Brouhahahahahaaa!

Quilts? Did someone say quilts?? Are you sitting down? Well ARE you? If not, do so. I'll wait. LalalalalaaaaaLalaaaaa.... Ready now? Good. Because I'm about to post something quilt-related. Ok, ok, don't get TOO excited. I don't mean that I, personally, have done anything Quiltishly Creative lately. Pleeeease! I'm much too involved in my coffee-drinking and novel-reading schedule to bother myself with such trifling endeavors as accomplishing something Quiltishly Creative. PishTosh! However my friends Martha and NP (aka North Pole Sue) have been taking up the slack and Martha just sent me a linkthat features pics of quilts they made, so I thought I'd share it with you, both because I think there are some fun quilts there and to show that I do, in fact, remember what a quilt IS, even if I'm not exactly burning up the ol' sewing machine lately. These quilts were for a challenge project between the Queensland Quilters, in Brisbane, Australia, and the Alaskan Quilters (which would be where Martha and NP fit in). The quilts have already been displayed in Australia and will be displayed in Alaska in March of 2006. But you can see photos of them now on the Alaskan Fiber Festival website. Martha's quilt is in the fifth row, second from the left. NP's is in the sixth row, third from the left. Enjoy! Books! Someone definitely said books! Remember a while back when several of us were talking about Time magazine's list of the 100 Best novels since 1923? Well in a discussion that would appear, at first, to be unrelated to that other than having to do with books, there has been a huge brouhaha (don't you love that word?) spanning several blogs over the last week or so having to do with reader reviews on Amazon. It all started when MaryJanice Davidson wrote a comment on Romancing the Blog wherein she basically said that writers shouldn't get worked up over Amazon reader reviews, either the good ones or the bad ones, because you don't really know who wrote them or where they're coming from, so you should just hunker down and keep on writing - keep on doing the work. Unfortunately the way in which she wrote the comment led a lot of people to misunderstand and think she was saying that most readers shouldn't write reviews - that only "qualified" people (like someone who has a lit. degree, perhaps) should write book reviews. That is so SO NOT what she meant, but nevertheless people ran with it, as people are wont to do, and at last count there were something like 98 comments on the original discussion, 86 on another blog, 46 on another, many of them by people who were thoroughly upset and indignant at being told - they thought! - that they shouldn't review books. And those are just the ones I've been following. Who knows what else has been said other places!! Me being me, I found a lot of it funny, (albeit sometimes frustrating that some people were being so obtuse). What, you might be asking yourself, does any of that have to do with Time's top 100 list? Well, I'll tell you! In an article that has nothing to do with the brouhaha Thang, but seems to me to prove MJD's original point about taking Amazon reader reviews with a grain of salt, Matthew Baldwin has collected and posted some one-star Amazon reader reviews on each of the classic books on Time's list. Naturally - me being me - they made me laugh. Art. Pretty sure someone said art. "Sunset Field" For a Limited Time Only!! Special Bonus BEAD Feature! Call Now! Operators Are Standing By! Ok, that whole thing about limited time and operators was a big fat lie. But just wanted to let you know that a friend of mine from a quilt list I'm on, Caty Porter, now has a website up and running called Caty Porter Beads. Caty creates one-of-a-kind lampwork beads and while she doesn't have a lot of photos posted yet (stay tuned!), what she has is gorgeous!! Yay Caty!