Midweek: out like a lion, stash report, OMG + reading

 March ended like a lion. On Monday Stevens woke up vomiting. Paramedics took him to the ER where, after many tests, they found a bowel obstruction.  No surgery required but he is still in the hospital. I visited yesterday. He perked up when he saw me.  Not sure when he will be discharged and to where.  More discussion with hospital social worker and a care consultant today.  (The hospital is in the same complex as the clinic where his doctor's office is, so his own physician has been to see him.)  Meanwhile V was so helpful. While I was sitting with S in the ER she cleaned up thoroughly.  And I had a lovely surprise phone call last evening from Jean, S's first wife (she's in assisted living in New Hampshire).  

I've been so alert to S for so long that it's odd to be in the house by myself.  

I didn't have to rush back from Tuesday's Zion Woman's Club meeting.  We planted pinwheels to recognize Child Abuse Prevention Month.  

On to quilting!  

I used orphan blocks to make five more placemats. 

Stash report:   March fabric in:   ZERO!     March fabric out:  86 yards

YTD fabric in:  164-3/4, $58.00.  YTD fabric out:  274 yards.  Yay!

April goals:  (1) make Sky Diamonds, the Running Doe topalong this month.  I'm going to use realistic florals and green.

(2) Finish the doll quilt for the Humble Quilts swap. (It's a flimsy.  I have to choose the backing and figure out how to quilt it.) 

(3) Make a batch of teal/turquoise blocks (RSC color) for a wheelchair-sized quilt.

# # # # # #   Recent reading: 

The Page Turner 2025 FB group has "a book on someone else's shelf" as a prompt.  I did not travel far for my selection.    This is one of my husband's favorite books.  It's been in his bookcase ever since I met him . . . and only now have I read it in its entirety.  Poet and memoirist Donald Hall writes evocatively and lovingly about the summers he spent on his grandparents' farm in New Hampshire.  Each chapter can stand alone; collectively they show the progression as Hall grows up and his grandparents grow older.  The 1979 edition includes a coda that tells what happened next -- Hall and his wife Jane Kenyon moved to the farm in 1975 after his grandmother passed away (at 96) and lived there the rest of their lives.  (Kenyon died in 1995 and Hall died in 2018.)   

[The farmhouse is now a historic property with a nonprofit board restoring and maintaining it.]

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  An intriguing story based on the life of the champion thoroughbred Lexington.  I enjoyed the multiple points of view -- Lexington's trainer in the 1850's, an art dealer in the 1950's, and the contemporary art historian and the Smithsonian scientist.   I listened to the audio version. The multi-voiced narration was easy to follow. 

Diann (Little Penguin Quilts) recommended this a while back.  Thanks, Diann!

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I've been an Anne Tyler fan for decades.  Her characters are spot-on -- people we know all too well, situations we are all too familiar with.  

Just before her daughter's wedding Gail Baines finds out that she has lost her long-time job as assistant to the headmistress of a private school.  She barely has time to adjust to that shock when  her ex-husband Max shows up at her door.  He explains that he can't stay at their daughter's house because he is fostering a cat and the fiance is allergic to cats.  What can Gail do but ask him in?  Both of them have always been socially awkward whereas the fiance's family is very polished and more affluent.    Gail and Max negotiate the social terrain, their daughter's pre-wedding nerves (or, remarkable lack of them), and in so doing Gail remembers how they met and why they split up.  And in the end . . . she has a cat and, maybe, a renewed relationship.

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Linking up with  Wednesday Wait Loss    OMG @ Stories from the Sewing Room