The weather the last couple of weeks has been completely irritating. If it’s not torrential downpour and flooding, it’s hotter than should be legal with humidity through the roof and heat indexes at 100°F. With all of the rain we’ve had our garden is growing like gangbusters. We have pea plants that are at least four feet tall, blossoms on the cucumbers, the corn is about three feet tall and tomato plants that were two feet tall last weekend are suddenly nearly three feet tall. We couldn’t ask for better growing weather, but with all of the great growing weather comes weeds. It’s been so hot and we’ve had so much rain, we haven’t had time to get out and weed the garden.

Last weekend as I was trying to get a little weeding done, I noticed that we had some very ripe radishes, a couple of onions and several pea pods.

The flower gardens have also been doing well. Some of my favorites that have been blooming over the last couple weeks are the:
Coreopsis,

Lily,

Phlox,

and in our front yard garden, the Portulaca.

March 27 was such a wonderful day. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the DNA Children’s Literature Festival hosted by our wonderful local children’s bookstore, the Reading Reptile. Seeing and meeting authors is always an amazing experience.

What struck me at the end of the day was how inspiring, different and similar each author and illustrator is. They each have their own style and their own way of putting books together, all with amazingly wonderful results. I was so touched by Patricia Polacco’s family and personal stories that have become her books The Keeping Quilt and Thank You, Mr. Falker.

After meeting Adam Rex, who illustrated one of my recent faves Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem, I’m definitely going to have to sink my teeth into the ARC of Fat Vampire that I have in our book basket. I just loved his odd and strange sense of humor.

March 29 – Sorry, I just realized I forgot to mention the other authors – Kate Klise, who I realized after I got home that I own her book Shall I Knit You a Hat?; Brian Selznick, author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret; Judy Sierra, author of Wild About Books and The Sleepy Little Alphabet; and Uri Shulevitz, author of How I Learned Geography. Being fairly new to the children’s lit world, I came home with some new favorite authors and more to check out!

I’m keeping a book log over on my reading blog, Reading Up a Storm.

Last night I had the privilege of participating in a Mock Caldecott Award at the Johnson County Library. Librarians from the metro area and the public were invited to participate.

At the Mock Caldecott, the winner was:
Alphabeasties by Sharon Werner
with honors going to:
The Lion & the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney
Coretta Scott by Ntozake Shange, illustrated by Kadir Nelson
Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem by Mac Barnett
Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Rosenthal

(book images from Goodreads)

At my library, I’ve been running a teen writing group. It’s been quite successful and the teens that have come each month have been really enthusiastic. At last night’s meeting, we had a video conference with Sarah Darer Littman, an author of teen novels. It was a really great experience and afterward the kids kept saying how “awesome” it was to talk to a real writer. I think she made an impact on them.

As part of each writing group meeting, the kids have an opportunity to read some of their own writing. It varies from what they’re working on on their own or what they wrote during our writing sessions that day. The first meeting, I didn’t have anything to read and the kids let me know that they fully expected me to participate in the group reading time. Thankfully, the second meeting, we read from what we’d written during the writing session that day.

A few weeks ago, I attended two different conferences in a week, one for young adult/teen librarians and another was on reader’s advisory. At both, I was struck by people who were participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). They were regular people, like me, trying to write a novel in a month. I’ve also been listening to a lot of audiobooks during my commute to and from work each day. Earlier this week, I had ideas swirling in my head (something that hasn’t happened to me since high school) and I decided to sit down and write. So I’ve set a writing goal for myself for each day and we’ll see how far I get. I’m not writing a novel in one month, I’m just setting a goal of writing 500 words each night. I guess it’s a job hazard when you’re running a writing group for teens.

The garden has been feeding us quiet well. Just over a month ago the cherry tomatoes started to ripen. I had no idea how many cherry tomatoes we would receive from five plants. In all I think we’ve picked over 9.5 pounds (4.3 kg) of cherry tomatoes. A pound of cherry tomatoes is a lot since they are so small. At one point we made pasta sauce, kept a container for ourselves, gave a container to my parents and donated over a pound of tomatoes to the local food bank through their Plant an Extra Row program.

With so many tomatoes we had to use them. We set out to find a good pasta sauce recipe for cherry tomatoes, which we found. Through combining and borrowing different ingredients from several different recipes, we had our own pasta sauce. It was extra gourmet. It was better than any pasta sauce I’ve had in a fancy restaurant. It was bursting with flavor and we made a special meal out of it.

The cherry tomatoes are winding down and have fallen victim to what I think is the tomato worm along with with some other little flying bugs. We’ve managed to rescue about another half pound of cherry tomatoes from doom.

In August, there was talk around our area about the great Midwest Tomato “Famine” of 2009. Everyone had a gazillion green tomatoes for weeks and no red ones. As an experiment, we brought a few green ones inside to see if we could get them to ripen.

About three days later as the ones inside were starting to ripen the ones outside started to ripen too. So we’ve been inundated with brandywine and moonglow (orange tomato – back row, center) tomatoes. We can’t use them fast enough so we’ve been sharing those too.

Then to add to the harvest, the peppers became extremely generous about the same time the tomatoes did. At one time there were over 30 jalapeño peppers on one plant.

Needless to say, the first year garden has been a huge success and we’ve been spoiled. Over Labor Day weekend, I planted several fall crops – lettuce, peas, carrots and beets. We’re also planning the flower gardens for the front yard for the spring. Who says fall isn’t a gardening season? What with bulbs for next spring and planning for next summer! :)

(phone camera not so great)
Kansas City is treating us well. We see my parents at least once a week. A couple of weeks ago we both had a weekend off and were able to get out and see a bit of the city. Being librarians we headed to the Kansas City (Missouri) Library’s Central Library. It was amazing and so much fun to explore.

One of the major advantages to living in a house that’s been in our family is the massive yard. The house has a yard that’s half an acre which is great for a garden. (All of the houses in our neighborhood have huge yards.)

Our 30 foot by 10 foot garden looked like a postage stamp in the backyard when we were preparing the garden for planting but now that it’s growing it looks a bit larger.
We’ve decided that we’re going to expand the garden next year and also put in more flower gardens in the front and the back. Bryan and I are all for more gardens because it’s less to mow.

Speaking of mowing, we bought ourselves a great new mower that we couldn’t be more pleased with. We had read about how polluting a gas mower is and that to run the mower for an hour is as polluting as driving your car a hundred miles. So we set out to find a good electric mower and my dad just happened to stumble on an ad for the Neuton. It’s so cool, electric and cordless. We just drop in the battery, plug in the key, flip the switch and off we go. It’s so light I’ve been able to mow the lawn and it’s not even self-propelled. Mowing our lawn has also become a form of exercise for me so I’m working it into my workout schedule.

A week and a half ago, I received my MSLIS (Master in Library and Information Science). Graduation was an exciting day but also a day of saying goodbye to some very good friends. I miss them all so much but I know we’ll see them again.

The day after graduation we moved the rest of our stuff from the apartment in Illinois to our house in Kansas. It was probably the least stressful move I’ve ever experienced. (I’ve only moved six times in the last 13 years.) We’ve begun to settle into the house with some boxes still remaining in the downstairs. The upstairs attic (future craft area and spare bedroom) is still full of boxes and needs some serious work. One of the challenges of moving into this house has been going through my aunt’s belongings and making room for our own.

Two days after our move, I started my new job as the Teen/Youth Coordinator at one of the local libraries. I love my new job and it still doesn’t seem real that I’m an honest to goodness librarian. I’ve been planning activities to go along with our summer reading program which has been a lot of fun. Today literally flew by.

Over Memorial Day weekend, I worked a lot in the garden. It’s now 95% planted with peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, peas, butternut squash, onions, herbs and we’ll soon be adding peanuts. We also put in two raspberry bushes in the backyard with one more to add later this week. The gardening has been so fulfilling and I can’t wait to find out how plentiful our harvest will be. I think we’ll probably have lettuce in the next couple of weeks.

This weekend was the Fairy Tale Ball at one of the local libraries. I volunteered to read stories and several friends and classmates volunteered to do other things at the Ball. It was a lot of fun and the fortune teller, who I happen to know was fabulous.

I’d spent a good part of Spring Break wondering if I would find a dress that was perfect. The first store my mom and I walked into and the second dress I tried on was perfect. I didn’t even need to hem it.

Friday afternoon, I whipped together my head garland in about an hour. I bought several stems of “silk” daisies and leaves at Hobby Lobby and twisted them around a bridal headband that I bought. It truly turned out better than I expected.

A couple of classmates said we should wear our Fairy Tale outfits more often. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a plan to wear them to one of our upcoming classes. Oh the joys of being a future children’s librarian! Now to just get the degree and a job.

This weekend I also started peppers, tomato, herbs, dahlia and echinacea seeds for our future garden. It’s a small portion of what we have planned for the garden. Bryan is working on getting the garden prepared for planting. We’ve found out that soil in Kansas City has a lot of heavy clay in it. Poor Bryan found that out the hard way yesterday after trying to pull up the sod. Looks like we’ll be paying someone to till up the soil for us.

This month at the library I work at we’re doing a Pedometer Challenge. There are different teams around the library competing for the highest weekly average. My average last week wasn’t great but this week is definitely going to be better. Biking can be converted to steps, so we dusted off our bikes this weekend. I’ve already biked over nine miles these last two days. My new walking shoes will be a huge help in motivating me to continue walking to work on those days that my seat is too sore to ride my bike.

pattern modified from Tweedy Vest by Mona Schmidt from Knitscene, Fall/Winter 2005
yarn: Debbie Bliss Aran Tweed, color: 20008
started: November 22, 2007
completed: February 10, 2008

The semester is winding down and there is still so much to be done. I’m looking forward to summer and growing vegetables again. Today I noticed the hostas we planted last year are coming up. They’re in a pot that we buried in the ground that we can dig up and put on our front porch. I just hope the apartment people don’t come by and chop them off thinking that they are weeds. My summer schedule is going to be a bit less crazy than this semester. I have two classes – Non-Fiction for Children and Adult Popular Literature. There will be a lot of reading but I loved reading for my Children’s Lit class last semester.

pattern: Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmermann from The Knitting Workshop
yarn: Berocco Cotton 100 in Blue (9198) and Lime (9225)
started: March 18, 2008
finished: March 28, 2008

Lately, I’ve been knitting washcloths. I’m nearly finished with my third in as many weeks. Maybe it’s spring fever, maybe it’s finally finishing the Martha sweater, maybe it’s feeling too pressed for time.

Six years ago on April 18, 2002 I started my lowly little blog. Last year, I noted all of the projects I’d worked on since April 2002. It’s been sort of a slow knitting year for me with school and all of the sewing that I did last summer. Since last April: I’ve started Library School, knitted two baby sweaters, finished the pair of Go with the Flow socks, completed a pair of Anniversary socks, and knitted one Waving Lace sock. I also finished the Moderne Baby Blanket. For myself, the Tweedy vest was knitted in a matter of a few months and the biggest accomplishment was finishing the Martha sweater. In the sewing department, I made six skirts for myself, several bags, two adorable bunnies, made my first quilt and started another quilt (which is a surprise).

My friend Dorie, who is an amazing quilter has three quilts that are part of an exhibit in New York. They are so adorable and so inspiring. I truly admire her work.

Originally written on February 10 – Some days I have a hard time getting out of bed not because I’m having a bad day but because I love my bed and sleeping so much. Ask my
husband, I’m horrible to get up in the mornings.

Lately, I feel like I’ve been just floating through my days probably because I haven’t had a day off in about three weeks. Between classes, my practicum at the public library and my assistantship, I’m going almost constantly. Being this busy was great for a few days then I started to feel like I haven’t seen my friends in weeks. I had to miss my knitting group this week because I really had to get some school work done. Lately, I’ve really been lacking in the inspiration department. Yes, I’ve been sporadically knitting but it was really nothing to write about. Friday evening I finished my tweedy vest and I’m planning to wear it Monday. Sometimes I think a lot of our inspiration comes from places that we don’t even think about. That was my first thought when I read about Dorie’s quilts being part of an exhibit. She’s not originally from the Midwest and has found such beautiful things in the Midwest that a native, like me, just sees as brown. There have been the beautiful sunsets that are few and far between lately but they are greatly appreciated when I see them. If there has ever been a time that I think I really need to stop and notice the beauty around me it’s right now. Yoga in the morning helps me feel more centered but it makes me long for spring. Winter used to be my favorite season but the cold and lack of sunlight in eastern Illinois have changed that for me. Winters feel long and harder than they did when I was a kid. I know I’ll never be able to live anywhere that doesn’t have the wonderful change of seasons but this winter seems to be dragging on. It does give me a good excuse to stay in and read when I do have some time off. To say I’m looking forward to the beauty of spring is an understatement.

I’m truly looking forward to this weekend. For the first time in almost two years I’m taking a spinning class. My wheel has been greatly neglected in the last six months and I’m hoping that this silk spinning class will spark my interest again in spinning. With limited time, I’m sure it will be a while before I’m knitting and spinning as much as I was last year at this time.