Mystery Fan? Book Winners!

"No matter how you feel, get up, get dressed up and show up"  Life Lessons According to Regina

Are you a mystery fan like I am?  I have a stack of books by my Night stand that will take me years to get through.  But, I can't help myself--if I see an interesting mystery, I'll check it out of the library or look for it on PBS.   And to make it worse--if that is possible--when I see a list like this one from Mystery Fanfare Blog I'm ready to buy them!  Then there is audio at Audible  
I'm a hopeless mystery fan!

What have you read?

Best Mystery Novel
Sandrine’s Case by Thomas H. Cook (Mysterious Press)
Dead Lions by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger (Atria Books)
The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood (Penguin Books)
How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
Standing in Another Man’s Grave by Ian Rankin (Reagan Arthur Books)

Best First Mystery 
Yesterday’s Echo by Matt Coyle (Oceanview Publishing)
Rage Against the Dying by Becky Masterman (Minotaur Books)
Cover of Snow by Jenny Milchman (Ballantine Books)
Norwegian by Night by Derek Miller (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
A Killing at Cotton Hill by Terry Shames (Seventh Street Books)

Best Mystery Short Story 
“The Terminal” by Reed Farrel Coleman (Kwik Krimes, edited by Otto Penzler; Thomas & Mercer)
“The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository” by John Connolly (Bibliomysteries: Short Tales about Deadly Books, edited by Otto Penzler; Bookspan)
“The Dragon’s Tail” by Martin Limon (Nightmare Range: The Collected Sueno and Bascom Short Stories, Soho Books)
“The Hindi Houdini” by Gigi Pandian (Fish Nets: The Second Guppy Anthology, edited by Ramona DeFelice Long; Wildside Press)
“Incident on the 405” by Travis Richardson (The Malfeasance Occasional: Girl Trouble, edited by Clare Toohey; Macmillan)
 “The Care and Feeding of Houseplants” by Art Taylor (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2013)

Best Nonfiction
The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece by Roseanne Montillo (William Morrow)
Being Cool: The Work of Elmore Leonard by Charles J. Rzepka (Johns Hopkins University Press)
The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War by Daniel Stashower (Minotaur Books)

Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award 
A Murder at Rosamund's Gate by Susanna Calkins (Minotaur Books)
Saving Lincoln by Robert Kresge (ABQ Press)
Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses by Catriona McPherson (Minotaur Books)
Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell (Little, Brown)
Ratlines by Stuart Neville (Soho Crime)

There is a Finish to That Downtown Abbey Quilt!

"Your children get only one childhood"  Life Lessons According to Regina

Finally!!  There is a Finish!

I'm so far behind the deadline on this Downtown Abbey Quilt, designed by Lovebug Studios

Two more small blocks completed

 

Then another larger 12.5" block finished--you've must remember, that we are not making just one block at a time, we're making 6 of these!

 

Have you ever seen the saying on products "some assembly required"?  Well, I'm in the process of assembling all these blocks into one top.  Maybe, I should have looked at the finished top when it came out a few weeks ago, but oh no, I waited for the big reveal until I was ready to assemble--next time, I'll look and I assemble as I go ! 

,,

FINISHED!   

Well.....................DARN It!

"Don't audit life....Show up and make the most of it now" Life Lessons According to Regina

 

 

 

Well, Darn It!

 

I chose to wear this pair of socks on one cold  day, 

But, holy moly, there was a small hole!  Well, darn it!   Yes, I think I will fix it by darning that hole!

I have this 'egg' darner that a good friend gave me years ago--it's the perfect tool for this job.

On close examination, I see how the knit stitches have fizzed away--why?  I don't have the foggiest idea--hopefully, not a moth in my sock drawer

Since I don't have this yarn anymore, I find a thread that is closest in color and begin to DARN. 

I try to do a knit stitch as close as possible.  It's not the greatest, but it will hold and I can wear my socks again!

Marching on..........................................

"Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does"  Life Lessons According to Regina

So, I'm working away on my February lace section and have about half of the pattern completed--when I discover--I began the right side of the next pattern on the WRONG side of January's lace section!!  Horrors!  Stupid mistake for sure--I did the frog thing "rip-it, rip-it, rip-it" back to the beginning!  and let's begin again......................

and now we have this

We March onto the third lace pattern: With beads or without beads! 

GERMAINE STITCH PATTERN
#3. Germaine Stitch Pattern (multiple of 11 + 7)

Listen Up--Great Books For Your Ears!

"However good or bad a situation is, it will change"  Life Lessons According to Regina

Oh yes!  My favorite spot to get books with great information!

Craft-Lit! is the Best!  At the present time we are learning about "Herland" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (free!)  On the prime side ($5 monthly fee) we are listening to "Portrait of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde.  Below are just a few of the books we have completed!

Come join in on the listening pleasure!

Book List

• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain.
• A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
• American Regional Writers
• Bonus Episodes Any little bonus episodes are listed here. Special Interviews with scholars, experts, and more.
• Dracula by Bram Stoker.
• Flatland by Edwin Abbott.
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
• Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.
• Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.
• Persuasion by Jane Austen.
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
• "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.
• "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving.
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
• The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.
• Tristan and Isolde trans. Joseph Bédier.
• Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

Museum Day With Peter Paul Rubens

"However good or bad a situation is, it will change" Life Lessons According to Regina

As a weaver, spinner and natural dyer, it was with pleasure I viewed this fabulous exhibit presented by Houston Museum of Fine Arts 

In the early 1620s, Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens completed one of his greatest achievements: designing the Triumph of the Eucharist tapestries. The most elaborate and expensive tapestries made in Europe in the 17th century, the 20 monumental works in this series celebrated the principles of the Roman Catholic Church.
Rubens (1577–1640) was commissioned to create the tapestries by the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia, governor-general of the Netherlands, as a gift to her favorite convent, the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales (Convent of the Barefoot Royals) in Madrid. Raised at the Spanish court, the infanta was the daughter of Habsburg monarchs Philip II and Isabel of Valois. Spectacular Rubens reunites Rubens’s exuberant oil sketches painted for this commission with the original tapestries, the largest number of works for the Eucharist series assembled in more than half a century. The exhibition offers an unrivaled opportunity for visitors to experience the Baroque master’s extraordinary impact, on both an intimate and a broad scale.
Spectacular Rubens features six painted modelli, or large-scale oil-on-panel studies, from the collection of the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid. Also on view are four of the original silk and wool tapestries, among the most renowned treasures of the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales; several paintings by Rubens related to the Eucharist series; and a series of preparatory sketches for three of the four tapestries. The modelli have recently undergone conservation, rendering the pictorial surfaces once again lively and forceful, offering a record of Rubens’s impressive and beautiful brushwork.

Let's Rodeo!

"Time heals almost everything....Give it time"  Life Lessons According to Regina

Rodeo Houston Livestock Show And Rodeo is HERE!!  We are ready with our scootin' boots, tight cowboy jeans, gaudy jewelry, big hair up-dos, flashy shirts, Stetson Hats--Yes, bring it on!  Tonight we are celebrating the start of 21 days of sheer fun and adventure--We are venturing though the music of Eric Church, whom we first saw on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville many years ago!

Yee-haw Y'all!