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 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: Comfort Food, Writer's Block, and Isolation

Month two in social isolation. The last time we were in public together was March 10 to vote in the Michigan primary election.

March 10 was also the date of Michigan's first COVID-19 cases.

We have been able to order delivery groceries from a local store and Imperfect Produce, and health and personal care items from the local drug store. You have to be up and online early in the morning to find an Instacart opening for delivery!

I wipe all the packages down with a virus-killing solution, repackage what I can, discard all the packaging, and then wash my hands and all the surfaces. Will this become the 'new normal'?

My hubby panic-ordered toilet paper on March 20 on Amazon, and it arrived from China April 10! We were down to one more roll.

It's comfort food time, like goulash.

And streusel-topped coffee cake like Mom used to bake. I used her cake pan, too, the one I remember from the 1960s.

My brother will be on unpaid furlough from Ford. My son is on a two month 20% pay reduction and his partner on unpaid furlough. Our retirement investments plummeted. Still, we count ourselves lucky; we all still have health insurance.

Sunny is reaching the age when she should be spade, but the vet office is closed. She will go into heat any time now. We haven't seen the grandpuppies in a month!

My husband and I take daily walks very early in the day, bundled in winter clothing. We rarely see anyone else. The young folk, dog walkers, and families wait until the day warms up.

 We did, though, see a gigantic opossum making its way home one morning. It likely spent the night rummaging through the trash set out for morning pick up.

We had several warm days in the sixties, then a snow and sleet. In other words, it's been a typical Michigan spring!

The birds are building nests and the daffodils are in flower.

My brother finds the lonely places to commune with nature. He shares spectacular photographs. Below is Dodge Park in Oakland County, MI, on a misty morning last week.

Earlier in the week he took his kayak down the canal to Cass Lake.

Meanwhile, life goes on.

I received the Advanced Reading Copy of The Preserve by Ariel S. Winter.

Book requests came in at the last minute and there was one offered by the publisher which I could not resist.

I am working hard to keep up! Writing the reviews is not coming as easily now. I am distracted.

New books on my NetGalley include

• Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put In Us and On Us by George Zaidan
• Vesper Flights by Helen MacDonald, author of H is for Hawk
• Poisoned Water: How the Citizens of Flint, Michigan, Fought for Their Lives and Warned the Nation by Candy J. Cooper, a Middle Grade Book on the Flint Water Crisis

My LibraryThing win to come is

• In Search for Safety: Voices of Refugees by Susan Kuklin

My mask-making abilities have proven abysmally bad. Every other quilter in the universe is mass producing masks for family, friends, and local hospitals. I have tried various patterns. I have no elastic, no twill tape or ribbon, no hair ties, no stash of batik cottons. Now it's asked we wear masks in public. I could wear one I made if need be. But I just stay home.

Sad news has come from my weekly quilt group. We haven't been together in over a month. One member lost her grandson to cancer. Another was diagnosed with cancer of the brain. She was a real creative force in our group. 

I am thankful that I can shelter safely in place, with all the food and books I need, and with my companion of 48 years. I am thankful we have a yard full of flowers and trees and suburban wildlife to enjoy. I am thankful we can safely walk the neighborhood in the early morning.

This pandemic has unearthed the great social and economic disparities in our country. I hope that they will be addressed in the future. 

The way Michigan's Governor Gretchen Whitmore is doing, she may be tapped to a national leadership role in the future! 

I hope you and yours are all isolating and safe. 

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.