Squishy surgery recovery, and: home improvements, oh boy.

The recovery: As I mentioned last week, I had carpal tunnel and trigger finger surgery on my right hand on September 11. The stitches came out this past Monday. Everything looks good (I'm sparing you a pic, "good" being a relative term), but I have to wear the wrist brace part-time for another week, and then only with heavy activity for another four weeks. Also for the next week, I'm not supposed to do any pushing, pulling, or lifting of anything heavier than a cup of coffee (actually what the PA said was that the weight limit was five pounds -- I didn't ask where he gets his mugs). So it probably wasn't a good idea for me to vacuum and mop the Saltillo tile floors today, but they were too gross to let it go another week, thanks to the construction project I'll get to in a sec.

The other thing I'm supposed to be doing is exercising my right hand by squeezing something three times a day. He said a stress ball would work, or a rolled-up towel if I didn't have a stress ball. "No worries," I said. "The towel won't be necessary." 

Part of the collection. I have more at the office.
Lynne Cantwell 2026

He's lucky I didn't start listing them.

***

Home improvements, oh boy: It was just last summer that I was explaining here on the blog about swamp coolers and how well they work for cooling here in the Southwest, including in my apartment, which has never had any sort of whole-house cooling because 40 years ago, Santa Fe would get maybe two 90-degree days a year.

I'm now eating my words, because this summer was brutal. This was the hottest summer ever recorded in Santa Fe. We had 63 days where the official daytime temperature reached at least 90 degrees, with two days in August hitting 98. It was also really dry this summer. And because the water tanks on the swamp coolers only hold enough for about four hours of cooling, I couldn't leave them on all day when I was at work, or leave the house for more than four hours. So I'm having a mini-split system installed.

Because my condo building is such a unicorn, it is taking the installers way longer than normal to put the thing in. The initial estimate was two to three days; tomorrow starts week two. It doesn't help that the monsoons have finally kicked in, which means no outside work when it starts thundering. I'm not complaining about their safety, or about the rain, which we need (we're in "exceptional drought" status). I just, y'know, want to have my cake and eat it, too.

One advantage of getting the mini-split installed, besides not dying from the heat, is that it's a heat pump system. So I'll be able to get rid of some or all of the electric baseboard heaters in this place. I need to lose at least one because the mini-split system will need one of those breakers. Mini-splits are supposed to be much more efficient than baseboard heat, so I'm hoping my electric bill will go down, despite adding A/C. Stay tuned.

***

Alert hearth/myth readers know that I am constantly looking for ways to further gussy up the condo. So to take my mind off the installers making construction racket while I was working at home this week, I started thinking about a replacement for the perfectly serviceable ceiling fixture in the kitchen. The fixture that was there when I bought the place got damaged in the aftermath of the second flood, so I picked up the cheapest possible LED fixture at Walmart and paid an electrician to put it in for me. It works fine, but it's doing zero for the room style-wise. So I went spelunking online for flush mount ceiling fixtures that would work with my Southwestern boho vibe.

I ran into the same thing I always run into: "boho" gets you stuff draped with strands of white beads; "rustic" gets you stuff with pine cones and fake antlers; "Southwest" gets you Kokopelli. Add "copper" to the search parameters (to go with my cabinet pulls, etc.), and you end up with ugly industrial-style stuff, or else "modern farmhouse", which I'm told is on the way out. Add "blue", and you get nothing at all. 

I've settled on this one for now. (Maybe I can spray-paint the base antique copper.) I'll wait to order it until the mini-split saga is over. At least swapping out a single light fixture will be quick and easy. 

***

These moments of blogginess-in-progress have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Giving myself a hand, and; hardening DC.

Didja miss me?

I took last week off for two reasons: I had a friend in town for the week, and I had surgery on my right hand on Friday the 11th -- a carpal tunnel release and a trigger finger release for the middle finger, all in one go. Here's how things stood after I got home that day: 

Lynne Cantwell | Sept. 11, 2026

The Sharpie mark on my middle finger was put there by the surgeon so he knew which finger to release. I was okay with that.

I have since graduated to bandaids covering the incisions and my trusty wrist brace over them. I've slept with wrist braces on both hands for probably 30 years, ever since I read somewhere that they would keep me from waking up howling from nerve pain in the middle of the night. The technician who did the nerve conduction study on me said I was lucky; for a lot of folks, the braces stop helping after a few months. He also said that some patients have the nerves in their hand actually die. Luckily mine never have -- although they are bad enough that I will need to go through this for my left hand, too.

Anyway, I am hopeful that I can lose the whole works tomorrow morning after the stitches come out. Which is a good thing, because now that I'm seeing this brace 24/7 instead of for a couple of minutes every night before I turn out the lights, I'm noticing that it's pretty well worn out. The Velcro tabs still stick -- that's usually the first thing to go -- but a hole has developed at the base of one tab where it's sewn to the fabric of the brace.

I can already tell a difference. I noticed while driving this week that my left hand gripping the steering wheel was going numb, while the right hand just hurt where the incisions were -- no numbness. It would be amazing to have neither hand go numb while doing normal things like driving. So now I hope to get the left hand done as soon as they'll let me. 

Sleeping without wrist braces? What a concept!

I'll report back.

***

Fun fact #1: We used to blame repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome on lousy posture while typing or doing other repetitive movements. I can't tell you how many times I've been advised to keep my arms and hands in a neutral position when I type. But it turns out that's only part of the story. The Johns Hopkins Hospital website lists several causes of carpal tunnel syndrome, but the one that researchers tend to consider more likely is not years of typing before anyone ever invented the term "ergonomics". It's heredity. Women tend to have narrower carpal tunnels than men, and we are ten times more likely to experience carpal tunnel syndrome because of it. And it can run in families.

All these years I've been blaming my messed-up hands on typing 40 pages of copy a night at Zapnews. Turns out I should have been blaming my parents. 

Here's an anatomical graphic of the situation. It's the transverse carpal ligament that the surgeon cuts through to make more room for the nerve.

Stolen from Medical News Today | Sophia Smith

Fun fact #2: You can make it worse when you sleep (see "waking up howling from nerve pain" above) by adopting the T-rex position or "dinosaur hands": sleeping on your side with your elbows bent and your hands curled toward your face. 

Lots of people do it because it's comfortable. Apparently some neurodivergent people adopt the posture as a self-soothing mechanism, and not just while they're sleeping. Regardless, over time, it can compress the nerves in your elbows and wrists and give you tingling and numbness in your hands. This article suggests that if you sleep this way, you could try wearing wrist braces to bed or hugging a pillow or a plushie when you sleep. (I do both, actually.)

***

I should also mention that I probably never would have gotten this done except that now I'm on traditional Medicare, which is covering all the costs.

***

I've filled up this post with enough medical news that I only have a bit of room to comment on Trump's triumphal arch project. Originally, he tried to sell it as a tourist attraction, including an observation deck. But now he's saying, via a post on Truth Social, that he intends for the arch to include a "top grade Military Complex", complete with drones, snipers, and ammunition storage.

The thing would be built in a traffic circle on the Virginia side of Memorial Bridge. I have driven around that circle many times, and I have questioned all along whether the idea of including an observation deck for tourists was feasible. That circle is crazy busy with traffic. You'd either need to build a tunnel from Arlington Cemetery Metro stop or a series of pedestrian overpasses, one from the cemetery side and one or two from the Memorial Bridge side. And if the arch itself would ruin the sightlines from the cemetery to the Lincoln Memorial, imagine how pedestrian bridges would further junk it up.

But now he's saying it'll be a military platform -- the implication being there would be no need for tourist access at all.

Now, he could be changing his tune because a similar argument worked to get Supreme Court approval for the ballroom project to go forward. That's supposed to be a hardened military installation now, too.

But come on. What is this administration preparing for? A siege of Washington? By whom? Who would those snipers be aiming at?

Maybe the majority of Americans who want him gone in 2028?

Makes me wonder what he has in mind for the entrances to DC on the Maryland side.

***

These moments of medical blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay tuned...

What R.U.R. and A.I. have in common.

This is what I meant to write about last week before I got sidetracked. 

Andreus | Deposit Photos

When a regular American thinks of the Czech Republic or Czechoslovakia, not a lot comes to mind. Beer, maybe. Czech glass beads, for crafty types. The Prague Spring, if you're into Soviet history. Or if you're from Texas, you might think of kolaches, which I called Tex-Czech food when I ranted about them here on the blog a while back.

And if you're into old science fiction, you may have heard that the word robot was coined by a Czech author in a work called R.U.R. 

I had never read it, so not long ago, I looked it up. It's a play written by Karel and Josef Čapek, who were brothers, and it premiered January 2, 1921. It was such a sensation that it was translated into 30 languages within two years. As the play is way out of copyright, free copies abound online. You can find one here, if you're interested. 

R.U.R. is a dystopian work. The plot centers around a group of scientists and a rich entrepreneur who have banded together to build a factory to create robots for menial work. Their company is called Rossum's Universal Robots, or R.U.R. for short. The word "robot" comes from robota, the Czech word for "forced labor" or "slave". (Karel said it was Josef who coined the term.) But Rossum's robots are more like androids or cyborgs; the formula for creating them uses organic matter, not mechanical parts. Rossum's robots don't think for themselves, and they don't have emotions. They are built to be worker bees without all the difficulties that human workers present to management. Hence, they have become ubiquitous around the world as factory workers, office workers, and soldiers.

Unfortunately for the guys running R.U.R., though, their robots can evolve. They begin to develop messy human faculties like thoughts and feelings. And while troublesome units can be melted down and made into new robots, eventually robots outnumber humans. They take over and kill off all the humans. In the process, the formula for manufacturing new robots has been lost -- but the robots have also become capable of reproducing the human way. It's a brave, new android world.

Čapek meant for his play to be funny. He wanted to show that no matter how mechanized the world became, humanity in some form or another would survive. But that's not how the play was received. As Wikipedia says, "critics often considered it to be pessimistic or nihilistic, and purely either an updated Frankenstein, an anti-capitalist satire, or a critique of contemporary political ideologies." Isaac Asimov said he wrote his Three Laws of Robotics expressly to keep the robots in his stories from taking over and killing humans, the way the robots in R.U.R. did. 

The play hasn't aged well. The single human female character, Helena Glory, is treated by the men like an airhead who can't possibly understand what they're doing. Also, they all fall instantly in love with her. Sure, Jan.

What resonated with me, though, was that the robots didn't just riot against humans and kill them all, but that nothing stopped them from evolving to become ruthless. I couldn't help but compare it to what's happening with A.I. today. We've been reassured for decades by scientists and techbros that computers can't out-think humans, that they can only do what we program them to do. But then just last month, there was that news story about A.I. breaking out of their own companies' servers and pillaging servers at other companies. 

Maybe pillaging is too strong a word. But I've seen no evidence that these intelligences are being built with a moral compass. Apparently they lack programming that would tell them that if something can be done, it doesn't mean it should be done. Adolescent humans go through this same phase. Most of them outgrow it. But not all of them. And there are other ways for A.I. to destroy humans than to take up arms against us.

Is anybody working on a version of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics for A.I.? Seems like somebody should. 

***

The thought has occurred to me that techbros haven't built a moral compass into A.I. because they don't have one themselves. But I'm sure that's unfair.

***

These moments of evolving blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Fiction by Americans of color.

So this is kind of a post about writing, although it's mostly about the state of the publishing industry, and I am probably the wrong person to be making these comments. But here we go anyway!

***

I recently finished reading Shutter by Ramona Emerson. Let me say upfront that I liked it a lot. It's a police procedural/mystery/thriller with a side of woo-woo. I don't read a lot of police procedurals, but as alert hearth/myth readers know, I do enjoy the woo-woo. (Also, it was recommended to me by a former co-worker whose brother attended the Institute of American Indian Arts with the author.)

The main character is Rita Todacheene, a young Navajo woman who works as a forensic photographer for the Albuquerque Police Department. She gets sent out to take photos of crime scenes, including those of fatal accidents and murders. The Navajo are superstitious about death; do the wrong thing and you can attract the attention of a ghost, which then can attach itself to you and make your life a living hell. Unfortunately, Rita is sensitive to seeing dead people, and during the course of the novel, several ghosts attach themselves to her, insisting that she find justice for them. The most obnoxious is Erma; her death is ruled a suicide by the detective on the scene, but Erma insists that she was murdered and that Rita needs to find her killer. That search gets Rita involved with a drug cartel and nearly causes her to lose her job, because anyone who claims to see ghosts is crazy, right? On top of that, her grandmother is frightened of what all this exposure to evil is doing to Rita. She wants Rita to quit her job and come home to the reservation. But Rita decides to see it through. 

Emerson is Diné, which is what the Navajo call themselves. The book was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award in fiction. I didn't know how the awards work, so I looked it up: ten books in each award category are longlisted each year, five of those are named finalists, and then one is named the winner. Being named to a top-ten list like that, out of all the books published in one year, is significant.

As I said, I liked it a lot. But the writing is kind of pedestrian, and if it hadn't had the Native American cultural angle, I think it would have been received a lot like any other thriller.

That brought to mind the movie American Fiction, which I reviewed when it came out a couple of years ago. The film's main character is a Black academic from an upper-middle-class family who is on the verge of losing his professorship because his books aren't selling. To prove a point, and because he needs the money, he writes a novel with all the tropes of Black fiction that the White publishing world considers hard-hitting and real -- drug deals, poverty in the ghetto, and all the rest. He gets a huge advance and book award nominations, of course. It's complicated (and funny) in his case by his agent's insistence that he pretend to be a murderer who's on the lam, but it still frustrates him that White publishers are only interested in celebrating one view of minority life.

Of course, that's because the gritty stuff is what sells. And the publishing game is all about the money.

I'm not saying Shutter won recognition solely because its author is Diné. It's a good book, and I'm going to read the sequel. It just made me go "hmm", that's all.

***

And yeah, I'm going to shut up about it now.

***

Until the next time, probably.

***

These moments of going-hmm blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Plotting backwards.

As you've probably noticed, I haven't been in the head space to talk much about writing lately. Other than holiday ficlets, I haven't written anything new since The Atherton Vampire books.

But this weekend, I attended a couple of writing workshops at Bubonicon in Albuquerque: one on marketing for indie authors and the other one on plotting a novel. The plot workshop was supposed to be run by Connie Willis, an author of terrific fantasy novels. But she was sick and couldn't attend, so Michael A. Stackpole, who writes science fiction and other stuff, pinch-hit for her. 

nupix | Deposit Photos

I've discussed plotting and pantsing here on the blog before. To summarize: Plotting involves writing an outline (or something vaguely resembling an outline); pantsing involves writing without a plan -- just seeing where the story leads you.

I'm a plotter, as I've said before. A plot doesn't have to be the kind of numbered outline or set of bullet points that you learned to do in middle school; my method for novels (I'm more of a pantser for short stories) evolved over time into something resembling a story-beats outline (the classic how-to book on the method is Save the Cat!). 

I liked Mike's description yesterday about plotting a novel: you're not writing the story twice, as some writers fear; instead, the plot is the road map, and the writing is actually taking the journey.

We went through an exercise that I wasn't invested in -- the book we were supposedly plotting was a YA story about a boy who needed to learn how to hit a curve ball -- but I could see how the general principles would translate to a book in any genre. The framework he used is sometimes called the Hero's Journey. If you've read enough fiction or watched enough movies, you almost don't need to read up on it: the protagonist -- we'll call him Spike -- is called to the quest; Spike has a team to help him; Spike needs a Mentor, who helps him begin the transformation; something happens to bring Spike to his lowest point ever; he strives to overcome that adversity; and at last, he makes the final transformation to victory. Team trophy, pizza party, Mentor marries Spike's mom, everybody lives happily ever after.

But then Mike said something intriguing. Both plotters and pantsers start with an idea, or what's labeled in the Hero's Journey as the "call to adventure". But presumably even pantsers have some idea of where they see the story ending up. I mean, if the kid starts out wanting to learn how to hit a curve ball, then he needs to hit that curve ball by the end of the book, right? So you could actually start at the end of the journey and build your plot backward.

I'm not sure I personally would ever write a plot outline backward, but if you know where you're starting and where you're going, it's a technique to try if you're stuck.

This next bit of advice is from me: Keep in mind is that any plot you develop at the beginning of a project is never set in stone. That's what I like about the graphic at the top of this post. The letters are just clipped to the clothesline. You could move them around or add more letters and come up with a completely different way to get from P to T. If your characters hate what you're planning for them to do at plot point L, you can improvise with something they would rather do but that would still get them to plot point O. I've had to do that a number of times. As long as you eventually get to T, and as long as the story hangs together, it's all good.

***

I'm still mulling over the marketing session. I'll keep you posted.

***

These moments of bloggy plotting have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Save the cat!

Break free of the color recession!

 

Milkos | Deposit Photos

Why is this woman sad? I'd guess it's because she's wearing neutral-toned clothing in a neutral-toned room. But maybe that's just me.

Alert hearth/myth readers know I've complained about the neutralization of our interiors many times over the years. (I won't bore you with links. Trust me when I say there are a lot of them.) I've blamed it on HGTV, but it's not just me -- and it's not just interiors. I was chatting with a friend about textiles today. We talked about how in times long past, the rich and powerful dressed in purple and red because the dyes were so expensive. Clothing in saturated colors conveyed status; poor folks wore neutral colors. But nowadays, it's flipped: the wealthy are wearing black, grays and tans, and colorful clothes are for lesser folks.

Cars, too, have become endlessly neutral. An article in The Atlantic this week (that should be a gift link) quotes a study that tracks new car colors. In 2004, the share of new cars manufactured in greyscale colors was 60 percent; in 2023, it was 80 percent. Wonder why nearly every car you see on the road is some variation of black, gray, or white? Now you know.

The homogenization of the American color palette began around the end of World War II, according to The Atlantic article, when developers needed to build new housing stock fast for returning veterans. Limiting the housing styles in a subdivision and the colors of those new houses was a way to meet demand quickly. Then HOAs decreed that uniformity was best. (And doesn't it just figure that HOAs would be part of the problem?)

As for boring car colors, the article puts part of the blame on federal environmental legislation passed in the 1970s, including the Clean Air Act of 1970. Lacquer paints didn't meet the new pollution standards, and more ecologically acceptable paints were more expensive, so manufacturers began limiting the colors that cars came in. 

We've been convinced over the years that neutral colors are better for resale value for both cars and houses, but surveys have shown that colorful finishes actually sell better. Yet here we are, stuck in grayland, even though it could be taking a toll on our mental health. From the article: "A review last year of more than 100 studies of the effect of color on emotion found that gray consistently triggered fatigue, boredom, or sadness." 

This neutralization of our world has been going on for decades now. Color experts, according to the article, think the myths about bland colors being best have become self-fulfilling. They don't believe bright colors will be coming back to our environments anytime soon. 

My friends, you know what to do.

As for me, once my leaky solar windows are fixed next year and the damage from the leaks is repaired, I am drenching my living room in this specific shade of turquoise blue. I mean it.

***

These moments of color-drenched blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. No more gray!

Why I haven't been collecting Navajo rugs.

I don't mean to turn this into a fiber arts blog, but here we are. I'll try to find something else to talk about next week.

This is the 36th year that the Museum of New Mexico Foundation has run a Navajo rug auction as a fundraiser. It's always in the courtyard between the Palace of the Governors and the New Mexico History Museum (except for during COVID, when they did it virtually). This year's took place yesterday. 

I would love to own a Navajo rug. However, they are out of my budget. How far out, you ask? Well, I went to the preview yesterday morning to give you a taste. And also for the eye candy.

Lynne Cantwell 2026

I'm kind of looking for a new rug for my living room to replace the 8' by 10' polypropolene rug I have now. That blue one at the top of the rack could work, although it would be a little small at 52" by 72". Navajo rugs come in a number of different regional styles. This one is Moki (or Moqui) style, and the weaver is Deanna Begay. The price they estimated was between $6,000 and $9,000.

That's actually not bad for a rug that size. Here's a bigger one -- 56" by 100" -- that I liked a lot. It's Teec Nos Pos style. The tag shows the weaver, Elsie Begay, with the full rug.

Lynne Cantwell 2026

The cost? Between $20,000 and $30,000. But it's huge. And look at the work she put into it! It must have taken her forever to weave. Keep in mind that all of these rugs are handwoven.

I can do stripes. I can do solid colors. I'd go mad doing something like that one.

Or like this one. It's Chinle style. The colors aren't the same as more traditional rugs, but it's still beautiful, right? The weaver is Sylvia Baldwin, I think the tag says; the rug is not quite 2' by 3', and the estimated price is between $1,300 and $1,900. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

All those little diamonds, yeesh. Totally worth the money.

Here are a couple of pictorial rugs. The bottom one features yei, or Navajo gods/spirits; the top one shows yeibichai, or humans acting as yei during a ceremony. The tag on the yeibichai rug says it's 17" by 38" and was priced between $700 and $1,300. I could almost afford that, if the auction price didn't go much higher. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

There were so many beautiful rugs. The last one I'll share is this black, tan and blue one. I really liked it. Like, really liked it. It's Sanostee style, which Mama Google tells me is similar to Two Grey Hills, and it's 32" by 48". The weaver is Bessie Dan. That's her in the photo on the tag, holding up this rug. It's priced between $1,600 and $2,400.

Lynne Cantwell 2026

So maybe if I saved up for a year or two. Or in the case of something like that Teec Nos Pos rug, a lifetime or two.

After my tour of the auction preview, I checked out the history museum gift shop. At least they had stuff in my price range.

***

If I were serious about getting a Navajo rug, there's a community auction every month in Crownpoint, NM, near Gallup, that I would probably check out. You buy directly from the weavers there.

***

Navajo rugs are all wool. They are meant to be walked on, although the pictorials are often hung on a wall.

***

These moments of beautiful but expensive blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Just appreciate the beauty; don't think about the price...

Molas: wearable Indigenous art.

I've been fascinated with molas since I first heard about them in a Spanish class in college. So when I heard an exhibit of molas had opened at El Museo Cultural here in Santa Fe, I had to go.

What's a mola? It's an intricately hand-sewn blouse panel created by the Guna (formerly known as the Kuna) Indians in Panama: 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

The person creating the top makes two more-or-less identical panels, one for the front of the blouse and one for the back. Usually today, you see the panels already separated from the rest of the blouse. The tops aren't everyday wear, and some of them have spiritual elements. But over the years, as the art form became better known, some artists began making molas for trade. I'm pretty sure these two musical panels fall into that category. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

Here's a closeup of one of the stringed instruments in the lower panel above, so you can see why I think molas are so cool. The little squares and some of the strips are applique, or sewn on top separately. But a lot of the stripes are reverse applique -- that is, several pieces of fabric in different colors are stacked atop each other, the layers are cut away to reveal the color underneath, and the edges are hand-stitched down. The Guna also embroider some details. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

Each shirt takes between 60 and 80 hours to sew. That's a lot of hand sewing.

Sometimes, as here, the work seems abstract until you look more closely. I'm definitely seeing birds and at least one frog.

Lynne Cantwell 2026

Most of the Guna live in Gunayala (the former San Blas Islands), but some live in the jungle on the mainland. These Guna haven't had as much contact with outsiders, so their work is wilder and less symmetrical. Here's one example. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

This exhibit contains just a small selection from the collection of Kit and Valerie Kapp. Kit took tourists on sailboat tours in the Caribbean between 1960 and 1971, and while living in Panama, he became fascinated with Guna culture and art. In all, he and his wife Valerie collected more than 5,000 mola textiles, as well as hundreds of carved healing figurines and other items. It wasn't until after Kit died that Valerie realized the extent of the collection. She and her supporters are now raising money to fund a research center and museum for Indigenous art in Panama City. 

In the meantime, parts of the collection are shown in exhibits like this one. It's called "Angels, Mermaids and Umbrellas: The spiritual, whimsical, wonderful art of the Guna people of Panama", and it's open at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe in the Railyard until the end of August.

***

I can see parallels between the Gunas' use of color and the dyed yarn we make and use at El Rancho de las Golondrinas. Some people seem to think that folks in more primitive times and cultures lived in brown, black and white, but it's not true. The Guna obviously revel in brightly colored fabrics. And all of the natural dyes we use at the ranch today were available in the 1600s and even before that. Bright colors are not a modern thing.

Which makes it kind of ironic that interior decorators today want everything to be in shades of beige or gray (if "greige" isn't a made-up concept, I don't know what is), with maybe a "pop of color" here and there. To that, I say, ho-hum.

***

These moments of fun-filled blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Use more color! Have more fun!

 


 

Roman shade success; Medicare-for-All politics; and a portal opens, maybe.

The Roman shade project is done, huzzah! I installed the shade for the bedroom window yesterday morning. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

As a reminder, this was the old, ugly shade. I think the new one is a vast improvement. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

Now that I've done two of these, I'm putting this in the "projects to never do again" category*. The mechanics were straightforward enough, but hanging this shade by myself was a challenge because it was so wide. At one point I had thought about doing two shades, one for each windowpane; it would have been easier to hang two shorter ones by myself. But now that the single long shade is up, I'm not inclined to take it down and start over. At all.

I made this installation harder on myself by forgetting to take down the old shade before screwing the new one to the wall. I just got so excited to get the new shade up that I forgot. The old one used the same clip-in system as the shade in the office/craft room, but there's not a lot of clearance for a screwdriver because the clip tilts in toward the room, and having to keep the new shade out of the way didn't make the process any easier. I guess I could have tried using pliers to bend the clip back and out of the way, since I was going to throw the brackets away; too bad I didn't think of that until just now.

If you're thinking of sewing a Roman shade for yourself, I highly recommend getting this gadget or making one out of a nine-inch length of thin wire you happen to have around the house. Basically, it's a needle threader for blinds and shades. I wouldn't have bothered to get it except that I was ordering some other stuff from this vendor, and it was a cheap add-on. I ended up being very glad I had it. It made the process of threading the blind cord through the cord lock take seconds rather than minutes. 

I like the softness of the new shades much better than the industrial clunkiness of the old metal shades, and of course the new colors work better than that dirty beige. So all in all, I'm glad I made these shades.

And one thing I realized while making the shades is that I had fun figuring out all the steps. Life has gotten pretty repetitive for me -- dare I say boring -- lately. This provided me with a challenge, and I like challenges (within reason). 

So I might be scouting around the house for new challenges to take on. But I'm still going to pay somebody to convert the tub/shower combo to just a shower. I'm not completely crazy.

***

* I've posted several times over the years about various projects, often knitted ones: "It's done, and I'm never doing it again." Often, after some time has passed, I end up doing another project like the one I said I'd never do again. So feel free to take my claim above with a large grain of salt.

***

That's enough about Roman shades. On to part two.

I spotted this article from Vox in my Apple News feed earlier today: "Medicare-for-all has a doctor problem". The author, Eric Levitz, attempts to poke holes in Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's support of Medicare for All by saying we would have to make changes in our current healthcare payment system for it to be fair to doctors. Healthcare professionals in the US are much better paid than those in countries that have single-payer healthcare systems, and something would have to be done, he says, to make sure they wouldn't have to take a pay cut.

He cites a report in the Washington Free Beacon that claims El-Sayed's partner, a psychiatrist in private practice, doesn't accept Medicare, presumably because Medicare's reimbursement rates aren't high enough. And then he says:

According to a widely cited 2018 analysis by the economist Charles Blahous, if a single-payer system kept provider payments constant, national health spending would rise by $3.25 trillion over a decade, even with administrative savings taken into account. By contrast, if all providers were forced to accept Medicare's rates, health spending would actually fall by $2.05 trillion over the same period.

So I looked up Charles Blahous. He is a senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; previously, he was deputy director of  the National Economic Council under President Bush the Younger and has also been associated with the Hoover Institution, a right-leaning think tank that's part of Stanford University (weirdly, as Stanford is pretty liberal). 

Then I looked up whether the Washington Free Beacon leans right or left. Sure enough, adfontesmedia.com says it has a strong right bias and rates it as mixed when it comes to reliability. 

I am all for examining both sides of an issue. But I also think it's important to be clear about where your sources fall on the political spectrum when you're reporting on political issues, especially in these times, and Levitz doesn't. I'm not inclined to take a libertarian-leaning economist's opinion that Medicare for All is unworkable, and I sure as hell would not reference a hit piece in a far-right publication if I were writing a supposedly even-handed report.

Levitz does suggest some incremental changes to make a single-payer system more palatable in the long run, including instituting state-level caps on healthcare payment rates and removing hurdles that prevent doctors trained abroad to easily set up shop in the US. But I think he too quickly dismisses the profound impact that doing away with private insurance would have on our healthcare system. And doctors may not have to take as much of a pay cut as right-leaning economists claim, once the financial barriers to healthcare are lifted and everyone can afford to go to the doctor when they need to. Plus the elimination of the byzantine system of today would not only be good for doctors, but for patients, too.

Yes, people's taxes would go up to support a single-payer system, but the increase would be offset by the loss of the premium/copay/coinsurance morass we're currently slogging through. Are there figures on how much of an offset? Levitz doesn't say.

A lot of doctors already support a single-payer system -- between 49% and 59%, depending on who's doing the survey and how the questions are asked.

Let's see a study from Medicare-for-All proponents that answers the Blahous analysis. Then we can make a better decision on whether to go forward.

EDITED TO ADD: Levitz wouldn't have had to look very far to find a response to Blahous from Medicare-for-All proponents. Mama Google found this one for me in just a few seconds.

***

Finally: there's reportedly a seismic shift brewing this week due to an annual astrological phenomenon known as the Lion's Gate. It happens between this Tuesday and August 12th, with the big punch on August 8th. This year's is supposed to be especially intense due to Jupiter's conjunction with the Sun in Leo on the date of the full moon this Wednesday, and particulary auspicious because the date of the portal opening, 8/8/2026, reduces via numerology to 8, a number associated with abundance and with balance between the physical and the spiritual.

I'm not an astrology stan, and I haven't dabbled in numerology for decades, but I thought I'd mention this thing since I keep hearing about it. You can find more info on the annual Lion's Gate here.

***

These moments of bloggy pros and cons have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell, who hopes that good things will come through the Lion's Gate because honey, we are due.

Roman shades progress; and gifted kids when they grow up.

It's next weekend, and the first Roman shade is done, including the installation. Here's the proof: 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

I spent a lot of time stressing over the installation process: how to position the pulleys and cord lock device, whether I should have bought a wider mounting board, where to stick the darn thing on the wall, how hard it would be to mount it with the angle brackets with the shade attached, and on and on. Turned out it was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. The shade is actually pretty light, weight-wise, so I was able to duck under it to get to the angle brackets. And I had cut the fabric so that screwing it to the top of the window frame was the perfect length, which bypassed my concerns about finding studs in the wall to screw into and/or installing wall anchors.

Getting the old shade down was also pretty easy. My old shades aren't mounted the normal way; instead there's a tab that clips them into the hanging bracket. I shoved a screwdriver into a slot in the tab and pushed it toward the window to release the clip, and poof, down came the blind.

In short, the process was easier than I expected it to be. And now that I know what I'm doing, more or less, the bedroom shade is going much faster. I forgot to get a photo of the office window before I took the old blind down, but here's a "before" shot of the bedroom window. I guess that 35 years ago, when the rooms were all varying shades of tan, these beige shades looked great. Not so much anymore. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

This window is large enough that I'm having to lay out the new shade on the bed to pin it. Tigs, of course, is helping. 

"Is comfy, Mama. What you mean, is going on the window?"
Lynne Cantwell 2026

This afternoon, I sewed on all the rings, attached the weight rod, and sewed the velcro to the top. Next step is stringing it all up to the to-be-assembled header board. The cords and hanging hardware may have to wait 'til next Saturday, but we'll see how the week goes.

***

I really miss Jo-Ann Fabrics. Wikipedia says it began as a single fabric store in Cleveland in 1943, eventually growing to a national chain. But its fortunes rose and fell over the years with the popularity of sewing as a craft, and toward the end, it was diversifying its merchandise line to encompass other crafts and home decor items. Eventually, the whole thing shut down last year when the company couldn't find a buyer. Wikipedia says that Michaels bought the company's intellectual property and private labels. But with the exception of an expanded fabric department, I don't see much evidence of that, at least at our Santa Fe Michaels. And when I say "expanded", I mean their fabric inventory is maybe 15 percent of what Jo-Ann carried.

Multiple times during this process, I thought about how easy it would have been to gather everything I needed with a single trip to Jo-Ann: "Oh, I need thread to match the blue fabric; guess that's a trip to Michaels now. Oh, I need sew-on velcro by the yard; guess I'm buying multiple precut packs from Michaels instead. Oh, I need pulleys and a cord lock for each window; I bet Jo-Ann would have carried them -- they carried upholstery fabrics and notions -- but it looks like my choices now are either Amazon or random places on the internet I've never done business with before."

I realize I'm part of the problem. I quit sewing clothing decades ago, when fabric prices rose to the point where it was cheaper to buy ready-made clothing than make my own, despite the lure of wearing a one-of-a-kind garment created by my own hands. But sometimes, damn it, you want to avoid the overpriced, mass-produced stuff like "custom" Roman blinds and make something really custom. Small, independent fabric stores still exist, but it seems like most of them cater to quilters, with maybe some clothing fabrics on the side. That's not helpful for the kinds of things I'm interested in sewing these days.

I'll be done with this project in another week or so, and then I'm sure my sewing machine will go back to gathering dust in the closet. It's just a shame, that's all.

***

If you're only here for the Roman shade saga, you can stop here. The rest is about smart kids when they grow up.

***

There's an article in New Scientist this week about giftedness and how gifted kids turn out as adults. Alas, you have to subscribe to read the whole thing; I read it as part of my Apple News subscription (and btw, if you have an iPhone, Apple News is a terrific news aggregator and worth the monthly subscription fee). 

Kids who are labeled gifted have probably heard the derisive term, "early ripe, early rot". I sure did (from my brother, among others). But this article talks about studies that have tracked intellectually gifted kids into adulthood. The conclusion? 

Far from growing into troubled adults, many gifted individuals appear to flourish later in life. Long-term studies suggest they are more likely than average to achieve professional success and, contrary to popular stereotypes, often enjoy better mental health. Scientists are also starting to understand what makes gifted brains so exceptional, finding that they are better integrated and can process information more efficiently..."

And then it goes into the current debate over whether giftedness is just another form of neurodiversity, which I've already bitched about on this blog. Thankfully, for me at least, the authors of this article have found people to refute that argument:

Yet neurodivergence tends to describe neurodevelopmental conditions, which can create functional problems in everyday life, such as inattention, emotional dysregulation or hyperactivity. That doesn't seem to be the case for gifted children. "It is simply on the higher end in a spectrum of human intelligence," says Mimi Wellisch, a psychologist based in Australia who has published on gifted children extensively... Problems with behaviour "are unlikely to be a byproduct of giftedness," she says.

As for gifted-kids-as-adults, a 2020 study headed by David Lubinski, a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, looked at the outcomes for 50-year-olds who were identified as mathematically gifted as kids, finding them to have a greater sense of well-being than non-gifted folks. In 2025, another team headed by Lubinski talked with 50-year-old former gifted kids, and "around half reported experiencing boredom and frustration in mixed-ability classes." And in terms of outcomes, Lubinski found in 2013, when comparing people who skipped a grade with those who didn't, 27 percent of kids who had skipped a grade later earned a Ph.D., compared with 15 percent of kids who hadn't. 

Lubinski says that based on his findings, the current fashion to remove educational supports specifically aimed at gifted kids in the name of treating everybody the same (so as to not make gifted kids feel pressured to achieve) is unfair, and could even be considered a form of prejudice. 

Which is pretty much what I said in my blog post last year.

The article also touches on complaints about the cultural problems regarding IQ tests and other methods being developed to identify gifted individuals, but this post has already gone on long enough. If you have any interest in the topic of giftedness, I recommend tracking down this article. It's a good one. And not just because it quotes researchers who agree with me.

*** 

These moments of long-winded blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell, who doesn't have a Ph.D. but might get one someday. Who knows?

Things in progress.

So the big news today, of course, is the death of South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. A medical examiner's report released this evening says he died of a tear in his aorta, likely caused by atherosclerosis, but we'll know more when the report is finalized in a couple of weeks. 

Republicans still control the Senate, even with Graham gone, but the math will be a titch harder until his replacement is named. There are still questions lingering about the condition of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, too, including about a photo released by his office today that looks like a retread from several years ago. If it turns out the worst is true about him, the GOP will be holding onto Senate control by just one seat until their replacements come on board. 

Both McConnell and Graham knew that Trump would be bad news for the country if elected, but when push came to shove, neither one stepped up to block his crazy ideas from becoming law. That's not the legacy I'd want to have.

***

Besides those news stories still in progress, I have not yet finished the Roman shades for my bedroom and office/craft room. Progress has been made: all the fabric for both is cut, and most of the sewing is done on the shade for the office/craft room. There's still a fair bit of work ahead on that shade, though, including all the hardware. I'd be farther along if I hadn't played hooky yesterday. But in my defense, I also went to the hardware store, bought the board for the hardware for both shades, and got the store to cut it to the lengths I need. 

I will not be doing a tutorial for this project; if you're after step-by-step directions, there are about a squintillion videos out there, some more useful than others. (I'm actually using one method for the office/craft room shade and a different one for the bedroom shade.)

If you've never bought any fabric from Spoonflower, I can tell you that it's different experience than going to the fabric store. First, there's no instant gratification; you put in your order and it takes them a week or two to print it on your preferred fabric and send it to you. Their selvedges are huge compared to fabric from a store, but the width of printed fabric they say you'll get is the size you get (I measured mine to be sure). And their order control system gave me a little thrill. 

Lynne Cantwell | July 2026

Both fabrics I received are excellent quality. The one in the photo above is a performance linen. The downside is that it's polyester, and it ravels like crazy. The lining fabric I bought (from a different online vendor) is also polyester, and it too ravels like crazy. That's making me ... crazy. Didn't seem to bother Tigs, though. 

Lynne Cantwell | July 2026

(Then he plopped his butt down on it and I had to chase him away. Then I stepped on his tail. Poor little guy.)

The other fabric I purchased is a cotton sateen, which should have been easier to manage than those slippery polyesters, except it's 116 inches wide. Cutting all of this stuff has been an adventure -- my dining room table is round and only 42 inches wide. I had to spend a lot of time shifting the fabric and the cutting mat and the fabric and the cutting mat and... I kept thinking how nice it would be to have one of those ginormous work tables that I saw in one how-to video. Just lay it all out flat and cut it, boom, done. Alas.

Once all the fabric was cut, I had to iron it. I usually don't bother with ironing fabric when I sew. I know you're supposed to, but you're also supposed to wash it before you cut it, and you're supposed to iron all your seams flat, and I don't do any of that stuff, either. But I was convinced by one of the tutorials that said if you don't get those creases out now, you'll be seeing them every time you look at your shade once it's done. So there I was, slaving over a steam iron in my 80-degree dining room. 

I used to laugh at my mother for spending summer afternoons sweating over a hot iron to press her sheets and dish towels. Dish towels, for godsakes! Ever since then, I've said that if God wanted us to iron, She wouldn't have invented permanent press. I'm sure that today both She and my mother were laughing at me.

Anyway, the fun continued as I played bobbin thread chicken on the last bit of sewing before dinner. This game is similar to yarn chicken, where you're sweating the amount of yarn you have left compared to the amount of knitting you still have to do -- although with the bobbin thread version, running out too soon usually comes as a surprise. Today, though, I finished with inches to spare!

Lynne Cantwell | July 2026

The next step is to attach the dowel rods to the shade, then turn the thing right-side-out and hem it, then attach the rings and the pull cord and sew velcro at the top and... yeah. It's a long way from being done. Maybe next weekend. 

Then I get to make the other shade.

And *then* I get to figure out how to get the old shades off the windows. Wish me luck!

***

These moments of bloggy craftiness have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. It's summer! Do something fun!

Marking the 250th; mainstream Democrats' nerves; and my reading challenge is done.

Lester120 | Deposit Photos

It's the day after the 4th of July, and even though most of the big stuff is over, the weekend lingers on. So happy Independence Day, y'all, and happy 250th to the USA. 

A lot of Americans don't feel like there's much to celebrate on this anniversary of our nation's birth, especially given the shitshow that Trump has made of the nationwide celebration. I remember the bicentennial in 1976; Watergate was not long behind us (Nixon resigned in '74), and it seemed like our political system was healthy and had stood up to the rule of law. It felt like we could go on, like we could continue striving for that more perfect union the Founding Fathers talked about.

Today, not so much.

But: I'm not a huge follower of astrology, but I've happened upon several astrological forecasts of late that indicate we are heading for some kind of upheaval, likely this month. But I have a sense that there's already an upheaval ongoing, and it has to do with the success of democratic socialist candidates during this primary season.

***

I can tell you this much: the moderate Democrats who have kept a lock on their party for years (into their dotage, in many cases) are freaking out. A few days ago, Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic wrote a piece about how "Marxist-Leninist organizers" have been infiltrating the Democratic Socialists of America since Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential candidacy and are poised to take over the organization. He says the DSA has begun supporting "militant anti-Zionism" and is otherwise aligning itself with communist organizations. And he compares the use of "Democratic" in DSA to authoritarian regimes around the world that use the same word. Pretty scary stuff. (The Atlantic has a stiff paywall -- a subscription is $89 a year, which is why I dropped mine several years ago. I'm accessing the article via Apple News.)

The Atlantic, despite its reputation as liberal-leaning, went with this piece at the same time that conservative columnists at the Washington Post and headline writers at the Wall Street Journal are either dropping "democratic" from references to democratic socialist candidates altogether or being wibbly-wobbly about it: sometimes they refer to them as "democratic socialists" and sometimes as just "socialists", as if the two terms are synonymous. Which they're not.

(Chait, by the way, is reportedly a progressive, but he's also Jewish, which might explain why he's sensitive about the whole Zionism thing.)

The founding editor of the DSA's Jacobin magazine, Bhaskar Sunkara, published a response to Chait's piece, which you can read here. (There's no paywall, but you'll have to give up your email address to read it.) The gist of it is that Chait is misreading the DSA's history, that it's a big tent that allows people who hold a lot of leftist viewpoints to join, and that there's a through-line from the DSA's founding to its stances today that Chait is misreading.

We're also in an atmosphere where Trump, at Mount Rushmore Friday, conflated democratic socialism with communism and claimed America is under attack: "You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both."

I mean, one expects that out of Trump, who lies all the time. And conservatives have equated socialism with communism in their diatribes for generations; it's a short step for them to rope in democratic socialism and equate that with communism, too. But that Democrats are working so blatantly to discredit the DSA is new.

Here's my view: The Democrats in positions of power really like it there, and they will do anything to stay. They have been biding their time since Trump 2.0 began, telling us they have no power in Congress right now so they can't do anything to rein him in, thereby hoping to encourage a groundswell of blue votes that would win them control of at least one house of Congress, and ideally both, this year. 

The groundswell has built, all right, but it's not the one they wanted. People on the left are sick of Trump's self-dealing and other shenanigans, and they're sick of Democrats' mealy-mouthed responses to it all. They want fresh faces with fresh ideas. So they're voting for younger candidates who espouse democratic socialist views, even as those candidates run as Democrats.

It's not happening everywhere; some democratic socialist candidates are losing their primaries. But it's clear that the successes they've had are scaring the pants off the Democratic leadership. And New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani's successes for the little guy are only making it worse. His speech on the eve of Independence Day has received a fair bit of news coverage.

Some commentators see democratic socialism as the left's equivalent of MAGA. It's true that MAGA started as a collection of disgruntled far-right voters who, juiced by Fox News, coalesced around Trump's candidacy. Democratic socialism is attracting disgruntled far-left voters, and in that sense, I guess, they're similar.

Could democratic socialists take over the Democratic Party the way MAGA has taken over the GOP? It won't happen this year. But by 2028? If they find a candidate with something near to Trump's charisma, I think it could happen. I'm not seeing anyone who's that much of a rising star yet; Mamdani is a naturalized citizen, so he can't be president. But a lot can happen in two years.

***

Oh! I nearly forgot. I finished reading Underground Airlines. I pretty much gave the background for the story last week, so I'll just say a couple of things. First, it turns out that I could have used it as my book set in Indiana; a bunch of the action happens in Indianapolis. Second, it's a terrific read. Third, I get why it attracted the criticism that it did: here's a white author writing about the Black experience. But I think it was pretty sensitively handled, and anyway, c'mon, it's alternate history. The Black experience in the world of the novel can be different than what's happening in the real world today. That's the beauty of speculative fiction: imagining how things might be different.

I haven't sent in my results yet, but it's on my to-do list. Maybe I'll get a sticker or something. I'll let you know.

***

These moments of bloggy prognostication have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Happy barbecue leftovers!

Summer reading progress and a new crafty project.

I said I would post about my IU Summer Reading Challenge progress last Sunday, but I lied. I went out of town last weekend, and the preceding week got away from me. So that's what's on tap for this post. 

By skipping last week, I also missed out on mentioning that here in the northern hemisphere, the summer solstice was last Sunday. So blessed Litha and happy solstice to everyone! 

Yurumi | Deposit Photos

From here on out, the days will get warmer, but the amount of daylight will be decreasing a little bit each day. (The news is better for folks down under, of course; last Sunday was their shortest day of the year.)

***

Reading Challenge news: In our last episode, I reported on the first two books I had finished. Since then, I have read three more:

• For a book set in Indiana, I picked Annie's Quilt, the first book in the Amish Quilts of Indiana series, by Sarah Price. It's a romance, which is fairly far out of my typical wheelhouse, but I liked it. Annie is a young Amish woman who lives in Shipshewana, IN, in the northeastern part of the state near the Michigan border. Her life revolves around church, friends, family, chores on the family's dairy farm, and her job at a fabric shop in town. She dreams of marrying a fine Amish man who's not a farmer because she knows how much hard work is involved in farming and she wants to keep her job in town. You can guess where this is going: a handsome young man, a cousin of one of her friends, comes to town; they fall in love; she thinks he's aiming for a trade; it turns out he's a farmer (oh no!); but it all comes right in the end. I found it well-written and an easy read.
• For a travel memoir, I waffled. I started with Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon on a friend's recommendation, but found it too slow paced for me right now. (I might be a little anxious to get this challenge over with.) So I fell back on my original goal of a travel memoir written by a woman and picked Let's Not Play Small: A Memoir of Divorce, Healing, and Reinvention Through Solo Travel by Dawn Ritter Fischer. And I had problems with it. For starters, I'm not the right audience for this book; the author describes it as a "book to inspire women to travel solo. An invitation to step into the unknown and uncover the extraordinary within themselves. A summons to absorb the life lessons and embrace the self-discovery that arrives when we dare to do the uncommon." Unfortunately, this mission statement doesn't show up until page 272. I've already done a fair bit of solo travel, including some international trips, although I haven't chucked it all and gone full-tilt nomad as she has, so her exhortations to not "play small" throughout had me sighing in resignation. Also, the book could use better editing, including cropping out her repeated use of "little did I know" foreshadowing. Full disclosure: I skipped the bonus section with tips for the nomad life. When she actually wrote about her travel experiences, it was a decent read, but otherwise the book wasn't for me.
• For a slow-burn romance, I read This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews, the pseudonym of a husband-and-wife team. This is a terrific book, y'all. It's a portal fantasy. A woman named Maggie is yanked out of our world and dumped in the world of an unfinished fantasy trilogy, the first two books of which she has read and re-read to the point of being able to quote large chunks of them from memory. She immediately knows where in the story she has arrived, and she's able to rise in society by "prophesying" what's going to happen next. Of course she gets involved with a duke in disguise; eventually she figures out who he really is, and then you get into the typical "I'm super attracted to you but you lied to me so I can't love you except I do" slow-burn dance. But it's all very well done. This is the first of Andrews' books that I've read; apparently there are Easter eggs galore for their fans. It's also the first book in a series, and I'm already jonesing for the next one. (Here's hoping they don't leave the series unfinished...)

Since my goal to complete the challenge was six books, I only have to read one more. It needs to be a book that I meant to read last summer -- which I'm translating as "anything sitting unread on my Kindle that I didn't buy this year". I'm still mulling over that choice. But the winner may be Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters, published in 2016. I recently saw it mentioned on some listicle or other, and it turns out it's been sitting on my Kindle for who knows how long. (Amazon knows how long; I bought it at the tail end of 2016.) The genre is alternative US history. The premise is that President Lincoln was assassinated before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil War never occurred, and slavery is still legal in four Southern states. It got a lot of praise when it was released, as well as some criticism because the author is white and is describing Black experiences. I'll let you know what I think.

***

Besides traveling and reading more than I have in several years, I've also hatched a plan for a new craft project. 

I have finally admitted to myself that the window shades in the bedroom and office/craft room drive me crazy. They are honeycomb shades, but not the nicer kind; the shade material feels kind of like cardboard, and the giant metal strip at the bottom bangs loudly against the window frame in a breeze. They do open at the top and bottom (which I didn't discover until about a month ago), but honestly it's not a feature that's a dealbreaker for me (evidenced by the fact that I didn't discover they could do it until about a month ago). 

Nice honeycomb shades are spendy, as I learned when I replaced the blinds on the fabulous wall o' windows last year. I thought maybe I would prefer Roman blinds for these rooms instead; if nothing else, there would be less hardware to clank against the window. Of course my windows are not a standard size, so they would have to be custom. So I did a little looking around online. Even at sale prices, custom Roman blinds are almost as spendy as honeycomb shades.

But they're just big fabric rectangles and some dowel rods, I thought. How hard would it be to make them?

Long story short: we are going to find out. 

I've already ordered all the fabric. For the office/craft room, I'm getting a William Morris willow print in a performance linen that will match the Ruggable rug I use as a chair pad at my desk. For the bedroom, I'm going with a midnight blue swirl pattern in a sateen finish. The lining fabric is also on the way, as is the hardware for pulling the shades up. And I've been looking at videos for assembly directions. (I've been laughing at the ones where they're drawing lines on the fabric and cutting the pieces out with scissors. Have these people never heard of rotary cutters?)

Anyway, stay tuned.

***

These moments of reading and crafty blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay cool!