My Haunts

Was today wasted? You decide!

2012-01-10T16:45:00.004-05:00

I started out today with the simple mission of getting enough ink to print out my next novel manuscript for my Editor Clover McKinley. She's read 250 manuscript pages of it out of about 1500 pages. I went to Cartridge world and got three new refills of ink. Came home and installed one. Started printing and managed to print about half of the first part before I had spooler problems. After rebooting the computer and the printer both about three times, I finally got so it would print the rest. But while waiting for all of those reboots, out of habit, and out of pure joy, I began to read what was in front of me.

What was in front of me was my own novel. I just started picking it up and reading right where it was.

I got the printing done and kept on reading. Now, let me tell you. I have re-read this book about fourteen times. Each time I was in some mode, clear the clutter, read for typos and misspellings, read for wordiness (yeah like that works!) I even read it through once to find out if the dialog was plausible. You have to read that out loud to discover it.

But today I just kept on reading out of the pure pleasure of it. I wonder now if Stephen King ever picked up a copy of Cujo by accident in a library and just opened the book at random and at once was pulled into that world and got caught, a world of his own making? Or maybe Dan Brown in a hospital waiting room happens to see a copy of Angels and Demons in a staff book exchange shelf and started reading chapter 16, just to have something he wouldn't have to concentrate on and then get caught. Or maybe Dickens, in one of the endless handwritten re-writes looked at David Copperfield with new eyes and lost himself in the text instead of copying it.

All at once Jake came out into the living room and said, "Hey mom, are you busy?"

I didn't know how to answer him. I wasn't doing anything I needed to do. I've been through this manuscript a dozen times. Now it's up to the professional editor to have at it. One part that I had read this afternoon had already been printed out for the editor so any changes I made on it would not be on her print out. How useless is that? I went to see what my son wanted and he suggested that the bananas I was saving for banana-nut muffins, were already at their optimum amount of black-peeled ripeness and should be made toot-sweet or they may soon turn into garbage. So I quickly made a double batch (I do nothing in singles) and as I put the first pan of them into the oven to bake, I realized that I had been hurrying that job so I could get back to the book.

I don't know why this book has me this captivated. Unless it's the two main characters. Nick and Sarah. Nick is a very hurt man. He was betrayed by his friends and took the rap for them. He did two years and eight months in prison on a five year sentence for breaking and entering. He admits to being there but wouldn't say who else was in the building with him. When he gets out he clings to the one thought that he never wants to go back, not for any reason. Yet, within a year he is again arrested. Why?

Then there is Sarah, she has also been hurt, in the worst way a girl can be hurt and still survive. She wasn't even able to confront her attacker because she was whisked away from the area without even putting forth an accusation. When she meets the hurt man, Nick, she is at a crossroads in her life. Nick too is at a crossroads in his life. Will he be able to make it outside of prison, and keep his word to himself? Will he find something to live for and be happy about? Will Sarah be able to heal herself from her abuse and go on to lead a productive life? I already know the answers to all of these questions, but still I found myself drawn up into their stories, and wishing to experience it again.

Is this vanity? Is this like that one girl in high school looking in the mirror and saying, "Oh my, I'm so cute today!" Is this me saying I'm God's gift to literature? Maybe? All I know is I love what I write. I was experiencing pure joy today re-reading the most emotional parts of this book.

I have never been in a position of self-aggrandizement before this. I was never the cutest girl in school, or the smartest, or the most talented, or the best dressed. But I know one thing, and that is this. I love this book!

So did I waste my time today, re-reading just for the joy of it? Or did I need to do this today to boost my self-confidence and self esteem. Now that I'm out there, being read, (and I am being read. Someone shared with me that they got their book club to read my book) maybe what I really needed was to reassure myself that what I write is good, enjoyable, worthy. Maybe I needed this today. Tomorrow it goes to the editor.

Cindy K-K

The Subconscious and the Writer's Thought Process

2011-11-17T10:08:00.004-05:00

One of my followers on this Blog, Pat Petrovich, e-mailed me the other day after I mentioned to her that I had a dream and a new story came fully blown into my consciousness. She was amazed that it could happen that way. But it does, that's exactly how it happened.

I began to write her a long post and then realized that it probably should be on this Blog. So here it is.

Dreams, according to psychologists, are windows into the subconscious. They study dreams to find out what kinds of things we are thinking and feeling. Nearly every really good idea I've had for a story has begun with a dream. Those that have not started that way soon become involved in my dreaming life as I work out the details of the story.

Writer's will often express the fact that when they are into their story good, they will experience a feeling of "not writing" but "channelling" the story, as if it's coming from somewhere else. It flows down from the mind through the hands and onto the keyboard or paper. Sometimes they claim that they don't know where it came from. Other times they get the feeling that they didn't write it at all, but someone else using them as a conduit wrote through them. What they've done without realizing it is tapped into that Sub-conscious mind while they were awake and allowed their subconscious to write the story for a time. It's still coming from them, it just doesn't feel that way.

So it shouldn't surprise anyone that writing and dreaming are intimately connected. Again it's one of those things that takes practice. The more you practice accessing those dreams, recalling dreams and tapping into that so very creative source, the better you will get.

One of the tools I use is from Julia Cameron's book called "The Artist's Way." In that book she talks about doing "morning pages" where you write in a notebook, always long hand, and you must write at least three pages every morning immediately upon awakening. I usually try to do it within one hour of getting out of bed. And what you write is total uncensored nonsense. Doesn't matter what it is. For the first few years of my doing this I wrote mostly things like, "OK, here I am, I'm awake, I'm in the kitchen, sipping on coffee, man there are a lot of dirty dishes I had to move the big pot out of the way in order to make coffee this morning, holy hell, I get tired of doing dishes, oh well, that's my life, shutting drawers and doors behind people and picking up after them. Maybe I should go on strike. Anyway, NO BIGGY, so I'll just put it on the list of stuff to do today and while I'm at it, I also need to mail the bills and throw in some laundry and then I can . . ." from there it turned into a PODA list. (Parade Of Daily Activities.)

Now I have learned that the list stuff is always in my mind and I can skip over it to get to the good stuff. So Now when I start my morning pages I start with headers and I never ((((NEVER)))) use the words "No Biggy" in my morning pages any more. I hated using that phrase, if it really was not a biggy then why was it occupying so much space in my head?

Now I start usually with the heading "Dream:" Then go on to state, "Woke up thinking about:" And try very hard to capture those early morning ideas which have proven to be so valuable to me. I like waking up naturally because REM sleep is usually the strongest just before waking, but I have also had good results with being awakened abruptly by a noise in the house (not an alarm) and then been able to relax back into the dream state.

Now, I have very far fetched and unsupported ideas about how the subconscious mind in humans may or may not be related to the supernatural. Freud put forward the theory that there is an Id, or a higher self involved as well as the "lower self" of the subconscious. I admit that I have not studied psychology past the rudimentary levels, but I think that the Id as described in that field is more like the idea of the perfect self. Each of us have in our minds attributes that we assign to ourselves whether we live them or not. We have our perfect self inside our mind and we only just try to live up to it, or we get into a downward spiral and decide not to live up to it at all. That's the Id. That has nothing to do with that I'm talking about.

I see the subconscious as more of a go-between and buffer for alternative dimensions and states of consciousness.

Many years ago, a very wise woman suggested to me that when we dream we go to the place where our spirits go after our bodies die. In the state we call sleep, our spirits and minds are free to travel to those places and encounter people and other beings that dwell in those places. If you've ever startled yourself awake after a nightmare, this woman claimed, it was really your spirit getting scared and quickly slamming itself back inside your body.

Science has fairly evenly proven that there are other dimensions that co-exist possibly side by side with our own. I believe that the higher power, that being that I like to call God, has mastery over traversing all the various dimensions, coming and going as SHE pleases. We as humans are only made in HIS image. We are not gods, we only have a small portion of the substance that is God in us, and that is our soul. Each of us that has a soul is part of God and SHE us. God is the Macrocosm, we the Microcosm. As such we have lesser abilities to maneuver but we still can. We must live for a time in this physical world and as such must do what we can to perform in it, learn all we can learn about survival and love and taking care of each other and sharing what we have with others, both in physical goods and in knowledge and skills. But ultimately we will all travel to other dimensions, other levels of being where we undoubtedly keep learning and growing.

But while we are forced to exist in this physical plane of existence we have the appearance of being cut off from the rest of existence, the world, other people, and God. Some of us learn that this is not true at all, but those who don't begin to feel utterly alone. Nothing could ever be further from the truth.

This is one of the life lessons that we are put on the physical plane to experience, and the subconscious mind is the buffer zone between our waking physical state and the truth of the fact that we also can exist in other dimensions. Our subconscious minds are there to connect us to these other dimensions which are our natural state of being, as well as to protect us from the idea that they are real. Only the most enlightened people among us know that they are there and that we are tapped into it. The rest of us need to live in the real world and not be distracted by this idea. It's easy to do, all you have to do is pretend that what you experience in dreams comes from your own wild imagination and weird unbounded feelings, hopes, and desires. Then you can dismiss them as just being fantasies, thus buffering you from truth.

Undoubtedly some of what you dream is fantasy because that's how the mind works. You can dream about having sex with your boss, but next time you encounter him you will say to yourself, that was just a dream, and go on and interact with him as if it never occurred, which it didn't. That's fine and has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

And that's why the subconscious mind is the way it is, so that we can put plausible deniability on whatever we wish to plausibly deny.

I didn't just sleep with my boss.
I didn't just see my dead father on the street and talked with him.
I didn't just travel to another dimension where I interacted with elves and dwarfs and they gave me a good idea for a story.

Or did I? It all gets mixed up in the subconscious mind, the truth with the fictions with the facts, and gets mushed around in there until we don't know what to believe, or can choose what to believe and what not to believe.

By the way, these are some of the ideas that I have permeating my latest novel, "A Haunting at Mackinac." The main character, Alina, is a psychic trying to control her skills at the same time fighting evil on an Island which seems to have the ability to telescope psychic powers. It's available for the Kindle on the Amazon website.

If you are wondering how I came to my conclusions here is a shortened version of that story:

My father died when I was 17 years old and I remember laying in bed the night after he died and wondering where he was. Somehow, the Christian view of heaven was leaving me cold. So I began to search. That night I started a spiritual search that ended years later with the writing of this novel. During this search I studied all the major religious beliefs of the world as well as spiritualism, paganism, Native American philosophy and the occult. What I came to believe is not in any one given religion, but a truth made up of a deep belief that I am a spirit and a part of God. I liken myself to a hand that is trying to learn a new skill, possibly knitting. The hand has to learn how to hold the needle and the yarn and manipulate it in a certain way to gain a certain result. I am God's hand, learning to do something that God wants to learn to do, and wants me to learn how to do. The way I see it, that's what we all are. It's like the hippies used to say, we are all connected because we all have that spark that comes from God, the spark that gives us life in this physical world but cannot exist apart from the supreme creator from whence it came. Therefore, what does it matter if we are Catholic or Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu, Muslim or Christian. We fight wars over these separations when we should be acknowledging the fact that we have all arrived at the same place from different roads. Gandhi said, "I am a Hindu and a Muslim, and a Christian and a Jew, and so are all of you."

I could go on all day, in fact, I have spent the entire morning writing this. So it's time for me to get some work done since this doesn't count toward my Nanowrimo word count!

For those of you who have read through this entire tome, thank you! We'll talk again.

Cindy K-K

Nanowrimo news, self publishing woes, and Thank yous!

2011-11-06T08:30:00.006-05:00

I had two comments about my Blogs within the last week and I want to thank everyone who reads me. I will post another "Tessa's Travels" Blog this afternoon!

I keep telling everyone that my Novel "A Haunting at Mackinac" will be out on Kindle in a matter of days. The only problem is I've been saying that for more than a week. LOL! I am working toward that goal. It's a matter of learning the technology, a feat that I am very slow about. There is still the feeling that if you do something wrong on the computer things get deleted and never are found again. Or you get a virus and screw up the hard drive or any of the other things you get warned about in spam e-mails happens, all of which will make you gasp and give you headaches and wish you had never seen a computer before. And yes, I'm being melodramatic so I can get it all out of my system at once and never think about it again.

Whew, now that that's all gone!

I am now going to relate this whole issue with my real world experience of Applique! When I first wished to do applique, it was because I saw a beautiful quilt that had applique on it. I thought, no prob, I can do this. Well I began to do it and found that it was kind of chore. I hated it. I got to the point on the project where I had to only do applique before I could go on and finish the whole quilt top, and I just got stuck! I put it on my UFO list and there it sat for over a decade.

Meanwhile I picked up a few hints and lessons from other quilters and I took a class with Elly Sienkiewicz, and after that I decided that I needed to teach a class, because as all teachers know, if you truly want to learn something the best way is to teach it to someone else. So long story/short, my skills began to catch up with my ambitions and I now love applique and would never give it up! Now I have the skills to go back and finish that UFO on my list that I began 15 years ago. And I will, as soon as I have time!! LOL!

That's where I am with this whole Kindle thing. I have a book, it's been edited and now I feel confident enough about it to put it out there for you all to read. But what's stopping me is this whole self-publishing software issue. It takes me about five read-throughs to get what they are trying to tell me. But when I do get it it's so simple, why it takes all that explanation to say so little is what has me bogged down. I've been jumping back and forth between the Amazon website and the Microsoft website trying to figure out step by step everything that I need the manuscript to have in order to self-publish this thing. That's the hold up. What I really need is a mentor! Someone who has done it already and who can guide me. My husband is the computer genius in the family and he is too busy playing WOW to help me with this issue. I have to figure this out on my own. But that's OK, I figured out E-bay and Netflix on my own, so I don't doubt, given time, that I can do this too.

In other news, Nanowrimo is going great! We had our first social event last night and everyone got their Nano-social badge. We made our goal word count of 10,000 words before I even got my computer properly set up. I had to work until 5 and didn't get there until it was half over! Our sponsor had to shell out the whole $100 he had pledged! Next year we are thinking about getting more sponsors and leaving the word count open ended. Maybe asking for a Dime pledge for every 100 words the group does or a penny pledge for every 10 words or something along those lines. Our total from last night was well over 20,000 words.

We had a great time! We again played the game where someone started a story with one sentence and then the story travels around the room and everyone adds a sentence to the story. It's a very fun exercise.

Last nights story had lots of blue shining and flashing objects, stones and swords and dragons and flashing lights and blue vortex portals, it was very cool!

I'll sign off for now, go see the Tessa's Travels Blog. I'm going to work on that one next!

Thanks again,
Cindy K-K

New writing projects on the horizon

2011-10-31T11:27:00.007-04:00

I have been writing daily letters to a dear friend of mine, who is away at her first year of college. Today I wrote my last letter to her telling her about my new writing project that I plan to begin tomorrow which is the first day of National Novel Writing Month, better known on the web as NaNoWriMo. So I thought I would share my ambitions with all of you as well.

I am literally days away from publishing my first novel on Amazon which will be available through the Kindle. The book is called "A Haunting at Mackinac" and it has been professionally edited so I'm hoping it fairs a little better than other books that are similarly published. But all that aside, the book is about a girl who is psychic. She is riding the wave of the "spiritualists" of the twenties when table tapping was a common parlor activity for people who wanted some excitement in their lives. However, this girl is the real deal. She can not only read other people's thoughts but she can also talk with spirits. She also tends to open up these gifts in other people around her.

When she arrives at Mackinac Island she awakens a sleeping evil spirit which begins to haunt the Island. The very fact that she is there is what triggers this to happen. But once it does, she has to figure out why it is happening and how to rid the Island of this evil entity. She makes some friends who help her along the way by doing research for her and protecting her in various ways both physically and spiritually. One of these helpers is a 100+ year-old Ojibway Medicine Man by the name of Kineekuhowa. Kineekuhowa helps her discover who the evil spirit is and gives her the means by which she can destroy it.

For Nanowrimo this year I intend to write a book that I have been wanting to write for a few years now. I got the idea while I was working at Polk. It started while I was compiling info for the city directory and I came across the name "Blackburn." I thought about what kind of fictional character someone named Blackburn would have to be and soon I had the main character for a book. Then I transported this character into an idea to write a fictional version of an incident that happened on Mackinac Island during and after the war of 1812 which was fought, in part, on the Island. In the years that passed since I have fleshed out the story several times and now it is fully realized inside my head and awaiting the time it will take to write it down. So now is my opportunity! Starting tonight at Midnight, I will be writing it!

Kineekuhowa is a minor character in this book too. During the War of 1812 legend has it that Kineekuhowa's mother went into premature labor giving birth to him in the same hour that the redcoats took the fort on the Island. In fact this is not so. Kineekuhowa was a boy of about ten years of age when the fort was taken. He had been sent down to the town with a message by his father who was a soldier at the fort, a tracker by the name of Gitchi Mug-wa, or Great Bear. The message was that the Ojibwa people needed to leave the Island at once, because the red coats were battering the bluffs. All the Native American people's got in their canoes and went to the mainland. It wasn't long before the American soldiers joined them.

I am nearly finished with a book called "Tessa's Travels" (for more about this book see my Blog of the same name, linked to the right). In this book, Tessa meets up with the descendants of Kineekuhowa who adopt her into their tribe. When they tell her about Kineekuhowa it is because the Windigo (evil spirit) who is after Tessa in this book is also expected of killing Kineekuhowa in the early sixties. It is said that Kineekuhowa died the same week as John F. Kennedy, and that he died under unusual circumstances. He did not die of natural causes like a man of 150 years probably should. It is said that he might have had the blood of the Bird People in him. I will talk more about the Bird People later as I develop these two stories.

So for a Character that started out in my first novel as a minor after-thought, Kineekuhowa has developed into a full-fledged icon of my writing. I would love for someone to come up with a drawing of Kineekuhowa for the release of my novel. He is about 112 years old when this story takes place, and he is described as looking a lot like the actor Floyd Red Crow Westerman who played Ten Bears in Dances with Wolves. He has white hair that is braided in a thin braid that hangs down the middle of his back past his waist and is tied with a piece of leather. In the book his great-grandson makes him a medicine headdress out of a carved piece of a hollow log worn as a crown and has embedded dear antlers. To announce his coming he sends Alina a Mandala made with a rabbit skin, and decorated with Buffalo wool and bird feathers. These are all elements I would like on my cover art.

I will try working something up on Paintshop Pro. I am told that cover art is very important for book sales.

I'll write more on my progress toward this goal later. Meanwhile I have one novel that I want to try to finish as best I can tonight before Midnight and then after midnight a new novel!

I got my work cut out for me!

Cindy K.-K.

My new Writing Career!

2011-10-19T07:17:00.002-04:00

See this quilt? I won first place in the 2011 Patchwork in the Pines quilt show, for best group quilt!

In other news, my arm is now healed properly, this time. I finished hand therapy yesterday and I accomplished all my goals. And now I am looking forward to yet another Nanowrimo coming up in just 13 days! I want to be finished with my novel entitled "Tessa's Travels" by then so I can set aside the second draft for proofing and editing at a later date, so I can write a novel that has been in my mind for many many years, a novel about the war of 1812 called "Blackburn."

That, in a nutshell, has been my life for this past year.

Oh yeah, there is one other tiny thing.

I am giving up quilting as an obsession! Quilting is going to be downgraded to a hobby only and not one that takes up so much space in my thoughts, my life, and my house. I have changed the desk that I used to quilt on for my computer desk, I am sitting at it right now, in fact. My sewing machine is now only an occasional visitor on the scene. I take it to Interquilten on Tuesday afternoons for open sew and do most of my sewing there. Puts a limit on how much I can actually get accomplished. I still relax in front of the TV at night with hand work, that's something that will always happen though. It's part of having a hobby!

My profession is now writing and as such, I invite all of you to be part of my journey. I will be trying for a greater on-line presence in the near future so . . . tell your friends!!

I am short days away from publishing my novel entitled "A Haunting at Mackinac" on Amazon for the Kindle. I am hoping for some publicity for that work of fiction on their site. But I know for sure that I have several friends who will buy it as well. I need to do some cover art for it. Anyone know anything about that who can help? I would appreciate a shout out. Otherwise I may just end up with a stylized photo of the Grand Hotel, which features prominently in the book.

Well, at least, while striving for a greater on-line presence, I will be Blogging more often.

Thanks for reading,
Cindy K.-K.

Sadly Missing A.J.

2010-10-31T13:20:00.003-04:00

My local Family Video film expert, A.J. (see his picture to the right) has left town for a lucrative position in Cadillac Michigan. You will be missed big time my friend, but it will be a good move for you. And you can bet that whenever I find myself in Cadillac I will be looking for your truck!

Nanowrimo is happening again. Beginning tonight at midnight. I just opened a Blog for my main character. This will double as the beginning of my book. I'm having fun with this. My characters usually take on a life of their own, but rarely do they start that way. Tessa Gates is a fully grown character with a life of her own already. More on that later. Her Blog address is now in the links file on the right.

As a protest against the removal of my dear friend A.J. I have joined Netflix. I've been thinking about it for a long time now but when I heard A.J. was leaving I decided to look more closely. It's the best thing I've done. I still have access to new movies on DVD sent to me through the mail at the rate of about 2 per week (which is the average I was getting at FV) but also I get unlimited downloads of movies, documentaries, and films that have been on Starz. I filled my instant queue with dozens of films that I can just peruse at my leisure. My mailing queue I'm trying to limit to about 40. Which will take about 6 months to complete. But no biggy. I've been watching as many movies as I wish daily, almost too many, since I have been practically living in my arm chair over the past few weeks since I got it.

I managed to watch several documentaries that have been featured at our film festival over the past few years including "The Cove" about the systematic destruction of Dolphins in one place in Japan and how stupid it is, because it's not done for any real reason. Their meat is too high in Mercury to be eaten safely, they do not harm the environment or the food source of humans, and this practice promotes the industry that makes Dolphins into captive entertainers.

Another Doc I watched was an inspirational doc called "Paperclips". A group of Middle School children, started this project with the help of their teacher/mentors to help them understand diversity in a rural Appalachian Tennessee town. They couldn't understand what the Nazi's had done because they couldn't imagine what six million was. So they began to collect paper clips. There was a social reason why they chose paperclips that was significant to the time and peoples of Europe. The children did Internet research concerning this. They began a letter writing campaign asking for paperclips and eventually the project grew and expanded exponentially. After Four years of this project they had collected more than 28 million paperclips. This project put these small town kids in contact with the greater world and taught them to treat others the way they would want to be treated. The end of the project is a German cattle car that was purchased for them by people who believed in their project and they refurbished this car to house their paperclips. It has become a physical monument to the lives lost in concentration camps during the forties. They decided to include Eleven million paperclips to commemorate all the lives lost, not just the Jews, but the Gypsies, the Homosexuals, the Catholics and Jehovah Witnesses, and political prisoners who all died in the camps at that time. A must see for a good cry!

Someone in line at the film festival last year thought that the best film they had seen this year was a Doc called, "The Most Dangerous Man in America" which is about Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in the sixties, which proved in essence that every president of the United States, as a pre-requisite for the job, it seems, is a liar! This documentary shows conclusively that beginning with Harry Truman and continuing on through to the leaders at the time, lies that had been told to the American Public by their elected leaders. The pentagon papers are the reason we no longer trust our government and also the reason we assume our leaders are all keeping things from us.

All of these films are worthy of being seen, but I'd also like to tell you about a few other films that are more entertaining.

If you have a chance, pick up "Departures" a film from Japan. "Castaway on the Moon" a Korean film that is not on DVD as yet, but soon will be (I hope) and "Kontrol" an Eastern European film about a man who feels his life is at a dead end, but eventually finds reason to live in the struggle between good and evil, this allegorical film is a must see in my book and is available on Netflix for a download.

Have fun and go see a good film this week, OK?

Cindy K-K haunting in her arm chair crocheting a new afghan.

TC Film Festival

2010-08-01T14:51:00.002-04:00

Here is the outdoor "theater" in the Traverse City open space, right next to the water. It's THEE best single place to watch a movie, and I spent three nights there last week, watching great films like Twister, Help, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. We do a little bit of tailgating before the film and the following is Sharon's genius idea on how to keep popcorn fresh and tasty!

As you can see I couldn't stop laughing. Anyway, I also saw plenty of indoor films as well, and still have two more to go to tonight yet.

My favorite one so far is a very low budget film made by some film students in Austin Texas called, "The Happy Poet". Ask me sometime what the poem in the film is about. It's called Chasm, and is one of the funniest moments in a very very funny film. When the library gets it in be sure to go check it out! I'm praying nightly that it finds a distributor, because it's truly great. It's about a guy who has a lot of bills who thinks it might be a good idea to open a hotdog stand that only sells health food. He sells vegetarian food and at first people don't get it but then it starts to catch on. He runs into problems because he doesn't really know anything about business and eventually he finds he has to "sell out" and start serving hotdogs because they are cheap and he can't afford anything else. It ends well though. I love a happy ending where the main character is an English major! It gives me hope!

I also attended a film school session on Screenwriting, and got some helpful pointers about how to re-write my screenplay. Do you know that every time another person becomes interested in your screenplay you get more money? They hire you to do a re-write of your original, tweaking it here and there. Sometimes they even ask you to do something to it that you approve of! But each time it goes to a new producer, director, studio, gets sold, or traded or researched, you get to talk with someone new and re-write the whole thing, for more money. Of course the object that all screenwriters go for is to get their plays produced, but a writer can make a living just re-writing their old scripts endlessly. I was so excited just listening to this man speak, that I wanted to go home right away and start re-writing my screenplay. His name is Jim Bernstein, and he wrote the script for "Renaissance Man" staring Danny DeVito.

He told some great stories about his experiences on the set with Penny Marshall. He also gave a lot of great advice on Story, Character, Theme, Dialog and action. He showed film clips that demonstrated examples of all these things, incorporating how you need to end the first act to drive into the second and how to end the second act with the character not really knowing what he is going to do, and how he has to figure it out on the screen in front of the audience.

The example he showed for this was the scene in Rocky where he goes to the arena the night before the fight and the promoter tells him that he's going to give everyone a heck of a show. He is devastated and goes back to Adrienne and tells her that he can't win. He doesn't know what to do, so we watch him figure it out, and he says the great line about how if he gets to that final bell and he's still standing he'll know for the first time in his life that he's not just another bum from the neighborhood.

Jim said that if we can learn how to do that, we will be successful screenwriters.

I'm really glad I went to that class on the first day, because I still had the entire week to keep asking the major questions he taught us about. The question, "What does this character want?" Because every script in the universe can be boiled down to this sequence. Someone wants something really bad, and he is having trouble getting it, and in the end he either does get it, or he doesn't. That's it! So I went to all the films thinking, "OK, what does this guy want?"

The Happy Poet--The main character wanted to make money by selling health food from a hotdog cart.

Solitary Man--The Micheal Douglas Character wanted to deny the fact that he was dying any way he could, and ended up destroying his whole life.

A Brand New Life--The Little girl wanted to be loved by her parents and to stop losing the people that she loved.

The infidel--Man finds out he is adopted, and his birth father is a different religion than he was brought up. He wants to know who he is, and to see his birth father.

Me and Orson Welles--Young man (Zak Ephrem) wants to live the life of an actor in the Mercury Theater under the tutelage of the great Welles.

The Concert--Former Director of the Bolshoi orchestra wants to heal himself of a past failure by stealing an opportunity to perform again in Paris.

I'll tell you about the other films I saw some other time. Like I said, I still have two more to see and I also saw two documentaries. Not very dangerous ones though. One, called "His and Hers", was about women in Ireland and their thoughts about the most important men in their lives, their fathers, their husbands, and their sons. This is a doc that is going to stick with me for many years.

The other one I saw was called "Reel Injun" and it depicted the roll of Native Americans in film. How white people in red face portrayed Indians in the early days of film and how Dances with Wolves changed all that. I'm not doing the topic justice here because there were so many good points made about how now Indians are beginning to make films from the inside. Whereas Dances with Wolves, and the Last of the Mohicans were told from the white POV, now more and more Indian film makers are starting to make movies from their own insider POV. They profiled one film which I am going to look up while I'm here at the library. And I will report on that later.

So for now, it's still me Haunting Dubiously in the Film Festival!
Cindy K-K

Another Mola!

2010-07-18T10:30:00.003-04:00

Many of you know that I love Molas. I believe they are the most beautiful form of needle art that exists and one that coincidentally I have never tried. A friend of mine, Nancy Crow brought this one in for me to see.

And what's great is that this tag was with it that tells a bit about Molas and where they come from.

Here is a detail of this wonderful piece of art. Notice the tiny little dots of color that are appliqued on top of the background, and also the decorative stitching and the little tiny zig zags that are reverse appliqued. This is a magnificent example.

Aside from this I also wanted to let my faithful readers to know that even though I don't post as often as I should (and this trend is bound to continue for the future), I will not be gone for long.

The film festival is coming up and I am sure that I won't be able to keep myself from sharing my opinions on the films I have tickets for. I went and bought 11 tickets mostly to Independent movies across the world, but I also have a couple of documentaries on my agenda.

Speaking of which, HBO has been showing a very dangerous doc called "Gasland" which is also being shown at our film festival. I sat down and watched it last night and it got my blood boiling. I want to write my congressmen now to make sure he knows that I want him to always oppose deregulation in any form. It has become fairly clear to me that anytime someone is striving to rid themselves of regulations it's because they think they can make more money without those checks and balances and usually end up hurting people in the process. It also made me want to check out alternative ways of heating my house in the winter. Definitely I'm going to get rid of the "clean burning" Natural Gas! I know better! That phrase definitely smacks of advertising propaganda!

I have also plotted another book in my mind. This is not a great habit to be in. I spend a lot of brain time on this and I can't possibly keep up with it in reality and get all these ideas down on paper.

I do have progress to report on this front. I finished the Nick and Sarah novel, the working title of it has been changed to "Crossroads" which is the name of the quilt pattern that Sarah and Katie use to make Nick's quilt. It's also very descriptive of both Sarah and Nick's lives. They are both at crossroads in their own lives.

The book has been sent to my dear friend Clover McKinley who is editing it. She's a professional editor at Village Press and I'm feeling very fortunate to have her. She's going to get a really nice acknowledgement in the front of my book!!!! LOL! I need to keep making statements like that to remind myself that publication is a forgone conclusion. Someday someone is going to see that I'm a prolific writer and they will want to make money off my writing and at that point, I too will start making money off it and be encouraged to quit all my other money grubbing pursuits in favor of sitting in front of this computer all day!

So those of you who actually talk to God on a regular basis, maybe you could put in a good word for this lofty goal of mine in passing! I would certainly appreciate it.

That's it for now. I hope all of you are having a wonderful summer, and are doing the things you all love as well.

Haunting the Festivals,
Cindy K-K

Is anyone wondering about my writing career?

2010-03-12T13:25:00.002-05:00

Besides me that is?

I have once again put my writing career on hold while I got a paying job. This sucks because I now have things that I could try to sell.

So here is an update and a challenge!

Every year at the time of the Oscars I say one thing, it's now kind of a tradition. My family makes Oscar night into a real event. We get dressed up, (I have a t-shirt that says "Vera Wang" on it, so I can honestly say I am wearing Vera Wang! LOL!) I make pulled pork sandwiches because Joan Crawford once said that the best place to watch the Oscars was in bed with a sandwich. We log on to Oscar.com and print out the ballots, one for each of us, to use as a score card. We try to win the trivia contest on the website and we talk about the current events that we've heard about that concern the program and who may or may not win. We have had an IN lately in the Documentary category because of our local film festival. All of the films in that category except one were at our festival. We try to second guess the Academy on who will win in each category as we watch.

Which brings me to my point. (and I do have one!)

Every year I say, "Next year I won't have to print out the ballot from the website, I'll have a real one and I'll have to send it in to Price Waterhouse to be tabulated!" My family looks at me and smile indulgently.

So what is stopping me? I wrote a screenplay last year during Script Frenzy. That contest is coming up again next month. It occurs to me that I have done nothing with the first script so why am I thinking about writing another?

Meanwhile, another Nanowrimo has come and gone and I am nearly finished with the book that I wrote during that contest last November.

Not only that but I have another novel that is totally finished already and just needs to be printed out and sent. I plan to do this every time I buy a new black ink cartridge for my printer.

As you faithful blog readers know I also have several more ideas that I want to explore which I have enumerated to you all in the past. to those I need to add another that I've been working on daily whenever I am in the car during the long drives to my job and back. I have been able to discipline my mind into going directly to my story line every time I get into the car for a drive longer than 15 minutes. As a result I have plotted out in my mind a story about a girl and her werewolf! (Again I blame Sookie Stackhouse and to this I might add Bella for refusing her own werewolf.)

So, am I to just tell myself these stories endlessly and then die not having shared them?

No I say! So here comes the challenge!

I Challenge myself, before the end of this year to find myself an agent and be on my way to publication of some sort.

I will begin by writing a great query letter and sending it out to one agency. Everyday that I don't have to work I will endeavor to spend an hour on this project. I will continue to go through the entire book of agents and agencies until someone agrees to take me on.

Furthermore I am determined to finish the Nick and Sara Novel and get it to an editor. I have parts of it edited already. But it still need to have the finishing touches put on it. I will start querying it as soon as I get it done.

Since today is one of those days that I don't work, I will start right now. Before the day is through I will write the query for "A Haunting at Mackinaw" and maybe another for the screenplay, "The Ghost of Dixboro" and send them out to Agents.

There's the plan! Keep me honest you guys! I'm counting on you!
Cindy K-K

Molas~!

2010-02-01T14:07:00.003-05:00

As most of you know, I love hand work of every kind. I came across this Mola a while ago at a yard sale. I bought it for $5. I recognized it as a piece of unique hand work. But it wasn't until I read about them at our last retreat that I began to understand the full meaning behind these intensely rich pieces of folk art. Here for your perusal is a collection of Molas shared with us at that retreat. They are made in South America, mostly in Guatemala. They are appliqued using only bright solid colored fabrics. They use both onset and inset applique or reverse applique to create the layered effects. They are often embellished with embroidery stitch, mostly the stem stitch or the back stitch, but also the seed stitch and the running stitch is used frequently. Embroidery is used to clearly define the facial features and other details such as teeth, claws, beaks, eyes, etc. This one is the same pattern as above, possibly depicting a llama or horse. You can see the difference in workmanship between the two. It is possible that the second one is unfinished or possibly done as by a younger girl practicing her stitches.
A lizard? Because of the colorful scales and the shape of the claws? this piece is unfinished because of the lack of background features.
This is a very finely made specimen, and depicts many different beasts, often with human looking appendages suggesting possibly that they are depictions of mythological creatures or creatures that have a specific divine quality.
Mostly they depict birds and animals but this one very unique orange and green piece has human figures pictured in. The humans seem to be dressed in their Sunday best, women in fluffy dresses and men wearing big hats! And they seem to be dancing!
Once the main figure has been stitched in, slits are made in the background fabric and colorful patches are layered underneath. The slits are then turned back and stitched into place making these horizontal and vertical lines in the background. This is what makes it a Mola. In this depiction of the birds, the background is filled in with spirals. Every inch of the picture is covered with stitching on the finest Molas.
I'm certain that if I were more familiar with South American birds I would probably be able to identify these just by their depiction alone.

This one seems atypical because it doesn't seem to depict a central figure, but just a geometric pattern. But again, it's considered a Mola because if it's use of every inch of space stitched into place.

My Haunts since New Years!

2010-01-10T12:04:00.002-05:00

Hey look what got finished on New Years Day at about 8 pm! This project took twenty years in the making, but now it is off the list! I'm doing well on the new blog. I haven't let a single day go by without finishing something. Sometimes it's a block, sometimes it's a twenty year old Hand Pieced and quilted quilt! Yeah!

New Years eve we went downtown to the State theater and watched Grease with some friends. the movie got out at 11:45 pm and we walked outside to the dropping of the cherry! It was fun to be in that crowd. I was kind of glad we had been in the theater because we were all warm. Of course when we got out to the crowd there were so many people there that we didn't get cold at all! It was fun!

Take a look at the other Blog (link to the right) to see what I've been doing.

In other news, we are now in the process of packing up the old store to move into the new one. I just cleaned out the store room and got the front counter cleaned out and packed up, but it beat the heck out of me. Moving is very hard work. So if any of you readers out there want to do a good deed, we could use some help moving things tomorrow, Monday! If you ask nicely she might give you a discount on something if you help. Worth a shot!

We will be open again later this week, possibly as early as Tuesday, at the new store. It's very neat in there. Lots more storage and bigger area saved for classes. We will still be carrying Miche Bags, and we will be introducing several new lines of Yarn. So come in and take a look.

I'm working on Freemo today so I'll report later on stuff that I get done today. There is also a little matter of Eurorails with our friends, Vic and Sharon.

Talk with you soon,
Cindy K-K
Happily Haunting in Interlochen!

New Blog! Check it out.

2009-12-30T00:36:00.002-05:00

OK, so this is why I have that CHAO syndrome (Can't have anyone over). My living room is overcrowded with projects. So I've decided that I'm going to put an end to it. I have to get this Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt finished by a week from yesterday. I signed a contract! Yes, I did! so that's the plan. forget the fact that I broke my thumb nail a week ago and have been waiting for it to heal and grow out before doing any quilting on it. But I do need to get it finished. This other picture:
yeah, this one, is the other side of the room and this whole pile is unfinished projects. It will all be gone if I can finish these projects. Boy that would be nice! Mostly in that pile is about a dozen bags worth of plarn in various colors. Check out previous posts to find the definition of plarn!

As I finish each project I am blogging about it on my new blog. check out the links section of the side bar for the link to my new blog. I am going to try to finish one project every day for a whole year. My friend's think I'm nuts, but they don't realize what kinds of things I have in this house. There are lots of things that I can finish in one day if I work on them diligently. There are other things that I can break down into one day segments and finish one whole section of them in one day. Other things I will have to work on for several hours and then finish them some other time. But I think I have enough to cover a whole year. I have an open ended list. It's going to be interesting.

On other fronts: We are planning a nice New Years Eve with friends, Vic and Sharon. We are planning on seeing the movie Grease at the State and then staying to watch the cherry drop! Sounded like fun so that's our big plans, we will see what happens. I'll post on Sunday after the event.

Tawni is in the throws of planning for her big move. Interquilten is moving across the street into a nice building that is bigger than the space we have now. I think it's going to be a very good move, the new building has more room and is a much nicer space, more character and more personality than the generic place we are in right now. Moving day is the 12th of January and we will probably be re-opened on the 14th in the new space.

Meanwhile, Jeff switched us from Showtime (after the series "Dexter" was over), and now we have HBO and Cinemax. It's amazing, we've been watching movies every night with this package but only watched Dexter with the last one. We are also catching up on the new seasons of True Blood and Big Love. Very Dramatic! My whole family loves True Blood, we laughed we cried, we cringed while watching the beginning credits! Yeah pretty gross. But I highly recommend it! It's like Twilight for adults!

OK, OK, so I haven't been walking. But hey, it's winter, and I'm on Coumadin which thins the blood and I'm having a really hard time staying warm. Or maybe it's because this is the first year I've had to endure the cold in my new body weight. At any rate I think a good morning walk would help me sweat and warm up. I just wish there was room in my living room for the treadmill. Look at those pictures again. No there really isn't.

Ok, I'll talk with you all later,
Cindy K-K
Haunting at home for now.

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-20T16:00:00.004-05:00

Guess what I've been doing? Good guess! Making Christmas gifts! I am picturing none of them, after all, those of you who are getting them wouldn't be surprised if you saw them on my Blog! Well, my mother might not and she got several of them.

Anyway, I'm also doing some of those "Plarn" bags. I've been making plarn for days, the plastic bags creating havoc in my living room. This is by far the weirdest project I've ever done. Making Plarn! I spent two full days just sorting plastic bags and cutting them into one inch strips. Then off and on I've been making them into plarn. For a very good tutorial on how to do this go to this website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdTm2V4ssvY

So these are three of the bags I've finished this week. I seem to be able to acquire an over abundance of white bags with various colored print. Mostly with green print (Oleson's, Tom's, and Family Video) and Red print (Thank you bags given out nearly everywhere.) In order to get the white bag I sorted the strips after they were cut and put all the white ones with no printing on it into a separate container. Then as I made the plarn for this if I ran into any that had even a small amount of printing I put it into a different container so that I could keep the plarn for this project pristine. What I didn't realize though was the difference in the various bags. Even white areas of the bags are subtly colored by the dying process which can easily be seen in the subtle variations of this bag. But still it's pretty unique. I have been telling my bag gatherers (and you know who you are) that I have enough white bags for now and only want them to save me their colored bags. I use them for the stripe around the top as in the green and red bags pictured. I have several blue ones, and now that Walmart in TC is a Super Walmart I will probably be getting more groceries there and getting more white bags with the blue print. And Best buy where Jeff buys some of his computer equipment gives out blue bags. One more project on the horizon!

But all this aside. I have to get back to my applique projects. I plan to do that tomorrow. I have three blocks that need to get done for the Guild Applique project, and then I also have one block that needs to get done before Saturday for the Shop Applique BOM. So I'm working on that this week.

Also, I have a major deadline coming up. I signed a contract stating that I would get my Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt done by no later than the January guild meeting. I'm doing fairly well accomplishing that. I worked on it all day Friday and here are two pictures of my progress. I have only two scallops to finish to have the edges all sewn. It's painstaking work in which I have to turn under the top and backing one quarter of an inch and then blind stitch it closed by hand. Then when it's finished I must go back and quilt the final border of white hexagons also by hand. The entire project was done entirely by hand. I hand pieced the blocks and put them together also by hand. The guild helped me hand quilt the top around each and every hexagon, and now I'm nearly finished. It's been a labor of love. Special thanks goes out to Eleanor Howard for helping with the hand quilting so very many sessions we spent on this project, and also for keeping me going on it with her good natured ribbing. She will be nearly as proud to see this project done as I will!

I hope all of you have a very merry Christmas and may the joy of the holiday season be in your hearts.

Haunting in the spirit of the holiday,
Cindy K-K

In the Midst of NaNoWriMo

2009-11-18T09:13:00.004-05:00

Hey everyone,

National Novel Writing Month has been keeping me very busy and very tired! Gosh it seems that the only time I have to write these days is from midnight until about 3 or 4 AM. But in the first two weeks I managed to get at least 78,000 words written on my Novel about Sarah and Nick called "Through Her Eyes". It seems strange but this month every one of my classes are going, the one month out of the year that I wish they hadn't. It would have freed up a lot more of my time to write if there had been little interest. I don't complain though. I just take this as a sign that God wants me to get out there and teach classes and make some extra money for Christmas. I'm sure He'll give me time off later on to finish the novel.

Also Rumpled Quilts Kin had their semi-annual fall retreat this past weekend. I worked on four or five different projects, got one top completed

and made huge progress on another one.

I'm now within two viewings of Pride and Prejudice of finishing my Kitty Cat I Spy quilt top. I have finished a bunch of Halloween projects but I have a few more I want to do. The goal I have in mind is to get the Halloween fabric stash down to a bare minimum so that I can fit it all into one box. It's not there yet.

I posted this photo of the project called Dancing with bats before, but now I have the companion piece for it done called Haunted Hill.

I also made this trip-tiche of Halloween goodies. this is called a split quilt technique.

Here too is a closeup of my Kitty Cat I Spy. I'll post more photos of these later as I get the quilt closer to finished.

This fine fellow is a project I'm working on for Interquilten. I got the branch couched on this weekend at retreat. I used a new thread that we are going to get in called Invisa-Fil. It's a new type of invisible thread that has enough body and pliability to be easy to work with but at the same time is fine and invisible. It worked great for couching. I used Pearl Cotton #5 in various colors of brown for the branches. Now all I have to do is fuse on the leaves and berries and well, you know, layer and quilt. It will be done and in the shop by sometime in December, I'm sure!!!

So it's turned out to be a very busy month. I am trying to get a few things done for a craft show coming up on December 3rd at Munson Hospital. Come down to the basement that day to find some interesting gifts for Christmas.

Last month Jeff updated our cable and we now have Showtime, so as a result I've been seeing my friends at Family Video a lot less lately. But I did manage to get over there yesterday to pick up the latest new releases. If you haven't seen the new Star Trek movie it's very well worth seeing, and not only to see the mean guy Sylar from Heroes depicting the much loved Vulcan, Mr. Spock. It's highly entertaining. I also got a good romantic Comedy called "The Ugly Truth." Turns out the truth isn't as ugly as all that. And the highly acclaimed depiction of the book by Jodi Picoult, "My Sister's Keeper." Don't try watching this one unless you have enough time for a good cry.

Have any of you read about the latest ideas that Michael Moore has been sending out? He wrote an article for the Record Eagle with a plan to get Traverse City out of this recession. It's worth a drive to the Library to look it up. It got sent to me this week because I'm a friend of the Film Festival.

Other than Haunting on my lap top and in Lake Ann this weekend I'm pretty much engulfed in the lives of Sarah and Nick. So stay tuned!

Yours Truly,
Cindy K-K
The Haunter

Another great Road Trip!

2009-10-28T23:14:00.003-04:00

I've been Haunting all over the state!

Suzy and I went on another road trip. Last Tuesday we hit the road and made it all the way down to Lake Orion and the quilt shop called Canterbury Village. I spent way too much, (don't tell Jeff) but the thing is this is going to be the last one this year and probably way until next summer. I'll need all that time to get the balance on my credit card down. LOL! Anyway, they were having a quilt show at the gift shop next door to the quilt shop and I took a few pictures. This one I'm going to copy.

I recently got my Halloween fabric stash out and started going through it. I now have about six more Halloween quilts planned. So it was serendipitous that I was able to see the interesting Halloween quilts at this shop.

So then there was this quilt too, which Suzy and I stared at for a long long time. So interesting. I took some close up detailed pics of it.
You can imagine, I'm going to be collecting blocks for my own version of this one. It's so detailed and unique.

And I love the little mermaids and fat ladies in bathing suits! So much fun!

But other than the Halloween projects that I won't be finished with before Halloween, I have a lot of other sewing to do. I have bags to make for the craft show at Munson, I have Christmas gifts to finish, and I have store samples to make. I know I'll have time to do most of this, but then again. Nanowrimo is starting Sunday! SUNDAY!! Yikes!

So my Sewing area looks like a horrifying industrial explosion of a fabric factory and all I really want to do is sit at my computer which is facing the window looking out onto my Japanese Garden and forget about everything that is going on behind me in the rest of the house. LOL!

So here is the view I face when I am sitting at the computer.

Nice Huh?

In other news: Jeff finally updated our cable. We have been enjoying Showtime for a week now, and we're totally caught up on the Dexter episodes. Are there any other Dexter Fans out there reading this? Love it!

Anyway, I will be catching up on the On-Demand movies for a while. That's why I haven't been at Family Video lately. Sorry A.J.! I'll am always trying to find good movies to tell all of you about. Maybe this time I should tell you about my all time favorites. Three words, Dickens, Austin, and Bronte. Yeah I know, those are authors not film makers. But I love the films made from the books that these three authors wrote. My favorite story of all time is Jane Eyre. I've seen every version of this film made. Likewise I will watch any film made from a Dickens book. My favorite one of those is Little Dorrit. I've been watching the BBC version of this book nearly daily.

The point is, the films made from these three authors seem to be ones that I watch again and again and again. Amazing!

OK, That's all I have for now. More about the finished projects later.

Cindy
The Haunter

Nanowrimo Coming soon!

2009-10-18T10:04:00.005-04:00

Yes, Wow, it's almost November which is National Novel Writing Month. You who know me also know that I won this contest of will power last year and you know also that I will be participating again this year! My dilemma is this: Do I go ahead with a fresh new project (say the one based on the Border Babes?) or do I finish the great story of Nick and Sarah that I started last year? I don't know if it matters much to the people at the Nanowrimo site. They are more interested in keeping people writing and in a state of frantic creativity. I don't think anyone would even notice what I was writing as long as my total word count kept going up and up.

What I want to avoid at all costs is having writing UFO's. Oh come on, you quilters out there know what I mean. We have lists of projects,from every aspect of our experience all waiting to be finished. I hate to think how many UFO's I have now that I'm working at the quilt shop. It seems every week I come home with new projects. I will have to make new lists before January. I say lists because I do so many different things. I don't just make quilts and sew, I also do cross stitch, needlepoint, basketry, knit and crochet, scrapbook, and other more creative artistic things like watercolors, drawings, pastels, found object art, and altered books. I do not limit myself in the line of being creative. And I probably have UFO's (Unfinished Objects) in all of these areas.

But so far I have managed to avoid having a list of writing UFO's. I have a list of writing projects that I've wanted to do but haven't begun yet. Here they are:

1. The story of Patty the quilter who belongs to a group of quilters who meet at bookstore. Patty, in a desperate state of mind hurts herself and is hospitalized on suicide watch. Her friends from the bookstore quilting group come up to keep her company and to help with the suicide watch, they tell her their life stories one by one and through the sharing of these woman Patty finds new purpose in her own life.

2. An Historical Novel, begins in 1810 about a young man who may be half Native American, named Samuel Blackburn. He is jilted by the girl he is in love with and joins the Pennsylvania Militia to escape his past. His troop is sent to the furthest and wildest outreaches of civilization at that time, Northern Michigan and there is present for the attack on Fort Michilimackinac located on Mackinaw Island. There he meets the beloved of his commanding officer the beautiful Sophia Biddle, who has the heart of every man who meets her, including his. Nearly eclipsed by her beauty is her younger cousin Anne Biddle who is still somehow able to attract our hero's attentions and they form a friendship. The novel spans the war years of 1812 through 1814 and paints a picture of how the soldiers from both sides deal with the Native Americans in the area. Some fall in love and marry the beautiful Indian Women and others ignore and exploit them. Still others cannot cope with the societal morays that inhibit their more noble instincts and suffer because of it. It's a story about bigotry and love in the earliest years of our history.

3. And I'm not sure I even want to do this one, but someone told me recently that the struggles I went through last year with my health would make for an interesting book. I am thinking that it would have to be a comedy up-playing the two days I spent with a tube in my throat and could only communicate through written notes. I still have the notebook I was writing in and most of it is pretty funny, I was under the influence. Of course there is also the story of the balloon that I told at Karen Hill's memorial service. And the story about how I saw the ghost cat in my house while I was still on those same pain meds. I still say that just because I was on the pain meds doesn't mean Karen and my dead cat were not actually there!

4. And finally, I had an idea a while ago for a book about a girl growing up in a desert scrub area during the times of the early Roman Empire. She is often put in charge of her younger brother and cousins and once in a while they get away from her and she has to try to find them. One time she finds them playing near a camp of men and women who are nomads, a religious order of sorts, and the leader of the group plays with the young children and laughs at their antics. She falls in love with this young man even though she is not more than 12 and he is in his late twenties. She says she will someday marry this man, a carpenter by trade. Years pass and she is now a young girl of 16. She has never forgotten this young man and once again she sees him as he travels into Jerusalem for the Sabbath. She is so excited to see him and shouts to him. But he doesn't see her because there is a crowd of people who are also there to welcome him in. She then finds out who he is and why they are all welcoming him. Several days later she is walking along the road and sees a procession. Here is her young man, he has been beaten bloody and is condemned to death. He is struggling to carry a wooden crossbeam up a hill. He falls and she runs out to him to wipe the sweat and blood from his face with her vale. He mutters a blessing onto her. She witnesses his death unbeknownst to her family who would not have approved of their young virginal daughter seeing such a sight. Afterward she goes back to her life and then several years later she hears about a preacher who knew this rabbi. She goes to one of their meetings and hears the stories. Afterward she approaches the man and tells him her own story of how she saw this man when she was a child and how she would have done anything to make him laugh, his joy and laughter were infectious. She becomes a part of the earliest ministry and traveled with the apostle Paul for a time. She takes the name of Thecla, not the name she had been born with, to disguise her identity and hide from her parents who would not approve of her vocation. She becomes one of the first female martyrs of the Christian faith.

There are other ideas on the horizon as well, I'm sure of that. I used to write down all of my dreams and ideas. I haven't done that for a while because of the backlog of usable ideas I already have.

So what do you think? I have come up with a readers poll for all of you to vote and tell me which of these projects I should develop next. Let me know your thoughts, please. You may either post an answer to this article, or at the very least go to the poll and vote for the one you would most like to read. I'll be looking forward to reading your responses.

In other news: I was able to get a couple of things done. This is going to be a class at Interquilten next month. It's a bow tie wreath. For the idea I must thank my dear friend Sharyn Woerz. It was relatively easy to do. It takes 1/2 yard of two different fabrics, about 10 yards of ribbon and a wire wreath form available at Micheal's or any other craft store that carries floral supplies. I also added a big bow to dress it up a bit. I was thinking about stringing some beads through it as well. After all, you know my motto, "Gorp it to the max!"

I apologize for missing last weeks post. But I couldn't find a movie worthy to review and suddenly the weekend got very busy, plus there was a problem with a badge on POGO.com. Do any of you POGO? It's fun and exciting. Both of my men spend money on on-line gaming. They play Civ, and Warcraft, and I know not what all. So I feel justified in the $25 a year I spend to play POGO. They have a variety of on-line games and they keep you interested by giving you two or three challenges every week. You can also use game tokens won in the games to buy outfits and goodies for your pogo mini character. It's fun. You can go there to play the free games which include several fun ones including some types of solitaire card games and others. A special offer, the first three people who e-mail me with the words "pogo request" in the subject line, I will give you a free weekend pass to club pogo so you can try out the paid games.

So about the films. I've seen about fifteen films over the past two weeks and the only ones that have stuck in my mind are the following:

"The Proposal", with Sandra Bullock as a Canadian about to be deported. She makes a last ditch effort to stay at her high status job by telling her employers that she and her male assistant are in love and about to be married. I love Sandra Bullock and she doesn't disappoint in this wonderful romp in a far away Alaskan retreat. The addition of Betty White in this film makes it a real treat. Those two alone could make the worst written script funny.

"Factory Girl", a look into the twisted bizarre world of Andy Warhol's factory. No one very recognizable is in this film but that is good because it would just detract from the flavor of it. Edie, the "poor little" abused "rich girl" in this film whom Warhol later claimed he was in love with, gets sucked into the factory world of Warhol's playthings. She appears in a couple of his films but when his influences on her start taking hold in the form of drug abuse and jealousy when she has an affair with a thinly disguised Bob Dylan, Warhol turns on her and meanly betrays her. It's an interesting portrait of that time.

And saving the best for last, "The Jane Austin Book Club", is about a group of woman who come together over their love of the novels written by Jane Austin and the men and other women in their lives. If you can see Jane Austin as a prophet for our times or the writer of rule books for women and men, then you will love this film as much as I did. Of course there is one scene in the book that puts it all into perspective for those who aren't "getting it!" The young lesbian character is having a relationship with a writer who is using her for story ideas. In one tumultuous scene This character finds a rejection letter from a publisher saying that the story ideas are mean spirited, obvious and implausible. The story called, "Separating Eggs for Flan" is an obvious symbol of her parents divorce. If it weren't for this one scene, I think many people wouldn't get the whole premise of the film as an allegory. I studied literature in college and I thought this scene a little heavy handed until my husband watched it and said, "Oh, I get it, they aren't talking about the books at all, their just all talking about their own lives." Well, DUH! LOL! My one comment is this, I wish the playwright had chosen a different Sci-Fi author. I could tell that she (or he) had read a lot of Austin but I seriously wondered if she (or he)(no on second thought, she) had read any LeGuin at all. There was nothing whatsoever about LeGuin's artistic renderings of her alternative universe or her own wonderful and inspiring allegories. The only thing that was said about Leguin's books were, they were good! Well, Double DUH!

Oh and one last thing. I know several of you are as anxiously awaiting the November release of "New Moon" as I am. I hope the hype is not getting to you. The first movie "Twilight" could not live up to the hype and I'm certain that "New Moon" will likewise not. I really liked "Twilight", despite what 90% of my young friends thought. My friend Katie Vreeland doesn't even abide the mentioning of this film in her presence any more, so sick of it she is. But seeing this movie got me to read the four book series by Stephanie Meyer. It is universally acknowledged that the book is always (with few exceptions) better than the movie. I love movies though, I love them almost as much as I love books, and when I have huge amounts of spare time I will pick up a book, or at least listen to one on CD or tape. But when I don't have much time, and I want a little "Austin" as they say in the film, I will slide in a DVD and watch a movie based on the book that I love. That's how I feel about the "Twilight" series.

BTW, if you liked "Twilight", and have yet to read any of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, Family video has the first season of "True Blood" out on DVD. Definitely not for young children, plenty of bad language and graphic sex and marvelous blood sucking vampire scenes! Go for it!

OK, more about projects next week. I just had to get all that out of my system!

Haunting in the Video Store!
Cindy K-K
The Haunter

Haunting in Marquette

2009-10-07T19:09:00.005-04:00

I was haunting in Marquette last week folks! My mother lives up there on Ohio Street which is at the very top of a very large hill. So you would think that walking in Marquette would be a downhill proposition. But not so! Yes, one does have to come back, but it seems that I nearly always want to go someplace else that is at the top of another hill.

I first walked down Ohio street to Third street and up to the little strip mall where the quilt shop is. That was a fairly nice half mile walk. Then I decided to walk back to Mom's house and that IS uphill all the way. I was carrying a new fabric purchase too! I didn't start catching my breath until I had been in the house sitting down for at least ten minutes. Is that normal?

I didn't take any pictures on that trek even though I had the camera and I walked under this drooping tree with huge leaves and very unique trunk, on Park street. I wanted to go back and take pictures of it but never got the chance. You see I had forgotten that I took the card out of the camera. OK, so now I have a spare card behind my driver's license in my wallet in case that ever happens again.

After dinner that night Jeff and I wanted to go down to Presque Isle (pronounced Press-keel). The Island is a rocky piece of land that juts out from the North side of Marquette and has some of the most lovely scenery in the area. I wanted to go back to the big rocks but the drive was blocked off and I didn't think I could walk that far before sunset. So we went over to Sunset park on the West side of the island and walked backwards up the drive. It was windy out and the Surf was definitely up! The majority of these pictures are of that walk. We took about 50 pictures. These are the best of the bunch.

Jeff is convinced that in a few thousand years the water and wind will totally obliterate this whole Island even though it has huge outcroppings of exposed bedrock.

My Third and final walk in as many days was down 6th street to Ridge Street and up the huge hill to the Yarn shop, which is a stones throw from their Ben Franklin Store which is right next door to their Family Video store. I stopped at all three places and managed to drop another $30 on various things. No movies though for two reasons. Number one, A.J. wasn't there to advise me. And Number two, we were leaving early the next day. My mom is not much of a movie buff, although I could have rented Grand Torino for her, she would have enjoyed that one. This picture was taken on Ridge Street. I was wondering if this was an ordinance or just good advice.

These last two pictures were just things that we saw the morning we left. This poor dog in the back of the truck, we both wondered what this poor thing had done to deserve this treatment.

We stopped at the rest area in the Senney Stretch and apparently there was a nice big family of beautiful brown ground squirrels that lived in the trees nearby. They appeared like our city dwelling chipmunks but they were way bigger, smaller than a regular squirrel though. This one was serving lunch at the lunch counter and calling the rest of the family to come to the table. LOL~!

I managed to also finish a couple of projects but I'll report on those later.

It was a good trip and I'm glad I got to see my Mom before the holidays even though it's difficult for us to get up there as much as we would like. But none-the-less, I'm glad to be home.

Monday night we had a really great Guild meeting. My program was on Figuring out how to develop your own color theory. Lots of people seemed to like it.

Tuesday I thought I would change the livingroom furniture around and clean underneath things. I also wanted to set up my sewing room in the kitchen again. Working at Interquilten I really do need to have an organized sewing area. So I spent the last two days changing, cleaning, and organizing. LOL! It so needed to be done! I'll take some pictures of the new area after it's totally clean and organized and post them next week along with pictures of the projects I will be able to finish because of it!

How's that for wishful thinking!

Cindy
Back haunting in TC again!

Busy Busy!

2009-09-27T14:29:00.026-04:00

I've been so busy this week that I haven't even had time for major haunting. I have been too busy haunting my sewing areas. I managed to find time to finish a few projects. Here is a picture of my design wall with all the projects I finished. Two paper pieced blocks, a crazy log cabin bag, and the Applique BOM that will be up in the store by Monday. I've finished a few other things too, like three apple blocks for our guild's BOM, and yet another tomato quilt block. I'll show those when I get them all done and the top finished.

Meanwhile today I've also been paper piecing for the guild's new charity project. Yes, guild members who read this, I am doing 9 of these blocks! NINE! Count them NINE! Only one person I know of has done more and that's Evelyn who did 12 of them. So what about all of you, are you nearly finished with the one two or three that you took to do? I will be calling for them soon. I thought we could start putting them together at the November Saturday Sew, those that are finished at least.

So let the badgering commence! Ok, so just a friendly reminder as of yet!

On my list of todos for this afternoon are: finishing the rest of the blocks for the Lovable Huggable mystery, Machine quilting "Dancing with Bats" wall hanging, and finishing the Applique BOM, crossed hearts for guild.

Now for the shameless plug: Go in and see that projects we are planning for Saturday workshops at Interquilten. There is a simple fun raggy scarf that would be perfect for a kid to make for her grandma! Also have Tawni show you the easy "smart bag", a travel bag for jewelry, and a spiffy notebook holder. All of these are easy and able to finish in a couple of hours.

I did manage to get to Border's this week. We saw this woman who had a cool bag. She gave us the name of the website where she got it but it went straight out of my head! Go figure. I also found a neat book on Halloween ideas for my Sister-in-law's big party. So that is going in the mail this week along with Ann Nelson's yarn and my brother's birthday card!

Oh and for those of you who asked, here is a picture of my movie expert at Cherryland Family Video, His name is A.J. and this week he suggested I watch "Observe and Report" which is similar to the previous film on the same topic "Paul Blart: Mall Cop". I had not seen either of them so I rented them, and as you can see I'm not recommending them.

But he's pretty cute anyway right? And he always calls me "My Dear" when I come in! Makes an old lady smile to have a young man say that to her!!!

OK, so this week Jeff has off and we are planning to take a trip up to Marquette. No doubt I'll see some sites to report on up there. I hope to see some color even though it's a little early for it here yet.

That was my boring week. I'll see if I can take some classes up in Marquette. There is a great little fabric store up there.

See you when I get back from my Marquette haunts!

Cindy K-K
The haunter!

How was your weekend? Mine was gruelling, thanks!

2009-09-21T18:49:00.003-04:00

How do you like this guy? His name is "Dancing with Bats" and he is available at Interquilten. Come in to the shop and take a closer look at him.

Now that the shameless plug has been accomplished, I'll tell you about my grueling weekend.

It started out on Saturday with a quilt-a-thon to benefit QAC (pro. Quack) the Quilters Against Cancer. It's a Michigan based group geared toward raising money for women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer who do not have insurance. The quilt-a-thon was sponsored by Interquilten and was attended by members of three area quilting guilds. I got action shots of the cutting,

piecing

and ironing.

We managed to make at least a dozen quilt tops and over the next few weeks we intend to get them machine quilted and bound in order to send them off so they can be sold on the QAC website. I will keep you informed of when and how to bid on one of these quilts.

Sunday morning I rose early and met Tawni at her house in Interlochen. (For those of you who don't know, Tawni Gilmer is the owner of Interquilten which I guess makes her my boss, although she doesn't act like it. She treats me more like a valued friend whose opinion she respects. Go figure!)

Anyway, we drove down to Chicago for a little thing they like to call Fabriganza! The Troy Distributors opened up their warehouse and store owners were allowed to walk through and pick up whatever bolts they wanted. We were able to get some batiks as well as some Halloween panels that we had been out of for a long time. We'd had lots of fun cutting kits for these little Halloween panels and we had been out of them for some time. I'll get a picture of it and post it for all of you to see.

When we arrived it was a gorgeous cool sunny day. As you can see, the sky-line of Chicago is just lovely.

The Troy Warehouse is in a very nice neighborhood filled with these little brownstones. This one had a particularly lovely garden out front. There were a lot of Spanish signs in the window fronts, which was probably indicative of the local ethnic make-up.

We got in and started shopping. Periodically they announced a speaker and we went to hear three of them. The first two had fairly good talks on how to boost sales in the store through display and book support and other good ideas. But the third one, a young lady from a distributor of quilting books, was showing very creative ideas on embellishing and how to sell new idea type books. This is one of the quilts that she showed.

The idea of course is to have the display model up on the wall and in front of it have strips of fabric cut with the Triangles on a roll. The customers take the bundle of triangles home with them and sew them up and then they bring them back to trade with other triangles that you have in a bin in the store.

Interlochen is the home of a music academy as many of you know, so Tawni and I are always looking for musically oriented fabric and patterns. This quilt was on display also at Troy.

While we were in there the weather changed a little. It got warm and muggy and started to rain on and off. I still wanted to take a few pictures of the architecture in Chicago though.

We were planning on spending the night somewhere on the road but we stopped in South Haven for dinner and felt pretty good so we kept on going and got home by midnight. So in case anyone wants to know if you can make it to Chicago and back in one day, YOU CAN!

You're friendly neighborhood Haunter
Cindy K-K

Haunting at Mackinaw and Indian River

2009-09-13T08:54:00.003-04:00

I DID IT!!! I Actually walked the entire length of the Mackinaw Bridge! It was not the ordeal that I was anticipating either. I nearly backed out several times remembering what happened last time I tried. But I am 100 pounds lighter now and I am in way better shape than I was last time. This was a true mile stone in my life!
I am very proud of myself!
Walkers from left to right are myself, Joann Day, Terise Gavar, Anne Nelson, and Suzy Bouwsma.
There was a record crowd there, the five of us that walked had a contest with a Fat Quarter at stake each as to how many walked. The total was almost 50,000 people. The winner of our pool was Anne the only non-quilter! But she's a knitter, so we are all going to find her a ball of yarn to send anyway. It was right that she won, it was her birthday and all we got her was some cupcakes and a card! I didn't get to know her very well because she was in the very back of the van and I was in the front next to my driver (read husband). But Joann described her as one of the kindest people she had ever met. Jeff was a real sport that day. He drove us up there and waited in traffic jams that were miles long to get us to the other side of the Bridge and to pick us up afterward. Jeff is in good with the parking gods, not the traffic gods so this was especially trying for him. He really deserved this cupcake.
Everyone who meets Terise loves her (I hope your reading this) because she is so funny and bubbly and in her own way wise about life. She is genuinely interested in people and she listens to them even if what they are saying is nonsense.
After the walk we needed to get the heck out of Dodge (Mackinaw) so we got back on the freeway and drove down to Indian River where we had picnic lunch and visited the the Cross in the Woods. We learned that we were all very spiritual and this little pilgrimage was just the right thing after that grueling feat! Suzy, my best friend, is the one who planned it and made most of the wonderful potluck picnic that we ate.

By the time this photo was taken we were hanging onto each other for dear life. We could have all stood there and posed for hours as long as we were holding onto each other. Posers are from left to right, Suzy Bouwsma, Anne Nelson, Terise Gavar, me, and Joann Day. I had met Joann Day when Suzy invited her to come to Borders. Then I ran into her no less than twice at her job when I was undergoing all that surgery last year. Joann is a recovery room nurse. She took care of me when I had my stomach surgery. There were only two words to describe how I felt, Pain--Heat! Every single thing that Joann did for me that day relieved me in some way. I love Joann with all my heart not because of what she has done for me, but because she is who she is!
For those of you who have never been there, Cross in the Woods is a giant crucifix. It is made from an Oregon Red Wood Tree and is 55 feet high and 22 feet wide. It has the figure of Christ cast in bronze which is 28 feet long from head to toe, and weighs 7 tons. The cross was completed in 1959. It was designed by Michigan Sculptor Marshall Fredericks. Several very interesting things have been built around this monument and the grounds have been decorated with many more sculptures and statues, including the three I show here.
The Blessed Kateri, a Native American of the Algonquin Nation who was converted in 1674 at the age of 18. What attracted me to the sculpture was the depiction of turtles at the base. Her father was the chief of the Mohawk tribe, the Turtle Clan. She was declared "Blessed" by Pope John Paul II in 1980.
Saint Francis of Assisi is a most beloved saint. His sculpture is located in a wooded grotto surrounded by pine trees. I could easily imagine the night time when the animals come out of the woods and I wonder if the animals are drawn to the this lovely place where the saint who so loved them is present. St. Francis is the patron saint of ecology.
This lovely sculpture of the holy family is placed within easy view of the outdoor cathedral. It carries with it a blessing for the family and a prayer to keep our own families safe and strong. Joann said she always gets emotional when she sees this sculpture. We discretely did not take any pictures of her after her visit to the Holy Family.

This great day is something I will remember all my life.

I'll go back to reporting on projects for next week. Have a good one!
Cindy K-K
The Haunter at Mackinaw! LOL!

What's wrong with my Brain?

2009-09-06T10:22:00.008-04:00

I've been asking this question all week. It's almost as if all those surgeries last year sent me into an early version of senile dementia! This week was a prime example.

Last Sunday my good friend Sharon and I got together for a Girl's Day IN! We shared a bottle of Bubbly, and well, I guess I've already told you most of what happened. But my point here is that for a day or two after drinking that heavily I don't quite function properly.

The next day I had a taught a class on Dimensional quilting. Two of my tried and true beginning students took the class. (I really need to start taking pictures at my classes.) Anyway, I showed up at my regular time for class, a little after Five pm. The time I usually get there. They were there and set up. I walked in and said, "Oh heck, this class was scheduled at five wasn't it?" I had totally forgotten that I had scheduled that class earlier than the others.

So the next day, Tuesday, was the guild meeting. I was determined to be organized for it. I had spent about four hours on Saturday on the phone confirming with people that Maria has signed up to teach classes and Saturday Sews. There were a couple of other leads too that I wanted to follow up and I managed to get a hold of a couple of them as well. So I thought I was prepared.

I spent most of the day Tuesday working on a project called Discharge Dying. This is an interesting technique of making images by removing dye from an already darkly dyed fabric. I used a solid black and also a dark red and a navy blue fabric and then I experimented with a bleach pen and also bleach straight from the bottle applied with either a Q-tip or a paint brush. They both worked fairly well. The fabric with the curly-q's on it used a bleach pen and at the bottom you can see the bubbles where the pen was starting to run out.

The face was a picture I got off the Internet of an album cover of Paul Simon. And the words I used were song lyrics from his Graceland Album. I saved the picture to my hard drive and then brought it up on Paint Shop Pro. It was only about 2 inches square so I blew it up to 4 inches. The resulting picture was very pixelated so I put a piece of regular typing paper over my computer screen and traced the light parts of the image making sure to make complete shapes and not just lines, because I knew that I would have to fill in the shapes with the bleach. It was still too small for a t-shirt so I put the resulting drawing in my copier and blew it up another 200%. I then had the size I wanted. I got out my light board and traced the image onto the test fabrics and onto the front of my shirt.

I used a brown 100% cotton T shirt. There was no way I could test the t-shirt fabric ahead of time without ruining it. But as luck would have it the brown beached out to a wonderful peachy pink. If I had known that color was underneath that yucky brown I might have tried beaching it out sooner. I didn't really like that t-shirt as it was so I wasn't overly concerned about wrecking it. Now of course I think it's my favorite t-shirt.

You can see the results of the two test fabrics. The red one has a pretty nice image even though you can barely see it. The black one ran into the fabric and I ended up using a Sharpy pen to re-define the image. (I think that one ended up looking less like Paul and more like Barack! But oh well, thems the breaks!)

I then threw everything in the washer and washed it up. It was dried in time for me to wear my new t-shirt to the guild meeting.

I was very overwhelmed at the guild meeting and stuttering more than usual. During my program on discharge dying someone (Clover McKinley, I think) asked me if people should be concerned about the fumes? I said, "You mean I should have been in a more ventilated area? You mean the fact that I've been breathing in bleach fumes all day is probably why my brain isn't working properly tonight?" Everyone was laughing hysterically, point made, I went back to the questions!

The rest of the night went great. We now have yet another Applique project to do.

OK, since I have a little time, I want to talk about Applique this week.

I have made a solemn vow to work on Applique this fall until at least January. To that I have also added hand work of any sort. I have a list of applique and hand work projects to finish which is now up at the left hand side of this blog. I have also signed a contract to finish the Grandmother's Flower Garden (GFG) quilt before the January guild meeting as well. So I have my work cut out for me.

Because I have this promise in place, I am now looking at all kinds of new Applique projects as being possible. Yesterday, while working at the shop, I noticed a nice pretty little project with appliqued circles that looked somewhat oriental. I realized that we had the perfect fabric for that project there in the shop so I decided to make it for Tawni as a surprise. I got the fabrics all cut out while I was there (waiting for customers) and last night when I got home I managed to applique all twenty circles onto the blocks. Today I will put the top together by machine.

I also have to finish another fused applique wall hanging today. If I get it all done I'll report on it next week.

My work is cut out for me today so I had better get to it!

See ya next weekend. I'll be haunting up near Mackinaw tomorrow.

Cindy K-K
The Haunter!

I'm Haunting Again

2009-09-02T13:56:00.005-04:00

Hey everyone,

I am getting ready for the big Bridge walk this coming weekend. It's a 6 mile walk. I've only attempted it once before and I didn't make it. I had a stroke of Arrhythmia about 4 miles into it and the ambulance drove me the rest of the way back to Mackinaw City. But this time I will make it. I am 100 lbs less than I was that day, and I now know for sure that I can walk 4 miles, because I did it this past week.

Here are the pictures of what I saw on my walk.

This is a little garden yard in my neighborhood, on Boon Street. I've been watching this little yard for years but this year I noticed this lovely Cairn standing there, with the piece of volcanic rock topping it, just like in the movie "Shawshank Redemption." Interesting I thought. And I wondered if the owner of this property was as big a fan of that movie as I am.

Next I saw this lovely metal statue of a praying mantis. This was in a little roadside garden next to a health facility on Hastings Rd. Here are two more pictures of this same garden.

It's in a kind of industrial blighted area so it's totally out of place and I don't think it gets noticed much, but it was worth stopping for a look.

My weekend got very busy, so I apologize for being late with this blog. Sunday was fantasy football draft day, and so us two "girls" got together to talk, knit, and share a bottle of bubbly. Man did we talk! I'm not even going to go into what we talked about, our lives, and our husbands, and our gossipy little innuendos. Nothing worthy of mention here! We had a great time and even got a little knitting done. Sharon is a spinner, and she had three skeins of a bulky gold yarn that had been in the shop and didn't sell, so she gave it too me. She kept insisting I take it even after I had decided I wanted it! So I borrowed some needles from her and started a pair of mittens and I may have enough left for a hat. I'll keep you posted as I get the components done.

Anyway, Here are a couple of things I actually did get done this week.
This is the latest applique block for my Applique Club. I got it done and in the shop so people can see what the next project is. I have the third project well underway as well. I intend to get one done every month from here on out.

This next project is a top that I'm starting. This is the background and I'm not sure what's going to go in it yet. I think I am going to try a scrapbook quilt of some sort.
I bought a couple of pieces of shiny object type things to put in it. I think I will have to call it my ADOSSO project. (ADOSSO=Attention Deficit, Oh $hit, Shiny Object!)((This statement was told to me by my friend who designed this blog template and fellow suffer of the ADOSSO syndrome, Feeby Coats, AKA Spirit.))

I will keep you posted on the progress of this particular shiny object.

Last but certainly not least is the pattern for the Mended Hearts. I have written up my version of the pattern and it will start to be available for sale at Interquilten in the next few weeks. Anyone else who would like a copy of this pattern can e-mail me. I believe they will be retailing for about $8.00. Here are two views of one quilt I made from this pattern. I have made about four of these quilts in different color schemes but somehow, they have all disappeared.

There is a story behind this one and why I still have access to it. I was finishing it up at a quilting retreat and my BFF Suzy kept saying, Oh what a beautiful quilt, you're making that for me right? Normally I would say, "Yeah sure," or "Sorry, you don't mean enough to me," or some other sarcastic remark. But this time I'm thinking (and expressing) how tired I am of doing these particular blocks and projects, and I'm so not enamoured of finishing this one. Well, By Saturday night my shoulders were so tight and pained from all that heavy quilting, I started complaining and thinking I should quit and go to bed early. Suzy came up behind me and started to give me a neck rub. It felt so good that after about ten minutes I said to her. Oh, OK, it's yours. I grabbed the quilt and threw it at her. She has kept it ever since and just loves it. So when I needed a new picture of it for the pattern I asked her to bring it to Borders and had two of the gals hold it up for me.

More has happened since the weekend already, yes I live a very busy life! But I will detail those things this coming Sunday in my next post!

Thanks for reading! And go rent "Shawshank Redemption" this week if you haven't seen it recently.

Cindy K-K
Haunting again!

Friends from out of . . .Country!

2009-08-23T14:58:00.006-04:00

Exciting things happened this week. On Friday I went down on a little mini road trip to just North of Ludington to see some friends. These are both Facet Ladies. Many of you have heard me talk about the Facet Ladies. They are an inspiring bunch of women, most of whom are quilters, who are on the Yahoo.list known as "Many Facets" It's a private, invitation only list and we've been together since about 2002. We have members in Washington, California, Canada, Michigan, Maine, Missouri, Virginia, New Hampshire, Wales, and Australia. Correct me if I've missed any please Ladies.

Anyway, our member from Virginia, Judy Hansen, has a cottage in Free Soil Michigan and spends Summers here. The member from Australia, has a son living in Colorado and has taken two trips in as many years to the States. This time she and her husband have come to Michigan and I got a chance to meet them on Friday. Wonderful Fun People!! I had such a good time that I kept thinking about it all the next day!

I left here at about 9 am and stopped at Two Sister's quilt shop on the way down. When I got to Judy's house they were sitting down to lunch and I joined them for a fabulous veggie tray and grill cheese sandwiches followed by a wonderful blueberry pie. We got a very good explanation of the game of Cricket from Graeme who stood up and gave us good visuals of the game so we could understand this otherwise totally obscure sport.

Pam and Graeme from Alexandria, Australia, Photo courtesy of Judy Wright.

After lunch, the men headed off to play a round of golf while Pam and Judy and I went toward Custer to visit the Pig Patch, another quilt shop which was very charming.

These two pictures were taken there and this is proof too that Pam bought something, Judy did not however. Very disciplined of you Judy!

We got back to the cabin and had a little quilt show. I showed my leaf quilt, my GFG, and the quotation quilt among several other things. They both looked at my Scrapbook which was a Facets list project. We sat and talked for a while waiting for the men to get home from their golf game. Meanwhile we chatted about lots of stuff and started to prepare dinner. We were going to have hamburgers and corn on the cob, the perfect summer meal. But Judy discovered that there was no hamburger so instead we cut up some veggies and chicken and steak and made Kabob's to grill. Pam shucked the corn, while I cut onions, we shared the chore of cutting the meat while Judy made rice. So when the men got home THEY COOKED! LOL! Isn't that how it always goes. The men sit near the grill and drink beer and yet the the credit for cooking! LOL!

When the men came in we told them about the change in plans, that got us to the Kabob idea instead of hamburgers. I said we lucked out. Everyone started to laugh. The four of them had had a discussion about this particular turn of phrase earlier that same day. Apparently the same phrase in Australia refers to the exact opposite thing it does here. When they say they lucked out it means they ran out of luck, It means they have had a piece of BAD luck, not Good luck, as it does here in the States.

So this started a whole series of questions about phrases that differ between our two countries.

Later on Judy was telling us about a splinter she had in her foot and Pam mentioned that Graeme was the splinter remover in the family. I was going to tell a story about my husband using a box cutter to remove splinters so I asked Graham if he used box cutters. In his wonderful down-under accent, he said, "That's not a knife." Then he mimed reaching back behind his head and said, "This is a knife!"

We all laughed and I said, "Yeah, OK, Crocodile Dundee!" Being a big movie fan I could appreciate that one. Graeme pointed out that most all Americans know that line of movie dialog!

Other things that happened this week:

On my way home from Class Thursday night I saw this wonderful rainbow. I couldn't get a good picture of it, but this kind of shows the colors. It was actually a double rainbow with echos of color spreading out to the left by thousands of yards. It was so beautiful, I nearly stopped on the road side just so I could watch it until it faded.

Then this morning I went for a long walk around my neighborhood and this silly vehicle was parked in the Cherryland Center parking lot. How interesting!

Apparently, these photos will be put up on the Oscar Meyer website. I have no idea where that is, but it's worth a google! LOL!

The Walk I took this morning was 2 1/2 miles long and I stopped in a couple of stores on the way. I was gone for just over an hour. Tomorrow I work at the quilt shop, and Tuesday I intend to walk again. Maybe do my 5K track, around to Hastings, and 8th Street and back up Woodmere to my house. I'll take my Camera in case I see something all of you should know about!!

Talk with you again next week.
Cindy K-K
Haunting again!

This Week

2009-08-16T18:05:00.004-04:00

This was a particularly busy week for me. One of my old haunts is the Fairgrounds. My quilting group has been going there to do Hand Quilting demonstrations for as long as I've been a member. This year it almost fell apart. We didn't have a quilt to quilt on. But I managed to pull out my old GFG (Grandmother's Flower Garden) to work on. There was just enough for Eleanor and I to do two good days worth of work on it. It's down to the bare nubbins now! There are a few little missed spots, one small area on the far left side and then just the last row around the edges. I'll endeavor to take some pictures this week so you can see what I'm talking about.

So today, Sunday, we decided to take a break and go to the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes. We had a pass, that we bought last weekend when we went Cannoed the Platte River, and wanted to get some use out of it. So we went up and took the drive around the Pierce Stocking Scenic drive. It was very nice and even Walt(native of TC) had not gone up there before. I had been a summer resident before I moved here when I was a kid, and so of course I know all about the more touristy things.

Here we are, Tammy and Walt and I, on the top of the Dune looking out over Lake Michigan.

Things are going very well at the shop. Here are two of my beginning quilting students, Joni and Marge, showing off the log cabin bags made from my pattern (soon to be available in stores.)

I have decided to start my own pattern company. I have been developing patterns on my own for a while now and have written up quite a few pattern sheets for the shop and the guild. So, I asked myself, why not make them more professional and start my company.

It will be called The Quilt Lynx and the picture of the Winking Lynx will be the logo. I already have it arranged, and am going to do some artwork on in to finish it.

Anyway, projects I've finished in the last two or three months are few and far between. Remember I have decided to focus on hand work and specifically Applique. So as a result, I will probably only get blocks done between now and Christmas. That's OK, I will then be ready for the next UFO club.

I did however, sign a contract about the GFG. I will be finishing that project between now and January. It will be done by the January meeting or I will be publicly humiliated! I worked on it at the fair and then again all evening on Friday and got two of the edges bound. It's difficult to bind a GFG because you don't use standard binding. You have to piece by piece fold under the top edge and cut the backing to match, folding it under as well and then blind stitch the two edges together using a ladder stitch. It's very similar to applique only your folding under both the top and bottom together. It's impossible to quilt the last row of quilting until the binding process is completed because it would interfere with the turning under of the edges. So therefore, once the edges are complete you then have to go back around and quilt the last row of hexagons. I'll take pictures of it this week to show you.

Anyway, for your viewing enjoyment. Here are two projects I did manage to finish over the last few months. The first is the project my students are doing for their beginning Patchwork class.

The second is a wallhanging I did for the shop. Tawni (the shop owner) did a similar one using a different color scheme. They hang side by side a the shop just to show people what kinds of things they can do with the five inch charm squares.

This week is going to be another busy one. I have classes going this week, and then Friday I am going to Ludington on a road trip to see a "facet" of my life that I have never before met. Remind me to explain this next week!

Oh and BTW, I lost those ten pounds that I had gained. Protein is a wonderful thing! All I needed to do was make sure my body did not think I was trying to starve it. Protein sends the message, "Oh yes, there is plenty here to eat, no need to go into starvation mode." Therefore it allows me to lose more weight. All I had to do was lay off the extra calories, sweets, walk around the fair once or twice, canoe down the Platte and drink a protein shake every morning and most evenings. Voila! Ten pounds gone. Lets see if I can get down another 10 this week! Hahaha!

See you next Sunday,
Cindy K-K

An update

2009-08-08T01:39:00.002-04:00

I know, I know, it's been what, a while, a long long while since I updated. But hey, I've been busy!

I got a job, I'm working at the new little Quilt shop in Interlochen Michigan called Interquilten! My friend Tawni Gilmer is the owner of the shop and we are getting along fantastically. We build off of each other's ideas, and she makes me feel like a valued part of the business which is wonderful.

OK, so in other developments. I am also now the Vice President of the Rumpled Quilts Kin Quilting Guild. As such I am in charge of putting together programs and activities for the guild. Do I have a plans for the guild. They want to do the UFO club again in January, so I figure my job between now and then is to get them to start as many different projects as possible. LOL!

Meanwhile, I've had a fairly busy summer. I did the Cherry Festival 5K race, and came in just over one hour. But hey, I made it and next year I plan on making it again only faster! Imagine, two years ago, I wouldn't have been able to make it even one mile let alone 3 and 1/2!!! Then the film festival came and went! I saw lots of great films and one or two mediocre ones. Then this weekend is our annual Canoe trip down the Platt river, which we will enjoy. The Northwest Michigan fair is coming up this week and I will be out there quilting with some friends. Then my friend Pam from Australia will be in Michigan near the end of August, I hope to see her for at least one day. Then On Labor day is the Bridge Walk. I'm in training for that one as well.

So here it is, my intention for the rest of the summer and into the fall: It is my intention to update my Blog at least weekly, to let you know how I'm doing. The reason for this Blog was to show you my haunts, and to keep myself actively pursuing the goal of being healthier and thinner. It's hard to write anything if I am being a slug and not doing anything toward this goal. But it's even worse when I'm too busy to really dedicate myself to the task at hand. I can't be too busy, this is my health we're talking about. It's too important a task to just leave on the side of the road. Because, like I say every morning in my daily affirmation, I am living on borrowed time, and I intend to live my life as such. I will enjoy every moment I have left. I will not do anything I am not enjoying for longer than 15 minutes. Likewise if I find I am enjoying a task I thought I would not enjoy I will go ahead and spend more time on it. I will not have surgery every again of my own free will. And I will live my life with the idea that I will take care of myself so that further surgery can be avoided. I will live out the rest of my borrowed days, living for the moment and enjoying my life, and with the certain knowledge that I have done my best!

So with that in mind, it is my intention to walk tomorrow, and then come home and work on two or more sewing projects. I went to a yard sale today and bought some fabric, yards and yards of it. Much of it was very good fabric, designer stuff. I got it sorted out and put away in my stash cupboard (which used to be my linen closet) and now I just have to figure out what I'm going to do with it.

OK, so this post has mainly been an over view of my summer thus far. So be it! I will post again in less than a week, and there will be more detail.

I have to say, though. Tonight I saw the movie Julie and Julia. It was kind of film fugue that showed the similarities between the lives of two women. Julia Child (brilliantly played by Meryl Streep) and Julie Powell who wrote a Blog about Julia Child as she cooked her way through Julia Child's book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I have to say that I had a copy of both volumes of that book when I was younger and sold it on e-bay because I just couldn't see my way clear to follow her recipes. I'm thinking I should have tried harder.

Anyway, seeing this movie has inspired me to get back to this Blog. Why my life is so interesting I know not. It probably isn't. But I do like my life.

I like living in Traverse City, I enjoy all the friends I've made here. Wonderful people for sure. I enjoy quilting, handcrafts, scrapbooking and basketry and all the other artistic things that I try, always experimenting and trying to find my niche. I love working at the quilt shop even though it causes me to spend money and start more projects. I love the opportunities for outdoor gatherings that we have here. The movies, the baseball games, the parades, the fire works, the concerts, the festival activities. I love the fact that we can go paddle a canoe on the river one day and take our chairs out into left field at the baseball game the next. I so love that we Traverse City people keep our chairs in the trunks of our cars in case there is a need for them. We will, at the drop of a hat, carry out portable telescoping chairs out into a big field and sit there for hours waiting for something to happen. And it always does. And weather doesn't always matter. We are apt to go to a ski race with our chairs as we are to the open space for a big screen movie. Doesn't matter. Have chair, will be entertained! That's all we really need to know.

I do love my life! Even though I'm really trying to improve it daily, in many ways, it's perfect as it is.

While my spirit still dwells in this body, I will haunt this town! After it finishes it's usefulness though, I won't. Then I'll have better places to be!

Cindy Koch-Krol
Artist/Writer

What's new--besides my great new Blog Template?

2009-02-25T01:37:00.004-05:00

This is Nick's Quilt!

Yes, my Main Character of my Novel has had a quilt made for him by his Girlfriend, Sarah and her Cousin Katie. Of course, I made this one myself. But that's not all, Nick has an E-mail Address too. It is ChiefMechaNick@yahoo.com. That's right. Now you can E-mail Nick himself and he might even answer your e-mails! Go figure! These are real people here, with lives of their own!

I just finished writing the horrifying tumultous scene in the book. I don't want to ruin it for you but lets just say that no one got away unscathed, not even me. Things were going so well for my two love birds too. But now they are nearly back to square one! It's sad, but neccessary. After all this is what the book is about.

Anyway, I'm taking a few days off to finish up some quilting before my guild meeting. I got a bunch of stuff done today. I got the Round Robin all quilted and I have to put the binding on it tomorrow. I'd let you see it, except my camera batteries are getting charged up right now. Oh well, maybe next week.

So how about this Blog Template!! Cool huh?! I have to tell you where I got it. I got it off a great Website called Spirit's Templates. It's run by a friend of mine who does custom templates for Blogs and websites. Isn't she a genius? A CREATIVE genius! She's a writer too. I met her on the Nanowrimo site!

Eleanor Howard has been helping me hand quilt my Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt and it's nearly finished. That's my oldest UFO! Can't wait to see that one finished.

I finish no less than 6 quilt tops last month. I know I haven't updated since November but really, it was the Christmas season and everyone goes a little nuts in the winter. They don't call it Cabin FEVER for nothing! We here in Michigan get stir-crazy looking at nothing but white and grey all the time!

So I'll cut this post short for now until I can get some new photos taken of my newest quilt tops. Thanks for looking in.

Cindy K-K

The Busy Month of November!

2008-11-25T12:45:00.003-05:00

This has been an exciting month. But it just goes to show what I can get accomplished if I am interested, driven, excited, and motivated!

November is Nanowrimo or National Novel Writing Month. We try to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. Yes, and there are many people who make the mark. There is one week left in this month and already I have written in excess of 67,000 words. The Novel I’m writing is called “Through Her Eyes” and it’s about a young man by the name of Nick who is an ex-con. As he leaves the prison complex at Jackson Michigan he gets on a bus and meets a high school girl who is at a cross-roads in her own life. They only chat together for a matter of a couple of hours while they travel toward a town that one is going back to and the other has never been before but will have to live in for a year. They are both trapped by their pasts and have less than certain futures. Sarah has suffered the loss of her father and her innocence, and is fleeing her comfortable home for an uncertain future with her aunt. Nick is going back home to a place where he had no direction and friends who tried to get him in trouble.

They make a connection on this journey. This connection lasts them through a turbulent couple of weeks while they sort out their personal woes and make new strides toward finding ways to cope with their own situations. When they finally come together again they are set on their paths and they find that having one another is fulfilling a need that neither really admitted to themselves.

I am about one third of the way through the novel at the moment with one week of Nanowrimo left. Above is the collage that I did for the cover of the plotting book.

Other things that have happened this month: I had arm surgery. Hopefully the last one. I now have a complete Ulna in my arm. I am not in hand therapy at the moment but I may have to do that soon. Can’t tell! I don’t have to go back to Ann Arbor until the middle of January! Glory be, I hope the weather will be OK for traveling!

I also took the class by Ann Loveless on how to do her landscape quilts. It was a really fun class and I love the resulting wallhanging that I made. Here is a picture of the unfinished version. I have some thread painting left to do on it, and then the binding. I would have loved to put a border on it too, but that would have required a little extra planning at the beginning. Next time! And there WILL be a next time!

It kind of reminds me of the Robert Frost Poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Here is a link to the whole text: http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/Stopping_ByWood.htm

I also finished a Needlepoint piece that I intend to use as a pocket for a new purse. The needlepoint was a UFO but now so is the purse, so I’m not getting the pins for it until I am totally finished with it.

So far so good, I’m getting things accomplished! Thanksgiving is coming and this year I am thankful for my smaller stomach, my increased energy and my loving family! Hope all of you have just as good a holiday season as I am planning!
Cindy K-K

UFO Club Update

2008-10-31T11:16:00.003-04:00

October 25, 2008 my guild started a new UFO club. This was my own brain child and I am running it as well as participating in it. Here is how it works:

Everyone who joins the club gives me four Fat Quarters and a list of projects that they wish to finish. I will then sign them up as a club member and give them a pin (safety pin with beads on it) for signing up. Then every time one of them finishes a project they get another pin. I have been giving out extra pins for things like being the first to do something or for signing up early or whatever else I can think of. I have already finished one of the projects on my list, the blue scarf, and it's marked on my UFO list as finished, as you can see. I made great strides on Saturday by layering four different quilts that I intend to finish soon. I also pulled out the friendship stars that our Border's group traded last year and they are up on my design wall waiting to be pieced into into a top. I have three projects on my sewing table that I am piecing, the nibblet borders for the tomato quilt, the second border for the rainbow color wash and the schlepp bag. This is all just sit down and sew type stuff and I will get to it all today no matter what else happens on God's green Earth! Because then I will be piecing the friendship stars before I go to bed tonight!

You see my dilemma? I have these grandiose plans and, even worse, a warped view of what I can get done in any given time period. What I need to do is multiply the amount of time I think it's going to take by two and then repeat that every time I think about it! Then I will have a right guess!

The killer thing is this: I also intend to to do NaNoWriMo next month. Next Month!!!??? That's tomorrow!! I'm supposed to start that tonight at Midnight! Where has October gone? Ok, no matter! I'm not pulling any all nighters anyway. I have to save my energy because I'm having surgery again on November 6th. So I will do what I can this month. No pressure!

One of my goals for 2009 will be to update this Blog more often. I am thinking about just going ahead and deleting what I have now and starting again fresh but then I read an article on Blogging that described it as a journey, a process of developing a voice. Well, I will leave this alone then and see how it develops!

One more thing. The main reason for finishing all of these UFO's is to free up my space, both in my house and in my head, for more creative projects like writing and like my more artistic endeavors. With this in mind I have to tell you, my loyal non-existent and totally imaginary readers, that I have a project in my head that is truly creative. I got the idea from a Cloth/Paper/Scissors magazine, one of my two new favorite magazines, and I have been running with it in my head. I am now almost ready to start it. I just have to buy some sandpaper and some wood glue! More on this endeavor later.

Goal for November: Blog at least once a week! No more big gaps!

Cindy K-K

Leafy Round Robin Done!!!

2008-09-15T12:47:00.004-04:00

Dispite how it looks in this photo, the leaf quilt is now finished and ready to put in our show next month. This was a round robin made by seven members of the Border's Quilting group better known as the Border Babes, which is a segment of the Rumpled Quilts Kin guild. Out coming show will be on October 11th at St. Francis High School in Traverse City. Admission is $5.

This quilt started out as four fall leaf orphan blocks. It first went to Laura Munck, the chipster! who attached the first border of batik leaves. Then it went to Judy Dunmire who put on more maple leaves in the light brown background. She broke the rules a little. I specified that I only wanted batiks in my quilt and she put in a regular print. Good thing it doesn't detract from the overall beauty! Next it went to Ellie Panek who is sadly now deceased. She put on the wonderful blue border with the three dimentional leaves. Next the quilt tripped over to Nancy Crow's residence where she attached the saw tooth edge border. Then it waltzed over to my dear friend Sues Simpson, who found a lot of great fabrics to add all of her piano keys border with one appliqued stylized rose. Then it was up to Elaine Penney to finish it off with a final border and she chose to add the yellow flange backed up by the lovely green and gold batik border. When I got it back I thought, my goodness this is sure huge! It was too big for a wall hanging but not quite big enough for my bed. So I decided to add one more border, well actually two, to make queen sized. So I made more of those wonderful fall leaves that I began with and made a top and bottom border with those and then bordered it one last time with a wonderful gold batik. TaDAAAA! It has a dark green variagated binding now and is totally finished! I am so proud of it. It is going on my bed as soon as I take it down from the show.

Above is another quilt I just finished. It's a miniature Amish 4-patch. It too will hang in the show.

More later as I get quilts finished and pictures taken.

Cindy K-K

Waiting for Weight Loss Surgery

2007-09-18T22:14:00.000-04:00

This year I have had one big, gigantic, huge project that I have been working on. That project is Weight Loss Surgery. In March, Jeff, my husband, came to me and told me that he had a way to pay for the surgery if I really wanted it. Before that day he had asked me a question. The question was this: What was I planning to do?

What he meant by that was this: He always thought I should have a job, because it would give me something to do every day. He also thought I should get outside and walk more often just for more stamina and better health. He offered to buy a gym membership for us. He has done everything humanly possible to encourage me to get myself together and lose some weight. But I have tried so often that I am worn out from trying. I think this should be considered a syndrome. The FAILED DIETERS SYNDROME! It happens when you start out as a young person who is maybe 10 or 15 lbs overweight, and you try to lose it by going on a diet. You lose it but then it comes back double because you have gone off the diet. Then year after year you continually try diet after diet, sometimes with exercise sometimes not, and you have success with the weight loss at first but then you go off the diet or exercise program and it comes back and then some. This happens year after year, for maybe twenty or thirty years. Some people yoyo up and down their entire lives, gaining and losing 100's of lbs over the course of their lifetimes. After a while they get so weary of this huge struggle of losing only to gain it all back again that they stop trying, no that's not exactly true, they are no longer capable of trying!

I could write a book on this phenomenon, and probably should! FDSers end up severely overweight, they suffer from a myriad of health issues all stemming from being overweight, heart problems, high blood pressure, bone and joint ailments, diabetes, feet and back problems, thyroid and metabolic problems. I have four of these issues at least. I believe that it is also a fact that the more of these issues that an FDSer has the harder it is to start over again on a weight loss program. Even if they do start a weight loss program on their own (meaning not under the supervision of a trainer or coach or at the Biggest Loser ranch) then they may be able to try their best for a while but after a few days they don't see any progress right away, they lose hope faster and faster each time until they are simply incapable of trying again. Even if they have a friend or loved one that is acting as a support person, they can last a little longer, maybe a few weeks. After a few weeks or a month they look at their weight loss and it is woefully low due to the fact that they are building muscle which weighs more than fat. But the numbers are not adding up in their minds and they lose heart. They start back tracking and wearing themselves out trying to overcompensate with harder and harder workouts and lower caloric intakes. This forms a downward spiral and again they take a break from their exercise routine, sometimes never to return.

These are all things that I have done, I know these things from experience. I feel stuck in this hole that I have made with my fat.

The answer to my husband's question: I'm going to die. I am waiting to die!

Between lack of exercise and the inability to curb my appetite for good rich foods, I had reached 357 lbs. Every year I didn't lose weight I got so that I could do less and less in my home. At first I just couldn't clean the floors, so I would ask Jeff to do it for me. Then for a while I couldn't bend over long enough to clean the bathroom, so Jeff took this job as well. Then I couldn't do parts of my hobby that I needed to do. I couldn't layer the quilts by myself, so I would ask my quilting friends to help me with that. Soon I couldn't stand up long enough to do dishes or to cook dinner. I would try very hard to do these things but my belly fat got in the way of standing at the sink so I would have to wash dishes bent over at the waist, my arms resting and propping me up against the sink. But this position made my back ache in very short time. So finally Jeff took over doing the dishes every morning for me. Our son Jake started Culinary school last year so he started doing much of the cooking in the house. Eventually it got so that the only thing I could do to keep the family going was shop and pay bills. But soon I got so that I couldn't shop any more too. I could walk around the store and collect the items we needed, and get them into the car, but once I got home there was nothing left. If one or both of the men weren't there, I could not get the groceries into the house. Then, last winter, I was in bed with some sort of a flu for over three weeks. At that point I couldn't stand up, I couldn't sit up for more than an hour at a time, I couldn't walk the stores, if I tried I started sweating profusely and people would ask me if I was alright. I was so far from getting a job or walking or even doing the dishes, that I couldn't imagine getting through a day without two naps and a lay down on the couch to watch a movie.

This was in February. This is when my husband asked me his question.

What was I going to do?

I was waiting to die!

This I think shocked him. I think he finally figured out that I meant it. I could see no other future for myself. I was going to die from being morbidly obese. This fat was going to kill me, and I was simply waiting for it to happen.

This is when he decided to try this last new approach! He figured out a way for me to get weight loss surgery. He told me that he could pay a one time medical bill out of his 401K without having to pay a penalty. In other words, he was willing to give up his retirement so that I could live longer, and possibly share in his old age. At the age of 51 he still had 10+ years to go before retirement, and I am pushing hard at the heels of 50 and been unemployed for the last six years.

I went to the April seminar given by Grand Traverse Surgery, a group of surgeons who do Bariatric surgery in my town. After the seminar I had to do a lot of soul searching to see if I was really worthy of having this done. I have failed at so many many things over the years, why should I spend all of my family's resources on a surgery for myself that may end up in failure? I searched my heart and soul and prayed to my maker over this issue. Then I had a doctor's appointment with my family physician and she said that I would probably be able to get off 90% of my expensive meds if I had this surgery. I did the preliminary work that would get me a consulting appointment. They sent in the information to my insurance company and I was approved to have the surgery. They said they would pay for 70% of the surgery. So that put the amount we would have to pay down to the $7000 deductible and whatever they wouldn't allow above and beyond the 70% which we are now hoping will not be more than a few thousand dollars. We of course will not know until much later, but once I get thin I will be able to pay him back his retirement fund. I will not be paying for meds, I will have a job and be making money. I will pay him back! I will!

Not that he has asked me to. Not that he wants that money back. He has told me that he wants me to live, that's all he is asking. He wants me to live my life again.

Winter is now coming again. I can feel the press of it on my psyche. I have not built up any stamina with walking over the summer. In fact, I probably have gained much weight over the summer, my Blood sugar is probably very high, my cholesterol is totally out of whack, my blood pressure was so high at the appointment with the Cardiologist that he raised my dosage.

OK but the other thing that is happening is this: I am waiting for a phone call. I am waiting for Angie, at Grand Traverse Surgery, to call me and schedule an appointment to get the final ball rolling so that I can schedule my surgery for late October (hopefully) or Early November (at the latest?).

I have, over the last five months, changed my view of my future. I have done this with the help of the GTS Support List and their Support group meetings. I have met a number of truly helpful people who are living with Weight Loss Surgery and it's aftermath. They have taught me to be hopeful again. They have taught me that with surgery, support and seeing this new opportunity, not as a be all end all to my weight problem, but as a tool of my recovery, I will be able to be a thin adult for the very first time in my life, I will wear those smaller clothes. I will be able to ride my bike again. I will be able to run, and wear nice female shoes again, I will be able to take karate, and fit into my quilted jacket that I made for myself. I will be able to clean my floors again, and I will be able to weed my garden. I'll be able to give basketry classes, and finish my novel. I will be able to do more writing because my house will be in order, and my mind will be in order. I will be able to take the little baby steps everyday that will lead me to true happiness. I will live my life. I will be able to live my life! I will live! I will no longer die, I will not wait to die any more.

I am now waiting to live!!

Up Coming T.C. Film Festival

2007-07-20T08:57:00.000-04:00

Well, the T.C. Film Festival now only in it's third year, has become an annual favorite of mine. This year my husband has even asked to see one of the films. So today is the day that I go and stand in line for tickets. I have one of those telescoping chairs in the van in case the line is too long and I need a little break. But I don't intent to go early so I'm hoping that the line will at least be moving.

My film choices this year are a bit limited, most of the films are documentaries, I think because the founder of our festival, Micheal Moore, is an Oscar winning director of documentaries. But I like the American Indie's, and he has included a range of those as well. I have chosen ten shows to see over the five day period. I hope I can get tickets to all of them.

No progress on the quilting so far. I've been working on beading mostly. I did a beaded fringe for my bedroom lampshade. And, while I had them out, I started the knitting on several more of my little beaded bags. I don't have any more buyers for these bags, but I am continuing to make them because I have the supplies! Might be silly but then, you never know when I might have the chance to attend a craft show and need something to sell.

Yesterday, at my Border's Hand working Quilting group, we discovered a new magazine called "Quilt-mania" from France. In the current issue on page 29 is the prototype for the applique raffle quilt that I want to do for our guild. It has the Border Babe seal of approval and I will write up the instructions and hand them out at the next guild meeting. I will also make a color copy of the picture in the magazine so people can see what we're aiming at. We had been going round and round about this raffle business and at this point I'm just doing what I said I would do and let the chips fall where they may. I said I would head up the design and construction of an applique raffle quilt and that is what I intend to do. I'll let other people worry about whether it will be in the raffle itself or if it will only serve as a daily drawing at the show. I think it would add up to more ticket sales if there is more than one quilt. But that's just my humble opinion, and opinions have been running strong about this issue.

I have also been cleaning out the old magazines from my scrapbooking box and tearing out the pages I want to keep. It came in handy at this moment in time because I found an idea for an edible topiary that you make out of lolly-pops and candy. Sounds like just the creative idea I needed for my next guild meeting, at which I have signed up as hostess. It will make a nice summery looking centerpiece for the table and it will be eaten so I will just throw away the styrofoam at the end, easy clean up!

I have somewhat designed another dozen pages on my scrapbook. I am working on the book called, "The book of Me" by Angie Pedersen. After I do these dozen pages I will be at the interesting part of the book. The author takes us into a voyage of discovery about ourselves and our characters, our core beliefs, and our purpose in life. These are things I have been interested in all my life. Her take on them is a little different than mine, she believes that if we document these things in a positive and permanent way, they become part of our arsonal of inspiration and determination to live well. I can see this very clearly. So that's why I wanted to spend more time on this book.

Like most books in my life these days it was introduced to me by one of the facet ladies. That what I call them. They are a group of ladies that I met when I was asked to join their group. they are an eclectic collection of fifteen or so ladies who are creative, wise and each struggling with their own life issues. Some of us a quilters, some crafters, some writers, some mothers and grandmothers, some teachers, ladies from all over the English speaking world! We offer each other opinions, hope, wisdom, encouragement, and knowledge. It started out as a book study group, to which we added a thing called the circle jar where we put our prayers for each other, but now we have evolved into a support system for each other. None of us have met in person, all together, but we communicate weekly over the internet. Some of us have met at times. I personally have only met one of them face to face. But we all know each other.

I figured I would introduce them to whoever turns up to read this blog since from time to time I will refer to them, they are that much of an influence on my life. I will refer to something a "Facet" said, or talk about "one of the Facet Ladies!"

So that's where I'm at today. Before the box office opens at noon I want to eat a little breakfast and work on the scrapbooking. Then I will go buy tickets ($85 worth of movie tickets at once!) And then I'll have the rest of the day to finish up some more scrapbooking, because my BFF is coming over tonight to spend a few hours watching movies and cross stitching!

TTYS,
Cindy K-K--Haunting today as usual!

Lets try this again!

2007-07-16T01:32:00.000-04:00

Gee whiz, it's been a while since I posted! In the year and two months that have passed since this last post, I have recieved an offer to get Bariatric Surgery and am now working on getting this thing accomplished. There are a huge number of hoops to jump through, but I'm nearly there. I am almost to the end. I have to wait for a stress test on August 14. Then they can schedule my surgery. I can't wait!

I will next turn my attention to other issues. There are certain things that I am good at, involved in, and passionate about. These things are crafty in nature and a bit artistic. I am also a very good writer and I have a lot of stories that I want to write. I am also interested in walking, running, and bicycling. I really want to get back on track with those pursuits. I have also recently begun scrapbooking, and have found this to be a very creative way to document my life.

But right now I would like to set a few goals! I want to desperately try to finish as many quilts as I possibly can, and in fact finish as many other types of projects as I can. I would also like to set goals for exercise and writing. So I will post these goals as I can. And I will update progress on them as it happens. Meanwhile a listing of all the various projects will be posted soon!

Cindy K-K

Before picture?

2006-05-15T17:04:00.000-04:00

This picture was taken a few years ago when we visited Picture Rocks in Michigan's U.P. So you can see what I'm dealing with here. It's tough sometimes to get out and walk when I sometimes haven't the energy to even get out of my chair. But I am determined to do it none-the-less. I am certain that eventually I will have more energy, more stamina, and less luggage, all I have to do is train myself to enjoy the action of walking. Coupled with photography, aided with Books on tape and music to walk by, bribing myself with interesting destinations, sights, motivations, and the like, I will continue to grow in my love and enjoyment of these walks. I will have conversations in my head, I will learn new things, I will continue to think my deep thoughts and share them in this journal.

We shall see if the next picture I put up here of myself, resembles this one. LOL!

The Haunter- Cindy K-K

A slight bribe

2006-05-15T16:42:00.000-04:00

Today I walked down Baldwin to Garfield Road, where there are several shops, a Sherwin Williams, a flower shop, a salon, a shop that sells rubber stamps, another that sells tobacco, and a Subway Sandwhich shop. I stopped in front of the Sherwin Williams store and looked for a long time a display of wall sized murals which intrigued me greatly except that I have no big walls in my home that are not already covered with quilts. Then I stopped into the Stamp store and marvelled at all the lovely cards that the lady had made from different papers and rubber stamps, colored inks and pens and lovely new techniques of paper craft that I've never imagined, and I have a great imagination!

I stopped at the Subway Shop and got a sandwich for lunch, this was my little bribe for myself of a bit of lunch so that I would get out and walk the mile up to the shop and back. So now I know I can walk a mile. Tomorrow I will walk down to the library about 9/10ths a mile from here. From I will rest there for a few minutes and browse, then I will continue on down to State Street and take some pictures of the gardens down there. I will post them tomorrow if I come up with anything good. I will then grab a bus back home again. That's the plan. We'll see how it goes.

Cindy K-K, the Haunter

My Haunts

2006-05-15T15:44:00.000-04:00

I am haunted by specters of death, ill health, medications, poor diet, little or no exercise and an artistic temperament. Over the past few years I have been trying to combat these hauntings with specific doses of healthy walking and a low-carb diet. This is to be a record of my new haunts, thoughts, pictures, discoveries, made as I walk about my life. I am a moody, sometimes bleak, person. So I will house my happier more positive thoughts in bright colors, and my sad, angry, or depressing thoughts in greys and blues. I have been fighting this problem all my life, and so I hold hope that I may someday claim victory over it. With the help of this journal and with He who strangthens me, all things are possible.

The Haunter, Cindy K-K