July 26, 2025
Finished reading: The Bladesmith Queen by Sarah MacLean 📚
They’ve scheduled a 90s Dance Party for our work retreat in a couple weeks. I am tempted to send everyone Rebecca Schuman’s The 90s Are Old Longreads series to read.
Just go ahead now.
July 23, 2025
📚 Hear me out: sun-soaked summer gothic literature. These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean. The Villa by Rachel Hawkins. What else?
July 22, 2025
🎮 Had a breakthrough in Blue Prince and I’m so excited about it it’s hard to sleep.
Another day, another autoimmune flare, another medical specialist, another round of blaming myself for chronic illness and also telling myself I should not blame myself. The road goes ever on and on…. (Advice not requested.)
July 21, 2025
Finished reading: Surrender to the Devil by Lorraine Heath 📚
Lorraine Heath is so good at the job.
📚 Reading Zoraida Córdova’s Labyrinth Lost and realized I had the perfect bookmark for any book by this author.

July 19, 2025
Finished reading: A Curse Carved in Bone by Danielle L. Jensen 📚
This companion-sequel to A Fate Inked in Blood spends the first third or so revisiting the first book but picks up in the middle third and is gripping and full of revelations for the last third. I highly recommend the duology.
July 13, 2025
Finished reading: Three Simple Rules by Nikki Sloane 📚🎧
Finished reading: These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean 📚
I will follow Sarah MacLean anywhere, from Whitechapel to Narragansett Bay. If you like family narratives with a strong romantic thread, read this book.
July 12, 2025
“There was something about trains.” 💬📚 Reading Sarah MacLean’s These Summer Storms while actually on a train.

July 10, 2025
Finished reading: The Rose & the Dagger by Renée Ahdieh 📚
Another excellent book!
July 8, 2025
My First Skirt Sketches 🧵
Here are my first sketches for my Skirt Skills class with Brooks Ann Camper. I did a yoke for each waistline because my tummy hurts often enough that I want a friendly waist for it. I also sketched with real shirts I actually have, tucked in, since I often do tuck in. (Usually with a French tuck, thanks Tan France!) My plan for my skirt is to make something lightweight that I can wear to my job as an elementary school librarian early in the school year, then transition to fall and winter with leggings. Each sketch includes a pattern inspired by fabric available from Spoonflower and a bookish graphic tee that I actually wear to work.
Brooks Ann has a great way to create a custom croquis to draw clothing designs on your own body, which is how I got these sketches that actually look like me.
Sketch 1: Pencil skirt
The pattern inspiration for this skirt is Stack of Books by Kassi Simpson and the shirt is It’s Me Hi I’m the Librarian by Yaquetees.


Sketch 2: A-line skirt
The pattern inspiration for this skirt is Red Crimson Pink Blush Roses by Elda & Oak Design Studio and the shirt is the Book Nerd Floral Unisex T-shirt by Out of Print.


Sketch 3: Tulip skirt

The pattern inspiration for this skirt is Pumpkin King Stripe by Disneybound Dresses and the shirt is the What’s More Punk? t-shirt from the Mt. Pleasant (VA) Library Friends.


Drawing these was super fun and has really inspired me. I’m beginning to understand and imagine so many possibilities for designing my own clothes, especially for cosplay.
July 6, 2025
I’ve been thinking about going back to a hand-coded website for a while now. I don’t want to lose the functionality I have at my current site, so I’ve created a staging site where I will work on brushing up my coding knowledge. You can follow along at handcoded.kimberlyhirsh.com.
July 5, 2025
🔖 Read We Cannot Give Up on Each Other by Kelly Jensen.
I really needed this today.
The page isn’t turned, and the book isn’t closed. There are chapters still being written, chapters still to be written, and people who are eager to be brought into the story to help make it what we all deserve.
📚 In Animal, Vegetable, Junk, Mark Bittman writes 19th century farmers wouldn’t let land lie fallow or rotate crops because it made the most sense to force land to yield the most profit. This led to soil exhaustion. I think the same thing happens when we try to extract maximum labor from people.
Finished reading: Managed by Kristen Callihan 📚🎧
July 1, 2025
Finished reading: The Wrath & the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh 📚
So great.
June 29, 2025
Swatching my little fabric stash
In her Intro to Fabrics lesson, Brooks Ann links to an article she wrote for Threads Magazine called How and Why to Swatch Fabrics. She includes swatch cards in this article, so I printed some up and went to work swatching my little fabric stash.
None of these are fabrics I’ll be using during the class, but it’s good to have a complete catalog and to get some practice ahead of the swatches I’ll be looking at for the class.
First up, a couple of quilting fabrics I used for my first sewing projects with my new machine (I think I got it in 2020):
The these are both woven cotton, one with a blue moth print and one with a seafoam green background with white manatees on it. I used the first to make napkins and the second to make a pillow.
The next two fabrics I bought for making pillows, too, but so far I’ve only made one. These are also quilting cottons. One is a black background with Pokémon in white circles, which I used for the pillow I posted about earlier. The other has dragons and white stars on a navy background. I’m planning to make a pillow for my sister with this one.
The last couple of swatches are a celestial Jack Skellington quilting cotton I’m planning to use to make my sister a pillow and an interlock knit tarot card print I’m planning to use to make myself a maxi skirt based on the Brit + Co Sewing 101 class instructions.
June 27, 2025
📚 Book Review: Once Upon You & Me by Timothy Janovsky
Once Upon You and Me by Timothy Janovsky is a contemporary romance. On the closed door/open door/in the room/in the bed heat scale, this book puts you in the bed with the main characters. Here’s the publisher’s description of the book:
When Taylor Frost’s boss, Amy, flies him across the country to prep for her daughter’s sweet sixteen at the Storybook Endings Resort in the Catskills, the solo mission is well within his wheelhouse. Taylor is excellent at his job—except, he’s probably not supposed to flirt with the resort’s mountain man of a manager, Ethan Golding. Because the rugged older man is also the birthday girl’s father, aka Amy’s ex-husband. Oops.
For Ethan, his divorce seemed like the bad ending to his romantic story. And now, making his daughter’s sweet sixteen dreams come true is the closest he’ll get to the kind of magic happiness in fairy tales. Until adorable Taylor has him wondering if maybe this is just the beginning of a more erotic kind of bedtime story…
The only problem is Amy. And how very not okay she’d be with the chemistry between her assistant and her ex.
If only forbidden flings ever led to happily-ever-afters…
What I loved
I always love Timothy Janovsky’s characters, and Taylor and Ethan are two more delightful guys I loved watching fall in love. Ethan has ADHD that’s only recently been diagnosed. He’s spent a lot of his life feeling like his challenges with executive function are moral failings, and especially like his ex-wife Amy saw them that way. He’s a dad who lives on the opposite coast from his daughter, which breaks his heart a little all the time. He’s bi which sets him up for frustrations when he tries to date, as the men he meets are always surprised by this and often aren’t comfortable dating someone who is also attracted to women. He is deeply lonely.
Taylor is the second oldest kid in a family with many siblings. His older brother took off young and his parents are inattentive and flakey, which leaves him as the primary caretaker for all his sibs. He’s very good at taking care of people. He’s been working as Amy’s assistant for three years, waiting for a promotion, and quietly making sure she has everything she needs to keep her business running smoothly. But it seems like no one ever takes care of him.
In my favorite romances, the people in the relationship each are able to be exactly what the other person needs. Taylor is able to meet Ethan’s ways of coping with ADHD with compassion. Ethan shows Taylor that he deserves to be cared for as much as he cares for others. I love how these two are like puzzle pieces specifically carved to fit together.
I also love the way fairy tales suffuse the story. The resort where it’s set is inspired by fairy tales. Taylor and Ethan read fairy tales together. Taylor starts out their time together staying in the Snow White Cottage. I’m sure Timothy Janovsky chose this fairy tale to highlight her specifically. I’m choosing to imagine it’s because he is a Disney fan and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first Disney fairy tale feature adaptation.
What I wanted more of
There’s nothing Timothy Janovsky left out. I would just be happy to spend more time with these guys.
What I need to warn you about.
Timothy Janovsky includes warnings at the beginning of the book, so check those out. There is biphobia and some judgmental responses to Ethan’s ADHD. There’s also discussion of Ethan’s father living with MS that has progressed so far as to limit his mobility.
Who should read this book
People looking for a low-conflict, high heat contemporary where two charming men connect and complete each other’s lives.
Book: Once Upon You and Me Author: Timothy Janovsky Publisher: Afterglow Books by Harlequin Publication Date: April 29, 2025 Pages: 288 Age Range: Adult Source of Book: ARC via NetGalley, Library
I’m taking Brooks Ann Camper’s Skirt Skills Custom Sewing class. Yesterday I put together my notebook for the class.
My goal is to use stuff I already have as much as possible so long as my experience doesn’t suffer for it.
Here are some photos! Notebook cover, pencil box, sketch paper.
June 24, 2025
It’s very Kimberly that I just had a nightmare in which the nightmarish occurrence was that the public library had pushed the YA bookshelves so close together that they were inaccessible. 📚
🔖🧵 Read Just Make it Already! How to Boost Your Sewing Confidence.
Brooks Ann Camper includes this as a bonus link in the orientation for Skirt Skills, which I’m taking right now. It’s exactly what recovering perfectionists need to heal & works for any creative endeavor.
June 20, 2025
Finished reading: To Have and to Heist by Sara Desai 📚
Super cute and fun!
June 18, 2025
🧵 I made a pillow! Well, I covered a pillow. I used instructions from the Sewing 10 class from Brit + Co. My seams were so wobbly that I actually had to go back and hand sew a gap closed. I used a messy whip stitch to finish it but I’ve hidden the seam on the bottom here.
