Mindful

I'll be working on Memorial Day, but I'm also setting some time aside to do some slow stitching with this bundle of vintage and recycled fabrics.

Every summer I make an art quilt that I put together spontaneously, without any clear plan or pattern. I improvise as I go along, and simply let the materials provide the inspiration.

I started the first panel last night by layering and stitching some of the fabrics with pretty threads. The colors are very restful after all the glitz of working on my last crazy quilt project.

Slow stitching gives me a chance to practice my needlework without the pressure of expectations. It's about embracing the imperfections and enjoying the journey rather than trying to make something specific and race toward a finish line (which I need.)

A Little Dessert

Here's a quick and easy dessert to make if you just want a few servings (double or triple if you want more):

Apple Puff Pastry Cups

1 Granny Smith apple

1/8 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon butter or margarine

3 frozen Puff Pastry cups

Decorative sugar (optional)

Preheat your oven to 425F. Peel and thinly slice the apple. Melt the butter in a small skillet, adding the sliced apple, brown sugar and cinnamon. Cook the mixture until the apples are soft, remove from heat and set aside.

Arrange the puff pastry cups on a greased cookie sheet, and bake at 425F for 14 minutes. Remove from oven, take off the little disc of pastry on top with a fork, fill the cup with your apple mixture, replace the pastry disc, and bake for 4 more minutes. Makes three servings.

Illuminate

"A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows."

Francis of Assisi

The Long Game

The k-drama series Itaewon Class will grab your heart for a lot of reasons; the difficult journey of protagonist Park Sae-Ro-Yi (Park Seo-Joon) is especially wrenching. As a teenager who dreams of becoming a cop, Sae-Ro-Yi steps in to stop a rich kid from bullying a classmate. By doing so he inadvertantly triggers a series of events that end up destroying his life, killing his father and sending him to prison. None of this is fair or deserved (quite the opposite), but it forges the boy into a man who will not be stopped until he settles the score.

Before the turnkey event Sae-Ro-Yi meets and falls for Oh Soo-A (Kwon Na-Ra), an orphan who is close to his dad. Sae-Ro-Yi's father is fond of Soo-A, and is helping to pay the tuition for her education. When Sae-Ro-Yi mixes it up with bully Jang Geun-Won (Ahn Bo-Hyun), he doesn't realize that the rich kid is the son of Jang Dae-Hee (Yoo Jae-Myung), CEO of the Jang Ga Group, and also his father's boss. Dae-Hee demands that Sae-Ro-Yi kneel before him and admit he was wrong for punching his son, but Sae-Ro-Yi feels he was in the right and refuses. Dae-Hee has Sae-Ro-Yi expelled. Proud of his son for standing up to his boss, Sae-Ro-Yi's father resigns from Jang Ga.

Sae-Ro-Yi and his dad start over by planning to open their own restaurant, but then Geun-Won kills Sae-Ro-Yi's father in a hit-and-run. The crime is quickly covered up by Dae-Hee, but Sae-Ro-Yi soon uncovers the truth. When he confronts Geun-Won and begins beating him with the intention of killing him, Soo-A intervenes and stops him. Dae-Hee sees to it that Sae-Ro-Yi is harshly punished for the beating by insisting he be prosecuted, which lands the heartbroken teen in prison for 2 years for assault and attempted murder charges. It's at this point that Sae-Ro-Yi decides to get revenge on Dae-Hee by beating him at his own game -- but fairly.

Vengeance isn't just about planning, it takes time. Once Sae-Ro-Yi is released from prison he spends seven years working as a deep-sea fisherman to earn the money he needs. The bullied kid he protected in high school becomes an investment manager, and secretly helps Sae-Ro-Yi use his father's life insurance and wage savings to buy stock in Jang Ga Group. Sae-Ro-Yi returns to open his first restaurant-bar in Itaewon, the colorful district where Soo-A lives.

Meanwhile, Dae-Hee takes Soo-A under his wing and supports her at school, after which she goes to work for Jang Ga Group. After a dismal childhood in the orphanage Soo-A is determined to live a better life and achieve her own dreams. She feels slightly guilty over her choice to work for the enemy because of Sae-Ro-Yi's feelings for her, but he assures her he only wants to see her successful. At this point I think every woman who watches this series wants to smack Soo-A for being an idiot and turning her back on Sae-Ro-Yi, but it's a realistic scenario, so we'll give her a pass.

When Sae-Ro-Yi opens his restaurant-bar DanBam (Sweet Night) in Itaewon, he assembles an interesting, quirky staff: Choi Seung-Kwon (Ryoo Kyung-Soo), a former thug and his cellmate in prison; Ma Hyun-Yi (Lee Joo-Young), a transgender woman who worked with Sae-Ro-Yi at a factory, Jo Yi-Seo (Kim Da-Mi), a young and brilliant teen turned social media star; Jang Geun-Soo (Kim Dong-Hee), Dae-Hee's illegitimate teenage son who has a crush on Yi-Seo, and Tony Kim (Chris Lyon), a multi-racial man who came to Korea from Guinea to try and find his father.

As manager Yi-Seo uses her marketing savvy to help DanBam become a successful business; in the process she falls for Sae-Ro-Yi, who just considers her a kid. This also sets up the love triangle between Sae-Ro-Yi, Soo-A and Yi-Seo, which becomes really interesting through the entire series. Dae-Hee soon discovers that Sae-Ro-Yi now owns a lot of Jang Ga Group stock, which he forces him to sell in order to protect DanBam's future. Jealous over Yi-Seo's feelings for Sae-Ro-Yi, Geun-Soo leaves DanBam to work for his father, and the war between Sae-Ro-Yi and Dae-Hee begins in earnest.

I think these sort of revenge stories are tricky. It's obviously vicariously pleasing to see justice served by the poor and victimized to the rich and over-privileged, but also difficult to do in a fair or realistic way. Itaewon Class serves it up perfectly in every sense. Park Seo-Joon did an amazing job portraying a young man shaped by love and tempered by hate. The long game of revenge is fascinating, but the most satisfying part for me was the resolution of the love triangle, which doesn't happen until almost the very end of the series. By that point I wanted to smack Sae-Ro-Yi in the head for not realizing his own feelings.

There is some fighting and violence, a bit graphic at points, but appropriate to the story. The portrayal of a transgender character is likely going to be polarizing, but I thought it was marvelous and quite inspiring. Available to watch on Netflix in the US.

Enchanting

My love for birds and a two-buck price tag prompted me to pick up a remaindered copy of An Enchantment of Ravens, author Margaret Rogerson's debut YA novel. I wasn't expecting much; I'm not a fan of fairy stories or YA, and it is the writer's first book. I see first books like first loves, always earnest but generally awkward.

Well, silly me.

The story is deceptively simple: in a Tolkienesque world where immortal Fae and humans exist together, a mortal portrait artist makes the mistake of painting a Fae prince with human emotion on his face. The results get her dragged off by him to the Fae world to stand trial (evidently making a fairy appear mortal is an unforgiveable sin.) Along the way the Fae prince falls in love with the artist, and both become targets of a hidden enemy.

Every writer who reads this novel will notice a few things: brilliant writing tops the list. The author has a naturally beautiful storytelling voice, and uses words like DaVinci used paint on canvas. Given the protagonist's occupation, this is just a lovely effect. I think the descriptive writing alone is the best thing I've seen in print for a long time.

There isn't a lot of plot to the story, but what there is also seriously impressed me. In first books I expect to be pummelled by too much plot (or bored by not nearly enough); this book has the perfect amount for the story the author wanted to tell. It's well thought out, restrained and super elegant.

My one criticism is that the romance between the main characters was lukewarm. Still, it's YA, and I'd be comfortable letting a young teen read this book, so it's appropriate to the genre. Despite not being entirely convinced that these two characters would actually fall in love, the writing made me happy to go along for the ride.

The author has written only two more books in the four years since this book was published, but based on the strength of this novel I'll be investing in them both. Highly recommended.

Next

My fingers are pretty sore from all the needlework I did on the crazy quilt project, so I'm going to take a short break from quilting. I have this lovely pile of recycled and vintage linen waiting for me when I decide I'm ready to start a lap quilt. I also picked up a couple of hand-dyed fabric bundles so I can do some smaller slow stitch projects:

I have a thing for moire satin, and I thought the peachy color of the vintage yardage I bought (on the bottom) would go nicely with this green and apricot bundle.

I don't know what I'm going to do with this bundle. It came with about a yard of burlap, but I'm saving that for something else. Maybe I'll turn it into some mini art quilts for my journal.

Done

I finished the last of the embroidery and embellishments on my crazy quilt tote, which came out better than expected. After that I sewed the sides together and lined the inside with a pretty Asian cotton print from Kona. Here's the final result:

I like the effect of the vintage brooches on both sides of the tote. I thought it might be too much to have two, but instead it makes it look special from both sides, so there isn't a back or front to this one.

I've never before added faux fur to a quilted piece, so that was a bit of a learning experience. Still, the fuzzies from edge fraying were pretty minimal, thanks to some careful basting. I also like how it feels and looks with the fresh water pearls.

It took awhile to get this done, but it feels nice to complete this as my first art quilting project started in 2021.

Tricky

Over the weekend I quilted the final tricky patch on my crazy quilt tote project; a hand-dyed swatch of heavy amethyst silk satin. Instead of fluttering like the habotai fabric this silk satin slithers around as if it's trying to avoid the needle. Once again I taped down the fabric to keep it from moving while I worked and went with a grid quilting stitch in light gold holographic Sulky. I wanted the dye pattern to show through the stitching, and I think that worked well.

I placed a second vintage brooch I bought in the center of the patch, and embellished the gold lace edging at the top with violet crystal montees in two sizes. If all goes well I might have the stitching on this project finished tonight.

On the Watchlist

I found a reliable seller of authentic overseas DVDs -- knockoffs are a real problem when you're shopping for these -- so I'm investing in some kdrama series I haven't been able to find anywhere else that feature three of my favorite Korean actors. On the left, What's Wrong with Secretary Kim?, a romantic comedy-drama that features a hilarious office romance between a narcissistic boss (Park Seo-joon) and his patient secretary (Park Min-young). On the right, Healer, an action thriller with Ji Chang-wook playing the title role of a secretive night courier/fighter and Park Min-young as an endangered journalist.

This should keep me busy for the next couple months. One of the pleasures of watching series in a foreign language with English subtitles is that my bad hearing doesn't factor in, and I'm actually picking up a lot about Korean culture to help with writing the NA series. :)

Slowly Getting There

I finished embellishing the habotai silk patch on my crazy quilted project last night. I didn't tear it, either, which was a big relief.

About 3/4 of the way done now. I have oe more tricky patch to tackle, and then I can finish up and turn this into a bag.

Long Lost

My mother loved candy, especially chocolate in any form, and one of her favorites were Ice Cubes by Moritz. These German candies are very strange; the chocolate has a hazelnut flavoring, and starts melting the moment you touch the candy. They also taste cool without any mint flavoring at all. When I was a girl I'd beg some change from my grandmother and buy a little bag of them for Mom for Mother's Day or her birthday.

I've kept an eye out for Ice Cubes for years, but I've never seen these for sale anywhere since I was a child. Because they're made with sugar and Mom was an insulin-dependent diabetic I couldn't give a bunch of them to her, but I would have bought her a few just to give her that sweet memory.

Yesterday we had our first sit-down dinner inside a restaurant in over a year, and when I came out I saw a little pack of Ice Cubes by the register. I bought them and tried one tonight. I don't use sugar so it was a bit too sweet for me, but the candy still melted as I took it out of the wrapper, and tasted cool. It brought back some good memories of me and my mother.

Masochist

I'm working on the one patch on my crazy quilt tote that worried me. The foundation is hand dyed habotai silk, which is so thin and fragile it's like a ghost fabric. It moves if you breathe on it, and it can tear with one wrong move of the needle. Despite all that I love this fabric; nothing else has such a lustrous sheen to it.

I kept the quilting simple, and taped down the fabric as I did the starburst stitching in lavender holographic Sulky. Now I'm adding a lace fan applique and some beading on top of it. So far so good.

Homegrown

The farm where we like to buy produce from local growers is open to the public again, so we made a trip over there yesterday to pick up a bag of fresh corn and some greens.

My first thought when I spied this tomato plant was "Do I look like that in the morning?" (Minus the tomatoes, probably.)

Watermelon season has begun. With a vengeance.

It always awes me a little to see the farm's harvest in person. It takes me two or three days to use up just one of our homegrown cucumbers. Picking them also acquainted me with how sticky and unpleasant cucumber plants can be.

What would you do with a truck filled with them? Ha.

Halfway Mark

I've finished one side of the crazy quilt tote, which is turning out better than I expected. Now I have to tackle the other side:

Violet and gold were good choices for this project. It's starting to feel very royal. :)

Guidance

I'm going to start a new journal, one that has prompts and questions to guide the entries. I keep a journal every day, but all I've been writing in it is my daily diet notes and stuff for work. I think I'm avoiding writing anything personal lately because of all the sadness over losing my mom and the stress of saying farewell to my favorite person as she moves across the country for her new job. I know it's better to get those feelings out on the page, but other than what I've written on the blog I'm not quite ready.

When I was a teenager I kept poetry and prose journals, which were fun. Now I'm thinking about writing a story entirely in longhand, too. Computers are so much more efficient and convenient, but there's something about hand writing a story that no technology can match.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Brooch Love

I like using vintage brooches for my crazy quilt projects. My grandmother always wore one when she got dressed up, so they remind me of her.

This is the rose brooch I bought for the golden silk patch, and here's how it turned out after I finished the cross hatch stitching:

I also have another one that's a gold and pearl floral spray to add to the other side of the bag, although I'm still debating where to place it:

I'm about halfway done with this project now, but I have a lot going on with work, so it will probably take at least another week or two to finish.

Modern Love

Three couples participate in video interviews about their love life while their real relationships play out at the same time, which makes the k-drama Lovestruck in the City fun and very funny. The most modern romantic series I've seen thus far (Because This is My First Life now takes second place), it also features a wonderful cast and highly addictive storylines.

All six characters have compelling stories, but the one that will grab your heart is that of Architect Park Jae-won (Ji Chang-wook), who takes a month off from work to go surfing. While on this vacation he meets and falls for the bewitching Yoon Seon-a (Kim Ji-won), a feisty and seemingly fearless woman who completely steals his heart. They get so close they even pretend to get married. When Jae-won has to go back to the city for a work emergency Seon-a promises to meet him again -- and then disappears. Jae-won then starts to fall apart as he tries to find the woman he loves -- who doesn't actually exist.

Yoon Seon-a is in reality Lee Eun-o, a friend of Jae-won's cousin who had a terrible break-up and lost her job just before she met Jae-won. Eun-o decides to take time off from life and become someone else, and meets Jae-won while she's posing as Seon-a. She falls hard for him, too. Yet when Eun-o has to go back to her real life in the city she decides to forget the vacation romance, as she's confused about herself and ashamed of having pretended to be someone else -- only she doesn't realize how much in love (and determined) Jae-won is.

I admit that Ji Chang-wook is one of my favorite k-drama actors, but he really outdoes himself in this series. He is so convincing as the heartbroken, slightly crazy architect that he made me laugh out loud and tear up at the same time. When Jae-won and Eun-o finally find each other again their reunion is anything but happy, but even when it's modern and very mixed-up, love finds a way. Available to watch on Netflix in the US.

Wishing

I submitted book one of my NA series for professional review and consideration, and in return I was praised for the work and provided with excellent feedback. Now I have some changes to contemplate, and decisions to make about the future.

I have a couple of different directions to take, which makes the deciding part a challenge. At times like these I wish I had a crystal ball so I could see the outcome of every choice. Wouldn't life be easier if we could do that?

Image by Matthias Böckel from Pixabay

Stitch Zen

Last night I was waiting for my family to come home from a long road trip. The weather between us was stormy, and I knew they would be late, so I got out my latest quilting project. Stitching helps me find calm when I'm stressed.

I didn't know what I was going to do with this patch, which is often the case when I embellish. I simply picked some beads and a vintage button I liked, and some ombre embroidery thread I thought would look good against the dark velvet. From there I went to work. Very often my worries circle around me, which inspired the feather stitching around the button. The shell beads and golden leaf trim around the patch slowly became a pretty frame. As I stitched I focused on the hand work and the colors, and gradually relaxed.

Just as I was finishing up the patch my crew arrived safely at home, which was the best part of the night.

Not For Everyone, But . . .

Bad Guys is a korean mystery/thriller series that works off this premise: what would happen if you took a disgraced, almost deranged police detective and put him in charge of a team made up of an assassin, a gangster and a psycopath in order to solve a serial murder case? That's the story in the beginning, but this series goes from there to a lot of other dark places.

After the murder of his daughter, Detective Oh Gu-tak (Kim Sang-joon) follows a downward professional and personal spiral into ruin, at least until his old boss comes and asks him to head up a team in order to hunt and stop a prolific killer. Gu-tak demands three members for his team, all seriously dangerous prisoners who are offered reduced sentences in return for their help.

When they agree, the convicted bad guys -- gangster Pak Un-cheol (Ma Dong-seok), hitman Jung Tae-soo (Jo dong-hyuk) and brilliant psycopath Lee Jung-moon (Park Hae-jin) -- are all given ankle bracelet trackers and two are briefed on the case. The third, psycopath Lee Jung-moon, decides to ditch the assignment and go see his ex-girlfriend, who was responsible for sending him to prison (he's also my favorite character in this series.) The team tracks him down, of course, but from there you begin to realize things aren't quite what they seem. The bad guys also prove remarkably effective as detectives.

I liked Bad Guys because it was so different, having basically everyone be a villain right from the start. The four journeys of redemption for the guys include a lot of complications and entanglements, but I found them very convincing. All the actors were superb in their roles. For me Park Hae-jin played the most complex character, and as the psycopath had the most heart-wrenching story; I was completely caught up in his storyline. Some of the fight scenes were unrealistic, but exciting to watch all the same.

I don't feel the series is something for everyone, as the violence and bloodiness are constant and sometimes fairly graphic. That said, I felt most were appropriate to the story, and the use of blurring during the most violent scenes helped. Available on Netflix in the US.

Daily Joy

It's so much fun to go out in the morning to see what's ready to pick in the garden.

As a Family

Some pics from when my family and I worked together to plant the grapefruit tree I bought to honor my mom for Mother's Day.

This was my idea, but I couldn't have done it without them.

I thought I would cry for my mother, but instead I was reminded of how lucky I am to have people who love me and want to make my wishes come true.

I'll think of that everytime I look at this tree.

A Little Crazy

I posted last week about my next sewing project, which will be a crazy-quilted gift bag using the silk and velvet fabrics I showed you. To begin this I took apart a plain canvas tote bag by the side seams so that it can serve as my foundation.

I then added a layer of batting on the top (I use scraps from other projects for this) and arrange and baste down the fabrics atop the batting. I sometimes use my sewing machine for putting the fabrics in place, but since I'm working with some very delicate silk pieces I did the basting by hand.

I have yet to make a full size crazy quilt, which I've always wanted to do. I don't have the confidence yet to try, but little projects like this bag give me a chance to practice.

Mother's Day

Dear Mom,

This is the first year I won't be able to wish you a Happy Mother's Day, so instead I'm planting a tree for you today. It's a white grapefruit, just like the one we had in the back yard when I was a little girl. You always asked me to pick the fruit from the very top branches because I was the best tree climber in the family, and I knew how to avoid the thorns. That is true of our relationship, too.

I know I disappointed you because I never became the person you wanted me to be. I'm sorry for that, but I'm glad that I learned from it. It taught me not only to cherish the people I love, but also to treat them with respect. I wish you and I could have had that, but I have no regrets. You couldn't pick your daughter anymore than I could pick my mother. I also think we both tried to be good to each other despite our differences.

I don't know where you are now, but I'm hoping you're with Dad, and at peace. That is all I wish for you.

Here's your tree:

Happy Mother's Day.

New Trees

My guy and I went today to find the tree to plant on Sunday as a remembrance of my mom. I usually plant a trees on the birthday of someone I've lost, but Mom's isn't until November. I also wanted to do something for her on Mother's Day.

When I was little we had a grapefruit tree in our back yard, so I decided to get one for Mom. While we were picking it out my guy decided to get an orange tree, too, so the grapefruit would have some company. My dad loved oranges so that's going to be his tree.

The orange tree had two little fruits on it, which we didn't realize until we got it home. A good omen, I think.