Now there’s something I didn’t think I needed

Guess what this is for:

It’s a mason jar cozy!

Why do my mason jars need coziness?  I make my own yogurt (because it’s cheap and delicious, that’s why!).  My method lately is to keep the jars in the oven wrapped in a scarf or shawl.  It works very well – the woolen item keeps the warm milk at the right temperature for incubation, and the oven is well-insulated, which matters more in winter when I keep my house at a temperature that some have described as child abuse.  It occurred to me that this might not be the best use of my lace shawls, so I grabbed a ball of worsted-weight wool from the stash and produced what looks like a malformed toque.  It works well!   I never thought I’d ever have to make a mason jar cozy.  But there you go.

We are having a glorious fall.

The colours are fantastic.  We drove up to Toronto for a friend’s birthday Saturday, and the usually boring drive was made less so by the beautiful trees.  I raked this morning.  This always makes me sad.  I kind of like the pretty leaves carpeting the ground.

It looks much better than bare grass.  Or in the case of my boulevard, bare yarrow and clover  - the grass got choked out years ago.  I’m pretty sure my neighbours hate me, because I encouraged it along.  However, since there’s no grass left, I only mow the boulevard twice a summer and it’s always green, no matter how dry the weather gets.  All this to say that the leaves I raked off the driveway ended up in my front garden bed, to provide a backdrop for my latest completed stuff.

That is the final version of the Baby Shane  blanket for my cousin’s baby (due any minute, I think).  Henceforth, it shall be referred to as the Baby Shane Cubed (it’s my third one, and I knit this one three times, except the border, before I was happy with it).  And, for the same baby, I finished this:

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before.  In typical Me fashion, it was basically finished about two months ago, but sat around forever while I got around to tucking in the ends and sewing on the  buttons.  It’s Willie, by Pamela Wynne.  The yarn is Patons Shetland Chunky.  It’s not the kind of thing I usually go for, but my cousin and his wife have a Dachshund named Rollo, and I thought they’d get a kick out of this sweater.  Intarsia isn’t usually my favourite, but due to the chunky yarn, it knit up really quickly.  It ended up a little bit bigger than I intended, but for babies, that’s generally fine.  You can’t tell from the picture, but the buttons are sparkly  (Zebula really, really liked them…) and the dog has a little floppy ear.  Now I just need to send them off.

I knit a baby beret and matching bootees last week for my Sue, in exchange for pickles.  This is our third trade, and I still think I totally get the better end of the deal – best dill pickles ever!  However, I didn’t have the presence of mind to take a picture before I delivered them.  Picture a wee black beret with teeny mary janes to go with them.  I made up the beret pattern, after a picture Sue sent me of what she wanted, and improvised the bootees by modifying an old Debbie Bliss pattern from New Baby Knits.

My  mom came to visit last week and requested a hat.  We browsed Ravelry together and she settled on this one:

Paddington Hat, by Tina Sanders, using Michael’s Cozy Wool.

Modeled by Zebula’s too-small head.  Hey, speaking of Zebula:

I had to give her a haircut due to a head louse epidemic at school that is reaching ridiculous levels.  It doesn’t look too bad!  I guess having a short-short haircut for most of my  life and watching hairstylists cut it finally paid off.  Short hair is easier than bobs.  Or even just cutting bangs.  The mistakes don’t show as much.

After Obscure Canlit Mama* posted about canning green tomato relish, I realized that was it – I missed the summer.  I managed to can exactly zero.   Nothing.  I froze a bunch of fruits and tomatoes, but that’s it.  I didn’t make jam.  I didn’t make pickles.  I didn’t make green tomato relish (my favourite).  Zip.  I didn’t even get much of a harvest this summer, because I basically neglected what little garden I had.  And now summer’s over, and we’ll probably be out of the country next summer.  So there you go.  No canning for me for a while.  It’s a good thing I  make my own yogurt!

Hallowe’en is fast approaching. Vorlon wants to be Legolas (he’s been watching Lord of the Rings).  Zebula wants to go as Artemis (she’s been reading The Lightning Thief).  Neither of those sounds too hard (though every time I have googled ‘Artemis’ for ideas, she’s topless, which I guess helps with handling the bow and arrow, but  which is probably against the school dress code.  I figure a toga will be close enough.)  And Christmas is coming.  And I promised Mom of Dr. Thingo some socks (her birthday is at the end of the month.  I started them already).  And I have a choir concert schedule that is quite full until mid-December.

I hope your fall is lovely and that you had a good Thanksgiving!

* Obscure Canlit Mama’s alter ego Carrie Snyder’s book, The Juliet Stories made the short list for the Governor General Literary Award!  I’m so happy for her!  It is well-deserved.  Now, go get her book and read it!

Now what?

I have finished the shades!  After nearly two years!  Even though it was probably, all told, less than 10 hours of work!

They’re not perfect (in fact, if you observe them even a little closely, quite frankly, they’re terrible).  But they’re better than the roller blinds that were there before.

The shades got to be a running gag.  After I bought the fabric, whenever I’d mention some home improvement I wanted to start, Craig would bring up the Roman Shades.  ”Let’s repaint the office!” “Yep!  As soon as the shades are done”.  ”I should change the light fixture in here.” “*cough*Shades*cough*”

(I would like to say, for the record, that the reason why the blinds aren’t straight at the bottom in this picture isn’t because the hems are wonky – they’re actually really good (I measured 20 times, and cut once…), but because our windowsills are never free of random crap).

So, what’s next?  Jacuzzi?  New kitchen?  Self-cleaning bathrooms?  Actually, the next project is likely to be insulating the house.  Necessary, but not very exciting. Still, it feels good to be done!

 

ETA:  I used the method from here.  It was good, and well-explained, but next time, I’ll leave the inside battens out.  Gluing them in was the worst part.

This post has 22 pictures

Ok, it doesn’t really, though there are a lot.  But 22 is how many pictures I uploaded to Flickr today.

I don’t know if it’s the weather (it was 24 degrees and sunny all afternoon with not a hint of haze in the sky), or the time of year but I feel so inspired today!

Today, I have made granola

and bread

I even sewed a little (more on that later).  I have yogurt incubating as I type.  Dinner was a cacciatore-style sauce composed of stuff that was already in my pantry, fridge and freezer.  And lest you think I’m all organized and in control, the turkey breast that I found in the freezer turned out to be a hunk of pork, which changed the end result somewhat, but not unpleasantly.  Label your frozen goods, people!

Work is good, choir’s about to start up again.  I’m all obsessed with this today (I have no time, and I’d have to take a course, but how cool would that be!  Can a kiln double as a bread oven??) I am excited at the prospect of making soup, and other things that require long, slow simmering, even though it’s supposed to go up to 31 on Friday.  But 31 at the end of August is way better than 31 in mid-July, especially with the sun going down at 8:00.  Anyway, I’m in a very at-peace-with-the-world kind of place.

These have been spotted all over my driveway lately

And it’s funny, because the trees from which they come haven’t really been changing colour that I’ve seen – the leaves just look like they spontaneously ended up, all red, on the driveway.  But it’s inevitable; summer’s almost over.  It was a good one!  I fit in two visits to Ottawa, and one to Montreal, we went camping, we cottaged, and we hung out.    I changed my storm door, all by myself.  I’m inordinately proud of this, which is silly, but still, it makes me happy every time I use it!  And even though it was hot, it didn’t bug me so much.  Either that, or I’m trying to suppress the memory of the hot nights when it was hard to sleep.  Oh, and we had a bat.  Summer’s not complete without a bat break-in!

It would appear that this summer was the summer of scarves.  I made, or finished, a pile of them.  Here’s the thing, though:  I almost never wear them!  I  mean, I wear them with my coat when it’s freezing out, like everybody else, but almost never as an accessory.  But maybe I should start, because I have some nice stuff!

This is Leftie, by Martina Behm, knit from dribs and drabs from the pile, for Zebula.  I ran out of white, but it’s big enough to make a kerchief-y scarf for her, and she really likes it.  I want to make one for me, out of some handspun.

There’s this:

I spun the yarn ages ago, from silk hankies.  Never again.  More trouble than it’s worth.  I made the scarf two winters ago.  Ecogrrl had said she liked the yarn, so I was planning on giving it to her, but then I put it someplace really safe, and didn’t find it again for months.  I did find it in the end, when I was going through all my baskets and yarn hidey places in the spring, and it took me this long to tuck the ends in and take a picture.  Ecogrrl, make sure I give it to you when I see you next!

The above is a Semele, by Asa Tricosa (looking at that page, there’s lots that I’d like to make!), worked on during the late spring/early summer.  The yarn is Tanis Fiber Arts Green Label Cashmere, colour Clover.  Everything about this was great:  the pattern, the yarn, the episodes of Mad Men I watched (well, listened to – this one was too hard to do without looking down) while I was making it.  And it’s lovely and soft.  I’m keeping this one!

There’s this, which I also worked on during the late spring/early summer:

Not a Drop, by Arlene’s World of Lace; yarn – also Tanis Fiber Arts Green Label Cashmere; colour – something like Autumn Sun.  This one was fun!  It looks like dropped stitches but isn’t.  And it’s badly in need of blocking, which I will get to soon.

I made another Citron (it’s my fourth), out of Lacey Lamb.  I don’t know what the colour is called, but it’s capital-p Pink!

This is becoming my go-to, leaving town, need something easy but not too quick to work on, pattern.  I added bright yellow beads on the bottom, both to weigh it down and add to the garishness.  I figure the colour will be welcome in the middle of winter when everything is white and grey outside.

And this got finished, from the Madelinetosh that I was gushing over in my last post:

Colour Affection, by Veera Välimäki.  I can’t wait to wear it!!

I crocheted, even!  It had been a while.  A friend texted me last week to ask if I’d could duplicate a larger version of a hat her daughter liked to wear, but which she’d outgrown.   Only, in my haste to take it to her, I forgot to take a picture.  But take this:

and imagine a smaller, better shaped version, with a crocheted flower as an accent. The one you see above is one I had intended for the friend in question, since she mentioned she’d like one too, but it ended up too big, and because of the way it sat on her head, it looked too much like a doily.  So I’ll make another one.  I keep forgetting how fast crochet is!  I should do it more.  Once I had figured out the pattern, it took about an hour to make, including the flower.

And, yesterday, it finally happened!  I finally started to sew the fabric I cut in November of last year, out of fabric that I bought in October the year before.  I sewed the three fabric panels to the lining, and pressed it all out.  I’m vowing to get these done before the equinox.  I estimate that I’m already more than half-done, but it’s taken me two years to get here…

That’s my sewing workstation.  Such as it is.  What you don’t see (well, I guess you get a little glimpse of it from the toys and sundry items on the floor) is the complete and utter chaos that is immediately outside the frame of this picture.  Not just toys, but random crap that’s been accumulating on that table in the last 9 years.  It’s crazy.  I must sort through it all, but I decided I needed to sew the shades more than I needed to clean up.

And I finished spinning the BFL from my last post:

That’s 260 metres of three-ply BFL goodness.  I’d put it at a heavy-fingering/sport weight.  No plans for it as of yet.

Currently, I’m working on some socks for Zebula:

I can’t remember what the yarn is, just that the colour was called ‘Pow!’.  The dyer is in the Ottawa region.  That’s all I remember.  But the ball comes double-stranded, so you make both socks at once, and the stripes will match.  Not my favourite method for sock knitting, but there you go.  I didn’t want to break up the stripe pattern, so it’s just a couple of tubes for now – I’ll throw in some afterthought heels later.

And here’s the retina-searing blanket from my last post, in a somewhat regressed state:

I was almost done!  I was at the point where I was knitting the border, and I just didn’t have enough yarn.  So I dug through my patterns, and found an older version of Baby Shane, and the initial cast-on was 20 stitches less than the current version of the pattern had!  I do remember being left with quite a bit of leftover yarn when I made it before.  I emailed Tanis, the designer, and she said she had upped the cast-on number because she’d received complaints that there was too much left over.  She said she’d work on finding a suitable compromise.  So I ripped it all out, and I’m starting over – I’m splitting the difference and casting on 10 fewer stitches.  It’s a testament to my general at-peace-with-the-worldness that I wasn’t even annoyed – now I get to do it all again!  With different colour combinations, to keep it fresh!  The baby I’m knitting it for is due in October, so I should be done in plenty of time, provided I don’t keep using up my spare time by doing this:

I swore I wouldn’t do any more fantasy series, but I watched the two existing seasons of the HBO show, and I got hooked.  To tide me over until next season, I decided I’d cave and read the books.  I’m pleasantly surprised!  Yes, it’s another long, long fantasy series.  Yes, it’s as-yet incomplete.  But the storylines are good, the characters are interesting and more complex than you’d find typically in fantasy literature, and the unavoidable battle scenes aren’t described in agonizing detail.

Now that the weather’s getting cooler, I’m envisioning a sweater for myself.  And I should finish the one I started for Zebula.  And Vorlon should get one too.  And I haven’t made socks for Dr. Thingo for a long time.  And Christmas is coming – I have hats to plan. The busy season’s about to start!

 

 

Smitten, and Spring

I’ve been feeling kind of mellow lately.  Just getting work done, keeping the house running, and the kids fed (Dr. Thingo has been away doing conferency things for about a week.  He’s back Monday).  Nothing too out of the ordinary, with the exception of the better part of an hour today spent with an old storm door.  It ended with me taking the whole damn thing out.  Guess I’m going to Home Depot tomorrow.

Oh, and I bought a rack and saddlebags for my new bike!  That’s something!  I installed them on my bike right outside the carpark, next to the bus stop Uptown, with tools borrowed from my office a block away.  People looked at me like I was crazy.  I don’t know why – it was certainly the easiest way to bring them home, and I didn’t think it was any weirder that the woman who came and sat next to me, took off her shoes, and proceeded to eat a ginormous sub while waiting for the bus.  Anyway, this is noteworthy because my old bike got stolen right out of said carpark on the Friday before the May 2-4 weekend (bastards!), and my completely irrational theory is that the saddlebag I had on my old bike is the reason why they took it.  Because the bike itself was a well-used, 14 year old hybrid with squishy brakes and off-true wheels and a flaky derailleur.  Why else would they want it?  So it took me two months to buy new saddlebags for the new bike.  But now I can bring home 4 litre bags of milk and cat litter pretty much effortlessly.  Well, except for the mess it makes of my left knee to be pulling that much weight.  Sigh.

So, on to my accomplishments.  Every time I’ve decided to take pictures of finished or in-progress things the last couple of days, it’s been pretty grey, so the photos for this post are all muted and quiet and reflect the mellow mood pretty well, I think.

This lack of motivation to go above and beyond these days means that I’ve been working on a lot of yarny things.  I am totally feeling the spinning love lately.  It’s all I’ve wanted to do for the past few days – I even spun while making crepes for breakfast this morning.

The fiber is Briar Rose Fibers, Bluefaced Leicester, I think.  I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a spinning wheel to replace the single-treadle Lendrum I sold a couple of years ago, but then I start with the spindles, and I’m not sure I need the wheel at all.  It’s nice to be able to just pick up the spindle and a bit of fluff, and get a little done when I have an off moment.  The wheel feels like more of a commitment, and it takes up some space, and I feel like if I’m going to sit down at the wheel, I need to block off a big chunk of time.  And there’s something appealing about how low-tech a spindle is.

And when I’m not spinning, there’s this:

I’ve decided to jump on the Colour Affection bandwagon, with some Madelinetosh Tosh Sock.  I picked up the yarn in Ottawa.  I was visiting with my mom when she expressed a desire to start a crochet project.  I immediately whisked her to a lovely yarn store close to her house, along with my unimpressed children, whom I bribed for a little more time in the store by telling them to pick a ball of yarn each for a pair of socks.  In Vorlon’s case, this bought me exactly 10 seconds – he beelined for the brightest sock yarn, and that was that.  Zebula took a long time comparing pinks.  This store had some Madelinetosh in stock, and it caught my eye.  The picture doesn’t convey just how nice the colours are.  The grey is luminous.  The blue and orange are wonderfully textured.  And it’s soft.  I love it.

And there’s this, which I worked on in Ottawa.  My stepdad called it retina-searing.  In a good way.  I made him these socks, at his request, after all.

This is my third Baby Shane blanket, and the yarn is Tanis Fiber Arts.  Also lovely.  This one’s for my soon-to-be first cousin once removed, due in October.

So, my last catch-up post left us in March.  I didn’t get that much finished in the spring.  There was The Sweater.  It didn’t take me that long, all things considered.  Two months, but then it sat for another three and a half before I took a picture of it.  The pattern is Royale, by Glenna C.  The yarn is Tanis Fiber Arts Green Label aran weight, Stormy colourway.  The pattern was good, for the most part (there was a bit of an error for the cast-on of the body, but some back-and-forth with Glenna via Ravelry (Yay for Ravelry!) sorted that all out.  The yarn was lovely.  I love the end result.

My sock hiatus was brief.  I made a pair for Vorlon:

Plain socks.  I have no idea what the yarn was.  But it was single-ply.  It’s pretty, but I need to remember in the future not to knit single-ply socks again!!

I also started a pair of socks for Zebula, but they ended up being a little too tight (she is now a women’s size 7.  She’s not even 10!!), and I discovered, to my dismay, that due to the yarn content (there was mohair or something in there.  It was fuzzy.), it was basically impossible to frog them.  So I just chucked the sock I had finished.  I don’t remember what that yarn was either.  (See?  This is why I’m a bad blogger!) The remainder has been reabsorbed by the stash.

I made these:

Tesselating Lace Socks, by Kat Haines.  Yarn:  Tanis Fiber Arts Blue Label Fingering (I do knit with other yarns occasionally, honest!!).  These were my yearly thank you gift to  the wonderful lady who drives me to and from choir rehearsals.  I should deliver them to her – they’re still sitting in the writing desk in my front entrance.  Though it’s been too hot for wool socks, so I’m sure she’s not missing them too much.

There was also a pair of Angee socks, made from Indigo Dragonfly sock yarn.  But you can’t see them, because I foolishly forgot to take a picture before I sent them off (see above re. bad blogger) Imagine the Angees, only in olive, lavender, and a little blue.  They were a swap with half of my favourite podcast pair, SavvyGirlDeborah, of The Savvy Girls podcast, who expressed at some point that she didn’t really like to knit socks, but really liked knitted socks.  So I (and a bunch of other people), offered to knit her a pair.  In return, she sewed me a bag!

It’s great – enough room for the yarn and needles for the retina-searing Baby Shane blanket above, plus a wallet, keys, chequebook, etc.  Pockets on the inside, and no Velcro at all – perfect!  The bag was delivered to me personally by SavvyGirlMelanie herself (the other half of said podcasting pair) in transit on her way to Toronto to catch a train.  Deborah, until recently, lived in Bogotà, Columbia, and Melanie was going to be in my part of the world anyway, so she schlepped the bag halfway across the country and brought it to me.  She had such a hard time getting here (this city was designed by crazy people), and I thought it was so nice of her to deliver the bag personally, that I gave her a hat, fresh off my needles, that I’d finished the night before out of some handspun I interred from the stash (more about that below).  Which I also didn’t have the presence of mind to take a picture of.   Imagine a slouchy hat with big cables.  Kind of like this (I used that picture as an inspiration and just winged it).

I also went through my stash one evening.  This will come as a surprise to nobody, but I have a lot of yarn.  Of note was this:

That is my pile of handspun yarn.  Well, most of it.  I have a few mini-skeins that I made out of sample bits of fiber, and I think there’s some black merino and silk somewhere.  And some pink silk, that didn’t end up in the pictures.  Anyway, there’s a lot of it!

There’s this:

Which I spun out of some merino/silk that I got in Seattle 6 years ago.

And this:

On the left is alpaca, with some wool.  On the right, is some Lofty Fibres (Rusty Paint Bucket, I think the colour was called).  Both spindle-spun.

There’s some experimental stuff:

On top is my first spindle spinning attempt, on the bottom is one of my last wheel-spun skeins, done quickly one evening to test out some fibre for somebody (I can’t remember who.  LoftyFibres, maybe?)

There are some leftovers from stuff that I spun and then knitted up:

The stuff on the left is some Lorna’s Laces fibre, wheel-spun, which eventually became mittens (which I have lost).  The stuff in the middle is very early wheel-spun yarn, with fibre from Greensleeves Spindles, Navajo-plied.  It’s the second yarn I made on my wheel (the first yarn was horrid.  I made socks for Dr. Thingo out of it.  They could practically stand on their own, the yarn was so dense and tightly knit.  He was a good sport, and wore them until I accidentally felted them in the wash).  This stuff is older than my first child, who will be 10 in September.  The fibre is from Greensleeves Spindles.  I made a hat out of it that my kids both wore as babies, and that was given away, and I have lots left over.  The stuff on the right is a heavier version of the Rusty Paint Bucket yarn above, which I used to make the hat that ended up going to SavvyGirlMelanie.

And there’s miscellaneous stuff:

On the left is some baby Alpaca, another skein of which was used to make a cowl last year (I guess, in that sense, it should have been in the leftovers picture).  In the middle, is fibre I got in a swap a few years ago.  It’s wool carded with little bits of silk thread.  On the right, is wool I got in Seattle.  All wheel-spun.

The question is, why don’t I use it?  It’s nice!  I was shocked to see so much of it.  So I resolved then and there to use some up, and then proceeded the next evening to knit the hat mentioned above.  And I have plans for some of the other stuff.  We’ll see if I can actually follow through.

And that, with the exception of a bunch of things that are finished but not blocked (shawls and scarves!) brings us up-to-date!

Other noteworthy spring things include: Vorlon turned 7 and we had a reptile party (a month late), my bike was stolen, I saw Gogol Bordello in concert (awesome!!), and I made these, commissioned by a friend for her son’s birthday:

It was my first time working with fondant – fun, and fairly quick.  Though I need to look up how to better cement the pieces together.  Things kept falling apart.  But I heard they were a hit.

So, this turned out to be kind of long – thanks for sticking it out!  I’m going to go do some spinning.

Winter

It’s currently 8:30 pm, and 28 degrees outside.  The living room is also at 28 degrees – the unexpected silver lining is that, since the house is warm anyway, turning the stove on isn’t going to harm anything, so I made a dinner that actually involved boiling a big pot of water, and it didn’t make things noticeably worse.  It looks like Arizona out there – everything’s all dry and brown and crunchy.  Up until yesterday, when we got a little rain, even my periwinkle was looking a little droopy.  Everything in the house feels moist.  It’s hot, is what I’m getting at.  So, for some imaginary relief, let’s think back a few months to last winter and try to recall how it felt to be cold.

Only last winter wasn’t really cold, and there was hardly any snow.  Oh well.

When last I posted something about my crafty work, it was to show off my Christmas socks.  After that, I decided to go on sock hiatus, but for one pair of kilt hose for my employer for his birthday/late Christmas.  I took a picture, but it’s so bad that I’m not going to bother putting it here.  Imagine these, only in black.

At some point in the winter, I bought this book.  I love her stuff.  So cute!  And I’m surprised at myself, because I don’t usually go for that kind of cute.  Anyway, the kids are all over it, and I let them pick out some that they liked especially.

Vorlon’s choice:

Zebula’s selection:

Vorlon brought his for Show and Tell and promptly told the class I’d make some for everybody.  I had to decline.  They are kind of fun to make though, and work up in a couple of hours.  I also made some teeny hamsters at some point, but there are no photos – I should dig them out.

I made myself a hat (Natalya, by Janneke Hopman.  Works up in one evening.  Yarn: Cascade 220):

Only, it looked way better on Zebula, so she ended up getting it.  This is how it begins, isn’t it?  Next thing I know, she’ll be borrowing my shirts without asking, and I’ll be looking for my shoes one day, and I’ll find them in her room because she wore them yesterday.  Sigh.

Photo taken from the train, en route to Ottawa during March break.  She wore it for the entire train ride.   Even though it was really hot in there.

I made one of these:

(Pogona, by Stephen West.  Yarn: Kauni Effektgarn)  I even wore it a few times before what winter we had quickly disappeared.  The yarn, while pretty to look at, is scratchy, but it’s very warm.  Maybe I’ll appreciate it more next year.

And that’s it for winter!  Except for starting the sweater from my last post, that’s all I made.  I spun a little, but, basically, it was kind of unproductive.  Warning: spring isn’t looking much better.

See what I do for you?

It was still 29 degrees outside, at 8:00 pm.  I put on this sweater:

It has been an embarrassingly long time since I’ve posted anything.  And it’s been even longer since I’ve posted about anything I’ve actually made (since January, as a matter of fact).  People were starting to ask me if I was ever going to blog again.  So I decided that was it.  I told Dr. Thingo to grab the camera.  The light was good.  I was finally going to have him take a picture of this sweater I finished (on April 1st!), even though putting it on was decidedly unpleasant.  Just to get the ball rolling, already.

So here I am.  I have a lot of catching up to do.  I’m going to do it installments.  Stay tuned!

This is what happens when I tell Dr. Thingo “Take a picture of the back”

 

Book review!

Note:  This is not about a knitting book!  Knitting content will resume after this!  Probably.  My track record lately isn’t so good…

I want to take a little break from my usual knitting fare to talk about my friend Carrie Snyder‘s new book. I hope I can do it justice – I loved it, and I hope I can increase its exposure to my knitty friends.

Carrie recently published a book, her second, called The Juliet Stories  A novel-in-stories, it’s a collection of short stories tied together through the main character, Juliet Friesen.  The first half or so of the book takes place during Juliet’s childhood, when her family goes to Nicaragua to protest the American involvement in the post-revolutionary war there, and the second half features Juliet as a young adult, after her family returns to North America.

I have to say, I wasn’t sure at first how to approach this book – I’m not generally a lover of short stories. I recognize that they are meant to show you a snapshot in time, rather than tell a whole story, but I guess something about the geek in me needs a plot.  Knowing that these were all short stories, I intended to read just one per day.  Since I knew it wouldn’t read like a novel, I would just go slowly, one story at a time, and leave some space in between.  However, I was surprised – I was hooked from the beginning.  The fact that the stories all tie together gives me that sense of narrative, while at the same time giving me little snapshots of Juliet’s life.  I ended up reading the whole thing in a few days rather than the couple of weeks it would have taken me if I’d stuck to plan A.

Carrie’s forte is creating mood.  She sets a tone in her stories, and I can feel it for a long time after I’ve put the book down.  I felt this most at the beginning, during Juliet’s childhood.  Those stories, told from the point of view of a child, convey a sense of timelessness.  A world full of conflict and turmoil, both external to her family bubble and within it, which Juliet is trying understand.  Time seems to stretch on.  The world is just happening around her, and she’s navigating through it.  As Juliet gets older, the stories happen at a faster pace, the world around comes into sharper focus and time seems to move more quickly.  This rings true – even though my childhood was nothing like Juliet’s, that is how I remember it – a blur in which bits memories stand out in sharp focus.

The high point of the book for me was one particular story, The Four Corners of a House, near the middle, where the narrative style takes a detour and other voices join Juliet’s for a little bit.  This chapter is pivotal, marking a turning point for the Friesens.  It left me heartbroken.  And a little in awe.

I hope you have the opportunity to read it – and I look forward to seeing more of Carrie’s writing soon!