Let's Make Baby Quilts! {7/3/20}

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

{I've Been Reading} Still Knife Painting

Still Knife Painting by Cheryl Hollon

Miranda has inherited her late uncle's homestead and has big plains to host cultural experiences, an afternoon of painting lessons followed by traditional local foods paired with tasting samples of moonshine. I'm not the slightest bit interested in moonshine, but the idea of outdoor painting classes in the Daniel Boone National Forest intrigued me If you like cozy mysteries set in small communities with a crafting element thrown in, pick this one up! It's fun and quirky and telling you my favorite elements might spoil the pacing of the book for you so I'm not going to do that. I love these  characters and can't wait to spend more time with them in future books.




A Sprinkling of Murder by Daryl Wood Gerber

Courtney Kelly teaches her customers at Open Your Imagination how to build  their own fairy gardens, selling the little houses plants and figurines that they'll need. When she discovers the owner of the dog grooming business next door is found dead on her patio, Courtney becomes a suspect in the murder investigation.

I wasn't expecting this book to have actual fairies in it and it took me a while to warm up to the idea. Fiona, Courtney's fairy friend, is  trying to earn her adult wings but keeps getting into trouble with the Fairy Queen. Helping to solve the murder will get Fiona closer to her wings. Probably the most unique thing about this new series is that Courtney is so open with everyone about the existence of fairies. Some of her customers can see Fiona and others can't, depending on how open they are to the possibility.



 A Curio Killing by Mary Ellen Hughes

Callie Reed's enthusiasm for the upcoming Keepsake Cove spring festival is only slightly dimmed when she learns that her ex's band will performing. When the band's manager is found dead, murdered with a music box from her shop, and Callie's ex is arrested...well, there's nothing she can do but try to prove him innocent.

This is a fun series and there's a lot in this book about the cove's different shop owners and the relationships between them. That's one of the things that make this  series work so well , along with the fact that Callie is such a likable character. Plenty of potential suspects has me guessing and even though I ultimately guessed wrong, I loved the ending.

Disclosure -- The publishers sent me advance review copies. This post contains affiliate links. 

{I've Been Reading} Gretchen

Gretchen by Shannon Kirk

This one started out strange and got progressively stranger. Lucy and her mother are on the run, setting up housekeeping in their eleventh state because a stranger seemed to think Lucy had reminded him of someone. It's a blessing to find a landlord who will accept the rent in cash and not ask too many questions, but the man and his daughter have secrets of their own. Lucy has always wanted lasting friendships, but soon she realized that Gretchen is really, really weird and has no respect for personal boundaries.

There's an obvious twist or two, then it snakes and spirals into something I don't think anyone would expect. At about the point where the story got insanely convoluted and twisted, I really found myself getting attached to Lucy and her mother.

It's not quite as good as Method 15/33 by the same author, but if you're in the mood for something weird and suspenseful (and don't require things to be actually plausible) give it a try. Especially if you've got Kindle Unlimited.





The Second Wife by Sheryl Browne

The cover copy tells you that Rebecca has stepped into Nicole's old life, living in Nicole's house with Nicole's husband, surrounded by Nicole's things. What it doesn't mention (but is revealed early enough in the book that I don't think I'll spoil it by telling you now) is that Rebecca and Nicole were best friends who haven't communicated much since Nicole and Richard were married.

After meeting them at the funeral, Rebecca is drawn to Richard and his adult daughter...and she also wants to find out what happened to her best friend. The perfect house doesn't seem to line up with what she knew about her friend. The fact that Nicole has given up her beloved oil painting doesn't seem right. The chapters alternate between Nicole in the days before her death, and Rebecca as she tries to learn what happened to cause Nicole's death. There is a lot of sex in this book. Far more than I've ever encountered in a domestic thriller. More than in a lot of romance novels. It kept me intrigued, but it's not one of the best.

Disclosure -- The publishers provided me with advance review copies. This post contains affiliate links. 

I Stitched A Goose in a Dress

Or maybe she's a duck. If you'd asked me last year I'd have told you that the last thing on earth I wanted to stitch was a goose....but I'd never seen a goose like this one by Barbara Ana Designs.

Pattern: The Key by Barbara Ana Designs 

I love the patterns with animals in dresses, but this is the best dress ever, with its great colors and geometric details. I started her for Maynia and got a corner of the dress done before moving on to something else because it was the next day and time to switch. A while later, I did some more stitching on the dress, but I was missing one of the shades of floss that I needed and wasn't feeling all that motivated... Then two nights ago the stitching bug bit hard.

Over the course of two evenings I went from "part of the dress is done" to having it completely finished. How long do you think it will take me to finish the fox?

If you enjoy huge single color samplers (or think you might), head over to Long Dog Samplers and download Pandemic. It's free for the next couple of days and absolutely amazing. I've been debating which of their samplers I might want to tackle and I guess this is the one.  It's got birds and flowers and a ton of amazing detail and I'm just deluded enough to think that I might be able to stitch it.