I've got some!

I've got TWO WHOLE SKEINS of that Wollmeise. Tammy snagged several skeins and decided to share them with her "good yarns" friend. Look how beautiful...

My next step will be to completely ignore this yarn for the rest of my life, knowing that any pattern I find could never be just right for it.
Please, ....Help me to actually use this yarn. You can browbeat me and mock me all you want....just keep me from stashing it away forever.


I read the book Forsaken which just came out in the stores Oct 1, and decided it would be a fun read, although I am wary of those which are published in the Christian book market. It would be a quick read because the book was compared to the pacing of the show "24" which is like a roller coaster ride. I found it to be quick indeed and not terribly memorable except one thing: the author sets a character into an incredibly intriguing situation:
The character is the modern-day Billy Graham type...known worldwide as the face of evangelical Christianity, and his daughter is kidnapped. What the kidnappers want is for him to renounce Christianity at the biggest rally of his life so far....and the kidnappers tell all the newspapers that this is their request...or they will kill his daughter. So now...should he do it? Would you? Renounce Christianity? I think not...! But what if everyone knew you didn't mean it? Certainly Christ would know you didn't mean it...but no one else would believe it either. Hmm. This question has raised some theological questions for me. New ones. I am still thinking about it. What do you think?


The published actually sent me the book, Forsaken and also, the publisher of the Yarn Harlot's new book sent me a free copy of this one above, too. Those publishers like reviewers and me...I like books. Good arrangement, huh! This one just came in the mail yesterday so I don't have a review yet. But I can say that I like this book better than the last two she's written.

Another look:
It feels amazing. The colors are completely un-photograph able.

Some good yarns:

One day a few months ago, my friend Danielle told me the local library was having a book sale. I went, knowing I'd like to see if I could find any good classics to add to the summer reading list. One I found was:I later found the news to be reporting that the author, a past prisoner of the Gulag in Russia, had died. This book was his expose of the gulag. It was fictional, but based on his life and was incredibly personal and intimately revealing of character and substance stripped away by time in such a place. Fascinating and gripping, this book revealed to me the more modern aspects of Russia, very unlike the earlier Russia of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.


"My Antonia" by Willa Cather, a Pulitzer prize winner, is a wistful and lovely book I had never read until this summer. It is no mere romance as I feared, but rather a character study of a woman forged by the harshness of the pioneering days and by the culture of those who rose above it. It rises above sentimentality into strength of purpose. I found myself hoping for the ending which I received; one of real love and purpose over the easy romance. I am glad this one jumped off the library sale shelves and into my shopping bag.

Oh, and I finally finished War and Peace. I loved it. People are right, it is impossible to really keep the people straight, but I was forewarned and was able to figure it out well enough.

So many great yarns out there. More to come.

Just about ready....

...to pick up the needles again, and to tell you all about the billions of books I've read in the last month and a half. Keep tuned...

Purging

Do you want a planter? How about Monoploy? No?? Well how about some great ski boots, or some puzzles? How about a few dozen kitchen gadgets or some great dishes, a whole set or two? We're getting rid of it all this and more. OK, most of it is gone already. The Goodwill and The Salvation Army have been our frequent drop-off place almost every day.

It makes me ponder: How much stuff can one family accumulate? !!! I thought we were fairly good at getting rid of stuff we don't need, and also avoiding unnecessary acquisitions. I must have been fooling myself.

Yes, books are yarn are stockpiled here, but the rest....it's just stuff.

The amazing thing is the feeling I have now it's mostly gone. I am freed, somehow. That stuff that we loved welcoming in our our home carried a burden with it. The need to store, to maintain and to use, display or love all those things was a burden. It was part of what made us feel insulated within suburbia. It was part of the desire to break out.

The next two years of training will be in a home much smaller. It'll be good for us.

Strangely, I have noticed a new desire, however....the desire to fill up the cupboards with new and better stuff. I've got my eye on a GPS for travel and feeling our way around a new state. I've got my eye on a new Kuerig coffee maker (did I spell that right?). And I know my kids need new clothes ( #3 doesn't have any long pants/jeans). It isn't that I object to getting the things we need....it's just the WAAANTING of them I wish I could avoid. I was hoping I was changing. Guess I'll have to be content with my mind changing and having my heart try to struggle to follow my mind.

Anyway....did I show my house socks yet? I made them while watching the TV show, HOUSE. Yes, the blue looks like his eyes, doesn't it? Oh, and I finished my first event in the Ravelympics. I finished the Scarf Stroke and the WIP Wrestling events when the Easy Flame Lace Scarf cast off a couple of days ago. Ravelry acknowledged the win with an award...see up top. Phelps and Luikin must be jealous. ;-)

In Which I Pretend to be a Photographer...

Bear with me...I had fun with these. Nothing special on the point and shoot camera, and no special settings, just the usual automatic.


I had such fun with the photos which appeared, the blue in the end of the wings and the details. I couldn't believe they came out, because the butterfly never really stopped moving.

Nature

We've been interested in nature lately. This fungus started cropping up yesterday. It grew by the inch every few hours:This one is showing her nature:So is this one:
This one...not so much. I had to tell her to close her mouth and stop talking. Three times.
Showing her music-long nature, this one fiddles with her iPod.
We're getting rid of stuff. Purging half our house, and it feels good. Goodwill is getting some great stuff. We're getting lighter.
More pictures of the gorgeous swallowtail butterfly to come.