librarysarie

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.  :-)

BOOK REVIEW: The Thorn and the Blossom

The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story by Theodora Goss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a beautiful little novella. The Thorn and the Blossom is the story of Evelyn and Brendan, who meet in a bookstore in a small town in Cornwall and feel an instant connection. They spend several days together, then part and don't see each other for years. Inevitably, though, their paths cross again, leaving the reader to contemplate the true nature of their mysterious, haunting love story.

The book is accordion-bound, making it two-sided -- Evelyn's story on one side, Brendan's on the other. The reader can choose which to read first; the two sides of the story run parallel, with repeated dialogue and such, but after reading the second perspective we come away with a different understanding of the first as well. I read Evelyn's story first; I wonder how different the book would have seemed if I'd read Brendan's first. It's a really interesting way to present a story; as a librarian, though, I wonder how well the book would hold up, physically, to library use. The paper is good-quality and quite heavy, and there is a sturdy slipcover, so I suppose it all comes down to how careful patrons are with it!

The book itself, in addition to being bound quite uniquely, is really lovely. The artwork on the slipcase reminds me of beautiful old botanical prints, and the story is illustrated with several block prints. The artistic style lends the book a very strong sense of timelessness and permanence.

The writing is gentle and lyrical, and reminded me very much of the epic romances I read so many of during college. I was a medieval literature major (both Brendan and Evelyn are medievalists) and spent a semester in England, as Evelyn did, so that section in particular made me feel nostalgic. Then after finishing the book, I read the Q&A with the author that Quirk sent along as well, and was struck by this sentence: "But in the end, a book is never created entirely by its writer. Readers will imagine these things for themselves, each in a different way. The forest will be the forests they've walked through; the love story will be relationships they've experienced. And that's as it should be. That's what reading's all about -- participating in the story." How very true.

Expected publication date: January 17, 2012

Copy received for review from Quirk Books

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BOOK REVIEW: Alice Bliss

Alice Bliss by Laura Harrington
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Alice Bliss broke my heart.

(I've been trying, but I can't separate my review of the book from my personal response to it, which necessitates a spoiler. Be forewarned.)

I could write at length about the floodgates of emotions that the book brought to the surface, but it would be rather more than I am comfortable sharing in a public review. Suffice to say, the book hit very close to home for me.

Matt Bliss, an Army reservist, gets called up and deployed to Iraq, leaving his wife Angie and daughters Alice and Ellie behind. The family struggles to deal with Matt's deployment and their feelings of loss in his absence. Matt is obviously the glue that holds the family together, as Angie retreats into herself, leaving Alice, at age fifteen, to take over many of the responsibilities of the household, caring for her sister, and navigating adolescence on her own. Alice, who is particularly close to her father, struggles to keep him as close to her as she can, wearing his clothes, planting the garden they'd planned together, and trying to fix up his workshop before his return.

There wouldn't be a book here without bad news. Matt's letters and phone calls grow more infrequent, and then the Bliss family gets the bad news that he is missing in action.

Alice grows increasingly worried about her beloved father's well-being, and starts imagining the worst even as she hopes against hope and tries to keep up a brave facade for her younger sister's benefit. But the hope is in vain, as one day a soldier and an army chaplain show up at the Bliss house bringing the worst news imaginable.

I lost my own father when I was fifteen. The circumstances were very different -- my father died after a long illness -- but regardless, the book took my breath away. Change a few little details, and it was like looking into a window at my own family and what we went through, right down to my uncle teaching me how to drive because my dad couldn't.

Harrington's portrayal of Alice's emotions is absolutely, to my experience, spot-on. Being a teenager is enough of an emotional rollercoaster even without the absence, nevermind the total loss, of a parent. I remember all too well the conflict I felt during the time surrounding my father's death, wanting desperately to hold on to my childhood, wishing that nothing needed to change, while at the same time looking anxiously forward to the future and all the promise it held.

I was especially touched, in the book, by Alice's relationship with her childhood best friend, Henry, as they tentatively explore their new feelings for each other, Henry acting as Alice's rock as her world shatters around her. The conflicting emotions, the euphoria of first love contrasting with -- and providing a welcome respite from -- the seemingly soul-crushing grief: it rang very true to me. Other reviews I have read question Alice's reactions and behavior; I think that these reviewers are looking at the situation from adult eyes. It's confusing, being old enough to understand completely what's going on, but having neither the experience nor the emotional maturity to really be able to deal with it. Everyone's experiences are different, of course, but Harrington's portrayal of Alice was very real and very raw to me. It's clear, too, that despite it all, Alice will be okay. She is a strong, determined young woman, and part of me wants to revisit her in ten years, in fifteen years, to check in on her. She will be remarkable.

Laura Harrington is a playwright and librettist, and this is her first novel. I'm glad she made the jump -- her writing is lovely and lyrical and there were passages I read over and over again just to savor the language.

All in all, this was a wonderful, if painful, book: your reaction to it may not be as strong as mine was, but still, I recommend tissues.

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BOOK REVIEW: Textual Healing

Textual Healing by Eric Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a book that desperately wants to be a movie. From the very first page, I could see the movie in my head -- the first words of the novel read as a voiceover, with a scene-setting panorama of New York City, before cutting into Ace's apartment. It reads as a kind of mashup, Scott Pilgrim meets High Fidelity meets Empire Records meets the bookstore of Notting Hill. The movie image was so clear in my mind, I even have the film all mentally cast.

Ace, a writer whose one best-selling, made-into-a-movie book is now gracing the clearance shelves at Barnes & Noble, has writers block, his girlfriend has left him, his used book store does hardly any business...and then the real upheaval starts, as a blind date turns into a life-changing experience for him as well as for those around him.

The novel can't be taken all that seriously -- really, all of the action takes place in a single week? -- but that adds to its charm, and you're not reading a book like this for a dose of reality, anyway. The characters (and boy, are they all characters!) are likable and a lot of fun -- and really, who wouldn't want to cross paths frequently with a haiku-speaking ninja? Life would be a lot more interesting if we all had wacky people like these populating our lives.

I had to knock off a star for the amount of typos, confusing punctuation, and flat-out errors in the text -- I found it really distracting to read. I also was a little turned off by all of the pop-culture references, many of which seemed gratuitous, forced, or both.

Despite my negative comments, though, I did enjoy the book and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys quirky, romantic-but-not-sappy stories. With a bit of editing, the novel would really shine.

Copy received from the author for review

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Magic

There are a lot of reasons why I'm glad we waited till we'd been married for a decade before moving ahead with Project Child, but one of them is that we had a number of holiday seasons in which to create our own holiday traditions without having to work a kid into them, too.  By the time Ian rolled around, we had things pretty sorted out -- you all know it can be hard to create new traditions while still upholding the old ones that you both bring to a relationship -- and, having had a long time to think about what is important to us, we had some pretty good ideas about how we want to share that with our son. 

We aren't religious by any definition, but that doesn't mean that it's not an important and sacred, if you'll forgive my use of the word, time of year for us.  We are lucky enough to have wonderful families that we love and are close to (and actually legitimately like, rather than just tolerate!) and if that's not worth celebrating, I don't know what is.  Giving and sharing and caring, and lighting the darkest nights of the year -- all things that are a wonderful basis for a holiday.

Last year we put up our Christmas tree after Ian had gone to bed, but this year he helped. (He helped us pick it out, too, of course!  He was much more interested in the proceedings than he was last year.)  He held the lights for Jim while he was putting them up, and then dropped a couple of ornaments under the tree (he can't quite work out how to actually hang them) before amusing himself sorting the non-breakable balls we bought into piles, while Jim and I did the actual decorating.  :-)

I've been going to the Wadsworth Atheneum for the annual Festival of Trees for years now, and last year I took Ian with me on a day off.  This year, Jim came along too.  I think the three of us were the only people there under the age of 50 on the Friday morning that we went, and so Ian was very busy amusing groups of little old ladies with his (well-behaved) antics.  We also went to the Christmas House in Torrington, which I cannot adequately explain for you other than to say that it is amazing that the place hasn't burned down, what with all the fire code violations.  It's awesome.

We didn't go see Santa -- Ian isn't old enough to care, and he HATES standing in line -- but he can now identify Santa on sight ("Tanta!") and will tell you that he says "ho, ho, ho" while rubbing his own little bowl full of jelly.

Most important of all, though, is spending time with our loved ones.  And this year we get to do it an extra lot -- we always celebrate Christmas in January with my family, so we still have that to look forward to -- but this year Jim's siblings and their spouses, sadly, couldn't overlap their visits home.  So we had our usual Christmas Eve with Jim's mom, grandma, sister, and her husband, and then Christmas Day with the three of us plus Mom and Grandma.  Tonight we're doing Christmas Eve, redux, but with Jim's brother and his wife in place of his sister and her husband.  Ian LOVES all the attention, and once he figured out what the deal was with presents, he loved THAT, too.  

Christmas morning at our house was nice and low-key.  Jim and I exchanged our gifts, and tried to get Ian to open some of his.  

He liked his very first present from Santa -- some play dishes -- so much, that all he wanted to do was play with them.  :-)  It took us most of the day to get through his gifts, one at a time as his interest dictated.  I can't say I minded it -- I know it'll only be a couple of years before he's in full-on Must Open All The Things As Quickly As Possible mode, and for now, it was nice to be able to spread it all out and see the excitement on his face as he opened each thing.  Everything elicited an "ooh!" or a "whoa!", and what really made my little nerdy librarian heart happy was when he opened up his very own copy of Gossie and Gertie -- he loves that book so much, he's worn the library copy right out -- and yelled out "Gossie!"  My boy can identify books!  And gets excited about them!  O happy day!

I sincerely hope that you all had a Christmas that was every ounce as happy and fun as ours was.  

And now, I can start to unveil the Christmas projects -- although even some of that will have to wait till the end of January, after we see my family!!

Three, sir.

(Remember this sweater I made, way back before Ian was even born?  It finally fits him!)

Ian is 19 months old now (in fact, today is his 19 monthiversary!) and he is just exploding with words.  He talks ALL the time -- a lot is still just gibberish, even to us, but his list of understandable words has grown to the point where it would take me quite a while to come up with anything resembling a complete list.  (And of course, being the stellar mother I am, I haven't been jotting down his new words as he learns them.  Someday, he'll ask when he learned certain things, and I'll just have to admit that I'm not as awesome at record-keeping as a librarian really ought to be.)

What's really neat to watch is that he's beginning to be able to express concepts, not just nouns.  He LOVES to go outside, and he will now go stand by the door and yell "Outside! Outside!" while trying to work the doorknob.  And he knows the whole routine that goes along with that too -- before going outside he'll retrieve (well, try to retrieve -- he can't quite reach) his jacket from the coat hook ("acket! acket!") and then wander around the house muttering "shooooes, shoooooes" until he finds his shoes.  And his tocks, of course.  You can't put on your shoes until you have your tocks on. 

He loves his books, too, and has started to have very definite preferences for what you read him, and when.  We used to be able to read him pretty much anything at bedtime, but now we have a selection of five or six books (mostly by Sandra Boynton) that he finds acceptable.  (Thankfully, other books are acceptable at other times.)  His favorites are The Going to Bed Book, Perfect Piggies, Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs (which he very cutely calls "My My") and, of course, the perennial childhood favorite Goodnight Moon (he likes to point out the kitties on all the pages on which they appear).  He's started to memorize some of the books, too -- in The Going to Bed Book there's a section "And when the moon is on the rise, they all go up to exercise" and he will often yell EXERCISE! (or something closely resembling it, anyway) at the right time. 

What's really hilarious, though, is his counting.  He's starting to learn his numbers.  I'm not sure how much of it is an actual understanding of the concept of numbers -- I think at this point, he's still mostly just repeating what he hears us say -- but he can count to five relatively reliably.  If you start counting and then stop, he will say the next number in the sequence, usually very loudly and with great enthusiasm.  My favorite is FWREEEEEE!  But if left to his own devices, he counts "doo, doo, FIIIIVE!"  Which makes me giggle every time.  So young, and already making Monty Python references.  That's my boy!

Snowpocalypse

The weather has just been so strange these last couple of months.  Yesterday it was nearly 70 degrees. A month ago, though, this is what we had to deal with.

(Ian's reaction when he looked out the window: "Whoa!"  Yes, indeed, little dude.  Yes, indeed.)

The snow started here just after noon on Saturday, October 29.  Our power went out just after dark (and it would stay out, though we didn't know it yet, until the following Sunday night).  All that night, all we could hear were branches snapping all over the place.  Usually weather doesn't phase me too much but I was more than a little nervous during this storm.  We woke up in the morning to clear blue skies and nearly two feet of heavy, wet snow.

Definitely the craziest October weather I ever remember.

Because it was October, there were still leaves on the trees, which is what caused so much damage -- the poor trees just couldn't take the weight.  My poor lilac was one of the casualties.

It needed a good pruning, but it didn't need to be THAT good.

On Sunday we ran the fireplace all day (mostly useless for heat, although i did make some awesome baked potatoes in it).  We decided to venture out to my library -- there's a generator there because the community center (where the library is located) is the town emergency shelter, and since we had no power, no phone, no internet, and no cell service, we really wanted to get an idea of how bad things were, not to mention check in with our families.  That night, it was supposed go to down into the 20s, and we weren't sure how to keep Ian warm enough...so when we got to the library and discovered that they were opening up the shelter, we decided to stay there.  But since we're not residents, we didn't want to use cots and other supplies that we weren't entitled to -- plus, why not take advantage of whatever privacy you're able to get? -- so instead we set up camp in my office.  I have often joked about sleeping in my office, but I assure you, I never thought I would actually, literally, sleep there.  We had Ian in his pack-and-play, and Jim and I slept on an air mattress.  Crazy. 

Truthfully, it's too bad Ian won't remember this whole episode -- because what kid doesn't secretly want to sleep in the library??  Here's our little camper, in his jammies in the library very very early in the morning, long before other people came in:

We slept in my office, cooked and ate in the staff room, washed hair in the sink in the story room...it was an adventure, to be sure.  And I worked.  A lot.  We kept the library open lots of extra hours -- for a time, it was, literally, the only place in town with power -- and holy smokes, was it busy.  People coming in to charge things, check their email, use the phone, get coffee (we were brewing it by the gallon), and just warming up....I couldn't believe how many people were in the library, literally crammed into every available space.  It was quite the experience -- we'd keep the library open till 9:30, I'd go change into pajamas and read for a while, we'd set up the air mattress and go to bed, then I'd roll out in the morning and empty the bookdrop while still in my pajamas....Surreal doesn't begin to describe it.

The storm and power outages effectively cancelled Halloween, but the town parks and rec department organized trick-or-treating for the kids staying at the shelter.  So Ian got to rock his little robot costume after all (and we didn't have to trick-or-treat in the cold and dark! WIN!)

The senior citizens who were handing out candy declared Ian absolutely adorable.  I was handing out candy in the library so I didn't get to walk around with him, but I am told that he was very polite and well-behaved, and even though he's too little to say "trick or treat" he DID say "BEEP!" whenever prompted, just like a good little robot should.

Luckily Jim's mom got her power back quite early -- on Halloween night, actually -- so our library camping adventure was relatively short-lived, and we stayed at Camp Grandma until our own power came back.  It was a crazy week-plus, let me tell you.  But I have to say -- everyone was in the same boat, and the whole experience really brought people together.  Our part of CT was the hardest-hit, and even after the power had been out for a week people were still, by and large, cheerful and optimistic and looking out for each other.  On the Friday of that week, as the library crowds were dwindling as more and more people got their power back, a man who had been there working daily (needless to say, telecommuting was not working from his house!) said, wistfully, "we should have a reunion in a few months! This has been fun!"  And you know, really, it was.  It was a giant pain, to be sure, but there's nothing like some good old-fashioned Yankee stiff-upper-lip and can-do and a healthy dose of community spirit to give you the warm fuzzies.

But it is REALLY nice to have my power and internet back.  Really nice.

Back on the grid, if not back in the saddle

Well, hello, world.  Long time no see.

As the saying goes, what a long, strange trip it's been.  Just when I was feeling some blog posts brewing, we had a freak snowstorm on October 29, which led to nine days without electricity, which was followed by another five days of no phone/internet/cable.  But we're back now and I've had a few days to catch my breath, just in time to run full-tilt into the holidays.  Whew!

I have much to say about our recent adventures, but it's not worth saying if I can't say it with pictures, and I have to find my camera cable, which I seem to have misplaced during our two weeks of nomadic living.  We'll just say that work has been crazy, regular life has been only slightly less crazy than that, and I have been knitting a lot, though that has manifested itself in a bout of startitis rather than in the sort of knitting that will allow me to crank out Christmas gifts in a timely manner.  

So for now, I leave it at that.  But hello - it's nice to be back.

BOOK REVIEW: Maphead

Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks by Ken Jennings
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

True story: my husband and I met because of a geography bee. I was the seventh grade Geography Bee champion at our middle school; he was the eighth grade champion. We went head to head for several rounds, but ultimately he bested me -- he knew that quinine was used to treat malaria, and I did not. I got my revenge, though, in a way -- he did not qualify for the state geography bee, but the following year, when I became the school champion, I DID. (And believe me -- some twenty years later, I still remind him of this quite frequently!) I went on to the Connecticut bee, with ninety-nine of the other top scorers, but I was eliminated before reaching the finals. It's true what they say -- you always remember the question that you didn't know the answer to. (In case it ever comes up for you: the South American desert known for being the driest in the world is the Atacama. You're welcome.)

You don't get to the state geography bee without being a map nerd -- so I don't need to tell you that I practically jumped up and down with excitement when I first heard about this book. A book about my people! Jennings, known for his 74-game winning streak on Jeopardy!, hooked me right in the very first chapter, with his tales of his childhood atlas (for me, it was a huge collection, courtesy of my grandfather, of National Geographic maps, plus a box set of "Close-Up USA" maps), wooden map puzzles, and realization that, for those of us who were in our peak geography-nerd phases before the end of the Cold War, our knowledge of world capitals and European country names is stuck in 1987.

Jennings goes on to trace the weird world of the "maphead" in chapters dealing the history of maps, map collecting, maps of fictional places, geocaching, and more. He shares my feeling that a book which includes maps must be good (bonus points if there's also an appendix!) and discusses the role that maps play in adult geek culture, noting that "Hogwarts and the starship Enterprise have been mapped in more detail than much of Africa." And, of course, there is a chapter on the National Geographic Bee which, as a former participant myself, I took special interest in. (And having read more about it, both here and elsewhere, I can look back and say, unequivocally, that despite my performance on the written test that qualified me for the state finals there is NO way I was prepared for that, nevermind the national finals. These kids are HARDCORE.)

As you would expect from a book written by a trivia champion and, dare I say, professional geek, the book is full of interesting facts and, yes, trivial sidenotes. Jennings has clearly done his homework; I'm nerdy enough to be totally jealous of the research he got to do for the book, especially visiting the map room at the Library of Congress. Jennings is a gifted, humorous writer, and the book is fast-paced and lighthearted -- if one were hoping for a serious academic treatment of maps and mapheads, this isn't the right book. (The book also boasts the rarest of all literary beasts, a funny appendix. The entries for "Jennings, Ken" and his wife made me giggle.)

All in all, Maphead is a fun read, and perfect for those who like a solid dose of chuckles with their facts. (And if descriptions of maps are going to make you go dig out your favorites so you can relive them all over again, then this is DEFINITELY for you.)

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BOOK REVIEW: Crafting With Cat Hair

Crafting with Cat Hair by Kaori Tsutaya
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I know a lot of people -- even fiber enthusiasts -- who are squicked by the idea of using cat or dog fur in projects. I've never really understood why -- what makes fur from a cat or a dog so fundamentally different than hair from a sheep (wool) or from a goat (cashmere) or from a rabbit (angora)? Certainly cat and dog fur isn't as well-suited to most crafting endeavors as these other fibers, but I've never heard an objection due to the utility of the fiber -- it's always emotional in nature. Strange.

Crafting With Cat Hair obviously seeks to persuade people that cat fur is, indeed, a perfectly legitimate material to craft with. Cat hair cannot be spun into yarn (at least not easily, and at least not so far as I am aware) due to its short staple length, so the book's projects are all based on felting. Wet felting is used to create adorable cat-hair finger puppets; other projects are things such as book covers, trinket boxes made of recycled milk cartons, and coin purses, all of which are made of other materials (generally manufactured wool felt, or recycled/repurposed sweaters in one case) while the cat hair is used to create a decorative embellishment via needle felting. In these cases, the cat hair is really almost an afterthought to the "main" project -- one could easily make the base project and them embellish it with beads, sequins, or other crafty doodads rather than with cat hair.

The projects are alternated in the book with two-page spreads on cat-related topics: how to best brush your cat; how much do cats shed; how cat hair is nearly odorless; how to care for your cat-hair projects; and so on. There are also ever-so-vaguely LOLcat-ish pictures throughout and, at the end, bios of the cats who "donated" their fur for the pictured projects.

The book seems to assume a knowledge of basic crafting skills. For example, in the pincushion project, the instructions call for sewing the pieces of the pincushion together inside out, turning it right-side out, stuffing it, and then sewing the hole closed, but there is no specific direction given as to how to do this. Still, though, there are no projects in the book that are difficult, and while absolute beginners may need to consult other sources for tips on how to do some of these things, everything here is still well within their reach. One thing that surprised me, however, was that there was only one brief mention of how sharp felting needles are, and that one mention was towards the end of the book. While "don't poke yourself with the needle" is a safety tip that should (one hopes) go without saying, it is extraordinarily painful to get poked with a barbed felting needle (speaking from experience here!) and I have never seen a felting book that didn't mention this upfront.

I would have known that Crafting With Cat Hair was Japanese in origin even if I hadn't known that it was. It just feels Japanese, between the voice, the subject matter, and the almost unbearable (in a good way!) cuteness. There are some things that were not fully adapted for an American audience -- several of the recommended cat brushes are Japanese products (or, at least, Japanese websites were given as sources), and at one point, the author suggests storing brushed cat hair in a seaweed tin until ready for use. I wouldn't know where to find a seaweed tin if my life depended on it.

All in all, this is a cute book that would appeal to crafters (if only for the novelty) and lovers of the quirky -- and, of course, cat people. And I must admit, I have a sudden hankering to make little tiny finger-puppet doppelgangers of my two cats. I've often joked that I could knit an entire new cat out of the amount of cat hair I sweep up, and perhaps this is the first step towards that.

Copy sent to me for review by Quirk Books.

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Stormy

Before Hurricane Irene hit, I figured I'd better find some Storm Knitting to do -- something that would lend itself to knitting in low-light conditions if we lost power (since everything else I'm knitting at the moment requires actual light).  It took me a while to find something, but I finally settled on a pattern in my queue: the Storm Cloud Shawlette.  Appropriate, no?  As it turned out, it's a good thing I did this - we made it through the entire storm just fine, only to lose power at 10pm on Sunday night, long after the rain and winds had stopped.  Go figure.  We had 48 hours without electricity.  My mother-in-law, who lives nearby, DID have power, so we showered there in the mornings and had dinner there after work, but then went home for bedtime.  Jim read with his favorite booklight, I knitted by candlelight.  And over the course of the outage, I knitted most of this shawl, finishing it in the next week.

That's a really horrid picture, but honestly, it's not a particularly photogenic project!  The yarn I used is my own handspun -- believe it or not, although I've been spinning for several years now, this is the first time I've knitted with my own yarn!  The fiber is a wool/bamboo blend from Creatively Dyed, and I purchased it at Rhinebeck 2008.  It went from this braid...

...to this singles...

...to this two-ply yarn...

...to this shawl.  It was really a good choice for this pattern; it's very light and drapey, but warm, and it striped ever so subtly, which works well with the semi-circular shape.  And I'm very pleased with how consistent the yarn was -- the plying was mostly very even, and the thickness pretty uniform too.  

The yarn was heavier than the yarn called for in the pattern, so I knitted this on pretty big needles - 10s, I think.  And truthully, I didn't have quite enough yarn -- I only managed to do a couple of rows of the ruffle after the final increase (rather than the 12, I think, that was called for) before needing to bind off -- and I literally had about two inches of yarn remaining after binding off my final stitch. So it's more of just a little flourish than a full-on ruffle, but this is a forgiving pattern so it doesn't matter.

This is on the small side -- I've not blocked it yet (and am not sure if I'll bother).  It's just large enough to drape over my shoulders.  I don't know how much use it'll really get, but it's pretty to look at -- far more than these poor pictures would suggest -- and I'll admit that I keep fondling it just to admire the yarn.  ;-)

 

BOOK REVIEW: Broetry by Brian McGackin

Broetry by Brian McGackin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To get one thing out of the way: I am SO not the target audience for this book. From the introduction: "Broetry is poetry for dudes. It's poetry for people who don't like poetry." I'm not a dude, and, well, I was an English major, so while I don't consider myself a poetry lover I feel like there must be some sort of appreciation for the form hardwired into my brain somewhere.

And yet, despite my non-dudeness, I enjoyed the book. It was surprisingly refreshing to read poetry that wasn't about Big Topics, and of course anyone who knows me is well aware that I love a good parody. I was a little disappointed, though, that none of the straight-up parodic poems were as good, to my mind, as the one on the front cover (though "O Captain! My Captain America!" comes close). It's a little like a comedy movie giving away all its best lines in its trailers. Still, though, the book made me chuckle, and there were some instances of real inspiration, as in "Not Another Teen Movie," which cleverly tracks the trajectory of a relationship using only movie titles.

My favorite title, which I feel the need to mention just because I giggle every time I read it: "The Road Unable To Be Taken Because I'm Trapped Behind a Line of Dudes in Stormtrooper Armor Who Feel the Need to Take Pictures with Every Girl They See Wearing a Slave Leia Outfit". I know those dudes, and I'm pretty sure I've been in line behind them before.

All in all, a fun, quick, light read. Not something I would recommend for anyone who takes their poetry too seriously, obviously, but a nice diversion for the rest of us.

(My copy of the book was sent to me by Quirk Books. Thank you, Eric!)

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Ten years ago

In 1988, I remember sitting on the couch with my mom, watching a documentary about the 25th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy.  At one point, I suddenly realized that she was crying, and I remember wondering why, or how, on earth she was crying over something that happened a quarter-century ago to a man she'd never met.

It occurs to me, now, that someday Ian will probably wonder the same thing about me, as I tear up while watching something about that inappropriately beautiful September day all those years ago.

On 9/11/2001, Jim and I lived in the Virginia suburbs about eighteen miles west of Washington, DC.  I remember signing on to check my email (amazingly, in those days, we didn't leave our computer turned on and hooked to the internet at all times. Imagine!) and seeing a headline that said a plane had hit the World Trade Center.  I didn't even click on it; I'd seen headlines like that before and it was always some little Cessna or something that had had engine trouble.  No biggie.  I ate my breakfast -- cheerios with a banana -- read a few things online, then went into the bedroom.  Jim was still in the shower, so I turned on the TV while I was waiting for my turn.  And that's when I knew.  

As I recall, our local NBC station kept cutting between the NBC News footage from New York and the local news desk in Washington.  The Pentagon had been hit by that point, but I don't think anyone knew exactly what had happened yet.  People must have seen smoke and attributed it to all kinds of things, because I remember them reporting that the Old Executive Office Building was on fire, among other things.  No one knew what was going on.  It wasn't long, though, before they confirmed that it was the Pentagon.  

I don't remember much else about the day, at least not in great detail.  We were just glued to the television, fielding phone calls from worried relatives and checking in with friends who lived and worked in Manhattan (and who, thankfully, were all okay).  We didn't go to work, but I can't remember if we just didn't go, or if they called and told us not to come in.  

I think that was the day, too, even if we didn't realize it at the time, that we decided to move back home to Connecticut.  We always knew we eventually would, but it was hard to be away from our families that day, and once Washington really started upping the security everywhere, we knew it was time.  Neither of us really wanted to live somewhere with armed guards and snipers and random road closures everywhere.  By 9/11/2002, we were back in New England.

It's difficult to believe that that day was ten years ago.  It seems like it was just yesterday.  And yet, somehow, it's hard to remember a time when it WASN'T a part of our collective experience.  Life has changed since then, and it's difficult to even imagine, now, how it was before.

BOOK REVIEW: Tension City by Jim Lehrer

Tension City: Inside the Presidential Debates, from Kennedy-Nixon to Obama-McCain by Jim Lehrer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

[Reviewed from a galley from Book Expo America 2011. Expected publication date 9/13/2011]

In college, I took a course called "Presidential Rhetoric," taught by a former George HW Bush speechwriter. The class was an interesting study of what presidents say, why and how they say it, and who puts the words into their mouths. Lehrer's new book -- his first nonfiction work in two decades, according to the author bio -- would be a good addendum to a course of that type. I know I'm not the only person who thinks "Jim Lehrer" when the topic of debate moderators comes up -- having moderated a great many of them over the past couple of decades, he is in a unique position to discuss them.

For the book (and for a previous PBS documentary), Lehrer interviewed former presidential and vice-presidential candidates about their debate performances, and their recollections are interspersed with his own memories, sections of transcripts, and discussions of whether, and how, the debates really shaped the trajectory of the race. He discusses "major moments" -- the infamous Kitty Dukakis question from 1988; "There you go again"; "You're no Jack Kennedy"; the sighing, lockbox-obsessed Al Gore. And Lehrer doesn't spare himself from his criticism: he discusses things that he did wrong as moderator, questions he wishes he'd worded differently, and questions he wishes he hadn't asked.

The book is an interesting historical document. Lehrer's writing style here leans a little towards "college essay," but it's a quick read and would be of interest to anyone who's a bit of a political junkie.

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(I just noticed that Goodreads has a "copy your review to your blog" feature, so I'm trying it out -- it definitely seems easier than finding a copy of the book cover to post here, plus copying and pasting my text....)

Come on, Irene

I've written before about how I had a major Space Phase as a child, but I really must confess that I had a Weather Phase too.  It's embarrassing to admit now, but I used to watch The Weather Channel for hours on end (and that was back in the days when it was really just all Weather -- there weren't shows on like there are now!).  To this day, I have a total addiction to weather maps and I do love a good storm.

How fortuitous, then, that Hurricane Irene is headed RIGHT TOWARDS US!  I've been following the predicted storm track all day -- the eye was, for a while, predicted to pass pretty much right over our house.  Then it moved a couple of towns to the east; now it's a couple of towns to the west.  In any event, it'll be very near!  My last (and only!) hurricane was Gloria, in 1985, during my Meteorology Phase -- the eye passed RIGHT over us.  I'd been sitting curled up in a chair all day, listening to the constant news and weather on WTIC-1080 (Bob Steele!), and when the eye hit, my sisters and I went outside with Dad to check things out.  It was SO eerie.  Somewhere, there's a picture of the three of us, climbing in a fallen tree during the eye.  

Of course, my excitement about a Big Storm is, these days, tempered by very real adult concerns like flooding basements, leaky roofs, running water (we have a well, so no power = no water), and the like.  Jim and I are, generally, NOT storm-preparers -- if we manage to have a few canned goods and a small bit of firewood for a blizzard, we're doing well -- but now that we have Ian, it seemed like we needed to be just a tad bit more prepared in case we lose power for an extended period of time.  (We are pretty much certain that we will lose power -- we ALWAYS do -- but the question is for how long.)  We've got jugs of drinking water, plenty of food, a little propane camp stove, candles, flashlights, batteries, and tonight before bed we'll fill the tub so we'll have water with which to flush the toilet.  

We also raided the garden today and picked all of the tomatoes that were ripe, or close to it.  There are still a ton of green ones, and hopefully they won't all get blown off the vines by the storm.  Even if they do, though, we'll be eating tomatoes for a while.

To be fair, a few of the big ones are from my mother-in-law's community garden, but most of them are ours!  I guess after several years of tomato blight, we were due a good tomato crop.

Anyway, the storm is supposed to pick up in intensity tonight, and the center should pass over us around midday.  We've got our fingers crossed that it's nothing more than a minor inconvenience, but you know what?  No matter what happens, life is good and I am happy.  Because today, while we were outside harvesting tomatoes, checking the house, and putting away the patio furniture, my little boy picked me a flower for the very first time.  :-)