A Little Help? (And a Give Away)

By Jeannie Watt

If any of you happened to catch my blog at The Pink Heart Society, you know that the more trouble I have with the story I’m writing, the more I want to sew. Some might call this escapism or perhaps procrastination.  I prefer to call is accessing another part of my brain and allowing the story-spinning part to recuperate.  Lately though, sewing has become almost as difficult as the problems I'm trying to work out in my plots.

Let me walk you through my latest project, the Crossing Nevada revision dress, and see if you can identify my problem.,

 I usually make a muslin if the pattern is new to me. No sense wasting fabric on a dress that doesn't fit--I've had that happen way too many times in the past.

 I lay out the pattern carefully, making certain to align the grain of the fabric properly.

I cut the contrast fabric at the same time, after prewashing it to make certain the dye doesn't bleed.

I do a lot of interfacing to give the finished garment body. I hate cutting and applying interfacing, but I do it.

After I have everything cut out, I make my tailoring marks and then remove the pattern.Then I arrange the pieces in the order I'll sew them together. I'm very organized, yet somehow stuff keeps getting mussed up and sometimes ends up in a heap on the floor.

Oddly, I have no problem when I actually sew. Perhaps something to do with the noise, however, I do have to drape all my working pieces over a chair. You can probably figure out why.

Here is a photo of the finished dress. Note that there is no "helper" in the photo. The cat is not allowed outside, otherwise I’m certain she’d be peeking out from under the skirt.

I'm celebrating handing in the revisions for Crossing Nevada by giving away a $15 Amazon gift card. Tell me about the biggest challenge you face when you're trying to complete a project, be it pursuing a hobby in too small of a space, or tackling a killer project at work.

Summertime, Summertime, S-S-Summertime!

(((Sorry this is posting late. I forgot to, um, hit post. LOL)))

It’s that time of year again. The time of year when attention spans are shorter than ever, energy levels are skyrocketing and not from an abundance of sugar, and teachers are counting down the days until the end of school as diligently as the kids are.

Me? I’m counting them down, too. Because in my house Kid 1 and Kid 2 do not get along and when summer vacation hits—it’s every Mom for herself.  LOL

My kids are older now and you’d think this would mean less fighting. Noooo, not in our house. It typically means more. The dh and I have informed Kid 1 that a summer job is a requirement. So far, no luck. Not that he’s tried that hard. 

As for Kid 2, summer will bring more help in the office and around the house—I hope. We’ve talked a good game and made big plans, declaring our “Summer Project” to be a full-house declutter-and-clean mission the likes of which our house has never seen. My energy is already lagging just from the thought. Any volunteers out there???

Regardless of what takes place this summer I’m sure there will be a lot of yelling, some tears, a few slammed doors, lots of laughter, too much mess, and not enough writing but we’ll all do our best. I can’t complain too much when my kids aren’t that far from college and all the noise and bickering will soon be gone for real. Just remind me of that when I'm pulling my hair out, okay?

Growing up, my older brother was the one getting a summer job to earn date money and to get out of the house. He drove an icee truck that also sold cotton candy. I loved his job. *sigh* LOL 

My summer jobs were boring, usually spent working as a legal receptionist and secretary. Great experience but not much fun. And there wasn’t any cotton candy to be had.

Did you have a summer job in high school? Was it fun? Boring? Were your parents thrilled to get you out of the house and out of their hair, or did you stay home and wreak havoc on your mom’s nerves? ;)

I’ll choose a winner from those who post and you’ll win your choice of my books (If available). What were your summer vacations like?

Kay Stockham

www.kaystockham.com

North Star, MT series Sep 2011-Jan 2012

THE CRASH BEFORE CHRISTMAS, DEC 2011

RETURN TO EDEN, AVAILABLE NOW!

BLIND MAN'S BLUFF, FALL 2012

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Whipped Cream Confessions

by Mary Brady

I was recently asked if there was anything whipped cream could be put on top of or added to that I didn’t like. (I am going to ignore all the innuendo popping up in my head and stick to the fluffy stuff that tickles my tongue and if piled high enough, perhaps even my nose.)

Quick answer, no. Real answer is longer.

The context of the question had to do with stewed dried plums. If you stew dried fruit—plums and apricots are my favorite, cool the fruit, fold sweetened whipped (real) cream into the fruit in a 3 to 1 ratio, you get a kind of fluffy, sweet concoction that I could eat every day—but don’t. My mother called the dried plum version prune whip. (Prune Whip The McCall Publishing Co.)

I started to wonder if there was anything I put whipped cream on/in that I didn’t like.

I’d have to say the quick answer is correct—but there are qualifications.

I’ve had whipped cream on/in things I didn’t like, but I didn’t put it there, someone else did. And because I was so (TIC) polite, I tasted the offering and, if the person stood and watched me, I ate it—all. Slight shudder. If they walked away or got distracted, I found various ways to dispatch it. Think “Friends” when Rachel Green crosses recipes and makes Beef Trifle. Everyone but Joey (of course) found ways not to eat it.

One “whipped cream” (called that by those serving it, not the manufacturer) has been lined up with a collection of things which contained at least one ingredient or one precursor ingredient also included in the whipped topping: margarine, suntan oil, detergent, antifreeze, and others, some even less savory.

To be fair, these ingredients:

Provide air-cell stability under cold to hot conditions,

Reduce syneresis,

Provide freeze-thaw stability,

Reduce processing time.

Sorry, I don’t know what syneresis is and I am not looking it up. (All right, the writer in me eventually will.) I’m just not eating whipped "topping" any more no matter who serves it to me.

For myself, when I refer to whipped cream, I mean handmade from heavy cream, dehydrated cane sugar juice and real vanilla. Add coffee if you want. Add chocolate. Add Cointreau, but please hold the polysorbate 60.

What do you like your whipped cream or whipped topping on most? Or tell your whipped cream story!

Comment for a chance to win a book from my back list or a set of TossOn™ bracelets. For examples of TossOn™ bracelets check out Juls and Maude.

Happy topping to all!

Winners from Ellen Hartman's Book Club Blog

Please get in touch so I can send you a copy of The Long Shot! (ellen@ellenhartman.com).

• BW
• Joye
• Kaelee
• Jill

Thanks to everyone who came by and shared their comments!

Book Clubs

Karina kindly posted on the News page that The Long Shot is the May pick for the Smart Bitches' Sizzling book club. The chat is happening on 5/30 and the book is on sale at All Romance until 5/15. This event has me thinking about book clubs. I haven't been in a book club in years and I miss it.

The last book club I was in was amazing and crazy all at the same time. (Are there any book clubs that aren't at least a little crazy?) Most of the women in the club had small children. We were lucky enough to be able to meet in a penthouse apartment in downtown Ithaca that belonged to the parents of a club member. This apartment was not only gorgeous, it was a kid-free oasis. Going to book club in that place at that time of my life felt like going to a spa.

Five Books We Read

1. Anna Karenina (A gorgeous edition. Loved this.)
2. Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House (Loved this. With two small children at home, the concept of order and science and solutions at home was super appealing.)
3. Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable (HATE. I think this was the book that drove me out of the book club. Go ahead and read the description. Would you have stayed in the club?)
4. Middlemarch (I loved this. I freely admit that I skimmed/skipped most of the descriptive passages which means I read about 1/3 of the book, but it's wonderful.)
5. Arcadia (I don't like reading plays. I loved reading this one.)

 Five Things I Loved About the Book Club

1. Theme food. One person brought food that somehow coordinated with the book's theme. You don't want to know what we had when we read The Red Tent. It was mostly delicious, though, and most importantly, it was grown up food!
2. The view. The penthouse view was breathtaking at night, especially when it was snowing.
3. The leader packets. One person led the discussion and usually came prepared with questions, background info, and other interesting tidbits. I learned a lot in this book club. 
4. The grown-up conversation about grown-up books. 
5. Being forced to read books I wouldn't have chosen. As weird as it sounds, I really did love that housekeeping manual (#2 above) and I never would have picked it up. Same with Arcadia. And Middlemarch. And a bunch of others. 

Five Things I Didn't Love So Much

1. The theme food. I'm cooking challenged on a good day. Having to prepare delicious, sophisticated food that somehow matched a book? Drove me nuts. (Luckily M&Ms are the new black.)
2. The night when my car broke down on the way to book club and then my husband called me three times to tell me about the bird that flew down our chimney and was nesting in the fireplace and then after hitching a ride home, having to chase that same bird through our house in an effort to make it GO BACK OUTSIDE TO NATURE.
3. People who didn't read the books. (I went to Catholic school. I do my homework.) 
4. Bickering about which books to pick next.
5. Bickering about everything.

So eventually the load of bickering grew too heavy and we read that alphabet book of experimental fiction and I'd had enough. The book club fractured and a splinter group formed a new club.

A gin club.

I'd like to say we were playing cards, but we were actually drinking gin. Correction: we were tasting gin. That makes it more respectable, right? We tasted some excellent gin. (Also some well-dressed gin.) But then the gin club experienced some issues with over-indulgence and it wasn't fun anymore so once again we splintered.

And that was when three of us formed up into a critique group. A writing group. We were still sipping gin and still discussing books, but now they were our own books! I miss being in a book club, but I love my critique group.

What about you? I already know you love reading, but are you in a book club? I love to hear your stories. Give me a top 5 list from your book club or other club. What's the best book you were ever forced to read? Have you read Ella Minnow Pea and did it make you rage? Ever make theme food to match a book or movie night?

I have a book out this month, so here is the obligatory tie-in with my book section of the blog post: I don't think it's a spoiler to reveal that Deacon Fallon, the hero of The Long Shot (May 2012), is illiterate. I never write about actual people I know, but I often write about themes or situations I'm working through. Because I have a son with a mild learning disability and I work in communication, I think about literacy and how it impacts inclusion and access to many aspects of life from basic services all the way up to the independent joy of reading for pleasure. That contemplation is where Deacon's issues came from.

WIN BOOKS: I'll choose 4 commenters to receive a copy of The Long Shot. Maybe you'll read it and join me for the book club chat on 5/30! 

Finally, It’s May (Garden Memories)

Last weekend, I won a gardening gift basket.  My writer’s group held a luncheon event where the person whose birthday is closest to the speaker’s gets to take home the centerpiece on the table.  (Yay!  Don’t you love when you win something?)

The gift basket was filled with annual seeds, gardening tools, gloves, even a cute garden gnome.

So this week, in the midst of revision-problems that have been giving me fits, I’ve been taking breaks to go outside and “play” in the dirt.  I’ve found it’s a great way to work out plot issues, and I’ve been enjoying the May flowers as an added bonus.


This is my crop of lilac bushes (the photo is from last year, but you get the point).  Lilacs remind me of my childhood; I think they’re very “New England.”  White lilacs were part of my wedding bouquet, and I remember that every time I looked at them that day, they made me happy. 

Blueberry bushes are another New England favorite.  My dad planted four for us in our miniscule back yard.  Right now, they are budded with flowers and dozens of bees are hovering over them, pollinating, but in June, Dad will stop by for a morning of helping me stretch nets over the plants so the birds won’t eat the ripening berries. 

Here’s a photo of last August’s crop.  The berries taste great in pancakes and smoothies.  I can’t wait!

Another favorite plant is of Lily of the Valley.  I do nothing special to take care of them, and yet they blossom every year, smelling great.  Lily of the Valley reminds me of my grandmother, who died when I was 17.  Her backyard was covered in them every spring.  When we sold her house, we transplanted some of her lilies, and the flowers in my yard are descended from hers. 

They remind me of her, and they make me smile, too.

(I don’t have a photo of the lilies, but here is Otis the Cat with a pot of spring herbs.)

I’d love your comments.  Do you have any garden memories?  If not gardening, what tasks do you do to think out knotty problems?

Everyday Heroes

Mary Sullivan

I’m sure this topic has been covered many times before, but I’d like to share a couple of things I’ve seen lately.

Across the street from my apartment building, there’s an elementary school that has a daycare attached to it. I happened to be outside one day and witnessed this scene. A police officer had parked across the street from the daycare and had been inside the school for a while, possibly to talk to a class or at an assembly. He came out of the school to get into his car to leave just as the children came out of their daycare to play outside. They all ran to the fence so they could wave to him, but then asked him what was wrong, because his flashing lights weren’t on.

This huge, muscular guy played right along, saying, “My lights aren’t on? I forgot to turn them on?”

He climbed into his patrol car and turned on his flashing lights and his siren and that ‘whoop whoop’ sound that emergency vehicles sometimes make. He pulled the car over so it was sitting right in front of the children and they all cheered. I LOVED watching this burly cop turn into a marshmallow for little kids.

On a completely unrelated topic, I learned recently that one of my daughter’s friends, who is in university working on his Ph.D., decided that he really wanted a place on campus where students could go to get super healthy food at cheap prices. He got together with two like-minded students and started a small café. All of their time is donated. This is completely a volunteer effort on their part.

My daughter’s friend bakes nine loaves of bread from scratch every week and makes incredibly healthy soups and salads. He works there three days a week and gets paid nothing for his labor. He finds joy in cooking for people.

So for $5, a student, rather than picking up junk or fast food, can go to the café and get a huge salad, a satisfying bowl of soup and a bunch of homemade bread.

I really admire these three young people who showed such initiative—who did more than just have a great idea, but actually saw it through to fruition—give of their time and labor so generously. It makes up for all of those in the news who aren’t doing so well, who are hurting those around them.

On the news tonight, there was coverage of an awards ceremony that honored pets who had saved their owners lives. They were gorgeous dogs and cats who had a strong bond with their owners, strong enough that they sensed when their owners were in distress, even while their owners slept through medical emergencies. Aren’t pets sometimes the most heroic creatures on earth?

There’s a cashier at my neighborhood grocery store who is unfailingly polite and cheerful, no matter what the customers are like. She wears glasses with bright red frames and lipstick to match and tells everyone to have a good day after she rings in their order. When I watch her I can SEE her make the choice to be pleasant. She consciously maintains her good humor.

A million years ago, I put myself through school by working as a cashier in a large grocery chain store. I know how hard it can be when you get tired, when you’re nearing the end of your day, to put up with customers who are tired and can become crabby on a dime. This woman makes everyone feel good.

These are the people (and pets) I admire, who make those around them feel good, feel cared for, who make us smile at their whimsy, their constant good will, or their generosity of spirit. Are there people in your life, or on the periphery of it, who make you feel good whenever you come into contact with them? 

I'm giving away a copy of my May release, NO ORDINARY SHERIFF, to someone who comments today.