First Winter at Home

*Miss Bayles would rather be indoors than go hunting at the moment.

*Icicles on the front porch. We had to knock them off because of the stress on the roof. I was also told they can be painful.

*Moose on the loose. The one on the left was on my back patio earlier.

*Old Glory

*Vacant bird house amidst the snow-covered trees. I look forward to seeing it occupied in the Spring.

*A fireplace was a must when I bought the house. I love a lit fireplace even before the snowfall. This winter it's SOP to light it up in the afternoon and let it die out before bedtime. I can be found with a pot of tea reading or crocheting here after dinner.

Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I came across Wool while combing Twitter for books to read, and the Wool Omnibus Edition on Amazon Kindle. I don't know how I missed this story since I love dystopian lit, but as good stories go, one may read it decades later with enjoyment. Part 1, a stand-alone novella, sets the story of a post-apocalypse world where society lives 144 levels underground and of Holston, Silo's sheriff, and his investigation into his wife's death which eventually puts into motion the unraveling of Silo's secrets revealed in Part 5.
Well-written. I enjoyed it and do recommend it. I wished the back story was fleshed out more in this edition but no worry, I see a Silo saga in my future.

View all my reviews

A Little Crochet and Miss Bayles

Let me get rolling on this blog with this post. Because, I have a picture that my cat decided to photobomb lol

Last November while on travel assignment I subscribed to Jimmy Beans Wool Beanie Bags. For $10.00 a month I get a bag of four yarn samples, a fiber art notion, a card of yarn info, a packet of yarn soak, and a pamphlet or a link to a pattern to knit or crochet a small item for a yarn "test drive". I have three such bags and I decided to work on the crochet project from the January bag, a little neck scarf.

Right when I snapped the pre-WIP picture, Miss Bayles dashed in and came to a screeching halt when she saw the tabletop. Oh, the look in her face. If she can talk! What, mother? More yarn??

My cat is yarn-shaming me. They're little bitty skeins of yarn and I didn't break the bank, kitty cat...

So. Anyway. I have four 20-yard Cascade samples in purples:

*Lana d'Oro of alpaca/wool in Berry Blend, a classic plied yarn.
*Highland Duo of alpaca/wool in Purple Orchid, a single ply yarn.
* Cloud of alpaca/wool in Loganberry, a chainette yarn.
*El Cielo of superfine alpaca/nylon in Bordeax, a soft fluffy lace yarn.

The bag also contained a sample wool soak and pretty Knitter's Pride shawl stick which will end up on my hair :)

I'll get started on little scarf after I get back from jury duty today. Right now it's time to brew coffee, put away the bag of goodies before Miss Bayles gets any ideas, and get ready to drive into town.

Staying Put

I want to return to blogging. I've thought about it for months. I've had friends ask me about my blogs. I was about to close this one along with my fiber arts blog (Yarntails) and resume blogging over on my first blog (Daily Inklings). I even posted a short entry over there a few days ago, but ... well Daily Inklings had run its course. Some things need to end, and I will close a blog I've had for over ten years. I'm burned out with politics and culture, and I'm embarrassed for not being able to blog "Daily". I don't want to rant every day!

Oh I still hold true to my values and opinions. And I will still express them now and then but I will do that here. I'm a whole person, and while it was once a good idea to separate my blogs according to interests, it bogged me down. The upkeep was too much and my personal life is more important. Heck, at one point I'd actually forgotten I have three blogs, and it took me all of last evening to find the URL to this one (I forgot I have it on my Twitter account of the same name) and do the "forgot your password" routine. Now I need to find Yarntails and look into the feaseability of transferring its contents here.

So there will be some upheavals here, some remodeling and new furniture. The Curious Reader will on occasion read rants, but most of the time I will post life journals, books I'm reading, pictures of knitting and crocheting in progress, my writing, my Traditionalist Catholic faith, prepping, what ticks me off, what makes me happy, cooking, gardening, my cat Miss Bayles,  the beauty of the Inland Northwest, and whatever else I want to write about. The key here is to go back to WRITING which I've been very much remiss in doing to the detriment of my spirit!

Ennui

A job offer fell on my lap and I took it. That's what happened. Living in an area with a high cost of living (and not get a raise in years), I took a job with another travel group. I should have done it sooner.  Anyway..

It took me north, past Sacramento, into a town called Marysville. Now there's a town waiting to be written so I took a lot of notes, jotted down story arcs and characters, wrote plots, while I was there. It was one of my toughest nursing assignments. I was later told that if I can survive their hospital, I can survive anywhere. Survive I did...with war stories to boot.

So, the job vied for time with NaNo. Nano lost, and had to be shelved for the next one. In the meantime, I worked, slept when I could, sold my house in San Diego, worked, got sick, worked. I came home ten days ago with the worst cold I ever had, which I still have full-blown.

The house got sold. Tomorrow the packers will pack and Tuesday they will load. We'll be gone by next Sunday, on the way to Idaho. I'm horrified at the thought of packing thirty years' worth of living in the same house. Oh my. I was sick since I came back and couldn't sort through. Ugh. The laundry...
I give up. They are professionals and have to deal with bigger and more complicated moves.

Writing-wise, while I was too weak to get out of bed to fix my own cup of tea (son David would fix me pots of it), I looked through my laptop to see where I am on my novels. I read through my Kingslyn---ugh, I wrote badly, need to edit badly, and worse, I need to do research badly. So on to reading history books and watching documentaries, and watching the Cadfael series for inspiration. No go. I must get this move over with before I can pick up the novels. I must stop coughing and sneezing and getting chilled!!

NaNoWriMo Begins, and The Quality of Mercy Reprised

NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, begins! I just finished the Midnight Dash with two sprints on Twitter and the #writeclub group with a starting word count of 639. I will talk more about NaNoWriMo in another post. I want to sleep. I'm still wearing my Morticia costume and time to shower and get to bed. But It's going to be a good effort and a good month for writing!

Just quickly, I'm reprising a previous Nanovel, a light fantasy called The Quality of Mercy I did on 2010. I had slightly over 15,000 words on it -- I got sick and stopped writing. I was going to add my most recent work into NaNo but that piece is historical fiction and will require research to continue with the story. TQOM, being urban fantasy, well I can speed along with the story and get it finished. I will go ahead and rewrite it, as the WIP is in a dead laptop and not written linearly anyway.

TQOM is about Mercy Bristol, a stay-at-home wife and mother with a tremendous Walter Mitty-like imagination who dreams of becoming a playwright. Her daydreams and inner life go on overdrive when the theater she was volunteering at burned down, and she believes she had witnessed what happened and who the culprit is. Her muse, Shakespeare, becomes real and both go on an adventure even she couldn't dream up. Two of her three kids, a middle schooler and a primary schooler think she's a total space cadet. Her loving husband thinks she reads too many mystery novels and should not put too much into the small coincidences surrounding what was ruled a faulty electrical incident.

Anyway I will be blogging this story this month. Good night.

Writing Saints Pt 1: a blog in search of its muse

I spent the night reading about various saints. It began with St. Anne, the patron saint of my church and of widows and also the mother of The Blessed Virgin Mary (who is also a widow and my patroness of solitude --- you know, people forget she married and is widowed indeed. I will not get into a debate about her ever virgin status even if I believe her to be so; that's a whole 'nother blog). After reading about St, Anne, I looked up other personal saints --- St. Venantius, my birthday saint; St, Clare of Assisi, my confirmation saint; St, Martha, my kitchen saint; St. Therese Lisieux, because I grew up amongst Carmelites; St. John the Baptist, my late husband's birthday saint and my mom's hometown patron saint. And St. Jude, the saint of the impossible!!  I've recently added two more: St. Isidore, patron saint of farming and rural life, and St. Luke, patron saint of healers.


And of writing?

Firstly, there are saints for just about any activity, occupation, event, locale, country, ailments, and human condition. I'm currently reading Utopia by St. Thomas More. I learned he's the patron saint of ...politicians and lawyers!? Oh man. What a thing to do to a great statesman, a man of unwavering integrity, a man who put God first before man's whims and his own comfort and was martyred for it. Patron saint of sleasebags. Yet if only they would emulate him! The irony is, in Utopia lawyers don't exist. They're not needed. 

And, I found out there's a patron saint even of the television---none other than my confirmation saint, St. Clare of Assisi. *note to self: look this one up*

Anyway...

There is a patron saint for just about everything including writers. Sometimes more than one. I had asked St. Paul's intercession in the past.  St. Paul contributed to about half of the New Testament so yeah, I say he is one. I read tonight that St. Francis de Sales is officially listed as the patron saint of writers. Cool, we writers can have both. And King David is the patron saint of poets (and played the harp). Very nice!

So now that I bored the heck out of you reader, what do saints have to do with this blog? Okay I said I'm Catholic. While reading about my church saint, I decided to have a saint for this blog and my writing. One that I can emulate, look up to, be inspired by. A muse, if you will! Or muses. Therefore, this blog will have St. Paul, St. Francis de Sales, King David, the Blessed Virgin Mary who is the patroness of all things good and beautiful and pure, St. Thomas More because of his integrity and authenticity and I really like him. And St. Jude, the saint of the impossible. There may be more later.

~~ Writing saints, whose words written and spoken have edified souls through the ages and brought glory to God, pray for me, my blog's contents and my writings, that I may write in joy and truth, in Christ's name, amen. ~~