Judy P's Tickle Trunk

…or Loose Ends

Please note the time lag. It is now taking me three days to get around to doing anything. This is what I should be doing but am not:

1. Darning in the loose ends on all the mittens I knit this winter.

2. Finishing the hand quilting on the 52 weeks/52 blocks quilt I made (a project hosted by the Canadian Quilting Foundation – they published a new block pattern every week. I chose a berry theme) They don’t call them crazy quilts for nothing folks.

3. Binding the edges of any one of the three hooked rugs I made over the winter. (The rugs will be for sale at Coastal Queen’s Place once the world gets back on its feet)

But this is what I am really doing:

Curling up in my cozy dormer nook

With Hilary Mantel’s new book. And snacks.

Please note, there is a bit of a time lag in these posts. What? I just said that? Sigh, now I’m repeating myself. Add that to forgetting where I put stuff, not knowing what day it is, and my forgetting to make coffee two mornings in a row and it should add up to a diagnosis. Please don’t be administering any senility tests right now, give me another week to practice spelling ‘world’ backwards. I digress.

What I was going to say was that I have already finished the book, The Mirror and the Light. I’d review it but I’m not sure how. Here are a few notes: It is a long read but it never flags. We all know what happened to Thomas Cromwell in the end but I still couldn’t wait to make my way there, just in case some small crumb of evidence might have surfaced to change the course of history. (Crumb – pun intended if you’ve read the book) That’s what Hilary Mantel is good at: depicting hope. And beheadings, lots of beheading and a scattered burning. I know it sounds gruesome but you can’t write a book about the 1500s without a beheading or two, that’s just the way it is. Besides, it gives us something to compare these trying times to – things could be a lot worse. (Thankfully Mantel did not dwell too much on the plague because that might have put me off right now. )The other thing the author does well, at least for my style of imagination, is put you behind the author’s eyes. Or close. For the entire book I felt like I was standing next to Thomas Cromwell, seeing his nightmares as he saw them, feeling his emotions, and judging the situations. What I took away is that Thomas had a very critical eye and that he was a master of manipulation, that Henry the 8th was a narcissistic user, and that Jane Seymour was a hard act to follow. As were Mantel’s previous books. Indeed, the minute I was finished I ordered Wolf Hall, Bring up the Bones, and The Mirror and the Light as audiobooks. They ought to get me through a lot of sanding and varnishing once I am off self isolation

In other news

https://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/30-Rock.gif

My son is safely back in Halifax and in quarantine. Happy day! All his goods and chattels are still in China and he had to leave his sweetheart behind in Brazil but thank heavens he is back in the land of that old socialized health care. We will find a way to work things out. And remember everyone, self isolation at home is not a prison but a refuge. This too will pass.

© Judy Parsons 2020