Valerean

I really enjoyed the pearl wave painting I did, and it helped exercise my beleaguered right hand, so I invested in two more kits of similar design. This gold, pearl and rhinestood moon is really glitzy. I want to turn it into a topper for a gift box. I also got a bird painting for my home office. I completed the first one on the same day it arrived. Generally I can do these in one night. The hand-eye coordination is good practice, and I think the results are pretty.

I'm feeling very blah right now. This month has traditionally been hard on me; there are the birthdays of two loved ones now gone from my life that I have to get through, the pumpkin spice nonsense explodes, and Christmas things show up everywhere in a big way. As I write this it's been raining steadily for two days, so I can't really spend any significant time outdoors. I need inspiration and motivation, stat. I have been looking in my own photo archives to see the projects I most liked from past Octobers in hopes that it would jog something, and saw this thrifted crocheted baby blanket that I acquired unfinished with the yarn and hook the maker had been using, and I finished it. I loved that project. In 2024 I made a small quilt from a pound of fabric an Etsy seller chose and sent to me. That is a challenge I really enjoy and I've made several quilts that way. In 2023 I completed the second embroidered recycled linen quilt in some of my favorite ...

While my guy and I were out running errands and mall walking, we stopped by a big church thrift store two towns over and I found a couple of bargains, which the very nice lady working the register packed in this luxury leather goods sack. Very fancy. :) For $5.00 I was able to get a mint-condition cream tablecloth with silver and gold embroidery, which I plan to use for Thanksgiving. I may have to shorten it a few inches. It came with three matching cloth napkins. I also needed some blank cards, and I found a pack of 12 brand new with envelopes for $2.00. That's about sixteen cents each. Here's my receipt.

This may not look very impressive, but it's a slice of something I've been working on all year. Backstory: my favorite cake happens to be plain cheesecake, and when I was diagnosed with diabetes it was one of the things I had to give up. I suffered greatly! Ha. Actually I thought I could eventually come up with a sugarfree version, but that turned out to be quite a journey. The crust was the real issue for me. The cheesecake filling (a half-size version of the filling from this recipe by the Sugarfree Diva) was fine, but I tried five different variations of the almond flour crusts and disliked all of them. I cheated and used ground up graham crackers, but that wasn't sugarfree. Finally I thought, why not use sugarfree Oreos? That was the tweak I needed, and now I have a mini cheesecake I can indulge in without any guilt whatsoever. :) Sugarfree Oreo Crust Mini Cheesecake For the crust: 6 sugarfree Oreo cookies 1 tablespoon margarine or butter, melted For ...

My guy and I drove out to Brownwood in the Villages last weeked to walk the farmer's market, and on the way home stopped in at Wildwood Antique Mall so I could look for some things for October decor and projects. Of course I came home with a little haul. :) I found another ghostly framed picture at the same booth I bought one last year , and had to own it. I might have to do a whole wall with these eventually. This pumpkin brooch will be adorning the October tote for my calendar project. I also invested in a mystery bag of jewelry, and got a nice set of silver and pearl pieces. I considered cutting up this kitchen towel for its Halloween colors and using the pieces for my tote, but I think I'll keep it intact and use it in the kitchen this month. I want to make some prim stuffies for Halloween, but I forgot that I used up almost all of my quilt pieces for my 2025 calendar project, so I looked for and found some very cheap to bring home. This is ...

Recently I read some fiction in which a terribly abused character regarded death as a dark, quiet room. She doesn't die during the story, and in fact her life turns around in a huge way shortly after that. The imagery of death as she viewed it was what stayed with me. In a bright, loud world where life is perpetually coming at you (and constantly subjecting you to some form of abuse) death as a dark, quiet room seems quite appealing. Being finished handling all these exhausting people and their demands does, too. It's where all the pain stops. You're finally alone (and I do understand that longing more than I realized.) As a writer I've thought of death in a zillion ways, probably, but I keep coming back to crossing a finish line. The end of a life is that kind of end -- we're finished with this whole beautiful, disastrous mess of existence. I don't want to debate what happens after death, because (assuming consciousness survives) we'll never know...

It seems like the latest hurricane will slide by us without much fuss, but folks in the Big Bend and nothern Gulf aren't going to be so lucky. Please do visit the National Hurricane Center for the most accurate information on Hurricane Isaias, and if you're in the strike zone, please get ready and take care.

After making the pearl wave kit and having more fun (and success) than I'd imagined, I jumped on the Halloween diamond painting kit ($9.99). This is a children's kit, btw, but I am not ashamed of getting it for myself. Often children's kits are easier for my arthritic hands to manage than the huge, complicated adult versions. Plus it's Halloween themed, what's not to love? This picture wasn't difficult, as expected, and while it got a bit monotonous with the black drills I mostly enjoyed putting it together. It also came with its own frame, so once I finished and trimmed it to size I could frame it right away. It made me happy, which was the whole point. I definitely need to do more Halloween projects. :)

I decided to invest in a simpler diamond art kit to practice some hand-eye coordination. This kind of craft, like mosaic art and paint by number, is great dexterity therapy. At the time I bought the kit it was on sale for $5.59, so pretty cheap, too. This wave picture is only highlighted by the pearl drills in the kit, so it took only about an hour to complete. The trick for me was not dropping the pearls, at which I was fairly successful, and placing them where they were supposed to go, at which I did much better. I applied some glass coat mod podge over the pearls to hold them permanently in place, and this is how it came out the next morning. Quite happy with the results.

When summer ends every year it seems like the whole world gets excited. There's the arrival of Fall, which everyone loves for the dying leaves, the chilly temps that force them to wear too many clothes, the dubious charms of Pumpkin Spice everything, the holidays of too much indulgence and over-eating alongside family members they avoid for the rest of the year. At the very end of it Santa doesn't arrive but everyone spends too much money on gifts and pretends they're happy while lying about the whole Santa con to their kids. Fall is an awful season that brings out the worst in people, in my opinion. I'm not going to go along with everyone else and pretend I like it, either. The only reason I welcome Winter, a season that I also don't care for, is because it means Fall is over . It's easy to become depressed when you're trapped in a time of year filled with things that make you unhappy. The trick, I've learned, is to focus on the few things you ...

Since I was recently diagnosed with yet another health problem, it's become even more important for me to exercise as much as possible. I like walking with my guy by this lake near our home at sunet. No matter what happens, nature always manages to restore my calm. This time of year the sky tends to be spectacular, too. The new diagnosis did not surprise me. It's been a long, rough, and pretty ugly year, and the pressure on me has been constant, unrelenting (and at times overwhelming) for the last nine months. Of course there would be fallout from it, especially at my age. Happily that's over, and my life has returned to the quiet serenity and simplicity that I will forever onward appreciate. If I can spend the last three months of 2026 in peace, I will be grateful.

While we were in Cocoa Village I stopped by Hello Again Books , where for the first time I discovered their clearance section way in the back of the store. When it's "buy two, get four free" (which is their wonderful idea of clearance) you know I'm in trouble. Six of these came from that section. :) They also gave me this reusable bag for free. I love this bookstore. I'll have to show you the fourteen books I picked up in two batches; otherwise they won't fit on the table. I didn't need another cookbook, honestly. That said, I am not going to be eating red meat any longer due to the diciness of what it being dumped into stores these days, so I figured why not try more chicken recipes? The Louise Penny and Anna Stuart books are new editions from the front of the store, and I paid full price for those two. :) So I have fourteen more books to read, and there are thirteen weeks left in 2026. Can I get them read before 2027? We shall se...

Last month we took another day trip to Cocoa Village. If you'd like to walk around town with us, see what we had for lunch, and find out what a live demo of an old hospital looks like, check out my album of pics here .

I'm looking at the possible quilting and slow stitch projects I'd like to make this month, and mostly they will be practice pieces and/or something for the house like table hot pads, dog bowl mats, market bags and so forth. I also should make some holiday bags. For the backing and linings I'll be using up more of this thrifted fabric bundle. I've gone through two-thirds of the basket of vintage fabric making my September tote, and I'd like to use up what's left. For Halloween I'd like to make some primitive stuffies out of old quilt pieces. I quite like these two that I acquired this summer, and I can see them and a few more having a Halloween party on the mantle or the coffee table.

For my calendar project's October tote I wanted to do a Halloween theme, of course. I'm trying to stay away from black totes for this project (I've already done two) so I purchased an inexpensive orange bag from Amazon to serve as the foundation. For the elements and embellishments I went shopping over at The Fabric Path on Etsy, and saw a lot to love. I picked two bundles with a Halloween theme; this being the first. Here's the second. If there is enough fabric I may make a crazy quilt type tote, or I may just stitch the elements in layers slow-stitch style. I'll know more once everything arrives. Image credits: tote image from Amazon.com; the two slow stitch pack images from The Fabric Path's listings.

My first quilting project in September was a simple hand quilted mug rug. I crocheted a little pumpkin out of thrifted variegated yarn. I made the September tote for my calendar project out of vintage fabric strips. For the first time ever I did the sewing and quilting entirely on my sewing machine. I hand-stitched stamped fabric embellishments to this tea-stained muslin bag and replaced the drawstrings with hand-dyed ribbon. On the crochet blog I demonstrated three ways to make an inexpensive DIY Advent calendar. I crocheted this hexagon blanket, Happiness, because I needed some, and that's what it brought me. I made a clone of my favorite winter hat in gray, pink and silver yarn. With all of my caregiving duties this month I didn't get a lot done, but I'm happy with what I was able to accomplish -- and having these projects really helped me get through a terrible time. On to a hopefully happier October!