Good Book!

The Door to December by Dean Koontz

rating: 5 of 5 stars
What fun! Dean Koontz has such interesting Twilight zone type books without them falling in the horror genre. This one is about a little girl and astral projection. The story was good enough I stayed downstairs with no cooler in a nearly 90 degree house to finish listening instead of going upstairs to my ACed room. Well worth it!


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In Passing...

I took the day off from knitting yesterday, for the most part, and read. Just sat and read. Well, between fixing meals, cleaning the kitchen, cleaning my room, stripping my bed, fixing more meals, washing more dishes....

What did I read, you ask? Nora Roberts second book in the Signs of Seven Trilogy, The Hollow. The first in the series was Blood Brothers. The last, Pagan Stone will come out in December. It's good, fast, entertaining reading. I only have 38 pages left on The Hollow.

If you notice on my sidebar to the right, I've started using GoodReads to keep track of what I've read, what I'm reading and what I want to read. I use it to research books recommended by others and I can with one click add them to any of the three above mentioned lists. It's cool!

My local library has summer reading programs for all ages. I decided to sign up for the adult one, promising to read ten books by July 19th. When I finish The Hollow, I'll have eight done! The prize is a $5 gift certificate to be used at the local used book store. They often have a good selection of knitting books: Knitting Without Tears was there once! So, I may just spend more time reading than knitting in the next couple weeks!

I did a little knitting last night, CO the second baby sock to go with the recently finished Hoodie. Just about ready to start the heel flap.

Today is grocery shopping day, so it'll be a day of heat and driving rather than reading or knitting.

Disposable Income, Wet Wool, and What We Think of Ourselves

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Stacy posted this today and I like it! Some days, “doing the best we can” may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect—on any front—and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else. —Mr. Rogers

This is Hatz 17. It's a large baby size. I really had a ginormous amount of fun making this one and even used up some little balls of leftovers.
Then a pair of little tiny baby mitts.

Got several rounds done on the Noro Hat while watching the world's stupidest TV show: The Moment of Truth. Normally, as you can probably guess, I don't watch these kinds of shows. I don't get any enjoyment out of seeing people squirm and hurt the ones they love for money. Just doesn't do it for me. But there was nothing on, and we all were enjoying the fact the cooler finally got fixed....sort of.

I guess the real summer has finally arrived. Several days of 105+ temperatures and it only cooling down to the 70s at night keeps everything hot all the time. Three more months of this.... I'm ready to run away to the library just to sit 'n' knit in AC.

Lolly is sharing pictures of Nova Scotia from a recent holiday there. I would much rather be there than here!
Okay...I don't really understand this.... Let's pay $300 for a device to read-not listen to, but read-a book from, when I can get the same book at the bookstore for anywere between $8-25 OR...OR...OR... from the library for free. Yes, it can store up to 100 books or something like that, but seriously folks, how often do you need to carry 100 books with you? Now if you were a student and could get your textbooks that way, okay...maybe. But just for entertainment reading? This must be one of those places to dispose of disposable income. I don't know for sure cuz it's been a lifetime since I've had disposable income, but..... And we won't even discuss how wonderful it is to cuddle up with a book and disappear into another world with the slight fragrance of the paper and glue....:::sigh::: A close runner up to the perfume of wool socks that are soaking .... (Seriously, I like the smell of clean, wet wool.)

Franklin has some very inspiring words about what we let the world tell us about ourselves. Take the time to read it. You'll be glad you did!

May 31, 2007

Reading is FUNdamental

Reading is coming along very well. I think she got past the decoding hump and is pretty much able to read. Need to work through a few more basic short vowel sounds and then move on to long vowels, blends, diphthongs, etc. I went to the library and picked up a dozen or so easy readers for her. We read all the ones pictured above, one right after another.

I'd say she averaged about 90% of all the words without too much help. Those she didn't know were multi-syllabic or had long vowel sounds, silent letters, etc. Some she remembered do to repetition, some just were too much. But she puzzled her way through many of them and that's the key, as far as I'm concerned. When I told her to go to sleep last night, she said, "Yup! Cuz I have reading to do tomorrow!"

Consequently, not too much to report on the knitting front. I have about 8 more heel decreasing rounds to do. click--> Renate asked what kind of yarn I'm using: click--> KnitPicks Essentials Tweed; Flint. Did a couple rows on my log cabin scrapghan, too, while catching up on TV last night.

And we've completed day three of no TV during the day!

I'm gonna have to break down and order this sock yarn. It knits up so nicely with subtle color changes....

Not much else on the net today.... just another blog contest.