Nonnie's Reading Corner #2

So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books.
-Roald Dahl

Omigoodness! What would I do without a book? I'd have never met Nancy Drew. I would never had known the wonder of a poem: "The moon was a ghostly galleon..."  I would believe that one woman could raise her children on by entering word contests,  I'd never had learned the phrase '"Twas brillig and the slithy toves. Did gyre and gimble in the wabe." I wouldn't know a blind cat named Homer who could catch flies out of the air and also survive 911. And I wouldn't have met Dick Francis.

Ten Facts About Books and Me:

1. I take a book with me everywhere. 
2. I read three at a time: one to listen to, one on my Kindle and one "real" book so that I can read three books at a time!  
3. The books have to be entirely different from one another or I can't sort them out.
4. I sometimes have to keep a list of characters so I know who they are as the book progresses.
5. I forget the end of most books I read.
6. I have the advantage of reading more books than anyone because I can read a book over and over and over again because I don't remember the end!
7. The author I've read the most is Dick Francis. If you want to start on his books, read The Danger.
8. I read young adult books because they are clean. I stop reading any book that has profanity, vulgar language or explicit sexual scenes.
9. I love a day where I can start and finish a book in one day. Book defined by amount of pages being over 250 pages.
10. My favorite book of all time is To Kill A Mockingbird. It touches my soul in so many ways.

In March I read four books:

1. Black Water, D. J. Hales
2. Reality Bug, D. J. Hales
3. Bleak House, Charles Dickents
4. I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith

The first two books are a continuation of a Young Adult series I'm reading.

I read Bleak House as an audio book. I often read older classics this way. Many older books were first serialized and the money earned was determined by how the number of words written. It tends to have a lot of drawn out situations, descriptions, and sideways wandering but I did find that I had no problem going through books if I listened to them. Bleak House is one of these. To support and explain the premise of why I listen and why I needed to have a list of characters, here is what Goodreads said: "[Bleak House] was published in 20 monthly installments...It is held to be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon."

I fell in love with Mr. Jarndyce and the Little Woman. The characters were rich and side stories and characters all came together in the end. The ethics and compassion of Mr. Jarndyce plays against the ruination of lives that live on hopes that will never come to be. I think that one of the funniest things in the books was a part of Mr. Jarndyce's personality. Though he is a benevolent man, he does not like to be thanked. When someone starts to thank him, he starts talking about the east wind and how it looks like it might switch to a north wind soon...
I believe this book will go right up with the other classics I adore:  Understood Betsy and The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

I found the book, I Capture the Castle quite by serendipity. It was written in 1948 by Dodie Smith. I'm really not good at writing descriptions of books, so I hope, dear readers, that you will bear with me. The castle in the title really is a dilapidated castle that a very poor family lives in. Most of it is in a state of "rack and ruin,"and part of it is uninhabitable. The family just manages to get by. The youngest daughter, the heroine of the story, decides to write a journal and follows the events of her family for six months of an unusual amount of events and change. It is a very dear book and so worthy of being read.

In the beginning of this post, I named four things I would never have met if I didn't read books. Leave a comment telling me the books I was describing. The one who gets the most books correct will win a prize...a quilty surprise. If there is a tie or two or...there will be a prize for each! 

I hope you will put your nose in a book today and find yourself in another place.

Looking Back & Looking Forward #10: Wherein There Is A Lot of Whooping Going On

Osteosperum in my flower garden

Life has been so much better this week. No more train wreck. I'm chugging along very well and at pretty good speed, I might add.  My quilting is back on track. My yard is blooming with flowers. The weather is wonderful. I get to see all my children this Sunday!
I have packages being delivered here almost every day. Most of the fabric I ordered came in today.

I'm not sure what the name of this flower is. If you know, you can put it in the comments. Every day I take a stroll around my front yard flower garden. I like to look for things that are coming up, new blooms, and just enjoy my lovely flowers.

Right now, the lilac and the iris are just starting to bloom. I just adore lilacs. Their smell! The tiny little flowers. Did you know that my lilacs put on buds in February, April and November. Crazy flowers. I tell them that all the time. "What do you think you are doing?" Obviously they ignore me because they keep doing it year after year. The only time the buds come out to flower, though, is in April.

It was 10 minutes to sunset when I started writing and there just wasn't enough light to take a good picture.

But I digress...

Looking Back

I did so well this week! Happy dancing is going on all through my house. Everyone else in the house (the dog, the cat and hubby) all think I'm crazy...you form your own opinion.

Goal #1
My conservative goal is to get the yardage package(s) out of the mailbox, open them up and iron the fabric.

This was the orange fabric to make my grandson's High School graduation quilt. I had started out with some orange, but there just wasn't enough variety. For the whole backstory, click here. The fabric all came with three of the five arriving in the mail this afternoon.

I was going to try and hurriedly iron them to make my goal. But I was making split pea soup and had to go in and make the Irish Soda Bread that goes with it. I have a different bread that goes with many recipes I have. See this post for my thoughts on bread AND a recipe for bread.

I vote that I met this goal since 3/5th of the fabric didn't arrive until this after noon.

Here's the new fabric. To hear the accompanying details for this story, click here.

The top four are just different oranges with lots of design. The lower one is  shades of medium orange to burnt orange. I have a couple of other oranges in my first set of fabrics that are a burnt orange so this should work in just fine.

Goal #2:
Chip's One-Year Birthday Quilt
2.  I have the fabric ready and already have the pattern. Since I'll be free most of the next week, my goal will be to cut out the pieces.

Here's the fabric! Isn't it sweet?

I had ordered a yard of cowboy fabric for Chip's quilt, but it wasn't enough. I had to fussy cut all the fabrics and since it was in rows I could only fussy cut every other row. I cut out all the fabric I could and ordered more. It came today.
The blocks for Chip's quilt are 6-1/2" square. You need 20 squares for the quilt.

The picture on the left shows the two fabrics that will be bordering the blocks.

The bonus is that once I've cut the fabric for Chip's quilt, there's enough left over to make a baby quilt. So I fussy cut the remaining fabric and will cut the rest.

The blocks are 4-1/2" square. It needs 20 blocks and makes a baby size quilt.

Below are a couple of pictures of this pattern. The one on the left is a baby quilt made for a co-worker of mine. The one on the right was made by Firstest when he was eight.

Looking Forward:

Next week I plan on putting most of my energy into Firstest's quilt and maybe a little time on a couple of side projects.

1.  Firstest's Quilt:  

     Cut new fabric into pieces.

     Assemble 10 blocks

 2.  Military Mom Quilt (see here for post with explanation of this quilt)

      Figure out and draw up the layout of quilt

3.  Computer chair pillow

     Make cover for pillow

That should keep me busy. Since we are going to a SFGiants game on  Friday afternoon and to Firstest's Court of Honor for his Eagle Scout Award, I may not get everything but #3 is a wish, and any work on #2 will do.

I hope you have a wonderful week with lots of flowers, happy circumstances and joy with the ones you love.

Nyd din dag! (Danish for "See You Later!")

I'll be sharing this post on linky parties. Be sure and jump over to them to check out what other accomplished and fascinating quilters are doing. The Linky Parties are listed by day of the week.