Housebound

I'm finally starting to feel better. I've been sick with a cold and sore throat for the past nine days. Sniffly, sore throat, runny nose, achy, coughing, generally feeling very yucky. It really hit me hard, and I've been pretty much glued to the sofa for the past week.

It has not been much fun, but I won't complain about it, as I know everyone has gone through this. The worst part is that I missed my guild's annual quilt retreat. That is three days when we go out of town, stay in a motel there, and sew to our heart's content in a conference room which we turn into a sewing "factory." No cooking, no housework, no making beds. It's always so much fun, and a time to get a lot of sewing done. One of my favorite parts is seeing everyone else's projects. So that was a big bummer, to miss that.

The good news is that I survived (!) and MisterStitches took good care of me. KittyStitches actually had the nerve to enjoy my being sick, as I generally had a lap for her.

I was able to do some things, though. I read a lot, and I did a lot of hand sewing. I recently showed you the hexagon Grandmother's Flower Garden designs I'm working on here. When I started these, I was brand new to it, and wasn't sure I wanted to sign up for a whole quilt. But I needed some kind of a project.

So I joined two flowers together with a ring around them, then added another ring all the way around that. I filled in the corners a little bit until it was about the size of a placemat. My plan is to quilt this, then trim it up and bind it into a placemat.

Here you can see three of the placemat shapes I've done. In the photo just above I've removed papers from some of the green hexagons, but not all of them. That's why it looks like there are two different colors of green. I've actually completed four placemat tops, and am close to done with number five. I love sewing these little hexagons together!

Now I'll tell you what I've been reading.

First of all, I finished reading Vanity Fair, which had taken me a very long time to read, since it's such a big book. Really. Big. Book. 1800's England, society, family life, society, hierarchies, society.

Then I picked up Sarah's Key, which I had bought a few weeks ago. I was so glad to have finished Vanity Fair so I could get on to reading another book! Sarah's Key is a great book, very moving. It went back and forth between present-day New York/Paris and Paris under Nazi occupation. I highly recommend it.

And just today I picked up this little book and read it through. Heaven is for Real is the true story of a 4-year-old boy who almost died with a burst appendix. After his recovery, he starts talking about seeing God and visiting heaven, with amazing detail for a child that young. It's very interesting, too.

New Reading

I've never before written about the books I'm reading, but I can assure you that I do know how to read! It seems that a lot of us quilters enjoy this pastime. At least we sure seem to pass around a lot of books in my quilting groups.

Well, I'm finally joining the ranks of the many who are reading or have read The Girl With theDragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. I'm not the biggest fan of mysteries, but after I heard this book (these books) praised so much, I just have to give it a try. Only read a few pages so far.....

The last book I read (just finished) was The Sweet Life in Paris by David Liebovitz. It is about a San Francisco pastry chef who goes to live in Paris. It's quite a funny book, in which talks about his

problems (and the pleasures of) adjusting to French life, some of his faux pas with the language, and what not to ask someone whom you've just met.

After every chapter is a recipe or two for some fabulous-sounding dishes, not just desserts! I highly recommend it.

A Good Read

Just finished reading a good book, The Lover's Knot by Clare O'Donohue. I always love a good novel that has to do with the quilting world, and this one really came through. It's a good mystery, and a good story about a younger woman who is new to quilting. There was a passage in it that really made me appreciate quilting and quilters in general. I will quote it in part.

"(Quilting) was creative, it was practical and it was tradition. Passed down from one generation of women to the next going back hundreds of years, no matter the circumstances.....the women...with their unique styles, often strange personalities and strong friendships."

(excerpted from page 257)

It makes me feel good to be part of such a group. I have made the best of friends with the quilters I know.

I see that Clare O'Donohue has another book out called The Drunkard's Path. I'll have to look for it.

Thank you to "The Quilt Show"

I was totally taken by surprise when I received an email from TheQuiltShow.com, telling me that there had been a drawing and I had won a cd copy of Prayers For Sale by Sandra Dallas. (Frankly, for more than one second, I thought it was an email scam!) But last week the package arrived, and I am so excited to get to listen to this book. It's so fun to WIN something, and I love to listen to books on tape while I'm driving in the car, so this is really great. And it's good timing, too, since I'm almost finished listening to Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and will need another book to listen to very soon. So, "Thank you, TQS!"

In case you aren't familiar with it, please check out the website for The Quilt Show. It is an online quilting show, hosted by Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims. One subscribes for a year at a time, then has online access to the shows they produce. I've been subscribing to it since they started (4 years ago?), and really enjoy their shows. They have some really awesome guests on the show. Now, I don't get a percentage of their profits or anything, but the whole thing is more than a quilting show. It's really a whole quilting community, with chat rooms, blogs, members' own little spaces showing their quilts, and other photos and information. You can find me there as MissesStitches (what a coincidence, right!), although I have to confess that I don't keep up on that site as well as I could.

Has anyone out there read Prayers for Sale? I'll let you know what I think of it when I finish the book.

Cheers!