Midweek: star and cake stand flimsy + reading

 

I chose the purple batik for the sashing almost without thinking.  I used nearly all of it (just 4-1/2" x 18" left over).  I auditioned a couple of batiks for the setting, my limitation being what I have in yardage (rather than FQs and scraps). The peach won out.  I made the float extra-large. I'm going to keep it that way and skip an outer border. 

5-3/4 yards used for the flimsy.    I still have 1-1/2" scrappy HSTs and a lot of 1-1/2" squares.

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An epistolary novel is one written as a series of letters.   It's one of The Page Turner 2026 prompts.   AI helpfully provides a list of them, from Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2008) to The Correspondent (2025).  I've read all of those so I chose something different.  

I first learned about Maine humorist John Gould when I lived in Texas (my first library job).  One of the library patrons requested his books via interlibrary loan and I read and enjoyed them. Then I married a man with deep roots in Maine, and we moved there, so John Gould was part of  the literary atmosphere.   I met him once--he, like Stevens, went to Bowdoin College.  He passed away in 2003 at the age of 95.   We acquired most of his books, some as reprints and many from used book dealers.   

The Parables of Peter Partout was published in 1964.  Our copy is a first edition.  The fictional Mr. Partout lived at Peppermint Corner in Lisbon Maine (a real place), and wrote equally fictional letters-to-the-editor with stories about his friends and neighbors that are definitely too good to be true. (Or are they?)   62 years after the compilation was published they are as funny as ever.  

Here's one of the shorter ones.  

Linking up at Wednesday Wait Loss