This is one of the books included in Kathryn’s 2025 birthday bag. I saw the idea on Facebook and decided to pass it along. On her birthday Kathryn received a bag of books (second hand that I’ve pre-read) each wrapped in brown paper. The idea is that once a month (on her birthdate) she can pick a book to read. Each book includes a bookmark of some sort.
This is one of the books that I didn’t pre-read. I’m a fan of Lisa See though and I hope to get it back one day so I can read it.
Pat was about to give this book away but I hadn’t read it and he thought I might like it. So it came out of the box (along with another by the same author) and was added to my books-to-read collection.
The author is Australian and the book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. I often find the Man Booker books are not to my liking but I gave this one a try. The writing is lovely, although there were some Australian terms that I wasn’t sure about. It was an interesting story and it wasn’t until the final pages that it all “came together”.
There are three main characters in the book, all of them somewhat damaged. Jim comes from a long line of fishermen and by the end of the book we see he is trying to outrun his family’s past. Lu is a musician who lost his brother, his brother’s wife, and their two children in a vehicle accident. The whole family are considered bad luck by the surrounding neighbours. Georgie has never maintained a long relationship, including one with her family; she is living with Jim and his two children when she meets Lu.
This quilt probably took as much time in the planning stage as it did in the making. I’ve always liked the idea of a temperature project but could never settle on what it would be – cross stitch, knitted or quilted, and then all the various options in all of those cases.
About the same time as I was seeing temperature quilts on social media, I got interested in fabric yo yos. I made a practice wreath to see how yo yos were made and then decided to use yo yos in my quilt. The size of the yo yos was the next decision; if there were going to be 365 of them they needed to be small enough that the quilt wouldn’t be super-sized, but they had to be large enough that I’d be able to do some quilting between the rows.
Next decision had to be what year I would choose to represent in my quilt. After some checking to see if I could find historical temperature records I decided to use the temperature readings from Saskatoon during the first year of my life – September 20, 1950 to September 19, 1951.
Once the year had been decided I needed to sort out temperature ranges, both highs and lows. I was working with a fabric line from my stash that had a restricted number of colours. Once the ranges and the fabric that corresponded to the ranges were decided it was time to get started.
The low temperatures of the day are reflected in the background colours while the highs for the day are reflected in the yo yo colours. It is interesting to note that the highest temperature of 33.3o F was on August 4, 1950 and the lowest temperature of -37.2o F was on February 7, 1951.
Surprisingly the whole thing went together quite quickly. The quilting is a simple mattress stitch both horizontally and vertically. I was able to complete the quilt in time for the Guild’s 2025 show.
This quilt represents the temperatures (highs and lows) for the first year of my life. The yo yo’s represent the highs and the backgrounds represent the lows. Interesting to note the highest temperature of 33.3 F on August 4, 1950 and the lowest temperature of -37.2 F on February 7, 1951. See the label for the temperature ranges. I quilted this on my domestic Janome.
Goodreads says I’ve read the book twice but I’ve never written a review (that I could find). Although the book was good I don’t want to make the mistake of reading it again.
I always like the Inspector Lynley novels; this one is the 17th in the series. It doesn’t matter a whole lot the order you read them in, although there are often hints at characters that appeared in previous books.
Lynley is working undercover, at the request of a senior officer, to verify that the death of the nephew of a wealthy family was truly an accident. He brings along Simon and Deborah St. James to help him with his inquiries. There are a number of secrets revealed along the way and there are several storylines going at the same time – all involving the Fairclough’s.
I enjoyed the book but thought it could have been better with just one less web of intrigue.
