Friday check in: wildflowers, a little sewing, and a lot of reading

Turk's cap lilies are in bloom.  I love their curled petals and freckled faces.   (Photos from Volo Bog and Illinois Beach State Park.) 

The garden yielded enough basil for a big batch of pesto. I freeze it in 1-T portions.   [For each 2 cups of basil:  2 tsp garlic, 1/2 c grated Parmesan, 1/2 c walnuts (cheaper than pignoli), 1/2 c olive oil, salt.]

 I had three routine medical procedures this week. Two sets of results are in, one to come. I am not worried.  

On the other hand, the Janome is in the shop.  The feed dogs have failed. Symptom: for weeks the straight stitch quality was off (set at the longest, sewed micro-short) though free-motion and walking foot were okay (since those don't depend on the feed dogs). I tried dropping the feed dogs to see if they would pop back up. They didn't.   The repair guys are really busy.  It may be as long as four weeks.

I set up Sweetness, the Singer 301.  I'm in for a lot of piecing.  

Case in point:  18 out of 20 blocks for Jasper, the July top-along. I'm using shirtings supplemented by homespuns.  

Blocks are 12" so this will be 48" x 60".

I went to an estate sale yesterday that advertised a trundle bed.  The bed was an odd size so no sale,  but there were two sewing machines (I passed) -- and a couple boxes of fabric.  I made a stack and offered $10.  Back home:  28 yards, which is .37 per yard. Some great Cranston Christmas prints, none of which I need but . . . 

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I've been reading the books I got at the ALA conference.  

Percival Everett's retelling of Huckleberry Finn from Jim's viewpoint is as good as everyone has said. It's won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal. Everett spoke at the Carnegie reception and I have an autographed copy.  

James is our AAUW selection for August and I'm leading the discussion.  

I'm now listening to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to compare and contrast.

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This is my favorite book of the summer.  I read it in a day. Funny, incisive, and altogether wonderful.

 Bud Stanley built a shell around himself when he was a kid--his mother died, his older brother was always better at everything--and the shell has gotten stronger over the years.  It turns out that it's not as protective as it is numbing.   He makes a drunkenly colossal email error and loses his job as an obituary writer, which leads to corporate HR bumbling.  It also opens the shell to admit help from friends -- his office-mate, his amazing landlord, the eight-year-old-boy next door, and the woman he meets at a funeral.  Each of them helps Bud realize that he has worth. 

As landlord Tim says, "You watch the world go by...You watch. You comment. But you don't engage. Because to do that takes courage. It takes vulnerability. The chance we might get hurt. But you've had enough of that. You're so afraid."  (188) Tim adds, "It isn't about death. It's about the privilege of being alive." 

Bud says, "Our lives each day are a series of choices. It's one decision over another.....Lives are changed by seemingly unconnected, random decisions that change everything." (247)

And, in the end:  "No one tells you about how, in the days and weeks after, when others have moved on, perhaps rarely thinking of the event, the passing, you sit there and think, 'How am I supposed to live?'"  (269)

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Sarah Penner combines magical realism and romance in Italy, set in 1821 and 2019.  I learned something -- a hagstone is a stone with a natural hole in it. Now I will look for them when I'm beachwalking.

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Wreck (publication October) is the follow up to last summer's best-selling Sandwich.  Both are narrated by Rocky, a fifty-something wife and mom who is juggling (=sandwich) her young adult children, her husband, her free-lance writing career, and her parents.  Sandwich is set during their annual week at the Cape.  Wreck is set two years later, back home in western Massachusetts (the author lives in Amherst).

Both are  told in a lively, rushing, stream-of-consciousness style -- all of Rocky's feelings are there all the time. I'd like her to be more insightful but I can imagine her saying she's so sorry but she's too busy juggling everything. And so, too often, are the rest of us.

 

Linking up with Finished or Not Friday

More wildflowers.

Yucca, lead plant, purple prairie clover. 

White meadowsweet, butterfly weed, St. John's wort.

Climbing roses, fire pink (also scarlet catchfly), purple angelica.