And the winners are . . .

The random number generator gave the pincushions to Kyle and Annie.  I do hope they will get lots of use (or loving abuse?) in their new homes!

Meanwhile, I only wish I was posting an entry here showing off some new quiltie project.  I only wish I was in my sewing room.  I really, really wish I was not sitting here staring at the pile of papers that I’m going to spend the rest of the day grading, or looking at the stack of final exams yet to be graded next to them, or thinking about the other stack of final exams that will be joining me by this evening.

End of the semester.  It’s like a train wreck.  The good news?  No matter what kind of pile of mental mush will be left of me one week from now, grades will be in.  Then there will be sewing.  And reading.  Lots of reading. 

Nothing too lofty mind you.  I’m thinking I could start by pulling out a favorite romance novel or two.  I’ll be in the mood for romance light, I’m sure.  Ever read Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase?  Like so many other romance readers out there, I do love that one.  Funny and touching.  You have to love a man who has this to say about his wife:

With the world securely in order, Dain was able to devote the leisurely bath time to editing his mental dictionary. He removed his wife from the general category labeled “Females” and gave her a section of her own. He made a note that she didn’t find him revolting, and proposed several explanations: (a) bad eyesight and faulty hearing, (b) a defect in a portion of her otherwise sound intellect, (c) an inherited Trent eccentricity, or (d) an act of God. Since the Almighty had not done him a single act of kindness in at least twenty-five years, Dain thought it was about bloody time, but he thanked his Heavenly Father all the same, and promised to be as good as he was capable of being.

Georgette Heyer is a gift.  Black Sheep.  These Old Shades.  Frederica.  The Grand Sophy.  Venetia.  Too many to list.  I grew up loving Georgette Heyer and I still love her wit and charm.  Though I have to say, while I like that her books are still in print after so many years, the latest batch of book covers don’t suit me at all.  I love some of the old classics.  Like these: 

 

Oh, yes.  Cotillion.  How did this one not immediately come to mind?  Lots and lots and lots of our current day romance heroes are real chest beaters.  If you are after a change of pace, there is simply no one funnier or sweeter or more loveable than Freddy.  Having agreed to a pretend engagement, here he is  helping his “fiancé”  tour the sights of London.

“Oh, Meg said I must go to see the marbles which Lord Elgin brought from Greece! She says everyone has seen them! They are at Burlington House, she told me.”

Freddy said severely that it was a pity she had not remembered the marbles before they came to Hanover Square, but he gave the direction to the coachman, and confided, as the carriage wended its way southward again, that he would not object to taking a look at them. “Deuce of a dust kicked up about ‘em!” he said. “Seem to be all the crack, though.”

But when, having, as he put it, dropped the blunt for two tickets of admission and a catalogue, he confronted these treasures of ancient Greece, he was quite dumbfounded, and only recovered his voice when he was called upon to admire the Three Fates, from the eastern pediment.

“Dash it, they’ve got no heads!” he protested.

“No, but, you see, Freddy, they are so very old! They have been damaged!” explained Miss Charing.

“Damaged! I should rather think so! They haven’t got any arms either! Well, if this don’t beat the Dutch! And just look at this, Kit!”

“Birth of Athene from the brain of Zeus,” said Kitty, consulting the catalogue.

“Birth of Athene from what!”

“The central groups, which are the most important features of the composition, are missing,” said Kitty, in propitiating accents. “And the catalogue says that the metopes are not in good preservation either, so perhaps we should just study the frieze, which is excessively beautiful!”

But the disclosure that he had been maced of his blunt by a set of persons whom he freely characterized as hell-kites only to see a collection of marbles of which the main parts were missing so worked upon him that he could not be brought to recognize the merits of the frieze, but seemed instead to be so much inclined to seek out the author of this attempt to gull the public that Kitty hastily announced her wish to visit St. Paul’s Cathedral, and coaxed him out of the building.

Am I alone?  Any of you other quilters enjoying romances?

Or, yes, she said, there will be time for some major BBC indulgence as well.  The two ruling emperors of romantic miniseries: Pride and Prejudice (the Colin Firth version, of course) and North and South (no one, I mean no one, smolders better than Richard Armitage).

And, get this.  There are audio books (abridged, alas, but still) of Richard Armitage reading Georgette Heyer.  Venetia, for one. 

Be still my heart.

Now that I have delayed that stack of papers (which seem to be multiplying as I look over at them) long enough, I must get to it.    One week, she says to herself, one week.  Cowboy up.