Valerean

Participating in National Novel Writing Month this year for me started out well, took a nasty dive and then may have actually cured a lingering malaise I've been having with writing productivity in 2020. It didn't help that I lost my two pups just before and in the first week of NaNo, and I did consider giving up and waving the white flag. Very glad I didn't. My wordcount as of the writing of this post (10:45 pm on 11/29) was 71,635. I'm going to try to hit 75K tomorrow, but even if I don't, I'm very happy with how much I wrote. What I did differently this go-round: I joined a writing group on the Nano web site, which was low-key friendly but stayed pretty quiet for the most part. Some nice girls in the bunch, but they didn't talk much. I'm hoping I wasn't the reason for that; I tried to stay low-key friendly, too. Although I wasn't really inspired to participate in the forums after running into some pinheads last year, I did t...

Ten Things I'm Doing Differently to Survive the Holidays Adding Letters to Cards: We don't do a lot of visiting during the holidays, but the few people we usually go to see are all at high-risk for covid-19. So instead they'll be getting a card in the mail with a letter (hopefully handwritten) from me with something funny to boost their spirits. Altering Gift-Giving Strategies: This year I'm going to make at least one gift for the immediate family, which is my usual thing. However, I'm not going to do any shopping at all. Instead I'm opting to send E-gift cards to allow everyone on my list to enjoy a little shopping spree after the holidays. This way I avoid any in-store shopping and the forecasted delays for shipping online shopping purchases. Bake More: In line with my hand made gifts, I'm going to make cookies, cakes or pastries for our immediate neighbors and family friends, and add the recipe to the gift so they can make more if they enjoy...

Thanksgiving was a bit weird this year, but a few things happened that were interesting. The night before as I was baking pie and prepping for everything else I also finished a book I've been reading since the pandemic began: Very well-written and information dense, sometimes a tad bit stodgy, and constantly surprising. Because the author is very smart and not especially interested in catering to the reader, probably not for anyone but an unwavering history buff like me. It's a bit like auditing a college class on Scottish influence on the rest of the world, particularly America. And speaking of pie: Behold the sugar pumpkin we had to go to six different markets before we could find it. Everyone at the first five markets looked at me as if I were crazy when I asked for one. One young clerk didn't know you could use an actual pumpkin to make fresh pumpkin pie. Ah, youth. You're going to starve when my generation dies. While I was cooking Edward called m...

When you're a diabetic who doesn't care for soda you're very limited on what you can drink. I mostly drink water, unsweetened homemade ice tea, herbal tea, coffee or oat milk. For a while I was using Crystal Light, but that turned out to a headache trigger for me. Since then I've eliminated all products sweetened with aspartame from my diet. I use stevia to sweeten my hot and cold teas, which seems to be the safest sugar sub on the market. I like it (it has a slight vanilla flavor to me) and I don't have a problem with any aftertaste. If anything it's a bit too sweet, so I use it sparingly. I've also been adding a little lemon juice to my ice tea, as I like that, too. Typically I drink about two liters altogether per day, and the majority of that is water or tea. I've been looking for something else to add to my options, but fruit juice is loaded with sugar, and too much coffee gives me heartburn. Smoothies are a pain to make and even the lac...

Happy Thanksgiving to my pals. Your ears will be burning tomorrow as I give thanks for you all. Much, much love.

Bit of trivia you may not know about me: when I graduated high school, I won both the English and Art awards for the senior class. Came with medals and everything. These were selected by our teachers, many of whom weren't my biggest fans, so I didn't think I'd win anything. When you spend as much time as I did in the dean's office, you generally don't expect to get any medals. Much much later (after I got out of the military and came home) I met my old English teacher, who among other things told me that nearly all the teachers agreed that I was the best writer and the best artist of that class (not shabby when you consider I graduated with 3500 other seniors.) My favorite part: I was the only senior to win two major awards that year, which really pissed off all the suck ups. :) My daughter, aka the little apple that didn't fall too far off this tree, is making a little money on the side by picking up art commissions, and she accepted a major one to do...

With Thanksgiving looming I've been thinking a lot about my dad lately. Not sadly, or even fondly, but just with longing. Having him here during the holidays would make it easier on me. He loved Thanksgiving, and cooking a big dinner, and gathering everyone at the table to share it. He really liked the way I made turkey, and preferred my stuffing to my mom's (although being a very good husband, he never told her that.) Dad's probably the reason Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. He even made Christmas bearable for me. Dad would have been in his late eighties for this pandemic, so in one sense I'm glad he never lived to see it. For once Alzheimer's probably would have spared him a lot if he had lived this long. He had so many friends in NYC, and odds are some of them didn't survive the first wave. He would have had to see the idiot ways it's become politicized, and how much all the squabbling has cost our country. That said, part of me still wishes ...

As of 11:57 pm last night, 50,015 words written on my NaNoWriMo novel. I'm going to keep working on it to the end of the month, but as I've right now, I won. :)

During my rookie year as a pro writer I spent $110.00 to buy a fountain pen on sale at Levenger. While that sounds insane, the pen retailed for $450.00, so I thought it was a good bargain. At the time I wanted to make the jump to using only fountain pens for hand writing, as my arthritis was starting to make it difficult to use anything else. Also, I fell in love with the pen, so that decided it. Back then I had no idea that my Platinum Koi would be my faithful companion for the next twenty-two years. I've written thousands of letters, hundreds of journals and autographed Lord only knows how many of my books with this pen. If you work out the price with the endurance, it only cost me around $5.00 a year, which is probably what a person spends on crap pens. It's certainly always been the finest writing instrument I've ever owned . . . until it started to skip and clog this year. I nursed it along with frequent cleanings and sparse use, but eventually I had to accept ...

His mom sent me these pics:

I finished Mom's birthday quilt on time, and here's how it turned out: I also made some pillows for Kat and Oliver out of some Minky remnant yardage I got for six bucks at JoAnn (I also used up two bags of fiber fill that I've had sitting in the sewing supply closet for a while): So that should make me happy, right? Eh. I want to do more with the time I have left to sew. Which brings me to the most ambitious embroidered quilt I've ever made, my recycled linen quilt, which I finished a little over a year ago: It's become my favorite quilt. It's the perfect weight for year-round use, and I just love it, so I've kept it out in the office since I finished it: When I finished it I remember thinking "never again." Linen is so hard to piece because it moves all over the place when you're sewing, plus all the work I put into the quilt was just insane. Now that my hands are deteriorating rapidly and my time to sew is runnin...

Kat and her dad decided to try their hands at gardening, and built this little raised bed patch as an experiment: The romaine lettuce they planted is doing great; we should be harvesting this in the next week: The banana peppers also look good, with lots of flower buds: Hopefully the strawberries catch up, because I love them:

If I work on Mom's lap quilt for a few hours every night I should get it done in time to send before her birthday, so doing that. I found another fabric leaf in the yard from my neighbor's ageing fall decorations, so I decided to add that to the little dog dish mat I made from the last of the red scrap pile: I thought only one leaf looked a bit lopsided, but a few days later another fabric leaf appeared in the yard, so: It makes me ridiculously happy to rescue these fake, tattered leaves and turn them into something other than trash. :)

My guy and I made a run out to the local farm where we buy most of our produce, and they were all decked out for Fall: I bought some of these gorgeous sweet potatoes for me and Kat (they're easier on my blood sugar than white potatoes, too): Lots of spooky white pumpkins for Halloween (I'm writing this on 10/16, btw): I think fall and farms just go together perfectly -- they both honor and celebrate food: Now if I could just get over my aversion to squash . . .

I pieced the top for Mom's birthday quilt, which turned out to be a nice lap-size: Although I was planning to wait another night, I'm running out of time, so I decided to press, batt, back and pin it together as well. For the backing I used a plain soft muslin, and to keep it light I opted for a low-loft batting (which was actually leftover from another project, so it's recycled.) For the quilting I'm going to use white and pale blue cotton thread: Now if my hands will cooperate, I should get this done in time.

I used some twill tape to frame the fox crazy quilt patchwork block and sewed it to the front of the last large black tote: Definitely lots of sparkle, but hey, I'm allowed. :) Want to see it sparkle? Ha.