10/28/08

I see that Macklin highjacked my blog earlier. He really is a creative little dog. How many dogs do you know that can type??? But he really is smitten with Annie!!! He gets this dreamy look in his eyes every time he sees her. So, he doesn't get his picture on MY update, since he already did his own!! ;-)

A lot has been going on. I know I say that every update, but this one has been particularly busy. We have sold my parent's house. Almost finished the addition to my sister's house for them, and moved them. They are pretty much settled except their kitchen cabinets have not come yet. We will have to finish the kitchen area once they arrive. The first of October, I started the H&R Block Tax Prep course. It really is a good course. It is 3 days a week, 3 hours a time, plus about 3 hours of homework for each class. It is pretty intensive. I have a really good teacher, so that helps. I have been obsessed with CNBC since the stock market has been so crazy. So haven't been doing as much reading as usual. If I have a few minutes, I am watching TV or doing homework, not reading. But I do have a few books to report on later in this update. After all the pictures. Of course, the election is driving me crazy. I will be very glad when it is over.


This is the Hexagon Afghan from the Bernet book. Made with Bernet yarn. Fun to crochet, not as fun to sew together. I will make another on though. I loved doing the hexagons.












Beaded Flag bracelet. I took a 2 hour class at Beadworkz in Suffolk, to learn this one. It took about 4 hours to make in total. I have been wearing it a lot. Not sure I am still going to be proud to be an American after the election.










These are plain K3,P1 socks. Made from Ellen Cooper yarn with real silver in it. They sparkle, you really can't tell from the picture. They are SOFT. Have some silk in them too. Got the yarn at Knitting Addiction in Southern Shores, NC.









Here are the 25 center blocks of the Charming Leaves quilt. I still have the dogtooth borders to go, but these were fun. Just need to do some applique. I seem to do more of it when I am away from home, than at home.











This really does look better on than laying on the couch!!! It is a ChicKnit pattern with Buton d Or yarn. Needs blocking. I need to hold a blocking party. It is getting cold and I have 3 or 4 sweaters that just need blocking and I could start wearing them. Plus a shawl and who knows what else needs blocking.





Exercise has been on a back burner. With class three mornings a week and trying to get my parents moved, it just hasn't gotten into the schedule. I will do better soon. I keep promising myself that!!!

On the reading front:
Sarah: How a Hockey Mom... by Keylene Johnson. Good intro to Sarah Palin.

Tan Lines by JJ Salem. Women's bonding book. A group of college friends that get together in the Hamptons years later. How their lives have diverged and converged. Good, not great. Has a murder mystery woven in.

Perfecting Amanda by Bonnie Dee. This was a free book for my Kindle (have I mentioned how much I LOVE my Kindle??) It is a story set at the turn of the century (1900). A pen pal bride goes to get married to a man she has never seen. When she gets to town, she is picked up by a man you makes her believe he is the fiance. After they spend the night together, he lets her know he isn't!! Should she tell the new fiance or not??? Good story. Light reading. Quite sexy!!

Murder on the Candlelight Tour by Ellen Elizabeth Hunter. This is another in the Wilmington NC murder mystery series. They are light and fun quick reads. Revolving around the same historic home restorer. I think there are 8 in the series. I will eventually read them all.

The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes. This is the story of the Great Depression. It is very good. Scary, how much it mirrors this current economic crises. Gets a little heavy at points, but I am enjoying it. Only have 2 chapters left so will finish it soon.

Murder at the Azalea Festival by Ellen Elizabeth Hunter. This is another of the Wilmington NC murder mystery series. Reading this one when Forgotten Man needs a break. Not far into it yet, but it is as good as the others in the series.

When I finish these two books, I will have read 47 books this year. My goal is 52 by the end of the year. Once the class is over the end of November, I will be able to read faster, since I won't have homework, so I should make my goal.

I think that gets things pretty much updated. I will try to do better about updating, but no promises!!!

Chat later
Susan

To Annie from Captain Macklin

Just in from a mission.













Mom said I could use this blog update (which is long overdue) to send my girlfriend, Annie a note.

For those that don't know Annie, you can learn about her at ://pennysanford.typepad.com/penny_sanford_porcelains_/ She is a beautiful Westie and another member of the Westie Special Forces. She lives with several other Westies, one of them being Major Mackie. I saw her pictures on Penny's blog and fell instantly in love.

Annie have no concern about being a small town, now country Westie. I was born, and lived the first year and a half of my life in a SMALL town in North Carolina. They don't even have a traffic light and they park in the middle of the street. My then Mom got very sick and was not able to look after me. They took her to some place they called a hospital. There was no one home to look after me. They were talking about "rescues" and "shelters". I don't know what they mean but I didn't like they way they sounded. Anyway, I got lucky (as did you) when my "now Mom" heard about me from her cousin, she drove the 2 hours to get me the next day. I came to live with my new human parents and my Scotty brother and sister, Chad and Chelsea. I miss my first Mom, but have a really good place to live now.

We have moles and squirrels and all sorts of invaders that must be guarded against. As you can see from the picture at the top of the post, I had been out on a mission. I have a doggie door so I can go in and out. Sometimes when I catch a vermit, I bring its dead body in to my Mom. She really doesn't seem to appreciate my hard work. She promptly discards them.




Here I am resting between missions. (Mom says don't look at the dust on the lamp).

Annie, don't worry when Miss Penny takes your picture when you aren't brushed. You still look beautiful to me. I am a rough and rugged Westie. I don't think brushing is necessary for a Westie most days!!!

Now you know a little more about me. Hopefully you will be more comfortable with your long distance beau.

Best wishes to all of your Westie Special Forces Team. Wish we could meet in "person". Sniffing is always good.

Captain Macklin

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