Pic Your Inspiration

On Christmas Day last year my guy and I meant to go and walk the beach, but it rained, so we settled for a long drive in the country and (when the rain stopped) a walk in a state park we like. I brought the camera along because although it was a wet, kinda miserable day I like taking pictures of interesting things I see. Sometimes all I need for an idea for a story is an single photo, like this one of an ancient wooden sailboat boat that looked like it sailed onto this property and got wedged in these trees. If you found that in your backyard one morning, would you look inside?

This tumble down barn we passed seemed a bit menacing. What secrets might it reveal if it suddenly collapsed? Treasure? Bones? A tunnel that leads to an underground world, or another dimension?

At the park there are these concrete steps everywhere that are green around the edges and suddenly start and stop in the oddest places. If you follow them, where would they take you? Forward in time, or back?

I loved these little ferns I saw growing out of the side of this step, and they gave me the strongest story idea of all. I wondered how I'd react if I came home and went to take a shower, and found one growing out of the side of my foot.

Maybe the squirrel watching me knew -- or maybe he's someone or something that is just disguised as a squirrel. :)

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Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Store Closing Haul

The mega Books-A-Million store over in Sanford is closing, and offered an extra 20% off on their current stock -- all sales final -- so I went over to do some shopping. Safely but sadly there was no one in the store but me the entire time I was there. The Holly Jackson novel is for Katherine, the Halloween board book is for Oliver, and the copy of Garden Spells is to keep on hand because I give that book to everyone. The rest of the books are for me. I love Anne Cleeves, and the Galbraith novel sounded interesting (the first couple weren't, but I'm willing to take another chance.) The Escape Room is by a new-to-me author, plus it was cheap. The GreenCraft mag is just a guilty pleasure. Hopefully the smaller BAM nearer to me won't close. I don't buy many books from brick-and-mortar stores these days, but that's really the last one within reasonable driving distance.

Valerean

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