What I m Reading: The Stolen Marriage

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Amanda Oliver
5 years ago
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What I m Reading: The Stolen Marriage I just finished up the audio book The Stolen Marriage: A Novel by Diane Chamberlain. I have read lots and lots of Diane Chamberlain books.

1 What I m Reading: The Stolen Marriage I just finished up the audio book The Stolen Marriage: A Novel by Diane Chamberlain. I have read lots and lots of Diane Chamberlain books. I could honestly say that she is one of my favorite authors. She s written many books and to date, I ve never read any of them that I didn t LOVE! That makes it hard to pick up her next books as I am always a little scared that she might write a dud but so far so good.. This book was great. I think one of the main reasons I love her books so much is that I learn a little bit about life in the times that she is writing about. In this book the story is told around the polio epidemic just as WWII is coming to an end. I didn t know a lot about polio and the great scare that it was. The book was informative and told a great story at the same time. Here s what Amazon has to say: One mistake, one fateful night, and Tess DeMello s life is changed forever. It is Pregnant, alone, and riddled with guilt, twentythree-year-old Tess DeMello abruptly gives up her budding career as a nurse and ends her engagement to the love of her

2 life, unable to live a lie. Instead, she turns to the baby s father for help and agrees to marry him, moving to the small, rural town of Hickory, North Carolina. Tess s new husband, Henry Kraft, is a secretive man who often stays out all night, hides money from his new wife, and shows her no affection. Tess quickly realizes she s trapped in a strange and loveless marriage with no way out. The people of Hickory love and respect Henry but see Tess as an outsider, treating her with suspicion and disdain. When one of the town s golden girls dies in a terrible accident, everyone holds Tess responsible. But Henry keeps his secrets even closer now, though it seems that everyone knows something about him that Tess does not. When a sudden polio epidemic strikes Hickory, the townspeople band together to build a polio hospital. Tess knows she is needed and defies Henry s wishes to begin working at there. Through this work, she begins to find purpose and meaning. Yet at home, Henry s actions grow more alarming by the day. As Tess works to save the lives of her patients, can she untangle the truth behind her husband s mysterious behavior and find the love and the life she was meant to have? Amazon reader gave this book 4.7 stars. I totally agree. READ IT! This one had me listening late listening in the car listening over nap time. Any chance I got, I listened. Stash Report: Quarters Quilter s You might remember my lack luster review from yesterday of Quilter s Quarters in Independence, Iowa.

3 Well here s what I found in those 7000 bolts of fabric. I did buy about 7 quarter yard cuts of mystery fabric and they are already cut up. Then I got this fabric. I thought it might be cute to fussy cut for a baby quilt some day. I got this next piece with fussy cutting in mind too.

4 I love the little sayings on it. I think it could be cute to fussy cut a saying and then add more around it and make a pot holder or something. I have it in the house now should the mood ever strike me to do something besides only quilts.

5 I ended up stopping at JoAnn s when I was in Cedar Rapids. I got these goodies. Needless for wool applique a wedge ruler and also needless for

fabric applique (not pictured). I hadn t used applique needles before. I thought they were a gimmick. NOPE. The needles were life changing. Remember I m applique-ing Bonnie Hunter s quilt Daylilies?

6 fabric applique (not pictured). I hadn t used applique needles before. I thought they were a gimmick. NOPE. The needles were life changing. Remember I m applique-ing Bonnie Hunter s quilt Daylilies? Well the needles are making that process MUCH less painful. About the wedge ruler I saw this pattern over at Quilted Twins. (Picture courtesy of Quilted Twins) the quilt Premium Labels. She used men s shirts. the labels in tack. She used the wedge ruler to wonky blocks. the blog She calls She kept make the I like the idea I know it s busy but still I like it a lot in all of it s busyness. I don t know if I d leave the labels on but the technique, fun different and something I d love to try!! So I bought the wedge ruler. If you haven t been you REALLY should go over the Quilted Twins page. It s a fun place to spend time there s one section of fabric for sale, one section that s blog and one section that I love browsing, FREE PATTERNS! Don t fret if you decided to download one of the patterns. It will make you think you re buying and have to pay for it but you don t.

Becky has new patterns ALL THE TIME!! and that is today s report. Being a Great Aunt I ve mentioned it before that I have an Aunt Agnes that I think the world of. Here she is at her 99th birthday.

7 Becky has new patterns ALL THE TIME!! and that is today s report. Being a Great Aunt I ve mentioned it before that I have an Aunt Agnes that I think the world of. Here she is at her 99th birthday. Next month we are gathering to celebrate birthday number 100. She is the nicest, most hard working, generous ladies I know. When my mom passed away young and her husband passed away young, my Aunt Agnes became much like a Grandma to my kids. She would come with my dad to our kids events. We loved it and the kids loved it. She became special to them too because she was active in their lives.

8 I got to thinking the other day how much I love and admire her also thinking how special it was that she made an effort to be part of my kids lives. That s when it hit me like a slap in the face. I am a great aunt. What am I doing to stay active in the lives of my great nieces and nephews? I want those special relationships in my life and if I don t try to work to have them, how will I have them? I actually have LOTS of great nieces and nephews. On my side of the family I have 50-ish. On Hubby s side, I think 18 great and 6 great-great. WOW. That s a lot considering I am only 52. Hubby and I are the younger siblings so where my sister already has 20 grandchildren we only have 2. In his family there are several great grandchildren that were born before we even had grandchildren.that s what happens when there are several years between siblings. Anyway back to my wanting to a special great aunt and not just a regular great aunt I decided that I need to be more present in their lives.so I went to a basketball game. My niece Jody lives in Cedar Rapids which is an hour from here. I contacted her and asked how far north does your team travel to play. She said Independence. So I told her to let me know when the game was. So the Thursday before Christmas Kelli and I went down to see the game. Independence Iowa is about an hour from house and about an hour for them to travel not terrible at all. I m really close to Jody. She s my niece but only 4 years younger than me-she s more like a sister to me. Her daughter Stacey who was playing is #34. We see Stacey quite a bit. Jody comes to a lot of family get togethers and Stacey and sister Dawn(who doesn t play basketball) come to them with Jody.

9 I love the relationship we have with her and am so happy to be part of her life. As you all know with Stacey being a 9th grader, things get tricky at this age, where Aunts aren t so cool so I m hoping we can ride through this and stay connected. When we got to the game my sister was there with her husband and my other niece, Jody s sister was there. I m not as close to Johanna. I used to be but life and priorities have made us drift. This has always been a little sad for me. It turns out her daughter Bri plays on the same team. Bri, I don t know very well.hardly at all. In fact, we were more or less introduced to each other.ugh. I hate that I don t know her. I wouldn t have recognized her on the street. She would have no clue who I was.

I got to thinking more about how extended our family has gotten.

10 It became apparent more than ever how easy it is for families to drift apart. Opportunities missed. I got to thinking more about how extended our family has gotten. I have some great nephews and nieces that I ve never met.i love having a big family but this part of it is hard.

11 Bri is the girl in red on the far right. Stacey the girl to far left in red. The basketball game was awesome. The girls are both REALLY good players. I can see that it s fun for my sister and husband to go the games and get an opportunity to see both of their grand daughters play at the same time. Marion, where they attend school, is known for it s great girls basketball players. I m sure these girls will grow with the team and be added to the list. Going for me was fun Fun to see the extended family fun to hang with Kelli. It was also a big reinforcement for me that I need to present in people s lives or opportunities can easily be missed. Our family is so big now that certainly I can t be everywhere all the time.but sometimes, I need to go. I need to make an effort. Jody had more kids she asked if I d like to go to show choir. That sounds fun.it s something our little school never had. So I think I ll be heading southward another day not all opportunities are going to be missed and as an added bonus, I can stop in and hang out with our little Lucy. Families are so hard sometimes sadly, I can see some of this drifting already happening in my own family. I don t see a way to stop it. Try as I might, Quilt Shop Tour: Quilter s

12 Quarters At the end of November I made a quick trip to Cedar Rapids for a baby shower for Lora and Buck s baby. I was worried I didn t have enough fabrics for the mystery quilt so I stopped in Independence at Quilter s Quarters. In my area they are known as the store with all of the fabric. FABRIC. The shop has over 7000 bolts. I mean ALL OF THE When I walked in I could hear a couple people talking in the back. I roamed the entire store It s really large.

13 Seriously, there is fabric EVERYWHERE! excess leans on the floor. likely has it. So much that the If there s a fabric you want, she

14 This picture right here shows about 1/6 of the store!!! There are novelty prints galore.

15 There are very few samples in proportion to the amount of fabric.

16 This is PART of the batik section. The fabric is organized in a way that it can be seen.

17 This is the black and white section.

18 Here s the floral section. She had a section and sold Pfaff sewing machines-at least I think she did. They were covered in other stuff and and I wasn t sure if that was the work area of if the machines were for sale. There is even a section with religious fabric.

19 Here s some Jesus Loves Me fabric. before. Have you? I ve never seen that

In all that time roaming the store taking pictures and then even picking out about about nine bolts of fabric, she never acknowledged me or came out of the back room.

20 In all that time roaming the store taking pictures and then even picking out about about nine bolts of fabric, she never acknowledged me or came out of the back room. She just talked and talked to the man that was there with her. It sounded like they might be neighbors or something talking about fencing. I finally went to the back room and asked for my fabric to be cut. To be honest, I don t know why I didn t just leave. I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. She still didn t talk to me but came to the counter and started cutting with the man following her. I roamed some more. I felt very awkward like I was eavesdropping in a on a personal conversation. I ended up finding a couple novelty prints and made my way back to the counter. She didn t have my first fabric cut and still didn t acknowledge me or let up on her conversation for

21 a second. I picked up here and there on the conversation even though I was trying to mind my own business. Something about a church and remodeling. That s when I remembered that someone who had gone to our quilt retreat in August had said they stopped here and that this lady was making a retreat center in an old church in town. She continued to talk to the guy. She would cut one of my fabrics refold the bolt edge.pin it in place.pause and look at the guy she was talking to then take another of my bolts and cut it. Still the lady never talked to me still she didn t include me in the conversation. I ve been to the shop enough to know that this is the owner. WOW. I was very unimpressed. She grabbed my stack of fabric and asked if was that all. That

22 was the first words she said to ME. I was in the store for 25 minutes. She started talking to the man again. She took my debit card, ran it through the machine-never said anything to me. She went to bag the fabric and said, Oh, you re doing the Bonnie Hunter mystery-these are her colors. I said yep and she went back to talking to her visitor. I ve been so hesitant to write this post. I ve thought and thought about if I should tell you about my experience. I don t want to be rude. I don t want to hurt her business but this is what I do. I visit quilt shops and I write reviews of them. I feel like I would be betraying you the reader if I didn t be honest in my review. I am doing to do a 1-5 rating system.five being the best-i m going to be stingy with my fives. This is just my impression on the day I visited and took pictures. Warm and Friendly: 0 Selection of Goods: 3 lots of bolts of fabric but I like the other things too! Neat and Organized: 3 I had to move bolts of fabric to get to what I wanted. shelf space. I tripped on another bolt that didn t have Parking: 4 Cozy and Cute: 1 limited samples limited cute displays Outside Appeal: 2 I think after visiting this shop I am considering adding the category of inspiring. This shop isn t. I didn t really realize that until I went to write this review. I love shops that have cute little projects that get me to buy things that I normally wouldn t have thought to buy. I love displays of bright colored zippers and three projects made up using them. Even though I don t make purses, I like to see them made and patterns for them. I like to see a baby toy, bibs, embroidery samples. I like looking at things besides bolts of fabric but if you are looking for fabric this is the place to go.

23 This shop is located about 20 minutes south of Lou Ann s Quilt Garden and Retreat in Oelwein where we held our retreat. Some people who attended suggested that we should do another retreat only move it to this location as there would be more space here in the new church retreat she is making.no WAY would I ever do that. NEVER. I like warm and friendly. Warm and friendly trumps space for me any day. I m hoping this was an off day. I m hoping that customers normally feel welcome and wanted. So will I go back. Only if I can t find what I m looking for ANYWHERE else!! I m really hoping that others who have visited the shop and had a good experience will chime in and let us know about that in the comment section. I want the best for this shop owner and am hoping someone has something to say that will balance out this review. Stop back tomorrow and see what I did buy.

What a Day..babies, quilt shops and McDonalds oh my!

What a Day..babies, quilt shops and McDonalds oh my! Saturday was the best day! It s the best day that I ve had in a LONG time!! I hadn t felt the greatest on Friday and had been a little worried I was