Just a Little Riot??

I've found the most beautiful wool, it's by King Cole and it's called Riot. It's so soft and fluffy and I love love love the varities of colour that it comes in.  The wool is variagated, posh word for meaning mixed colours in no particular pattern, I love using this wool for knitting baby booties because it means no two are ever the same, the variation in colours is always a surprise. 

The particular style I've used for these booties is a very simple design which just gives the Riot wool the chance to shine.

Bootielicious a Sweet Treat for Precious Feet 

There's some amazing colour blends available in Riot. try Yarns 4 Less who have Riot in some wonderful colourways.

Time

Time is a very funny thing, it's a difficult concept to actually wrap one's head around,  at some points it creeps and crawls like when your child is a baby and they are teething and won't sleep for nights on end and whinge and cry all the time, time seems to mooch along at a snail's pace dragging it's feet as you beg for it to hurry up and for that period of time to be over.... please please please when will this end arrrgh.

And then other times time rushes past with the speed of light, so fast you never feel like you are catching up and that it's all getting away from you. 

Motherhood seems to be based so much on time, the passage of it, the squandering of it, the need for more of it...

And then one day you're stunned to find it's all gone by too fast and standing in front of you is the young man that once upon a time was your little baby.

Yesterday I felt that moment upon me,  my son reached his 18th birthday.  All the drama and joys and the tears that were shed over the years reached up and tapped me on the shoulder and I felt that pang... it's all gone by too fast.  My baby is a young man, ready to start his own struggle with time.

From Blog That!

Book Review - Simple Knits for Children

An excellent knitting book for the inexperienced knitter,  the book contains 20 handknit projects all very simple in design and using very basic techniques on the whole.

You will find some slightly more challenging patterning but mostly it is in the form of embellishments and patterns.  But there are enough very simple patterns to get a new knitter started.  by the time you've completed some of the really simple ones you will feel confident enough to tackle adding the embellishments.

All of these Erika Knight designs are knitted in natural fibres, cotton yarns, bamboo, baby cashmerino.  You can substitute these for ordinary acryllic 4ply and double knitting but you need to be aware of the changes that will make in tension. So make sure you do swatch tests first.

Book Review - A Respectable Trade

I can't tell you how much I loved this book.   As someone descended on my father's side from the African slave trade this book really spoke to me. 

One of the things I liked was that although Ms Gregory doesn't gloss over the brutality that the slaves endured nor does she belittle it or trivialise it a the same time she doesn't dwell on it, she doesn't leave you believing that the violence and cruelty are all that the slaves are about, yes they suffered, yes they were mistreated but the book doesn't leave you with the impression of broken destroyed people who had nothing at the end of it. As people they aren't defined by the ill treatment.

In fact the book leaves you with a sense of just how strong and determined the slaves were, determined to survive, to move on and to build a new life. And for me that was a positive thing. 

I also liked that Ms Gregory shines the light on the slave trade in England, that is very often totally ignored and the concentration is usually on America,  but England did have a slave trade and made a lot of money from it before Wilberforce campaigned against it.

The gentle love story between the frustrated Francis Scott and Mahuru was I imagine supposed to be the focus of the book but I suppose because of my own history and leanings I didn't find myself getting too absorbed in it.  In some ways it was refreshing as the love story is usually supposed to be between the man and the slave girl.

I did also like the fact that the book reveals a snippet of information that a lot of English people don't realise in that people of black African origin remained in the UK after slavery was abolished and built lives, married into the population and had children here long long before the emigrations from the West Indies of the 1950's and '60's

Book Review - The Other Queen

I struggled with this book right from the very start,  I think for starters that my view was coloured by my own historical knowledge of Mary Queen of Scots.   It could also be the whole rampant Catholic thing,  I'm not a believer and therefore struggle with the concept of religious fervour.

Philippa Gregory as a writer does her best and you can't fault her historical knowledge, it's all there from Mary's early days to her disastrous return to Scotland and her imprisonment by her cousin Elizabeth all the way to her final execution.

I can't say I would recommend this book as a "must read" more of an ok if you have a few spare days you want to fritter away then fine go for it.

So what's wrong with it?  Well mostly its a history problem if anything, Mary isn't the most likeable character in history and she wouldn't have actually made a good Queen, from historical references she was a weak, vain woman who made some rather large mistakes but Ms Gregory doesn't seem to be able to make up her mind in her writing if she likes Mary at all or not either.

I also found the Earl of Shrewsbury to be a bit of a wimpy character, he slopes about mooning after Mary which seeing as he was a married man and his wife was also Mary's Gaoler made me cringe a bit in embarassment for the poor woman married to him. 

Not the best Philippa Gregory Book I've read to be honest.

Book Review - Cell

Stephen King is really the writer of my youth,  he is one of the authors that whet my appetite for the written word, I started reading King novels in my early teens and when I say early  I mean 11.  I was happily working my way through Jubilee Gardens Library and had long grown out of the children's section and the librarians seeing my love of the written word very kindly allowed me into the adult section and I read voraciously.  I took home my quota of 10 books every 3 or 4 days and I read them all.  No wonder my eyesight is shot!

I think "The Stand" was my first King novel and I just fell in love, I fell in love with his writing style, with the depth of his ideas and found through his writing a love of the science fiction and horror genre's.  When asked what it is about King's work that I love so much I have to say it's the fact that what he writes about in books like The Stand and in this one Cell is the possibility that it could happen... and that in itself is the most terrifying idea of all.

The Cell is based on the premise that a virus could be transmitted by cell phone... Think about it... just for a moment, how many people have a mobile phone?  Millions? Billions?  What if an event happened that every one of those phones rang at the same moment and transmitted a virus and within hours everyone who received those calls either becomes insane or just dies?

Can you imagine that?  Can you conceive of such a thing?  

Well Stephen King does and he does it so well, so believably that it scared the living daylights out of me.   I read this book cover to cover in a matter of about 3 days and at nigh on 400 pages that's no small feat. I mean one does have to eat and feed other people.

But to me the overriding element I took away from this story was "love", the love of a man for his child, what he would go through, how far he would travel how hard he would search to find and save his son. 

This book is a must read although having said that you may never feel as comfortable answering your mobile phone again if you do read it.

Righteous Rant

I love books, anyone that has been following my blogs will know that one of my main loves in life is books. I love the way they feel, I love to be able to run my fingers over the pages and the tactile sensation of the paper. I love the slight roughness of the pages of a novel and I glory in the sensual quality of the pages in craft books, all glossy and smooth, it's a delicious sensation. I love the way a new book smells and that crinkling sound of the paper when I  turn the pages in a novel or the slight cracking sound as the spine gives way when you first open it. I adore the shushing sound of glossy pages as they give way for the first time as they slightly stick together when you pull them apart. The weight of a book in my hands is a special thing, it has substance and solidity that's so real.

So for me deciding to go paperless is a big thing,  giving up those delights in favour of being more "eco-efficient" feels like a big sacrifice. So having bought an iPad and installed the kindle apps I thought ok this is the time to bite the bullet and "do the right thing".

So imagine my annoyance when surfing through Amazon and the Apple store I find that going eco friendly is actually more expensive than continuing to purchase books the traditional way!!!! 

I don't actually get it,  it does not compute in my head.  I will, by buying digitally, no longer have a beloved book in my hands,  I will not be using paper, not killing a tree, not contributing to the carbon footprint of the "book" so why then should I pay more for the privilege?

Perhaps I was foolish in thinking that it would be cheaper to buy digitally as it has been in the case of music but it's not. At least with a traditional book it is possible to share the book or sell it on or give it away... This isn't possible with digital versions.   

So for the time being I think as eco unfriendly as it may be I will stick to buying my books in paper format. I don't see why I should give up the pleasure I find in real books if there isn't even the incentive of saving money. 

Rant concluded :)