I participate in economic protests, I am thoughtful with my voting in my allegedly “constitutional federal representative democracy” and I distance myself from people who support hateful, misogynist, racist regimes.
It never seems like enough during these “dark times”; and I applaud those who throw themselves onto the front lines of protesting though at times it seems like nothing is accomplished (and some individuals have lost their lives like happened in Minneapolis, MN recently).
I observe the actions of those working to “Make America Great Again“, and it feels like each day they are stripping “America” of what once made it great. I’m not seeing any greatness on the horizon and I don’t know how long it will take for the “country I live in” to heal the fractured relations with the world.
As a person of color (I have both an African American and Native American ethnic background) I struggle with seeing the leadership of the “country I live in” (and once loved) try to erase/hide the country’s past because it makes some people uncomfortable.
I remember when I was first working on my undergraduate degree and I met a woman who grew up in Germany in my German language class, and she told me as a teenager they went on a school trip to a concentration camp. They do not hide from their youth the unfathomable terrible time in history of their country. Studying the ugly historical moments in your country is a path for a society not to repeat them. Our current leadership wants “American” history whitewashed (this word feel very appropriate for what they are trying to do).
But enough of my rant. I had committed not to be too political on my blog but to me this doesn’t feel like politics it feels like a battle between love and hate (racism, lack of empathy, trying to control others life choices, etc.) I’ve always tried to be empathetic and respectful of those who think different from me politically and consider where their perspective arises. but I am struggle with what the “far right” wants to accomplish for the “country I live in”.
What I’ve decided to do additionally in protest of the current state of the “country I live in” is continue to be a loving person and send love out to the world and the people I interact with in person and through online mediums such as this one.
Because love is magic.
Life is magic.
We are the only officially known fully sentient life forms in our galaxy and perhaps the entire universe. That is some big magic!
I’d like to share the words and music of Stevie Wonder which celebrate the magic of love and life to close out this post of my musings:
If It’s Magic
by Stevie Wonder, 1976
If it’s magic Then why can’t it be everlasting Like the sun that always shines Like the poets in this rhyme Like the galaxies in time
If it’s pleasing Then why can’t it be never leaving Like the day that never fails Like on seashores there are shells Like the time that always tells
It holds the key to every heart Throughout the universe It fills you up without a bite And quenches every thirst
So If it’s special Then with it why aren’t we as careful As making sure we dress in style Posing pictures with a smile Keeping danger from a child
It holds the key to every heart Throughout the universe It fills you up without a bite And quenches every thirst
So If it’s magic Why can’t we make it everlasting Like the lifetime of the sun It will leave no heart undone For there’s enough for everyone
Source: Lyricfind.com
We all have hearts… If you have a heart, love somebody. If you have enough heart, love everybody. – Stevie Wonder
In the January 15th 2026 ScrapyHappy post I shared this progress – 9 scrappy EPP flowers machine appliquéd to 6.5 inch by 6.5 inch scrap denim backgrounds:
I made some great progress since then and I now have 37 EPP flowers machine appliquéd to scrap denim:
I’ve developed a rhythm to my machine appliqué of the flowers onto the denim and it’s now so cumbersome now to do it.
I stitch them on a slightly larger than 6.5 inch by 6.5 inch square and then trim to size after I stitch them onto the scrap denim.
Only 62 more blocks to make of the 99 EPP flowers I’ve created.
The house is currently in such chaos I needed a calm place in which I could blog and sew if I wanted until we get closer to our move date in early March. John came up with the idea of moving a table into our bedroom in front of the window and setting up my laptop and my sewing machine.
We also set up an area in our bedroom where I could sit and stitch on the quilt I am hand quilting (Hand Quilting “Go Boldly”) or read a book…or just enjoy an escape from boxes…
So now I have a place to escape the madness in the rest of house and write or create (even if most of my stuff is packed up now).
We are in the process of packing up our house in order to move to a new house in early March 2026 and put our existing house on the market.
So far I’ve packed 75+ small boxes (the image above is only a small sampling) while John works on various house projects to put the house on the market.
In a December 2025 post (Chaos in the Craft Room!) I mentioned that John and I were looking at downsizing and selling our house someday. At the time I wrote that, “someday” meant in early to mid 2027. We didn’t have any plans to move in 2026!
So how did we get here?
Well a month ago, on a lovely day in late January 2026 (we’ve had a bout of unseasonably nice weather in the lower elevations in Colorado…we live at 6000 feet above sea level which is a lower elevation in this high altitude state) John and I decided to go explore neighborhoods north of us.
We absolutely fell in love with a new-ish community near the Denver Airport (but not on the flight path, ha!) and found a perfect ranch-style house (one level living but this ranch house also had a loft where I could have my studio and a 70% finished basement) and made a major life decision to move now instead of next year!
You never know how much stuff you have until you try to pack it…
So John and I put an offer on the new house, which was accepted, and began packing up our lives. We’ve also been purging a lot from our lives. This has been kind of freeing and kind of frustrating as we wished we hadn’t bought the stuff in the first place. Oh well, the charity thrift shops will have some nice things to sell.
I didn’t purge more fabric as I’ve already had a couple purges over the years, but I did purge more craft books (I guess I’m never going to get into macrame or making paper flowers, ha!)
Here is what my studio, that I just moved in December to a smaller room, currently looks like:
It’s been an exhausting whirlwind of major life change but we are trying to focus on the excitement of moving to our new “forever home” and that John will have a new woodworking workshop in the garage and I will have a cozy studio in the loft.
Plus it is a new construction home (it is a former model home) and we will be the first people to live in it!
Thanks for your comments and guesses on what Human Tierney and Human John are up to. Several of you guessed it correctly: they are working on moving to a new house. Tierney will share the back story and update on their currently journey of trying to pack up a life!
Okay, I covered the first two levels in the previous post, so I’ll start with moving on to the 3rd level, our Living Room. (Please note you will continue to have endure Tierney’s terrible photography, sigh…)
Level 3 – the Living Room:
This is our main hang out area where we listen to records on our turntable (see my guest blogger post Guest Blogger: Teeny-Tiny Turntable Adventures), have Beastie-sized cocktails, snacks and I can work on my knitting.
Well John Beastie and I don’t have a large collection of books like Human Tierney. We have a couple books that we are storing on the shelves in the but that’s it. So for now we are storing Tierney’s collection of miniature plants and some Knick Knacks.
And at the top of the Beastie Tower you can find me contemplating working on a new sewing project with with my Beastnina, the Beastie version of a Bernina sewing machine!
Okay well that is the tour and now I need to nudge Tierney to respond to post comments and catch up on her blogging buddies posts. Just because she is nearly buried in moving boxes doesn’t mean she can fall off the blogging wagon!
Postscript
John Beastie and I are pretty excited: in the new home that the Humans are moving to, there is a corner ledge in the loft area that will nicely fit our Beastie Tower!
Greetings! This is the tierneycreates Beastie guest blog posting (if you are new to this blog, my backgroudn story is on this post: I’m A Monster!!! ; and you can see all my posts at this link: Beastie Adventures).
Tierney hasn’t posted in a while because she is working on a challenging but exciting life event that she will share with you in the future (see the Postscript section of this post for a sneak peek); so I thought I better step in and do a post for her as her occasional “Guest Blogger”.
As I mentioned, I am married to John Beastie and John Beastie was living on the shelf above Human John’s desk. John Beastie and I met with Humans Tierney and John and discussed that it was time for us to move in together!
So Human John expanded my tower to 5-levels and John Beastie moved in!
I have to rely on Tierney to take photos as my little knitted paws are too small to operate her phone camera. Tierney is very distracted these days so my apologies that you will have to put up with her rushed photography…
Let me give you a tour of all 5-levels.
Level 1 – Ground Level – John Beastie’s garage area:
Hope you make out some of the fun stuff in his garage with Tierney’s terrible photography. He has a foosball table so he and I can play; and a Skee ball game that Tierney got him for Christmas.
Our dog Mikelet (named after the late Mike, Tierney and John’s dog) now gets to hang out with John Beastie all the time instead of only visiting with him when John Beastie would sneak up from his shelf in the basement. Mikelet is waiting to go outside with John, who is distracted by holding a winning poker hand, and play ball,
Tierney found John Beastie a tiny golf club set and he has some tiny tools and a little Yeti cooler in the garage also. On the wall is a photo from our trip to Ireland in 2022 (we are enjoying a giant pint of Guinness) and the framed postcard from Crawcraft Beastiesin Dublin, Ireland where I was born.
Level 2 – The Kitchen:
Beasties like to eat, we are always hungry and Tierney and John have made sure we have enough food for our 5 – 7 meals a day and snacks. Luckily because we are knitted we don’t gain weight from all that eating!
You can see in the images above John Beastie’s famous dish of spaghetti and meatballs; and some naughty “fast food”/”takeaway” food that Tierney found in our size!
Tierney found the kitchen while on her trip to Florida in December 2025 (see her post A Little Jaunt to Florida) and now I have a proper kitchen with a refrigerator that has its light turn on when we open the door.
Tierney forgot to photograph that for you but here is a little video about our new refrigerator:
I’ll continue the tour in my next installment!
Oh Tierney, due to her major life distraction, is very behind on reading her blogging buddies’ blog posts but I will strongly encourage her to work on catching up soon!
Postscript
Can you guess what Tierney (and Human John) are up to? Sorry no additional information beyond this image at this time…
tierneycreates 