What we are reading in 2015-2016

Last year we swung the schedule around a little bit.  We still meet the second Tuesday, nine months of the ear (no July, no August & no December), but we choose the next books the month before the last month before the two months we don't meet.  Easy, right?

Anyway, this is what's up:

October 2015: Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

November 2015: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey

January 2016: The Golden Books Family Treasury of Poetry selected etc. by Louis Untermeyer

February 2016: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

March 2016: The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

April 2016: Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen

May 2016: Emma: A Modern Retelling by Alexander McCall Smith

June 2016: Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll

September 2016: Consider the Fork: How Technology Transforms the Way We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson

We aim for a mix of classics/contemporary, fiction/non-fiction, long/short/in-between & I hope for a wildcard: a play, poetry, a graphic novel.  Not every year hits every note, but every year has variety which is the goal. 

We still have June & September of the current year to wrap up.  & I have updated the Goodreads Kitchen Table Book Club shelf to reflect everything we have read in the past -wow! that many!- years. 

Marybeth's bookshelf: kitchen-table-book-club

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

by Mary Ann Shaffer

tagged: kitchen-table-book-club

A Dirty Job

by Christopher Moore

tagged: kitchen-table-book-club

The Egyptologist

by Arthur Phillips

tagged: kitchen-table-book-club

Pink Slip

by Rita Ciresi

Maybe it was growing up in CT, the same time as the narrator, knowing Choo-choo & Railroad Salvage, remembering when AIDS wasn't even called AIDS yet, but I just fell into this book.

tagged: kitchen-table-book-club

The Eyre Affair

by Jasper Fforde

tagged: kitchen-table-book-club

2014 so far

I keep starting posts & not finishing them in a timely way,  & then they go past their due date (like my Blogger's Quilt Festival post complete with pictures.  Linky closed on Friday.  WHOOPS!).   Also, I don't exactly hate but am less interested in other peoples' posts about why they haven't been posting.  So I thought instead I would just catch up, the big & the small, & maybe get back into the swing of things now that the days are getting shorter & there is just as much as there ever was to fill them.  So here it is, in no particular order:

I met my Goodreads reading quota for 2014 just last week.  Yes, It's a small thing but I am still pleased.  & I am of course aware that some of the books on the list are barely worthy of counting (but I LIKE picture books).  A few highlights- I am almost up to date on Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series.  I will say Broken Harbor was not a favorite but Faithful Place was so good that I plan to continue.  Jonathan Tropper continues to make it work, as far as I'm concerned & I discovered Leanne Shapton (Important Artifacts is my big book recommendation of the year.  Turns out no one who has asked for a book recommendation from me has not gotten this title at the top of the list; even people who asked months ago have received revised lists putting this on at the top.  It is a thing of beauty).  On the other hand Lauren Hillenbrand's Unbroken was just kind of meh for me.  I know there are people who thought it was fan-f*cking-tastic, but I am not one of them.

I have become a baby quilt making machine  There will be AT LEAST three births in one 4 month period (that ends in FEB 2015, unless it doesn't) & that is just the tail end, unless it isn't.  In days gone by I tended to make quilts in pairs or triples.  The baby quilt I prefer (Modern Quilt Studio's Once Upon a Time from their book The Modern Quilt Workshop) which lends itself to this as you can make lots & lots of connecting blocks & be 1/2-way done with one when you are done-done with the other.  Trust me, it makes sense & it does NOT make two of the same quilt.  Generally I make a set of girls quilts, a set of boys quilts &/or a set of gender neutral quilts (that's right, pink, blue & green-sue me).  I try to mix up the sets so I use up the little I-SPY images & avoid duplicate looking quilts.  But so far, for more than two years it has been ALL GIRLS.  & the next one is ALSO a girl.  I have a closet full of blue & green (& yellow & purple) baby quilts & parents who are decorating in pink-stravaganza.  Yes, at some point someone is going to have a surprise baby boy & I am going to look like a genius but until then I am swimming in pink.

Cowgirl had a baby.  Cowgirl had a baby GIRL!!!  No quilt for her, but I am pleased nonetheless. Because Hattie (Hathor, Hattie for short) arrived just a couple weeks before the cold weather we are leaving mama & baby be for longer than usual & plan to start a milking schedule by the end of this month.

My bathroom is still is not working properly. I don't want to talk about it. 

The banana trees went ballistic this year. We cut two more blooms down yesterday (cold snap last light) & they are ripening on the kitchen counter. 

I am up to (down to) a 15 minute mile, which I can maintain for.....two miles. Hey, it's no Paul Ryan speed but still I am pleased.  On Friday I started covering four miles total (run a mile, walk a minute, run a mile, like that) & I hope to keep it up even in the cold weather.  If it seems like I took an absurd amount of time to get here, you are right.  In late 2013 I had a bone density blip & it was suggested that any impact anything would not be a good idea.  For a while.  & I only started trying to run again this past August.  In the meantime, I have been BollyBlasting my way to...nowhere actually.  Still fun, though. 

Yes, I'm sure there has been more, but this is all I can remember.  Or all I care about.  More likely this is all that overlaps in a Venn diagram of things I can remember & things I care about. 

Blubber & Clover

Every year around this time, I fold a book I might otherwise not read (or reread) into the pile in honor of Banned Books Week.  This year, I read (listened to) Blubber.  & yes, I know I has probably never been banned although it is often challenged.  What caught my eye was WHY it is so often suggested to be inappropriate for school libraries.

The book is, to be brief, about bullying.  & brace yourself:  the bullies are never really punished.  Even better (or worse) when the bullied have a chance to bully back, do they...you bet!  & the problem with this is it sends the wrong message.  Apparently.  Because that is of course in the eye of the beholder.  Since the narrator is first person, anyone reading (listening!) has ringside seats in her experiences, injustices, etc.  there are very few adult-originated repercussions, but there is plenty of lesson to go around, if that is what you think every book on every school library shelf should be about.  SIDEBAR// this circuitous reasoning kind of made me laugh:  I have a problem with this book, therefore it should not be available to anyone.  That's right, I am bullying you out of access to a book about bullying because the bullies are inadequate punished.  Now everyone try & think of a way to punish THIS bully.

So I read Blubber.  Listened to, I listened to Blubber.  It was not familiar so I doubt I had encountered it before.  Which brings me to the other book I read during banned books month: Clover.  I had never read Clover either (it was published in 1991 & not that I didn't read children's books in my 20s, I was not exactly the demographic) although I had heard of the movie-mostly because of the cast.

Here is the thing about Clover:  it is a gentle, quiet book about a death immediately following a wedding.  A black man marries a white woman that his daughter, Clover, is none to sure about & then he dies in a car accident.  Everything that was changing, changes again.  I am not going to tell you anything else, read it don't read it, whichever you like. 

But here is the funny thing:  I looked & looked & looked & could find no where that Clover was ever challenged.  Maybe we are getting better after all. 

& then it was June

This past weekend, half in May, half in June was particularly crazy here.  Being the last Saturday of the month, there was a Quilt Block Swap group deadline.  Alas, in keeping with the way the group has been going lately, two of the six sets where not here on time (one is en route the other is MIA & I promise no more bitching about that here), so that swap still has not happened.  Being the first of the month, we had all that first of the month stuff, & lastly being the first of JUNE, A is up to his eyeballs as the last month of the university's fiscal year goes flying by.

In bigger backyard news, we finally torched the enormous burn pile that had been sitting in the pasture for well over a year.  While I kept an eye on the fire & gathered down limbs from around the pasture, A moved another burn pile of roughly the same size & added it.  I stopped counting at five pick-uploads (mostly because at that point A said there were at least three more loads & then three or more loads later I asked if we were close to done & he said nope, three more at least).  It was a long day.  As a side bar, though, if anyone wants ash for their garden call me.  I am moving some to my compost pile & on to the gardens themselves but there is PLENTY.  With all the rain we are having, though, in another week two or so it will all be washed into the ground.

That was days ago & I am still sore.  Also, it turns out what I thought was a cluster of fire ant bites on my foot is shaping up more like a place where hot ash landed on bare skin.  Yes, it was so hot that a dime sized piece of burning ash did not grab my attention; I guess these things are relative right up until they go too far.

Generally, I try to do garden & yard work before noon or after 5pm.  If it isn't too hot -& it usually is- it is brutally humid.  So in the middle of the day, I go inside & do...whatever.  & whatever I do, I usually do with an audio book going which brings me to:  June is Audio Book Month.

It is astonishing I did not now this before, although I suppose it is possible 2014 is the first year of this...event.  Nope, I just checked, it dates back at least to 2011.  Oh well.   It's not like knowing would have changed the way I spent the month.  As far as I am concerned every month is audio book month.  Sitting in my audiobook pile right now:  The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier, Welcome to Paradise by Laurence Shames & the one I have been waiting for Skin Game by Jim Butcher. 

Emperor Constantine

What can I say, Constantine is a favorite of mine. There are so many wonderful quirky things about him & then he is a saint & then he is an emperor. Really, what's not to love? You can look up all the garden variety stuff in any world history, so let me go straight to the good bits:

Constantine had several children & named most of them for himself (except one daughter he named Helena, for his mother & another son called Crispus). Three of his sons were called Constatine, Constantius & Constans. He even named a daughter Constantina. For a man named Caesar Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus, son of Constantius Chlorus this shows a shocking lack of imagination. Or incredible self promotion. Ever since I learned this, I picture Constantine looking a lot like George Foreman. In a toga.

"Scholars debate" when he actually converted to christianity. His mother had converted many years before her death, but he held on to (& took advantage of) his pagan title until the day he died. I actually think you can make an solid argument for his being an atheist or at a minimum a major hedger of bets. While they debate, scholars like to point to the many protections he gave chirtians, certainly not the norm. Except his mother was a christian & even an emperor can have a soft spot for his mother. Finally, there is no disputing that the christians were not singled out for special treatment. He had a remarkably even hand when it came to religious tolerance. The better to tax you with, my dears.

& that was Constantine's real claim to fame. Put everyone in touch with everyone else, let them barter, let them trade & take your percentage off the top. He is looking more & more like George Foreman to you, too now, right. 

Anyhow today is Constantine's feast day.  The one I mean anyhow.  Not the Constantines that came before & after.  Not to be confused with the saints Constantius (yep more than one).  There are scores of better looks at his life than this one.  My brother recommends John Julius Norwich's Byzantium in three easy volumes.  Our boy appears mostly in the first--but he is felt all the way through.  I instead give you this. 

The best plant sale of the year

This past Saturday was the local IFAS extension/Master Gardener's plant sale.  & it was packed.  they open at 8am & at &7:45 I was waiting in a looooooong line of traffic to make the turn into the IFAS extension office building lot.  I have no idea if they opened early because by the time I got parked & out of the car it was after 8. 

I had planned to take pictures even though my camera was on a trip to Miami (next week it goes to Paris without me!); I have been learning the camera on my phone which s actually a nice one but my hands were full almost immediately.  I had brought sturdy bags which enabled m to carry plenty of plants but next year I am bringing a wagon!

I came home with one calendula which I immediately repotted (it had two unopened blooms & I was hoping to save one of them) & one cut-leaf coneflower.  I actually went hoping to find one of the varieties of purple coneflower but they were gone by the time I made it to the perennials section.  What I did find was a different variety of the rain lilies I am already crazy about.  I also go two lavender plants because I never can resist them & four roses: two Belinda's Dream & two Louis Philippe.  I forked over a whopping $26.  Consider if you will that roses this size cost >$15 a the local discount rose garden.  Yes I am delighted with my haul but that's not all.

The famously difficult to find UF campus IFAS bookstore had a booth where I could have easily dropped $100.  What I did buy was a book on native tree identification, an updated poisonous pasture plants guide & a small but thorough booklet on fruit plant propagation with a special focus on different kinds of grafting.  Yee-ha!

On the whole this event seemed to go smoothly.   There were two unruly people, both of them elderly men who were probably themselves overwhelmed, not that that is an excuse.  Still two cranks in a crowd of I don't know how many seems like almost nothing.  There was also a snafu as I was checking out; they kept coming up with a different plant count & I nixed it each time; all of their numbers added up to an even number & I knew I had nine plants.  In the end it was quite the headache to recreate the prices of what I had (they talked about going back to look but I knew the lavenders & one of the roses were already gone).  As I walked away from the table I could not help but notice the older lady responsible for pulling the color stakes used as price tags still had some of the tags from my plants in one hand when she started pulling them for the next sale.  Then she put them on the table & began to pile all the stakes  together.  The woman who was working with her caught my eye, smiled & shrugged.  I can see how the crowd of people no matter how happy to be there could easily fluster a person who would rather be gardening.

In all the sale runs for five hours (four actually but there are still people there even as the are wrapping up) & it is just once a year.  I have heard they made over $15K for the local Master Gardener program.  A good day.

What we are reading for the next year or so

Last night was our annual book club book selection.  We meet monthly most of the year but take two months off over the summer & the month of December so we are usually looking for nine titles with a good mix of fiction/non-fiction, classics/fluff (or that brass ring:  classic fluff).

This year we had no real wildcards (poems or collections or plays) but B****** & I had both heard an NPR program about a novel about RLStevenson & I have suggested Treasure Island before as a quick-read.  Merging them together seemed natural. 
Our other choices came from all over the place.  Old favorites of non-members (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), recently deceased authors in the news (The Snow Leopard), recently banned books in the news (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian).  It is not unusual for books to be proposed by different people in different years (The Light Between Oceans).  One in particular made me laugh because it was proposed by another member but until I was reading the blurb I had completely forgotten I had read it..& loved it (I will let you guess which one). 

Without further ado here are the next books.  Yes we choose through September 2015; that whole taking the summer off thing means we have been facing our big book almost immediately & we all thought maybe we would like to work up to that one instead.

Sept 2014:  Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand
October 2014:  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
November 2014:  The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
January 2015:  Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
February 2015:  The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
March 2015:  The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman 
April 2015:  Under the Wide & Starry Sky by Nancy Horan AND Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
May 2015:  Art Thief by Noah Charney
June 2015:  Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Sept 2015:  The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman

If you are interested you can take a wander through current & previous selections on
my kitchen-table-book-club shelf:

What would Donald do?

Donald Sinclair was one of the more beloved characters in 20th century literature.  His business partner wrote a series of short stories about his own life, which was closely entwined with that of Sinclair.  Those stories became books, the books became a movie & the movie grew to become one of the most successful book2television adaptations, well, ever.

& one of the highlights of the books & the programs was the author's interactions with Sinclair himself.  The man was famously eccentric & generous & much beloved.  Sinclair was so insulted he considered this characterization the biggest test of their friendship, but he did manage to put it behind him insisting that the writing was exaggerated.  Others however, including the author's son (who later joined the same firm, so in addition to knowing Sinclair all of his life, he was able to interact with Sinclair much as his father had), said that the character was toned down because Sinclair was so extreme he would not have been believable.  In a different sort of twist, Sinclair became good friends with the actor who portrayed him, despite his belief that the portrayal was over the top. 

Sinclair was born today in 1911.  Like I said, he had a career, was made famous by his business partner's literary portrayal of him, but other wise lived if not a quiet ordinary life, certainly a life without fanfare.  His first wife died, something not particular well known as it happened before his famous partnership, but he & his second wife were married for more than 50 years.   He tried to become a pilot in World War II, but through a series of...you know what, it doesn't really matter why, he never did.  Because his profession in private life was considered vital to the stability of the country, he was returned home without seeing combat. 

His younger brother, also a "character" died about four years before Sinclair did, then that same business partner died & less than four months later his wife died.  Two weeks after that, Donald Sinclair deliberately overdosed.  He was 84 years old. 

What did Donald do?  He gave us the gift of himself, warts & all.  We know him as Siegfried Farnon. 

52 Photos Project: How I Start My Day

How I start my day has gone through a few changes in the past day or so (& will change back in another cycle, I hope).   It is Spring Break here, which makes no difference really except that A can travel without classes being disrupted.  Last night was the first night he was gone & I tried to have a normal evening, but the dogs kept getting up & barking every time a car drove by & around 3am I moved back out to the couch (A usually gets up around 4:30/5 so they would have been going nuts for breakfast soon enough). 

 

When I woke back up this morning, this was what greeted me.  Also my neck hurt, mostly because in addition to moving out to the couch, I put on headphones to listen to a book which I had found very funny before but it deals with what happens after a much loved wife dies unexpectedly in a plane crash.  & there you have the other reason I wasn't sleeping so well.  What was witty & heartfelt before my husband got on a plane has lost some of its humor.  The book is How To Talk To A Widower so it is not like I had any excuse for not knowing what it was about. 

In the old days, I did not exactly look forward to his leaving, I did enjoy thing that would make him crazy.  Cereal for dinner, late night quilting, hat kind of thing.  Now I want him to come home & not just so I can get some sleep. 

 

This photo is a bit deceptive.  It was taken with no flash & a long-ish exposure.  Lilly didn't move, I didn't move; it looks like a bright sunny day but it was really quite dark.  The sun was up & we were in a room with windows across three walls but the rain was pounding down.  She was not any more anxious to get out there than I was, but it had to be done.  This how we both started our day: completely frozen hoping no one else noticed we were awake & then racing to make it out into the yard to pee before the other dogs jumped on us.  Her, not me; peeing in the yard is not one of the things I enjoy when my husband goes out of town.  

Wish list (if you could just direct me...)

I am more than a little bit obsessed with Thursday Next.  I have been contemplating a tattoo à la hers from The Woman Who Died A Lot (I would tell you what it is but that would be a spoiler), in the not so secret hope that after I die, whichever med student gets my cadaver (did I skip that bit?  Sorry--after minimal consideration & honestly it is not like we have progeny, me & A both thought we would leave our leftovers to the med school)...which ever med student gets my cadaver might just think I WAS Thursday Next.  Wow, what a great sentence that was! 

In the interest of obsession mash-up (because one good obsession deserves another), I have been quietly acquiring Thursday Next-ish themed fabrics & patterns to make a Thursday Next quilt for myself.  I think the reality that there is no such fabric line makes this more fun (so please, Benartex, Lakehouse & Timeless Treasures et al, I honestly would rather do this without direct input from you; I realize Spoonflower may already have such a collection -they have the Dr. Who & tardis toile, after all- but I am confident they are not trying to lock it down).  Some of the stuff I have had for awhile, yards of rather regency looking characters-ideal to represent that book that disguises JurisFiction HQ for example.  I also bought the Wuthering Heights FQs when they were on clearance way back when & we can pretend it is really Jane Eyre, right?  & there are book fabrics & clock fabrics almost everywhere once you start looking.  I don't need to tell you that nursery crime, erm, I mean Nursery Rhyme fabric abounds.  I even have some rather off-beat generic saint-sort-of fabric that I am happy to call Saint Zvlkx.  Maps of the Crimea present their own challenge, naturally, but I think I can get around that one.  Maybe.  Cheese fabrics abound (who knew?).

But I am running into a wall with a few things & so I am asking:

Has anyone seen any dodo fabric?  What about a line drawing of a dodo for maybe a redwork design?  I have looked through my Dover clip art for same, but all the drawings are more detailed than I can manage.  I am toying with appliqueing a dodo, but that seems like it's own project & maybe not part of this one.

Ditto Porsche line drawings.  I realize I may just have to trace one (I am NEVER gong to find the correct make & model with the specific colors so I have given up on that), but I thought I would ask.

Neanderthals are shockingly neglected in all handwork resources.  There is really nothing more to say on that. 

So if anyone has any thoughts, I would appreciate the feedback, either in comments or message me or whatever.  Also, & I realize the answer is probably "oh hell NO", does anyone else want in...?

Colette v Colette

I remember the first time I saw the movie Gigi, it was at the Prosser Public Library where they used to have a regular Friday night movie (also the first place I saw The Graduate- you just know they don't do this anymore).  I was primed to love this movie for all the usual reasons but also because me & my brothers were quite sure the lyrics to the most famous song began with "Thank Kevin for little girls" & one of use was Kevin!  So thrilling. 

For those of you wondering why I am talking about this is, Gigi (& several other novellas & short stories- run, run to your public library) was written by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette & her connection to today is....extremely tenuous.  Back to Gigi for just a moment:  it is a fairy tale:  young girl in poverty etc. etc. marries the prince & lives happily ever after (I refuse to apologize for the spoiler, if you don't know how Gigi ends, you really need to get out more). 

But today's Colette is an entirely different person...& personage.  Saint Colette was born in 1381, in Corbin, France (a place that is not Googleable or Bingable so either it was spelled wrong, renamed or has Brigadoon-type qualities, guess which story I prefer).  After a while she joined the Poor Claires & began reforming, but before that she was an anchoress.  When I first learned about these women, I was fascinated & I still pretty much stop every time I hear about one.

An anchoress would wall herself into a room with no egress (if ever there was a time for the word "egress" I believe this is it)....with no egress except a window looking into a church.

I have been told I have the soul of an accountant.  I don't think it was meant to be a compliment & my response at the time was I don't have the soul of anything, there is no such thing as a soul which I am sure the other guy thought pretty much proved his point.  But I knew what he meant.  While I like a good yarn as much as anyone, it takes me mere moments to get bogged down in the day-to-dayness of just about anything.  Upon hearing of an anchoress, my first thought was how did she go to the bathroom, but our saint lived in a day of chamber pots so that was a no brainer.  More problematic was how she managed to produce anything to fill a chamber pot.  I picture the priest holding mass while altar boys chuck loaves of bread through the window behind him.  Then there is the whole how did she get in there?  How did she get out (she left the room after four years)?  I cannot be alone in starting to wonder if this is how the whole Rapunzel thing got started. 

Now for the Rapunzel detour:  the Rapunzel story we know is almost certainly a German rip-off of a French story written by an actual known person, a woman as it happens:  Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force.  Mademoiselle de la Force lived...quite the life & was well known in her day.  More than a hundred years later, her stories were still being published in France under her name & then the Grimm Brothers sanitized it & it caught on everywhere else.  Yes, yes de la Force ripped the story off from the legend of Saint Barbara (patroness of among other things firefighters & people who will die a sudden death--what?!?!?!), but she spiced it up plenty. 

So here we are at the other Colette.  She wrote, famously or infamously, under what I was taught was a pseudonym but turned out to be her last name, one of them anyhow.  In fairness, the first stories WERE published under her husband-at-the-time's pen name but no one seems to have ever been confused about who really wrote them.  It seems he often published other writers' works as his own.  This doesn't make it not-plagiarism but does make it maybe a norm for the time. 

Colette was described as a victim of her machinating husband/publisher who took all the credit & kept all the money.  This story also had a Rapunzel ring to it, but it turns out she had a pretty good time herself.  She died in 1954 & it is clear everyone knew who she was.  She had a state funeral after all, having been much lauded while alive for all kinds of artsy & patriotic stuff.  The French people adored her, the catholic church not so much; they refused rites because of her divorces.  Apparently you can hide Jews from Nazis, etc but get two or three little divorces...

To recap:  one Colette lived in a room with a window into a church & the other Colette lived large.  One went on to a life of deprivation & the other did NOT.  That's all I've got.  Except today's word: machination.  & Saint Colette's patronages:  women who are trying to get pregnant, expectant mothers & sick children.  The other Colette was by all accounts, including her own, a disinterested mother.

Let them eat cake

The week before this week kind of sucked.  There was stupidity from multiple sources re: the quilt block swap group (I will spare you any more detail, I promise), a gentle but building panic from newly crafted adults just learning they are average when 6 months ago they were the smartest people they knew (for them this is one of the most difficult things that will ever happen, for us it is the week before midterms) & what has come to be run-of-the-mill behavior from members of our extended family (still doesn't make it fun, just means the bar is set really, really low...& we still have to lower it occasionally).  Like I said:  sucked.

& by last Sunday I had kind of had it.  I was so deflated I blew off all my Sunday stuff.  I didn't go to my usual house of worship (the library).  I drank my coffee without cream or sweetener because I could not face the grocery store.  I didn't get gas (yes, I get gas just once a week) or even leave the house for any reason except to do the bare minimum of outside chores, which mostly means feeding & watering.  I just sat & stared at the tv...which was not even on.  You read that right.  In my defense it is a flat screen & it nicely reflects the bird feeders so it is the same thing as looking out the window, except when I move the birds cannot see it. 

At some point, I picked up one of the books that had been recommended & I had dutifully checked out (yes, I go to the library more than once a week).  It changed my whole day.  The book is All Cakes Considered by Melissa Gray.  I more or less just planned to look at the pictures, but within the first dozen pages I started rattling around the cupboards.  I didn't own a tube pan (I do now!), so I followed the directions (I usually do, actually.  Mostly.  Sometimes) & halved the recipe & the cooking time & squeaked by with my 4-mini-loaf pan.

Since I was in the kitchen anyhow, I mixed up a batch of unseasoned bread crumbs & Turkish blend, set some chicken breast strips to effectively marinate in a two beaten eggs & boiled & mashed the potatoes that had been sitting on the counter since...I'm actually not sure when.  The timing worked so the potatoes could sit in a warm oven after the cake came out.  By the time the first loaf pan was empty, it was time for dinner.

You might think that two people who had just shoveled down 1/8th of a pound cake could not then put away breaded & fried (in very little oil, I swear) chicken, A LOT of mashed potatoes with the rest of the sour cream (most of it went into the cake) & steamed pole beans (we aren't savages) but you would be wrong.  One of even had seconds on the mashed potatoes (OKay, it was me).  Then we had more cake.  We would have had all the cake but I put away the smallest loaf (it came out the prettiest, honest) to take to W*****. 

A has been walking around since saying it is the best angel food cake he has ever had.  To clarify, it wasn't an angel food cake, it was a pound cake, the first recipe in the book.  To further clarify, he spent a certain portion of his childhood in the bakery/restaurant his uncle managed for the Selinger family for decades.  In short, he has an intimate familiarity with really good cakes & we have the dental bills to prove it, he just doesn't always pull the right word.

On Monday, I bought a tube cake pan.  & my own copy of All Cakes Considered. 

52 Photos Project: My Reflection

I almost sat out this week on 52 Photos Project, the prompt being My Reflection.  I have limited patience with what I think of as naval gazing (I know I am in the vast minority thinking that Eat, Pray, Love & that ilk are overrated.  I feel mean saying it, but on the other hand if a person is going to put this monologue out there, some dissension is to be expected. 

We are reading Traveling With Pomegranates for bookclub this month & I am having the same kind of problems (I am sorry you are depressed when you know you have so much to live for & feel guilty & ashamed about being depressed but I am just not all that interested).  My attitude towards introspection probably is not helping here.  I have been accused of being MASCULINE in my views about those things (that's right I said it); I sort of wonder if depression & fear & boredom are all different approaches to the same paralyzing state of mind & a certain amount of "snap out of it" is required on the part of the beholder.

Yea, yea depression is chemical & needs to be dealt with like a disease, because t is a disease.  But there is almost no cure of any disease that is aided by watching the world go by & not getting involved (OKay, maybe addiction, but I honestly cannot think of any other right now & I think we can agree getting involved with the world & avoiding what you are addicted to is what addiction cures are all about). 

Next I am bogged down with the whole not getting as much out of it as you might if you were not depressed being a first world problem.  Maybe this book will dissolve my prejudices....but not so far.  My other lack of enthusiasm re: My Reflection is I have been trying not to stage anything, photographically & let each 52 Photos Project photo happen in the now (yep, I said that too).  There is no natural occurring moment now when I might take a picture of myself (my passport is unused but up-to-date).  I barely look at myself (no this is not self loathing, I'm just busy). 

When in doubt, go semantic.  In addition to being an image or counterpart, a reflection is also a meditation.  Meditation I understand (if that seems in conflict to my lack of introspection let me remind you that meditation begins with nothing.  I am a big fan of things about nothing).

I give you my reflection, in that other sense of the word: 

Last summer when my little dog died, M****** gave me this rose "white pet" & we planted it near the door to the greenhouse (she is buried under stepping stones at the front).  It has been doing well, pretty, unremarkable.  There have been only a couple of blossoms

Enter winter.  It has been below freezing most nights this week (hey, I live in Florida, this is not usual).  I cover all the roses overnight & uncover them in the morning.  Most afternoons I snip a little shaggy rose. 

I have a suspicion it being banked by the greenhouse that is creating this little winter-free oasis.  I have been reflecting on it all week. 

Books by the yard for June 2014

I had to read The Great Gatsby in high school.  I know a lot of people did; for many it was the first "good book" they liked.  I loathed it.  I did not know I could hate a book so much (these were the days before the g*d-damned fish book).  That book, Gatsby I mean, was overloaded with very heavy imagery- those eyes for instance.  Anyway, one of the images that actually stuck with me was the idea that people purchased books by the yard, choosing volumes with quality spines to match their décor without any thought to the contents of the books themselves.  Which brings us to the June 2014 Facebook Quilt Block Swap Group swap block:  a books for the bookcase block.

I poked my head up & looked around other quilt block sites & there are indeed many different versions out there & they are all pretty good.  But none of them take advantage of one quality our group has that many others making these blocks do not: we can make the same exact same block using the exact same fabrics in the same order (for the first two sets anyhow).  Which means we can make these in bulk.

I will give the formula first & then specific measurements for ONE book; you will need five (5) different books, & maybe more but certainly not fewer:

You want to end up with a block that is, in total 8.5" unfinished/8" finished by the same (if it is a 1/4" to 1/2" longer that is OKay), using unequal parts book versus background fabric (did I mention the background fabric?  I think I might have forgotten.  It should be either white like bleached white muslin or a white on white design.  Please use nothing with anything but white, this way the blocks from different people can all line up on a single shelf). 


The background piece should be less than or equal to 1/2 of the finished block + 1/2" by the width of the number of books you hope to make; the book pieces should be greater than or equal to 1/2 of the finished block +1/2" by that same width.  For my first example, the back ground piece was 2.5" wide & the book fabric was 6.5" wide.  You might want to start with a piece that is larger than 8.5" total & cut it down when you square up the whole block (I know I wish I had).  The next book has slightly less book fabric, slightly more background.  I continued like this, staggering the heights so that every book was distinct from every other book. 

Cut the individual books anywhere between 1" unfinished/.5" finished to 3" unfinished/2.5" finished.  To the help the blocks go together smoothly, please be sure to use a book that is AT LEAST 2" at either end of your row of books.  Also, & this unusual, it is OKay f your shelf is slightly longer than 8.5" (but please not as much as 9"); this should help in piecing the rows together once blocks have been swapped. 

To make one blocks, you will need at least five (5) different books, but how many depends on wide your book strips are.  You should use the same background for all of the books in any given block; you do not need to use unique fabrics for each book in any given block, but please don't use the same book fabric in books that are next to each other.  It is perfectly fine if all five of your blocks are identical, it is even OKay if two sets of fie are identical but please do not use the same books in more than two sets of five.

Now for a word about the book fabric.  You can use any quilting cotton you like, anything at all (so long as it is 100% quilt cotton, muslin etc.; please no canvas, no denim, no voile, no interlock, etc.).  I used mostly single color, blender type fabrics with the occasional pattern; using many busy fabrics pressed against each other makes it hard to see the pattern of distinct books. 


I also went the extra step of making at least one of my books more detailed.  In one case -not pictured here- I added text to the spine (if you do this, please do NOT use the selvage; while selvage block can be wonderful a single bit of selvage in an otherwise selvage free quilt does not work-it shrinks at a different rate, has a different feel; it is more like home dec fabric than quilting fabric).  In the pictures you can see I also added a several strips of fabric along the top of one set of uncut books, effectively chain piecing a more detailed book binding.  You do not have to do any of this, but it adds a bit of extra oomph & maybe raises the challenge level if you are finding this otherwise very simple block.  You can also GOOGLE or BING or whatever book shelf or book case quilt blocks & you will find a number of variations, among them books that are stacked instead of in a row or books that lean....  These are all great but they are not what we are swapping.  if you decide to go whole hog & make an entire bookcase though, you could certainly make some of these different blocks for your own use. 

Books by the yard is the third Facebook Quilt Block Swap Group block of 2014.  Blocks are du in-house the last Saturday in June (June 28, 2014).  As always, we swap in sets of five, send five blocks & get five back or increments of five (You can include one or more 6th block if you choose).  If you choose to send more than two sets, please please please do not send two or more identical sets of blocks; be sure to use different book fabrics & different orders.  

The new year in books

I have said I am not much for resolutions.  But I am a huge fans of lists (I also like songs that count).  I like numbered lists & consecutive lists...oh those lovely lists.  So it should be no surprise that I make a Goodreads book count resolution type thing every year.  Or at least every year since I joined Goodreads. 

2013 was a good book listing year.

2013 Reading Challenge

Marybeth has completed her goal of reading 125 books in 2013!

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135 of 125 (100%)

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If it looks like I am some kind of over-achiever, I promise that is just not true.  I read more than I said I would because I include picture books on my list & I want to mark them READ & there is no way to exclude them from the list.  Unless I leave off the end date.  Which I am too crazy to do.  So a good chunk of that overage was read in under an hour.  Well under an hour.

& finally I thought I would start off the year with a Word Of The Day.  Today's word is OVERAGE.  It is not the same thing as "over age" which is a different thing, but not entirely.  It means
the above & beyond count in product.  or money.  Too fixed asset-y?  OKay, it is a surplus of goods.  For a long long long time this was considered a good thing (I grew up in Reagan's America), but maybe more isn't better. 

Who am I kidding, more books read is always better!  So in 2014 I am going to read....130 books.  give or take. 

Bye Bye.....Blackbeard

The short version of this post is today in 1718 Edward Teach was shot & stabbed multiple times while battling his majesty's navy.  Edward Teach might be better know to you by his rock'n'roll sobriquet: Blackbeard. 

Last things first:  yes, I said sobriquet.  I have been working this one into conversation ever since I first heard Amelia Peabody use it in reference to a certain smuggler of Egyptian antiquities.  I do mean listened, despite Amelia being no doubt long dead.  Also fictional.  Because I listened to those books on disc.  Also, in this case sobriquet may well be the very word that Teach would have used himself, unlike nickname or handle.  So I said sobriquet & I meant sobriquet.  I encourage you to work it into your weekend, perhaps one of those descriptive nicknames favored by football players, but that is just a suggestion. 

The thing about pirates, as any student of naval history knows, is that piracy is in the eye of the beholder.  Pirates & privateers were often one & the same, privateers being the word for seafaring folk who loot the enemies of the crown & the crown turns a blind eye. 

So.  Captain Teach.  Born in England, very likely in Bristol, one of the largest seafaring towns of the day.  Raised in same & almost certainly able to read & write, a novelty for his day, Edward Teach joined the navy while quite young & helped plague the Spanish in the western Atlantic.  When peace was reached between Great Britain & Spain, Teach was left unemployed...with one very specific skill.  & no reason not to take any ship he could; certainly no reason to limit himself to just Spanish ships.  Peace, like so many things, is relative.

You don't need me to tell you about Blackbeard.  I could write a longer-than-usual post listing just the titles of books & articles about him, so I am going to skip it entirely.  Chances are excellent you did not make it through today without running into a single news story about the anniversary of a famous death.  Speaking of pirates, Clive of India died today in 1774, not of a gunshot but a stabbing.  Probably.  Maybe even self-inflicted.  Today is also the official death day of Robin Hood. 

Lastly, in 1963 both Aldous Huxley & C. S. Lewis died.  So did someone else.  History has done interesting things to all of these men, so I am going to leave you with one of my favorite death songs.  Yes, I know people say its about a prostitute leaving the profession & returning to her mother.  Maybe it is. 

Trying to turn a corner

I have had a shit-tastic couple weeks.  I euthanized my best-beloved horse last Thursday.  A few days before that & one day after, the neighbor's dog disappeared two of our barn cats (yes, I called animal control, I have an incident report, there will be a fine- it still sucks). 

But I had been looking forward to this past Saturday for a long long time.  It was my twice a year cleanse & renewal, my high holy day.  That's right, the Friends of the Library Book Sale.  We did all the traditional things, hunted for a parking space, bumped elbows with fellow junkies.  While we waited in line at the check-out, A predicted the event had another ten years tops (& yes, he has been saying this for more than ten years).  I ate too much lunch before the book sale & then on the way home we went for MOCHI.  It was a good day.

We also had a particularly good haul.  I know I say that every time, but seriously, this one was good.  First we had the basics that we will read, pass along to other people & may very well end up back in a future sale & that's just fine.  A found a textbook in physical science about color which delighted me (& at 5 bucks pushed me right up against my $15 limit for a grand total of $14.10).  He could not figure out what class it might have been for but who cares!  It has cool graphs about color!  I found A two copies of Susan Orlean's biography of Rin Tin Tin (we only bought one so the other might still be there).  The quilting books have been picked pretty clean the last few sales & this time the knitting books were also a bit lean.  One of my local librarians told me that those kind of books (746 et al) have been higher traffic of late, so less likely to be culled.  There were still a few.

I was looking at A Garden of Quilts by Mary Elizabeth Johnson & kind of on the fence (it's not the money, its the shelf space) until I flipped to the back & discovered these beauties.  It was destiny; we all went home together. 

My other happy meet-up was with an old copy of Maude Southwell Wahlman's Signs & Symbols:  African Images in African American Quilts.  Shocking that I did not already own my own copy.  Even lamer, it flops open automatically to....you guessed it:  Pecolia Warner's Bird Trap Quilt.  It's almost like someone checked this book out & gazed at that photos for, I am going to guess, hours & hours.  Oh well the library's loss is my gain.  & don't be too sad for them-they have at least one other copy of this book still on the shelf.  I know because I checked.

What would Pelham do?

People who know me know I love dachshunds.  & as it happens one of my heroes also loved dachshunds.  He loved them so much that after he left England to live elsewhere, for reasons I will go into, he & his wife never returned to England together.  The reason for the split trips:  they did not want to leave their dachshunds alone in the house.  I can certainly understand that, I don't much like leaving mine alone either.

Who is this Pelham you ask? Pelham Grenville of course.  Pelham Grenville better know as P. G. Wodehouse.  That's right, the Jeeves guy. 

Wodehouse began his career in that venue I always think comedians should do a stint:  banking.  Specifically banking in Hong Kong.  I won't go into the whys & wherefores (you can read a Wikipedia entry faster than I can distill it), but while everyone, including the British think of him as very British, the fact is he is just as much American.  He married an American woman, he more or less split his time between the two shores from 1914 onwards, although as I alluded, he & his wife did not live in England together but commuted from their home in France.  Because of the dogs.  For reasons I am not entirely clear on, time spent in France counts as time not spent in the US & is therefore time spent in England...? 

Back to the dogs:  one of the great controversies of Wodehouse's life was his failure to leave France when the Germans were en route.  The only reason he ever gave for not getting when the getting was good was that his wife didn't want to leave the -you guessed it- dog behind as they could not take it to England with them.  In exchange for this, Wodehouse was interned in a German prison camp & then held under house arrest until just before his 6oth birthday.  I don't know what happened to the dog.

Being a naturally happy person (I am a mostly naturally happy person so I can tell you this is absolutely TRUE), Wodehouse struggled with not being too happy when everyone around him was miserable.  I myself once got chewed out for smiling at a funeral because apparently reminiscing about a happy moment with the deceased is bad.  Actually, Wodehouse DIDN'T struggle with it, he pretty much tried to stay happy.  He made up songs & stories & so on with the intent of keeping himself & his fellow internees happy.  What he thought was making the best of a very bad deal (no one would know how bad from him; he never talked about it) was viewed by the British populace as collaborating.  There is just no pleasing some people.  On the flip side, if that was the kind of reception he was going to get across the channel, you can sort of understand the decision to remain with the dog that got him into the whole mess to begin with.

As a result, Wodehouse was popularly identified as a Nazi collaborator & blacklisted & even banned & pretty much the only public complaint Wodehouse ever made about anything ever in his life was that the MI5 report that cleared him of living off of the Nazis (they had actually seized his accounts & doled back to him a small portion for his living expenses) was not made public while he could have benefitted from it (it was declassified years after his death).  Instead England pretty much gave him the old heave-ho & he settled permanently in the US with his US wife.  & we were delighted to have him.

I won't go into the other things he did, although his famous literary feud with A. A. Milne is hilarious, not just because Milne took himself way too seriously but also because the literary heavy weights came down on Wodehouse's side.  & not just the live-&-let-live types either; George Orwell told the British public to stick a cork in it.  I do love Winnie-the-Pooh, but it just does not compare to a library of Jeeves & Psmith & the Drones & Uncle Fred & Wodehouse Playhouse &....&...  I think I need to go read some RIGHT NOW!

I don't know what to say to that except Pip Pip!  Oh & Happy Birthday Uncle Plum. 

That scandalous affair

Every year when it comes to book club book selection time, I usually toss a few mysteries on the pile.  Dime detective novels are a particular favorite with me & my absolute favorite is Nero Wolfe.  Actually, I prefer Archie Goodwin.  Alright already, I really have a thing for Saul Panzer but they are referred to as the Nero Wolfe books. 

I have probably said it here before: I am fascinated by pulp-style fiction (be it mysteries or romances or westerns or what have you) written more or less contemporarily to their setting in time, particularly when it is not my place in time.  Or to put it another way, don't you think Lt. Uhura's uniform tells us more about the present day when Star Trek was made than it does about what people thought the future would be?  Or if they did think the future was all mini skirts & long sleeves for women, who do you think was planning that future?  Yes, I can get lost in this silliness. 

I am also a fan of Agatha Christie, although I came to it later in life.  But the first sleuth (after Nancy, of course; Nancy is always first-first).  But before Agatha, for me anyhow, there was Dorothy.  Agatha Christie had the reputation for writing as a lark, at least once she became successful she didn't need to keep it up &maybe that showed.  Dorothy Sayers, however, needed the money.  & just as Agatha's detective were more or less living on their income, or at least some kind of budget, Dorothy's detective lived, well...LARGE.  Just about as large as any book-detective I have ever heard of, barring the Scarlet Pimpernel, if you were going to call him a detective, which I really think you should.

I refer, of course, to Lord Peter Wimsey: he had money, he had brains, he had style.  The only thing he did not have was looks.  His creator was ruthless; just about the nicest thing she ever said about his appearance was he looked rather silly.  He also went for long long long time without the affection of the woman he adored.  But that all came to an end today...in 1937.  On this day Peter Wimsey married Harriet Vane.  I think what I like best about these books is that the marriage is more or less mid-point in their careers. While he has most of his mysteries before, there are a handful after.  Marriage can do that.  Before they get together, but after he falls in love, Harriet has a book more or less without him. 

Another thing I came to love was something I didn't really catch on to when I was 16 or so & reading them for the first time.  Before the books ever begin, Peter is a returning soldier, profoundly ill with some wounds, but mostly shellshock & even with every advantage of wealth & connection, he just barely pulls himself together.  He has flashbacks & setbacks that fade but never really go away. 

& unlike Nancy & Miss Marple & so forth (not Nero et al, they do this too), Peter & Harriet move forward through time, at the same speed as the rest of us.  So happy anniversary Lord & Lady Peter. 

Tools & gadgets: indispensable or complete bust

Block Lotto's weekend update has converted to a month long linky thing.  I cannot speak for everyone (who can?), but this works way better for me.  This month's theme is Tools & Gadgets:  indispensable or complete bust.  Okay, I add that last bit, but it was sort of implied. 

& there is one tool without which I could not quilt the way I do, I could not build block swaps, & frankly I would not be able to put myself to sleep at night rearranging imaginary quilts--which is how I do it now.  I am talking about Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns.  That's right, my most important quilting tool is a book.  This should come as no surprise to people who know me because I ALWAYS think the most important tool in any endeavor is a book.  That might be why I use words like endeavor.  Or maybe I use words like endeavor because....you know what, that's not my point.

I bought my copy back when it was still in print.  I also talked our library into buying a copy around the same time (it wasn't hard-they actually bought three).  Now you would pay a good bit more, so here's hoping there is a new edition on the horizon.  In the event that you want it, but you cannot pay $100+ let me recommend PaperbackSwap. It may take a while, it may take a long while, but sooner or later everything seems to wash up on those shores.

The Encyclopedia, if you are not familiar with it, is set up thusly:  there is a sort of outline of general types 4-patch, 9-patch, etc.  then within each there is further detail 9-patches made of equal parts versus unequal parts, that kind of thing.  The blocks are recorded by name & number.  Blocks with close number are likely to have a similar construction.  You can look up a number or use the index to look up by common name, but like plants the common names of quilt blocks can be sketchy.

My copy is in pretty good shape, but I have added post-it-type flags to the top marking ranges of numbers & I used to have random slips of paper marking particular blocks, but they fell out all the time so now I use ribbons (usually the ribbons that tie up fat quarter bundles). 

That is it, the only quilting tool I ever took to bed....or into the bathtub.  Yes, there is a wonderful software program (BlockBase) with much the same info & other features a paper book just doesn't have.  & I have that program, but there is nothing like a book.