Leftovers. I excluded a pieced strip from the recently-made baby blanket (8” along the bottom in the photo above), because it made that quilt too big. Since I had all the coordinating fabrics still in a pile, I decided to keep going and make the household a couch throw (laid out above).

I started merrily along. Ran out of bobbin thread. Wound a new one. Put it in. It fell out. Put it back in. It fell out again. Really snapped the bobbin case into place (thought I had the previous times?) and the thread broke after an inch of stitching. One, two, three times — starting a seam, breaking thread.

Walked away. Frustrating. Never mind that this is the very problem I just paid decent money to have remedied.

Once a piecing rhythm got going two weeks ago a small quiet part of me thought, “Oh. The machine was acting out because I’d been ignoring it.”

(I’ll examine tension today. It’s not the tension).

It’s sunny today! In the thirties, but sunny. There’s been a lot of rain.

I have been researching self-publishing with some regular and dedicated attention and trying not to let the sense of overwhelm get the better of me.

A few random snippets: ** decided to wait on the purchase of ISBNs until I have a price so I can order the bar code at the same time ** revised acknowledgements ** fixed four typos (FOUR!) that a recent reader spotted ** removed footer from doc ** read about a handful more formatting/distribution companies ** mulled over the book’s title some more ** revised my FB page so I can start posting novel morsels, etc. there and it won’t look totally out of place ** wrote a new ABOUT PAGE for website (in third person like they say to) ** started to learn about how Amazon ranks books and the categories that would apply to mine ** made an excel file of blog subscriber emails ** collected book covers I like that are in my genre (no gowned woman facing the horizon please!).

Etc.

The main reason I bore you with these details is not so much to share my “self-publishing journey,” but to say there’s a reason I’ve been quiet here and not quite keeping up with other blogs.

After sharing of a few more of this week’s Paris Collage Club digital collages, I’ll end with a humorous screen shot, a sentiment most recently brought on by the thought of trump receiving intelligence briefings as soon as his nomination is official.*

* John Brennan, former Director of the CIA, addressed this on Deadline Whitehouse this week. He said he trusts intelligence professionals to share summaries. No sources and methods. Nothing highly classified.