Bran New Death

I've already written about how much I love the first two books in the Vintage Kitchen mystery series by Victoria Hamilton, A Deadly Grind and Bowled Over.  The author has a brand new series making its debut this week with Bran New Death, and I'm happy to be today's stop on her virtual book tour.

 

 

Merry is making a fresh start in small-town Autumn Vale, New York, in the mansion she’s inherited from her late uncle, Melvin. The house is run-down and someone has been digging giant holes on the grounds, but with its restaurant-quality kitchen, the place has potential for her new baking business. She even has her first client—the local retirement home.

Unfortunately, Merry soon finds that quite a few townsfolk didn’t like Uncle Mel, and she has inherited their enmity as well as his home. Local baker Binny Turner and her crazy brother, Tom, blame Melvin for their father’s death, and Tom may be the one vandalizing her land. But when Tom turns up dead in one of the holes in her yard, Merry needs to prove she had nothing to do with his death—or her new muffin-making career may crumble before it starts...

 

I loved this book. It has a completely different tone from the Vintage Kitchen Mysteries -- the characters are a little quirkier and I'm fascinated by the setting, a castle in the woods and a small town that Merry describes as "Shirley Jackson odd. Stephen King Odd!"  The book ends with some questions left answered, but it's not the kind of cliffhanger that made me feel cheated.

 

You can enter to win an autographed copy of the book over at the Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours website.

 

The book is available from these online retailers --  

Amazon       Book World      B&N     Powell’s Books      Book Depository

 

You can find out more about all of Victoria Hamilton's mysteries at her website, Victoria Hamilton Mysteries.  The third Vintage Kitchen book is due out in November, and the first book in her Teapot Collector series is due out next year. I'll be watching for both!

 

And I'll be keeping my eye out for more of her muffin recipes, too. After I finished the book, I made a batch of Bacon Cheddar Muffins from the included recipe.  We've never tried savory muffins at our house. I absolutely loved them and Hubby, who never likes anything, liked them.(If you're going to make them yourself, there's a slight typo in the book. Where it reads "1/2 1 pound bacon" that's supposed to be a half a pound.)

Weekly Stash Report

My stash report is early this week since I'm participating in the virtual book tour for Bran New Death on Sunday.

 

 

Don't you love it when things come in the mail sooner than you were expecting them? That Rest in Pieces that I ordered from Connecting Threads last week is here already. I was hoping to use some of the haunted house print to back Hocuspocusville, but I wasn't sure if it would compete with the embroidery. It's going to be perfect!  (Don't ask when I'm going to get the embroidery done -- this isn't a race, right?)

 

I counted the fabric towards last week's stash report. This week, I haven't bought a thing. But I did pull out some wool that I'd bought to make a baby sweater when my youngest was still a baby. There's not enough to make a sweater in his current size, but there is enough to make myself a Lonely Tree Shawl.

 

And I found this sock toe while I was working on my Labor Day weekend to do list. I pulled out the needles a few years back to work on another sock, probably because this looks way too wide for my foot. I'm going to unravel it and use this yarn for my next pair of plain tv watching socks.

The list? I've crossed off all but one item, and it's only Saturday night. I think that means I'm doing well.

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 54 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 233 1/4 yards
Net Added for 2013: 178 1/2 yards


Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 2250 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 9500 yards
Net Added for 2013: 7250 yards

I'm linking up to Patchwork Times and Finding Fifth.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {week 35}

I really thought I'd have at least one baby quilt finished this week, but life doesn't always work out the way we expect it to.

How about you -- any progress to show off?

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, but it's got to be about baby quilts. While we're still gathering steam, 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.

I've got new socks!

This is my fourth pair of socks for 2013, and the fifth pair will probably be finished tonight. In case you haven't had the pleasure of trying it yourself, it's hard to get a picture of socks on your own feet...
.

but they don't look quite right lying flat, either...

 

 Wool socks are more cooperative when it comes to taking pictures without feet inside them, but these are Patons Stretch, a blend of cotton, wool and elastic. Great for knitting with and wearing, not so easy to photograph unless your foot model is home and not busy with another project.

Maybe it's time I invested in a set of sock blockers.

I link up with Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?, Get Crafting Friday, Pinworthy Projects, and Freedom Fridays, Wonderful at Home, Inspired Friday.

Labor Day Weekend Goals

Jo over at Jo's Country Junction suggested that we post our sewing goals for Labor Day weekend, and she's set up a linky party and giveaway.  I think she probably meant for us to pick one goal, but I've got a bunch of things I really need to get working on.

That comment I made Monday about being back to my regular schedule and able to get some quilting done? I knew I was going to jinx myself when I typed that....

So here's the plan. Wish me luck!

• Find gingham piece big enough for backing the new baby quilt (or piece gingham squares to make a backing for it)
• Assemble top for green checkerboard quilt
• frog new blue sock and start over with the right number of stitches, since my first attempt was too small
• Count border pieces for the turtle quilt and see how many more I need
• Finish winding yarn for the new shawl and find appropriate needles
• Find blue Dresden Plates top and see about adding borders and pin-basting

Another of our house's interesting quirks...

I would love to know what this house looked like back in the day. Now and then, I catch a tempting glimpse of its past. Remember that horrifying floor I uncovered in the boys' room?

I don't spend a whole lot of time in the back of Teenage Daughter's closet. I knew she had neat old wallpaper, but until I went in there to take some pictures, I'd forgotten how stinkin' cute it was!

 

 

 

She's got a beret! We can't seem to decide what this little creature actually is -- any guesses?

And they've got little gas pumps -- squee!

 

It's in poor condition and I know most people would have painted over it as soon as they moved in, but it's survived for so many decades I just can't bring myself to do that, especially since it's tucked away from everyday sight.

This post is linked to Time Travel Thursday, Treasure Hunt Thursday, Vintage Thingie Thursday, Share Your Cup, and Ivy and Elephants.

Free Kindle titles -- Prequels to The Returned

On Saturday, I posted about reading The Returned by Jason Mott and how I wished that the author had included more glimpses of the other "returned." It turns out that there are three short prequels to the book, all of them available as free Kindle editions -- The First, The Sparrow, and The Choice. 

I've read The First and The Choice already and both of them are self contained. You can enjoy them without reading the full book, although I'm guessing you'll be intrigued enough to read more. Or, if you're like me and didn't find out about them until after finishing The Returned, you can read them later on.

For some reason, I can't get the Amazon product page for The Choice to load, although I downloaded and read it last night. All three stories are also available as free Audible Audio editions.

{Yarn Along} a new pile of socks

I've got a whole pile of socks in progress. There's the plain pair that I'm knitting with the Kroy Stripes, and the Mock Croc Socks, and a new pair I started this week.

The new ones were going to be a plain pair to work on when the striped socks are done, but the colors are knitting up more subtly than I expected so I decided to add some texture. It's the lace rib from Barbara G. Walker's Treasury of Knitting Patterns.

I've just finished reading The Angola Horror: The 1867 Train Wreck That Shocked the Nation and Transformed American Railroads by Charity Vogel. It tells the story of the Angola train wreck, but beyond that it's a fascinating look at the rail travel and newspaper coverage of the era. No photographs were taken in the aftermath of the disaster, but the book includes many illustrations from the original newspaper stories.

Hubby and I have been watching the new season of Hell on Wheels, and the kids and I are waiting for The Lone Ranger to hit the cheap theater, so I've got trains on the brain lately...and now I've got more historical knowledge than I started out with.

Here's the publisher's description --

On December 18, 1867, the Buffalo and Erie Railroad’s eastbound New York Express derailed as it approached the high truss bridge over Big Sister Creek, just east of the small settlement of Angola, New York, on the shores of Lake Erie. The last two cars of the express train were pitched completely off the tracks and plummeted into the creek bed below. When they struck bottom, one of the wrecked cars was immediately engulfed in flames as the heating stoves in the coach spilled out coals and ignited its wooden timbers. The other car was badly smashed. About fifty people died at the bottom of the gorge or shortly thereafter, and dozens more were injured. Rescuers from the small rural community responded with haste, but there was almost nothing they could do but listen to the cries of the dying—and carry away the dead and injured thrown clear of the fiery wreck. The next day and in the weeks that followed, newspapers across the country carried news of the “Angola Horror,” one of the deadliest railway accidents to that point in U.S. history.

In a dramatic historical narrative, Charity Vogel tells the gripping, true-to-life story of the wreck and the characters involved in the tragic accident. Her tale weaves together the stories of the people—some unknown; others soon to be famous—caught up in the disaster, the facts of the New York Express’s fateful run, the fiery scenes in the creek ravine, and the subsequent legal, legislative, and journalistic search for answers to the question: what had happened at Angola, and why? The Angola Horror is a classic story of disaster and its aftermath, in which events coincide to produce horrific consequences and people are forced to respond to experiences that test the limits of their endurance. Vogel sets the Angola Horror against a broader context of the developing technology of railroads, the culture of the nation’s print media, the public policy legislation of the post–Civil War era, and, finally, the culture of death and mourning in the Victorian period. The Angola Horror sheds light on the psyche of the American nation. The fatal wreck of an express train nine years later, during a similar bridge crossing in Ashtabula, Ohio, serves as a chilling coda to the story.

The publisher provided me with an advance copy of The Angola Horror.  For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis. 

Free Kindle Title -- Misery Loves Company

I've actually had this one reserved from the library and just brought it home last week. But, since it's free on Amazon today, now I've got it downloaded and I'll be taking the paperback back for someone on the reserve list to enjoy.  Because, truth be told, if I'm just reading the story sometimes it's just easier to have it on my Kindle. And in this case it'll mean that I don't have to worry about returning it to the library on time -- that's always a good thing!

   

Here's the book's description from Amazon:

 

Filled with grief, Jules Belleno rarely leaves the house since her husband’s death while on duty as a police officer. Other than the reviews Jules writes on her blog, she has little contact with the outside world.

But one day when she ventures out to the local grocery store, Jules bumps into a fellow customer . . . and recognizes him as her favorite author, Patrick Reagan. Jules gushes and thoroughly embarrasses herself before Regan graciously talks with her.

And that’s the last thing she remembers—until she wakes up in a strange room with a splitting headache. She’s been kidnapped. And what she discovers will change everything she believed about her husband’s death . . . her career . . . and her faith.

I don't know how long Misery Loves Company will be a freebie, so make sure you check the price before clicking to purchase it.

Design Wall Monday

I'm going to jinx myself by saying this, but I think life is falling back into its normal routine.  I've even managed to carve out some time to play with fabric. It's so much fun to experiment instead of sitting down and knowing exactly what I need to do.

 

 

The pastel quilt is based on a project Karen at the Recipe Bunny posted recently. It's not the kind of thing I usually do, but it's a way to use up some of those gingham squares. The green and white checkerboard is a top I'm working on to use up some challenging background fabric. And the strips are waiting for me to cut them into 2 1/2" squares and start a scrappy version of Marilyn.

 

To see more design walls, head over to Patchwork Times.

I love Halloween Fabric

But this, in my mind at least, isn't seasonal Halloween fabric. It's the absolute perfect stuff to use for making the boys some sturdy book bags for hauling treasures home from the library. I'm wanting to do something like the bag I made for the Nancy Drew blog hop earlier this year.

I didn't realize until I took the picture how huge the pattern repeat on this fabric is. There are so many great movie posters here I'm going to have a hard time fussy cutting to make the bags. What can I leave out?  (On the bright side, I've got three bags to make and that center panel won't take much fabric. I've have a lot left over to play with!)

I did order four yards of fabric this week. Have you seen Rest in Pieces, the new Halloween line from Connecting Threads?!  If there's a more perfect fabric to back Hocuspocusville with, I haven't seen it.

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 2 1/4 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 54 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 4 yards
Added Year to Date: 233 1/4 yards
Net Added for 2013: 178 1/2 yards


Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 2250 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 9500 yards
Net Added for 2013: 7250 yards

I'm linking up to Patchwork Times and Finding Fifth.

{Whatcha Reading?} The Returned by Jason Mott

Jacob Hargrave's parents lost their only son when he slipped away from his eighth birthday party and drowned in the river near their home.  Now, almost fifty years later, a  man in a suit is standing at their front door with a little boy at his side. Jacob. Or something that looks and acts exactly like Jacob did before his death. He was found on the banks of a river in China.

The dead are returning. Not as zombies or monsters -- people are coming back just as they were in life. No one knows how, or why. But tensions are rising as more and more people appear. The book focuses on the Hargrave family and the small town they live in, but the author also provides glimpses of other people in other places. It's an interesting exploration of what would happen if the dearly departed were suddenly there again. I do wish that the author had provided more glimpses of the other "returned" -- the artist who came back to enjoy the fame that he'd only achieved after his death and the Japanese soldier desperately trying to find someone to surrender to both intrigued me.

According to the author's website, ABC is making a television show based on the book. That should be interesting. There are also three prequels to the book, all of them available as free Kindle editions -- The First, The Sparrow, and The Choice. 


Disclosure -- a copy of the book was provided by the publisher. I'm linking up to It's Monday! What are you reading? at Book Journey.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {week 34}

My baby quilt for this week is Marilyn. Would you believe she started out as an Irish Chain?

 

 

I didn't plan to write up a tutorial for this one, since it's almost the same quilt as Pumpkin Carving or Laura...but it turns out that a slight change in color placement makes a HUGE difference in the finished quilt. Now I'm working out how to make up for the pictures of the layout that I didn't take along the way.

 

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, but it's got to be about baby quilts. While we're still gathering steam, 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.

Meet Marilyn!

Unless I'm working up a submission for someone else, I rarely draw out my quilts in advance. I start with an idea in my head and sometimes I get what I'm picturing and sometimes it comes out a little different.

With Marilyn, I made so many changes along the way that I didn't know for sure what I was getting until the top was assembled.

The quilt started out as a plan to use up a yard of flannel with perfume bottles and roses and hand mirrors that I'd originally bought to make pajama pants for my little girl.

My go-to plan for using up great backing fabric is to make a simple Irish Chain, and that's what I thought I was going to do for this quilt.  I have a huge hunk of this blue print that I can't for the life of me remember buying...it must be from one of those Craigslist deals a few months back. Wherever it came from, I like the way the swirls look with the backing fabric.

Then I started thinking of names. The girliest-girl name I could come up with...one that conjured up atomizers and hand mirrors and fancy lipstick tubes.

Marilyn.

And from there, I decided I wanted facets, so what about alternating snowball blocks with the nine patches that would form the chain? And what about setting them on point? With more blue for the setting triangles around the outer edges?

This post is linked to I Gotta Try That, Sew Much Ado, Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?, Get Crafting Friday, Pinworthy Projects, and Freedom Fridays, Wonderful at Home, and Hooking Up With HOH, Inspired Friday.

I didn't know I wanted one of these

Once upon a time, I had a really nice dry erase board. I found it in our garage, still in the original plastic packaging with an eraser and magnets and pens. It sat out there for more than a year before I decided that whatever Hubby had intended to do with it (forgotten Christmas present is my best guess) wasn't going to happen and I adopted it as my own.

 

Then the kids started to use it, which was fine. Until they managed to Fold It In Half. These are the same kids who broke that Fisher-Price corn popper push toy that would be indestructible in any other house on the planet. I haven't been able to bring myself to buy another one like the one I had...but I'm wanting a dry erase board for some of our homeschooling stuff.

 

Last week, Teenage Daughter unearthed this at the thrift store. Squee!

 

 

I go out of my way to avoid traditional classroom stuff, but I absolutely adore this. Right now, we're using it for school stuff, but the thin metal and the wooden frame are so fragile I hold my breath every time I get near it and it may go on the wall in my sewing room with some cute magnets.

This post is linked to Time Travel Thursday, Treasure Hunt Thursday, Vintage Thingie Thursday, Share Your Cup, and Ivy and Elephants.

{Yarn Along} Croc Socks

I've had this sock yarn in my stash for years. It's Opal Crocodile and, back when it was a fad on the knitting lists,  I wanted it desperately. Then I was afraid to cast on with it, because what if I messed up. (That's a silly fear, by the way. With most knitting projects, you can just unravel false starts and cast on again with something else.)

 

 

The yarn has been up in the sewing room, so safely tucked away that I'd completely forgotten about it until I rediscovered it while I was digging out yarn for the pooling sock yarn challenge. If there was ever a time to make socks with my crocodile, it's now. I planned on plain stockinette, but then I googled images because I couldn't remember what the stuff was supposed to look like if it "crocked" right and found the Mock Croc Socks, a free pattern from Knitpicks. Crocodile colors and texture? Yup, that's what I needed to do with this yarn.

 

Maybe because we've had so many adventures with the local varmits over the past few weeks, I decided to pick up Pigs in Clover: Or How I Accidentally Fell in Love with the Good Life by Simon Dawson. It's been in my to-read pile for a while now.

 

Here's how the book opens --

 

As of this moment in time, nobody has died, nobody has given birth and nobody has escaped.

 

I thought our bees and chickens and geese and cats were stressful! Compared to Simon and his wife, our family has had it easy. Before a noisy New Year's Eve when Simon found himself agreeing to whatever his wife had just suggested to him, he'd never been to a zoo or petting farm, but he goes along with her plans to move from London to Exmoor and before he knows it, they've got chickens and horses and pigs and sheep and they're both learning as they go.

Pigs in Clover tells the story of their eleven year transformation from Londoners to self-sufficient smallholders. I loved reading about the Dawsons, their growing menagerie of animals, and the bumps along the road they encountered as they learned to care for them.

For more fun knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis.

 

The publisher provided me with a review copy of Pigs in Clover.

skunks are nocturnal, and apparently they wear watches

I really have got it figured out this time. The skunk shows up in the egg boxes every night at eight o'clock. So if I want to get this weeks' baby quilt done this week, I'm going to have to work on it during the day, before he shows up to disrupt the household.

 

Having to work my quilting time in around the well -fed vermin's schedule is very annoying -- almost as annoying as realizing that the chickens have been laying eggs. Hopefully hubby can solve the problem tonight.

 

A couple of people have misunderstood me and thought that the skunk was in the kitchen. If there was a skunk in my house, I don't know what I'd do.  All I've had to handle so far has been a possum in the bathroom, and that was more than enough of a thrill!

Now can someone please explain to me why the vermin is so punctual? When we first moved into this house, a skunk came through under our bedroom window at 3am every morning like clockwork. Through the window, the smell would wake my husband up and he'd wake me up.  He eventually changed his routine -- either that or we learned to sleep through it.

This new skunk, though, is being more persistent.

Pets on Quilts -- time to vote!

I've been making my way through the Pets on Quilts entries. You can find them all in this post and vote for your favorites here. There are some gorgeous quilts and adorable critters -- and I'm drooling over some of the sewing rooms in the backgrounds. Needled Mom has little turtles on a mug rug shaped like an egg.

I still can't get bees to land on a quilt, but I've got a new plan for next year. And since the bugs refuse to cooperate, Josephine, my daughter's pet hedgehog, is entered in the "other" category -- she's #9.

I've gotten a lot of questions about her. She's an African pygmy hedgehog, which is a different critter from the kind that Beatrix Potter wrote about.

There are about fifty-seven bazillion adorable pictures of hedgehogs on Pinterest. It wasn't long before Teenage Daughter fell in love and decided that she wanted one.... Hubby and I had had one when we were first married, so we knew what was involved in taking care of one, and the next thing I knew we were buying our girl a hedgehog for her birthday.

Here she is on that quilted pillow that I made for the cat a while back...the one that the cat has never ever touched because she's too busy leaving hairs all over my quilts.

When she's not exploring the house under close supervision, she lives in a big aquarium with a hamster wheel. Hedgehogs are nocturnal and VERY active.

I annoy her. When I walk in the room she slowly hunches her quills down over her face, just enough to let me know that she's thinking about curling.

Those little quills are sharp. More than once, I've been accused of leaving a pin or needle on the floor when she was the little culprit.

You can read more about Josephine's exploits over at my daughter's blog, A Girl and her Chicken Named Betty.

I think I've figured this one out..

This started out as a single Irish Chain and it's been evolving ever since. I'm making the top to go with the background fabric, so my measurements are predetermined. That's been keeping things interesting, but I think I've finally decided what I want to do.

 

I would've had the top assembled last night, but there was some drama with a skunk in the chicken coop and that gobbled up most of my quilting time. It's always something, isn't it?

 

For more design walls, check out Patchwork Times.

single skeins of sock yarn

When I first fell in love with the idea of sock knitting, I was drawn to all of the hand-painted (or mechanically made to look sort of like hand-painted, which was more within my budget) and self-striping yarns. Then I saw what could be done with cables and lace and my taste switched to solids.

 

Now that I'm in a mindless knitting while I watch TV with my Hubby phase, those self patterning yarns are starting to look pretty good again.

 

Somewhere along the line, I picked up a bunch of single skeins of yarn with the intention of making socks for the boys. Then I realized how bad I was at keeping track of toddler socks....and how utterly, completely destructive those boys are now that they're old enough to put on and take off their own socks... I'm not about to knit them socks.

So I decided to see if I could find second skeins of these same colors, use 40% off coupons, and make big girl socks. I spent about a month convincing myself that I should just do ankle socks, or anklets for teenage daughter's smaller feet.... and by the time I finally made it to Joanns to look for these colors the sock yarn shelf was bare.  Every skein had just been put on clearance.  I did find two of them at Fred Meyers for 20% off, which made them almost as cheap as the original plan. (And I found two skeins of a gorgeous sparkly pink that might become socks or a shawl.)

I've had this yarn in my stash for a few years, so the colorways could have been replaced by completely different colorways that are what they just did away with....or I could have missed my chance by a few hours or days. I am not going to try to find them online. I have lots and lots of sock yarn and once I use some of those solids I can use the leftovers for contrasting heels and toes.

But it's bugging me. If I hadn't waited that extra couple of weeks, would those colors have been there?

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 52 1/2 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 229 1/4 yards
Net Added for 2013: 176 3/4 yards


Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 2250 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 800 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 9500 yards
Net Added for 2013: 7250 yards

To see more weekly stash reports, click over to Patchwork Times.

{Whatcha Reading?} Cropped to Death

Cropped to Death is the first in the Faith Hunter Scrap This mystery series. A former JAG specialist,  Faith now works at Scrap This, the store owned by her two grandmothers.  As the book opens, the sound of the paper cutter is driving Faith to the brink. Her good friend Marilyn is determined to amputate all pictures of her cheating husband from her scrapbooking project. It seems like harmless therapy, until Michael is found dead and the police discover the mutilated photographs.

Faith is determined to help clear Marilyn's name and to keep the secrets of her own past hidden, all while rearranging the store to make up for the scissors seized by the police and settling disagreements between customers determined to win the store's design contest. I enjoyed reading about her.

Designed to Death, the second book in the series, will be released next month. Faith and her grandmothers are hosting Belinda Watson, one of Making Legacies Magazine's Life Artist Divas, at Scrap This. There are customers lined up out the door, eager to get their magazines signed and attend Belinda's class. But between the diva's ridiculous demands and her cousin Darlene's accusations of scraplifting, things quickly fall apart...and then Belinda's dead body is discovered outside the store.

Once again, Faith finds herself tangled up in the murder investigation. The story is fast paced and filled with twists and turns -- and one scene with rare washi tape had me laughing out loud.

Embellished to Death is due out next April and I'll be watching for it!

This post is linked to It's Monday! What are you Reading? at Book Journey. The publisher provided me with review copies of Cropped to Death and Designed to Death.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {week 33}

Have I got inspiration for you this week! The nice folks at Martingale sent me a review copy of their new book, The Big Book of Baby Quilts. Eighty-seven patterns, all of them for baby quilts...

 

I can 't get over the variety of projects they've included here. There's applique and curved piecing and prairie points and rick rack and chenille...

I really want to try the chenille circles.

I love this little quilt with its applique grommets and laces. Wouldn't it be fun in bright primary colors?



 

 

 And the dancing shoes... They remind me of one of those old Arthur Murray Dance studio charts.

 

This one is just sweet --

 

And so is this one --

 

If I showed your pictures of everything in here that I want to make, I'd be showing you the whole book.  The quilts range in size from 30x30" to big crib-sized and all of the patterns have the clear, complete instructions that I've come to expect from That Patchwork Place.  I could see a charity quilter working her way through the whole book!

Note -- Martingale provided me with a review copy of the book and all pictures from the book are property of Martingale.

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, but it's got to be about baby quilts. While we're still gathering steam, 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.