Valerean

Here's a chore that I do a couple times of year (or I used to, anyway): cleaning out the scraps bag I keep in the sewing room. This time it's overflowing because I've been procrastinating, and there's literally no room left in it for anything else. Pulling out all the scraps and sorting them is like a trip back through time; I get to see snips and trimmings from all my projects. As I did I began seeing scraps from projects I did last year, and checked my journal. Sure enough, I haven't cleaned out the scrap bag since September 2025 . This also made me realize how little I've been sewing over the last 13 months. Back to the sort. I do save all the batting scraps in a big bag which I raid for smaller projects. The tiniest scraps of fabric, all of which are unsuitable for reuse, went into my thread catcher bag, which holds the snips of yarn from my crochet, too. I call this shoddy, and I want to find a way to reuse it, even if it's as stuffi...

I have a bunch of scraps leftover from making my October tote for my calendar project. I have zero ambition to start quilting anything by machine. Time for a mug rug, I thought. I have an entire box of mug rugs. I make them whenever I feel blue. It's a tiny project that I can accomplish in an hour or two (yes, I'm that slow now.) I like using them in the sewing room and my home office. Deciding to make this one made me happy in a sad way. I have no Halloween mug rugs. Will I even be able to hold a needle by next October? I hate my arthritis. I let go of all the noise in my head. I sewed the front and back on the machine, batted it, and hand stitched the rest. I didn't think about next October, Halloween or anything, really. I just stitched. Slowly, painfully at times (my fingers are still sore from making the tote) but steadily. I found a couple of hours of mindless bliss in making this little mug rug. I love how it looks. It completely changed my mood a...

I set aside all my other projects and devoted a couple of days to stitching, embellishing and assembling the October tote for my calendar project. My fingertips grew sore for the first time in years because I haven't been hand-stitching, but I took my time and did what I could while not trying to be too ambitious. For the fabric elements I just focused on getting them stitched down securely. I added some feather stitching here and there when my hands allowed a little more work. I also didn't do much hand quilting, but I did add some beading, which I hadn't planned to do. The vibe I got from the finished slow stitching was very elegant. I added two fabric pumpkins to one patch to emphasize this. Then it was time to assemble it. Because I pre-batted and lined the tote, I just had to sew up the sides on the machine. The finished tote. I'm very happy with how this turned out. We're all ready for Halloween now. :)

There's a new blind date with a book seller at one of our local antique malls, so of course I had to invest and show my support. I'm wonderful that way, lol. I meant to pick up a contemporary romance, too, but my man distracted me for a moment and instead I grabbed this historical fiction/romance. Ah, well, I'll just have to suffer. This seller included some very nice items tucke in the wrappings: a big paperclip, little journal and bookmark that resemble old library checkout cards, a pen and a tea bag. I got If the Tide Turns by Rachel Rueeckert, a novel and an author I have never read. Sounds like it's right up my alley, too: witchhunts and piracy. Very happy and I will be going on more blind dates with this seller again.

A few days ago a reader of mine reached out to me to see if I was still working (and probably to check and see if I was still alive.) They also asked me if I would ever go back to publishing under one of the bylines I used during the twenty years I worked for big publishers in NYC. The subject hasn't come up very often in the eight years since I went freelance and became a partner in a small independent publisher. I've made more money on my own than I ever did with an agent and working for NY, so there's that. I do not miss being in the spotlight and all the ugliness that comes with it; that dimension of my career was particularly brutal for me. I should never have gone the way I did; indy publishing is where I really belong -- but it didn't really exist back in my day. Here's some advice from a shy person who put up with all that nonsense for two decades: if NY ever offers you a contract, and promises that they'll develop your brand, promote your wor...

I got a bit of a late start on the October tote for my calendar project, but once I focused on it things started to come together nicely. I settled on doing a slow stitch design rather than a crazy quilt design. After I batted and backed the tote I finalized the arrangement of the fabric pieces, and pinned them down. I've got three weeks to do the hand quilting and embroidery, and (maybe) a little beading. I will use the machine if I have to, but I want to try to do some hand work this month.