I got home from my work trip Monday afternoon and have had yesterday and today as comp days. On top of the usual exhaustion of board meetings followed by running a conference, I was sleeping in a dorm room, drove four days round trip with people in my car half of both ways, and had a lot of significant interactions with people while I was there. So I've been in Introvert Recovery Mode and trying to talk to as few people as possible the last couple of days, even via social media.
However, I did come home to Happy Mail: My July Sew Sampler box was waiting for me! If you haven't gotten yours yet, SPOILER ALERT! You may not want to read any further!
Once again, there are some very handy tools and notions in this box, although it's all built around a pattern I'm not sure I would actually make. It's not entirely my style. It's a Dresden Plate block, which I do like, but I'm not keen on the setting. However, I'm glad to have the tools to make a Dresden Plate as I could see me putting those to use someday!
I'm just dumping everything into a gallery--it's on automatic but you can also use the forward and back tools on either side of the photos to move at your own speed. If you're reading through through a blog-reader, you may need to go to the web version to get the gallery.
See below for some bonus material...
The best thing for Introvert Recovery is a cup of tea and a good book. I've been merrily sipping away at more of my Plum Deluxe teas: Oregon Breakfast Black Tea is my current go-to AM tea for after I'm done with my coffee but before I cut myself off of caffeine at lunchtime. In the afternoons, I switch to iced tea made with whatever blend strikes my fancy. Somehow, caffeinated tea does make it into my iced tea brewer but I think that's because the ice cuts the caffeine significantly so it doesn't bother me the way a normal cup of black tea does. So lately I've been drinking Spiced Berry Refresher Iced Tea Blend. I make so much iced tea over the summer that I got impatient with my former "sun tea" method using a glass pitcher on my back patio, and ordered myself the Takeya Iced Tea Maker from Amazon. Well worth it. Now I can have fresh brewed iced tea in about 15 minutes.
In terms of good books, my almost-niece (my nephew's long-time girlfriend) and I both belong to the same Book of the Month Club so we've started coordinating what we order each month and then swap. Plus she'd belonged longer than me so she had a stack of books from before I'd started that she handed over to me a couple of weeks ago. I pass books along to my MIL, and she passes them on to Almost-Niece and/or my SIL, and eventually they make it back to me to pass along to my other-niece-from-another-sister. It's very complicated, but it keeps us all in novels! Here's what I've recently read:
Still Lives by Maria Hummel: And here's my Goodreads review of it. I was fair to middling on this one. I liked it as far as it goes, but would've liked it better if she'd pushed some themes a bit more.
The Last Equation of Isaac Severy by Nova Jacobs: And my short review that tells you almost nothing about the book itself. (I've been busy--sorry!) I can saw that I enjoyed this more than Still Lives, and it surprised me how much I liked it as I read it, for some reason.
I've put Pillars of Earth by Ken Follett on hold for a bit. I'm struggling to really get into it and decided I wanted to read other things for a bit. I haven't completely abandoned it, though. Maybe I'll be more in the mood in the deep midwinter when snow falls and it feels more the thing to be immersed in a slow-moving epic.
I'm still reading Us Against You by Frederik Backman. This is the sequel to Beartown and it's just as good--it drew me in from the first couple of pages. If you decide to read this, you do really have to read Beartown first as this one assumes you know everything that happened in that one. There's not a lot of time spent on backwards exposition.
Hey--did you know that if you use the Goodreads app you can super-easily scan the cover of a book to get all the information about it and add it to one of your shelves? Honest--I don't get any kick-back from Goodreads. I just use it ALL THE FREAKING TIME to decide what I want to read next, check out books in the bookstore or on my neighbor's lap in an airport waiting area, and add what I'm reading to my shelves. Their scan feature got super-fast and easy in a recent update, so I highly recommend it!
That's all my catch-up for now. I only have one short turn-around trip in August for work, and then vacation at the end of the month. Meanwhile, I'm hoping to have some quiet time for sewing and embroidery--and maybe more blogging and podcasting!