librarysarie

Ten on Tuesday, or, GOOOOOAAAALLLs!

Today's topic is 10 Goals For This Summer.  This is something I've been thinking about anyway, so thanks to Carole for the push to write about it!

1) Keep up with the running.  I have a vague plan to run a 5k this summer (more on that later) but even beyond that, I just need to get into an actual regular habit of exercise...something I have never ever been able to do before.  I need to do it to keep myself healthy, and I would like to expose Ian to a more active lifestyle than the one I have been practicing for thirty-four years.  ;-)  And as a corollary, I need to start thinking about what I can do over the winter months, when it's too cold/icy to exercise outdoors.  

2) Finish knitting three things.  I often slack off on the knitting in the summer months, as many people do, but I'd like to get through some things, even if they're just tiny projects.  If nothing else...headstart on Christmas gifts!

3) Actually read some of the galleys I pick up next week at Book Expo!  I always have such grand plans to read so many things...and then it doesn't really happen the way I want it to.  

4) Keep the garden weeded properly.  We really fell off the wagon with weeding last year, and I think that some of the plants suffered for it.  (And maybe more importantly, I do love the look of a nicely-weeded garden.)

5) Go to the farmers' market and local farmstands more.  Fresh, local fruits and vegetables are SO yummy, and the growing season here is so short...we really need to take more advantage!

6) Preserve some of that summer bounty.  In theory, I am all about freezing and canning and making jam and the like.  In practice, I rarely, if ever, do any of that!  This year, I vow to prepare and stash at least ONE thing.

7) Take more photographs.  I've really been slacking off in the photography lately -- I can't really remember the last time I worked on hobby-photography, and I'm not even taking as many pictures of Ian these days, now that he is All About Playing With The Camera and it's hard to get any pictures of him before he's grabbing for the camera.  

8) Day trips!  Another thing I always want to do over the summer, but we never manage to do much of.  The beach, local museums, that kind of thing.  We do have a vacation planned (an actual, proper vacation! yay!) but sometimes these daytrips end up being even more fun.  It's hard sometimes for the two of us to manage to coordinate days off, but we're going to try our hardest this summer.

9) Write some letters.  I was thinking the other day about how no one writes letters anymore, and darn it, I want to take pen to paper and use a stamp and give my mailman something to handle other than bills and junk!  (Also, true confession: I am overdue in writing thank-you notes for Ian's birthday. Oops.)

10) Try not to complain too much about the weather.  My hatred of heat and humidity is legendary.  However, I know how much it irritates me when people complain incessantly about the cold, or about the rain, or whatever, and I have taken that to heart and I am going to keep the weather-complaining to a minimum.  (Which isn't to say I won't complain AT ALL.  In fact, just this morning I posted on Facebook about how hot it is in my house right now.  I'll just try to cap the complaints at a reasonable amount.)

What are YOUR goals for the summer?

Spring into...everything.

I always forget -- until it comes around again -- just how busy I always am in the spring!  This year has seemed even crazier than usual, though, for some reason.  And to think that Ian isn't in school, so we don't even have end-of-the-school-year craziness (or, really, much of anything that is Ian-centered) to add into the mix.  Yet.

So, what HAS been keeping me so busy, and keeping me from writing anything?  My last couple of months, in bullet point form:

Knitting: Is, at the moment, not happening, but since last we spoke I did knit a Wingspan shawl (though mine is more scarf-sized) and I liked it so much that I started another.  And I sold a little bit of yarn from my stash (thanks to people asking nicely on Ravelry!).  That's about all the yarn action that's happened around here.  I didn't go to Maryland Sheep & Wool; I thought about Massachusetts Sheep & Wool this weekend but couldn't work up the motivation.

Reading: I'm still on pace to make my 52-book goal for the year!  I love the Goodreads widget that keeps track of my progress for me.  (As of right now, I'm one book ahead.)  I read a couple of prepub books on my Kindle (thanks, Netgalley!) that I really must review; and Book Expo America is coming up next week!  I won't be lacking for things to read, that's for sure.  Even my husband is getting in on the book review action -- the only difference is that, assuming it meets their specifications, HIS is going to be published in an actual print publication that you've probably even heard of (he's frequently published in places you HAVEN'T heard of).  Ah, the benefits of being practically-a-PhD and Knowing People In Your Field.  

Anyway, right now I am still working on book 2 of the Game of Thrones series -- I had every intention of keeping ahead of the TV show, but that didn't happen.  Oh well.  I let it languish for a while, but over the last couple of days I've been picking up speed on it.  Maybe I'll manage to read Book 3 before Season 3 starts!

Ian: Is TWO.  I know, I can hardly believe it myself.  If I were a better/more organized mother, I would have written a heartfelt birthday post for him, but instead I am a busy mother so it'll have to wait.  I have so much I could write about him; I'll save it for its own post.  But I love that he's now at an age where he is clearly listening and taking things in, to the point where we are even able to reason with him these days (inasmuch as one can reason with a toddler).  I mean, he seems to understand the word "later," which was an amazing breakthrough in our dealings with him.  :-)

Work: Is crazy.  I've been serving on a task force for our library consortium, which has necessitated all kinds of demos and webinars and a lot of driving around to different libraries.  Plus, spring is Conference Season, between the Book Expo and the CT Library Association conference and a few smaller other things.  AND I've been teaching a lot of classes at the library.  Between all the time out of my office and the time I've been devoting to preparing for, and teaching, my classes, I feel like I barely have even touched my "normal" job responsibilities lately!  And now summer reading is upon us...woohoo.

Running:  Yes, you read that right.  Running.  I started up a couch-to-5k program again.  I've started (but never finished) a program multiple times over the last few years; I think the last time was the summer I ended up getting pregnant, and when it got really hot I used that as an excuse to quit.  For whatever reason, I seem to be much more motivated this time around.  Today I did week 4 day 2 (there are eight weeks, 3 days per week) so I'm nearly halfway through the program.  It's starting to get difficult for me...but I guess that if it took four weeks for it to feel like a challenge, that's a good thing. Right?

Family: Our big family news is that my sister Kayte finished her RN!  YAY!  She's been going to school while also juggling multiple jobs, multiple sclerosis, and single-motherhood, so it was a long time coming, but she is finally DONE and she just found out a couple of days ago that she passed her state boards, so it's all official and everything.  I am just so proud of her I could bust.  I even got to go to her graduation: the last time (when she got her LPN) I was just days from delivering Ian, so opted not to drive all the way to New Hampshire for the ceremony.  

Gardening: My perennials all came back (except for, oddly enough, the coneflowers -- I would have thought they'd be pretty indestructible) and have spread well and are just generally doing quite well.  Yesterday I bought some plants and some seeds, and Jim got the vegetable garden all planted.  There are a few more odds and ends we want to add to the vegetable garden, and I'd like to add a few more flowers to the perennial beds, but everything is in good shape for this summer!

I think that's all the big stuff.  You see why I've had no time or inclination to blog!  

Quiet Sunday Morning

This weekend's milestone: Ian had his first sleepover with House (Grandma, if you missed that story) last night!  It's 9:36AM as I write this sentence and the phone hasn't rung yet, so all must have gone well.  :-)

Ian has a new chore/favorite thing to do: he feeds the cats in the morning.  I started thinking quite a long time ago about what would be good chores to have him do once he was old enough, and feeding the cats seemed like it would be right up his alley.  So for months now, I've made it a point to try to have him around when I feed the cats so that he could see the procedure, and this week he decided (of his own volition, even!) that he was ready to take over: one morning as I was opening up the catfood container he came barrelling into the kitchen.  "NOOOOO!  Eee-eh do it!"  And that was that...it's now HIS job.  :-)  And I find it funny, how quickly the cats have acclimated to this slight change in routine: Gandalf now meows incessantly at Ian every time he walks into the kitchen, and this morning the cats woke me up at exactly the same time Ian normally wakes up, rather than starting in around 5am with the "feeeeed us! we are poor starving babies!" routine.

Strange side effect of motherhood: I'm on much more of an internal schedule than I used to be.  I only need to set an alarm in the morning when I need to be up MUCH earlier than usual, and I apparently cannot sleep in anymore: even with Ian gone, I was up before 8 this morning.  In days gone by, I would have gotten up, fed the cats, and gone back to sleep.  Not now, though.  WHO AM I?  I should have spent the morning being productive, but no.  Relaxation is good, I know, but I lost a day on Friday to being sick and I have a busy month ahead of me, so I need to Get Things Done.

This picture is cheating: it's from mid-April 2010, just before Ian's birth.  With this spring's unusual weather, I was looking around for pictures from previous springs to see when things were blossoming.  We had a week of 80-degree temperatures, and so around here most of the flowering trees have already blossomed, and our forsythia is already well past the degree of bloom in this picture.  I feel like April is going to seem kind of colorless with so many of the usual April/early May blooms already passed -- or will our return to colder weather make the flowering season last longer?  And then there's the question of my lilac: the October snowstorm decimated the poor thing, and I've been waiting anxiously to see whether it survived enough to regenerate somewhat.  

I took advantage of the weather two weekends ago to do some work outdoors -- I got my perennial beds cleaned up and pulled last year's plants out of the garden.  I'm really sort of flying by the seat of my pants with this whole gardening thing -- I really don't know what I'm doing, so I just do what feels right.  ;-)  I need to augment the perennial beds this year with something that blooms later in the summer, and we need to decide what's going in the vegetable garden this year.  It was nice to have that bout of nice weather to get a headstart on the spring cleanup, so once planting time arrives we can dive right in!

BOOK REVIEW: The Woman Who Wasn't There

The Woman Who Wasn't There: The True Story of an Incredible Deception by Robin Gaby Fisher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Two years after the attacks of 9/11, a survivor named Tania Head started posting to survivor's forums online. She was one of only 19 people who had been above the point of impact in the South Tower of the World Trade Center and survived. Her remarkable story of escape -- her arm nearly torn off, her assistant decapitated, the fireman who led her to safety as the tower collapsed, her days of unconsciousness in a New York City burn unit -- was made all the more heartrending by the fact that her husband died in the North Tower.

In a short period of time, her forceful, magnetic personality, combined with her amazing story, made her the face -- and the heart -- of the survivors' network. She helped found and became the beloved president of the World Trade Center Survivors' Network and lobbied successfully to have the 9/11 survivors recognized on par with rescue workers and the victims' families. She gave tours of Ground Zero to visitors and dignitaries such as Rudy Guiliani and Eliot Spitzer. She was instrumental in the saving of the "survivors' staircase," which had been slated for demolition. She got the survivors admitted to the official anniversary ceremonies.

In time, though, discrepancies in her stories started to be noticed. She grew increasingly paranoid and wary of the press and started to have something of a split personality, being unimaginably cruel at times to other survivors -- people who were supposed to be her best friends. Eventually her story was entirely discredited, and in September 2007 the New York Times revealed her to be a true fraud -- she had not even been in the United States on the date of the attacks, and not a single part of her story was true.

I know a couple of people who I believe to be pathological liars, and as bizarre as their fabrications are, this blows them out of the water. Perhaps the strangest part of the story is that Tania Head made no money off of her deception -- her motivation has never become known, but she received no monetary benefit (and, in fact, spent sums of her own money on the survivors' cause) and collected only acclaim, concern, and love.

I couldn't put this book down. The first part of it goes into Tania's (fabricated) story in great detail. The reader knows from the beginning -- from the title and the information on the book flap -- that none of it is true, which makes it even more compelling. The amount of research about the attacks that Tania must have done in order to concoct her story had to have been astounding. By the time I reached the end, I couldn't decide whether I should be angry, sad, disgusted, or some combination of all of the above. What would ever lead someone to do something like this? Did she do it out of cruelty to the true survivors? Was her own life so sad and meaningless that this was the only way she could feel loved and appreciated? Mostly, though, I felt betrayed right along with the real survivors.

Publication date 4/3/2012

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The winter that wasn't

It's been difficult to remind myself over these last few days that it's really only March!  Sometimes we'll get one randomly warm day in the very early spring, but a week of 80-degree temperatures?  Unheard of!  I wore sleeveless dresses to work these last two days....something I usually only do during July and August.  Crazy.

We didn't have much of a winter, truly.  I mean, yes, there was the giant storm at the end of October, but that was pretty much it.  We only had one real snowfall to speak of, in mid-January -- the day my grandmother came home from the hospital for the last time.  The good thing was that since we were all gathered for that, our nephew Thomas was here -- which meant that he got to introduce Ian to playing in the snow.  Who better to do it?

Ian LOVED the snow.  He seems to enjoy the cold -- even last winter when we went to Vermont when he was about nine months old, we noticed that he was all smiles whenever we went outside into the frigid temperatures.  Jim is beside himself with anticipation for next winter (or maybe the winter after that, if I get my way) -- he's been looking forward to teaching Ian to ski since, well, since before I even was pregnant with him.  :-)  I, however, am less thrilled about the prospect.  I'm no fun.

Sadly, this was pretty much it for snow play this year.  We had a couple of other light dustings which he got to toddle around in, but there wasn't really another snowfall that lent itself to playing.

While we didn't get much snow, it was just chilly enough for a nice warm hat -- and luckily, Ian loved the one I knit for him.

Pattern: Child's Hat with Pompom, from 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders
Yarn: Malabrigo Seleccion Privada 
Needles: US7, I think? I didn't write it down!
Time: December 26, 2011 - January 5, 2012
Ravelry project page

(These pictures were taken outside in early January.  You can see how not-wintry it was!  Note that Ian's only wearing a fleece, not even a real winter coat.)

This was a quick knit, obviously, being a tiny little hat.  It only took me so long because I ripped it out and restarted it at least three or four times -- it took quite a while to find a combination of size, fabric, and pooling that I found satisfactory.  I'd like the pooling, but the hat would be way too big.  I'd like the size, but the pooling was funny.  Different needle size led to a good size, but the fabric was way too stiff....you get the idea.  I finally found a combination I was happy with, though.  I neglected to mark down which needle size finally worked, but I wound up casting on 84 stitches and working the pattern in multiples of 6 stitches instead of 8.  And, obviously, I left off the pompom.  Other than that, though, I followed the pattern.  Ian LOVED this hat, insisted on wearing it everywhere, and I think it will still fit him next year, too.  Hopefully he'll still like it!

I didn't really set out to knit my one-year-old a hat out of a $25 skein of Malabrigo (I'm generally all about the easy-care yarn for kid knits), but when I saw these colors I just couldn't resist.  What a perfect, bright, happy colorway for a little kid....and, of course, it's super-soft for his noggin.

I had woolly things I kind of wanted to get to this winter, but now it's time to think ahead to spring and summer knits.  Of course, I'm certain we'll get one more snowstorm before we're truly 100% into spring.  Maybe over Easter -- it would be an appropriate counterpoint to the Halloween storm!

in which I enter the age of e-ink

Despite my reputation as a gadgeteer, I'm generally not on the cutting edge when it comes to electronics -- I'm a devotee but I never buy an Apple product until the second or third generation (and even then, I usually get the newly-outdated model, not the latest and greatest) and I'm never the first kid on the block to have whatever the new Gadget of the Moment is.  Somehow, though, everyone at work seems to think I have every gadget known to man, and so it came as a surprise to everyone when Jim bought me a Kindle, at my request, for my birthday this year.  The most common response: "Really? You didn't have one already?"  The second most common: "You only went for e-ink?  Why not the Fire?"

Yes, it's true.  I got an e-reader, finally.  The price finally came down enough where I felt like I could justify it -- even if I didn't like it, it wasn't a HUGE waste of money.  I chose the very lowest-end Kindle (though I did pay up to get the version with no ads).  And that was done very deliberately: I didn't want the touchscreen version for a variety of reasons, and I wanted something to read on, not another device that gives me internet access and apps and myriad other ways to waste my time.  I've got a laptop and an iPhone and a tablet for that already.  Plus, while I spend pretty much my entire workday, and a large chunk of my non-workday, on a computer, I really don't like reading on a backlit screen...anything longer than a newspaper feature article, and I prefer to read it in print.  Always have, and I suspect I always will.

I hoped that the Kindle would cause me to read more, if only because it's so easy to bring everywhere -- and it's definitely lived up to that!  Of the twelve books I've read so far this year, ten have been on the Kindle.  I'm particularly enjoying the library e-books.  We have Overdrive at our library and, as is the case in most libraries, the demand for the e-books is very high, and at any given time there aren't many available.  Consequently, I've wound up reading books that I never would have gotten around to reading in print, just because they're available, and really enjoyed them -- so, it's a win.  (If you're the sort of person who tends to always read in the same genre, I suppose the limitations of the Overdrive system wouldn't work well for you, but since I read widely, it's been great for me.)  I've also loaded it up with classics that I've been meaning to catch up on.

Another thing the Kindle has allowed me to do is use Netgalley more.  Netgalley is a website that allows publishers to share electronic galleys/advance copies with booksellers, reviewers, librarians, etc.  But because I don't like reading on the computer screen, it was of little use to me before.  Now, though, I can send them to the Kindle, and I've been able to read and review several recent books this way.

This has led to an embarrasment of riches, though -- so much to read!  I'm finding it a bit difficult to prioritize things I want to read purely for pleasure with things I want to read for review -- and it doesn't help that I've dived into George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books, either (Those I am reading in print, in case you're wondering!).  That's like five thousand pages of reading right there.  And with Book Expo America coming up in a couple of months...I'm not going to be short of reading material anytime soon!

I fell behind on my reviewing a bit when my grandmother was ill -- there were a couple of January titles I intended to read and review before publication, but that fell by the wayside.  I'll catch up someday...

 

BOOK REVIEW: If Walls Could Talk

If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home by Lucy Worsley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

From the title of this book, you might expect a historical treatment of the home itself -- perhaps a book about architecture -- but it's far more than that. Lucy Worsley, chief curator for Britain's Historic Royal palaces, uses the four main rooms of the home -- the bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen -- as a framework for revealing the lives of the people who live within those walls.

It sounds dull on paper, but the book is fascinating. And it answers questions I've always wondered about (how on earth did women go to the bathroom in those gigantic dresses? How did families manage to all sleep in a single bed/bedroom?) and things I never realized I wanted to know (how were bodies preserved for public viewings? How did personal hygiene evolve?). The book touches on all sorts of topics -- sexuality, cooking, sleeping, boardinghouses, outhouses, you name it -- and shows how societal norms evolved alongside such things as indoor plumbing, automatic appliances, and duvets.

This isn't a scholarly history, but it's an engaging, lively work of popular history, with Worsley's dry wit evident throughout. I would particularly recommend it to people who enjoy Downton Abbey, The Tudors, or other period television shows, as it provides an interesting backdrop to what's happening onscreen and why.

Electronic review copy received from the publisher via NetGalley. Publication date March 7, 2012.

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Nom.

Today is the 100th birthday of the Oreo.

I'm celebrating appropriately and I hope you are, too!

 

Opposite Day

Lately Ian has been saying "no" a lot.  He's certainly picked up its contrarian-toddler "NO!" sort of context, but mostly he just uses it incorrectly.  It's become his all-purpose reply to everything.  No means no, except for when it means yes, which is most of the time.  The difference between no-no and yes-no can be determined through context, body language, and, to an extent, tone.

One of my majors in college was linguistics, and I took a couple of courses on language development.  I have to admit that watching a new little human being learn how to speak and understand has always been one of the things I looked forward to the most about parenthood, and thus far Ian hasn't disappointed!  He's quite the little chatterbox...he talks nearly constantly, although not much of it is understandable yet.  There are quite a few things he says entirely correctly (kitty, puppy, pizza, to name a few) but my favorite words are the ones he says incorrectly.  

Some of my favorite mispronunciations:

shucks: trucks
shanes: trains
a-BEE bowds: Angry Birds (he is OBSESSED - although he can't actually play it)
sou-side: outside 
dook: book
book: milk
cheetos: Cheerios (He's never had Cheetos. How confusing.)
sheeshees: Goldfish (as in the snack, not the pet)
ah-pa-pits: opposites (he doesn't know what it means yet, as far as I know, but LOVES the book Opposites by Sandra Boynton, and requests it frequently) 
bupf: up (he gets bupf and down confused quite frequently, as with no/yes)
owf: off
Soso: Grover 

He also has some sentence constructions that I find absolutely adorable.  "Ee eh Mommy's" translates to "It is Mommy's" -- it sounds almost romance-language-esque, no?  He usually says it as he's handing me something he's retrieved from elsewhere in the house...a ball of yarn, my purse, a potato.  And the other day after Jim left the room, Ian looked around, threw his hands up in the universal ????? gesture, and said "Oh di Daddy go???"  A four-word sentence!  That's gotta be SOME kind of milestone, right?

My other favorite thing?  He apologizes.  ALL THE TIME.  I'm walking through the kitchen carrying a basket of laundry, and he steps out of the way.  "Sowwy, mommy."  He steps on a book as he hops down off the couch: "Sowwy, dook."  I tell him to stop pulling the cat's tail because it's not nice: "Sowwy, kitty."  But my favorite: the  other day he was sitting in his highchair eating a snack of goldfish, and he was looking intently at them before popping them in his mouth.  "Sowwy, sheeshees."  Apologizing to his snack: we must have a budding vegetarian on our hands.

Sleepyhead

Back in the fall, I did some test knitting for Juniper Moon Farm -- they have three new yarn lines coming out for spring/summer, and solicited test knitters on their Ravelry group.  I was excited to be chosen to knit one of the new patterns!  

I'd never done any test knitting before, and it was a fun process -- I got to try out a not-yet-on-the-market yarn, knit a brand-new pattern, and make comments on the pattern.  It was like copyediting in knitting form: how could I NOT enjoy that?!  It's also not very often that I get to participate in something so top-secret...I felt like a knitting 007 for a while there.  (Well, maybe not quite.)

The yarn and the accompanying booklets have hit the shelves (I went to Webs last weekend and saw them with my very own eyes!) so I am finally free to share my test project!

All photos in this post copyright Joel Eagle, and used with permission of the photographer and Juniper Moon Farm.

Pattern: Sleepyhead, designed by Pam Wynne, from the Juniper Moon Farm Yearling booklet
Yarn: Juniper Moon Farm Yearling, about 3 skeins 
Needles: US10.5/6.5mm
Time: November 16-21, 2011
Ravelry project page

This is such a cute little pattern; it's a good thing Ian has long outgrown baby bags, otherwise I might have had a hard time sending this back to the farm for its photoshoot and its future life as a trunk show model!  It's knitted in the round from the bottom up; you separate front and back once you get to the bodice and the top is knitted like a pair of overalls.  The bodice is knitted in a stretchy ribbing and there are three sets of buttonholes on the straps, so it will grow with baby.

I have to be honest: I didn't expect to like working with this yarn.  I don't use bulky yarns often (and when I do, it's only for small projects), and I also don't particularly like cottons or cotton blends as a general rule (Yearling is 60% merino/40% cotton).  Cotton tends to hurt my wrists, and the combination of cotton + bulky seemed like it would be particularly unpleasant.  BUT.  I LOVED it!  It "read" much more like a wool than a cotton to me, and it has gorgeous drape -- it's not at all stiff like I was expecting.  

The next time I have cause to use a bulky yarn, I will definitely turn to Yearling...I wish I could have kept the leftovers from this project!  

One caveat: if you wet-block with Yearling, make sure you leave PLENTY of time for it to dry.  A LOT of time.  This took nearly three days to dry completely -- now, granted, it was November and we keep our house quite cool, but still.  I knitted it in plenty of time, but the drying took so long I was afraid I wouldn't make the deadline for mailing the garment back to the farm!  In the end, Jim and I wound up rigging a contraption with a drying rack and a fan.  Who knows how long it would have taken to dry without that...!

All twisted up

Towards the end of last year, I was kind of on a cable kick with my knitting.  Of course most of my "knitting" time is actually spend browsing Ravelry and perusing knitting magazines rather than, you know, actually KNITTING, but still, I found myself drawn to cables.  I have visions of knitting myself some kind of lovely cabled sweater or vest or something, but for now, I'm taking the edge off with little accessories.  

First up, a hat.  An impossible-to-photograph hat -- what IS it about purple?

Pattern: Bramble Beret, from the book Vintage Modern Knits
Yarn: Valley Yarns Northampton, less than one skein 
Needles: US5/3.75mm and US7/4.5mm
Time: September 2011 (about two weeks, start to finish)
Ravelry project page

When I got this book for the library, as soon as I saw this hat I knew I'd have to make it.  I decided to make it in time to enter it in the Harwinton Fair -- and it won a blue ribbon in the hat category!  Even as I was knitting it I was thinking that it would be a perfect gift for my sister Katie.  I mentally earmarked it as a Christmas gift for her, which is why I didn't blog about it sooner.  (I did give it to her, and she proudly wears her Award-Winning Hat now :-) )

This wasn't a particularly difficult knit for me -- but it was very fiddly.  I prefer to knit things like hats on double-pointed needles rather than circular needles, which always makes for some "octopus wrestling" moments once you work cable needles into the mix as well.  The reason the pattern took so long for me to knit was because it has about eight million bobbles.  I love the texture of the finished product, but oy, I never wanted to see another bobble ever again.  The pattern is charted, and I found it to be very well-written and easy to follow.  

I loved the yarn -- Valley Yarns Northampton.  I actually got this particular skein for free, as a giveaway at the Storey booth at Book Expo America last year!  It reminds me a lot of Cascade 220 -- a 100% wool yarn that I am told felts beautifully (though I've not felted with Northampton myself), but is still nice and soft and perfect for next-to-skin wear.  I have already used Northampton again (see below!) and will do so in the future, too.  It's a great basic yarn and comes in a lot of colors.

This particular color, of course, was nearly impossible for me to photograph.  Neither of these pictures is quite right -- it's a deep, dark eggplant purple.  So not only was it hard to get the color right in pictures, the project was so dark it was hard to capture the pattern too! 

I had so much fun cabling with Northampton, I did it a second time!

Pattern: Twisty Sister Cabled Handwarmers (free pattern available here)
Yarn: Valley Yarns Northampton, less than one skein 
Needles: US6/4.0mm
Time: November 25 - December 1, 2011
Ravelry project page

These were SUCH a fun knit -- I LOVED them and want to make another pair, if not more than one!  They're a small project so they go quickly.  The cable is intuitive and fun to knit, and looks a lot more complicated than it actually is so you get a lot of bang for your buck.  The pattern is free, but is exceedingly well-written -- personally, I think the designer should have charged for it!  It was better than any number of patterns that I HAVE paid for.  

I used Northampton again for these (another freebie ball from Book Expo -- this one picked up by my coworker).  It's a great yarn for cabling -- it makes the cables nice and plump -- and the finished product was so nice and soft and warm.  I gave these to my sister-in-law Kate for Christmas, but it was hard to give them up!

I see more cables in my future...I'm just not sure what, exactly, they'll be a part of!

BOOK REVIEW: Nerd Craft Roundup

Today: the rare double-review!  I was reviewing a galley of Knits for Nerds when our children's librarian purchased a copy of World of Geekcraft (I am ashamed and appalled that Geekcraft had somehow passed me by -- it was published last year!).  Like chocolate and peanut butter, it seemed like two great tastes that went great together, so here we are...

Knits for Nerds: 30 Projects for Fans of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Comic Books by a.k.a Toni Carr Joan of Dark
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a fun book! There's so much nerd/knitter overlap, it just surprises me that it took this long for this book to be written!

Knits for Nerds has a wide variety of patterns -- ranging from the ridiculous (Hobbit Feet slippers, complete with hair) to the lovely (the Summer Queen shawl, a pretty, delicate lace number). Some of the patterns are rather costumey (the Princess Leia hair-bun hat comes to mind) but many are quite wearable even for people who aren't into wearing their nerdiness on their sleeves; in fact, some of the patterns are just good, solid basic patterns, made nerdy only by virtue of the colors used. The inspirations come from all corners of geekdom; not just things you'd expect like Doctor Who and Firefly (both of which have given rise to many a knitting project) but also from Neil Gaiman's books and Tank Girl. There are also several generically geeky patterns: a tie; an e-reader/tablet sleeve; a laptop bag that doubles as a travel chess board. And, of course, there are sweater vest patterns inspired by the Big Bang Theory.

All of the yarns used in the book are inexpensive and easy to find (Knitpicks, Lion Brand, Patons, etc.); the only ones that I, personally, cannot find at my local big-box Michaels or AC Moore are Knitpicks, Berrocco, and Cascade 220, which are all certainly easy to come by online or at yarn shops. There are patterns for all knitting levels, from the beginner to the person who enjoys a challenge. Patterns are either charted or written out, not both. There is a glossary of terms and a how-to section at the end of the book which covers all techniques necessary to complete the patterns.

My only complaint about the book was that I found the pictures to be very dark and hard to view -- but to be fair, I was viewing a PDF galley on a Nook Color, and have noticed this problem with other knitting books I am currently reviewing. I think it is a problem specific to the galley/e-reader combination; I will compare once I see a printed copy of the book.

I would recommend Knits for Nerds to all my nerdy knitter friends -- of which there are many. I look forward to seeing finished projects from the book at this year's New York ComicCon...and who knows, maybe I'll knit and wear one myself! I do love me a good sweater vest...

Reviewed galley provided by Andrews McMeel Publishing, via NetGalley. Expected publication date February 21, 2012.

 

World of Geekcraft: Step-by-Step Instructions for 25 Super-Cool Craft Projects by Susan Beal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

World of Geekcraft is a delightful book. The 25 projects run the gamut of geekdom, from jewelry made from 20-sided dice, to crocheted Tribbles, to a replica of the sewing boxes from Coraline. While many of the projects are inspired by a specific world of geekery (Buffy, Star Wars), others are just generally geeky (a Morse Code quilt, a steampunk pendant, a needle-felted solar system mobile).

Patterns are arranged in order of difficulty, and run from extremely easy to rather intricate and detailed. There's something for everyone, as some projects are of the glue-gun-and-scissors variety and would require no special skills, while some require a fair bit of prior knowledge -- the aforementioned quilt, for example; some knitted items that assume you already know how to knit. This is a book to turn to for project inspiration, not one to learn new techniques.

And what projects will this geek be making from the book? First and foremost, the Oregon Trail-inspired cross stitch. It is ridiculously awesome.

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Moosie

Growing up, I always thought of my grandparents -- my father's parents -- as being REALLY old.  And, well, they were...if they were still alive, they'd be turning 99 and 104 this year.  And they were much older than my other set of grandparents.  So it was a surprise when I realized, about a month ago, that my grandma Moosie, the youngest of all my grandparents, was, suddenly, my oldest grandparent -- she'd outlived all of the others and was older than even my dad's father had ever been.  

Moosie and me, 1978

Today would have been Moosie's 88th birthday.  But she missed it by two weeks -- after declining steadily over the last six months or so, she died on January 22.  She'd gone to the hospital just a week before she died -- she was having trouble breathing -- and it was pretty clear that she was at the end.  She came home on Saturday afternoon and died just about 25 hours later, quietly, just like she lived.  It was peaceful, in the end.  My mom and my uncles, my sisters and my cousin and I were all with her.

It sounds so trite to say, but truly, there is no one quite like a grandma.  It's so difficult to put into words everything that she meant to me, and I find myself simply lapsing into snippets, anecdotes, about her life and about our time together.   There are so many things I will always remember: Going on walks with her.  Her oatmeal cookies and her homemade chow mein.  The letters she wrote me while I was away at college.  The summer during college that I lived with her, when she insisted on packing my lunch every day before I left for my job as a day camp counselor (and would sometimes even send me in with a batch of cookies to share with the kids at camp).  The many nights at her house playing cribbage and Scrabble -- sometimes just the two of us, sometimes a whole lot of us.  How she took me out driving, when I turned 16 the winter after my dad died, because my mom was too scared to do it herself.  Her delight in her great-grandchildren.  How she took me shopping, the week before my wedding, to help me find a pretty barrette to put in my hair because I wasn't planning on wearing a veil.    

Moosie and me, 2000.

I could go on and on.  There are a million memories, and yet they aren't enough.  They could never be enough.  When you love someone, it doesn't matter how much time you spend with them -- you always wish it could be longer.

Moosie lived a life that sounded like something out of a storybook.  She was orphaned twice as a young child, and eventually was taken in by an elderly aunt and uncle.  She met my grandfather during World War II when her cousin suggested that she write to a nice young man from Louisiana that he'd come to know -- they wrote throughout the war, he came to Connecticut after he was discharged, and the rest is history.  She ran our town's post office out of the back room of her house from the late 1960s until the mid 1980s.  

I always loved to listen to Moosie's stories about growing up, particularly because I, too, grew up in the same town.  It always seemed vaguely preposterous that we'd grown up separated only by fifty-four years, because her childhood seemed SO different from mine.  She told stories about doing things like sledding down the road in front of her house.  Even then it was the main road in town -- but then it was a quiet country lane, and now it's a state highway with a 50mph speed limit.  She went to a one-room schoolhouse and then attended high school in an adjacent town, since our town didn't have its own high school until the 1960s.

Ian, in the one-room schoolhouse where his great-grandmother went to school (!!)

Moosie also did a ton of crafts, as did most women of her generation.  She sewed a lot, and could knit and crochet (though she didn't enjoy either and I don't recall her ever doing either, although she must have at some point because a few years ago she gave me a bunch of crochet hooks and knitting needles), but mostly, at least in the years I knew her, she did rug braiding, shuttle tatting, and chair caning...three things that fall into the category of "things no one can do anymore."  I'm tremendously sad to say, though, that I didn't learn any of these things from her.  She tried to teach me to tat several times, but I just literally could not wrap my fingers around it (I think that now that I'm a good knitter, it would probably make more sense to me -- I must find someone to teach me!).  Chair caning was something I wanted to learn -- but by the time I had the time and the inclination to learn, her eyesight had deteriorated enough that she couldn't really do it anymore.  The same with rug braiding -- I don't know when exactly she gave it up, but she already had by the time I was ready to learn.  Still, though, despite the fact that I didn't pick up those three particular things (though I intend to learn someday!), I learned so much from her.  She taught me how to sew and mend, and the values of having a button collection and various notions handy at all times, and she always loved to try out new things -- something I definitely picked up from her!  In her later years, even after she had to stop doing handwork herself, she always loved to see what I was working on and talk shop with me.  For many years, she demonstrated chair caning at our town's historical fair, and I like to think that now, as I demonstrate spinning there, I'm following in her footsteps.

One thing my family is lucky to have is a LOT of pictures, going back into Moosie's childhood and even earlier.  We've all been going through them over the last few weeks.  I scanned a lot of them for a display at her memorial service, and have continued going through and scanning others so that we can have a digital repository and share them amongst our family members.  I leave you with one of my favorite images we found -- Moosie, from sometime in the early 1940s.  I love how beautiful and ethereal, somehow, she looks in it, and I love that it's not a typical posed photo.  It's so like her -- always doing something with her hands.  

Happy birthday, Moosie.  I love you and I miss you.  

The Entertainer

It's been a rough few weeks here (more on that later) but through it all, the one constant has been that Ian continues to make us laugh.  If laughter is the best medicine, then he's the best doctor there is.  (Not a bad feat for a 21-month-old!)  I swear, if it weren't for him, I would have spent a large part of the last three weeks in a heap on the floor.  

A couple of amusing anecdotes from recent days...

Practicing for the Elementary School Cafeteria

This past weekend, I took Ian to get his hair cut.  The Snip-Its that we go to is in the same plaza as Panera, and it's become our tradition to go there afterwards.  This time around, it was a little early for lunch, so we had a little snack -- milk and an oatmeal raisin cookie for Ian; chai a and toffee nut cookie for me.  Ian's still a bit too small to really converse with at length, but we sat by the window and pointed out trucks going by, and beeped each other's noses, and made faces at each other, and I tried to get Ian to say some of the things he says especially cutely.  It was a lovely date.

Just before we started getting ready to leave, a woman tried to sit at the table next to us and dropped her tray.  Her bowl shattered and soup was EVERYWHERE.  I think all of us sitting nearby would have just ignored it (she was fine and nothing was hurt) in order to lessen the woman's embarrassment, but Ian whipped around, sized up the situation, and yelled "UH OH!" at the top of his little lungs, causing our entire quadrant of the restaurant to bust out laughing.  Oops.  All I could think of was how, in elementary school, if someone dropped a tray or accidentally popped a plastic bag or something, the entire cafeteria would bust out in a chorus of "oooooOOOOOHHHHH....!"  Sorry, soup lady.  I swear he wasn't mocking you.

Funny, They Don't Look Like Hugh Laurie

My mother-in-law lives just about a mile from us, and as such we visit her frequently.  When we get there, I always say "we're at Grandma's house!".  The last time we went to see her, Ian yelled "HOUSE!" as we pulled into the driveway.  Which made total sense, since I always announce where we are.  So we go inside and go through our afternoon.  Eventually Ian pulled down the family picture from the table in MIL's living room -- he likes to point at everyone in the picture and identify them.  He started, as always, with "daddy," and then "mommy," and then "baby," and then...."House!"  Yes, he's apparently internalized the wrong half of "Grandma's house" -- and Grandma is now House.  Throughout the rest of the day he kept pointing at her -- "House!" -- and when we left, she got a very solemn wave and "buh-bye....House."

The very next day, my mom came to our house for dinner, and Ian called HER House, too.  (He doesn't see my mom nearly as much, since she lives in New Hampshire, so she was just excited that he clearly understands that she's Grandma, too!)

I'm not sure either of them will ever live this down.  Wonder how long it'll stick?  Maybe we should invest in some canes and VIcodin for them, so they can play the part.  They're on their own for the grumpy behavior, though.

She knits!

I really did fall off the knitting, or at least the knitblogging, wagon there for a while.  It's no secret that I don't knit as much as I used to, but also, towards the end of the year I started work on a big project -- a sock yarn blanket -- which pretty much took up all of my knitting time.  And then came Christmas gifts, which I couldn't blog about.  And then there's the whole issue of me being lazy about photographing projects (and then getting the pictures from my camera....and then uploading them to flickr....and now my flickr pro account is expired), so, well, not much knitblogging.

But anyway, Christmas is (mostly) over, so I can unveil some of the projects I did.

First, there was a hat I knitted for my brother-in-law, but I forgot to take a picture, and my sister-in-law hasn't sent me one yet, so I'll just tell you that I did it, but you don't get to see it.  ;-)

Then, from the "projects that are lovely but really not all that photogenic" files, a cowl for my mother-in-law.

Pattern: One-row eyelet cowl
Yarn: Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca Grande Tweed, one skein
Needles: US11/8.0mm
Time: December 2-3, 2011
Ravelry project page

This was a super-quick project -- as the pattern name suggests, it's just one row, repeated over and over, till you run out of yarn.  The finished product is really lovely -- it's nice and drapey (especially after blocking, which really opened up the eyelets) and oh so soft and warm without being heavy.  I love alpaca for this kind of project.

And for my sister-in-law, who is a huge Doctor Who fan...

Pattern: The Oncoming Storm
Yarn: Frog Tree Alpaca Sportweight, one skein gray, maybe 1/3 skein dark charcoal gray
Needles: US6/4.0mm
Time: December 4-20, 2011
Ravelry project page

If you're a Doctor Who fan too, you'll recognize these as being Dalek-inspired.  I loved that they are clearly Daleks if you are familiar with Daleks -- but if you're not, they're just a neat pattern.  Just the right degree of geeky for me.  These were a fun knit...colorwork (which I haven't done in forever), bobbles...just interesting enough.  I didn't do the bobbles exactly as written; instead I used bobble instructions I've used previously, because the ones in the pattern didn't "bobble" enough for my liking, especially with this yarn (which is rather flat and didn't have good stitch definition for things like bobbles).  I didn't really like the way the thumbhole was written in the pattern, either...it seemed WAY too big for a thumb.  I think the point was to make the thumb stick out straight to more closely resemble a Dalek, but I think I'd modify it somehow if I were to make these again, to make them fit the hand more nicely.  But all in all, these were a big success -- they're nice and soft (it's been a very alpaca Christmas!) and as you can see from the picture, Katie loved them.  :-)

And next, at long last, a hat for Jim (being modeled by Ian).  I love my husband dearly, but he doesn't wear many knits, and so I never knit anything for him! 

Pattern: Hurricane Hat
Yarn: my handspun
Needles: US7/4.5mm
Time: December 4-21, 2011
Ravelry project page

And here's a picture of the actual recipient.  Such a versatile hat, it fits both man and child!

I knitted this from yarn I spun (and blogged, very briefly, here) a couple of years ago.  It's Falkland wool, from fiber dyed by Freckle Face Fibers.  This yarn wanted to be a hat from the very moment I took it off the niddy-noddy, and its time had finally come.  It had a bit of a bumpy, rustic, thick-and-thin quality to it, so I knew I needed a simple pattern, and the Hurricane Hat, with its spiral of purl stitches on a stockinette background, was just the ticket.  I'm intrigued that it knitted up in stripes (seen best in the picture that Ian is modeling in), since I spun the yarn, as I recall, totally randomly!  Jim wanted a basic hat in a natural fiber that he could wear while skiing, and since he always runs warm, I didn't want to make it too heavy.  This fits the bill nicely, I think, and even matches his navy-and-grey ski jacket pretty well!  This was another quick knit, but it took as long as it did because I was knitting it in secret on my lunch breaks at work, just a couple of rows per day for the better part of a month.  :-)