Valerean

The two quilts I thrifted at the online auction just arrived, so let's see if they're worth what I paid for them. I can already tell I got a steal -- they're both vibrant, look unused and are nicely made. Here's the smaller quilt, very nicely pieced and machine quilted. Love the colors and the message. The larger quilt has very nice colors. This looks like something someone put together to try a technique. I love it for summer. The backs of both quilts. They're unsigned, but I will treasure them all the same. Do you think they're worth the $9.99 I paid for them? Yep, me too.

After not winning any lots I've had some luck turn around at the online auction, and landed this lot of two small quilts for $9.99 with no competition. I also landed a lot of yarn that I think is worth at least $100.00 for $9.99. We shall soon see if I'm right. Finally, I thrifted this lot of cookbooks for $9.99, some of which I plan to give to my guy for Father's Day as he loves to grill. Stay tuned to the blog to see if my less than ten buck finds turn out to be worth it. Image credit: all the pics in this post came from the original auction listings at ShopGoodwill.com.

I decided to try a little beading and embroidery on the May tote for my calendar project, but while I did get some beads sewn on, the embroidery did not work out at all, so I removed what little I did. The problem is the age of the crazy quilt fragments, which are actively shattering. Every time I manipulate these patches they split and shred. Each bead I sewed on made the fabric fray, too, as you can see here. I was trying to preserve the fragments by incorporating them into the tote, but that was a mistake (I now understand why so many collectors simply frame them.) I'll only destroy the fragments even more by removing them, so I think I'm done with this tote. Once I sew it back together and line it I'll call it a day. Not the results I was hoping for, but now I know not to try and sew, embroider or bead century-old quilt pieces. :(

Although I'm finished with spring cleaning for the year, I decided to redo the walls in my home office, and hang up some new pieces. This is fun, and since I haven't changed the art on the walls in a couple of years I had a lot of new pieces to display. My art quilts and totes look nice, and although they're a bit unconventional, they make me happy -- and isn't that the point with a creative space?

The other day I was making ziti for my nephew (it's his most requested dinner) and prepping garlic toast and cucumbers on the side and in general cooking as usual when I turned on the oven to preheat while I was walking the dogs. Yes, I still multitask. Only when I got home from walking the first dog the oven was still preheating. I slid the ziti in the oven and walked the other dog, but when I got home the oven was still preheating. It wasn't coming up to temperature; in fact it barely got above 250F (we have a temp measuring gun that my guy used to confirm this.) I cook every day, and I use my stove every single day, so this was mildly distressing to me. I also take good care of the appliances and regularly clean them, so it wasn't from neglect. I finished dinner in the microwave (ziti turned out fine) and air fryer (ditto on the garlic toast) and let the oven cool enough for my guy to check the heating elements. The broiler was fine, but the baking element brok...

With much careful and strategic sewing I've applied all the crazy quilted fragments on the black canvas foundation for May's tote. I had to go very slowly because the pieces are literally shredding, shedding and splitting apart from being hand sewn to the backings. Not unusual for 126 year old quilt bits, but a bit hair raising. I intended to add some beading and trims to the pieces, but now I'm rethinking that. These fragments won't take much more handling without self-destructing, and the whole point of using them on a tote was preservation. I might do a bit of beading on one piece and see how it goes. Anyway, stay tuned to the blog to see how it works out.

Learning to Love is a Japanese romantic drama series that I probably shouldn't have watched, as I'm not a fan of the Japanese version of lounge lizards. Also, an average-looking teacher who is thirty-five falling for said extremely dramatic-looking lounge lizard when he's twenty-three (even thought he has a learning disability) seems like a stretch. Still, I wanted to see if they could pull it off, and for the most part they did. Ogawa Manami (Kimura Fumino) a high school teacher who still lives at home and is being pressured to get married by her overbearing father and dishrag of a mother, meets Kaoru (Murakami Raul Maito), a 23-year-old nightclub host who dropped out of school and cannot functionally read or write. This is at first to save one of her students from Kaoru's clutches, but the two gradually become friends and Manami tries to teach him how to read and write so he can improve his life and get out of the host business. It goes about how you'd exp...

Because I have an urge to paint again I put in a bid on this lot of art supplies. Alas, I was quickly outbid and the lot went to the winner for $34.00. This 20 journal lot I bid on was to cover and make gifts. In the last few hours another bid came in, and they got it for $11.00. This little quilt has the most charming primitive applique work, and I would have loved to add it to my collection. Unfortunately I was quickly outbid, and war ensued, and the winner got it for a whopping $76.00. As always not winning any of the lots isn't a problem; I'd rather stick to my maximum than overpay. There's always a next time, too.

One of my creative pleasures is using a card deck for writing inspiration. Back in the day I reviewed quite a few that were created for just such a purpose, and even gave a talk about how to use them to get ideas for stories at a conference. I was intrigued when I saw the In Dreams storytelling card deck by Jamie Thul and Mike Berg on Amazon, especially as it was billed as "slightly surreal". I decided to invest in a deck to see how it worked. The deck comes in a gorgeous case, and has a little booklet of instructions on how to use the cards. There are 36 prompt cards and 18 event cards. You draw a total of eight prompt cards to determine the main character of your idea, creating them out of the prompts in the booklet and on the prompt cards. My character draw produced this: "I am from far away, and am lost, and before this dream ends I must return to another dreamer." You then draw up to 2 to 4 prompt cards to generate an encounter, which is a...

My guy took me to Cocoa Village again to visit -- here are my pics from that day .

After brooding for a week about the May tote for my calendar project, I got started by disassembling the black canvas bag I'm using as the foundation. I then spread it out on my cutting mat and arranged the vintage embroidered crazy quilt fragments and the heron block on it until I got the look I wanted. This will be the front side. This will be the back (I may rearrange the fragments one more time.) To give you an idea of how I'm going to put this tote together, here's a box top I embellished with a damaged vintage crazy quilt piece. I created the top by sewing the piece to some backing and batting, covered the patchwork damage with some lace, added embroidery to the places where the original needlework had worn away, and then quilted it with beads and added an old dragonfly brooch.

Although I'd never recommend Val McDermid for the faint of heart, the author is one of the best crime fiction writers on the market. It was a no brainer to pick up A Distant Echo , and while it's become a bit dated since its publication twenty-two years ago, it still kept me absorbed right up to the end. The novel is told in two timelines. First 1978, when the body of a young barmaid is discovered by four uni students in a Scottish cemetery. The only suspects in her brutal murder end up being the four boys who found her, and they all suffer greatly because of the incompetence of the police and the viciousness of the barmaid's brothers. All of them are changed forever by the incident. No one is ever charged with the murder. The second timeline is 25 years later, when the murder is reopened as a cold case. The four uni students are now grown men with careers and families; one has a pregnant wife. When two of them are murdered, it seems like the past has finally cau...

I want to say upfront that watching the Chinese historical romance drama Pursuit of Jade can become very addicting, and by the time you reach the final episode you'll wonder if you just spent a couple of years in the past watching all the fascinating characters play out their equally absorbing storylines. This series has become notorious for several reasons, including one of the most justifiably admired, show-stealing antagonists ever (my hat is off to Deng Kai, the actor who played the role, but we'll get to him shortly.) This story sprawls in different directions, but it basically follows the romance between Fan Changyu (Tian Xiwei), a female pig butcher with super human strength, and Xie Zheng,(Zhang Linghe), a wounded warrior she finds in the snow. Yes, I know, that doesn't sound appetizing, but in reality it's brilliant. Changyu believes her guy is simply an ordinary soldier who needs her help to recover and survive; Xie Zheng is in fact the Marquis of Wu...

This is one of my favorite purses, whichj developed a big shreddy hole in the back side from (I assume) rubbing against things as I've used it. It's a Vera Bradley I thrifted in a huge lot last year , so I paid only about $1.47 for it. I also certainly have enough purses to just get another from my Vera stash and use it, which I did. I really like this purse, though, so I decided to repair it, launder it and use it again. Since I didn't have any scraps that match the fabric of the purse, I went with a white dotted dark blue patch that goes fine with the floral print. I pinned down the patch in a rectangle and sewed it over the hole, reinforcing the edges with a blind stitch to give it extra strength. Here's the finished mend. Holes and fraying are common problems with vintage Vera Bradley products, as the fabric and thread used to make them is extremely thin and cheap. This purse was in new condition when I began using it back seven months ago. ...

For the May edition of my calendar tote project I decided to use a vintage embroidered crazy quilt patch I've been saving for a while. I'd like to do a theme of vintage embroidery with a black tote. Ordinary I avoid black, as it tends to be depressing, but this time it feels right. I did test the patch against a cream colored cutter quilt piece and while it does bring out the bird a little better I prefer how it looks with the black. I also got out my basket of vintage crazy quilt pieces to hunt through and see if there are some smaller bits of embroidery work I can incorporate. All of these came to me as cutter pieces, which kind of breaks my heart, but crazy quilts are well known to disintegrate, especially because of the types of dyes and the thin silks used during this era, so I feel lucky to have them anyway. The granny square I crocheted in Gumdrop silk yarn last month doesn't quite work with my idea. Neither do these blocks. These defi...

My guy and I saw this local fisherman when we went on a hike by one of the local lakes last week. If you'd like to see what else we did, check out my album of pics here .

A few famous authors who were my peers back in the day have been announcing their retirement lately; I won't name names because I don't want to attract their fan bases here. Let me just say that I completely understand what it is to cope with increasing mental and physical limits due to age and infirmity, and how hard a hit the ego takes because of that. They have my sincere sympathy. I don't have a retirement date set for myself just yet. It's getting closer, but I have not noticed any diminished capability on my part other than it takes me a little longer to get things done. I asked for and was given more time this year to work on my current big project for the day job. My editor and I have both acknowledged that we're in the winding down stage of the career, not that it matters when you're a writer for hire. No one knows that I'm the one writing these projects, so no one will miss the real me when I hang it up. Kind of nice that way. After writ...

On the thrifting front I'm doing a little at the online auction. I have an urge to paint again (I don't know why; I'm terrible at it), but all the art supplies I had are either dried up or too old to use, so I put in a bid on this lot of supplies. There are actually 20 journals in this lot, which I plan to make covers for, embellish and then give as gifts. This little quilt has the most charming primitive applique work I've seen in a while, and I'd love to add it to my collection. Stay tuned to the blog to see if I win any or all of these.