My Jumbly Journals

 

I mentioned recently that I've been in the throes of an obsession a creative path involving the sewing of paper.  I thought I'd show you what I've been up to.  I'm making journals.  Actually, I'm developing my own style of journal I call "Jumbly Journals,  because they are a happy jumble of images and materials and patterns, but still suitable for journaling in or sticking things in or using in all sorts of different ways.  (Some people call this sort of thing "junk journals," but I think that makes them sounds... well, junky.)

I've made books for a long time, but I got enthused in a whole new way when I took an online class from Mary Ann Moss called "Remains of the Day." It opened up my eyes to using a huge variety of fun stuff in one book, and I've been messing around with them ever since.  (In case you are interested, a new session of the class is open for registration right now.)  In any event, I've been fiddling and honing my methods to make them the way I like, and I'm having a blast.

This is the one I finished a few days ago, with a travel theme. 

I don't know why, but it needed these beady things hanging from the side.  They also work as bookmarks.

What's that you say? You'd like to see inside?  Well, here you go.

I like to use a wide assortment of things inside.  Some of my own photographs.  Bits of old calendars. 

I like a mix of old and new stuff.  That "Fountain Paint Pot" page is from a vintage travel souvenir booklet I found at a yard sale.

I've been using bits of maps.  Even the occasional perfect greeting card.

The hardest part, I'm finding, is leaving space -- for writing and sticking photos and memorabilia.  I like to have lots of pockets and flaps that will hold journaling cards and pages.

Here are a few pages from a book I made a while back.  There's no theme, just stuff I thought was fun.  I use the occasional old yearbook photo (from a random old yearbook, again found at a yard sale).

I'll use old copyright-free photos, and bits of the really thrashed children's books I find at the thrift store.

You can tell in this early book I kept forgetting to leave SPACE.  I was having too much fun mixing things in. I think there's a quilterly aspect to this, mixing disparate things and colors and patterns to make something pleasing.

But I love it.  A lot of people who make junk journals glue everything.  Me, I sew.  I like the way it looks and feels to have stitching on the page, and I think I mentioned how much I love the pocka-pocka sound sewing through paper makes.  It's a very happy sound. 

Here's one that I'm finishing now -- it's almost done, I just need to sew the signatures into the cover.  It's on a reading theme. Shhhhh, don't tell anyone.  This is a gift.

I found a great assortment of library-themed scrapbooking paper, and I've had such fun mixing it with other bits and bobs.

I'm in love with the paper that looks like card catalog drawers. I think I need more.  Just because.  To hoard and love.  And maybe use from time to time.

I'm even starting to think about selling these on Etsy.  Do you think they'd sell?  I'm just having so much fun making them that I don't want to stop. 

The endless allure of art and craft supplies

I came upon this video by Linda recently, and it made me laugh.  Anyone who makes art or craft items knows how wonderful the world of art supplies is ... and the enticing allure of "if I just had the right item, I could do amazing things."

But how quickly the attraction of "the stuff" can take over the attracting of actually MAKING things!  And what really made me relate and laugh was the phenomenon of watching Youtube for instructions and demos and inspiration, only to come away with a whole list of "must have" items.
Oy.

I know this is true for quilt artists, even if the supplies themselves are different.  So even if you're not into scrapbooking or paper crafting, watch this.  Linda really nails that "I think I NEED that" problem!

Snapshot of Now

At this very moment, I'm sitting in my car because I've staked out an excellent viewing spot for Healdsburg's annual "Future Farmers of America parade. It's a very small town sort of thing, with every kid in town either in the parade or watching. For the bazillionth year in a row, my daughter is in it -- again, as with the last few years, she's been with her equestrian team to demonstrate vaulting (gymnastics on horseback) along the route. I try to forget that there's asphalt below the horse. (Rest assured that there are lots of spotters.) And she always gets a big cheer when she does a back flip off the back of the horse - which makes the staking out a spot and waiting for hours worth it in the end.

Reading: The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by .Jan-Philipp Sendker. I'm liking it fairly well, but just had the story shift into the past to follow a different character. These days, I'm annoyed by that device. I hate it when a novel shifts focus just when I've started caring about the character I started with. But I'll keep going and see what happens. (Added later:  I finished it.  Meh.)

Listening: Podcasts, a lot of podcasts. I have a bunch backed up in my Overcast app, so I've been listening to try to get current. I'm really loving the Alec Baldwin interview podcast "Here's the Thing" -- he's a surprisingly good interviewer. I still love Radio Lab and Invisibilia and This American Life and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, of course.

Watching: Grace and Frankie on Netflix -- I'm SO enjoying watching Jane Fonda's brilliant comedy. I also have been periodically watching episodes of "Longmire" on Netflix. The series is based on the mystery series of books by Craig Johnson. Longmire is a modern day sheriff in a small town in Wyoming that borders an indian reservation. The stories are interesting, the writing is excellent, and the characters are complex and compelling. In fact, I've been enjoying the mysteries so much, and I have such clear images of the characters in my head, that I was wary about the tv series for fear it would conflict too much with my mental Longmire. But I'm impressed and enjoying the series so far.

Eating: Chopped salads. I've become obsessed with Safeway's own chopped salad kits, which come with lettuce, other veggies, some crunchy add-ins like chopped nuts or wonton strips, and dressing. I thrown in chicken and voila, two nights' worth of dinner. My favorites are the Mediterranean and Asian kits but they have others, too. Can you tell I'm not in the mood to cook these days?

Creating: I'm in a creative whirl these days, alternately working with paper and fabric. My sewing room looks like a tornado went through it and hurled supplies every which way. No, I will not memorialize it with a photo... You can make your own big mess, multiply it a few times, and THAT's what my mess looks like.

Anticipating: Some possible road trips! I'm in the planning stages, which is fun. My sister and I are thinking about a trip up to Eureka, which is a small town on the California coast about 4 hours north of me. We're thinking we'll have some good day trips -- ocean and redwood forests and some quaint small towns to explore. But we're stilling pinning down accomodations and dates. A trip up to Washington might be on the summer schedule too. We'll see.

Working: Yes, there's always work in the background. It's interesting, but not interesting enough to talk about.

What are you doing right now?

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Grace and Frankie

I've been a big fan of Jane Fonda since way back.  So I was quite excited to hear that she and Lily Tomlin were making a series for Netflix -- and with Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen, even.  What a cast!  It started airing this past week, and I've watched the first 5 episodes.  And I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin play wives of law firm partners Sheen and Waterston, who learn in the first episode that their husbands are leaving them because they've been having a 20-year long affair with each other.  They are totally different personalities -- Fonda's character is proper and elegant and brittle, Tomlin's is an unconventional, hippyish artist -- but they are united in their shock. 

Watching them, and the men, and all of their adult children, navigate this new minefield is pretty entertaining.  But the highlight is just seeing Fonda and Tomlin together -- funny and wry and remarking on aging and marriage and starting over. 

I think I'm going have to start rationing the remaining episodes to only one a night.  There are just 13, although there is talk of a second season. 

And I may have to start the episodes all over just to look at the sets -- all that beautiful furniture AND a funky beach-side art studio, too!

The Best of What I've Read Lately

Have you read anything really good lately? During the last month I was afflicted with some weird fluey bug that made me feel tired and draggy and achy a lot of the time... so what's a girl to do?  Curl up and read, that's my solution.  Actually, that's my solution to a whole lot of things.  So what'd I read, you ask?

I have loved every single thing I've read by Marisa de los Santos, and I can highly recommend her newest, "The Precious One."  It's told by two half-sisters who share an eccentric and intense father.  One sister felt abandoned when he left her mother and started a new family; the other sister, growing up being the apple of his eye, lives under his demanding scrutiny.  As with all of de los Santos' novels, there was great writing, wonderful wit, characters to love. 

I will confess that I put this book on my Kindle because it was $1.99 and sounded interesting. (If you have an ereader and haven't discovered Bookbub yet, go sign up right now.  It's free.  It's great.  Go ahead, I'll wait.)  But I loved "History of the Rain" by Niall Williams, I totally loved it.  It's told by Ruth, a young bed-ridden girl who reflects on her life and her small town in Ireland and most especially on her father, who is best known to her through the books he has left behind.  This isn't a fast plot -- in fact, one friend who loved it too described it as a book without a plot. But there is a thread and wonderful, lyrical writing, and so many gorgeous ideas about books and family and community.  I discovered after I read it that it was long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2014.

These days, John Green is best known for "The Fault in Our Stars", which was a lovely, unexpected sort of book.  "Paper Towns" is another of those.  It's the story of Quentin, a teen whose last high school year is unexpectedly enlivened by an enigmatic girl named Margo.  She enlists him in an unusual adventure, and then when she disappears later, Quentin makes it his mission to find her.  (Spoiler alert: no one in this book has cancer, in case you were worried about that.)  Green has a way of writing about teens that is true without being at all condescending, and he evokes that sense of being on the edge of adulthood, the confusion and freedom so beautifully.  This was delightful and thought-provoking.  Don't let the Young Adult billing put you off. (Added later:  I just saw a commercial on TV last night for the upcoming movie from this novel.  Hmm.  Read it first, that's my advice.)

I'm a sucker for books about books and bookstores.  And "The Moment of Everything" by Shelly King is another good one. Maggie, recently laid off from the Silicon Valley start-up company she co-founded, spends her now-plentiful free time hanging out at her favorite used book store.  She gets involved in running a book club for high-powered Silicon Valley women, discovers some old love letters in an old copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover, and starts making the bookstore life her own. It's a pleasant novel -- not earth shattering or deep, but fun and interesting and heck, it's about a bookstore.  What's not to like?

And you, what have you read lately that you loved?

Paper Trail

So you want to see a peek at what I've been doing lately?

I love playing with paper almost as much as I love playing with fabric.  You might remember that I've made a lot of books in the past (see this, and this for example) and every once in a while the urge hits me again.  I fall under the spell of gorgeous patterned papers and I can't resist.

 

So I have been experimenting and playing with some specific projects in mind.  I spent one afternoon spraying paper with strong coffee to get a vintage effect, and messing about with paints and inks to see if I could make paper look like leather. 

Funny that I'm never drawn to brown fabric, but something about these rich warm brown papers really appeals to me.  And then there is SEWING on paper, which is really fun.  I love the pucka-pucka-pucka sound the needle makes going through paper.  But then, I'm easily amused.

 

And once I get going, it's hard to stop.  (Which explains how I sewed my way through a whole bunch of episodes of "Dance Mom."  I didn't want to stop to change the channel.) 

Can you tell where this is going?  I'm designing as I go, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all ends up myself!  Stay tuned!

Life is a Readathon

You all know that I'm an avid reader, right?  But I never used to read for leisure in the middle of the day.  I guess it's the result of student life and then working life for so many years, but I tended to read in the "in between" times -- essentially, in bed before falling asleep, or if I was eating a meal alone, or if I was waiting somewhere, or -- as a big luxury -- sitting in bed with a big mug of coffee on Sunday mornings.  Reading during the day was appropriate vacation behavior, but otherwise, reading in the middle of the day felt like decadence.

It's silly isn't it? I value reading hugely.  I firmly believe that reading is never a waste of time.  If someone else told me that they sat and read in the middle of the afternoon, say, I would been impressed and even envious, probably. And yet the thought of just sitting and reading in the middle of an afternoon provoked a little puritanical voice in my head that scolded me and told me I should be doing something PRODUCTIVE.

Somewhere along the way, a few years back, it occurred to me that the prohibition was silly and pointless. And since then, from time to time, I'd let myself read a bit in the afternoon.  It was like taking a short nap, but better.  My favorite place is the living room couch, stretched out with a view out the window and dappled shadows from the leaves outside dancing along wall.  It is the ultimate treat, to just sink into my comfy couch and open a book.

At one point, reading Mary Ann Moss's blog (oh how I adore her), I stumbled onto an entry in which she described taking herself off on a reading retreat. I'd never thought about it -- although I suppose many of my vacations could be considered reading retreats, I hauled so many books along.  Mary Ann referenced an article in Salon magazine that talked about reading retreats, too.  What a concept!  The thought of dedicating an entire vacation to reading just delighted me.

So far, I've only done it for part of a weekend -- a day and a bit more. Even so, it felt like the ultimate luxury, to let myself just read fiction and do nothing else.  Even in my own home, with the laundry piled up in the laundry room and dust settling on the blinds in the family room, it felt like a mini-vacation.

Earlier this week, I came across a blog that talked about an entire "readathon" week, where people sign up to read intensively (or as intensively as their lives will allow, I guess) for an entire week.  It's coming up, and runs from May 11 to May 17, 2015.  I have to confess that I had to hunt around to find out what the point of a readathon was -- and it looks like it's designed to get people to commit to reading for a week, and to post their progress on a daily basis as a motivation to read.  One can set goals, or not, and there are even prizes.

Perhaps your average non-reader type needs a reason to read -- and maybe "Sorry, honey, I can't cook dinner tonight, I have to read my novel for the readathon" is a good enough reason to stop everything and just get lost in a novel or two or three.

Me, I think life is a readathon.  During the day, even!  Shall I print a t-shirt?

 

Simply Outlandish

 Look!  It's another quilt, one I finished this very week. (Oops, did you fall of your chair in astonishment?)

Every April, the retreat that I attend features a challenge, and this year the challenge was to use plaid fabrics in some significant way.  I had a bundle of bright plaid fat quarters in my closet, from who knows where -- probably a quilt show some years back. (I have a hard time resisting a happy bundle of fat quarters charmingly tied up with a ribbon.  They're just so dang appealing!)

I cast around for something to do with the plaids, and remembered a pattern I'd pinned on Pinterest some time back.  It's called Suburbs, from Cluck Cluck Sew.  It felt just right -- and it was available for immediate download upon purchase. Perfect! (They have a paper version too, in case you're wondering.)

Upon reviewing the pattern, I realized that the pattern resulted in big houses -- something on the order of 8.5 x 11 blocks.  But I only had little fat quarters of fabric, and I'd been picturing little houses.  I pulled out my trusty graph paper and worked out a scaled down block, so my houses could be roughly 5x6 inches.

And away I went. It was fun making the houses and I liked using all of the plaids together.  And I'm calling it "Outlandish" because plaids make me think of Scottish tartan, which makes me think of kilts, which was connected to a weekend of binge-watching the "Outlander" series when cable tv provided the Starz network shows free for a week, which I was watching when I was in the midst of making this quilt.  Well, it makes sense to me.

I did a basic outlining with a few vertical lines to quilt the houses but toward the bottom I couldn't resist decorating a few a bit differently.

This is likely to be a donation quilt.  But I finished it in time to show it for the Plaid Challenge reveal, and several people asked where they could get the pattern so I sent them over to Cluck Cluck Sew.  Maybe there'll be a few more little villages at the next retreat!

UFO Sightings

Can we talk UFOs?

I was thinking recently about all of the UFOs in my closet, and I decided that it'd be good to list them and then work on getting them off that list into a "Finished in 2015" list. (That list has only 2 items on it so far but I am ever optimistic.) And I realized that I have different categories of UFOs, as you probably do too.  Here are my categories:

1.  Pieces cut but nothing sewn (you know, because I had this great idea and couldn't wait to get started...)
2.  Fabric cut and some parts sewn (because I had this great idea, couldn't wait to get started, and I DID get started, but then got interrupted...)
3.  Bunch of fabric blocks all sewn but not assembled in any fashion (Paused after I finished sewing blocks because I returned from retreat and set them aside and forgot about them, or needed time to lay them out on the design wall, or for some other completely excellent reason)
4.  Art quilts in some state of incompletion because they require decisions that I can't seem to make quite yet.  (They're "marinating." That's what I call it.)
5.  Quilt tops almost done, but requiring borders or further decisions about what (if anything) to do next.  (Clearly, the decision-making often stalls me.  Let's call this more marinating.)
6.   Fully completed quilt tops, needing to be sandwiched and quilted.  Because I just dread the sandwiching part.  It's never as bad as I think it's going to be, but still I dread it.

Lest you think I never finish anything (hi, Mom!), I'd like to remind you that I do get back to these and finish some from time to time.  Even if it's a few (ahem) years later... like here, and here, for example.

But yesterday I was thinking in particular about how many quilt tops I have that need to be sandwiched and quilted.  I decided to pull them out and count them.  And the total is..... 25.  Oh dear.

Some of them (five, to be exact) are ones I made for myself or for specific people who will receive them, eventually.

Some of them are ones I made with the idea of selling them at some point.  At this rate, I'll be able to list them as "vintage" quilts.

Some I made to use up scraps from other projects, and they will probably be donation quilts once I get around to quilting them.

(And by the way, there used to be another quilt in this pile, but I was having company one day, wanted just the right look for the table, and I decided to hem the edges of the quilt top and use it as a table cloth.  It's now in the linen cupboard!)

And then there's this beast:

It is a king-sized pineapple quilt top that I made when I was in the throes of my obsession with Freddy Moran.  I love it, I really do, but it's so HUGE.  At the time I envisioned using it as a bedspread.  But it became clear that it was too bright and crazy and chaotic.  I either need to take it apart so it'll be two smaller quilts, or send it off to a long-arm quilter because I don't want to wrestle with a king-sized quilt under my home machine.

Okay, 'fess up.  How many quilt tops do you have stacked up?  Can you beat my total?! 

Seeing all of these tops makes me want to get a long-arm quilting machine, an urge that resurfaces at least once a year.  Because the fastest way to get all of these done is to go buy a big new machine with a long learning curve, don't you think?!

May Day! Baskets o' Fun

 

Hey look!  It's a quilt!  Yep, made by me, started and finished in the last few months!  I know. I can hardly believe it myself.

I've been a stalker groupie fan of Freddy Moran for many years. When I discovered her and (for a while there) took every class she taught), her approach to color and pattern resonated with me and totally changed the whole quilting game for me.  But it'd been ages since I'd seen her.  So when I learned she was teaching her basket class at a shop in my area, I rustled up a few friends and away we went.

In the class, Freddy demonstrated her approach to making a few different types of wonky baskets.  And by the end of the day, I'd made most of the crazy baskets you see up there in the center of the quilt.  It was a totally fun day and I was so happy to see Freddy in fine form.

I've been in a "using up the stash" mode for a while now, so in the spirit of Freddy and Gwen Marston's "parts department" approach to quilting with scraps, I pulled out blocks I'd done with scraps, and away I went.

I can't remember when I made a pieced quilt by just doing once thing and then deciding "what next" without a big plan.  It was very fun. I don't know how I managed to make all of these blocks without making a visible dent in the scrap bags -- do they multiply, or something?  Ah well, I guess that means there are more "parts department" quilts like this ahead.

I now have this hanging on a wall in my upstairs hallway, so it faces me when I come upstairs. It makes me smile although the teen critic in the house thinks it's too jumbly.  I figure if she can live with the mess in her room, she can handle a bit of jumble on the wall.

Here's a little detail shot, in case you wanted to see up close:

 

Christine's Turtle

Look at this fabulous quilt!  No, it's not mine.  Christine Penna made this colorful fellow after seeing a photo I posted on the blog back in 2012.  

I love Christine's interpretation and her fabric and color choices.  Those whimsical dragonflies are a great addition!  It's an honor to have someone be inspired by a photo I've taken, and it's even better to see such a great result.

Thanks for sharing this with me, Christine, and for allowing me to share it here!

Starting Again

Hey there!

This past week, I was off at a quilting retreat and a friend asked me why I haven't been blogging lately.  "Is everything okay?" she asked. I didn't know how to reply.  Everything is fine, I assured her.  And it really is.  I'm just.... well, I couldn't figure out how to explain why I've just not had much to say.

I've already alluded to the fact that my marriage of 20 years has ended.  That's actually been a very positive thing overall, although it has been and continues to be strange and difficult and just weird.  Some days I feel like I don't know who I am or what my life is any more.  And some days I get a glimpse of the "me" that I haven't felt like in a long time, and I've missed.

I try sometimes to think of a good analogy for how I'm feeling these days.  Maybe it's like wandering through the woods ... they're pretty and peaceful and I'm seeing all sorts of new things.  But I lose the path from time to time, and some days it feels like I'm just hacking at a lot of branches and some days I need to just sit on a rock and rest.

Or perhaps it's like what I've been experiencing after getting new eyeglasses after wearing an old and scratched pair for a long time.  Suddenly the world looks clear and I see things I didn't notice before and think "how did I tolerate that hazy view for so long?"  And then other days all of that clarity gives me a headache. 

At any rate, as soon as Wendy asked me about blogging I realized that I didn't want to stop.  And not stopping meant, obviously, starting again.

So bear with me as I try to clear a new path for myself!  Who knows where we'll go?

Feeling Goosey

My friend Jenny and I were talking quilts the other day, and she was trying to decide on what to do for a wedding quilt she wants to make. "I'm thinking about flying geese," she said, "Have you ever done one?"  

Hah.  As a matter of fact, most of the quilts I've made in the last year or two have involved flying geese.  And Jenny's comments made me get them out and get photos of them -- which was no small feat as they are big quilts and I don't have a great way to photograph such large quilts.  But with some ribbon and pins and command hooks, I rigged something and here you go.  Please take my word for it that these all have straight edges and square corners -- really, they do! 

So here's my "Christmas Geese," one I finished in December after having the geese units floating around my sewing room for a year or two.  Most of the fabrics were from a bundle of geometric prints I fell in love with somewhere along the way -- if you recognize the collection of fabric, do let me know in the comments because I sure don't remember!  It's a fun Christmas quilt.  It's quilted with an overall swirly design.

 

And then there's the Polka dotted Geese quilt I made a year or so ago, which I mentioned here.  At a quilt show a few years ago, I'd bought a luscious bundle of polka dotted fabric, which I'd had out on a shelf in my sewing room because they looks so happy together.  And during my one and only trip to Festival of Quilts in the UK a few years ago, I bought a bundle of assorted Oakshott cottons which I also had out because the colors were so beautiful.  I was rummaging through my shelves, looking for a particular book, when I happened to put the Oakshott bundle next to the polka dot fabric bundle.  And suddenly they needed to be geese.  I loved making this quilt!  (And truly, the edges are straight!)

The quilt that marked the start of my obsession with fly geese is this huge red and white geese quilt.  I have a TON of red fabric in my stash, a lot of which I collected when I was working on red and white house blocks for another massive quilt.  I started making geese with red scraps and solid white fabric, and I just kept going.  And going.  And this resulted.  I love it, and it lives on the back of the red couch in the family room where it looks happy and is great for movie-time snuggling.

This is a bit fuzzy, but you can get a sense of all of the different prints.  I arranged the geese into blocks of pairs, and was pleased when a secondary star pattern emerged.

I just put a flying geese border on my current project -- and I'm not tired of making them yet!

Book Review: Deep, Down, Dark

One of my goals this year is to add some non-fiction to my reading.  I tend to read fiction almost exclusively, and somewhere along the way I realized that I'm probably missing out on some good reading -- and learning.  I'm trying to broaden my reading horizons a bit this year.  So I've set myself the goal of reading a nonfiction book each month, roughly.

And then at some point recently I heard Ann Patchett interviewed on National Public Radio.  NPR's Morning Edition has started its own book club, in which they plan to have a well-known writer choose a book he or she loved.  Ann Patchett's pick for January is Deep Down Dark:  The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that Set Them Free, by Hector Tobar.

I should probably add that I'm a wimp when it comes to reading about certain difficult things.  (I avoid things about the Holocaust and incest like the plague, for example.)  And reading about miners and mining, let alone miners trapped underground for weeks, is hardly something I'd normally choose.  But as I listened to Ann Patchett's interview (you can hear it here), I was reminded of how enthralled I was watching news footage as the miners emerged, one by one, from the mine.

On that day in October, 2010, I was at the quilt retreat I often attend.  One friend had her Ipad sitting on her table, streaming the live coverage of the rescue.  We gathered around as the "Fenix" rescue pod brought each man up to the surface, and we cheered and hugged.  There we were, miles and miles away, a group of financially secure, middle-aged white woman, cheering and wiping tears from our eyes as men whose lives we couldn't even imagine were rescued from an ordeal we had even less ability to conceive of.  Over the course of that night, we continued to watch and cheer and feel such joy as each man emerged from the mine. It was a funny sort of bonding experience, but I think it made each of us feel connected to the events unfolding in Chile in an unusual way.

When I started the book, to my surprise I found that it was hard to put down.  This book is one of the few inside accounts of those 69 days in the mine, because the miners banded together and agreed that they'd tell their story together.  Tobar's writing is very good, and he personalizes it all by telling each man's individual story.  You get a sense of each man's life and personality, both before the mine collapse and as the story unfolds. There's a bit of history about the area in Chile, about the mining company that owned the mine and the mine operations.  There are stories about the miner's families, how the rescue operations unfolded, and how politics and egos affected things.  All of the pieces are woven together skillfully to tell an amazing story.  Gripping, I'd even say.  I had a hard time putting this book down.

But what comes through is how these ordinary men coped in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.  They weren't perfect -- they struggled.  They felt and expressed fear and anger.  I found it especially interesting to hear how the men have fared since their rescue. Hailed as heroes, they were thrust into a spotlight that was freakishly strange to all of them.

Watching each man emerge from the mine back in October, 2010 made me feel a bit connected to the experience, but reading this book showed me so much more about each of those men, and about the human spirit.  I'm really glad I read it, and I'd recommend it.

I think my nonfiction reading plan is off to a very good start.   

Saying Goodbye

Gemma was just the cutest pup in the world. 

 She loved adventure -- a good run, a lot of sniffing. 

She was always up for a trip to the dog park.

     

She loved having friends over

And of course she loved a good game of "lick the kid"

 

She made us laugh.

 

She wasn't afraid to be silly, and she loved a good party.

 

 But she had her quiet, dignified moments too.

 

 She was a sweet, constant, loving companion.

It's so hard to let a beloved companion go. 

But it was time, and it's what we have to do when we take on the responsibility 

of having animals in our lives.

But all that love?  It's still here.

Welcome, 2015!

Happy New Year to you!

This year, I seem to be sliding into the new year while it feels like I'm still emerging from Christmas, and with the sense that January has come around unexpectedly quickly.  Having a succession of out-of-town guests explains that a bit, I guess -- plus the fact that the holiday decorations are still around (I haven't had a chance to sit and sketch them yet!) and I feel like I'm still pulling holiday leftovers out of the freezer to turn into different dinners.

And it feels like I spent an awful lot of 2014 living in my head -- thinking, reflecting, analyzing, planning, reminiscing.  I've experienced a lot of rather huge transitions over the past two years, and I'm finding that even while events have passed, the ripples of them continue to affect me. 2014 was a good year, all in all, but it's been an internal sort of one.  I've gotten a lot of new understanding and perspective, and that's good.

But as I was thinking about the past year, and feeling like I didn't accomplish that much, I sat down and made a list.  And I was pleased to discover that it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought -- in fact, I did a lot of wonderful things.

I finished 3 quilts and at least 4 quilt tops... and started a few new projects, too.

I did a fair amount of sketching, completed 3 6-week Sketchbook Skool courses, and went on a lot of sketch outings with my local Urban Sketchers.

I saw my daughter successfully re-enter the world of school at the community college, and helped her navigate some new anxieties and experiences -- and was happy to see her come out with flying colors.

I started making books again, and made a whole bunch of creative "jumbly journals" that were a total blast.

I did a lot of hours of legal work.

I sang in two seasons' worth of chorus concerts, sat on the chorus board for the year, and helped the chorus redesign its logo and website.

I got some long overdue maintenance stuff done at home, including new flooring downstairs and big improvements to the house gutters. Exciting, eh?

I went to three fun and productive quilting retreats, and I've added a monthly sewing group to the schedule that makes me very happy.

Thanks to Goodreads, I know that I read 112 novels last year.  Strangely, that's the exact same number I read in 2013.

I took some fun trips -- to the Seattle area and to the California gold country.

The area in which I've had the biggest developments, oddly enough, is with friendships.  Through all of the turmoil over the last few years, I've been so grateful for amazing friends. During this past year, I've struggled with really difficult challenges involving two close friends.  I've made some delightful new friendships that surprise and enrich me.  And I've had several long-time friendships emerge with new importance as my life has changed. I'm reminded that my friends keep me sane, make me laugh, tell me the truth, and enrich my life so much.  You know who you are -- and thank you!