The first week, I knitted almost exclusively on Bryan’s mittens. They still need a thumb and to be stitched together across the top.

The second week, I worked on the saddle shoulder cardigan doubling the length of the first sleeve. One day when it’s sunny I will get a good photo of the sleeve and body of the cardigan.

Several evenings when I didn’t feel like knitting, I worked on a quilt that I started several weeks ago. I’m two strips away from finishing the top. Later this spring, I’m taking a machine quilting class and am excited to learn free-motion quilting. I know how it works but am not sure enough to use it on a quilt.

The last day of the Games, it felt a bit odd to plant seeds for our garden. As the seedlings have come up and the weather has turned a bit warmer. I am looking forward to spring more than ever.

I love the Winter Olympics but am so relieved when spring is around the corner. It’s been a rough winter for us, though I know some had it much worse.

If I get the mittens finished, I hope to get some more of Bryan’s Saddle Shoulder Cardigan knit.

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)

In no particular order are my favorite books from 2009:
Hate List by Jennifer Brown
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
Th1rteen R3asons Why by Jay Asher
Poppy by Avi
If I Stay by Gayle Forman
Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen
The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
Helen’s Eyes: A Photobiography of Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller’s Teacher by Marfe Ferguson Delano

We started the year knowing that within days of the year starting we’d be apart for several months. Bryan moved into the house that’s been in my family since it was built in 1931 and a few days later started his new job as an assistant manager at one of the Kansas City area libraries. A weeks later I started my final semester of graduate school. It was an exciting time but also nerve-wracking wondering if I would find a job.

Through February, March and April, I visited Bryan a lot. Each month we knew that our time apart was getting closer to the end. April was an exciting month, I participated in the annual Storytelling Festival at the Graduate School and a few days later interviewed for a job. I was offered the job as a Youth & Teen Librarian and couldn’t pass up the opportunity. It was a relief to have a job before graduation.

May found us saying goodbye to many dear friends that we’d made in the Champaign-Urbana area. I graduated with my Master of Science in Library and Information Science. I was a real honest to goodness officially certified librarian! The day after graduation, we packed up our apartment and headed to Kansas City. The movers moved the rest of our stuff in on Tuesday and I started my new job on Wednesday.

This summer we spent a lot of time in the garden and enjoying the fruits of our labor. So many amazing tomatoes, peppers and fresh herbs. We’re still enjoying butternut squash that we picked in November. There are definitely plans to expand the garden next year.

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.

It’s been a great fall for us. The tomatoes in the garden continue to amaze us. The lettuce and peas I planted Labor Day weekend are growing well and we were able to harvest a few leaves of lettuce this weekend.
Saturday, we picked all of our carrots. They were so bunched together it was impossible to just pick one.

We’ve also managed to finish cleaning out the upstairs. We have our crafting area along with a guest bedroom for visitors. It’s such a great space and Bryan has been taking full advantage of the space, much more than I have.
I think once the cold really sets in and I’m a bit more into crafting, I’ll spend more time upstairs, especially since it’s warmer than the downstairs.

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! :)

2. Good soil, sun and water will make the garden grow bigger than I ever expected.

3. Don’t fret about the plants that don’t make it because there’s a reason they didn’t live. There wouldn’t be any room in the garden if they had survived.

4. Give butternut squash a bed all its own.

5. Always be amazed how much the garden changes over a few days, especially when new flowers and peppers appear.

6. Eleven basil plants is plenty but we’ll have pesto for the next year.

7. Cage all of the tomatoes not just some.

8. If making beds in the garden instead of rows, make the walkways larger than two feet wide as the tomato plants will grow so large that they will practically intertwine themselves over those two foot walkways.

9. Never underestimate the power of the flower to invite bees. They love our tomato plants this year.

10. When you move into a new house some of the plants you want to buy may suddenly appear in your yard because they were planted by the previous owner.

(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.