Leftovers

Still OTN, whether 'N' is needles or nightstand:

On the Nightstand (books I've begun but not finished in 2008)

T C Boyle: Tooth and Claw (Dec 1 - )
Michael Connelly: Angels Flight (Dec 22 - )
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee: Knitting Rules (Dec 1-)
Mary Roach: Stiff (Oct 25-)
Cleveland Amory: The Cat and the Curmudgeon
David Baldacci: Saving Faith
Gail Sheehy: The Silent Passage


On the Needles (knitting)

2nd Henley tshirt in Alpaca (Oct 2 '8 - Jan 2)
My Seriously Ribbed sox (Dec 20 '8 - Jan 1)
2nd Trellis in Bernat Softee Baby (Nov 8 '8 - )
Log Cabin throw (2007 - )
bag to felt (2008 - )
sampler squares afghan (Dec 1 '8 - )
SKP2008 #5 (Oct 31 '8 - )
Scrappy sox (Sep 22 '8 - )
three-tone sox (2008 - )


On the Other Needles (knot nitting)

"Family" cross stitch (May 9 '8 - )
Latch-Hoook Kittens (June 21 '8 - )
wolf puppies cross stitch (2007 - )
sewing room cross stitch (2008 - )

Books read in 2008

66 books! That's almost twice as many as in 2007 (37)!

Michael Connelly: The Black Echo (Dec 22)
Robert B Parker: High Profile (Dec 14)
John Sandford: Dark of the Moon (Dec 13)
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee: Yarn Harlot (Nov 29)
Robert B Parker: Small Vices (Nov 19)
Newsweek: 2008 Election Special Edition (Nov 18)
Walter Mosley: Cinnamon Kiss (Nov 2)
Anne Tyler: Ladder of Years (Oct 25)
Robert B Parker: The Hanged Man's Song (Oct 16)
Walter Mosley: Little Scarlet (Oct 15)
Christopher Moore: The Stupidest Angel (Oct 10)
Kate Atkinson: One Good Turn (Sep 29)
Nora Roberts: Blue Smoke (Sep 27)
John Sandford: Chosen Prey (Sep 26)
Sara Gruen: Water for Elephants (Sep 24)
Billie Letts: The Honk & Holler Opening Soon (Sep 23)
Scott Turow: Pleading Guilty (Sep 19)
James Lee Burke: Black Cherry Blues (Sep 16)
Stephenie Meyer: Eclipse (Sep 12)
Carl Hiassen: Stormy Weather (Sep 6)
Stephenie Meyer: New Moon (Aug 29)
John Sandford: Mind Prey (Aug 24)
Annie Proulx: Postcards (Aug 22)
Robert B Parker: Thin Air (Aug 22)
James Lee Burke: In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (Aug 21)
Robert B Parker: A Catskill Eagle (Aug 16)
Sheri S Tepper: Singer from the Sea (Aug 13)
Stephenie Meyer: Twilight (Aug 10)
Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle: The Burning City (Aug 8)
Robert B Parker: Spare Change (Aug 3)
Robert B Parker: Looking for Rachel Wallace (Aug 2)
Robert B Parker: Blue Screen (Aug 1)
Robert B Parker: The Godwulf Manuscript (July 27)
Robert B Parker: Death in Paradise (July 26)
Julia Quinn: The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever (July 24)
Ed McBain: Downtown (July 22)
Janet Evanovich: Fearless Fourteen (July 20)
Tony Hillerman: Skinwalkers (July 19)
C Michael Curtis (ed): Contemporary West Coast Stories (July 18)
Elmore Leonard: Be Cool (July 11)
Janet Evanovich: Motor Mouth (June 29)
Robert B Parker: Hundred Dollar Baby (June 28)
John D McDonald: Ballroom of the Skies (June 25)
Janet Evanovich: Plum Lovin' (June 22)
Janet Evanovich: Three to Get Deadly (June 22)
Janet Evanovich: Lean Mean Thirteen (June 20)
Michael Crichton: Next (June 19)
Anthology: Sudden Fiction (June 18)
Janet Evanovich: Eleven on Top (June 11)
Janet Evanovich: Twelve Sharp (June 9)
John Sandford: Invisible Prey (June 7)
Vince Flynn: Term Limits (June 4)
John Grisham: The Innocent Man (June 1)
Janet Evanovitch: High Five (May 10-11)
John Grisham: Painted Houses (Apr 21 - 25)
Stephen King: From a Buick 8 (Apr 12-20)
Carol N. Douglas: Cat in a Crimson Haze (Mar 3-Apr 11)
Doug Marlett: Magic Time (Mar 10-30)
Larry Brown: Dirty Work (Mar 8-10)
Carol N. Douglas: Pussyfoot (Feb 23-29)
Sheri S. Tepper: Beauty (Feb 20-22)
Anne Hoffmann: The River King (Feb 14-Feb 20)
Sue M. Kidd: The Mermaid Chair (Jan 24-Feb 14)
Wendell Berry: Andy Catlett (Dec 2006-Feb 9)
Ken Kesey: Sometimes a Great Notion (2007-Feb 3)
Robert B. Parker: Valediction (Jan 20-22)

snowday

At 730 this morning the world outside my windows was white; even the road had a glaze. I took a couple pictures with the cell phone but the signal strength today hasn't been enough to send a multimedia message. (sent later, see below)

Before a trip into town I had a nice long soak in the tub, with the book I'm currently reading, Mary Roach's Stiff, which is a very funny nonfiction about what happens to corpses after death. Really. Funny.

We went to the nearby new Tractor Supply (it's in the old Mal~Wart) this afternoon (and I forgot to bring the cell phone, therfore the snow pix still didn't get sent), and learned they carry all the cat and dog food I've been driving 80 miles to Barboursville to buy. Yea!

Also dropped off stuff at CSS and books at the laundromat, and had lunch at Shoney's.

Still haven't jacked up the wood stove with the unistrut I got for that purpose, so we still don't have a fire in the stove. The electric bill is gonna be high...

can you say OCD?

Hours ago I found a "should I read this book?" request from a Shelfari member, and logged in to answer. While there I notice I only had listed 17 books (as books I'd read). Off to the races. I now have 372 books listed, and each one reminds me of half a dozen others I can add.

Time to do something else for a while.



OH YEAH: while we were out, I stopped in AC Moore --at th'Mr's suggestion (no, really! He said, "weren't you saying, on your blog (what, he reads my blog??), that you need a new circular needle, because you don't like the one you are using?") is he a good'un or what-- (did I just nest a couple pair of parentheses? How cool) ...and though I didn't find a #4 clover in a long circ, I did meet a Ravelry member (!) and at her suggestion bought a couple colors of a sock yarn I hadn't tried before.

Pix another time. My tail is sore from sitting at this desk cataloging my shelfari for so long. Go read that while you wait for me to come back.

Birthday bux = birthday boox

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birthday books

Finally got a "thank you" note sent off to Dad (th'Mr'Sr) for the bux he sent me my birthday in January (never mind EVerything was late, I mean everything from EVerybody and I celebrated opened gifts and cards a week after my actual birthday), and right after dropping that (the thank you to Dad) off at the Post Office I drove to Books-a-Million and spent it, plus twenty bux of my own. Photo of the loot follows.

2007 books "FO'd"

I'm beginning 2008 with a few books begun but not finished. They are:

* Gail Sheehy: The Silent Passage
* Janet Evanovich: One for the Money
* Anthology: Sudden Fiction
* Ken Kesey: Sometimes a Great Notion
* Wendell Berry: Andy Catlett



These are the books I finished since I began this blog, thus, these are the books I read in 2007. I only counted once, so I may be mistaken, but I think there's that magic number 37 again...?

* Sheri S. Tepper: Shadow's End (Dec 30)
* Michael Allen Dymmoch: The Man Who Understood Cats (Nov 22)
* Maggie Sefton: A Deadly Yarn (Nov 18)
* Sheri S. Tepper: The Gate to Women's Country (Nov 7)
* John Grisham: The Testament (Oct 26)
* Christopher Moore: A Dirty Job (Oct 21)
* John Sandford: Broken Prey (Oct 10)
* Christopher Moore: You Suck (Oct 8)
* Michael Jecks: The Devil's Acolyte (Sep 23)
* Andrew Vachss: Dead and Gone (Sep 15)
* James Lee Burke: Jesus Out to Sea (Sep 9)
* Lisa Tucker: The Song Reader (Sep 4)
* LM Montgomery: Anne of Green Gables (Aug 23)
* various (anthology): Black Cats and Broken Mirrors (Aug 19)
* Ed McBain: McBain's Ladies Too (Aug 13)
* Kevin Brockmeier: The Brief History of the Dead (Aug 3)
* Patricia C. McKissack: A Picture of Freedom (July 23)
* Tom Robbins: Another Roadside Attraction (July 22)
* Robert B. Parker: The Widening Gyre (July 4)
* John Le Carre: The Little Drummer Girl (June 29)
* Cormac McCarthy: The Road (May 31)
* Walter Mosely: Always Outnumbered; Always Outgunned (May 22)
* Sheri S. Tepper: Gibbon's Decline and Fall (May 15)
* Larry Brown: Rabbit Factory (May 8)
* Joan Medlicott: The Three Mrs. Parkers (May 3)
* Kent Haruf: Plainsong (April 26)
* Sheri S. Tepper: The Family Tree (April 23)
* Cormac McCarthy: No Country for Old Men
* Raymond Chandler/Robert Parker: Poodle Springs (April 14)
* Stephen King: Lisey's Story
* Robert B. Parker: School Days
* James Patterson: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
* Stephen King: Cell
* Steven Carter: Famous Writers' School
* Kim Edwards: The Memory Keeper's Daughter
* Bobbie Ann Mason: In Country
* Mary Ann Taylor-Hall: Come and Go, Molly Snow

Books

Maggie Sefton - A Deadly Yarn
May or may not read more of hers. Typos, annoying ones like pour for pore, fair for fare. 'Ç' replaced 'é' more than once. It seems someone rummaged through the protag's purse but this was left openended. Finished 11/17, Saturday.


Michael Allen Dymmoch - The Man Who Understood Cats
The cover made me assume YA (young adult) genre, but it's not. The chapters with Detective's POV I hear the Dragnet narrator. Excellent read, hard to put down. Finished 11/22, Thursday.

magazines

Like I don't have enough keeping me from knitting: (work, for one) a tumbling pile of books by the bed and a shelf full of unread paperbacks by my desk, email subscriptions to fifteen yahoo groups (though I'm "no mail" in all but four of them, and in digest mode in those), not to mention email from family & friends, now I've gone and bought the latest Interweave Knits and Vogue Knitting magazines.

I went looking for the VK Holiday 2007 because I read (one one of those lists) that there's an Alice Starmore pattern in it. My favorite bookstore didn't have a copy, but IK's Winter 2007 leapt off the rack and into my hands in its place. Just in time; Knitting Daily (another email list I'm on) has a poll: which project(s) in this IK are our hands itching to get started on.

My answer?
Henley Perfected - it's perfect.
Colette Pullover - love those cats, but in different colors, please.
Tilting Cable Socks - solid color yarn for me.
Ivy League Vest - if I wore vests, the fair isle is so tempting.
Farrow Rib Cardigan - pretty.

I also fell in love with the skirt half of the dress on the inside front cover, an ad for Rebecca Magazine. Love several more of the ads. Hate a couple of the patterns (citrus yoke pullover, rosemary's swing jacket), and was charmed to find the closing article column (whatever that's called - the inside back cover article that many mags sport) to be by Marilyn Roberts, my very favorite blogger.

As if that wasn't enough, on the way home yesterday, since I knew th'Mr had a gig in Lexington & wouldn't be home till after nine, I stopped in AC Moore and there I did find the Vogue holiday issue. The Starmore is wonderful, of course, but I'm more drawn to Sasha Kagan's leafy vest. Yes, vest. I'd find a way to wear a vest, if I knit that vest.

Babbling.

Nearly noon, time to wake th'Mr. I'm home today because at 2:30 I have to go have my head examined in Mt. Sterling, a new doctor to look at the "dark spots" my regular doctor found on the MRI she took back in the spring. Hey, I've been saying for decades I have a brain tumor. Might explain some personality quirks, eh?

We're back on forties

Thursday afternoon the Powers That Be decided that for now we're working forty-hour weeks. I was unprepared, so had to go back to the apartment for stuff - my laundry, for one thing - before heading home. I do love three-day weekends.

Friday we cleaned a little, we grocery shopped, and I cooked chicken to go into a pot pie. Saturday we went to a little book fair at the Morgan county HS, bought & sold books (they had a dollar table, and I dropped ten real easily) and had a pretty nice time - Brosies were there, as were Hughes', Dicks, and others we see only at these events; Sunday is today, and we spent time together while finishing up preparing for the week ahead.

Next weekend is the Sturgis book fair, but we may go to Muncie instead. th'Mr's dad is sick with something called pre-leukemia and Sis is worn out with worrying over him. Our turn.

Tonight we had a surprise visitor; a HS teacher from Carter county wanted to talk to th'Mr about how to get started writing. Was interesting, though I wandered off to knit after a few minutes. Was funny the little dog had gone off, barking at the back door; th'Mr and I thought it was over some noise I'd made in the kitchen, and I said something along the line of, "STFU Grrrl, there's nobody out there," when came the answer, "oh, but there is."

'K, it's now time for me to take my nine o'clock Sunday sleepy pill - so I don't wake up at two ayem and stay awake till the alarm goes off at four.

getting there

All right!
Got up and finished a book while having a tub soak, found the gloves, fixed the cucumber salad, gave the cats their liver, got in an hour of porch sitting split between cross stitching, brushing Winston and taking hummingbird pictures, started the pork roast, went to the bank & grocery while the pork cooked, dosed Grrrl and Nameless, and now I'm logging some bills at wheresgeorge.com.

Still have laundry & packing to do; I could still use a nap, and the closet light might wait another week, but I've cleaned out the fridge and have a plan for some sewing next weekend:

A couple weeks ago I bought two sets of high-thread-count sheets at a yard sale; one is queen and one is double, so both are the wrong size for our full-size bed, but if I cut a strip out of the fitted one that's too big and sew it into the one that's too small I may have two good sets of sheets when it's done. Or I'll be out seven bucks, but that's worth the lesson.

catching up - home and garden

A week ago Friday --that would be May 4th-- th'Mr had a post-shock Dr appointment in Maysville, and from there we continued on to Muncie, for a months-overdue visit to family. We stayed with his Dad and made visits to his [mine!] sister, niece, one of the nephews, back to Sis', back to niece, across the street to neighbors, and then Tuesday morning 240 miles back home.

The truck (Moby Dodge) with it's new rebuilt motor got 13mpg on its first full tank of gas. Gasp. I hope this improves. The second tank was 15mpg (still nowhere near the 21mpg the old motor got) and last night the engine was making seizing-up noises that indicate there's probably a new fuel pump in the near future, which HOPEFULLY will improve the mileage again. I'm almost out of money; guess it's time to go back to work.

Dad's neighbor (as always) loaded me down with plants from his intricately landscaped yard; I've got most of them in the ground now but have forgotten what all but the comfrey and catnip are. The catnip I put in the south corner of the fenced part of the yard, with a milk crate over it. The next morning the milk crate was a foot away, overturned, and the catnip had chew marks all over it. I re-covered it. our friends A & J are due in sometime this week, J said she'd also bring me a healthy catnip plant since I can't seem to grow it here (could it be that anything less than a field of catnip can't win against nine cats?).

Sis again reminded us of a used book store she'd reminded us of before, many times (I don't remember that at all) and finally we went there, and came out with two large paper sacks of books, spending $100 and some change. The clerk said, "tell your sister 'thank you' for me!"

We also bought a split bench seat and two mirrors out of a wrecked '95 Dodge, and had the seat installed, all for $180.-

Thursday, the day before we left for Muncie, I'd finally sewn and installed a seat cover for his old bench seat. I know we needed a new seat, and badly, but still I grumbled till I found out that the three-day-old cover did fit the new seat too.

Friday afternoon (fast-forwarding now to May 11th) I freaked to see poison ivy growing around my hammock and near the front porch --I'm quite allergic-- so Friday evening th'Mr and I spent busy with loppers and RoundUp (anyone who knows me even slightly knows I hate to use poisons; RoundUp is an extreme step for me), finally dealing with the poison ivy that's been swarming the pines in the driveway. As long as it confined itself to the driveway I was content to let it live, but by my hammock? That's just plain rude.

We got so involved in the yardwork that I missed the Friday night knit-together.

Yesterday afternoon I cleaned along the front fence, around the roses, butterfly bush (which looks dead - did the late spring frost kill it?), forsythia and irises, then th'Mr and I got another wheelbarrow load of dirt from the neighbor's horse pasture and I put around the roses & so forth. It looks really nice now, quite different.

The roses have begun blooming. It looks like my pruning (which scared the hell out of me - am I going to kill these hundred-year-old rose bushes with my inexperience?) actually did them some good. I'm so pleased.

When we returned from Muncie I bought myself a new toy... a rotary blade mower. I've always wanted one of these, and it's already proven itself handy for getting in the tight spots the rider just isn't convenient for. The Chicago Trib predicts $5/gallon gas before the summer is over. This thing uses no gas whatsoever. And it's fun.

entertainment

I'm reading a truly awful book, Joan Mendicott's The Three Mrs. Parker, which by now I'd have tossed in the corner except I'm mildly interested in how it's going to turn out. The story is okay, but the writing itself is just awful. For instance, there's a dead guy on the living room floor, and as the ever-widening pool of blood spreads around him, one of the main characters wonders if that stain is ever going to come out of the Oriental carpet. For another instance, she describes jimsonweed flowers as being blue and bell-shaped, and I know they are neither. That sort of casual disregard for facts really pisses me off. But the story's okay, and I'm not too far from the end of the book, so I'll probably finish it and then read something good.

This week we've watched a couple of movies I don't feel like looking up the names of. The first was a 1972 documentary about the fundamentalist church, done by someone who had been a child prodigy preacher, ordained at age four. Marjoe, that's the name of it. He made the movie intending to "expose" the fakery of the church. Now, I have no love of church and especially not the fundies, but I think that's just sad and mean. And the movie itself had lots and lots of "Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!" innit, which makes me plain uneasy.

The second was Fancy Dancing, by the producers of Smoke Signals. Lots of the same actors as in Smoke Signals, and as in Northern Exposure. The story is about a gay indian poet who goes home to the res for a funeral. It is quite good, if also quite low-budget. Memorable, though not exactly riveting. I learned that "innit" is a res expression, instead of brit as I'd thought previously. I like "innit," and have been using it since I ran across it on misc.writing several years ago.

As I quit watching TV several years ago (1989), there are a lot of actually good series that I've missed. Gobbless Netflix. Now we're renting those same TV shows and watching four at a time on disc. A much more efficient way than sitting down at seven o'clock every Thursday, if you ask me. He's just now added Northern Exposure and Soap to our queue.