Midweek: mystery belatedly begun, placemats + reading

 

Almost-full moon at 5:30 this morning.  Didn't we just have a full moon? The days and nights fly by.

I thought I'd signed up for the guild's 2025 mystery quilt-along in January but it turned out that I hadn't.  I rectified the omission by paying the $10 fee at the meeting last week.  Five weeks' clues dropped into my email box. 

The pattern requires 3-1/2 yards of background (tone-on-tone recommended) and either a jelly roll or 40 2-1/2" strips.  I had a 4-yard piece in lavender (estate sale purchase $5) for the background.  I don't have any jelly rolls so I cut strips from my stash.  The colorway probably looks familiar from my recent Transport and Mosaic Sparkler flimsies--I hadn't gotten around to putting all of those away.

The first of the first 12 blocks is at the lower left.

Look what arrived on Monday.   QuiltDiva Julie sent four placemats for my project.  

Thank you!   

I'm making more placemats, too.  These are the cutaways from Transport and Amelia (the January top-along).  

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In 1936 Charlotte Cross was in Egypt on an archaeological dig. She discovered a trove linked to the only female pharoah, Hathorkare (=Hapshetsut).   Her expedition cut short by personal tragedy, she returned home to New York and her work as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

She never abandoned her research on the queen.  In 1978 while assisting with mounting the King Tut exhibit she discovers that one of the pieces  is the necklace she found in Hathorkare's tomb all those years before.  She is determined to discover who has had it for four decades.   

Enter Annie Jenkins, a nineteen-year-old who inadvertently becomes Charlotte's assistant.  Together the two women unravel long-held secrets.

Davis has hit on a good formula:  take an iconic Manhattan building and use it as the setting for two interconnected stories, one long ago and another sort-of-nowadays.   Though there wasn't as much about the Met as an institution or structure, the tale is a good one.

Linking up with Wednesday Wait Loss  -- and thanks for the shout out, Jennifer.