Quick Summer Update

By -

 Well, I guess since the semester starts today, it's not quite summer any more, but it's sure hot!  We are all fine here, but the world has gone even madder than usual; we had a nasty heat wave and lightning storm with very little rain, and the result is that half the state is on fire -- and there's another storm coming in.    There is nothing very near to us, but the smoke is heavy, so we can't go outside much.  As my brother said, inside entertainment is closed and outside entertainment is on fire, so we just sit around.  The lack of exercise is difficult for me, but since we're about as fortunate as it's possible to be during a pandemic/heat wave/state on fire, I can hardly complain.

I did pretty much take the week off from any serious reading, though.  I was up-to-date on The Golden Bough until this week (though I have yet to write up the notes post I should have posted a week ago) and was making decent progress on two books of summer.  I'm none too sure than I'll finish my summer list, which is annoying, but I've decided to let it be what it is and not worry about it.

One thing I have been working on (besides surviving the heat) has been a pretty big quilting project; a labyrinth based on the St. Omer pattern.  I'm quilting it now and it's pretty huge: 80" square.  I also got a screaming deal on a free-motion quilting setup, which is large and for which there is no room in my house.

It's back to work today, and there's plenty to do!  Should be an interesting semester, though I sure do miss everybody else.  All the fun parts of my job involve other people.

So I'll be working on catching up here, but I don't promise anything, especially since the way things are going, Godzilla might show up any minute.  I hope you are all doing well and surviving your own tropical storms and weird things.  Here's a preliminary photo of my labyrinth quilt before quilting (taken from about 7 feet up to get it all in).  My idea was that you're wandering through different landscapes, like stone walls or grass and hedges, or even trees/jungle.  Between the tripod quilt and this one, I'm hoping to win a Most Lunatic Quilts award from my guild, if we ever meet again...


Comments

  1. mudpuddleAugust 24, 2020 at 11:22 AM

    spectacular quilt!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jenny @ Reading the EndAugust 25, 2020 at 4:50 AM

    The labyrinth quilt looks very VERY cool -- I'm so impressed! And I am sending good thoughts for y'all to be able to do fun things again soon. And I think you can hardly complain! One thing about this pandemic is that like, if we lose even one of the things that's making life bearable right now, it can feel like The End. I too can't exercise right now (I think I have a tough of bursitis in my knee) and it is maddening.

    ReplyDelete
  3. CleoAugust 25, 2020 at 10:23 AM

    Argh! I'm so sorry I've fallen off The Golden Bough train. I'm behind on my courses, it looks like I'm moving and other crazy things are going on. I don't know if life will ever get back to normal. That said, I'm progressing through Udolpho so I'm not a complete disaster. Stay safe and keep reading (and posting!)!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ruth @ with freedom and booksAugust 31, 2020 at 8:31 AM

    Hey, Jean,
    I'm late to your post, butI hope you guys are ok up there. We have our own issues w/ SoCal fires. Nothing hear by, but the wind sure shifted and took the smoke up over the mountains and into the desert. For at least two days, I actually thought about voluntarily wearing a mask just to keep out the smell. But we are much better now, and I don't even see the smoke anymore. I always thought October was fire season, but it comes earlier and earlier it seems.

    Hope you are enjoying the cooler weather this week....maybe?

    ReplyDelete
  5. JeanSeptember 1, 2020 at 8:23 PM

    Well, the smoke has cleared a good deal, but it's still very hot! At least I can go outside now. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more