Work in Progress & What I'm Reading Wednesday

Sorry. I forgot to mention that this is part of a group of posts. For the list, check Tami's blog.

I decided that I would catalog every single work in progress, but I chickened out. Here are the projects to which I will admit:

First up: I dyed this messenger bag back in, oh maybe April, and had every intention of decorating it. Pretty impressive decorations, huh?

I cut out these blouses back in May, thinking I'd have some nice summer blouses..... Maybe in time for next year!

I had some "flowers" left over from my Scraptastic quilts in mid summer and have every intention of making a pillow out of these.

As I organized the scraps back in the winter leading up to the Scraptastic projects, there were some scraps that were too big for those projects and too small to put back on the shelves. So, I decided I'd make a couple of quilts inspired by this book:

Aren't these pretty fabrics? I was petting them when I arranged them for this photo:

This past weekend was pretty busy (as will be the next couple of weekends as well), but I was able to get the pink blocks made for Peppermint Candy (these are stacks of blocks):

You can see where they'll fit in:

I have been knitting Abby for myself out of my first handspun yarn.

My next project involves hand-dyed black and red cotton yarn (yarn is on its way from Dharma Trading as we speak) and is for the cutest great nephew in the world, who'll turn one in January.

I finished Hutchinson's book about Thomas Cromwell. Hutchinson writes well, you get a very good sense of the people involved as well as the various issues confronting the country. There is one very tedious chapter where he goes into Cromwell's personal finances in an exhaustive way. Skip that chapter unless you're an accountant. If you are looking for a good introduction to the period, this would be a fine place to start.

Over the weekend, needing some "popcorn" reading, I read Lisa Scottoline's Look Again. This is a fast-paced novel with rounded characters, believable situations, and an intriguing story. I will confess that I figured out the resolution of the book about 50 pages before the end, but that was part of the fun - however will she get there, and how will the characters handle it?

I went to the used booksale run by the local chapter of the American Association of University Women this past weekend. I came home with a paper grocery bag full of books and will be talking about some of those as the weeks roll on.