Lobster Bouquet

I absolutely adore this little piece! 

The pattern is Lobster Bouquet, a free download from Ink Circles. The fabric is something I bought with a coupon at Hobby Lobby. The floss is DMC #304.

This was my eighth Stitch Maynia start for this year and I kept picking it up again until it was finished. It's so addictive just to do one more flower petal or swirl or lobster claw.

I've been wanting to tackle a single color project by Long Dog Samplers. I thought I'd enjoy it, but after stitching this, I'm thoroughly convinced!

{I've Been Reading} You Are Not Alone

You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

The description for this one is really sparse. The main character is unhappy with her life until she meets two sisters who pull her into their world of perfection. The book itself is apparently on a ton of "most anticipated" lists.  I picked it up because I loved The Wife Between Us by the same authors and I know I was drawn into An Anonymous Girl, even if the plot of that one has faded from my memory.

This book just wasn't for me. The plot is a slow burn, building up to a revelation of what's going on with the perfect sisters and their carefully chosen group of friends. I never managed to get more than mildly curious about their secrets.





Little Creeping Things by Chelsea Ichaso

It was the cover art and title that drew me to this one, before I realized that it was a young adult novel. That's one of the drawbacks of ebooks -- sometimes it's easy to expect the wrong thing.

Cassidy Pratt accidentally started a fire in her playhouse when she was a young child, killing her best friend. It wasn't her fault, but a decade later her classmates will never let her forget that she's "the fire girl." She's not really a killer. That detailed murder plan she wrote in her silver spiral bound notebook was just a joke...except someone seems to have followed it and the notebook is missing. Cassidy is afraid to go to the police with what she knows so she tries to find the killer on her own.

I didn't love this one. That cover and title had me expecting something much darker. It's not a bad book, just a kind of run-of-the-mill YA thriller that will probably appeal to a younger audience.

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

{Thrift Shop Temptations} Someone Else's Creative Vision

Over the past couple of years, my daughter and I have seen one or two Mod Podged tabled at the Goodwill outlet. They're not even tempting. That's someone else's creative vision that doesn't match mine....and the person who had the vision must have changed their mind for it to wind up in the thrift store. 

This one was different. Not all of the images appeal to me, but if I was going to pick things to glue onto a bookshelf, a lot of these would work for me. 

Especially the Arizona Road Maps Tour Book. There are some book spines at the back of the lowest shelf that I didn't get in the picture, but they look just perfect, especially the way they're peeking out from other images.

There's a lot here that I don't recognize and a lot that I do.

My own reaction was that I could find an old piece of wooden furniture and make something like that someday. Maybe. Can't you just picture a shelf or cabinet with pictures cut out of old crafting books and magazines? Now that I think about it, I've got a couple of pieces of furniture that would make wonderful backgrounds for a project like that, along with stacks of old books and magazines. It's one of those projects that I could do, but probably won't.

The bookshelf from the thrift shop? That's at my house now  because my son shares the vision of whoever made it in the first place. And it really is a nice old piece of furniture under everything else.

Want to see the rest of our thrifting adventure? Just click below.

{I've Been Reading} Carpe Glitter

Carpe Glitter by Cat Rambo

Persephone Aim inherited her grandmother's houses. Not only was her grandmother a hoarder who added buildings to her property to hold all of her possessions, she was also a stage magician. I got happily lost in the pages of this novella and my only complaint is that I wish it was longer so I could have spent more time with Persephone, watching her sort through her grandmother's possessions. I think I would have loved this book just for its descriptions of old dresses shedding sequins like scales, but then there's the artifact that she discovers broken into pieces and hidden throughout the three houses. That's the point where Persephone realizes that there's a lot about her grandmother that she didn't know.



Unfollow Me by Charlotte Duckworth

A mommy vlogger vanishes suddenly from the internet, all of her accounts deleted without warning or explanation. The online forums are buzzing with speculation. Instead of being the story of the missing influencer the book is about Lily and Yvonne, two of her obsessed fans.

I wanted to like this book and I did enjoy parts of it, but there are a lot of characters with alternating chapters and it was a struggle to figure out which ones were connected and how. More than once, I had to flip back a few pages to remind myself which character I was reading about. There's a message to all of this, about lying and oversharing and overstepping boundaries, and it's an interesting one. I kind of wish the book had spent more time exploring the members of the online forums than the histories of Lilly and Yvonne. 





My Husband's Lie by Emma Davies

When Thea gets the chance to move back to the old rectory she lived in as a child, she doesn't hesitate. She can already picture her daughters loving the big house as much as she did. Her husband, Drew, is a bit more hesitant, but he goes along with her plan. The husband and wife have been inseparable since they lived next door to one another as children. They're the perfect couple.

It's not long before Thea realizes that she's not welcome in her former home. Something happened  before her family moved away and she seems to be the only one in the dark about what it was.

Maybe I would have enjoyed this book more if I hadn't been expecting it to be a thriller (it's not) or if it had had a different title. The plot is interesting and the characters and their relationships are well developed, but I kept waiting for the awful event or revelation that never came.

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

Ten Days into Stitch Maynia 2020

My plan was to post every day or two and show all of my new starts with all of the details. Obviously that isn't happening so far. 

But actually stitching is more important than writing about and photographing the stitching, right? I've been stitching a lot since the first of May....

That's nine starts in the first nine days, despite a low level three day migraine that I'm still trying to shake. I'm eager to keep working on most of these and trying to figure out what to start each day is keeping me from obsessing over masks and lock downs and how uncertain the future feels.

So I'll take that as a win, and  try to update more frequently as the days pass.

The projects are:

Mad Bluebird by Bucilla
Stitching ABC by Design Works
Stitching Lessons by Riolis 
Dollhouse Hutch by Bucilla 
Flowers in a Window by Stone Street Stitchworks (free download) 
Window With Magpie by Riolis 
Lobster Bouquet by Ink Circles  (free download) 
Thimbelina the Needlework Fairy by Lynne Nicoletti

Stitch Maynia 2020

Stitch Maynia has finally started and on day six  I already have six of my possible thirty one starts. I'm extremely happy about that, but not quite happy and motivated enough to lay them all out and take pictures and fight with the photo editing software. There will be pictures soon. 

This is the first project, on the first day. I've picked him up three more times since then and made more progress and I'm absolutely loving this angry little bird. Isn't he the perfect quarantine stitching? 

The kit is Mad Bluebird by Bucilla. I picked him up at the thrift store because he was dirt cheap and looked like he might be be fun to stitch someday. Apparently that time has come. With the craft stores and thrift stores and estate sales either closed or off limits right now, I'm very grateful that I've had so many supplies and kits stashed for so long. It would take years for me to make a sizable dent, but I've got lots of choices and possibilities and Maynia is giving me a fantastic excuse to start a bunch of things.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {5/1/2020}

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