Valerean

Until I watched the mini-drama Grab Your Love I'd never seen a steamy Chinese historical romance (steamy being in the eastern Asian sense of the term, not the western version.) Later, when I read some of the comments I was surprised to see how many viewers considered it slightly smutty. No one gets naked (the male lead does remove his shirt twice) and while there are a lot of suggestive scenes, nothing steps a toe past PG territory. I've seen more skin in a broadcast TV show, frankly. That said, it was the raciest drama I've ever watched from any Asian country, and the fact that it came from China (infamous for drama censorship and propaganda) blows my mind. The story is very basic: during the late Republican Era a poor but beautiful tutor wrangles a job from a villanous rich man to tutor his troublesome kid, rich man falls for tutor, clingy and jealous socialite wannabe girlfriend decides to use rather drastic measures to get rid of her. This includes drugging th...

I've been looking for alternatives to Netflix, as it's gotten weird with the ads and what I can or cannot watch because I'm on the cheapest plan. That's how I discovered Tubi , a completely free streaming platform that has over 275,000 movies and TV series that you can watch without paying a dime. You just get ads, which is what I'm paying for with Netflix. It's mostly older stuff, but I have spotted a few contemporary offerings. I'm really surprised to see what looks like all of the early Doctor Who series available (1-7), as I was never able to watch them. There are a lot of movies from the 80's on this platform, so I indulged myself by watching two of my favorites from that era. The first was Runaway with Tom Selleck, which is a goofy but earnest attempt to show what the world would be like with robots doing everything for us -- and what would happen when they're programmed to kill. This was a fun and energetic SF romp, and while i...

While out thrifting we noticed a new place across the street from our local church thrift, and went to check it out. They just opened their doors a month ago but were already well-stocked and busy. I found two big bags of fabric scraps for $1.00 each. I want to make some more patriotic table toppers and hot pads for this summer, and I love the idea of using up these scraps. I think if I combine them together I'll have enough to make the projects I want. Really love the antique look of these prints, too.

I needed some shorts for walking the dogs and as pajama bottoms, ass well as some fabric and a tray, so off to the local church thrift store we went. I gave myself a budget of $10.00, and started off with buying these three very nice shorts for $2.00, $2.00, and $3.00 respectively. One needs a patch, but otherwise they're like new. I've been using the lid of a tin to hold beads when I'm art quilting, so this very shallow tray (probably used for coins and keys originally) was perfect. Got it for 12 cents. I'm also thrifted more pink fabric for the Pink Power summer art quilt, and got one dark pink pillowcase and two pale pink pillowcases. $1.25 for all three. I got everything I needed and only spent $8.96. Here's my receipt. :)

On the last day of April my guy and I went to a bunch of nearby places to walk. Among them was Longwood, where I saw this lovely house. Originally built in 1888, it's been a private home, an antique shop and even a birthing center. Reiter Park in Longwood is a pretty place for kids to play. I fell in love with their little bamboo garden. Flowers blooming the butterfly garden at the park really cheered me up. Spring is here!

I'm writing this post on April 30th (yep, I'm eight weeks ahead on posts again) because of a growing problem that isn't helping anyone but people who want to make a lot of money by terrorizing the public: fear mongering. If you're not familiar with the term, it's deliberately alarming people with questionable claims in order to manipulate their behavior, primarily in this country to sell products and services. You've also been a victim of fear mongering if you bought something because the advertising made you afraid of what would happen if you didn't. When you need to sell anything from storm shutters to counter cleaners, frightening your targeted consumer is an excellent and effective marketing tool. You don't even have to be telling them the truth. Just scare the crap out of them and they'll hand over their money -- and people wonder why everyone's anxiety level is through the roof lately ( According to this , in 2024, 43% of adults sa...

Back in April I had a lot of fun working on my fourth crocheted throw of the year, but I ran into a snag: I didn't have enough of the Lion Brand Mandala orange/white/teal yarn to make a complete throw. I decided at first to use a one-pound Caron skein in a pretty light orange color to fill in the center of the quilt. Although the Caron and the Lion Brand yarns were the same weight, they were very different. The Caron was noticeably thicker, and had an unpleasant stiffness to it that might or might not be chemicals, which often don't wash out. I ended up yanking out a row of the Caron yarn I'd added and went hunting in my stash. This time I found some other Lion Brand Mandala yarn in an orange/white/pink ombre that could work, along with scrap balls of the same. The orange and white scraps worked much better than the Caron, as they matched the orange/white/teal yarn I'd been using in thickness and softness. I weeded out the pink sections and just us...

A bunch of lovely quilts showed up on the online thrift auction at the end of April, and I decided to bid on three lots (although I was pretty sure I'd be outbid on all of them.) The first one was this velvet crazy quilt -- in need of some repairs, but the colors are gorgeous, and I don't have a velvet crazy quilt in my collection. So I bid. The second lot offered these two quilts. Both look more modern, and the green and brown quilt has what looks like a Minky backing. I like them both, so I bid. The third lot was for this vintage blue and white quilt with what looks like hand quilting. There wasn't a full pic of the quilt, so it could be a disaster, but I had a good feeling about it, so I bid. As it turned out I didn't win any of them, because I don't get drawn into bidding wars or go over the maximum I'm willing to pay (in the case of these three lots, my max bid was $15.00.) The final winning bids were: Velvet crazy quilt: $47.99, two qui...

On my art quilter's bingo card I have pink only . Pink is my second least favorite color for reasons I won't get into because I'm done with all that. As I did last year with yellow I want to do something positive to help me get over my color angst, so I decided to make an all-pink art quilt this year. My idea was inspired by the École des Nouvelles Images' short film Code Rose , which really spoke to me as a Floridian, an artist and a veteran. Based on the video I came up with the above mockup. Basically I want to write a poem about my sentiments and shape it via embroidery it into the aircraft carrier, and then cover it with flamingos. It's pretty ambitious for me, but I also love the idea, so why not? I have ordered some new flamingo fabric from Spoonflower, and I'll update you all on the project when it arrives and I have a poem to share.

Back at the end of April I decided to rewatch Love Me Love My Voice , a super squeaky clean romance drama series that featured a lot of great singing and very little romance to speak of. I thought I might have been a little too harsh in my original review , but all the points I made are still true. I was very tired of super angsty conflict-filled dramas at that time, so it was like taking a nice little vacation. I think with second rewatches of dramas I'm always more forgiving, especially with those I had problems with the first time. I know what to expect, maybe, and can focus on the better details. This drama has a super sweet, very slow burn romance between the leads that is draggy and uber Edwardian, but it's restful to watch the characters fall in love by tiny degrees. They both did a great job with their parts, too. I'm still more inclined to say the secondary romance is better than the leads, but that's because of Hou Wen Yuan, who steals every scene he...

I was looking for a pic to kick off the start of the new season today when I came across this pic of our pups during their first month with us. It's hard to believe that these little guys joined our family four years ago now. They've brought us so much happiness -- just like this season. There is no better time of the year than this one, and I hope you enjoy it, too. Happy Summer!

Back in April we discovered a fox den on one side of our property had at least one baby kit inside. This is the second time foxes have dug a den near our house; the best thing to do is just leave them alone and not let the dogs off their leashes. I was able to get a few shots of this one kit by using my zoom on the camera while standing on the front porch. Baby is very cute. :)

My current day job is one that I've loved and deeply appreciated over the last seven years. I have so much creative control, I earn half of the profits my work generates and all I do is what I do best: write. Did I mention that I work with a brilliant editor who gets me, and a gifted cover artist and copy writer who always makes my books look fantastic? But like all good things, my job can't last forever. We're all seniors, you see, and someday me and my crew will wrap up the business and go off to retire, which will probably be about the time I won't have any reason to work for money any more. I should stop writing professionally then, of course. The question is, after 27 years of doing something pretty much daily, including weekends and holidays, can I do that? I think about the time to come when I don't have to get up and start my writing day with a four-hour work session, and end my day with another after dinner. I do have enough to do around the ho...

Back on March I posted about a problem I'm having with this man and his giant dog chasing after me and my pups on our morning walks. It happened again today, and to get away from him I had to go into the neighborhood next to ours, walk through two back yards and climb through a broken fence with Beau, who was terrified and resisting me almost the entire way. So now I'm going to document it every time it happens and send a letter to the HOA because at this point it's harrassment.

We went on another road trip to Brooksville to do the second half of the walking tour. If you'd like to see what we did, check out my pics here.

We spent Easter walking on Daytona Beach and hiking at Tomoka State Park. To see what we did, check out my album of pics here .

After finding this Caron one pound skein of lovely peach yarn in my thrifted lot I raided my stash for two cakes of Mandala in Pegasus, which matches it perfectly. For practice and hand therapy I'm going to make another Worth Street Afghan with this free pattern , but this time I'll use the yarn that was recommended for it plus the one pound skein. I'm not quite ready to do the vintage/recycled linen quilt I had planned (still a bit too nervous about the idea), so I'm going to use some color therapy and make a quilt from these thrifted green fat quarters. I considered doing another Yellow Brick road patchwork pattern, but I might go with a split rail fence like this one.

I finally got a chance to measure all the fabric in the mystery patchwork lot, and it turned out to be more than I imagined. Altogether I got three yards of this gorgeous mint condtion vintage gold metallic lightning/rainbow batik fabric, which I discovered now sells for $14.99 a yard. That's $44.97 retail for just those two pieces of fabric. The fleece and flannels here totalled 5-1/4 yards. The cheapest retail price I could find for the fleece was $10.77. Flannels run about $5.99 a yard, so those two would have cost me $19.47. Much of the fabric is quilt shop quality, like this lovely yard of Robert Kaufman Fusions #7, which presently retails for $12.99. I can't put a price on the patchwork. I'm just honored that it came my way, and I'll be happy to finish it. Adding up all the measurements, the total for the lot was 28.5 yards. I'm comfortable pricing all the fabric I received at $5.00 per yard resale (as indicated above, some are worth a lot ...

Yesterday's post made me think about the other side of ageing, which is really nice for me. While it comes with lots of aches, pains, limitations and worries, I like this part of my life better than any other that came before it. Yep, that's the truth. Why? #1: It's just me and my guy now, which means I don't have to take care of any other people anymore, which has been pretty much a daily obligation since I was a kid. I was also forced to be a caregiver in nearly every situation, like taking in, detoxing and putting through high school an annorexic, drug-addicted younger sister who no one else wanted to deal with, even our own mother. Not having to do things like that anymore? So nice. #2: I still work at the best job I've ever had -- my dream job -- and this particular job is the very best of all of those. It makes up for all the wretched jobs I had to work before I got my dream. Never having to work for jerks again? Wonderful. #3: I'...

One day back in April I had a memory blip that left me a little upset; I thought I'd accidentally thrown away my medic alert cuff and a vintage bracelet I thrifted and really like. I made myself dig through the garbage can, all the while kicking myself for being so careless. I actually didn't throw them away; I finally discovered the missing items next to my laptop in the sewing room. I had absolutely no idea when I put them there, and still don't. That upset me even more. To just heap more depression atop my worries, this was also the same day I had to say goodbye to our last living cat Jericho some years ago after losing his brother Jak a few months before then. It's part of ageing, and being a pet owner, but I got very depressed, so I decided I needed some junk therapy. I asked my guy to take me to The Old Packing House in Umatilla, my favorite place to find vintage fabrics, household items, and art pieces like these two painted wooden cats ($5.00 each) tha...

Back in March my diabetes doctor changed my medication and encouraged me to alter my diet and exercise more in order to bring down my A1C, which at the time tested out at a dismal 8.3 (normal is 5.8.) So for the next two months I dealt with the increased meds, stuck to my decidedly grim diet and added a lot more walking to my exercise regime. P.S., it's never fun to be a diabetic, but over the last couple of months I've really tried to keep a good attitude about it. Attitude isn't everything, but it helps a lot when you have to make significant changes while battling a disease like this. Yesterday I performed a home A1C test, and I'm currently at 6.5. That's pretty amazing results, even for me. If I can get it down another half point before I see the doctor in July I'd be over the moon, but I feel like I've already done great. Image credit: Image by Daniele Liberatori from Pixabay

Back in April my guy and I paid a visit to Brooksville, a historic town with gorgeous houses and amazing art. To see my photos of our day there, check out my album here .