Trenton Lee Stewarts The Mysterious Benedict Society Series

I just finished listening to all three of this series and it was really a fun read...or "listen" in my case.

Foot In The Door

At the Minneapolis Institute of Arts ~any~ Minnesota Artist can enter a piece in the "Foot In The Door" exhibit. This exhibit occurs only once every ten years! Your piece must be limited to 1 square foot or 1 cubic foot. (foot in the door, ya know!)
Not complete yet, this is almost my piece. It will be 2D, not 3D. I will cut it down to 12" square.
When ever I have used fusible webbing on fabric in a project, and had left overs I always put them in a container together. I have been doing this for decadeS, literally. It's probably one of the only things I have kept organized all these years just because of the fear of not detecting there's fusible on the fabric and either ironing it to the ironing board or gunking up the iron. The container started out as a ziploc bag, and and later required a box just less than a square foot.
My imagination started out with a 14" square sheet of white fabric and cutting a variety of the fusible fabrics into little brick shapes and ironing them down. After filling about half of the sheet I didn't like how I always have to have things organized, in a row, straight...why can't I just free-flow it? So the other half of the sheet I filled with all sorts of shapes.
Now it was down-right ugly!
So what do you do when something looks out of place? ADD MORE! So I kept doing that...cutting little pieces and putting them down, over and over again.
This might be considered ennui-nessly monotonochistic tediumology but I was happily laughing while listening to the audio book: "The Sweet Potato Queens Guide to Raising Children for Fun and Profit!". Jill Conner Browne reveals the humorous side of life with her husband "The cutest boy in the world", her baby girl BoPeep, and the life of her friends who are raising little "penii"..."Look Mommy, it got big all by itself, I didn't have to touch it!"
Anyhow.
Off to finish the Foot In The Door, which by the way, has to be 'ready to hang or install'. Anybody know if MIA has any strange interpretations of that I should know about?

This is freakin' hilarious!

Listening to while machine quilting the blue and white quilt...

The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness

A true story, ready by the author Joel ben Izzy, is titled The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness.

Cave women who quilt...

Last night was another meeting of the Cave Women quilt group, and as always, a butt load of hilarity!
We now know that Sharon is going to be stuck with us meeting at her house, because we're willing to meet there even when she's not home! She had an emergency dental disaster and had to rush to her super handsome, sweet, funny dentist; but we met at her house anyway.
We just open her door and head to the cave, I didn't even bother yelling "Hello!" to her husband when I let myself in. We even bring some of our own cookies, chocolate and beverages to enjoy in our gayety. Meanwhile Sharon's having some ground up chinese peoples bones put in her mouth and then skin grafts sewn over by the dentist who found the instructions for this technique on the internet that afternoon!
And then don't get Peg started on the subject of dentistry...she wants to go on and on about how painful it is while she offers to show you inside her mouth!
I'm sitting there with my fingers in my ears, rocking back and forth, chanting "Go to your special place, go to your special place..."

READY OR NOT, HERE I COME!
Sharon pulled out her QWASOH quilt piece that she's constructing of a gorgeous Alligator in red sparkly pumps and decides to name her "Betty" after a discussion about the subject at this website:
http://www.bettybeauty.com/
Although Sharon is known for mooning her tie-died underwear in public, nobody confessed this evening if they had designs on their betty's, let alone show them! It doesn't seem to matter if you call it your Vah-jay-jay or burmuda triangle (things get lost?), if you're not happy with the color, you can get a dye job. And let's not even get into 'shape'...let me just say the brazilian is out and mowing the lawn is in.

My thoughts?
Same as the dentist: "Get the hell away from there!"

I read a few pages from Carrie Fishers book "Wishful Drinking", totally hilarious book, showed my latest embroidered dish-towel, Kathy was sewing on binding, Sam stitching clamshells, Wendy...what was Wendy doing? Sarah showed us cute pictures of her 17 yo dog Ruthie who was just put down, and Peg kept on bringing up the dentistry subject. Everyone exchanged their Row-blocks, so next month we'll see more creativity on that front. Everyone but me gave Sarah fatquarters of dog fabric. I forgot to bring some.

To walk in another man's shoes...

I finished listening too American Lion. This picture from an audio/cd on amazon has a different reader, the one I got from the library was read by Richard McGonagle...I like his voice. Some other readers voices distract me from the book.
I enjoy American History, and this book combined not only recorded history but also melded together with personal letters to, from and about Andrew Jackson for a detailed look at the personality of Andrew Jackson and his relationships with dozens of people - family and political.
Things are still the same today as the 1820's: many of the same political issues, and even gossip, mudslinging, and adulterous scandal.

My own question is the same as always, how can any deeply religious person be proactive about slavery? The only answer I can surmise is "Let he who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her".
How could we know if we were born in that day, raised with slaves, depended on their slavery for income on our crops, that we would also not be able to recognise the dichotomy between slavery and a nation's declaration that "...all men are created equal..."?
Bullies and tyrants need love too?
Thankfully people who had sense stood forward and repaired that injustice.

I enjoyed the entire book; a verbal picture painted of a great leader, a man who felt strongly in his beliefs, and applied those beliefs to the best of his abilities in every situation.

In his end he understood equality.

A book in my ear.

I finished listening to Inkheart on CD while I've been organizing my sewing room.
It was a delightful read, or 'listen' in my case. It is read by Lynn Redgrave.