End of August: Yardage Tracking and Books Read

Boy-o! Is my August fabric trashing report telling, or what? 

Though no fabric came in this month, it's obvious not much fabric went out either! That low. 69 yard of fabric used reflects only that I made sleeves for two quilts that are now in Jacksonville for QuiltFest,  September 18-20.

I've had a real lack of sew-jo, and it's obvious that I spent more of August quilting, round loom knitting, and diamond painting, than I did actually sewing. I didn't even make the eight Posh Penelope blocks I committed to making every month! FAIL! I'll do better in September.

In my August 14 blog post you saw three Comfort Dolls I round loom knitted.

What I also made this month was a 24-peg, round loom knitted Cupcake Skirt Doll. She's quite a bit more time-consuming than a Comfort Doll, but isn't she precious? 

She stands about 9" tall, has hands, button-topped shoes on her feet, lashy eyelashes, and hair in an updo. If you were to peek up her skirt, you'd see she has legs too!

I want to make more!

Sharing progress on my second diamond painting, I've just completed the top section of an ocean sunset with a silhouetted palm on the side. 

This one is painted with square drills. I love working on it.

In case you're wondering about the status of the first "Ocean" diamond painting I started... I'm still waiting for the arrival of a replacement/corrected canvas and drills being shipped to me from China. The last time I checked tracking, it was sitting in a customs facility in Los Angeles. 

Book Recommendations 

With so much time spent machine quilting and diamond painting, I listened to quite a few audiobooks in August - 12 to be exact. 

In score order (with 5.0 being the highest), they are:

• 4.6 - James, Everett Percival
• 4.5 - The Dressmaker, Kate Alcott
• 4.4 - Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy
• 4.4 - What Happened to Nina?, Dervia McTiernan
• 4.3 - The Egg and I (#1), Betty MacDonald
• 4.2 - The Plague and I (#2), Betty MacDonald
• 4.2 - Anybody Can Do Anything (#3), Betty MacDonald
• 4.2 - I'm Not Done With You Yet, Jesse Sutanto
• 4.1 - Onions in the Stew (#4), Betty MacDonald
• 4.1 - Shoes to Fill, Book 2 in the Mount Hope Southern Adventure series, Lynne Gentry
• 3.8 - Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy
• Before You Share Your Faith, Matt Smethurst

Books that encourage and edify Christianity and my faith are all good, so I don't score them.

About James... It's a must-read. The story is about Jim, the black slave who was Huck Finn's friend. The author has pulled that character from Mark Twain's books, and followed his adventures as a runaway slave. It's an interesting and thought-provoking accounting of life along the Mississippi just before the Civil War. 

Similarly, The Dressmaker is a must-read because of its interesting, fictional and factual recounting of the April 14, 1912 sinking of theTitanic, and the public outcry and Senate investigative hearings the week afterward. I know that a person with the same last name as ours was on Margaret Brown's (the Unsinkable Molly) lifeboat, and since Mrs. Brown was character in this story, I followed it with even more interest. The book had me looking up facts about it on Wikipedia. 

What Happened to Nina? What can I say but that this book totally captured my attention from the opening narration. I felt a kinship with a mother's anxiety, and sympathy for her desire to get even. 

Wild Dark Shore is a windswept story that takes place on an island off the coast of Australia. The author makes her perspective on global warming quite clear, but if you look beyond that, the story itself is beautiful, and an intriguing mystery.

Did you know The Egg and I was a 1947 movie? It included two of the book's characters - Ma and Pa Kettle. Do those names ring a bell? I enjoyed the book enough that I wanted to read all of Betty MacDonald's titles. She writes with an ironic sense of humor, often using personification to describe animals and nature.

The Plague and I takes an indepth look into Betty's experiences in an asylum for people with tuberculosis. I had no idea! 

Anybody Can Do Anything is about Betty's life finding and trying work that takes various form, during the Depression. Her sister keeps telling Betty she's capable of doing anything - shorthand, typing, bookkeeping. It's sort of a fake-it-'til-you-make-it book. 

Onions in the Stew is about Betty's life with her two daughters (by her first marriage) and second husband Don when they moved to and lived on Vashon Island in Puget Sound, Washington. I found it interesting because in this story she writes about life in the 1950s while living in a place of natural beauty and abundance.

Shoes to Fill... this is a pleasant series about a small-town Baptist church, and the interactions of its elders, congregants, and strangers. 

Migrations is a story about the drastic reduction and extinction of all creatures/animals on the earth, as a woman examines and comes to grips with her need to live near the seas.

I hope you are attracted to a few of these titles. Linda