Thank you all for your kind words about our loss of Chloe. Our house feels so empty. Both Bryan and I keep thinking we either need to get home and feed her, if we’re running late, or I’ll expect her to be hiding under the bed before we go to bed. It’s truly amazing how much these little furry creatures touch your life and make you a better person. (This is a photo I took of her about four days before she died. She had food on her nose and kept giving me the look of “What? I’m saving it for later.” She was such a sweetheart and loved having her photo taken.)
Bryan, friends and school have kept me busy this past week. Wednesday I baked bread and learned all about what it means to have a very warm and humid kitchen. The end result bread was fabulous and was so airy. I have more bread in the works this morning.
Sunday we went blueberry picking for the third time this summer. We came home with just over seven pounds. We’ve slowly been freezing some of them to have for later. Last year we had blueberries until December. My breakfast bowl has been so filled with berries over the last few weeks between the blueberries we’ve picked and the berries from our friends’ backyard. Now our little garden in back is becoming fruitful with bell and jalapeño peppers, along with our amazingly huge plant of basil.
With my two classes this summer I’ve been reading a lot. Every summer, I sign up for the adult summer reading program at the local public library. I also keep a list on the fridge of the books I’ve read and “reward” myself with cute stickers I’ve had for years. (To decorate all of those letters that I was supposedly going to write all of these years.) This weekend I passed a goal that I didn’t think was possible for summer. Granted I started my summer reading as soon as school ended, but still I’ve read more than 25 books since May 3. This doesn’t even count the picture books that I’ve read for my Children’s Non-Fiction class. In summers past, I’ve been proud of 16 books over the summer but this will be hard to surpass next summer. So what are these books I’ve read, well here they are:
(one star = read for Adult Popular Literature, two stars = read for Children’s Non-Fiction)
* Devil in the White City by Erik Larson Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar What Happened to Cass McBride by Gail Giles
* Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
** Laika by Nick Abadzis
* Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
* Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
* Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
** Little People and a Lost World by Linda Goldenberg
* Anyone But You by Jennifer Crusie
** Code Talkers by Joseph Bruchac
** Indian School by Michael Cooper
** 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving by Catherine O’Neill Grace and Margaret Bruchac
* Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
* Be Still My Vampire Heart by Kerrelyn Sparks
** Bearing Witness: Stories of the Holocaust selected by Hazel Rochman and Darlene Z. McCampbell
** Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman
** Maus II: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman
* Forbidden Pleasures by Bertrice Small (I was surprised how explicit this romance novel was)
** Ain’t Nothing But A Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry by Scott Reynolds Nelson
** Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, The Untold Story of an American Legend by Scott Reynolds Nelson
* Mojave Crossing by Louis L’Amour
** What’s Going on Down There? by Karen Gravelle
** The Period Book by Karen Gravelle
** Kampung Boy by Lat
** Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos
For my sanity, a couple of them I’ve listened to as audio books so that I can get off the couch and do a little sewing. Only two more weeks of class and 11 more books to go. Then I can start reading for pleasure again, which seems sort of strange to say since so much of the reading I’ve done this summer has been pleasurable reading. On my list for after-school reading - Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer, Bonk by Mary Roach, The Host by Stephenie Meyer and I’m literally drawing a blank on what else is on my list. I only have three weeks off before school starts in last August but I plan on getting more done than just reading. There’s a quilt the desperately needs to be finished and I have some fabric for tops that I’d like to get made before it gets too chilly to wear sleeveless tops.
My classes this summer have been keeping me very busy. I’m having a lot of fun in both classes, which is how summer classes should be. I’ve also managed to get a little sewing in during my breaks from reading.
My Adult Popular Literature is an online class and I’ve been reading science fiction, fantasy, romance and non-fiction books for that class. I’m in the middle of a romance novel now called Be Still My Vampire Heart. It’s really been a fun read and one that I didn’t expect to like. I still have to read three mysteries and a western.
This weekend I was working on a book talk that I have to do for Adult Pop Lit. I’m doing it on one of my favorite books, Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. It’s been two years and after reading over 90 books since then I needed a bit of a refresher. I’m not one to reread books but I reread Prep to refresh my memory and I enjoyed it as much as I did the first time I read it. As one of my friends said yesterday, “The cover really doesn’t do it justice.” If you like coming-of-age stories and haven’t heard of Prep, I highly recommend it.
My other class is Information Books for Children. It’s basically Children’s Non-Fiction but since there are fairy tales, poetry, plays and literature cataloged in the Dewey numbers with the “non-fiction” in a library, information books fits the books better. We’ve read some great and not-so-great books for the class. The point isn’t to read all wonderful books because we need to learn about the not-so-great books out there too. My instructor is wonderful, she’s the same instructor I had for my Children’s Lit class last fall that I loved.
The last several weeks have been a whirlwind. June has also not been a friendly month for the Lee kitties. My parents lost their second cat, Lucy, last week. She hadn’t been doing well since her friend Milly died on the first of June. My parents were out of town and Lucy was boarding at the vet. She’d been having trouble breathing on Tuesday and just slipped away later in the day. At least she went peacefully and knew she was loved, she was definitely a spoiled cat. My mom made sure of that.
This past weekend, Bryan and I decided to make it a three day weekend to celebrate his birthday and both took Friday off. Friday, we just relaxed and got a lot of reading done. We’d planned to go to Springfield, Illinois but the threat of bad thunderstorms made us rethink our plans. Saturday, we did one of our favorite things - blueberry picking! There is nothing quite as scrumptious as fresh, handpicked blueberries. We thought we’d pick just enough to get us through a week since we’ll probably go back this Friday. We had not idea we’d picked almost five pounds. So we gave some to our friend L and her husband to enjoy since we know they won’t be able to get out there for a while. Then Sunday, L brought us some black raspberries from her garden to add to the berry delightfulness in our house. Even Chloe seems to like the fresh berries, though she can’t eat them. She gets so excited when we open the container of berries. You’d think we had kitty cat food stashed way in those bags by the way she acts.
Bryan also spent part of the weekend getting his Etsy shop and new blog set up.
Once I get some photos of my sewing I’ll post them. I hope everyone is having a good summer.
Thank you all for your kind words about George. We’re all getting along okay and Chloe is figuring out what it means to be the only cat in the house. This is the first time she’s ever been without George. I swear George gave her some snarking tips before he passed away.
I’m finished with school for the semester! It felt like the semester that would never end a few weeks ago, but I turned in my final paper (exam) on Wednesday, a day early. I’ve been home sick for the last seven days with a nasty virus (cold-like symptoms) so I’ve have a lot of time to read, watch Ugly Betty on DVD and knit. Another Baby Surprise Jacket is three rows from being finished. (Photos soon)
This summer I’m taking an Adult Popular Literature class and figured I’d start doing some reading for the class before everything kicks into full gear in June. In four days, I plowed through Devil in the White City, an amazing book. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. I seriously could have stayed up all night to read it but knew that I needed my sleep.
Of course, after I finished Devil in the White City I got a bit distracted. For one of my final papers this semester, I had to evaluate a medium that was geared to children or teens. I chose to evaluate the show Gossip Girl with no idea how addictive the show could be. It’s sort of an updated Beverly Hills, 90210 mixed in with Sex & the City. In all of my research, which included watching several episodes of the show and reading quite a few articles on the show, I totally got sucked in. Yesterday, I checked out a fair amount of books for my Adult Popular Lit class and a Gossip Girl book just happened to end up in my stack of books. How odd! I’ve since finished the book and am thinking I’ve found yet another guilty pleasure. They aren’t books I would recommend to younger teens and they’re books I would be hesitant to recommend to fifteen-year-olds but if they are fans of the show, then I probably would recommend them. I can definitely see why many parents are not happy about these books and the show - the amount of underage drinking is more than I think most adults want any kids engaging in, although I’m sure a lot of teens are drinking anyway.
(I learned this semester that when school gets a bit insane that washcloths are the perfect project - from February until this past Monday I knit a total of seven washcloths. Above are just three of them that I knit for my sister.)
Don’t hate me because it’s summer and I don’t feel like knitting a stitch. Don’t ask me where that came from either, it’s just the first thing that popped in my head when I started this post.
No Cookies in the Library
I stumbled onto this on YouTube and thought, “Cookie Monster would love our library since we have a cafe with cookies.”
I’d love to say that I’ve finished so many projects lately that I have a whole slew of them to show you but I don’t. Last week, I knitted my first stitch in about three weeks. I traveled to Kansas about two weeks ago and had planned to get some sewing done but I just didn’t have the time. Before I left for Kansas, I did whip up a cute little skirt from Sew What Skirts and cut out another one to work on while I was visiting my parents. A few things I did manage to do while I was gone were putting in, ripping out a zipper and resewing it into another skirt that I hadn’t finished. Last week for the Harry Potter party, I realized I didn’t have a black skirt to wear so I just bought some fabric and whipped up a cute black skirt. Since I had my sewing machine out, I also finished the skirt I’d been working on in Kansas. I’ll get photos up soon.
While I was gone I worked on the baby quilt, I finished two of the edges and am working on the other two then I’ll be sending it off.
While I was in Kansas, I was able to visit the Hays Public Library. It’s the library I grew up in and was anxious to see their remodeled and expanded building. What a great library and extremely inviting when you walk in. They’ve put a lot of time and work into making it a very browseable library. In two areas, they’ve arranged the shelves so that there are small alcoves of shelves, sort of what you’d see in a bookstore. I was very impressed and now know why my grandfather brags about the library so much. The best part was that they still have the castle in the children’s department that I remember spending so many hours in.
The Harry Potter party we had at the library was a big success. We handed out all of our books, more than 300, in less than 14 minutes. One of my favorite parts of the night was the reactions of the kids when they were handed the new Harry Potter book. You’d thought that they had been handed the greatest thing they’d ever seen. It makes me so happy and excited to see kids this excited about a book. The café in our library was open that night too and served butterbeer, pumpkin juice and various other Harry Potter related treats. Now people asking when is the next big party at the library. I think people not only loved the activities we had going on but the fact that the library was open late on a Friday night and it was a party. It was a lot of fun working that night, but it took me the entire next day to recover. Saturday we’d planned to go blueberry picking and I was exhausted from the night before but that wasn’t going to stop me from going to the blueberry farm. I was a gorgeous day out and to be outside I think helped me recover some.
More than anything else I’ve been reading a lot. I finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban en route to Kansas and started and finished The Uglies by Scott Westerfeld while I was there. Last week and most of Sunday I read New Moon by Stephenie Meyer, the sequel to Twilight that I mentioned in my previous post. I literally read the entire day on Sunday. Sunday evening, I started the fourth Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. With all of the Harry mania, I couldn’t help but get wrapped up in it. I’m enjoying the books and this is a case where I want to be like everyone else and finish the series.
The weeks are counting down and I can’t believe that in three weeks, I’ll be in the middle of my graduate assistant training at the library I’ll be working at this fall. School starts in about four weeks, fortunately my first class isn’t until August 28, so I have some time. I was checking into the book list for my children’s lit class and I think it’s going to be a really fun class. Having to read children’s picture books for class, what fun.
Well, I have jumped on the Harry Potter bandwagon recently. Several years ago I read the first two Harry Potter books. After being disappointed with the second book, I’ve had no desire to pick up the third one until now. Our library is having a Harry Potter party and I’m working the circ desk that night. I can’t help but get caught up in the excitement of all of the anticipation. I’m slowly working my way through the book only because I’ve been working on my baby quilt and other sewing projects. If I plan to be a young adult/teen librarian after finishing school, these are must-read books for me.
This has been the summer of YA/teen books for me again as they are the perfect summer reading books. They have great stories and don’t get really hung up in some of the stuff that adult books get hung up in, plus they are quick reads. Two other books that I’ve really enjoyed in the last few weeks are American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang was the winner of the Winner of the 2007 Michael L. Printz Award, which is the award for excellence in young adult literature. It’s a graphic novel and one of the best graphic novels I’ve read. Bryan and I really enjoyed it and both highly recommend it. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. A great vampire love story between a normal human girl and a vampire that she meets at school. Books like these really make me excited that there are such great books out there for teenagers. It really gives me hope that we won’t have a generation of kids that are so plugged in that they can’t enjoy the pleasure of sitting down and reading a book in a quiet room.
Have you been reading a lot this summer? What have you been reading? Do you have books that you specifically save for summer reading? I’d love to hear about what you’ve been reading this summer.
It’s been a while since I last blogged and I’ve been busy. The summer isn’t the perfect time to blog, plus there are so many other things I’d rather be doing than sitting inf front of the computer.
The garden is growing well, I eventually lost the cherry tomato to a critter. I had to move the lavender into a pot and am sprinkling pepper flakes on the soil to keep the critters from eating more of the lavender. Two of the plants are finally coming back, two died, one of the surviving plants is a replacement for a dead lavender plant. The cilantro went nuts and we’ve enjoyed a lot of salsa made with our own cilantro. The flavor of our own cilantro is much more intense than store bought since it’s freshly picked. Since the cilantro grew so fast, I decided to buy some seeds and have managed to get little cilantro plants growing in the kitchen that I’ll transplant outside later on. We’re patiently waiting for our tomato plants to produce tomatoes and for our little green peppers to grow up to be big beautiful bell peppers. The basil has gone crazy too and is huge. Sort of makes me want to plant huge pots of herbs next year or a huge herb garden when we finally are able to buy a house.
I’ve been sewing a lot lately. Since my last post I’ve made two skirts and two canvas bags, similar to the one I made for my friend that was shown in the last post. Each bag seems to get more involved and I love the last one I made for S. She gave me the fabric and I made the bag for her this week. It’s so cute and I love the bicycles. She also gave me these beautiful Amy Butler fabrics that I might to make into a skirt similar to this one, but I haven’t decided quite yet.
About two weeks ago another friend had a baby, it’s the fourth of six babies born to our friends this year. I decided I couldn’t work on another baby blanket right now so I decided to make my first baby quilt. With all of the babies being born and all of the babies needing gifts, I decided this might be a quick route to go since the baby was born last week. S helped me pick out the fabrics and is going to hold my hand in the piecing together of this quilt. I just have to have faith in myself that I can do this. It’s not going to be difficult, I just keep finding ways to distract myself because I’m so afraid of messing up a very simple block quilt. Last night as I was piecing the strips together, I realized that I cut my middle block too small, so I’m going to remedy that tomorrow by just buying a new piece of fabric for the middle block and cutting it to fit what’s already pieced together.
As you’ve probably guessed my knitting has been a bit stagnant over the last three weeks. I’m 16 of 36 garter ridges into the last blocks along the edge of the Moderne Baby blanket and I’m trying to make myself knit about two ridges (four rows) a day. I haven’t thought of counting the stitches because four rows takes almost an hour to knit while watching tv, plus it’s been so warm and muggy that wool on the legs is not the most pleasant thing.
Last week, I decided it was time to get started on the another baby item. It’s currently a secret baby project since I know the mom reads my blog. She’s due in late August so I hope to get that project finished by then. Until she receives it, it will have to remain the secret baby project.
I’ve also been working on my summer reading. Last summer I read 16 books between Memorial Day and Labor Day. This year I started my summer reading earlier since my summer ends a few weeks before Labor Day with the start of school. So far I’ve already read six books. One of them I feel I completely need to spread the word about. The book is The Girls by Lori Lansens. It’s a wonderful book about a pair of conjoined twins who are about to turn 30. I’ve loved so many books I’ve read since the beginning of the year but this one sticks with me. Somehow I completely identified with these women and just loved their story. If you’re looking for a great book to read that you probably haven’t heard about, this is definitely one to check out.
First of all, thank you all for your wonderful comments and emails about my acceptance into library grad school. I’m so excited to start and see what the library world may have in store for us.
February was a very cold month, we had snow and more snow. We still have snow on the ground despite a few warmer (over 35°F) days this past week. I’m so happy March is finally here. February was a great month for reading and I read an amazing book that I’m recommending called Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. I’d seen it at the library and had meant to read it but kept putting it off. This was a wonderful book and it’s on my personal top ten list now. When I was a child if there was one animal that I wanted to be, if I had to choose one, it was the elephant. Why? Because it was big, something I definitely wasn’t and it started with an E. Silly reasoning, I know but I was about 5 or 6 when I thought about this.
February had been designated sock month for my knitting almanac project but for some reason my excitement for socks just wasn’t there until about February 26. I did knit a pair of baby socks knit, Bryan’s alpaca scarf, a pair of fingerless gloves and made quite a bit of progress on Martha.
A former co-worker of mine is having a baby in a few weeks and when I received the invitation to the baby shower, I knew I had to knit her a pair of socks. I missed the shower because I had to work that day, but she loves the socks. These were experimental socks for me in that I decided to try the after-thought heel. I had started out with a short-row heel but had holes and decided that it was time to try the after-thought heel, which worked quite well.
During the cold of the last six or so weeks, I’d thought many times about knitting myself some fingerless gloves but didn’t wanted to buy any new yarn for them. Around Feburary 8, the idea hit me, spin some yarn from fiber that I received from Wendy, my secret pal back in July 2005. I started spinning it quite bulky and after two days of spinning and plying, I had about 45 yards plied. I wasn’t sure how far that would get me so I decided to just knit until I ran out of yarn. Fortunately, 44 yards got me quite far. February 16, I knit one of the gloves and on February 19, I knit just past half of the second one before I ran out of yarn. Immediately after I ran out of yarn, I sat down, spun and plied another 18 yards, which was plenty to finish the top of the second glove. (Pattern from Last Minute Knitted Gifts.) Of course, as soon as I finished them it started to warm up slightly but they’ve been perfect for those chilly mornings and evenings.
In the last five days my excitement about the Go With the Flow socks seems to have exploded. The idea of wearing them really appeals to me now (why they didn’t before I don’t know) and when I set a goal of knitting 20 rows a day, I’ve seen some amazing progress. Now I’m about 16 rows from the toe decreases on the second sock. Then I have the fun of ripping out the foot of the first sock and reknitting it. In wearing several pairs of my handknit socks recently, I’ve realized that those knit on the size 2 Addi’s aren’t wearing well on the bottom. So I’ve decided that the only solution I have is to rip out the feet and reknit the bottom of the socks on size 1 Knit Picks circulars, while knitting the top of the instep on the Addi’s. I’m fine with this, especially since it means that I won’t worry about wearing my socks out as quickly and having to repair them sooner than later.
March is lace month, here are my planned knitting almanac projects:
I’m planning to graft together the two pieces of the lace sampler scarf that I’ve already knitted. Easy-peasy lace project to finish.
Finish the Go With the Flow socks.
Swatch and knit the lace doily from A Gathering of Lace by Meg Swanson
Well, I have jumped on the Harry Potter bandwagon recently. Several years ago I read the first two Harry Potter books. After being disappointed with the second book, I’ve had no desire to pick up the third one until now. Our library is having a Harry Potter party and I’m working the circ desk that night. I can’t help but get caught up in the excitement of all of the anticipation. I’m slowly working my way through the book only because I’ve been working on my baby quilt and other sewing projects. If I plan to be a young adult/teen librarian after finishing school, these are must-read books for me.
I’ve also been working on my summer reading. Last summer I read 16 books between Memorial Day and Labor Day. This year I started my summer reading earlier since my summer ends a few weeks before Labor Day with the start of school. So far I’ve already read six books. One of them I feel I completely need to spread the word about. The book is The Girls by Lori Lansens. It’s a wonderful book about a pair of conjoined twins who are about to turn 30. I’ve loved so many books I’ve read since the beginning of the year but this one sticks with me. Somehow I completely identified with these women and just loved their story. If you’re looking for a great book to read that you probably haven’t heard about, this is definitely one to check out.
