Rayen

May you get all treats and no tricks today. Happy Halloween!

The mixed lot of yarn and fabric I recently bought at the online auction just arrived; let's see if I got my money's worth out of this one. At first it looked like there were eleven skeins and balls of yarn. Four of the Caron One Pound ($13 to $17 retail) are unused, as is the Lion Brand Pound of Love ($14.00 retail) and one of the Red Heart Super Savers ($5.49 retail). I'd say the pile is worth $53.00 resale. There were also vintage runners, doilies, cord work, fabric, two skeins of cording and two more balls of yarn. Conservatively speaking the linens are worth $50.00 resale, and the extra yarn and cording is $12.00, so $62.00 here. The original owner paid $2.72 for the fabric remnant -- way back in 1999. Heck, it lasted this long -- let's add that in. :) The bag of fabric turned out to be Japanese, and this exact pack retails new for $18.99 on Amazon. Adding up all the estimated, the total resale value of this lot is $136.71. I paid $10.99 f...

I was about twenty pages into The Night Ends with Fire by K.X. Song when I realized the novel was a knockoff. If you're a fan of Disney, the story of Mulan is probably very familiar: girl protects her family by pretending to be a boy and joining the army. This book is about the same character, but her motivations are all dark and negative, and nothing you could really call heroic. She's not protecting her family, she's abandoning them to her drug addict dad to avoid a marriage to a cruel man he arranged. This Mulan is angry and greedy and all about herself, which is fine. That's pretty much the modern lifestory these days. The writing is quite deft, and the pacing is consistent. The author has the skills to write well, and does. I just kept getting sidelined by the knockoff aspects. The main character is not sympathetic or even likeable, and since I am a female who served in the military I should have at least identified with her. Instead I wished she'd...

While I'm brooding on my vintage linen project, I decided to turn this basket of vintage fabric that I used to make the September tote for my calendar project into a small quilt. Back in September I cut half of the fabric into strips, so I pieced the leftovers into blocks. Here's the quilt top arrangement. Stay tuned to see how I make the backing out of the rest of the scrap.

One weekend this month we spent the day in St. Augustine puttering around, getting rained on and admiring houses. To stroll with us, check out my album of photos here .

This is an old Missouri Star video about the quilt as you go method, which illustrates the technique I want to use for my vintage linens quilt. I'll be making mine in panels rather than all one piece, but it gives you the general idea. I will also be using the sewing machine to make this quilt, along with a little hand stitching here and there as my hands allow. The linens and vintage scrap need a bath, mainly for a bit of storage odor that came with them. It isn't always necessary to launder scrap, particularly vintage, but I want everything clean first, and I have a sensitive nose. I sorted them into lights and darks, and I'll run them through the washer in lingerie bags on a delicate setting, dry them, and then I'll get started on the first panel.

I invested in the 2026 issue of a Somerset Halloween to see if that would give my persistent fall apathy a kick in the keister. I will say up front that the issue has a lot of doll and skeleton projects. I'm not really a fan of dolls, but these are not babies or human, so there's that. Skeletons are also not my favorite choice of decor, but I get that they appeal to the folks who put 15 foot versions in their front yards (why? Got me.) There are some different and very creative ideas this year, like Halloween themed journals, little ghost soaps (I'm not a soap maker, but have to admit, they're charming), sachets that are decorated like plague treatments, and even a Halloween version of a gingerbread house. I might have to make one of the journal projects. I like Halloween so much I wouldn't mind writing in a themed journal even after it passes.

To jump start my quilting muse I decided to go back to Ramen Hands , the Etsy seller who sold me the fabric for this challenge quilt, a purchase a couple more bundles: a pound of fabric scraps and the estate sale ina box withe the linen closet option. In the special requests section I just asked for anything that I could make into a quilt. The box arrived last week, so let's see what she sent. My two bundles. I'm so excited. Here is the pound of fabric scraps. I love how neatly she puts these together. Definitely a terrific variety to use for my project. The estate sale linen closet bundle is huge! I'll have to show you everything in two pics. There is a marvelous variety of old linens to use, including pillowcases, handkerchiefs and even an apron. Now I can't wait to make something out of these. I knew she would inspire me. My initial idea is to try something I've never done: a quilt as you go throw. It would be easier on my...

Here's a chore that I do a couple times of year (or I used to, anyway): cleaning out the scraps bag I keep in the sewing room. This time it's overflowing because I've been procrastinating, and there's literally no room left in it for anything else. Pulling out all the scraps and sorting them is like a trip back through time; I get to see snips and trimmings from all my projects. As I did I began seeing scraps from projects I did last year, and checked my journal. Sure enough, I haven't cleaned out the scrap bag since September 2025 . This also made me realize how little I've been sewing over the last 13 months. Back to the sort. I do save all the batting scraps in a big bag which I raid for smaller projects. The tiniest scraps of fabric, all of which are unsuitable for reuse, went into my thread catcher bag, which holds the snips of yarn from my crochet, too. I call this shoddy, and I want to find a way to reuse it, even if it's as stuffi...

I have a bunch of scraps leftover from making my October tote for my calendar project. I have zero ambition to start quilting anything by machine. Time for a mug rug, I thought. I have an entire box of mug rugs. I make them whenever I feel blue. It's a tiny project that I can accomplish in an hour or two (yes, I'm that slow now.) I like using them in the sewing room and my home office. Deciding to make this one made me happy in a sad way. I have no Halloween mug rugs. Will I even be able to hold a needle by next October? I hate my arthritis. I let go of all the noise in my head. I sewed the front and back on the machine, batted it, and hand stitched the rest. I didn't think about next October, Halloween or anything, really. I just stitched. Slowly, painfully at times (my fingers are still sore from making the tote) but steadily. I found a couple of hours of mindless bliss in making this little mug rug. I love how it looks. It completely changed my mood a...

I set aside all my other projects and devoted a couple of days to stitching, embellishing and assembling the October tote for my calendar project. My fingertips grew sore for the first time in years because I haven't been hand-stitching, but I took my time and did what I could while not trying to be too ambitious. For the fabric elements I just focused on getting them stitched down securely. I added some feather stitching here and there when my hands allowed a little more work. I also didn't do much hand quilting, but I did add some beading, which I hadn't planned to do. The vibe I got from the finished slow stitching was very elegant. I added two fabric pumpkins to one patch to emphasize this. Then it was time to assemble it. Because I pre-batted and lined the tote, I just had to sew up the sides on the machine. The finished tote. I'm very happy with how this turned out. We're all ready for Halloween now. :)

There's a new blind date with a book seller at one of our local antique malls, so of course I had to invest and show my support. I'm wonderful that way, lol. I meant to pick up a contemporary romance, too, but my man distracted me for a moment and instead I grabbed this historical fiction/romance. Ah, well, I'll just have to suffer. This seller included some very nice items tucked in the wrappings: a big paperclip, little journal and bookmark that resemble old library checkout cards, a pen and a tea bag. I got If the Tide Turns by Rachel Rueeckert, a novel and an author I have never read. Sounds like it's right up my alley, too: witchhunts and piracy. Very happy and I will be going on more blind dates with this seller again.

A few days ago a reader of mine reached out to me to see if I was still working (and probably to check and see if I was still alive.) They also asked me if I would ever go back to publishing under one of the bylines I used during the twenty years I worked for big publishers in NYC. The subject hasn't come up very often in the eight years since I went freelance and became a partner in a small independent publisher. I've made more money on my own than I ever did with an agent and working for NY, so there's that. I do not miss being in the spotlight and all the ugliness that comes with it; that dimension of my career was particularly brutal for me. I should never have gone the way I did; indy publishing is where I really belong -- but it didn't really exist back in my day. Here's some advice from a shy person who put up with all that nonsense for two decades: if NY ever offers you a contract, and promises that they'll develop your brand, promote your wor...

I got a bit of a late start on the October tote for my calendar project, but once I focused on it things started to come together nicely. I settled on doing a slow stitch design rather than a crazy quilt design. After I batted and backed the tote I finalized the arrangement of the fabric pieces, and pinned them down. I've got three weeks to do the hand quilting and embroidery, and (maybe) a little beading. I will use the machine if I have to, but I want to try to do some hand work this month.

To celebrate my dad's birthday and make a donation in honor of him and his love of animals, we visited our local no-kill cat shelter last week. To see the kitties we visited, check out my album of pics here.

I decided to try making my first primitive stuffie for Halloween by printing out Ann Wood's Happy cats sewing pattern . Since I was working with a quilt piece as the fabric I cut the large cat printout a bit larger. I sewed the pieces together on the machine, used amigurumi eyes instead of embroidery, stuffed it and then hand stitched to close the opening. The result was more than satisfying. I liked how the embroidery from the original quilt made designs on the front and back of my cat. My little collection of prims is growing nicely. I think I'll try a pumpkin next.