Zero-Waste Gardening is your essential go-to guide to growing your own food for maximum taste and minimum waste.Organic gardening expert, Ben Raskin, shares over 60 unique planning-for-yield guides for key crops. Work out how to make the most of the green space you have got, what to grow easily in it, and how much you will harvest seasonally for zero waste.Learn about the roots of organic gardening, and unearth how to plant waste-free for any size plot, from balcony containers to 5-metre-square yards. Peppered with root-to-stalk cooking techniques, and edibility tips including which crops you can eat straight away, this is a plot-to-plate handbook for everyone with a green-thumb.Perfect for new and experienced growers, zero-food waste followers, city gardeners, and the ecologically minded, this is the only gardening book you will ever need!
Thursday, May 27, 2021
Zero Waste Gardening by Ben Raskin
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
Playful Free-Form Embroidery: Stitch Stories with Texture, Pattern & Color by Laura Wasilowski
A black background always makes colors pop. It also shows up the details in the foliage.
This sweet lamb greeting a bird would be lovely in a nursery!
I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
Laura Wasilowski
ISBN: 9781617459931
UPC: 734817-114086
eISBN: 9781617459948 Book ( $19.95 )
eBook ( $15.99
from the publisher
From the best-selling author of Joyful Stitching, Laura Wasilowski brings 6 new hand-embroidery projects with full-sized patterns and step-by-step pictorial directions. Bright and lively project designs include a whirling paint brush, a dancing bird, tea cups tipping, flowers blooming, a fuzzy sheep, and a happy acorn nut house. With the free-form embroidery approach, you can either follow the given directions, or allow your imagination to run wild and improv your own additions—there is no right or wrong! Plus, no special tools are needed—just felt or felted wool, perle cotton #12 and #8 threads, embroidery needles, and sewing equipment. Start your stitch story!
- Stitch 6 textured projects with easy-to-follow free-form embroidery instructions
- Each project features a unique stitch combination, including some wool applique
- Finished creations are visually stunning art work that can be treasured for a lifetime
about the author
Laura Wasilowski loves fabric. Her first love was a sweet pink gingham fabric selected for a 4-H sewing project. As a college student, she discovered more exotic fabrics. And while she earned a degree in costume design, she found a new thrill - dyeing.
For many years Laura created hand-dyed fabrics for garments that she sold in boutiques across the country. It was a friendly neighbor who introduced Laura to her current flame, the art quilt. This latest love is a marriage of fabric, color, and whimsy that she truly enjoys.
Laura is married to her colorful husband, Steve. They are the proud parents of Gus and Louise. Laura lives in Elgin, IL, where she hand dyes fabric and thread for her business, Artfabrik.
Visit Artfabrik online: artfabrik.com
Monday, May 24, 2021
Moving to Wordpress!
Sunday, May 23, 2021
Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford
by Francis Spufford
Scribner
Pub Date May 18, 2021
ISBN: 9781982174149
hardcover $27.00 (USD)
from the publisher
From the critically acclaimed and award‑winning author of Golden Hill, a mesmerizing and boldly inventive novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London.
Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworth's on Bexford High Street in southeast London receives a delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children.
Who were they? What futures did they lose? This brilliantly constructed novel lets an alternative reel of time run, imagining the life arcs of these five souls as they live through the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of twentieth-century London. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual, and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs, disasters; of second chances and redemption.
Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, Light Perpetual illuminates the shapes of experience, the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the mysteries of memory and expectation, and the preciousness of life.
Saturday, May 22, 2021
COVID-19 Life: Books & Quilts & More
My husband ordered a signed copy of Stacy Abram's new novel While Justice Sleeps!
- Still Life by Sarah Winman whose Tin Man I reviewed
Friday, May 21, 2021
The Story of Nelson Mandela: A Biography Book for New Readers by Floyd Stokes, LHD
Teaching helps throughout the book include timelines, challenge questions, and pronunciation guides. Questions are poised to help children relate to the story and to judge comprehension.
The series theme is Stories About Dreamers Just Like You, and the books are meant to inspire young people.
I received a free book through Amazon Vine. My review is fair and unbiased.
See other books in the series by clicking on these links
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-story-of-harriet-tubman-biography.html
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-story-of-frida-kahlo-by-susan-b-katz.html
Thursday, May 20, 2021
Time and Again by Jack Finney/ The Dutch House by Anne Patchett Audiobook
Leif Enger (Virgil Wander) and David Abrams (Brave Deeds) were talking on Instagram about the 1970 novel Time and Again by Jack Finney. I knew I had it on Kindle (along with hundreds of other ebooks still unread) and so took a look at it.
And I kept on reading.
I missed this when it came out because I was graduating from high school and going to college at the time of its publication. And for years, my reading was mostly 'looking backwards' to the 19th c.--The century in which this novel is set!
Si Morely is a vet and bored commercial artist when he is recruited into a top secret government experiment--traveling back in time. He is an excellent student and becomes the best at time travel.
He sets out to solve the mystery of his girlfriend's grandfather's death and strange headstone, with a half burnt letter her only clue.
The story becomes a mystery, and a romance, and a study of what civilization has given us and what it has taken away.
Finney excels at description. Every costume, every horse drawn vehicle, every building, and every activity is recreated in such detail, it's like seeing a movie play in one's head. The streets filled with their cacophony of noise and smells, congested with pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages. The city at play in the snow. A devastating fire and daring rescues. An escape from police.
And, the book is filled with Si's drawings and photographs, illustrating what he has seen.
Enger said if he had a book club, this would be his first choice.
My husband and I so enjoyed listening to News of the World together that I borrowed the audiobook of The Dutch House by Ann Patchett from the library. I had heard so much praise about Tom Hanks' narration--and it was justified.
We absolutely loved Hanks interpretation of the text. He brought the story alive. When I read the novel I did not catch the humor as strongly as Hanks delivers it. I will listen to anything read by Hanks.
The characters love or hate the Dutch House. Ownership is coveted by a second wife who steals it from her step-kids and then kicks them out. They can never quite get over its loss; they spend hours remembering their childhood there. Their inability to move on curtails their growth and harms their relationships.
I recalled my own lost childhood home. I fantasized about growing up and buying it back. When it was torn down while I was still a teenager, I was broken-hearted.
This is a story of family and brokenness and loving the wrong things and regret and forgiveness. In the end, our family becomes the people who we choose and who choose us to be family.
Read my review of the novel here.