Still Kickin'...

Quote for the Day:

"Insanity does not run in my family.

It strolls through, takes it's time,

and gets to know everyone personally."

~author unknown

I hope you enjoyed the above quote!  In know it brought a HUGE smile to my face when I found it!   :D

I thought maybe you, my readers, had thought I had fallen off the face of the earth!  I thought I'd better let you know that I hadn't and that I'm still here kickin'.  LOL 


Wanted to share the progress I've made on the Sunflower Quilt that I'm currently hand quilting.  I'm just 6" away from the half-way point!  :D  You can see the huge star that marks the center of the quilt in this picture...

I'm really moving along quite fast on this quilt and am really loving the way it is turning out!  

The motif on this particular block is my favorite...

I'm not trying for "teensy" stitches anymore as I found that I actually like to see a little of the stitch, especially because I'm using variegated thread on this quilt.  Once the quilt is washed and "crinkles" up, the stitches will be less visible than they are now (for you purists out there who think that stitches should be too tiny to be seen!  LOL)



I have two book reviews for you, today.  BTW...I am love, love, loving my new Nook!  I'm very happy that I treated myself to one!  :)


First book:  "The Bag Lady Papers:  The Priceless Experience of Losing it All" by Alexandra Penney.   I listened to this as an audiobook on my MP3 player and thought it was very intriguing.    

• Synopsis:  A victim of Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, mom and former Self magazine editor-in-chief Penney (How to Make Love to a Man), hyperventilates her way through this intriguing memoir of putting it back together. Finding herself almost entirely without money, Penney faces the unexpected need to retrench with a daunting sense of paranoia; brought up by aloof parents, Penney lived for a long time with a chronic, seemingly irrational fear of becoming a destitute bag lady. As a "Person of Reduced Circumstances", Penney bolsters herself with chin-up wisdom ("unless you've been mummified, you have choices and alternatives") and bravely vows to apply her own nail polish while eulogizing her days as an expensively-dressed editrix at Conde Nast. While she ponders lists labeled "money can still buy" and "money can't buy," a collection of well-heeled and influential friends encourage her with quotes from Emerson, invitations to the Caribbean and tax advice. With considerations like, "Is it worse to have had money and lost it? Or is it worse to never have had money at all?" Penney can be an (admittedly) unsympathetic protagonist, but her struggle is genuine, her charm expansive and surprising, and her strength winning. 

My second book is "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua.  (This is the first book I read on my Nook!)   Very interesting book!   I find that I don't have to agree 100%...or even 10%...with the author to still find their books interesting.  In fact, I like to read to find out about things that I don't know anything about.

• Synopsis:  Chua imparts the secret behind the stereotypical Asian child's phenomenal success: the Chinese mother. Chua promotes what has traditionally worked very well in raising children: strict, Old World, uncompromising values--and the parents don't have to be Chinese. What they are, however, are different from what she sees as indulgent and permissive Western parents: stressing academic performance above all, never accepting a mediocre grade, insisting on drilling and practice, and instilling respect for authority. Chua and her Jewish husband (both are professors at Yale Law) raised two girls, and her account of their formative years achieving amazing success in school and music performance proves both a model and a cautionary tale. Sophia, the eldest, was dutiful and diligent, leapfrogging over her peers in academics and as a Suzuki piano student; Lulu was also gifted, but defiant, who excelled at the violin but eventually balked at her mother's pushing. Chua's efforts "not to raise a soft, entitled child" will strike American readers as a little scary--removing her children from school for extra practice, public shaming and insults, equating Western parenting with failure--but the results, she claims somewhat glibly in this frank, unapologetic report card, "were hard to quarrel with."

I love reading!  The love of books and reading was instilled into me at a young age, probably mainly by mother who was an avid reader and would let me read the Agatha Christie novels she would check out of the library to read!  She never read anything that she wouldn't want her children to see, so if she brought it home, I usually read it, too!   Eugenia Price, Corrie Ten Boom, Agatha Christie...to name a few of the authors she read.  

I got my love of learning from my dad.  In the evenings if he wasn't busy doing something else, he'd sit and read either the Bible or an encyclopedia!  Yes!  An encyclopedia!  He was always trying to learn and what better place to do it than a book filled with all kinds of information!  (We had an old set of encyclopedias that were probably from the '50's!   But this was in the 70's, before scientific advances  started exploding at the speed of light, so the information wasn't really out of date.)

A book can educate you, move you emotionally, or take you places you probably will never go yourself!  So pick up a book today and expose yourself to all kinds of new adventures!!

Loretta