Bits and Pieces.

Sunday was a good day. I sewed like a frantic woman and got most of the top of the quilt done before Mum arrived. She walked into the lounge room with her dog bouncing all over her, and there was a sewing machine. Something that has never before been seen in my house. She's an intelligent woman so she knew something was up. So while Dad fixed a couple of things in the kitchen that had come apart, we had coffee and talked about sewing. It was all very arty-crafty.

Mum's actually a very creative person. She's always been ducking off taking classes in different crafts for as long as I can remember.They've still got glazed pottery mugs from the pottery phase she went through when I was 13 and I still remember the drawing classes she went to where she'd put bright colours on the page, then cover the page with black and then scratch out a design. The colours show through the black. That was pretty amazing when you're small. We always wore the clothes she made us when we were growing up, both knitted and sewn. The list could go on, but it won't because I'm going to move on from nostalgia about the olden days. She's always done her own thing, and now that 'thing' is painting. After she retired she took up the paintbrush, and she goes to classes, exhibits at shows and has sales to her credit. What makes this even more incredible is that she has really bad rheumatoid arthritis that has twisted her fingers and gives her pain in every joint of her body all the time. She never complains about it, which is brave. If I had it, (which I never will. I've told the cosmos that I'm not inheriting that particular gene. I refuse), then I'm sure I'd be sitting on the couch whimpering like a miseryguts all the time. But she just gets on with it. I could go on about the quadruple bypass she went through a couple of years ago, then just when she'd recovered from all of the painful physio resulting from that, how she tripped and smashed her shoulder and had to go through it all again with such grace and bravery, but I won't. It'll sound like a eulogy, and she definitely isn't dead yet. Unless she's the most solid ghost ever seen in the history of the world.

After Mum and Dad left I finished the patchwork. I'm really happy with how it looks. I rang Sandy and we had a batting and backing expedition to Spotlight. Mum said that one of her friends who is a quilting demon told her that she prefers to make backing out of flannelette because it grips the top of the bed better, so when we walked in and Spotlight had a sale on flannelette sheet sets I stocked up. $20 a set, no matter what size. I walked away with four sets. There were two more sets left, but somehow I didn't think the boys would be too fond of bright pink fairy backings on their quilts. They're reasonably evolved little males, but the pink fairy thing just isn't a boundary any of us are willing to fight through.

After that it was time for Brennan's guitar concert. He's been learning for three years now and he's finally good enough to be put in a band to play, instead of sitting up there with his teacher, painfully plunking away at some lame song. They played 'I love rock and roll' by Joan Jett (which coincidentally is the same song that he won the school talent quest last week playing.) There were three guitarists, a drummer and a singer. They sounded good, but Brennan made me laugh. He looked like the 'cool' one.... he stood like a rock in one place and simply played. He should've been a bass player.

Nicola from Back to Books included this list of the top 100 books of the twentieth century, compiled by the good folk of Random House's Modern Library. This is a very American list, but I like skimming down lists like this and seeing which ones I've knocked over. I've put stars next to those ones. If you're not a reader, then feel free to skip the rest of this post, because there's nothing else after this.

Modern Library Top 100 Books of the Century

ULYSSES by James Joyce
*THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
*LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
*BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
*THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
*THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
*1984 by George Orwell
*I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
*TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
*INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara
U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
*ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
*LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
*THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
*PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
PARADE'S END by Ford Madox Ford
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
*THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
*A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
*THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
KIM by Rudyard Kipling
A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
*BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
*THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
THE OLD WIVES' TALE by Arnold Bennett
*THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
LOVING by Henry Green
MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
IRONWEED by William Kennedy
THE MAGUS by John Fowles
WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
*SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
*THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
*THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington
read 22/100
(that's pretty bad, isn't it? I'd better start using this list as a 'tick off' list and get me some more of that C20th lit happening.)

Yet another all-consuming hobby.

There's no denying that I'm a very lucky person. Remember my plan yesterday to go to a quilting shop and look around, despite my (very real) fear that they'd point their fingers and laugh at me? Well, mid morning I rang my friend Sandy (she only works 3 days a week, so I knew there's be a good chance she'd be home), and asked if she wanted to come with me.

"There's a shop in Burke road I've heard about," I said. (Thanks for the comments yesterday, everyone.)

"Hang on," she said. "I think there's one around the corner from me."

And so there was. And what's even more important than it being around the corner from her is that it's just down the road from me. (It's all about me, Sandy....) In Centre Rd Bentleigh, number 281 (near Wheatley road), there's a shop called amitie. We went in. I've never been so nervous. But we had a great time. Sandy's been wanting to go there for ages but never had a reason to, so that's obviously why she has me for a friend.

We wandered around looking at all the amazing fabrics, talked to a lady who works there, started choosing fabric for a black and white quilt, when Sandy discovered some little packets of coordinated pieces that they'd put together. All up they equal 1 metre of fabric in total for $20 a pack. Much easier for a novice to work with. We chose two packets to make a boys quilt. (I needed fabric with muscles. No sissy pinks and mauves for my family!!)

When I was up at the counter getting the pattern for the new 'all boy' quilt, I asked about quilting classes. Sandy (who will one day take up quilting, even if she says she's wedded to learning to play the piano at present) has loaned me her sewing machine, so the only thing stopping me from beginning this thing immediately is a little thing called know-how. Plus I have to learn how to drive the sewing machine. So from next week Thursday nights are going to be quilting time. The poor things. Next Thursday I'm going to rock up to class, clutching my muscular fabric pieces in my small little hands, look at them and say, "So what do I do now?" I hope they're prepared for total ignorance.

(Though I read in 'Quilting for Dummies' that I should wash fabric before I quilt with it, so I'll have that step done.)

Connor came home from school first and claimed the quilt as his. So now I'm committed. Actually, I'm pretty excited about it. So is Sandy. She rang up just before dinner to talk about it again. I suppose that means that I'm doubly committed. Or should be committed....

And yet another exciting thing happened.
While I was talking to Sandy, I checked my emails and guess what? Harper Collins has a reviewer program where you register and they send out a soon-to-be-released book for you to review. My first one is being sent out even as I speak! How amazing is that? I'm going to be a book reviewer!!! I'm really pleased about this one. I can't remember if you simply get the book or if they also pay you a nominal amount, but I'm happy either way. firstlook@harpercollins.com is the place to go (I think.) I registered a while ago so I'm a little hazy on the details. (I actually forgot I registered until I got the email telling me my book was on its way.) I feel so important. My opinion matters. Whoever would've thought?


Just before I go to start another weekend full of racing from gardening to baking to housework to knitting to dog food making (thanks a bunch, Sandy. You OWE it to me to take up quilting now after getting me into the BARF food for the pets), I thought I'd share a blog I discovered this morning about quilting. Oh My God. This woman is prolific with the old needle, and she's made some fantastic things. I'm torn between being totally excited about this new area in my life and being totally intimidated.
Crazy Mom Quilts has kept me royally scared and in awe for the last hour or so. I particularly like the icy-pole quilt she has pictured on Flickr. I can see something like that on my bed. (It's too good to waste on the boys.) Just as an aside, are there any other Australians who find it really hard to spell 'Mum' as 'Mom'? It's something I have to concentrate on, and it's ruffling, because it totally feels like I'm making a spelling mistake. And making speeling nistakes is something I hate to do.

But enough of whingeing about those whacky Americans and their crazy spelling rules. (They make damned fine quilts, though!) I'm off to wash my masculine fabric pieces and dream of starting my new (all squares) quilt. Have a good weekend everybody!

Gifts for the street.

Here are the books I've ordered from the UK. I took them along to the Simple Savings meet up in Melbourne today, as a bit of a show and tell. It was nice to catch up with people from the Simple Savings forum, and put faces to names. Seeing as I log on every day to see what the discussions are covering, these women were like old friends. Actually... four of them are. We've met at previous get-togethers.

These books are great. I ordered 'The Gentle Art of Domesticity' after I discovered yarnstorm soon after I started blogging. (Look! I think I've learned how to link!!!! If it works... thanks lightening!)

I got hooked on the colours that she captures in her photography. Vivid, in your face colours. The book is lovely, the kind of book you should really dip in and out of. (Unlike me, who has to read a book cover to cover immediately.) It's fascinating to see the effect that the photos have on different people. Connor adores them, and he's been inspired to take the camera and experiment with all sorts of shots. Jordan, on the other hand, flipped through a few pages, then closed the book and said, "It's too bright. It's doing my head in. I think I prefer pastels..."

I've been inspired to take up quilting by seeing the things she's made, which leads me onto the other books. I've already whipped through the encyclopedia one, which has colour photos. 'Quilting for Dummies', on the other hand, is more my speed. It talks about needles, and thread, and how to thread a needle, etc. God help me when I finally get started. I doubt I'm going to set the quilting world on fire. Judith and Sylvia at the Simple Savings meet up were saying that I should start by quilting a knitting bag. I've had the same bag that Sally Went, the bully who made my life a misery in primary school for years, gave me when I was seven. She came to my party, proceeded to ignore me and made horrible comments to the other kids there. Mum told me years later that she wanted to throttle her. Still, at least I've made good use of the knitting bag. It looks a bit moth eaten and battered now. It has holes and bits are hanging off it, but my frugality kick is just about satisfied. Time for a new bag. But is a quilted knitting bag a bit weird?? (I don't want any other knitters to point their fingers and snicker at me. I don't know if my self-esteem is strong enough to take it....)

Look at this. Lovely, isn't it? It's sticking through my front fence. Last year I renovated the outside of the house by ripping off the hideous fake brick cladding, painting the weatherboards underneath and pulling down the brown brick front fence and putting up a tall picket fence. (Shutting out the world and making a haven for the boys and I after too many disappointing dates. I think by that stage I was up to about 80 or so.) There's 3 rose bushes on the fence line that were part of the original garden. Today I saw the flowers when I was waiting to pull into the driveway when I was coming home from the city. I should cut them and bring them inside, but I won't. They're my present of beauty to the street. They're close to the fence, so they're not likely to take the eyes from some unfortunate pedestrian who happens to walk past the house. They're just a simple thing of beauty.

Lovely day.

What a fantastic day!! I spent all of it with a definite bubble of happiness inside me. Everything went well, even when I had to bellow at the boys for being lazy little so-and-sos for not doing any housework. I kept the bubble because they went and did all the work while I made 4 meals of leek and potato soup, 2 meals of tuna pasta sauce and 80 cupcakes/muffins with green and red icing.

I guess it began on Friday, when I got some quilting books in the mail from England. Yes, I'm putting in the research. It was all going well until it dawned on me that when you're quilting, not only do you have to sew all of the patches together, then sew the wadding and the backing onto it as well... you THEN have to sew all over it in a million different directions to keep them all together. That just doesn't seem fair. I don't have a sewing machine, so that's a world full of hand sewing to make a quilt to keep me warm at night. (Not having a man and all.... what's a girl to do? Apart from have an electric blanket.... oh how I love my blanket....)

I was almost about to give the whole idea away... resign myself to cranking up the electric blanket for 10 months of the year... (I'm a bit of a reptile)... when my friend Sandy called. I mentioned in the course of the conversation about the inordinate amount of sewing that quilting demands, and she said that she had an old sewing machine she'd lend me. Can you believe it? I'm so rapt. So the quilting/doona cover thing is all set to go. I was flicking through the quilting books today, and I'm looking forward to giving it a burl. Honestly, how hard can it be? One of my books is 'Quilting for Dummies', so if they can do it, then so can I!!

Then, after my whinge at my technological ineptitude about links yesterday, Lightening posted a comment explaining how to do them. How fantastic is that? I haven't had a chance today to get near the computer to try and follow her directions, but now I know they're there when I need them. I don't need to rush out and order 'HTML For Dummies.' I'm a happy technophobe.

Then there was the meme...

I tagged Suze from Peasoup. She was apparently pleased by this (thank goodness. You never know if people are going to like you or loathe you when you tag.) Then later in her post, she mentioned buying wool on line from the Bendigo Knitting mills. She included a link. (Obviously she's more savvy than I am.) I was beside myself with glee. I've been wanting to buy some more wool for ages, but the wool shop near me is a bit limited in range, and Marta's, while gorgeous, is a bit exxy. All of the online shops I've seen have been in the UK or the US, which made me reluctant to buy online. It seemed a bit silly to fly wool into the country when we've got a gazillion sheep here. Suddenly, there was the answer. I chortled happily and tapped the link. Fifteen minutes later, I'd ordered a pattern and some soft green wool. I can't tell you how pleased I was. I've saved the site in my favourites, so now I'm set! How lucky is that?

Then I wandered out and glanced at the veggie garden, and guess what I saw? Purple beans. No, I'm not kidding. I was pretty darned pleased, because they said on the packet that these things are purple, and then when you cook them they go green. "Get out!" I said as I looked at them in the shop. I had to plant them and see.

See? How bizarre does that look? I think it's fantastic. We haven't cooked any yet, but when we do I'll have my head jammed half way in the saucepan to follow the colour change. I'll let you know how it goes.

Sandy reminded me to update about the afghan. I should apologise to all those who have been on the point of emailing me demanding to know how it's progressing. I realise that for many of you, knowledge of the progress of my acrylic basket weave afghan is the only thing getting you out of bed each morning. Well... on Friday night I officially passed the half way mark. (I can hear a round of applause... ). I'm very pleased about it, because when I started with it a while ago, I knew I wouldn't get it finished before summer came. So in my head, I thought that if I . .. (I've just realised what a stupid thing that was to type. Where else apart from my head would I be thinking? I don't think my spleen has had any good ideas lately. What an idiot.)

Anyway, I had an idea that if I made it to the half way point this year, that'd be good. Well, now I'm at least 10 rows past that. (At 253 stitches per row, that's not bad going.) I really love the feeling that now I'm doing next year's knitting!!! I'm time travelling! Already this thing is as tall as a toddler. I'm starting to look forward to when it's finished, because it's big enough now to spread over my knees when I'm knitting, and I have to say that it's rather cosy. I have visions of curling up on the couch in the dead of night watching all new episodes of 'Boston Legal' all snuggled up in my afghan. What care I if the temperature is a bit nippy??? Under the afghan it'll be tropical.

I've got more to say but it's getting late. Before I go I'll just quickly mention a comment Scott made on the post I wrote yesterday on the 7 weird things meme. It was very funny, but he will not suck me in to his twisted plot to make the world read shockingly bad authors.

I realise I said that once I start a book I have to finish it. It's absolutely true.

However... nothing... I repeat.... NOTHING will make me read another Isabel Allende book again. (Unless it's on the booklist for work and I have to teach it.) Scott is a cruel, evil sort of person, who will stop at nothing to torment me. He's devoted to the woman and knows my views. Honestly I can't see why anyone would want to plough through one of her books unless it was superglued to your hands and someone had a gun to your head forcing you to read it. Even then, I think that death by gunshot would be a preferable fate.

So nice try, oh so-called friend of mine, but I'll resist. (It's a shame, because the opening sentence sounds interesting, but I know all too well the agony that will come.....)

I take my history in novel form.

I wonder who was the twit who saw this pretty plant and said, "Let's call it Pigface." I've planted some along the side of the main veggie patch with the thought of pollination in mind, and I was appalled when Mum said that's what it was called. I suppose if you squint, stand on your head and look sideways at it then the flowers might appear to be pigs' snouts, but honestly I think there'd also have to be a major amount of chemicals running through your system at the same time. I really likes this plant, but now I've gone off it a bit. Maybe this proves that a rose by any other name DOESN"T smell as sweet.

I'll be writing more about books, after a fabulous comment I received on the last post. She reminded me about Jean Plaidy. Every Saturday morning I used to walk up to Highett library with one of those old lady wheely shopping carts filled with books and spend a halcyon hour or so browsing the shelves for my fix for the next week. Jean Plaidy was one of my favourite authors. Prolific! My God the woman could churn them out. She also wrote gothic romantic fiction under the name Victoria Holt and I sampled a few of them, but my true love was for her historical 'faction'. I learned so much history from reading her work, and I'm sure that she's coloured how I regard historical figures even today. Catherine de Medici, for example. The woman was a queen of France and poisoned people left right and centre. Towards the end of her life people got nervous if she looked at them for too long. Yet I regard her with a tinge of fondness. She had it tough when she was a girl....

Am I the only one who learned history through reading fiction? At school the only interesting year of history we did was in Year 7. Egypt, Rome, etc. Then for the next 5 years it was set down that we had to do Australian history. For the first couple of years it wasn't so bad. There's Ned Kelly, the Eureka stockade, explorers trudging off into the deserts and carking it, the gold rushes....
But we've only got about 200 years of history. There's only so much sensational things you can learn about before the mundane and dreary take over. (And yes I know the Aborigines have about 40,000 more, but they didn't write any of it down, and so we poor school kids were forced to learn about squatters and Federation year after year.) In my last year of high school I rebelled and ended up learning European history by correspondence. Yes, that was probably the extent of my teenage rebellion that year. I lived life on the edge, baby...

European history, even by correspondence was more interesting than sheep farmers and explorers dying in the desert (again). It was this subject that introduced me to Renaissance art. I still remember being blown away by the sculpture, the paintings and the absolute attention to detail. But the lesson content was still a bit dry, full of legislation for this and negotiations for that. I wanted Henry the eighth striding down a hallway in Hampton Court with his retinue around him. I wanted colour, movement and passion. In short... I wanted my historical novels.

I'm still a sucker for them.

Addicted to reading.

I was blog-hopping during detention a couple of days ago, and I came across a book challenge. Young Adult novels reading challenge
Hopefully this link will work. It's my first try. Scott showed me how to use HTML ten minutes ago.

Basically, all you have to do is read 12 Young Adult novels over 2008. I really like this genre, and not because I'm an English teacher of Young Adults. (At least, that's what they say they are, but sometimes I take the liberty of doubting it.) I enjoy that these books tend to deal with some challenging themes, and they stick to the point, which can't be said for other genres. The plot has to grab, otherwise kids won't persevere, so it forces the author to be less self indulgent. I realise I'm speaking in massive generalisations here, so don't leave comments saying I'm an idiot. (But feel free to leave comments about anything else!!) Also, next year I'll be looking for new texts for our ESL kids, so doing this challenge will be like a tax deduction for the mind. Work + Fun = a happy me.

Another reason I'm happy to take part in this is that these books are going to be a part of our kids' lives. They'll be shaping their literary memories and forming part of their view of the world. I still have incredibly clear memories of the books I loved as a child.

The 'Little House' books still stay with me today. I even named one of my dogs Laura. When I'm being frugal I channel Ma Ingalls.... what would she do?

And what about 'Go Ask Alice'? My cousin and I read that book together over the summer holiday I spent at her house while Mum and Dad were in Europe. I read a page aloud, then she'd read a page.... I'm sure that book is one of the reasons why I steered clear of drugs. (Scared the bejeebers out of me!)

I read the 'Anne of Green Gables' books over and over again in my early teen years. Who wasn't captivated by the little red haired orphan and her imagination? Remember her walk through the haunted woods? Remember the reenactment of 'The Lady of Shallott'? The puffed sleeves she coveted?

Later on when I was 16 or so I graduated to Georgette Heyer. I own the complete set of her works. I have them parked on the bottom bookshelf in my lounge room, partially hidden behind a chair. (Well.... they're not exactly literary boasting material. But I love them nonetheless.) 'These Old Shades'... top read. I just loved Leonie. Sophie, Hero, Ancilla and all of the others were just fabulous. Heyer was also funny. Every now and then there's a dry line that's hysterical. And the interesting thing is that even though my literary tastes have moved on over the past twenty years, I find that if I'm particularly stressed, then I'll gravitate to reading one. I know what's going to happen after reading each one hundreds of times in my youth, so it must be somehow soothing to switch off and just let my eyes run over the pages full of muslin clad, high-spirited heroines and their cleft-chinned men who can control a team of highly strung horses with one flick of their wrists. (sigh! They don't make them like that anymore...)

The 'Silver Brumby' books by Elyne Mitchell are also fantastic. Following these horses through the bush, watching the generations grow and move on, watching Thowra become more and more of a legend the longer time went on... fabulous stuff. Although they are about horses, these are no Pony Club books with spoilt little missies whingeing about missing a jump at the last gymkhana. These horses are wild brumbies....

When I was a SAHM in the depths of nappies, poverty and a bad marriage, the kid next door introduced me to the 'Tomorrow When the War Began' series by John Marsden. Hands down one of the best series I've ever read, either for Young Adults or for those of us more Geriatrically Challenged. I gobbled down the books that were written, and then haunted the bookshops waiting for the next one to come out. By this stage I didn't classify as a 'Young Adult' type of reader. I was 33 and had three-and-a-half kids. These books have a wonderful plotline (what if Australia was invaded? What would happen? A group of teenagers from the bush escape the initial round-up of Aussies. What do they do now??) I love them. Even Jack has started reading them, and he's no reader.

So bring on the challenge!! I'm looking forward to it. It's taking my mind of the looming pressure of having to start my NaNoWriMo novel. Scott's upped the ante by bringing genre into it. (I'd be happy to have a singlecharacter, let alone a whole genre.)
Maybe I'll make mine a Young Adult one.....

Rows on the throw.

My computer is running really slowly this morning. I'd tear my hair out if I had any, so this post will probably be brief.

I started my throw/afghan last night. I bought about 6 circular knitting needles at the op shop at the end of my street for $3 total, and luckily one of them was the correct size for this project, so my frugality kick is happy. The word 'project' was deliberately chosen. It's 254 stitches a row, knitted in 8 ply wool on 4mm needles. I estimate the finish date to be in the vicinity of winter 2010. I knitted during '50 First Dates' last night, and got a grand total of 9 rows done. It's half the length of my little finger. And no, I'm not a slow knitter. It's not a complicated pattern, just plains and pearls. But I will finish it. I'm channelling Scarlett O'Hara... "As God is my witness, I'll finish this damned rug...."

Have to say I'm loving the barefoot investor book. I'm half way through, just got up to the Mojo account part, which is the part I'm really interested in. So far, I'm already doing all of what he talks about, so of course that makes me feel good, but most of my enjoyment comes from the way he's written it. He has a conversational style that's funny and easy to read, so the information gets absorbed painlessly. Now how to get Jack to read it? If he thinks I'm desperate to put it into his hands he won't touch it. Whereas Brennan is absorbing investment like a sponge... weird how kids brought up the same way, with the same genetic heritage can be so different. Why can't all my children be just like me????