May Mishmash

A month of merriment, making, and memories.

May 31, 2024

Hello friends, this month has been busy and was over in a flash! I feel like there’s been more sunny days than rainy, and even though I am already always hot all the time, I am looking forward to warmer days, longer days, BBQS, summer!!!!

Food!

What can I say about food. I haven’t been cooking anything interesting lately. We got takeout from Gumba recently and it was SO GOOD.
My favorite ice cream returned to Salt and Straw: Jasmine Milk Tea with Almond Stracciatella. It’s so heavenly! I bought two pints and am trying to make it last as long as possible!

Books

You can shop all my recent reads here: https://bookshop.org/shop/michelleflook (Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.)

I have two non-fiction and four fiction books to talk about this month! All of these were audiobooks! I listen to audiobooks when I walk Remi and when I am sewing, so I have been jamming through so many of them! I am getting over my issue with fiction audiobooks! I am reading a very long e-book right now, so that will come next month.

Non-fiction:
- Doppelganger by Naomi Klein - This was a fascinating book, and a great audiobook read by the author. The author, Naomi Klein, is often confused with a conspiracy theorist, Naomi Wolf, on Twitter and so it’s part memoir and part research/informative into conspiracies among other topics, written during COVID. I really loved it. This line from the description is perfect: “What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you'd devoted your life to fighting against?”
- Another Word for Love by Carvell Wallace - A great memoir, and another great audiobook read by the author. This memoir has a poetic writing style that I really enjoyed.
Fiction:
- Tell me who I am by Louisa Luna - A mystery with an unreliable narrator. This one kept me guessing all the way through. A distinct voice actor for each of the three main characters on the audiobook made for a very engaging listen.
- Olympus, Texas by Stacey Swann - A modern retelling of a Greek myth, set in Texas. This book is billed as Circe meets Friday Night Lights. I haven’t watched Friday Night Lights, but I get where they were going with it. It’s a family drama story, and if you didn’t know it was rooted in Greek mythology it would read as such. I liked it. it was short and kept me interested.
- The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart - This book was good, I liked a lot about it, but some parts felt a bit dragged out. The main character is a child, who is thrown into a new life living with her grandmother whom she has never met before, on a flower farm following a tragedy. She grows up there, falls in love, secrets abound, etc. I liked it but just didn’t LOVE it.
- If Something Happens to Me by Alex Finlay - this is another mystery but it felt a bit far fetched. Definitely a quick one and has some interesting surprises.

TV/Movies

Mr & Mrs Smith (on Amazon Prime) - This is a really, really fun show! Fast-paced, actiony rom-com? Just watch it. Matthew and I both loved it!
Hollywood Con Queen (on Apple TV) - This is a wild documentary, a three part series. We really loved this one too!
Bodkin (on Netflix) - This is a quirky little show, set in a small town in Ireland. It’s a bit of a mystery, with dry humor. It’s kind of slow, but I like it.
Talk to Me (on Hulu) - This is a really good horror movie!! Not too scary, just spooky enough. I had been wanting to watch it for a while, so glad we finally got to it!

Projects!

I'm up to my eyeballs in projects right now and it's great!!!! Here’s a quick rundown

I got the scrappy stars all quilted and bound and took it with me on a weekend getaway. I’m still obsessed with this quilt.
Here’s my May block for the Sweet Potato Quilts Block of the month club, and It’s the first block that uses all the colors for this project. It was a fun one to put together and it looks so good!
I joined a mystery quilt sew along, and am cruising right along making lots of cute curvy blocks. A chunk of the pattern is released each week, and I have no idea yet what the finished quilt will look like, which is part of the fun! There’s also a book club associated with this and i haven’t even started the book yet.
I’ve been working on some samples of the quilt pattern that I designed, it’s called Oceanfront! I have a baby-sized one finished (see below!) and almost done with a throw size. I’m planning to do one more baby-sized one too, in prints, and I have some pattern testers making samples as well! This process has been really fun and I have learned so much. I’ll share the other versions next month after the pattern is officially released to the world!
I also signed up to pattern test for someone else who took the same pattern writing course as I did, and need to get started on that asap! I am definitely keeping busy in the sewing projects department!!!

Miscellaneous!

Went on a very short and sweet weekend girls trip to Hood River/White Salmon area. We lucked out with great weather! We went wine tasting, hot tubbing, watched a lot of Sex and the City, ate outside, didn’t see the aurora borealis, and it was all around a lovely weekend with some of my fave people.
I went to see Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service! It was so, so great seeing Postal Service perform, a band I was obsessed with in the early 2000s.
This month marks 2 years cancer free! Woohoo! This month also marks 6 years since my mom died. I can’t believe it’s already been 6 years!