May 12, 2023: Hand sewing; Loving spring!; Books

Greetings dear readers! I’m late in posting this week because of a lot going on; most importantly, I have a car! We managed to find the same model car I’ve been driving for years, but 7 years newer than my previous one, with only 35,000 miles on it – less than a third of the mileage on my previous car. It’s an amazingly reliable car and because I’m already familiar with the model, the learning curve will be easier – whew! It feels really good to have that task out of the way, thanks to great research and time put in by my wonderful husband 😊. We celebrate our 46th wedding anniversary on Sunday; I’m so grateful!

I still do not have my sewing machine back! It’s been almost 3 weeks now 🙁. The shop keeps telling me there’s only one part time person doing maintenance and repairs and he’s gotten behind. So I’m staying busy with Sweet Journeys and the Hexagon Stars. On SJ, I studied the center medallion and made some decisions about the quilting – nothing too fancy because I want the appliqué design to get most of the attention.

I formulated a plan for filling in the chopped up open spaces behind the appliqué in the center and got started:

I have all the tan connector pieces attached to the stars (definitely the most tedious part of this project) in row 13 of the HS project and am sewing the stars together in a row – then I have to repeat that for rows 14 and 15.

I put all the completed basket blocks back up on the design wall – 88!

I have 8 blocks all prepped for sewing and need to pick fabrics for 2 more to make 98 in all. Then I need to decide if I’m adding sashing and what color (green?) and decide what to use for setting triangles. For the latter, I’m leaning toward a mix of the fabrics I’ve used for block backgrounds.

After a period of numerous raw, gloomy, rainy days, we finally have had almost a week of glorious spring weather. I took a walk to the river and reveled in the light green leaves poking out, starting to fill the spaces between the trees:

The river was running really high after all the rain:

The sound of it rushing along is very soothing and centering for me. I moved from studying buds to studying baby leaves:

And COLOR is back!😊:

I walked with a friend yesterday in the woods near her home and she showed me a place on the river (same river I walk to from my home but 2-3 miles further along) where turtles sun themselves on fallen logs. The first 2 photos are 2 separate logs – the turtles are gray spots on the logs, nearer to the shore – can you see them? – and the third photo is the best closeup I could get. If you get too close, the turtles sense your presence and slip into the water:

I read another book that I highly recommend:

It’s a story about family relationships. There were some parts that seemed contrived, but in the end I didn’t care because I enjoyed Napolitano’s telling of the story so much. Professional reviews of the book were mostly very, very positive; reader reviews were more mixed with plenty of positives, but a few negatives, especially those who didn’t like the parts that seemed contrived and were unwilling to “suspend disbelief” like I was. I normally don’t pay much attention to Oprah’s book choices, but I’m actually very much looking forward to her most recent one as well:

This is his 4th book, second novel. I’ve read all 3 of his previous books and loved every one and highly recommend them all. Perhaps one of the attractions for me is that Verghese is a medical doctor, an actively practicing infectious disease specialist and the practice of medicine has played a role in all 3 previous book; I think in this new one as well.
I’d better close this post and get back to reading the (thick!) manuals on how to use my new car!!😊

Be kind, be grateful, and cherish each day, Gladi