Better Than I Thought and Books

Last evening/night turned out better than I thought they would. I'd resigned myself to an early-to-bed-and-hope-I-fall-asleep night, as my head hurt and my stomach was upset. Then I took a generic benadryl-like pill and within 15 minutes, I felt better. I made our Friday night pizza, this time with pesto instead of tomato sauce, and had a pleasant evening. I listened to podcasts--one about books and one about the Japanese artist Hokusai--while I finished a tote bag I'd been working on for weeks, while Bill listened to game 2 of the 2018 Red Sox baseball season on his computer.

I spent a bit of time weaving in ends on the bag today after I sat and read for a while with my morning coffee--which I have in a book-themed mug given to me by a friend. It was a peaceful, pleasant morning, for which I was grateful.

Here is the middle section of my March book list.

Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes
This book is the second novel in the author’s series about the Walsh family, but it could easily be read as a stand-alone novel. As the title indicates, this one revolves around Rachel. She is the middle daughter of five, in her late 20s, and living in New York City, where she shares an apartment with a friend she’s had since childhood. Rachel is very conscious of what is cool and trendy when it comes to places, people, and fashion and wants to be seen wearing the right clothes in the right places with the right people. When she meets Luke, another young Irish person in NY, they immediately hit ot off, but she’s embarrassed by him because he and his friends are not cool enough. In fact, she and her friend used to laugh at the group of them when they’d see them in various places. Nevertheless, they end up in a relationship. Then Rachel wakes up in hopsital having her stomach pumped. She’s inadvertently overdosed on a cocktail of various drugs. Her sister and brother-in-law fly in from Dublin to bring her back to Ireland so she can attend a rehab centre. She is quite sure she just takes drugs for fun and does not have a problem, but when she finds out that her parents have reserved a spot for her in The Cloisters, where some celebrities have been known to go for rehab, she consents and allows herself to be admitted. She expects a nice holiday, complete with tropical fruit buffets, spa treatments, a gym, mud baths, seaweed wraps, and other such relaxing activities. She is, of course, completely unprepared for the reality that awaits her and the people she will be with as she comes to learn about herself, her past, and the reasons she did what she did. Keyes is a wonderful writer who knows how to construct a great story. I was laughing one minute and breathless the next as the story whipped from the moment Rachel meets her roommate, Jackie (spelled Chaquie, because J-A-C-K-I-E is so boring and common) to the group meeting where one of the other people in rehab has to face the wife he physically abused. In between epsiodes at The Cloisters, Rachel thinks back to moments from her past as she slowly accepts that she has a serious, life-threatening problem. I loved this book.

A Country Miscellany by Alice Taylor
I’ve enjoyed Alice Taylor’s accounts of life in rural Ireland ever since the librarian at the Ballinrobe library gave me one of her books one day and said she thought I might enjoy it. I did. I came across this one in the e-book section of the library website and checked it out. This contains memories of her childhood and the people she knew, as well as more current (at the time of writing) anecdotes.

Himself by Jess Kidd
This is a wonderful book. I could not out it down. Well, I did, but only long enough to heat up some supper. I posted about it earlier here.

I hope things are peaceful and pleaant in your neck of the woods, too.

Share

Sadly Spring, But at Least There Are Books

We turned the clocks forward last weekend and it's been a very unproductive week. I always need a while to adjust to the spring time change anyway, and all my usual spring and summer problems have arrived right on schedule. I am not sleeping as well, am tired, have the usual seasonal depression, aches and pains. All of this should go away about 6 months from now. In the meantime, I'll eventually get used to it all as I do every year and get onto the rhythm of dealing with it and getting stuff done anyway until we get past the yucky spring and summer months. Until I get used to it again I just gave myself permission to get the basics done this week and that's it.

I've not done much stitching or reading this week, but I did get sick and tired of seeing a scrap piece of cross stitching sticking up from the end of a book. I'd stuck it in there when we moved house last year and there it remained. I'd taken a narrow scrap of black aida cloth and made random cross stitches with scraps and ends of thread--I wanted an abstract design with a piece of sea glass. I'd had the glass with the piece but when we moved, it got put with all the rest. Rather than look through it all, I grabbed a piece that was in a plant pot, washed it, let it dry, and used it. So now this small piece is finished and the book has nothing sticking up from it.

Although I haven't read much this week, I had some good books to read earlier this month. Here's the first part of the list.

The Stories of Muriel Spark
This is a collection of Muriel Spark’s short fiction. Many of the stories involve Brits in colonial Africa and the tensions between the colonizers and native people, racism, and the attitudes of the Brits who lived there. Funny story about this library book. I'd returned it a week and a half before it was due, but then the local library was unable to access the larger system, as the ISP--the dreaded Eircon--had a problem. When asked what the problem was and when it would be fixed, the guy said he did not know. Typical. So the books piled up for two weeks because the librarian couldn't check them in. I happened to be there after the system was fixed and he was scanning it in and when he opened it, I noticed a couple of things I'd stuck in there and forgotten about, so I was able to retrieve them.

The Case of the Unsuitable Suitor by Cathy Ace
Having read the first and third (the library e-book section does not have the second) books in this new-to-me cosy mystery series, I decided to reserve the fourth. This seres revolves around the WISE Enquiry Agency, so named because the four women who founded it are Welsh, Irish, Scottish, and English. There were two unrelated storylines/mysteries in this book. One takes place in the Welsh village where they all live and work and the pther takes place in Northern Ireland, where one of the women is on holiday with her partner at the ancestral family home. One storyline was more predictable than the other. I find these books pleasant to read and will read the next one if I come across it whenever it is published.

The Wisdom of the Buddha--Anne Bancroft, ed
This is a collection of sayings of ‘the’ Buddha, taken from various texts, sutras/suttas. It is divided into categories, like love, kindness, society, practice, etc. It’s a nice little collection.

Now I am off to take an aspirin in the hopes of losing this headache/face pain. Spring. Bah! Humbug!!

Share

Squishy!

The other day, Bill got an email from The Wool Shop, an online shop that is closing down so the owners can embark on new life adventures. In this email, they said that all felting supplies were 60% off. Bill, who surprises me with goodies to feed my addiction indulge my passion for textile manipulation when opportunity knocks, clicked over to the site and placed an order. After a phone call to find out where we are, the courier dropped it off this morning.

I admit that Bill was less enthusiastic about squeezing and fondling each ball of roving than I was, but he was happy enough to watch. You know what they say--happy wife, happy life! 😊

The two in the front are felting mohair--they're particularly soft. I've not needle felted with mohair yet, so I'll be curious to see how it behaves.

As it happens, I have a felt book from the library that I have not looked at yet. I also have a book that Bill got me a while back.

It really is inspirational. The techniques are illustrated with pieces inspired by the sky. The book is full of gorgeous photos of skies and felt pieces, made using both wet and dry felting techniques.

My mind is crammed with felty thoughts--will have to pick one idea and start stabbing soon!

Hope you have some fun surprises today, too!

Share

A Wonderful Cup of Tea and a Completed Commission

Yesterday morning, I went outside for a while and re-potted some plants. Then we went to get fruit and veg from veg man. Unsurprisingly, by early afternoon, my head was clogged and I had a scratchy throat. I considered taking a Benadryl, but decided to just wait it out. I should have taken it then, because this morning I woke up with drippy nose and eyes and a funky stomach. I had my porridge and coffee and sat quietly on the couch, eyes closed, with a blanket on my lap and a shawl around myself, shivering, as I do when allergies attack. After a while, I took that Benadryl and continued to sit until I felt like a cup of tea. It was just plain old regular tea with a splash of milk, but it was wonderful! As I swallowed the first sip, I felt goosebumps rising on my arms and legs. I really enjoyed that cup of tea! And after a while, I felt myself warming up--a sure sign that things were settling back to normal. By then I could keep my eyes open, so I picked up the hat I was commissioned to make and completed the knitting. We went to the shop to pick up a few groceries, after which I made another cup of tea and settled in to weave in ends. Then I delivered it.

I was quite pleased with it. The person buying it was very happy. And Bill asked if he could have a similar one.

The hat is made with leftovers from other projects. The person it's for came over to choose colours and asked for stripes, so that's what he got. I think these colours came together well. I'll have a rummage in the scrap bag and start Bill's soon. For now, I am happy to be feeling almost normal again, if a bit tired. I expect my second wind will show up around midnight, as it usually does.

I hope you're having a wonderful day in your neck of the woods!

Share

A Good Read: Himself by Jess Kidd

I was reading a review of this author’s latest book (The Hoarder) one day and they mentioned this, her first novel. After placing The Hoarder on hold, I looked up this one and requested it as well. I picked it up on a Sunday afternoon, planning to start it and see whether I liked it. I forced myself to put it down so I could reheat leftovers for supper, but other than that, I read it straight through that day. In reading a couple of reviews of this book after I’d finished it, I was surprised to read that the reviewers thought there was too much going on in parts and that they felt it got bogged down in the middle. This was not my experience at all. I was completely caught up in this book on every page and when I finished it, I closed the book and said (out loud), ’Wow!’
It is true that there is a lot going on in this book, but that was certainly not a problem and I think it’s part of what makes it such a good read. Rural Ireland, traditional folktales and spiritual practices, literature, theatre, Catholicism’s role in rural Irish life, and more are all skillfully knitted together by the author to move the story along.  She is also a wonderful writer. She moves from laugh-out-loud humour one minute to disturbing violence the next. She crafts beautiful sentences and paragraphs, such as these--such an evocative way to say that, in a small village, news travels fast:

‘Words are capable of flying. They dart through windows, over fences, between bar stools and across courtyards. They travel rapidly from mouth to ear, from ear to mouth. And as they go, they pick up speed and weight and substance and gravity. Until they land with a scud, take seed and grow as fast as the unruliest of beanstalks.’ (p60-61)

The story revolves around Mahoney, who has been brought up in an orphanage (staffed with abusive nuns and priests, except for one nun who is kind) in Dublin, thinking his mother abandoned him. He is given information that indicates otherwise and he goes to Mulderrig in County Mayo to find out what happened to his mother and how he got to Dublin. We soon learn that Mahoney sees and communicates with deceased people. He meets the local pub owner first and then takes a room in an old house with one other lodger--the aging theatre actress, Mrs. Cauley, who describes herself at one point as, ‘Miss Marple with balls’. They bond quickly and she begins to help him in his quest, as does the woman who runs the boarding house and Bridget, who was one of the couple of friends his mother had. The dead also help, in their own way, as do books. Villagers are not pleased at Mahoney’s arrival and at first they cling to the story that his mother--an unpopular teenager--simply left of her own accord. There were lots of stories and none of them make much sense, but people cling to them anyway.

A good part of the story involves the old ways and the tensions between those and the Catholic church’s teachings and representatives. The current corrupt priest, for example, ridicules an elder for believing in the old ways and dumps some water out of a horse trough--water that was spiritually significant for her. He is then subject to a holy spring that springs up (ha-ha) in his drawing room, accompanied by frogs and other aquatic/amphibious creatures.

The reader is in no suspense about what happened to Mahoney’s mother, as this is the scene that opens the book. But as Mahoney, Mrs Cauley, and the others get closer to the truth, personal secrets begin to come out.

The book is an interesting combination of genres. There are so many different aspects to it--folklore, psychological thriller, detective story, village full of quirky characters, humour, and nature writing are all here. I was surprised to love this book as there are some aspects of it that are not the kind of thing I would normally pick up. I knew that before I started, but the other aspects of it and the setting made it seem like it was worth a try. I’m glad I set my reservations aside and gave it a shot! One other thing I liked about the book was that, at a certain point, the ‘damsel in distress’ trope was turned upside down.  I’m quite looking forward to reading the new book!

Share

No Rain on the Parade...

but there were a few snow flurries! It is, as they say here, Baltic out there. 😊 Nevertheless, the parade must go on and the sign in town said it would commence at 2:30 sharp, so at 2:29, Bill and I stepped outside to await the man himself.

He was followed by large trucks with bunting and flags, the fire truck, a few groups of cold looking children wearing sparkly headbands, and some bagpipers--not a good day for kilt wearing even with cool knee socks. Everyone who was not in an enclosed vehicle looked like they were freezing, but some seemed to be having a good time in spite of the wind and cold.

the love bug showed up

sea scouts

cosy cottage

Then it was done. We stepped back inside and had a cuppa. Now the sun's out.

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Share

Needle Tatted Shamrocks

St Patrick's Day is tomorrow, so I decided to make a few shamrocks to hang in the window of the front door. I started with this one, since I had the cone of green fingering weight cotton and the appropriate tatting needle next to me.

Then I went upstairs and got some green yarn scraps and my wooden tatting needles and made a few more.

These are really simple to make.

For the larger shamrock, make three rings of 23 stitches each. Then make a chain of 13 for the stem. In the photo, the top one, the darkest one, and the large one on the bottom are made this way. The other two are smaller. For the smaller shamrock, make three rings of 13 stitches each and a chain of 7 stitches for the stem. Of course, you can make these as large or small as you want by either varying the yarn/thread you use or changing the number of stitches used to make the rings and stem.

I decided to make a brooch using the first wee shamrock, so I got out the needle felting supplies and played around.

The background looks a bit on the reddish side on my screen, but it's the bright orange of the Irish flag, which is green, white, and orange.

Winter is making a comeback and it may well rain on our parade--or sleet or snow. It is supposed to be cold. I hope the folks on the floats dress up warm. Last year we stood in the rain and watched the parade. Last year we walked down to the square and I almost got poked in the eye by someone's umbrella. Then we found out it goes right by our house, so we came home and stood outside. If it's icy out there tomorrow, we could just stand at the window if we want. I feel kind of bad for the vendors--there is supposed to be music and food trucks in and around the square, but I don't think it'll be a good day for that stuff. The pubs will do a roaring business, though.
🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀

It's just about time for the pizza crust to be done, so I'm off to roll that out and make the pizza. Happy weekend!

Share