Friday, November 30, 2018
On "The Clockmaker's Daughter": A Book Review
Title: The Clockmaker's Daughter
Author: Kate Morton
Genre: Fiction/Mystery
About the Book...
Told across multiple story lines from the 1860's through 2017, The Clockmaker's Daughter revolves around artist Edward Radcliffe, the priceless Radcliffe blue jewel, and the mysterious Lily Millington, all who continue to have an affect on those in the future including a school girl, a WWII evacuee, and an archivist among others.
What I Think...
Kate Morton is one of the few mainstream authors who I actually look forward to finding out has written a new book and as far as I'm concerned this is her best yet!
Part of what I love about her books is that she jumps back and forth between the past and present combining multiple story lines that ultimately come together by the end. This particular book had about six different plot lines as opposed to the typical two or three, which I felt added a greater depth to this book than her others. While some characters and their stories were more engaging , Morton does an excellent job in balancing them all to the extent that you want to keep reading to find out how they all relate to one another. She also keeps you guessing about what happened to the Radcliffe blue and the fate of Lily without revealing too much as the book progresses. There are quite a few twists and turns overall, but each one builds on the story rather than distracting from it.
To Sum It All Up...
A well written novel that leaves you guessing until the very end and that captures the common human frailties that link the characters together over a mass span of time.♥️
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
On a Magnifying Glass Pin to Match My Nancy Drew Shirt: A Photo Post
Thursday, November 1, 2018
On Being a Rose Bush
Yesterday I became one of the Queen of Heart's rose bushes, a costume that has been coming together for the past few month.
It all started simply enough with the roses about mid-September. After some thoughts about getting a bouquet of fake roses at the store, I ended up deciding that I'd really rather make them out of felt, which then turned into hand-sewing them out of felt--all 15 of them--because if I hot glued them I realized the pin probably wouldn't go through. May I say while it's not too bad to do a few, 15 is a bit much? Then I got over excited about the leaves (didn't count those), but those I could at least do on the machine with the exception of attaching them to the roses.
While I was going through this process, I still needed to find a sweater, so I made a trip to the swap meet to find one (post on the other finds coming soon!) and managed to find the one I'm wearing in the pic and a thermal green shirt as an additional option both for just a $1.
So having found the perfect sweater and with the roses being done, I thought "It's the beginning of October and I'm already done, great!"...but being the obsessive Alice's Adventures in Wonderland girl that I am, I kept thinking of new things to add!
Suddenly, it occurred to me that I needed a paint can, which was easy enough to obtain and make a label for (using Lewis Carroll font, I might add!) and once again I thought I was done with the exception of maybe digging around the garage for a paint brush. Then last Friday, after having debated about it off and on for a month, I decided I really did need brown jeans if it was going to look right, so I stopped by a thrift store on my way home. Two pairs of brown pants in my size...one pair fit!!! Having checked that off my list, I was really truly done. You'll will by now caught on to where this is going.
It is now October 30th...I wanted a leaf mask! So I happily sat on the living room floor and made my mask while listening to the 1938 radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds". All done, again! Except around 7:30, I started thinking about how I should have a Queen of Hearts playing card dangling from my outfit somewhere and how nice it would have been if I had had time to make a stuffed hedgehog. So I hunt up an image of a Victorian playing card, while still thinking about hedgehogs and then it occurs to me I can make a felt one and pin it on my leg! Some sketching, hand-stitching, and machine stitching later, tada, hedgehog! All done! Except as I'm going to bed, I'm thinking, I really don't like the store bought paint brush...
October 31st, I wake up thinking about paint brushes. I can't hang any of my art paint brushes from my belt loop because there's no place to tie anything on to them. However, I have two chop-sticks that I didn't end up using for the mask. I hot glue them together, leaving a gap to slip the ribbon through, glue on some yarn, wrap silver wire ribbon around the top of that, and add a little paint to make a fake brush that any playing card would be proud to paint with! And that really truly concluded the costume making!
The non-Cheshire Cat wanted to know why it wasn't being fed from the "giant tin of cat food" |
♥️ ♥️ ♥️
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)