Sail Away, Sail Away, Sail Away!

I have no idea why this quilt top has brought back 1990's Enya music into my head, but I've had Orinoco Flow running through my brain all morning. 

My goal has been to get completely caught up on my quilts from do.Good Stitches before it's my month again in March.  These are the sail boat blocks I requested in November.  I think this quilt is going to make some little boy very happy. 

A Special Quilt

On the Friday before Christmas a friend of mine was traveling with her 4 youngest boys on the highway when a car headed in the opposite direction turned into her lane and hit their van head on. The boys had bumps and bruises and amazingly were ok, but she sustained the majority of the injuries. She has two fractured feet, a fractured shin, a broken femur, and her lower back was crushed (her doctor said it looked like it was a crushed soda can). She was in the hospital for 3 weeks, and now has begun physical therapy from home.  It will be a while before she is able to walk again.   She has been nothing but positive and showing gratitude through the whole process, but she has a hard road in front of her.

As I started working on this Rising Star Quilt from do.Good Stitches, my friend kept running through my mind.  I felt instinctively that this quilt belonged to her.  I talked to my Peace Circle ladies and we all agreed this quilt was meant for her.  She loved it and I hope it's a comfort to her on her long road to recovery.

This was the first time I've done a large scale quilting pattern on such a huge quilt, so it was a bit rocky, but in the end, I liked the loose basket weave look.

I love these pictures because the clouds are so puffy they look like they're falling straight out of the sky onto the quilt.

 The contrast of the extremely dead grass is also quite striking.  😉

A Day in Ireland

 

I just finished reading Dubliners by James Joyce (1882-1941).  This book falls under category #2 of the Back to the Classics Challenge 2017. A 20th Century Classic - any book published between 1900 and 1967.  Dubliners is a collection of short stories.  This book first came to my attention because of the acclaim that The Dead often receives an example of the quintessential short story, and it is one of the short stories in Dubliners.  

I read one short story a day to break it up a bit.  It's pretty obvious from the beginning that he was a gifted writer.  Within a few sentences he's plopped you straight into a cross section of someone's life and it feels like you haven't missed a thing.  Most of the stories really only cover one day in that person's life, but it's almost always at a junction in their life where they have some sort of personal epiphany (and it's usually not a very happy one).   I can't say that I "enjoyed" the book, because that's not really the right word to describe it.  Most of the stories are depressing and they usually emphasize the lower natures of human beings.  He brings out a lot of the vices within the Irish culture.  For example, there's quite a bit of the stereotypical Irish drunkard of a husband squandering all the money on booze.  I can totally see why his writing would have been controversial when it was published back in 1914.  I do have to say that I definitely felt an appreciation for his literary prowess even if I didn't always fully understand all of the political and cultural nuisances associated with life in Ireland.  I'll end with a couple quotes from Dubliners to give you an idea of his writing style:

“He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a verb in the past tense.”  

“Too excited to be genuinely happy”

 “She respected her husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office, as something large, secure and fixed: and though she knew the small number of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male.”

Third Time's the Charm

  

I started out with the easiest category for me in the Classics Challenge 2017: #6 A Romance Classic.  Previous to this challenge I had read a couple of Georgette Heyer books and loved all of them, so I thought I would read another one for this category.  Even though Jane Austen wrote during the Regency era, Georgette Heyer (1902-1974) is the mother of Regency Romance as Historical Fiction.  The woman was prolific and very well loved.  I personally love her biting sense of humor that is often tongue in cheek.

I didn't have a particular Heyer book in mind for this challenge, so I found three books that were in print at my local library and decided to read those ones.  I started with The Convenient Marriage, and as fate would have it, I didn't care for it all that much.  Heyer still had some witty lines that had me laughing out loud, but I found that I really didn't care for most of the main characters. Lord Rule is the only intelligent one, but he's so far superior in wisdom than the others that I couldn't believe him to be even remotely amused by Horry.  I walked away from the book dissatisfied, but luckily for me I had 2 more books on hand.  I then read The Talisman Ring, and I found it a bit more to my liking.  It still wasn't my favorite Heyer book, so I continued on to my last option which was Regency Buck.    This was by far my favorite Heyer book of the three.

The back of the book synopsis:
"After their father's death, Miss Judith Taverner and her brother Peregrine travel to London to meet their guardian, Lord Worth, expecting an elderly gentleman. To their surprise and utter disgust, their guardian is not much older than they are, doesn't want the office of guardian any more than they want him, and is determined to thwart all their interests and return them to the country.

"With altogether too many complications"

But when Miss Taverner and Peregrine begin to move in the highest social circles, Lord Worth cannot help but entangle himself with his adventuresome wards..."

Regency Buck's got a bit of mystery along with Heyer's typical characters (the cunning one, the nincompoop, the headstrong heroine, and the slimy suitor).  I felt like the two main love interests were equally suited in intelligence and temperament, so it was enjoyable to read about the war of their wills pitted against each other.  This book is why I first loved Georgette Heyer as author to begin with, so I'm glad I ended on a high note.

First Finish of the Year

With the craziness of last year I didn't make nearly as many quilts as I usually do.  I'm off to a good start this year though.  This little baby boy quilt is mailed and on its way to a sweet baby of a friend from our medical school years in Hershey.

The back is left over flannel from a previous quilt, so this entire quilt came from my stash.  I was pretty happy to be able to use this fabric line again.  I've always loved the lions. 

My next project is to catch up on the 2 do.Good Stitches quilts from this Fall.  One is a completed quilt top I need to quilt and finish, and the other is still in block form from what the ladies mailed to me that needs to be pieced together. 

January blocks

This month's Peace Circle block for do.Good Stitches was a quick and painless block.  We just had to add triangles to 5" dark blue squares.  The triangles could be any size, straight or wonky.  I knew my scrap bag full of triangles would come in handy one day!  Sometimes hording fabric actually pays off!  😊

The Power of Hair

Little Guy was blessed with curly blond locks of hair.  He's cute and he knows it!  I've never had a kid have so much hair this young.  Little Lady was still practically bald at this age.  We have a friend who cuts hair for a living who refers to Little Guy as Samson.  She says we can't cut his hair, because that's where his power lies. Everyone kept telling me that if I cut off his curls he'd lose them and his hair would be straight after that.  We've left his hair alone, but every time we wash it I notice it's past his shoulders.  He looks like he's the lead singer in an 80's metal band.

It was the hair laying over his ears on his sides that finally convinced me to trim it.  As the curls came off I was pretty sure a little part of me was going to die on the inside.

 It turns out my fears were unfounded.  It just made his hair curlier.  He's seriously so cute!  I think his power is definitely in his curls!

Some Progress

I found a tutorial for The Road Trip Quilt, and it was for the size of scraps I had.  It came together quickly, and now I'm currently working on the border.  Here's the quilt top:

I also have quilt club tonight, so I needed to complete a row.  I'm back working on my original dragonfly quilt.  I sewed 2 rows together and then made some 4-patches to go with them.  I didn't sew my row on, because I'm still playing with design.  Yet again, I'm finishing my row a day before we meet.  There's just something about a deadline that gets me moving. 

New Projects

I got a second wind after the kiddos went to bed last night and I tackled my sewing desk.  The drawers are organized, and (gasp) I even dusted!  Wahoo!

Another side benefit- I finally couldn't ignore the stuffed animals my children have been begging me to fix for...um, a very long time.  I think the chihuahua made the move broken, so that's 6 months right there.  Oops.  Anyway, I reattached his leg and fixed the zebra's ear, and all is right in the stuffed animal kingdom once again. 

My newly cleaned desk is just in time for another project I need to get under way.  I need to whip up a baby boy quilt quickly.  I remembered I had a bag of scraps from this quilt I made over 4 years ago.  I got the scraps, and I'm so excited to be using them again.  I love this fabric line, so I'm glad I have an excuse to use it.   I want to do something completely different this time with the scraps.

A New Year

I'm not very good with goals.  Well, I'm good at making them.  I'm not so great on the completion part of it.  One year I posted the goals on my bathroom mirror, so I saw them every morning.  I did better that year, but I still didn't accomplish most of them.  This year I'm just going to tick off a couple of things that are on My Bucket List.  There are some things I've always wanted to learn and/or do.  I didn't include my traveling bucket list, because I don't foresee much opportunity to travel this year, and I wanted this to be as realistic as possible. 

One of the things I wanted to do this year is to read more classics.  I saw this Back to Classics Challenge, and I thought this was something that I could reasonably do this year.  I've just preliminarily put a possibility for some of the categories, but I haven't decided on most of them yet. 

1.    A 19th Century Classic - any book published between 1800 and 1899.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

2.  A 20th Century Classic - any book published between 1900 and 1967. Just like last year, all books MUST have been published at least 50 years ago to qualify. The only exception is books written at least 50 years ago, but published later, such as posthumous publications.

Dubliners by James Joyce

3.  A classic by a woman author. 

Georgette Heyer

4.  A classic in translation.  Any book originally written published in a language other than your native language. Feel free to read the book in your language or the original language. (You can also read books in translation for any of the other categories).

Something in Spanish

5.  A classic published before 1800. Plays and epic poems are acceptable in this category.

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

6.  A romance classic. I'm pretty flexible here about the definition of romance. It can have a happy ending or a sad ending, as long as there is a strong romantic element to the plot.

Georgette Heyer

7.  A Gothic or horror classic. For a good definition of what makes a book Gothic, and an excellent list of possible reads, please see this list on Goodreads. 

 Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

8.  A classic with a number in the title. Examples include A Tale of Two Cities, Three Men in a Boat, The Nine Tailors, Henry V, Fahrenheit 451, etc.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

9.  A classic about an animal or which includes the name of an animal in the title.  It can be an actual animal or a metaphor, or just the name in the title. Examples include To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, The Metamorphosis, White Fang, etc.

10. A classic set in a place you'd like to visit. It can be real or imaginary: The Wizard of Oz, Down and Out in Paris and London, Death on the Nile, etc.

11. An award-winning classic. It could be the Newbery award, the Prix Goncourt, the Pulitzer Prize, the James Tait Award, etc. Any award, just mention in your blog post what award your choice received.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

12. A Russian Classic. 2017 will be the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, so read a classic by any Russian author.

The other thing I need to do is organize myself, so I'm joining my fellow do.Good Stitches Peace Circle member in her Sewing Organization Challenge.  First up- cleaning off your sewing table...  Here's my official BEFORE picture.  It seemed a bit unfair that you can't tell how messy it is because it's completely covered by the Christmas quilt that I haven't been working on for the last 3 weeks.

 I was feeling guilty that I hadn't worked on the quilt, and now that Christmas is over I don't really feel like working on it anymore either.  To ease my guilty conscience I quilted some blocks on this portion of the quilt and then I packed it back away.

 Here's the table without the quilt.  It revealed the 2 stuffed animals I've been promising to fix for my children for...um...let's just say quite a while.  Maybe I'll do that this evening since they saw them again and got upset about it.  Oopsy.  Nobody every said getting organized is an easy process.

What it looks like without the quilt on top