A feed of the latest posts from the journal.
It's been a while and this year has turned out to be about three things for me: moving my body a lot each day, getting back into music, and books. I feel like there are a lot of books here, but maybe this is becoming my new normal. I'm reading a lot and I'm doing so both on my phone digitally and paper books. I'm heavy on romance as well, they're easy and take me away from the world and right now…
We recently traveled outside the US. (Yes, friends, we did it, one of my 2026 goals!) Going into the trip I was thinking about cell data and looked into what we had available through our phone plan. We could get international data, but it would be a charge per 24 hours, being charged only when we used it. I could also get a local sim, but I wasn't sure I wanted to bother with that. We set up our…
It's been.... a while. I know. I got this website updated and then I started to sew again, kept knitting, and I've been reading a lot. I've had days where I sit down to read and somehow hours pass and it's been so good. This all led me away from my computer and posting on this site. But here I am and things are OK, especially if I stay offline as much as I can so that's what I'm trying to do (not…
As of today my site is now being compiled by Eleventy. My prediction at the end of December was correct. It wasn't a hard transition as far as getting Eleventy up and running, but my data needed a lot of work. I have about 1700 markdown files that make up the content of this site and over the last several weeks I've touched every single one of them. Yes, you read that right, I did it all by hand.…
I want to acknowledge that 2025 was a rough year for so many people. I'm lucky that in my day-to-day I haven't felt much of the chaos, but I know that's not true for many, many people. Below I'm going to talk about the things that brought me joy thoughout the year becuase I think it's important to acknowledge these things, especially in dark times. Favorite Makes This year for the first time since…
The last book post of 2025. I'll probably finish at least one more book before the end of the year, but it'll be in my next post. I don't track too carefully what I read in terms of numbers and this year is no different, but I do like reflect on what books I'm still thinking about and that'll be in my 2025 wrap up post that's coming soon. The biggest change in my reading lately is that I've been…
Movie season in our house began on November 2 this year. I've come to realize there are two season around here in regards to what we're watching, baseball and movie. Baseball ended on November 1, so movie season started on November 2. We started out with the Criterion Channel collection Black Out Noir and we've dabbled in other things from there. Early Bogey and Bacall that I'd never seen as well…
Last week, for the third time in my life, I was summoned for jury duty. I was also a juror, for the third time in my life. Yup, that's right, three times summoned three times a juror in three different jurisdictions. What's been interesting about these three experiences is how much has changed over the years. My first and second times on a jury I was summoned the old fashioned way, you had to show…
Bel Canto A well known soprano is singing at a dinner for an executive of a Japanese company in a Central or South American country. After the show is over a group of rebels invade in an attempt to assasinate the president. The problem is the president of the country isn't there and then the rebels are left trying to figure out what to do. They take hostages and the story proceeds from there. This…
I've been meaning to take pictures of all the things in this post for quite some time and finally got it done last weekend! I'm still trying to decide if I want to keep trying to fit my posts into the various things that are used on social media or if I'll let go of the illiteration and just post when I want to, we'll see. But here are my three most recent makes all in one picture. I made the…
I've been seeing some folks post about their comfort watches or reads and it's had me thinking the past week about baseball. It's my comfort watch. This year especially I think I've watched a lot of baseball, but we'll see what MLB says when they send the end of year stats. I'm not a lifelong baseball fan, in fact I think I'm a rather new baseball fan. It started in 2020 for me. In 2019 G bought a…
Last week I finished a 100 day project, quietly, just as I had been working on it. I decided during the spring that I wanted something to get me back in the groove of sketching and journaling, so bought a new journal and away I went. I also bought The Book of Alchemy , Suleika Jaouad's latest book, to use as inspiration and help me along. Although I've finished the 100 days, I haven't finished the…
I almost couldn't believe I haven't posted a reading update since the end of May, but when I look at how long this list of books is that I've read since then, I can believe it. Reading has been my refuge at times, my way to try and see how the world can be better and different. It also got me through 11.5 hours in the Denver airport and poetry has been a companion as I've journaled in the…
Yesterday, aftering thinking about this for quite some time, I deleted my Substack account. I started to feel horrible about using the platform a while ago and I didn't pay for any subscriptions because I didn't want to put money into that company, but I was still subscribed to a handful of newsletters that I enjoyed. If you're not aware, Substack is doing absolutely no content moderation, which…
I recently listened to an episode of the Sporkful podcast entitled "Is your recipe lying to you?" I enjoyed the podcast, the conversation with Chris Kimball was hilarious, but I was caught by something the Elizabeth Dunn said towards the end. It's actually an incredibly pleasing and gratifying feeling, cooking things repeatedly and honing them. I don't know, there's something very comforting to me…
Craig Mod : For me, from this boredom—this blankness of mind as I walk past sometimes fields and sometimes giant gambling pachinko parlors—words flow. I can’t stop them. My mind begins writing about what we see and refuses to shut up. That gap created by a lack of artificial stimulation is filled—thanks to the magic plasticity of our brains—with words and more words. Without Candy Crush, an…
If I was still on Twitter in the old days, maybe some of these would've been posted there. But I'm not on social media and I've been trying to figure out how to share some of the small things, so I'm trying this. All of these thoughts or events happened in the past couple of weeks, I've collected them and figured it was worth a share. We're in a large city for the weekend so G can make use of a…
It's Memorial Day Weekend and in some ways I can't believe it and in others it feels like we should be way deeper in 2025 given all that's happened and is happening. I'll admit that I've not dealt well with the events of the world lately and books, knitting, and journaling are getting me through. I've started some things and not finished them as they've not been for me, but as usual, here is what…
I was recently reading through my feeds and came across a short post from Scott Boms , with a quote from Haruki Murakami so good I'm going to put it here to make it easy to read. Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart. I've been thinking about that a lot as things in the US get worse. It's also made me think of…
A couple of years ago I injured my lower back doing some core work during a workout. I recovered and for the most part, my back is fine. Every once in a great while, like around once a year, my back decides it really wants me to slow down by seizing and spasming. This happened last week. Now that I've been through this a few times, I know what to do. But for the first few minutes, it's always so…
I've spent a lot of time this year thinking about the clothes I make, specifically looking for the intersection of what I like to make and what I like to wear. I'm a basics person almost all the time; I love a good jeans + tee + sweater. It's what I wear most days in the cooler months and sub out shorts for the jeans in the summer. This year I've also been consciously trying to use fabric and yarn…
Over the past few days I've been coping with the world by making. One of the things I love about making is finishing things and it's been several days in a row of finishing things, my favorite. On Saturday I finished a dress, on Sunday I sewed up a belt bag in one go, today I finished some socks, and I finally sewed on the buttons to fully finish my cabled cardigan . I'll probably talk about all…
What a start to the year it's been. I've been heartbroken to see what's going on in both my country and the world, it's hard to imagine that it will ever get better, but books step into that gap for me and help me see what's possible. I've read a lot and just keep on going with several books out from the library at a time so I'm never without the next read. I've also dipped my toes into poetry and…
I've spent the past week off of social media (since I no longer have any accounts) and trying to cut down my time online overall. At the same time, I've seen so many different articles of people talking about doing the same thing. I think, quite possibly, many folks are realizing that technology isn't the answer and that it may be a hindrance to living the life we want. I spend time on both…
I woke up to snow today. It's unusual for where I live, maybe once a winter we get snow that sticks. As the day has gone on the snow is falling heavier and sticking even more. I've welcomed the quiet, white world outside. From my walk in the snow, usually this is where I stop and chat with Meow Meow the cat, but today he was nowhere to be found. All was quiet as the snow fell. I've not done well…
I've been seeing posts popping up in my RSS feed lately where folks are all answering the same set of questions about their blogs. To my surprise I was tagged by Naz and so here we are. As a complete aside: I don't track any analytics on this site so I have no idea who is reading it and it always surprises me to find out people are, in fact, reading it. Why did you start blogging in the first…
I've spent the past two months reading a lot. I've had a book to hand and have picked it up rather than my phone much of the time when I have free moments. It's advice I saw on Mandy's site and it's a great idea, highly recommend. To that end, Mandy wrote something else about reading and rereading that I found really profound in a recent newsletter (apologies for no link, but this one isn't online…
We traveled a lot this past year, more than we have in years, be it a couple nights in a nearby city or a longer trip to visit family, we got away from home 7 out of the 12 months. And instead of talking about my year, I thought I'd show it. Many of these photos were taken by G, since he's gotten into photography I've now got a lot of photos of me as he is behind the camera most of the time. In…
This year, especially in the last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about marking time. How does one see and notice time going by and how, in particular, I do that. This also has a lot to do with the round numbers that've been part of my life this year, via my birthday and our anniversary . What I realized as I thought about this on walks and runs and while knitting is that I've noticed time…
Baseball season ended at the end of last month and the last few years when that happens, I reup Netflix to stream The Crown but that show ended last year. This year I wasn't quite sure what to do. I started searching around for what streaming service had things on it we wanted to watch and, honestly, there wasn't anything leaping out at me. What a first world problem, all these services but really…
I started this post prior to the election and have sat on it since, trying to figure out if I should post it. I realized I should with some additions. Day to day life is ongoing and prior to November 5 I'd had a good fall, celebrating with G on a trip and figuring out how to cook some really good food without meat. Hiding away the good isn't going to change what happened or what's going to happen.…
It's been much longer than I thought since I've posted about books. September was a month of starting things, realizing they weren't for me, and setting them down. But if there's one book in this list that I think everyone should read it's the first one, Blood in the Machine , I could say so much more about it, but I've opted to let it all settle in, think more about it, and quite possibly, I'll…
Lately a lot of links about social media and the networks we use to connect online have popped up in my feed reader or my email. So I've been thinking a lot about networks and how we connect online. I have thoughts, many thoughts, and I've started this post so many times, but then left it alone. But I wanted to collect the various things I've been reading in one spot at the very least. I've read…
September felt like a month full of fits and starts with me finally hitting my stride on a few things towards the final week. It also brought cooler weather, at least in the evenings and mornings, along with changing leaves. I'm more than ready to put away the shorts and tanks and not be sweating anymore, but I think the warm days will linger well into October. Making In August I decided I really…
August started rough but turned out to be a good month. Typically it's hot and often smokey and none of those things were true this month, the past few weeks have been absolutely wonderful. It's finally cooling off at night to allow for enjoyable mornings and evenings. Although we are hot during the day, I find it so much easier when I can go on a walk and not be dripping with sweat when I get…
I don't think I've been reading quite as much as usual, but recently have finished more books and enjoyed reading as the weather remains hot. I started using Storygraph to track my reading and I'm still not sure how I feel about it, it's the first time I've used something like this, so I'm still figuring it out. I like the idea of the data about my reading on the one hand, but I have very little…
Whew, July is over. It was hot here for the majority of the month. I think we were above 95 for a good two weeks or more starting on July 5. This month was filled with getting up and getting a walk in, tending to the garden right after that, and then closing up the house and hiding from the sun until evening. We've been fairly lucky with wildfire smoke in our area so far, we've had a few spells,…
Yesterday we bought a DVD player. It felt a bit odd, to buy a piece of tech we'd eschewed years ago, but it's in line with some of the other choices in life I've been making lately. You can stream so many things; it's too many things and it's overwhelming. When I would bring up older movies to G that I wanted to watch for one reason or another, we'd look to see where we could watch them. Some…
Phew, June is ending and sometimes it feels like maybe not a lot is going on, but looking back things happened. I did some making, we took a quick weekend trip, the garden is going gangbusters, and we got some house maintenance done. Without further ado a bit about what's been happening and what I've been thinking about this past month. Rediscovering makes One thing that's happening these days is…
I go on binges of podcasts on a regular basis, usually when my podcast fetcher has filled up with quite a few episodes. Recently I realized I was really behind, which is a bit of an odd thing to say, but I wanted to listen to them all, but just hadn't been. Here are some one off episodes of things I liked and few that I've been listening to the full seasons. How Do We Survive the Media…
It's summer where I live and that means the following things have happened this week. We ate breakfast on the patio for the first time yesterday. Living in a place where it gets hot, the mornings are the best time of day on the patio and I love sipping my tea as the bees and bugs do their thing in the flowers around us. Some times a lizard even joins us to start the day with a sun bath. Stone…
Wow, I didn't realize I hadn't rounded up books for such a long time, but well, it's been a bit. We've traveled a bit this spring and I don't read as much when we're traveling, so I forgot about the round up. That being said, I've read some books that are sticking with me and I'm still thinking about, even though I finished them a while ago. Tom Lake I saw so many recommendations for this book and…
May is almost over, but it was a good month for the most part. We traveled, I got my garden going, and I made some things. I'll have a book post up soon, but I thought I'd do a bit of a round up via photos of the month. Travel to the Midwest We started the month with a trip to the Midwest to see family but also a bit of big city time for us in Chicago. We stayed in Wicker Park and really enjoyed…
I don't watch a ton of TV or movies, especially not during baseball season, but I just finished two shows that I really enjoyed and thought I'd share. I'll also add that this may be a regular thing but much less frequently than my book posts. I've given up all social media (except Ravelry—is Ravelry social media, I'm still not sure about that), so I'm once again trying to put the things I'm…
It's May and in the sewing world that means it's #memademay. I struggled with this last year and this year I finally did some research to figure out what it is and what the intentions of the founder were when she started it all. It was really helpful for me to listen to a podcast that Zoe did where she explains what Me Made May is and isn't. Guess what? It has nothing to do with taking photos of…
1,162. That's the number of pages, not counting any end material, in the copy of The Power Broker that I read. Probably the longest book I've read in my life. I honestly wasn't sure if I would finish this when I set out to read it in January, but here we are less than three months from the day I started and I'm done. I read this book, nothing more; no notes, no underling, no writing in the…
It'd been longer than I realized since I did one of these round ups. Part of that is because I've been reading the same book since the beginning of January and then supplementing with other books for my before bed readings. The Power Broker is going well, I have roughly 200 pages to go, but it's also dense and heavy (both literally and figuratively) and I can't read it in bed simply because the…
A few weeks ago I turned 50. I was so ambivalent about this birthday, it felt so different than when I turned 40 that I wanted to do something quieter and more relaxed. View from our hotel upon arriving in Seattle. We got a big city fix and walked and walked and walked. Luck was in our favor as the weather in the Pacific Northwest was dry both days we were in Seattle. All of that walking and…
The other day as I was eating breakfast and going through my feeds I clicked on a link that Baldur Bjarnason had in a round up links post entitled "The creator economy can't rely on Patreon." and read through it. It wasn't that I didn't know it was hard to make a sustainable living off of subscriptions, but I didn't realize it was quite as hard as Westenberg lays out. Relying solely on organic…
It's been over a month since my last book round up and in some ways I can't believe it. I've been reading more than ever lately as I stay away from screens, one reason this post has taken so long. Now that I'm not on a computer all day, it's been much harder to push myself to write and post than it was and the more I spend time away from screens, the less time I want to spend on them. In addition…