In the list of books below, bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you want to read, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a ten-foot pole, put a cross (+) in front of the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of.
1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
*10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
+11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
*12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
+13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
*14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
+16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
*17. *Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
*18. *The Stand (Stephen King)
+19. +Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. +The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. +The Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
*24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
+26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) saw the movie, someday may read it & I think gutenberg has it...
28. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
*30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
+31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
+32. *The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. *Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
+34. 1984 (Orwell)
+35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
*36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
*37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb) I started reading this one & did not like it... I don't know how to do a crossout in HTML!
+39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
*40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
+41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) (read some of it)
*42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
*43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
+45. Bible (some of it, at least)
+46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
*47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
*48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb) (again don't know how to do crossouts, I guess I don't like his stuff..I may still have this book, it'd be packed away though.
+51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
+52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
+54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
*56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
+57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
+58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) it's been years but I'd like to read this one again.. Erich Segal, the guy who wrote Love Story also wrote a book that has a similar theme as this one! That one is called Acts of Faith.. I also like his book Doctors...
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
*60. The Time Traveler’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
+62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
+63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
+64. Interview with the Vampire (Anne Rice)
*65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
+67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
+70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) (we're still reading this: as a bedtime story for our youngest!)
*71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
*72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
+77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
*79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
+80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
*81. Not Wanted On the Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
*83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
*84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen) –
+86. Watership Down (Richard Adams) Of course I read this one... several years ago: I was given my first dog and the person said, "If you want her, just keep the name"... "okay, where's it from?" "watership down"... so I brought her home, got her settled & went to the bookstore to pick up the book...Hlao-Roo... or Roo for short... loved that girldoggie! 1978-1994... part shepherd, husky & coonhound...
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields) couldn't get into this one...
*89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
*90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
*91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding) started to read it, never finished
+93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
*96. The Outsiders (S. E. Hinton)
*97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
*98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
+99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)
That said, I'm currently reading the book Wicked by Gregory Maguire... it's okay... it's a slow read, but kind of interesting... just slow...love reading about the green-girl Elphaba, though! :)
We'll be going on our yearly trek for matzo (to Fort Worth, about an hour away) tomorrow... As I type this, I've got my blog archives loading to see how many 5-packs of matzos we got last year... reading back, I didn't say how many we actually got in the April blog, just that we were THINKING about getting 4 or 5 packs (20-25 boxes)... we'll see how the price looks! I guess we'll plan for 4 or 5 if the price is still like it was the last few years...
And I'll try to remember to post the final number here so that I can look it up NEXT year! I think we'll get 4 or 5...since we'll also be picking up our organic produce on Tuesday, we need to do our shopping trip with the produce in mind!
Tapestry Weaving
I'm almost done with the tapestry sampler, one more section, then I'll see what kind of design I want to do for tapestry postcards, maybe do some 4x4 (artsquared) or even smaller ATC sized pieces... I THINK the loom is big enough to make 2 of them at a time & still have enough warp in between to sew them in...will do the math later...
ATC standard size is 2-1/2 by 3-1/2... the weaving space is between 6-7 inches long and about 5 inches wide,..it'd be tight so I guess I could pull out my Archie copper loom (which gives a weaving space the size of a legal sheet of paper)... but for now I'll stick with 4x6" postcard size, at least for my next project...
Heel & toe & away we go (much ado about heels)
I'm still working on the baby sweater, will photo it after the recipient receives it, though I don't think they know about this blog!
I FINALLY (I think?) finished the heels for the spring fling socks... a couple more inches & I'll have the leg portion done & will have a better idea whether or not I like the fit of the heel. I think I want short socks for this pair, then I'll be able to start another.
I don't THINK I'm going to use the afterthought heel again, I'll save those for crocheted socks. We'll see how comfortable that heel is. To date, my most comfortable heel is the heel on the green socks that Ann made in 2005... she says it's the eclectic heel...found here:
I crocheted a pair of socks using this pattern...they are mostly finished except for the heel. I finished one heel but did not like it so pulled it out & will make it deeper...
Will do a few pix to post in a day or two... of the spring fling socks, tapestry sampler and crocheted socks...and whatever else I think I need to show off!
Health Issues
I went to the doctor last week to check on why my ankles are swollen, was given a diuretic to take for 3 days & now I'm seeing pointy ANKLES instead of puffiness surrounding them! Sometime this week I'll go in to get my bloodwork followup done and if the puffiness comes back, I'll set up another appointment with the nurse practitioner or doctor...
Gary's been fighting with depression...chemical imbalance... watching how they go about finding The Right Medicine for a person is not a fun process At All... the person has to live in agony for 5 or 6 weeks to see if the medicine works & if not, they try another... in his case, they didn't pull the one that doesn't (seem to) work but just added another...
I've heard others say that finding the right medicine gave them their life back... would love to see that happen for him!
But I don't have any photos at the moment... maybe next time...
Sorry about not updating, just didn't quite feel up to it... maybe if we could figure out how to get the computer set up so that it'll be easy to upload pictures... it's easy enough now, but I can't do it on the spot, I have to go into a different (root) account in Debian Linux... hopefully once we set up Slackware (another LInux OS), this problem will be resolved...
Another Baby Sweater
I've got another baby sweater in progress..not sure if it will make it to its recipient before he grows out of it, plus I'm not sure that I SHOULD be knitting baby sweaters during cat shedding season... I hope I can get the cat fur out of it! Either that, or they're not allergic. I will wash & block (in another cat-free room) before sending. I'm mostly working on the sleeves for it & am waiting to finish the body when I get some more yarn to do an intarsia sailboat.
The pattern for it is Lillie's Little Sweater from Cottage Creations... I've got some in stock on the Weaving Rainbow Website It is very clearly written.
The yarn is Patons Decor (and will be using Encore, basically the same size & formula yarn) for the sailboat. You work top down, back & forth starting with the hood (short rows) and then you do the sleeves in the round... my round gauge & back & forth gauge were clearly different: I had to frog what I had started on the sleeves because my round gauge is tighter than my back & forth gauge. SO while I'm using a 6 or 7 for the body, I need an 8 for the sleeves, which I'm doing both at the same time using 2 circular needles... I'd do magic loop but don't have a needle that is QUIIIITE long enough...the needles I'm using now would work, but it'd be tight...
Tapestry
I'm playing with some tapestry ideas for postcard sized pieces...
Drawing/Painting
Haven't done much in a while, but might do some when I need more designs for weaving... been doing some based on some Celtic knot concepts...
And a pair of crocheted socks
And I crocheted a pair of worsted weight socks using the pattern on the Grafton Fibers website, which I still need to do the heel & a bit more on the leg... I ran out of the handpainted yarn I had, so am doing the heel in Tuffy red mix (which I also have on the website)...
Happy St Patrick's Day
And a Happy Green Day to all that celebrate it! We're having chicken today... I may make some cabbage to go along with it... (now where did I see that wonderful sweet & sour cabbage recipe? No meat in it....)