Yarn Along and a Book Review

Like everyone said, as soon as I got my needles sorted, the Hitchhiker is flying along with ease and enjoyment. (It was a lot of green on green on green for St. Paddy's Day.) You were all so right! I love it. I keep sneaking time in to knit it, like a book you can't put down. It is just so satisfying to get another "tooth" off the needles, and I try to get at least one done a day doing here and there, though I don't put much time into it. I've got 16 "teeth" of the 42 and the yarn is very lovely. As is always the case for me, when I project is going well, I spend the whole time working on it daydreaming of the NEXT thing I'll do that is like it.

Because, maybe just maybe, someday it will stop snowing and we will have a lacrosse game (two cancelled so far), I acquired some ivory wool roving for these one hour fingerless mittens. I already have the right sized needles, I have been wanting some fingerless gloves, I need to use my cell phone during games to keep the in-laws updated, and it claims they only take two hours to make a pair. Match made in heaven, right? But I have to complicate things and explore so I'm going to try to dye the wool myself before using it. The problem with that is choosing a color... Julian says purple. Any ideas?

I've been saying I would write more about the books I'm reading. So here you go. Julian and I are reading the River Cottage Handbook #12, Booze at nights before bed. We both love it. John Wright is a hilarious person, both in speech and writing, and he gives such an inspired confidence to the DIYer, forager, or homesteader to try new things. If you have any interest in homemade infused liqueurs or country wines, its worth the read. Furthermore, it is part of the River Cottage Handbooks collection so we just had to have it. In addition to being entertaining, it has helped revive our spirits as we think of the future when we might not be stuck on a postage stamp lot in a subdivision!

 I've had this book on my "to-read" shelf on Goodreads for a while. I am glad to have gotten it through my local library, ON LOAN ON MY KINDLE. Its like magic, this whole kindle thing. I am constantly amazed. {I'm already one of those people who walks around saying, "Well, when I was young, we didn't have...}I thought Bread and Wine by Shauna Neiquist was going to be the perfect book for Lent. I was looking for something that would inspire me, and help me both reflect and prepare for the season without being so hard core "devotional". Don't judge. The trouble is that it started out really great, but as it has gone along, it has gotten more "generic-memoir" and less "Bible-truths-for-real-in-my-life". What's worse it that it includes recipes inspired by the stories but they are copied out of easily accessible cookbooks by Food Network cooks. Don't get me wrong. I DO like the book, and I DO think you should read it. The stories are heartfelt, the writing style is good, and the authors emotions strike a chord with many people. I am just a bit let down after an opening with words as awesome at this: "I am a bread and wine person. By that I mean that I am a Christian, a person of the body and the blood, a person of bread and wine....Bread is bread and wine is wine, but bread-and-wine together is another thing entirely. The two together are the sacred and the material at once, the heaven and earth, the divine and the daily." In summary, I'm not completely finished the book so I may think differently in the end. Who knows, for now I'm too busy knitting!

Sharing with Ginny.