Welcome to 2023!

Well, here we are in 2023! 

It feels like the last year was one long blur of activity. I guess it often feels that way, looking back at the past year, but this past year was truly an action-packed one for me. 2022 was a year of big transitions, of difficult goodbyes, of new adventures and of doors opening. 

The year started with a whole lot of preparation to leave my home of 20+ years in Healdsburg, California. It was a lovely home in a lovely town, but it was time to leave both. I have good memories, especially of Miss C as a little kid and all of the adventures we had there. But it was our married, family home -- and after the marriage ended, it felt a bit like I was living in a place that didn't fit anymore.   

 

So, there was a whole lot of fixing and freshening to get the house ready to sell.

When I pulled up this photo of the house with its newly-painted look, I spotted the 250 gallon water tote off to the right of the driveway. Like many of my neighbors around town, I'd gotten that so that we could take advantage of the city's free weekly delivery of recycled water during the drought months. Over the past few years, the city had severely restricted household water use and prohibited most garden watering. That recycled water allowed me to keep the trees and shrubs in the yard alive, even while everything else turned brown and died. Yikes. Six months in the rainy Pacific Northwest and I'd already forgotten about the recycled water. 

Inside, the house went from a home filled with color and much-loved personal decor to a beige, neutral "anyone could live here" staged look. Accomplishing that involved more painting (beige!), a lot of studying home decor blogs, and pulling out every wood, woven, brown, neutral thing I could find. My realtor was stunned when she saw the result, and apparently got inquiries about which professional stager she had used. And it did look rather inviting, if I do say so myself. Not like my house (again, BEIGE) but kind of peaceful.

All that preparation meant no sewing or quilting. This autumn leaf quilt was a gift for my sister and was the last quilt that came off of the longarm before it was dismantled to store and then move. (My realtor kept asking if "the loom" was out of the bedroom yet. It made me laugh every time.)

 

After much contemplation about how to protect the frame during pre-sale storage and moving, I decided that the solution was pool noodles. Brilliant, eh?  I ordered a box of them, and wrapped the rails with split noodles, batting and garbage bags. It worked beautifully. When the frame was reassembled just last month, every piece was in perfect condition. Not a single nick or scratch.  

 

 

2022 also had an unexpected interruption for surgery. In the midst of all of that prep work, I managed to fall and break my wrist. Ouch. (I tripped over a garden hose while I was in the process of clearing things away so my handyman wouldn't trip and hurt himself. Yes, really.) Luckily, that happened just after the realtor's photographer had already taken the listing photographs, so the house was staged and clean and ready, and all I had to do was not mess anything up. The wrist break, and eventual surgery to pin things back together, pretty much ensured that I wasn't going to do any messing up at all. I did a whole lot of TV watching and reading instead.

A wonderful benefit of that unexpected event was how many longtime friends came to my aid. They helped pack, and took car loads of stuff to Goodwill, delivered boxes of books to the library to donate, and helped make the parched backyard look decent with potted flowers. It was very humbling and lovely to have friends step up -- and it was really, really helpful. I truly don't know what I would have done without them.   

Did I mention that 2022 also brought another feline member to our family? This is Kaya. Admittedly, it was not the best time to adopt a new pet, what with the chaos of packing and house-showing and an upcoming move out of state. But when "your" pet shows up, you know. And Caroline just knew. So we figured it out, and our other critters (cat Maybel and relentlessly friendly golden retrievers Rosie and Starlie) accepted her gracefully into the family. 

Somewhere in all of that activity, I worked with a Whidbey Island realtor and found a house that looked ideal for me, Miss C, and our critter crew. After home tours and negotiations and inspections, not to mention a whole lot of paperwork, it was mine.  

 

 So, it was time to say goodbye to Healdsburg, with some sadness and a whole lot of relief, actually. It was a good family community when we got there, but it has changed a lot and become so touristy and fancy and money-obsessed over the last 20 years. It didn't feel like a place I wanted to be any more.

Speaking of friends, when it came time to make the trek from  northern California to Whidbey Island, Washington, two more dear friends volunteered to help with the adventure. This is us back in our U.C. Irvine college days, circa 1979 or so. We were so young! Moe flew up from Anaheim and helped me pack, and Beth stopped on her way back from her travels to help us drive up to Washington.

  

Moe and I (and the dogs) rode together, singing along to a 1970's music station (our college decade) for most of the trip, and Caroline and the cats kept Beth company. Here we are, a mere 40 years later, posing in front of my new house.

  

So the early summer found me unpacking, and exploring a bit, and trying to figure out where to put things and how to turn a house full of boxes into a functional home.  

This summer, my sister, dad and I said a final goodbye to my mom after a rapid health decline. I was glad to be there during the week before she died, and she knew she was home and that we were all there with her. It was, all things considered, as good as it could have been. I know my mom and my brother are together, surrounded by the wonderful family dogs we had over the years, and probably playing cards with grandparents and great aunts and uncles. 

Miss C and I spent our first autumn on Whidbey Island, and I realized with a shock that I'd not actually enjoyed autumn in quite a few years. Autumn in Sonoma County means drought and fire season, with  evacuation readiness a constant necessity. It was a huge improvement to our quality of life to leave that behind. And as some of you have read here on this blog, I have had a great time exploring the local farmers' market and autumn offerings.

 In November, we survived a 3+ day power outage after a massive windstorm brought down tree limbs and power lines.  I'd had a generator purchase in the works, but now it's installed and ready to click on at the next power outage. I think I've just guaranteed that South Whidbey won't have an outage for a while. 

I also joined the local quilt guild, and felt like I'd found my tribe! I am looking forward to making new friends. Quilters tend to be very nice people.

December brought Bernina technicians to my house to get my longarm up and running again, so I've been having a great time reacquainting myself. I've finished two quilts since then, nothing fancy but simple quilts that were fun to get done, and I just loaded up another today. 

First Whidbey Christmas was great fun, and even provided a white almost-Christmas snow storm. It made for several magical (if very icy) days. Oh, how I love the snow.

 

 

Beth (see college friend, above) joined us for Christmas with her new young lab Finn, so there was much dog romping and laughing and a whole lot of nibbling on holiday food.  

 

2023 promises to be a quieter year, but with continued exploring of our new home. 

I wish you comfort, creativity, and joy in the coming year! 

December, Already

 

 Yikes! It's December already! That happened fast! 

Last time I posted, it was about to be Thanksgiving, and I was excitedly looking forward to the set-up of my longarm machine.

Well, life happens. Turns out that there was a Covid outbreak among the Bernina tech team, so no longarm installation. I had SO been looking forward to having that long weekend to reacquaint myself with my machine. And it's not that I don't have a ton of other things to do -- but I was seriously thrown by the change in plans. I recovered by a whole lot of reading, plus some sewing with holiday movies playing to lift my spirits.

 

 

Here is quilt top #1. Quite a while ago, I decided to adopt my own version of Bonnie Hunter's scrap organization system, and I started cutting fabric scraps into usable sizes - for me, 5 inch squares, 2.5 and 1.5 inch strips, and 2.5 inch squares. (Bonnie's systems has a lot more variety, but I'm overwhelmed with scraps as it is and I try to keep it simple.) I have a big bin of 5 inch squares, and I decided to try to use a bunch of them. For the top above, I matched colored squares with low volume black and white prints to make a whole bunch of half square triangles, and voila. Another top for the "to be quilted" pile.

That barely made a dent in the scrap bin. How does that happen? I swear, they multiply. So, this was quilt top number 2. I made this by roughly following a photo off of Pinterest. It is mostly 4.5 inch squares mixed with a few half square triangles to form the diagonal lines. So, another top for the pile. 

And still the bin is full. A mystery. 

Meanwhile, we had an actual SNOW DAY! It started snowing one evening and continued a bit into the next day. I have so missed living in snow since my New Hampshire days. Maybe it's that I grew up in California and didn't encounter snow until I was in my mid-20's, but I love it and can never have enough of it. It wasn't much, compared to other places, but I'm told Whidbey Island doesn't typically get that much snow. By morning there was about an inch and a half on the ground. Enough to make me very happy.

Do you know the Gilmore Girls, and how Lorelai can smell snow, and gets excited because good things happen when it snows? That was me. Smelling snow and throwing tiny snowballs for the dogs and just being happy.

Look at my little balcony! Snow!

Meanwhile, I realized something was a big odd when I was cooking the little turkey I made for Thanksgiving dinner. The gas oven kept making this repeating "pfffft" sound -- heat kept heating, turkey kept cooking, but that sound was odd. I called for repair the next day, and learned that it was probably related to the gas igniter thingy starting to fail, so it was best not to use the oven. I will skip over the next few days during which I kept thinking I was smelling the faint smell of propane gas, and called for various inspections and repairs. Cut to a Friday night -- still smelling gas despite not using the thing and following all expert advice -- the emergency people advised me to pull out the range and turn off the gas line running to it. I appealed for help to my very very very nice neighbors, for whom I will bake a batch of thank you cookies WHEN I HAVE A WORKING OVEN, and so we were to pull the range away from the wall and turn the gas off with only minimal swearing and a lot of laughing. We have been fine, albeit stovetop and oven free since then. I will also spare you the repair efforts, except to say that it does not inspire confidence when you enter the kitchen to find the repair guy watching a Youtube video on how to take the back of the range off. 

Ahem. Well, repair is in process, ordered parts are arriving, and by December 21 (yes. That far away.) I should have a working oven and cook top.

 In the meantime, Miss C and I have gotten creative with the microwave, toaster oven (luckily we have a large one), and various electric appliances such as the Instant Pot and the slow cooker. That chicken is an egg poacher (that works quite well, actually) and yes, we had poached eggs on toast for dinner one night.

I won't bore you with food photos, but I do need to share last night's dinner, fresh from the Instant Pot. I used this recipe for Pork Potsticker Bowls, using ground pork and veggies I had on hand, and it turned out quite well. (If you make it, I would advise cutting soy sauce in half and adding a bit more water to replace it.) And -- one pot! No cooktop!

I decided to get the Christmas decorations up, at least the easily-findable ones. 

So Christmas tree is up. Family room mantle is decorated. (Sorry, Jane Ann, the mercury glass pieces will stay packed up for another year.)

And, perhaps most importantly, Bing, Danny and Rosemary are hanging out with me again. They live next door to Ruth but she doesn't seem to mind their singing and tap dancing.

And then! I got the call and Longarm Day was back on the calendar! The Bernina technicians from Quality Sewing and Vacuum arrived and got my system up and running again. I will add that I have been very impressed by this dealer, and these technicians were amazing. Pleasant, thorough -- got everything up and running, oiled the parts that required oil, checked that all was level and smooth, and even set up a test quilt to make sure that everything was sewing properly. (Nary a Youtube video needed by them, I might add.) 

Oh right, it's BIG. It always looks bigger than I expect. In fact, it pretty much fills up the living room. But now I can figure out what to do with the loveseat and random chair and how to make it be functional and look decent. 

I immediately loaded up some practice fabric and played a bit on that, and then did some really basic quilting on a small charity quilt from the quilt guild to get me going again. It did strike me as funny that they'd given me a brown quilt. I never sew brown quilts. 

But three passes and it was done -- so on to another very very old quilt top from my very very old quilt top pile, for more practice. 

This is just big nine-patches alternating with big squares -- from an old Kaffe Fassett book I think. I'd made a quilt like this for my sister years ago, which turned out to be like a quilted indoor garden of green. And, eventually, I got around to using the leftovers from her quilt to make another top. This will probably be a charity quilt too. Anyway, I'll work on that a bit later today. Yay! Fun quilting ahead!

This is what Starlie and Rosie do while I'm quilting, by the way. Guess I'd better keep the loveseat in there.

Oh, one more WI adventure to report. Three good friends from my college days in Southern California now live in Port Townsend, which is just a ferry ride away. A fourth was visiting, so I walked on to the Coupeville ferry and went over to meet them for dinner one evening. Coupeville is about 30 minutes from my house, maybe, sort of in the center of the island, and the Coupville ferry goes straight west and lands in downtown Port Townsend. 

This is what it looked like while I was waiting for the 2:45 ferry from Coupeville. So that's the Olympic peninsula and a bit of PT way across the water. 

I walked on, hung out in the lounge area, and voila - 30 minutes later I was in Port Townsend where my friends picked me up.

Port Townsend is a Victorian seaport town, with a lot of historical flavor and charm. It reminds me a lot of the old town part of Portland, Maine, actually. We ate at the lounge at the Manresa Castle, which was a comfortable, quirky place with very yummy food. The whole thing was a very fun time with very old  -- wait, make that long-time -- friends, and I was so pleased that the excursion was so easy. I will be ferrying over again soon.

And by the way, I've been reading a memoir called House Lessons: Renovating a Life, by Erica Baumeister. It is the story about a woman (a fiction author whose novels are quite charming) who, with her husband and family, buys a very old house in Port Townsend and starts renovating it. It has a lot of reflection of what home means, how moving and adapting to a new place brings up a lot of thoughts and feelings -- plus interesting info about PT and old houses. It fits where I am right now on a lot of levels.  

One more new WI life lesson. Apparently one needs to cover one's hose outlets to prevent freezing. I only rented when I lived in NH, so I was not aware of this little winterization job. They make insulated hose bib covers, which were handily right by the front door at my local hardware store. Who knew?!

 

While there, I bought myself a snow shovel. A SNOW SHOVEL! Because I need one now! 

Life is good here on Whidbey Island. What is making your life good these days?

 

Here it Comes

 Here comes winter! We have had many very frosty mornings here on Whidbey Island, and I am excited to think that snow is not far away. I've lived in snowy places for about 17 tears -- Ithaca, New York when I was in law school, and the Concord, New Hampshire area for about 14 years after that. And I never tired of it. Google tells me that my area of the island only gets a few inches a year but I remain hopeful. You can be sure that I will enjoy every snowflake that falls. 

Meanwhile, big things are coming. Yes, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, too, but I am talking something more exciting than that. My longarm quilting machine is being set up tomorrow! I had it disassembled about a year ago in preparation for selling my house and moving, and I have sorely missed it. 

If you promise not to tell anyone, I will show you the very messy state of my sewing room. (I have put away about half of that mess, and today's project is to deal with the rest.) But those long poles are the poles for my quilting frame, padded and wrapped in a creative combination of pool noodles, batting, and garbage bags. I really wanted to make sure they weren't dinged or dented in the move. I have unwrapped about half of that pile and will do the other in a bit. 

It has been a bit tricky estimating the space that the longarm will take. Before I bought my machine and frame, a Bernina dealer gave me a big plastic mat that rolls out and shows you exactly how much floor space is needed. It is inevitably  a bigger space than I think. So, having rolled out the mat a bunch of times, I'm sure that the frame will fit, sort of along that right-hand wall, but I may need to get rid of the loveseat and table down there under the window. I'll see how things go. The dogs sure do love hanging out on the love seat while I am sewing, so they can keep an eye on me and on goings-on in front of the house.

In my excitement about the longarm's arrival, I have been sewing a very easy quilt top that looks quite complex. Look, it's really all half-square triangles (the navy and white squares) and whole patterned squares. Super fast, actually. The pattern is called Skip to My Lou by Busy Hands Quilts. I got it all sewn together yesterday, so it may be the first "real" quilt that goes on the longarm after I do a bit of practice. 

I am also contemplating making a cover for the longarm machine. Up until now, I have simply draped a vintage table cloth over it.

Someone on the Bernina Longarm group posted one she'd made and I've been studying it. Looks doable, I think. I have a bag of miscellaneous orphan blocks and component parts so I'm thinking I will try to put them together and make something similar.

 These chilly nights have proven excellent for retreating to bed early with my book. I just finished "The Christie Affair" by Nina de Gramont, and it was just as excellent as Nancy Pearl said it would be. Nancy Pearl's interview with the author was an interesting complement to the novel. 

I'm going to go make breakfast now. My current breakfast delight is my version of "toad in the hole." Basically, you butter a slice of bread, cut a hole in it, put it in a hot pan, and then crack an egg into the hole. I flip it over at the last minute to make sure the egg white is fully cooked but I'm not sure if that is an official step or not. I can highly recommend this as a breakfast to enjoy while reading a novel set in England. 

 

Always More to Read

You might remember that a while ago I came upon a flyer announcing that Nancy Pearl was going to speaking in Langley. I got all of my work done and sent off, so I was free to trot off on Thursday morning to see her talk.

Nancy Pearl is a retired librarian from Seattle. She has become known for her love of reading and her talent and at recommending books to others. You can read all about her here on Wikipedia. I didn't know that she started the concept of having a whole city read the same book -- "Seattle Reads" -- which has been adopted by any cities around the country. I knew her from her interviews on Public Radio, and from a few books she has published with lists of book recommendations.

Beforehand, I got my official Sno-Isle library card, giving me access to the Snohomish and Island County libraries. Isn't that a great name? Sno-Isle sounds like a magical wintry island where you can snuggle in, drink hot chocolate and read all day. 

Nancy Pearl's talk was held at the local arts center, and the place was packed. It was wonderful to be in a big room full of avid readers. It looked to me like a lot of book club groups had come together. As a newcomer to Whidbey Island, it was heartening to look around and see people who love books and reading. Will one of them become a friend, some day? This talk was Nancy's 25th talk in Langley, and the woman next to me had been to every one. 

 

The talk was about some of the best books that Nancy has read over the last year. Conveniently, the program included the list of titles and authors Nancy would be discussing, and people (including me) took notes to remember the ones that sounded most appealing. It was a delightful talk, and Nancy seemed like someone you'd want to just sit and talk books with for hours. 

She talked some about paper books vs audio books vs e-readers. Nancy has no prejudices against any of the formats. There was a bit of discussion about how a book/ebook is a dialogue between book and reader, and an audiobook becomes a conversation between author, reader and narrator. It is certainly true that audio book narrators can make or break a listening experience. (I recall one I tried to listen to awhile back where the narrator kept pausing or changing her intonation as if the sentence had ended...but it had not. It was very disconcerting and I stopped listening because it was just too distracting.)

And speaking of stopping, Nancy Pearl has become known for her "Rule of 50" which she has now adapted. Her view is that life is to short, and there are too many great things to read, to waste time on something you are not enjoying. Hear, hear! So her rule is this: You should read 50 pages and if you are still not involved or enjoying it, stop. (Her exception was if you are reading for a book club, keep going...  because then you have made a commitment to the other club members.) She also added: you are reading a mystery, not enjoying it much but reading only because you want to know who did it, for pete's sake go look at the end, and then walk away. Her new amendments are: if you are over 51 years old, subtract your age from 100 and that is how many pages you should read. For example, if you are 65, subtract 65 from 100 and you need only read 35 pages. And, she added, if you are 100 then you can judge a book by its cover and read however much or however little you choose.

Isn't it funny how we need permission to stop reading a book? For the longest time, I felt like I had to read to the end if I started it, and felt horribly guilty if I stopped midway. Some years back I let go of that, but I appreciate having a librarian's permission to abandon ship at will. 

Some of Nancy Pearl's previous Langley talks are posted on Youtube, so you can listen, get a flavor for her, and get some past book recommendations.  She's done a Ted Talk, which you can watch here. And she has done a bunch of "Book Lust with Nancy Pearl" author interviews on Seattle Channel, which you can find on Youtube also.

You want to know what Nancy Pearl recommended, don't you? Here are a few of the ones I noted:

  What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year by Charles Finch

        A non-fiction diary of one man's experience of 2020 and Covid lockdown. Nancy said she didn't want to relive 2020 but the book was wonderful. You can see her interview with the author here. 

Revenge of the Librarians by Tom Gauld

    A collection of cartoons about books, writing, editing, reading. You might recognize his style from his New Yorker contributions. I went straight to the bookstore afterwards and bought this. I need more cartoons in my life. And it's delightful. 

 The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin

    I had read this and really enjoyed it. It's the story of Lenni, a 17 year old terminal cancer patient, and Margo, an 83 year old woman, who are both hospitalized and meet in the craft room. They realize that their ages total 100 years, and they decide to paint images of their lives, one for each year, so when they are done they will have a collection of 100 paintings. I thought it was lovely, poignant, and not (surprisingly) not depressing.

 Thank You, Mr. Nixon by Gish Jen  

    I really want to read this. It is a series of linked short stories, about different generations from the same family. The publisher's blurb says: "Beginning with a cheery letter penned by a Chinese girl in heaven to “poor Mr. Nixon” in hell, Gish Jen embarks on a fictional journey through U.S.-China relations, capturing the excitement of a world on the brink of tectonic change."  This especially interests me. Caroline was born in and adopted from China, and our beloved guide when we were in China, Chen, was the (then very young) Chinese diplomat responsible for coordinating Nixon's travels through China. There is a Nancy Pearl interview with Gish Jen on Youtube.

The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont 

    I have seen this book in a lot of places, and figured it was one of the many sort of derivative historical fiction pieces that seem popular right now. Nancy Pearl's comments about it made me want to read it, and I just got it from the library. If you're an Agatha Christie fan, you probably know that there is a real mystery about Christie's life about an 11 day period where she simply disappeared. To this day, no one really know what happened, and there is much speculation. Christie's husband was having a very public affair, and when Christie disappeared it was feared that she had killed herself. She was subsequently discovered, alive, checked into an inn under the name of the mistress. This is a take on that 11 days, told from the perspective of the mistress. Nancy recommended it highly, so I'm giving it a go. But before I start I'll watch Nancy's interview with the author, here.

 

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin 

    This was on my "to read" list so I am looking forward tot his even more. You might know Gabrielle Zevin from her delightful novel, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow traces the lives of two friends from their meeting as young students, to their decision to create a computer game together, to what happens after that. According to the publisher, "two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality." Nancy raved about this and said you do not have to know about or like computer games to really enjoy this book.  

Still Life by Sarah Winman  

    I'd not heard of this but it sounds intriguing. Based on Nancy's recommendation, I've added this to my To Read list. Here is the publisher's description:

"Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amidst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses's life for the next four decades."

After the talk, I wandered over to Langley's charming independent bookstore, Moonraker Books. I bought the Tom Gauld book of cartoons there, wandered a bit  -- so many tempting books! 

 

I ended my outing at Crabby Coffee, where I sat next to the fireplace, sipped a latte, and perused Tom Gauld's bookish cartoons. 

It was a wonderful way to spend the morning. And now I will appreciate Whidbey's rainy and chilly weather even more, because it is the perfect weather for snuggling in and reading.