Valerean

Black Knight is a short dystopian k-drama series that looks at what life might be like on Earth after a comet strike that wipes out 99% of us. This disaster also turns the Korean peninsula into a barren desert with air so polluted oxygen becomes a commodity. That, water and food are delivered to the social-class-status divided population by superheroic delivery drivers. If that wasn't enough, plans are in the works to provide a new community for the comet survivors, but the snobbish son of the CEO wants it only for society's elite, and takes drastic steps to wipe out the common rabble. The story loosely revolves around two leads: 5-8 (Kim Woo-bin), a legendary delivery driver who was once involved in a rebellion, and Yoon Sa-Wol (Kang You-seok), a young refugee boy who hero worships 5-8 and wants to become a delivery driver as well. Both become entangled in the plot by Ryu Seok (Song Seung-heon), that snobby CEO's son, to wipe out the refugees so only the best pe...

The Young Victoria may not be the most romantic of films, thanks to a bit too much of the politics and cat-fighting that went on in the queen's teens, but it is an interesting look at the monarch as a young woman, and how her famous love affair with her husband Prince Albert began. Emily Blunt is very persuasive in the lead role, playing Victoria with a kind of weary earnestness that I liked a lot. Beneath the rigid manners and the corsets was a very human young woman being beseiged on all sides as everyone tried to control her and through her the power of the British monarchy. Rupert Friend is quite good as Prince Albert, poor guy, although even with the convincing accent and facial hair I was constantly flashing back to him playing Wickham in the 2005 movie version of Pride and Prejudice. There is no real spontaneity to the love story, of course, but the fact that these two came together and got married is pretty incredible, considering all the odds stacked against them. ...

There aren't many bloggers around who started back when I did with my very first blog; Dooce was one of them. She committed suicide earlier this month, and while I wasn't a friend or even an acquaintance I was upset to hear the news. I used to recommend aspiring writers read her blog to understand voice and honesty. Outliving one's colleagues is not fun, something I've known since Monica Jackson died. You want to say something with meaning for those they left behind. Despite the fact that we probably would have disagreed on basically everything if we ever had become friends, Dooce was a hell of a writer. I wish she had gotten the help she needed to deal with her depression, as I know she had two kids. Safe journey, Heather.

I finally finished hand quilting my thrifted clothing fabric quilt, so now I can move on to the embroidery. For that I'll be using all of these vintage perle threads (except the bright green.) I have a vague idea of what I want to do with the embroidery, but I'm also keeping an open mind and trying to stitch in the moment. So far, so good.

My guy has been helping our neighbor by building shadecloth racks for her gardens, and asked me to help by making sleeves in the cloths for some PVC pipe to anchor it. That meant sewing 4 ten foot sleeves, but it wasn't a problem. I just marked the cloth and ran it through the machine with my guy's help to feed it along. Here's where you can see one of the sleeves I sewed. It's always great to help my guy with a project, plus my neighbor promised me payment in produce from her garden. :)

The primary reason my guy inspects our property before mowing it each time are the critters he sometimes finds hiding in the grass. This is a baby gopher tortoise. It's not a newborn but it's not very old; it's about the same size it would be after hatching. These tortoises are endangered, and we have two of their burrows on our property, so we're always on the lookout for them. I just moved one out of the road the other day so it wouldn't get hit by a car. This one seems very early (hatching typically starts around August.) It's also illegal to keep these guys as pets without a permit (not that we need another pet.) So we relocated him near the one recently active burrow on our property. Never a dull moment around here. :)

I found some more really good deals by thrifting and buying vintage last month. Goodwill had two never-opened rolls of quilting batting for $4.99 each. I checked them for bad odors, but they smelled new, too. The 81" X 96" roll retails for $34.99 new, and the 90" X 108" retails for $44.99 new. Savings: $70.00 This lot of 28 vintage skeins of #3 perle thread appeared unused, and cost me $22.73 on eBay. New each skein costs $2.99, or $83.72 for 28. Savings: $60.99 I paid $2.99 at Goodwill for this heavy wood picture frame. One at Target that is almost identical retails for $18.00. Savings: $16.00.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I got sick this month. I started to feel like crap with a bad headache and muscle aches, and spent most of that night tossing and turning. It felt like flu, which I've only had twice in my life despite being constantly exposed to it. I didn't have much of a fever, and no throat, chest or nose symptoms, so I thought I might use one of my freebie goverment Covid tests to see if I'd finally been infected. That came up negative, but then Kat called to say she had gotten Covid, and showed negative on her first test. So I did another home test. This is the new normal, I suppose. This is the first time I've ever been tested for Covid since the pandemic began, and I'm the one testing me while I'm miserable and feel like crap. Only today I do feel a little better, so it's probably not Covid. Let's go and look at my results. Negative again. Yay. Love it when I'm right.

Emergency Declaration is a Korean action catastrophe movie that is at times so realistic it might fool you into thinking it's a documentary. At other times there are some quick fixes and heavy-handed plotting that are painfully obvious, so it's a bit of a rollercoaster. For reasons never defined in the movie, a former biochemist Ryu Jin-seok (Siwan) self-implants something under his arm before boarding a crowded plane headed for Hawaii, where he uses an asthma inhaler to release the contents of the implant in a restroom. This turns out to be a deadly mutated virus that gruesomely kills the first passenger exposed to it, and quickly spreads to the rest. Passengers start to die. When the pilot tries to get permission to land in the U.S. he's refused. The pilot then dies of the virus, and so does the terrorist. The co-pilot, Choi Hyun-soo (Kim Nam-gil) turns the plane around to head back to Korea, where police detective Gu In-ho (Song Kang-ho), whose wife is on the ...

I thought I was done with C-dramas, but then I saw a trailer for Road Home and decided to give it a try. Thirty episodes later I was still absorbed, a little puzzled and definitely impressed, although it's going to be tough to explain I liked this second chance at love series so much (unless you grew up in the sixties. Then you might understand.) Here's the backstory: While in high school rich girl Gui Xiao (Tan Song Yun) meets poor boy Lu Chen (Jing Bo Ran), and they basically fall for each other at first sight. There are flashbacks to their first relationship throughout the series, too, so you know where they came from. After graduation they try to stay together, but Lu Chen goes off to the police academy, while Gui Xiao starts university. Maintaining the long-distance relationship becomes more difficult for both of them, as Lu Chen is a very mature, proud guy of few words and Gui Xiao is immature, talkative and emotional. When her parents get divorced, and his tra...

My Little Happiness is a c-drama that will likely become a classic romance, thanks to a clever script, nice plotting and actors who did not phone it in but portrayed their characters with affection and depth. The series has a big cast, and several subplots surrounding the primary romance between childhood friends Cong Rong (Xing Fei) and Wen Shaoqing (Tang Xiaotian). Rong is a fiesty little girl who can't stand seeing shy, chubby Shaoqing being bullied, and stands up for him. They quickly become best friends, but then Rong's father passes away, and she leaves the school, promising to return and see Shaoqing again, but never does. Twenty or so years later, a very short but quite cute Rong returns from abroad to China for an internship at a law firm, and is assigned to the hospital where the towering and now very handsome Shaoqing works as a neurosurgeon. There's a lot going on in this drama, from Rong's mom not wanting her to become a lawyer to Shaoqing's poe...

I'm falling behind on several projects, which makes me annoyed with myself. My progress on the one-pound challenge quilt has been frustratingly slow. I'm mired down with spring cleaning the last two rooms, which are probably going to take until summer arrives. My guy has been busy pressure cleaning the outside of the house, so I've been taking care of the dogs solo, including their long walks, which takes up more of my time. Then I got sick for a couple days, and that set me back on everything. All of this stuff combines to drag me down. On the upside? I've finally gotten into the rhythm of writing again for my latest work novel, but I had a lousy couple of days with that. I did finish our hurricane prep, and now have everything in place to weather another storm season, but I still wonder if it's enough. I'm constantly second-guessing myself. Although I have a good routine established with housework and the day job, sometimes I can't get into i...

Despite some serious reservations I decided to watch the crowd-funded, son-directed documentary For the Love of Spock , a film on actor Leonard Nimoy and his iconic character from Star Trek. I'm not sorry I saw it, although much of what I thought would come out in the interviews and voice overs did, from endless and gushy fannish adoration to personal score-settling and blame for things far beyond a busy actor's control. It's hard to see the latter happen when the subject is no longer alive to defend himself. Leonard Nimoy as an actor was an interesting man -- he worked in many productions and television series that most Trekkies aren't even aware of, and clips are shown early on that demonstrate his range. He was also a poet, a photographer and a very talented director. Naturally he was the titular character on Star Trek, outshining even William Shatner's Captain Kirk. I was surprised to see that Shatner was actually very polite and complimentary toward Leo...

I suggested to my guy that we do some extra walking by going downtown and strolling along the lake front, so off we went. A lot has changed in town, especially with new businesses opening post-pandemic. Most of the antique shops are gone, replaced by boutiques, gift shops and little coffee and sandwich places. I was happy to see some local artwork displayed outside our favorite bistro. I hope the town doesn't go too commercial. One of its charms is that it was a great place to sell art as well as antiques. As a reward for all the extra walking I did my guy treated me to vegggie dip, crackers and chips, and iced tea. Delicious!

While spring cleaning my home office I decided to change up the art on the walls, and create more of a gallery look. That meant taking down most of my little art quilts, but I did put up my first crazy quilted piece as a nod to the past. I just picked what appealed to me, framed most of it and arranged it in a manner pleasing to me. I'm moving into another creative phase in my life, and not quite sure what it means. I do like it. :)

To keep this project truly recycled from start to finish I used some scrap preshrunk cotton batting and a thrifted sheet for the backing. The light green grid print of the backing sheet works nicely with the rest of the quilt. To quilt the piece I'm using these three colors of vintage thread out of my stash. I've also ordered a lot of vintage perle thread to do some embroidery once the hand quilting is done.

Signs of spring: my guy came in to tell me there was a snake in the garage, and I went out to take some pics and see if I could encourage it to leave. It hid behind some boxes and buckets we keep under my guy's work bench. From the color and head shape I'm pretty sure it was a black rat snake, and probably came in exploring to hunt for prey. Most snakes only become aggressive when they feel cornered, so in the end we decided to leave the doors open so it could leave on its own.

Happy Mother's Day.

My kid was on a television program produced by her university that was uploaded to YouTube in this video; you can see her being brilliant and explaining her work at the 11:45 mark, but the whole show is really interesting.

I managed to make 36 improv-pieced 7" patchwork blocks out of my one pound of thrifted fabric. I also cut another 6 7" blocks of each of the fabrics because I didn't want every block pieced. Once I figured out how I wanted to arrange the blocks, I stacked them in six piles and sewed them in rows, and then sewed the rows together. Here's the finished quilt top. Onward to batting, backing and picking out the quilting thread.

I looked through some quilting magazines to get some ideas on how to piece my thrifted clothing fabric into patchwork for a quilt, and came across an article on improv piecing. I've never tried this method, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. Rather than get complicated with a lot of little pieces I'm trying a simplified version of the method, and keeping everything in squares and rectangles rather than different shapes. This is entirely random, so I have no idea how the blocks will look once I finish making them. Stay tuned to see how they turn out.

Sometimes buying vintage fabrics doesn't go according to plan. One seller listed a basket of vintage fabric and quilt pieces that I planned to use for my pink/blue/white thrifted quilt project, only after I bought it she said she had lost the basket and wanted to make a substitution. I thought she meant just the basket, so I agreed -- but she meant everything, as she sent me a completely new bundle of fabric in a different basket. I was disappointed, but I thought, eh, make the best of it. This is a really pretty applique piece. I also like this embroidered piece. The rest of the quilted pieces are too small for me to use except for adding them to one of my box journal projects. The fabrics are pretty, although with all the yellow I would never have bought this particular collection. Finally, everything smelled funny, so I had to had wash the lot and detox the basket right away (disclaimer: that's not unusual with buying vintage.) I'll find a way to us...

I can cheat and have a tiny slice of cake (sometimes) but otherwise all the desserts I make belong to my guy. I've been trying to downsize these, too, as he can't really eat an entire cake by himself. I hunted around for a small pineapple upside down cake recipe, and I was happy to find this one that serves four. I used a small loaf pan as I didn't have a 6" round cake pan, and I left out the pecan halves, but otherwise I followed the recipe. Don't tell my diabetes doc, but the results were delicious. :)

To give myself a creative recycling challenge, I purchased a pound of thrifted fabric to make into a quilt. While I could make something with all of the fabric, it would look a little odd. So I set aside these fabrics to use for other projects. I ended up with these six different thrifted fabric piles for my project. To add a little more color I selected this sea-glass colored solid from my UFO bin. Stay tuned to see how I turn these bits and pieces of old clothes into something new.