Lick My Sticks

Yesterday, Zoe and I walked to our neighborhood main library branch to sign Zoe up for her very fir…very second library card. She signed up for the summer reading program that consists of fun activities three days a week and me convincing Zoe that reading every day is going to be fun. So far, it’s working.

This challenge of getting Zoe to read and enjoy chapter books left me looking for a good reading list for kids going into the third grade. A few Google searches later and I was squealing to my husband over familiar titles I had long forgotten about. She is currently reading Beezus and Ramona…a great place to start on chapter books, I think!
SO, in an attempt to solicit your beloved childhood reading memories, I give you the titles now scribbled into my library notebook for Zoe’s potential summer reading.

• Mr. Popper’s Penguins – Richard Atwater
• Superfudge – Judy Blume
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roahl Dahl
• Indian in the Cupboard – Lynne Reid Banks
• Sarah, Plain and Tall – Patricia Maclachlan
• Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing – Judy Blume
• Encyclopedia Brown (all of them) – Donald J Sobol
• Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
• Ramona The Pest, Age 8, etc – Beverly Cleary
• Freckle Juice – Judy Blume
• Amelia Bedelia (all) – Peggy Parish

And perhaps a little later in life I will give her my treasured, worn, well-loved copy of Harriet The Spy. Just not yet.

New MagKnits is up and I am in love with this Cinnibar scarf!

I am currently knitting wrist warmers of my own design with some leftover black KnitPicks Andean Silk. I will post some pictures soon.

I’ve also picked up yarn to make my mom some gloves, and intend to finally finish the Henry Rollins knit your own rockstar for my brother-in-law this year. AND the mittens for my nephews.

We’ll see…I just got new books in so knitting will be fighting for my attention. I just finished A Boy Called It/The Lost Boy by David Peltzer last week and I’ve started Enchanted (an Audry Hepburn biography) and I’ve come to the conclusion that biographies aren’t my thing. I mean, I’m enjoying the book, she was something else…but I find myself drifting off sometimes in the endless details about her directors and things of that sort. I’m looking forward to tackling my new books (The Penelopaide, Atlas Shrugged, Failed States, and Running With Scissors).

That’s it for now. I leave you with this!

So, I’m in my Social History of Women in the US class today, and I’m staring at the girl who’s doing an oral report on Alva Belmont. I’m admiring her pretty top, a black knit little thing…and I swear I know the pattern. It looks like Glampyre’s Cathode…except in smaller yarn with asymmetrical buttons where that folded flap is. I swear I’ve seen the pattern. She of course, bags me staring at her about 20 times and I flick my eyes away as quickly as possible. She probably thinks I either hate her or want to make out with her now (I mean..she IS very pretty…nevermind) all because I’m a nerd and was mentally scanning all the patterns I’ve liked over the past three or four years looking for a match.

Once I saw a girl in Newbury Comics on Newbury Street (our killer record store chain for you non-New Englanders) in town wearing the skully sweater from the first Stitch N Bitch book. I felt like I should just run up to her and gush over her sweater and bond over our mutual love for needles and thread and skulls…surely she’d be thrilled that someone recognized her hard work. And then it occured to me she might not have made it, then I’d feel stupid. OR maybe she’d get freaked out by this stranger admiring her intarsia skills and tell me to get fucked. Out of sheer paranoia…I just smiled politely and went back to rummaging through Nick Cave CD’s. She got the look of “why is this bitch staring at me lovingly and smiling at me?” and paid for her CD’s.

I’m not sure what has instilled this paranoia in me about approaching other knitters. Even the woman knitting a green novelty yarn garter-stitch scarf at my polling station kept me silent. Why? She seemed perfectly friendly.

What IS the code of conduct for spotting a potential knitter? Would YOU happily receive a stranger’s addresses if you were wearing something they recognized as a knitting pattern? Have those dreaded snotty knitters at the LYS who scoff at your choices in yarn and needles really caused us to recoil in fear at approaching someone about a mutual hobby? Ponder that.

Also: 99 Bad Ass Knitters…come onnnn 100

ALSO also: I finished The Kite Runner in the span of yesterday, read the whole damn book straight through…amazing. Totally amazing.

I just finished The Time Traveler’s Wife and I am an emotionally drained mess. That was easily the best book I have ever read. If you don’t read it…you’re missing out.

That’s all.

I finished Pride and Prejudice yesterday. I liked it quite a bit, Austen is really sassy in her writing. She writes so beautifully, but if you’re paying attention you catch all this snarky humor. She is really funny and considering this book was written 200 years ago, you can deduce that she was pretty wild for her time. So I think I might read Sense and Sensibility eventually.

For people that LIKED Pride and Prejudice…did you like the movie?

I started The Time Traveler’s Wife at 10:30pm last night and didn’t put it down until 3:30am. I am GLUED to this book. I’ve had it for a while and I chose to read a few books before this…I’m not sure why, I think I just knew I’d love it and wanted to have something to look forward to. I’m about 150 pages into it. This is another one I decided to read due to the praise going around about it on the Knitty board. I’m going to get back into bed and read!

(I also repaired the I Love Books page so the sidebar is back and all the font isn’t bold and weird. I have no idea how these things happen.)

Has anyone read The Kite Runner? I’m getting mixed reviews and I’m curious what you think before I buy it and add it to the STACK of “to-read” books that is almost as large as my “to-knit” list.