Author: Rankin, Ian

My to-read shelf is getting taller every week with Pat bringing home books from the library sales. This was one of ours and I was ready for a good detective story and this author never fails.

Rebus is newly retired but hasn’t yet quite let go of the excitement of the chase. An old, unsolved case comes to his attention and to fill his time he starts digging. During his search he encounters several cronies from his past but a more current crime seems to be more intriguing than solved the cold case. And Rebus inserts himself into the investigation.

Goodreads Rating: * * * *

This was the last project in the Little Handfuls of Scraps book that Stacia, Deloise and I worked on each month for the past couple of years. I finished it at the Guild’s January retreat this year, well behind Stacia and Deloise.

I originally intended to use straight lines down and across (maybe with my serpentine stitch) but everyone thought I should blanket stitch the butterflies. I was afraid to start that but once I got going it went quite quickly and I was pleased with the results. I used the serpentine stitch to outline each of the blocks.

I fully intended to pass the book along when I finished this last project but in the meantime I’ve used some of the patterns, or pieces of the patterns, for other projects so I think I’ll hang on to it.

The Guild decided to spend some of our money and our project was to make and fill cosmetic bags for our women’s shelter. I’m not a fan of making bags and I’m certainly not a fan of zippers but it was for a good cause so I decided to participate.

We were working from a very old pattern and at some point it was decided that there needed to be a demo for those people who were having problems. I thought I should get a start on the bag before the demo and I was only at step 2 (the zipper) before I had issues. So off to the demo I went.

I took photos and when I tried again at home everything went reasonably well until it was time for the lining. My bag was about half the size of what it should be. I chatted with a guild member at one of our swims and she suggested I had perhaps sewn the zipper onto the wrong side. Another look at the pattern and my small bag and I realized that was the issue.

So I bought another zipper (two more actually just in case) and started again. Things worked better this time but I had major issues with the lining. It was much too large for the size my bag came to but I wasn’t about to start over so I stuffed it inside and sewed it by hand.

Never again! The pattern wasn’t very clear on directions, both of the ladies handling the demo had different methods and neither of them matched the pattern directions.

Done is done – not pretty and really not very well done but …

Needless to say my idea of making these as Christmas gifts for my granddaughters went out the window!

Author: Boyne, John

I downloaded this book for our recent Saskatchewan trip and completely forgot about it until I got a notice that it was due in a couple of days. I was able to renew it for three weeks but it only took a week to finish it.

As I started reading I thought it was more of a children’s story and I could see reading it aloud to someone about the same age as Noah. I had a bit of an insight into what the story was really about very close to the end when the second character in the story wishes he had never become a real boy. Yes, it is the story of Pinnocchio but long after Geppetto has died.

I’m not so sure it is a good kid’s story but I certainly enjoyed it.

Goodreads Rating: * * * *