After living in a rural town most of our lives, a little over a year ago, we moved to a suburban city. One of the biggest surprises about our new home is how much “wild” wildlife we see here. Sure, at our previous home, with its large backyard enclosed by trees and bushes, we saw plenty of squirrels, rabbits, birds, and butterflies. The robins had parties in our yard in the spring, plucking through the…
Normally, I read between 20 and 25 books per year, a mix of fiction and nonfiction. In 2022, I only read 4 books the entire year because we were packing and finishing up home improvement projects in order to sell our house. In 2023, I managed to read 13 books, well below average, because we were still sorting and getting rid of stuff from the move, as well as clearing out long-term storage and helping…
Apparently, according to the email I got from LinkedIn recently, I’ve been on the site for 15 years. How can that possibly be? Feels like I joined only a few years ago. Of course, this could be because I’ve only become really active on it in the past few years. And since Twitter fell into the slop bucket and Facebook has become a nest of non-stop advertising (both undergoing enshittification, as Cory Doctorow would put…
Hubby and I visited Darwin, Minnesota, on St. Patrick’s Day. We were in the area of this small town (population around 337), which is known for its giant ball of twine, and I had to stop. For a fiber artist, it’s a must-see. According to the informational signage with the ball of twine, this won the Guinness Book of World Records in 1991 for the largest ball of baling twine constructed by one man, Francis…
Since receiving “The Dressmaker’s Companion: A Practical Guide to Sewing Clothes” by Elizabeth “Liz” Haywood for Christmas, I’ve wanted to write a review of it. I haven’t gotten around to it until now because every time I dive into this treasure to figure out what to write, I get lost in all the fabulous information presented. When I first opened the book, which is a hefty 449 pages, I landed on the section discussing the…