9/15/08

No picture post since I am on the Outer Banks without my camera. I will have a few finished things when I get back to take pics of, so that gives you something to look forward to....

My sister, my 2 nephews (12 yo) and I rode the 50 mile Between the Lighthouses Bike Ride on Saturday. We all finished. They boys were the youngest to ride that distance, so they have something to be really proud of. My knee "went South" on me at mile 45 and I was very unhappy the last 5 miles, but I made it. I also burned my lower lip!!! I have never burned my lip before, and I don't recommend it. Today it has a scab all across it and is still swollen. I am so afraid I am going to split it. I won't do that again. I will always remember my lip sunscreen!!! Of course, it was a record high temperature day, of course.

Have done some reading. Araminta Spookie #5, a continuation of the young adult series about a witch who has a vampire as an uncle. Really cute and a super quick read. It is by Angie Sage.

Unknown Waters by Alfred McLaren. This is the story of the submarine, the Queenfish, that mapped the area under the Arctic icecap in the 1960's. Since my husband is a retired submariner, this was very interesting to me. It had a little too much of the Navy alphabet shorthand, but other than that it was very readable.

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. This is the first in the Southern Vampire series. I think there are 8 in the series. It was very good. I look forward to the next one. It is another of the "politically correct" vampires books where vampires don't bite people!!!

Epicenter by Joel Rosenberg. This follows the book of Ezekiel and it's predictions of the future as compared to what is happening in the world today, and how close we are to the end of days. It was very good until the last chapter. Then it became a little "too" religious. More like a sermon than a book. But overall it was very good.

Mayday by Nelson DeMille and Thomas Block. Very good, but DeMille's books always are. This is a subspace passenger airliner that is shot by a Navy missile during a secret test. Very good. Hard to put down.

Now I am going to read the draft of Midnight Sun by Stephanie Meyers. This is the Twilight series from Edwards prospective. She was writing the book and someone leaked it on the internet. She is so upset, she isn't sure she is going to finish it. But of course, I have to read the draft. I sent the pdf from the internet to my Kindle, so I could read it. Bad, I know!!!

I have been appliquing on the Charming Leaves quilt. I have 3 more blocks and the borders. So if I would work on it, it wouldn't take long!!! It is the working on it thing!!

Well off to the showers!!

Chat later
Susan

9/7/08 Just for Fun

The Big Read is an NEA program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six.

*Look at the list and bold those we have read.
*Italicize those we intend to read.

Share this list in your blog, too, if you like.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (Tried but couldn't get into it)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


That's 39 of 100 for me. Guess that isn't so bad, since they say the average is 6!!! I may read any of the ones not marked. Who knows?

Have fun with this

Chat later
Susan

8/27/08

Got to go to Nags Head, had a great long weekend. My mother's second cataract surgery went just as smoothly as the first, so that is behind us. The next family trauma is getting my parent's new living space finished and them out of their house by the end of October. The construction schedule is so tight, that if anyone sneezes we won't make it!!! Then they are homeless!!

No new FO knittng/crochet projects to show. I have been on a reading jag, so not much handwork done!! I have a four day quilting weekend this weekend, so will get some stuff done then. Hopefully the next update will include a load of FO pictures.

Have been doing a lot of bike riding. Did a 47 mile ride on Saturday and hope to do it again this weekend. We are expecting leftover rain from the tropical storm this week, so hopefully it will clear out so we can ride. The Between the Lights bike ride is September 13th. It is 50 miles on the Outer Banks. That is what we are training for.

I have given up on the Rock and Roll half marathon. I was planning to walk it, but have been having a lot of trouble with leg pain after walking anything over 2 miles. So have had to give this up in favor of the bike. I hope to spend some time with a personal trainer soon to try to work out the leg pain problem.

On the reading list:
Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett - This is the second time I have read this book. It is excellent. Long but you really get lost in it. There is an Earl who is a sadist so there is a bit of sexual violence that was troubling, but I think it is probably true to the time. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys political intrique.

Murder on the Ghost Walk - Ellen Elizabeth Hunter - This is a murder mystery set in Willmington, NC. It is light reading, and interesting because I knew some of the places she was talking about. I read it in one day on the beach. It is the first in a series of mysteries set in Willmington. I plan to read them all.

The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alesander McCall Smith - Light mystery. Great character development. You really feel you get to know them. It is a series of short mysteries, not one long involved one. I prefer the long involved mystery. But enjoyed the insite in African culture. This is also a series of books. I will probably read more. This is another book I read in one day, sitting on the beach.

Dog Eat Dog - Laurien Berenson - If you are a dog lover, this is a must read. Murder mystery with a ton of dog stories thrown in. How can you not love a book that almost has more dogs than people in it. Another series. I will be reading more!!! Another one day beach read.

Under you Spell - Lois Greiman - I started this the last day on the beach. I read 100 pages only because I didn't have another book. I would have dropped it in the trash on the beach, but I wanted to make a note of it, so I didn't buy any more books by this author. This is very unusual for me to not finish a book. I just couldn't slog through it. The language was cumbersome and the story wasn't moving. Enough said

Septimus Heap:Queste Book 4 - Angie Sage - If you like Harry Potter, you will like Septimus. He is an Ordinary Wizard in an apprenticeship to be an Extraordinary Wizard. Great fantasy. I have abou 50 pages left. What will be next..............

Told you I had been reading a bunch!!!!

Hopefully I will get something to take a picture of finished by next time.

Puppies are fine. They are still loving the screened in front porch. Sometimes they even sit out there without me!!! I am dreading the weather getting cold and me not getting to sit out there. Of course, then I will so some hand work instead of just read.

Chat later
Susan

8/9/08

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my Kindle. After holding an almost 800 page hard cover book, now holding the lightweight Kindle is so much nicer!!!! I have almost finished Lady Killer. It isn't as good as the other Lisa Scottoline that I read, but still very good. I will continue to read her books.

I leave for the Outer Banks on Weds (hopefully). Not sure if I will take the Kindle or a real book for beach reading. I can just put the Kindle in a ziplock bag, but I am not sure I am comfortable, just sticking it in my bag and going for a walk!?!?! Not sure I really want to hold a real book, though, is that lazy or what!?!?! ;-)

I know I said I was doing UFO's in July and August, but I started a quick V-neck tank. Hopefully I can finish it to wear at the beach. But I have to quit reading long enough to do it. OR practice doing both at the same time.

Chat later
Susan

8/6/08

A bit calmer week, this week. It was time for one.

No new knitting/crocheting/appliquing pictures. I have been sitting on the new screened in front porch reading!!! I LOVE the porch. I have finished Back on Blossom Street. This is the third in the Blossom Street series. Good, quick, chick lit read. It is about a knitting store and the customers that frequent it. The first two books are Shop on Blossom Street and a Good Yarn. All three are good light reading.

I am about 3/4 the way through the fourth book of the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyers, Breaking Dawn. I was a little shocked by this book. It is a young adult book and has gotten into some issues that surprise me for that level book. I won't give details because I don't want to spoil it for anyone that is going to read it. It, like the rest of the series is very good.

Next book, I think, is Lady Killer by Lisa Scottoline. That will be the first full length book on the Kindle. So far I love the Kindle. I have a TON of "real books" so am trying to read several real books for each Kindle book, to whittle down the piles!!! My nephew (who also loves to read) had declared that I have a BOOK ADDICTION!!! You think??? ;-)

We have ridden the bikes almost 100 miles this week. T is doing much better with his new road bike versus his old mountain bike. Hopefully we will be ready for a 50 mile ride by early September. Not sure if we are taking bikes to the OBX next week or not. My sister and her family are leaving Friday for the beach. I am not going until next Weds or Thurs. My mother is having cataract surgery on Weds and I am going to stay here and make sure that goes well. Hate for both of us to be gone when it is done. It is rarely a problem, but don't want to be away during it.

Well back to the porch, before it gets any hotter, to finish my book. Puppies LOVE the porch also. As soon as I head that way, they are running to get out there too!!!

Chat later
Susan

7/30/08 Part II

Macklin in his hiding place guarding his bone. The pile on the drawer is my magazines that I need to go through!!! Why am I always behind?












On the Reading front, I have gotten a lot done, I finished the Septimus Heap book. They are much like Harry Potter, a boy wizard in a magical world. I have one left to go in that series of the ones that are out. Not sure how many there will be in total. Then I read the Araminta Spookie series by Ange Sage (same one that wrote Septimus Heap). This is a little girl who lives with her magical Aunt and Uncle (vampire). Cute quick read. Young Adult kind of stuff.

Then I read Andrew Gross's second book, Dark Tide. I think I liked it better than the first one. Murder mystery, set against a background of the diamond districts (NYC) dealings. Very good.

Then came Killer Smile by Lisa Scottoline. It is the first of her books I have read and it certainly won't be the last. Legal drama, all female law firm. Verges on Chick Lit, but not really. Had more substance than what I usually put in that catagory.

Now I am reading Another Shop on Blossom Street. This is from the knitting series by Debbie Macomber. Haven't really gotten into it good yet. But the others have been very good.

Big news on the reading front is that I bought a Kindle. E-book reader from Amazon for those that aren't familiar with it. I love it. I can carry 250 books in the size and weight of one paperback. It is tied to what they call the Whispernet, so I can download a new book in about 2 minutes. It is amazing. A whole book downloads faster than one song from iTunes. Can't wait until I get some reading time in my swing.

I almost forgot the Stitching Weekend, here at the house. It was great. I think everyone had a ball. I know I did. We will do it again, someday, but not until my life settles down a little!! Just too much uncertainty right now!!!

Now for some puppy pictures. Of course, Chad and Chelsea are NINE tomorrow, so they really aren't puppies anymore!!! ;-(



The trio guarding their toys and milkbones. From left to right, Chelsea, Macklin, and Chad.













Chad in "his snack corner". They have all chosen their own special spot to eat their treats.













Chelsea guarding her "rescue puppy". She loves her balls and stuffed animals.













Macklin, in his "treat spot". This is the step between the kitchen and the den. He can keep track of both places from here. Yes, there are more pictures of Mack than the other two. I am not showing favorites, it is just much easier to get a cute picture of a white dog than a black one. So many I take of them, they just look like a black outline.

That should get me all caught up for July. Hopefully it won't take a month before I get time to post again. I really am enjoying all the time with my nephews and I will miss them a bunch when school starts back up, but I get NOTHING done when I am running them all over the place all the time. I need to treasure this time and not feel guilt about things like blogging, not getting done!!!

Chat later
Susan

7/30/08 Part I

July has been one of the craziests months in history. Thanks to those who sent wishes that all was well. It is as well as it ever is, so thanks. Just a long line of craziness. Early in the month, my sister had a week on the Outer Banks. I was supposed to go for the week, but with one of my nephews playing All Star Little League Baseball and my parent's house on the market, I ended up going down Monday morning, coming back Tuesday night, going back Thursday morning and coming back Friday night!!! I should have known that with the first day of the month going that way, that it was going to be a crazy month.

My parent's aren't able to keep the house in "showing" condition, so I go clean twice a week. My sister's two dogs stay over there almost every day. Both of them shed like crazy, so I have to vacuum twice a week to keep the hairballs to a minimum. Do you think I clean my house that well? NOT!!!

The third week in the month my brother-in-law had to go to Georgetown for CyberKnife radiation treatments. It was a weeks worth of treatments. Nephew and I went up on Monday and stayed until Wednesday night. Then my sister came up and stayed the rest of the week. Nephew and I went to the Smithsonian and the zoo and the Spy Museum while b-i-l was doing the medical stuff. The Spy Museum is great by the way, I had never been. Lots of interactive stuff.

While all this was going on. DH tore the front porch off the house and replace it from the ground up and screened it in. I LOVE my Screened in porch, with a swing. Fabulous place to knit and read!!! IF only I had time to do that!!!

And of course the Tour de France was going on. I am not a big sports watcher, but I do love the Tour. I got to watch all of it thanks to DVR's. When I got back from Georgetown I had 20 hours to watch, not counting others programs that were taped. I am still not caught up and they are replacing my DVR on Friday, so I have to watch all I can or they will be gone.

On the exercise front, I am bike riding with my nephew and still walking trying to get ready for the half marathon. Nephew and I are doing a 50 mile bike ride early in September. I can ride way better than I can walk. I have a lot of pain after walking. I am afraid I will have to give up the half marathon. I don't see much point in doing something that I KNOW is going to hurt, a lot.

Now on the knittingcrocheting front:


This is Poppy be Elsebeth Lavold. Knit in Cotton Patine. I love it. It will look way better after blocking and finishing. One day I will get that done.












This is a ripple afghan I started in April 2007. It was SO BORING. I finally finished it during the Tour de France. It is not large, just enough to snuggle under on the couch. But I don't have to have UFO guilt about it anymore!!!

This is the Tidal Wave pattern from SWTC. I did it toe up instead of by the pattern, but used the "wave" pattern on the cuff. I really like them. The yarn is Sockmania. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE her stuff!!! The second picture is the whole pair of socks.

This is a kitchen cotton wash cloth. I like them for face clothes. They exfoliate gently, not like the scratchy pads they sell for that.

This is the Lacy Little Top knit from hemp, from Hemp for Knitting. I really like it, but I have to reblock it wider, to see if I can get a little more "boobage" room. Hopefully it will relax a little with wearing.

Noro sock yarn, knit two at a time on two circs, toe up using WendyKnits basic pattern. 3 x 1 rib on the cuffs. Not sure I love the Noro yarn. Not sure the thick/thin nature is going to hold up well in socks, but LOVE the colors.

Check Part II for further update. This is just getting too long for one post

Chat later (or right now)

Susan