Book Review - 2/14

I am really enjoying the ability to speed the books up a little while I am listening to them on the iPod! I finished 2 this week!

The first book I finished was And When She was Good by Laura Lippman. Helen Lewis grew up in a home with abuse and she planned to get away as soon as she could with schooling and a college education. She ended up outside of Baltimore living with a pimp and earning money as a prostitute. When she gets pregnant, she turns the pimp in for murder and spends the next 10 years setting up and running a high end escort service with the pimp as the ‘brains’ behind the operation so that he doesn’t suspect her of turning him in.

Now, there is a chance that the pimp will get released from prison and Heloise (after she changed her name) is scared that he will get out and realize that she had his son. And then a suburban madam in a neighboring county is murdered and the police pay a visit to Heloise.

I enjoyed this book as much as any of Lippman’s other novels that I have read. I thought it was an interesting premise to set up the business and report taxes. There are several people that are trying to cause problems for Heloise and, to protect her son, she handles everything. I did have to rewind a few times in the beginning when the story jumped back to 1990’s or early 2000’s until I got used to it happening. Overall, a pretty good read.

The second book I finished was The Associate by John Grisham. Kyle McAvoy is months away from graduating from Yale Law School and he has many career options open to him. Until one night a few FBI agents ‘encourage’ him, to meet with a detective about an alleged rape that occurred 5 years prior in his undergrad days. While Kyle wasn’t involved directly with the incident, there is a new video that could be very damning to his career options. He is blackmailed into taking a job at a prestigious NYC law office to become a spy for the fake detective.

I think this was my second Grisham novel that I have read and it was OK. There was not as much action as I though there would be. As I got closer to the end of the book, I kept waiting for something else to happen and it just never did. There was a lot of set up and I was anticipating a big blow out or a few twists and it just never panned out and then the book was over. It was just a bit of a let down, I think.

What a day!!

Well, and last night, too! When I got home from work, I walked the dogs and then got busy cleaning up the microwave cart in the kitchen. It looks much better now. Then, I organized my plastic bags that are hidden by the cart - the bags are used for doggie duty when we go out. Just some busy work, but it needed to be done. I got in a bit of sewing, but not much.

This morning, I walked the dogs again and then worked on straightening up the spare bedroom and getting a pile of things ready to take to Goodwill. I also made a list of errands that I wanted to do when I left the house. When I finally got out of the house, I forgot  a couple of things which hindered the plans a bit.

I headed to the big Joann's and realized that I forgot the coupons at home so I run to Goodwill and dropped off my donations and then walked through the store quickly. I wanted to see what they had in terms of furniture for the room switch. I don't think that I have ever been into a Goodwill... What an eye opener! They didn't have anything that would really work for what I am looking for so I left there and thought I would head to the Goodwill closer to home.

While I was driving to my next stop, I passed a Big Lots and Hobby Lobby so I dropped in there. Big Lots had a bookcase that I think could work for storage and for setting the TV and accessories on. The cost was right so that is probably the way that I will go. When I left there, I headed back home to pick up the things that I forgot and then dropped books off at the library and went to the second Goodwill which was another bust. I hit a furniture store and looked at what they had and then moved on.

One of my errands was to find drip pan replacements for my stove. The pans were white and would only stay clean as long as the burners were off. As soon as 1 burner was turned on for any length of time, the pan would look awful.



And with the replacements. I couldn't find white so I went with silver and I am hoping that they won't show the use as much as the white does.



I also picked up a skin for my new iPod. This was my second attempt at a skin and this one works much better! It is purple, smooth (not slick) and textured. I love it!



I also went to Home Depot and picked up some paint samples for the room switch. I am thinking that I will go lighter than the hallway is between the 2 rooms.



Here is the wall in the master bedroom. I think that the paint is still a little wet. I can't wait to see how it looks in daylight.



And here is what it looks like in the spare bedroom that does not have any other paint on the wall. It's a little harder to see, but I think the colors are more true in that room.



The color on the left has a touch of yellow and the color on the right has a touch of orange. I had been leaning towards the one on the left, but now I think I like the one in the middle. Time will tell! I'm looking forward to my guests in April to get their opinions!

I also went to the smaller Joann's by my house for the fabric for 2 quilts. I drew the quilts up in EQ last night so that I knew how much fabric to look for. They are going to be super easy quilts and I should be able to cut out most of the fabric with the GO!

This is one that my mom wants me to make for a family friend who loves Maxine. I love these fabrics!



And this is for my mom. It will be the same pattern for both quilts. Mom likes these fabrics because I told her to! :-D



I treated myself to IHOP after I was done and then came home to the pups who were happy to be released from their cage. No pictures of them tonight. I told them we would have ice cream and they are too excited to hold still for a picture!

Mid-week Update

I have gotten no sewing done this week for a variety of reasons. I am ready to get to my machine this evening and definitely tomorrow for the Friday Night Sew In.

Monday night, I was in charge of the Guild program which was a Guild Shop Hop. We had 8 quilt shops from the area come to our meeting and set up tables and displays to sell their wares. Other than some members taking way too long at the podium during Show and Tell, I think the night was a success. All of the shops were very happy with how the night went.

When I got home, my new iPod Touch was waiting for me and I spent a little too long setting it up and downloading a new iOS and putting all of the songs and books from my laptop onto it. I have been enjoying how easy it is to use, but there has been some getting used to it, too.

Tuesday, it was early to bed after staying up too late on Monday. I think I spent too much time online that night, too.

Last night, I had a Holiday dinner with my newest quilt guild, the Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild. Of course, when I left work, I just had to stop at JoAnn's for some of the fleece that is on sale this week. My stash report is going to take a hit, but I am hoping to get it all used up in the next couple of weeks. It will all be used in Christmas gifts. The dinner was nice and relaxing and it was great to get to know a few more of the guild members a little better!

I have also been picking up Christmas gifts here and there and I think that I am just about ready to get some shipped out. I will have to worry about those early next week. I need to take a mental inventory to see what else needs to be done or picked up.

Today, a new adventure starts at the office. A few weeks ago, one of my co-workers took a new position in the company and I got a little anxious about the fact that I could be very pigeon holed in my job. This feeling translated into several discussions with my boss and her boss about different options that they will open up for me which will start with me helping in the hiring of the replacement for my co-worker. The long and the short of it is that this replacement will be taking over some easier parts of my job to free up my time for projects and for different job duties. We hope that this will give my job a bit more variety to help keep me from getting bored with the monotony of fixed assets.

This Saturday, the Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild is having a mini-sew day at my library up the street and I have to decide what I am going to take. I would love to be able to have the witches ready to press and satin stitch along the edges, but in order to do that, I need to make some really good progress on my Granma's quilt before then. I may just end up taking the rest of Granma's quilt to finish. I lost my notes on the borders for the quilt so I have to try and glean what I was planning on from the fabric I bought and what the finished size should be. And I need to get the quilt done fast to get it to the quilter!

So this is what I have been up to. I haven't responded to emails this week and I am way behind on my blog reader. When it gets like this, it always makes me think that I need to re-visit my blog list and remove some from my list. As it is, I only comment regularly on about half of the blogs that I read, but part of this is because some of the blogs have their comments embedded in their post instead of having a pop up window or a second screen and I can't post on the embedded comments from work or my blackberry. I'm not going to make any changes right now, but they may be coming after the holidays.

Maisy thinks that everything will look much brighter after a nap!

Very traumatic evening - Real Quilter

With another finish thrown in!

Last night started out pretty well. I was productive in getting the charity quilt finished quickly and all running smoothly with Squiggy, the Mega Quilter. The frame was holding up nicely, too. I got everything prepped and started loading the t-shirt quilt onto Lenny, the frame. I had to take a short break and iron out the backing, but it wasn't anything major.

I decided on a black and white variegated Lava thread for the top and a grey Bottom Line for the bobbins and I wound 2 and a partial bobbins. I say a partial because I was trying to wind the bobbins on my Sidewinder, but I was having issues with the cone and the Sidewinder so I gave up and just wound the 2 full bobbins on Squiggy.

I started quilting and I was a little nervous about the bulk of the t-shirts and sweatshirts and the interfacing being a problem with the quilting, but the first few passes were as smooth as a baby's bottom. And I was listening to the iPod since it was fixed and just quilting away like there was no tomorrow!

Now, *insert several ominous tones here* this is where the story goes downhill for our heroine.

At one point, I had to rip some stitches out. Not a big deal, but I couldn't get the bobbin thread to come through to the top of the quilt. I walked around to the back of Lenny, the frame and with my LARGE scissors, I snipped the bobbin thread. I was quite proud of myself as I lowered the scissors and examined my work. Then ... I closed the scissors to lock them....



Apparently, the scissors are very sharp because I didn't feel very much resistance at all when I was closing them. Drat! (Not really what I said, but this is a mostly PG story.) No big deal though, the quilting was going well and I was happy to be able to be quilting again so I just grabbed another pair of headphones and moved along.

Until....




I am still really not sure what happened. I think that I blocked it out like the people who don't remember large chunks of time when they are in an accident or attacked. I do not hold Squiggy responsible for my injuries though. I feel that must be said!

Anyway, I was smoothing something out on the quilt top and my finger just didn't move fast enough. I do not know if the needle went from the top of the finger nail through to the bottom or if it just got a couple of 'bites' out of the fleshy part of my finger, but there was blood. Buckets of blood! OK, it wasn't buckets, but it did fill up a napkin quite well.

I sent Jen a text and she called me right back to ask how it happened and if it was OK and if I had to pull thread out of the wounds. (FYI - I did not.) I told her how I was telling her how Brenda from my sorority told me that you aren't a real quilter until you sew through a finger and my response was - if being a 'real' quilter meant that you had to be a dumb @$$, I was OK with being a fake quilter! So, I am now a 'real' quilter. yippee. (Can you sense my enthusiasm?)

OK, back to the quilting, I had to clean the quilt up a little, but luckily, the fabric was already red and it hadn't started to really bleed until I pulled my hand back to look at it. I finished up the quilting without any more incidents, cleaned up and went to bed!