Weekly Round Up

Lately we....

... enjoyed my sisters Rachel's performance in her parish's annual melodrama.

... started planning the garden

.... started planning the garden shed.  We used an old role-playing map that can be written on and then erased with ordinary dry-erase markers, and then we made shapes in the sizes of the stuff we wanted to put in it.

.... decorated my office.

BEFORE

AFTER

One more year....

.... next year on Feb 24 my brother will be marrying the beautiful and sweet Maria!  Can't wait to get a new sister :)

Triumph! A Clean Craft Studio!

I cleaned my studio!

It’s not perfect, but I can actually create stuff now.  Sometime, it will be beautifully organized.  But for now, I’m happy to see usable space.

For your own inspiration....

BEFORE

 AFTER

Makes me happy!

And Centuries Later.... A New Whitman Novel

Isn't scholarly detective work COOL?

Or maybe I'm just a first-class nerd with the doctorate to prove it, but I thought this story was exciting.

A graduate student searching the archives of the Library of Congress discovered an anonymously published novel by Walt Whitman.  How did he know the novel was by Whitman if it is was published anonymously?  Read the New York Times article here to find out.

I worked on the Walt Whitman archive in graduate school at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  I bet my old colleagues were pretty excited by this news.

Book for Later

This book is on sewing using pillow cases, but it ends up being "how to make stuff without a lot of yardage."  Aprons and skirts are included, but I can see myself making more of the other stuff: hats, slippers, bracelets, and scarves.

Craft Challenge: Dozens of Ways to Repurpose a Pillowcase
by Suzanne Tourtillott

Currently Reading....

Secret Diplomacy: Espionage and Cryptography 1500-1815
by James Westfall Thompson and Saul K. Padover

It is fascinating stuff!  Can you imagine trying to break the cypher on a medieval document that could be in Latin, French, Italian, or who know what language?  And there is enough raw material for more than a few great novels and movies in here.

In fact, I am reading it as research for a book I'm writing someday.  (There are two others I want to write first, but I want to set them all in the same era, so I need to pick the right era.)  I already have my plot, but maybe I'll find a subplot or two....

Happy Valentines Day!

This photo was on the front page of our hometown newspaper in January.  (The photographer was literarily wandering the street looking for people stupid enough to be out in the icy, dangerous weather and found us.)   I think its a nice shot for Valentine's Day.

Thank you to my husband for joining me on all of my adventures, crazy and otherwise!