer space. The images were from NASA photos and created with fusible applique.

Michael Collins is on the left. detail from When Dreams Came True
by Nancy A. Bekofske

When Dreams Came True by Nancy A. Bekofske

Stay safe.

Find your bliss.

Covid-19 Life: A Quilt Finish, New Books, a Walk in the Woods, and The End of the Rainbow

I finished machine quilting the Water Lily quilt! I intend to wash it and the fabric and cotton batting will shrink some, giving it an antique look. I bought this Mountain Mist pattern early in my quilting life, almost thirty years ago. It was time I finally made it.

I hand appliqued it and machine quilted it. I should not have machine quilted it. It was a very bad idea. But, when I read that the quilting was to be echo quilting I did not want to do all that hand quilting. It is what it is.

Book mail from The Book Club Cookbook and St. Martin's Press included the paperback edition A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler. 

I reviewed the galley when it came out. I wrote,

Foreshadowing began with the opening sentences, narrated in a voice that brought to mind Rod Serling introducing a Twilight Zone episode, setting up the story.

A girl sitting beside a swimming pool behind her newly built home. The neighbor boy welcoming her to the neighborhood. A typical day in a typical good neighborhood, upscale and friendly, a place where women gather for book clubs and teenagers can safely run in the local park.

But underneath the 'tenuous peace' simmers the possibility of fracture, the conflict of class and money and race and values. For some, conspicuous wealth is the goal. For another, environmental concerns are primary.

And probing deeper, there are secret desires and blooming love and the blindness we hold on to for self-protection.

Lives will be destroyed. A Good Neighborhood is a reflection of the social turmoil of our time.

New on my NetGalley shelf is

• Classical Crossroads by Leonard Slatkin, director laureate of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, on ideas for the classical music world to meet the challenges of the 21 st c. Slatkin blogged about these ideas over the pandemic as orchestra concerts were shut down. We had season tickets for concerts that never happened last year. But we did enjoy accessing online concerts!
• Zero Waste Gardening:Maximize Space and Taste with Minimal Waste by Ben Raskin. We took a class in organic gardening in 1973. I am interested to learn about new techniques that address zero food waste.

From Goodreads giveaways is coming 

• The Ground Breaking: An American City and its Search for Justice, about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre by Scott Ellsworth. I have read books that reference massacre, now I will learn more about this tragedy. 

And from The Book Club Cook Book I won

• A Hundred Suns by Karin Tanabe, historical fiction set in 1930s Colonial Vietnam

A snow was followed by temps into the high 20s, but our flowering fruit trees seem to have survived! I am thrilled since this is the year for a high apple yield from the Northern Spy trees. It is filled with buds ready to bloom.

I brought in the tulips. They were closed but opened with the warmth indoors.

April 22 was Earth Day. I was still in high school that first Earth Day. Students from a university had tables set up in the hall to educate us. I bought a pinback button still in my collect. Give Earth a Chance. Fifty-one years later,we still are hoping for changes that will protect our one and only home.

On Friday we went to Tenhave Woods in Royal Oak, Michigan to see the early spring wildflowers. The woods is next to the high school I attended and my biology teacher was instrumental in preserving them. 

Trillium are beginning to bloom, trout lily predominated in a yellow cloud, and we saw spring beauty and wild geranium. The may apples were budding. And we spooked a garter snake sunning himself.

We have visited the dentist and eye doctors, appointments we skipped last spring.  Last week we made some shopping trips into several local specialty stores, but are still using Shipt and pick up and social isolating. After all, these amazing vaccines are not 100% effective and we don't want to be the 5% who contract covid or pass it on.

I purchased masks with filters from Vera Bradley last summer and have been very pleased with them, plus they are pretty! I love the adjustable ear straps. They are now only $5.

Here are my obligatory fur grandkid pics. First up, Gus the kitten.

Sunny and Ellie go to Dogtopia where this  cute photo was taken. Apparently, the idea of a picnic did not appeal to the pups.

My brother and his girlfriend have been walking the North Country Trail across Michigan. Last weekend as they drove home, Martha caught this rainbow coming out of my brother's truck! 

Tom noted he was at the end of the rainbow, so perhaps was Martha's "pot of gold," but I suggested he also might be her leprechaun. 

Stay safe. And here's to finding the rainbow's end!