Magnolias on Monday

 

Happy Monday, Happy May.

The Magnolias are finally blooming.

They are such odd little things to me - putting out their beautiful blooms long before their leaves.

There is not much new here.  The days have been gray and gloomy.

{Rajah Roo}

I fear that soon that everyone here will soon melt into a morass of grayness.

I finally finished (?) hooking Early Bird (design by Lori Brechlin of Notforgotten Farm).

The question mark is there because I am not thrilled with my background hooking and the longer it sits about unbound, the more the urge to do some reverse hooking takes hold.

We'll see.  For now, it is keeping the other unbound rugs company on my table. 

I have also made progress on "Sepia Sampler," another design by Lori from Notforgotten Farm. 

For some reason, this has been a really soothing stitch - except that border.  Believe it or not, the stems are a different color than the leaves on the "clover" (at least they look like clovers to me) so there is a great deal of starts and stops.  I probably should have changed out one of the colors so the difference was more noticeable, but it's too late now.

And I'm not certain why I'm bothering to tell you this since the colors are not showing properly on the photo.

Have I mentioned it's gray and gloomy here?

*************

In the reading department, this is one I finished a few months back already.

I had enjoyed another book by this author, Anxious People, which I mentioned in this post so, of course, I had to read another by him.

Like Anxious People, this book does not fall within the genre to which I generally gravitate.  It is quirky and different and, again, I find the author's wry humor irresistible.

It is the story of young Elsa, whose grandmother is, well, nuts.

When Elsa's grandmother dies, Elsa is charged with tracking down people her grandmother has wronged in her life and apologizing to them.

It turns into an adventure of fairy tales and imaginary kingdoms and all-too-real heartbreak.

And like any good fairy tale, there is a lot of wisdom packed inside if you're open to finding it.

It's about grief, forgiveness and, most of all, embracing being different - something some of us can relate to too well.

*************

Well, I'm off to get some bread in the oven.  After a week of thinking I need to break my hermitage and get some groceries, I decided it's easier to bake.

Here's hoping your Monday has some Magnolias and fairy tales in it.

Ready for Green

 

No, not those greens kitteh....

And even though your eyes are a pretty intense green, I don't mean that green either.

I'm desperately in need of outside, growing-things, green.

I know that Nod can have freak April blizzards that drop a foot of snow or more, but this spring has been like a slow, tedious, cold and windy, torture.

I see photos on some of your blogs of green leaves, green grass, and good grief...even blooming things!....and I am, well, "green."

Yesterday we made it almost to 70° but it was cloudy, and windy...and today we are back to freezing...and gale force winds.  (60 mph gusts...seriously???)

Yeah, yeah...I know "no winter lasts forever, no spring skips it turn," but the guy who wrote that (and yes, it was a "guy"), never lived in Nod.

Anyhow...

Like I said, it's been windy.... Incredibly windy. Like almost-every-day windy.

And wind makes me edgy edgier than usual.

Cabin fever and wind are a foul combination I tell ya.

There's a reason (probably more than one) that I'm called the Cranky Crow.

{Buttons stitched by my sweet SIL...}

Nothing is really blogworthy here...one day blends into the next unnoticed.  

I am slowly putting the bunnies of Easter back into their dark hiding spots until next season and filling the empty places they left with more "generic" signs of spring.

{"Set Free" pinkeep by Scattered Seed Samplers}

It's not helping...in case you were wondering.

I've made only negative progress on my hooking.  

In my defense, it isn't easy when a 20# cat decides your rug hooking frame is his new bff.

And, yes, that's Snowdog on the other side.

And, yes, that's a drop cloth on my floor.

On a happy news note, on one of my trips "down there," I opened a box I had not noticed before sitting on a shelf and peeked inside... And there was my collection of stone fruit.

I have been looking for these since WWR ended.

I'll take my victories where I can get them.

*******

My recent read was "Anxious People" by Fredrik Backman.

Completely out of my typical genres and, had it not been given to me to read, I likely never would have chosen to read it, and that would have been my loss.

Yes, it was that good.

It's a poignant, comical, novel about a crime that never took place, a wanna-be bank robber who disappears, and eight extremely "anxious" strangers who are held hostage by said wanna-be bank robber.

I typically don't like comedy...not in television shows, not in movies, not in books... (Perhaps there is more than one reason I am cranky?), 

but this author's humor is wry and witty...a rare combination that I found completely charming.  

Whimsical, yes...but also a dive into the study of society and the workings of people's minds.

*******

Be well...stay sane.

On second thought, just be well.