Cedar Key, and Making

It's not like me to go a week in between blog posts, but we were away from home for a few days, on a mid-week get-away. It's especially good to go on these during the off-season - no extra winter tourists or snowbirds. So, we pick a place and head that direction without even making overnight (or two) reservations.

This week we went to Cedar Key, an island on the Gulf side of Florida that was hit by Hurricane Idalia last August. Even ten months after the storm, not everything has been restored. A few restaurants and shops haven't yet reopened. A few rental houses, townhomes and motels sit unrestored,

A couple docks haven't yet been (or maybe will never be?) rebuilt. 

Cedar Key is small and quaint with most of the main street buildings (back and up from the waterfront) built in the 1880s. The best modes of transportation are by foot, bicycle, or electric golf cart which usually comes with a rental.

a wind-surfer

We stayed on the second floor of a two-story townhome on stilts (about 40-feet above sea level), right on the Gulf front - Daughtry Bay - with a wonderful 200-degree view of the ocean and outlying islands. My phone captured this panoramic view, though the picture is an illusion. It seems like the view bowed away,  outward from us. In fact we were "outward" and our panoramic view went over our left and right shoulders.

We watched fishing boats come and go; leaping bottlenose dolphins, and mullets; and enjoyed some great seafood - clam chowder (the area is known for clamming), and the best fish (haddock) and chips I've ever eaten. Not being much of a seafood-lover, that's saying a lot!

Even on a cloudy day, the sunset was lovely. 

Before our get-away, some of the sewing I accomplished was to begin making blocks for Amy Friend's (duringquiettime) Bibliography quilt, a pattern of 12" blocks made with selvedges surrounded by a foundation paper-pieced frame. 

Painter's Palette French Blue is my background fabric of choice. I'm six blocks in now, and plan to make 42 blocks. I surely have enough selvedges to accomplish that... and then some!

I also finished chicken scratch - hand-embroidery stitched on checked fabric - on the linen bodice and sleeves of the "Irina" dress I'm sewing along with Bernina. The Irina dress pattern was free during the month of May. We're on week four of the sew along (I've just sewn pockets to the skirt) and expect to finish in a total of eight weeks, by July 22.

I'm still reading the print book Ringling: The Florida Years, 1911-1936, and am about half-way through. John Ringling's character, as a circus man (Ringling Bros. Circus) and business man (oil, ranching, property development) and the mark he made on Florida (Sarasota in particular) is most interesting. Did you know he was born in McGregor, Iowa?

I also listened to two more audiobooks.

Book Recommendations

The Cutting Season by Attica Locke takes place in present day Louisiana at a plantation, Belle Vie. It's surely a made-up place, but descriptively almost matches Oak Alley Plantation where our daughter was married - right there in front of the house, on the brick path under the canopy of trees.

Even the book cover picture looks like Oak Alley.

Caren is a single mother, living at Belle Vie where generations of her family slaved and worked. Now she's managing the place and is responsible for making it a profitable venue as an educational site for school children, and a beautiful location for conferences and weddings serving delicious Southern food.

A woman's body is found along Belle Vie's fence line that abuts a sugar cane farm. Questions are asked. Where was each Belle Vie staff person at the time of the woman's death? A local detective is particularly interested in the whereabouts of each actor who performs a drama depicting Civil War era life on the plantation. When Caren's former partner shows up, ready to allay concerns about their daughter's strange response to blood found on her school uniform, he, now a lawyer, becomes embroiled in the situation. 

For several reasons, Caren suspects the killer is a young man she knows, but she's determine to think the best of him, and find out what really happened. The more she uncovers, the more she realizes that stories she's been told about her ancestors have not been truthfully revealed.  Linda's score: 4.3/5.0

Twist of Fate by D.L Mark is a story that's a little bit demonic, a little bit overzealous religion, and a little bit drug-induced hallucinations. 

Claudine is a self-made, successful communications expert living in London, removed from the odd, psychotic lifestyle of her highly intelligent brother, Jethro. Our of the blue, Jethro comes to Claudine's place of work, urgently talking and making no sense to Claudine. When Jethro is attacked by a madman, right in front of Claudine, she forces herself to return to their home in the marshes to search Jethro's effects, and try to make sense of what she witnessed. 

What she finds appalls her. Yet meeting Jethro's care-giver, Peg, somewhat assuages Claudine's guilt, and makes her feel vulnerable too. Stories arise about Jethro's activities, and how his fervent beliefs about God and the "disciples" he influenced, triggered actions that were anything but "Godly."

This book was far-fetched enough that it wasn't enjoyable. One of the characters wanted everyone to understand that belief in Jesus was intentionally induced by feeding particular hallucinogenic herbs/drugs to congregants in the early church. Sheesh. Linda's score: 3.7/5.0

One more interesting bit about our townhouse at Cedar Key... 

Seeing this on the dining table made me exclaim, "Kantha!" when I walked in the door. But then I flipped it over to realize the stitching doesn't go through the piece. So is this a manufactured table runner? Or a piece of Kantha that, after the fact, was sewn into a table runner? The hand stitching sure looked genuine. 

Linda