Randomday

I have come to the conclusion that just because I have a Kindle Fire now does not mean I can read any faster.

But... I finished a few good books this week.

Command Authority, by Tom Clancy and Mark Greaney.  I've been a Clancy fan for years, and always amazed by how prescient his books are.  This one, published posthumously last fall, has all sorts of eerie connections with things we've seen in recent news.  A Russian dissident who mysteriously dies of polonium poisoning.  A Russian president with close ties to the old KGB who wants to reclaim the old Soviet satellite states.  A Russian economy and political system riddled with corruption and basically run by organized crime.  Ukraine wanting to break free of Russian control but unable to stand independently.  An attack on an American diplomatic outpost, staged to look like a political protest turned violent (but handled with much more integrity by the fictional American administration than the Benghazi attack was).  The Clancy characters have come full circle, with a significant plot element involving flashbacks to a young Jack Ryan enmeshed in international intrigue 30 years ago.  Okay, so the Clancy characters have never been completely believable -- but the events they deal with are a snapshot of the real world.  I wonder what the franchise will do with his characters in the future.

7 Men: and the Secret of their Greatness, by Eric Metaxas.  I've briefly reviewed this before but it merits a read by anyone who appreciates biography.  It's particularly nice because of the manageable size of the 7 mini-biographies.  All 7 men (George Washington, William Wilberforce, Dietrich Bonhoffer, Eric Liddell, Jackie Robinson, Pope John Paul II, Chuck Colson) took courageous stands and made sacrifices based largely if not exclusively on their Christian faith.

In other randomness, the basement has mostly stopped leaking because the rain has stopped falling quite so hard and fast from the south.  Smudge has been retrieved from the basement and escorted back outside where he belongs.  We are afraid that when he is inside now, he is too scared of the other cats and his own shadow to eat.  He is truly an outdoor cat now.  He goes from hidey-hole to hidey-hole outside and seems relatively happy as long as we keep feeding him.

I took the girls to the Journey Theater Arts production of The Little Mermaid Jr. tonight.  It was lovely all the way around.  We know Ariel from church, and recognized several other faces and names in the cast and crew.

My Olympic knitting is almost done, but not quite.  There have been several days where I didn't work on it at all, so it looks like I may end up having to sprint to the finish line.  But I don't think I'm awake enough to do any more tonight.

I am finding it hard to enjoy grading anymore, and I keep getting more of it to do.

WIP Wednesday and Yarn-Along

 The composition book covers are finished!  I used this tutorial by Stitched in Color, and I was inspired by the fact that the graduates I will be giving them to come from Cedar Tree Classical Christian School, for which I made this quilt a few months back:

That quilt sold at our auction, but unfortunately not for as much as I had hoped. (Overall the auction raised quite a bit of money so I'm trying to focus on the positive side).  Still, I'm never tired of making scrappy trees.  The trees on the covers of these notebooks were also inspired by Bonnie K. Hunter's free mug rug tutorial.  Although I didn't really do much more than look at her design and eyeball what size and shape I wanted for the trees.  I've gotten a lot more confident at eyeballing and guesstimating when I make scrappy quilts lately.

 The notebook covers are pretty from the back too, I think.  We have one boy and 3 girl graduates, and the other notebooks were requested by Daniel and Quarta.  I just remember having to keep a journal and turn it in weekly for a couple of my college classes.  They probably do everything by computer now, but I kept thinking how nice it would be to just be able to pick your own unique notebook out of the pile.  Or good for a sketchbook or diary, or whatever.  I enjoyed these little projects and would make more of them.

 I'm somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 way through the quilting of Orca Bay.  Squiggles, loops, and stars in black thread.

And speaking of Bonnie K. Hunter, I was ecstatic to receive the book I ordered from her in the mail yesterday: String Fling: Scrappy, Happy and Loving It!  I own one of her other books; this one focuses on string piecing elements combined with traditional quilt block design for a complete festival of scrappiness.  Orca Bay is one of the featured patterns- of course, I made mine as part of a mystery quilt-along before the book was published.  I am having a lot of fun with quilting rather than knitting at the moment, and even with all the scraps I am using up I still have a lot more.  I have made a small amount of progress on Steve's socks though -- about halfway through the gusset increases.  Poor socks, I just can't get up a head of steam on them.  I really hope I finish them soon, but those twisted stitches are a bit of a drag.

Status Updates - WIPs and UFOs

Well, April has now come and gone.  My UFO list for April was as follows:

1. Random goal (held over from March): the bowling-style knitting bag.  still not done
2. Finish the argyles, and start a pair of socks for Steve. Done
3. Finish collecting signatures on the Crumbs auction quilt, quilt it and bind it, and turn it over to the auction. Done!
4. Finish the clean-up of the sewing area.  And then we can think about the next quilt.  This is one of those jobs that will probably never be done.

Finished in April: The argyle socks, the felted blanket, the Crumbs auction quilt.  I'm pretty pleased with those.  The felted blanket was an unplanned project, and already Secundus in particular has shown great appreciation for it in late-night TV watching sessions.
And now, I need to come up with some sorta-kinda goals for May. 

1. I randomly chose #5 on  my yearlong list, - make a felted wool blanket.  Okay, I did that last month, but there's material for two more.  So it's a maybe for this month.
2. I'm keeping that knitting bag sewing project on the list because I'm stubborn.  Maybe I really need to take it off the list and give up on it, and that will spur me to actually work on it.  I dunno.
3. Quilt and bind the Orca Bay quilt.
4. Finish the current socks for Steve. (I'm only about halfway up the foot).  Maybe start a new pair of socks -- but I'm starting to experience sock fatigue.  This is the equivalent of Second Sock Syndrome, but is experienced by people who knit two socks at the same time.  It's closely related to the feeling of being marooned on Sleeve Island.
5. Finish cleaning the sewing area AT LEAST ENOUGH to be able to cut out a new project.  That means that I have to quit puttering around with organizing my scraps and put them away for a bit.  I have been cutting up a lot of scraps into squares and bricks.  Fun, but there need to be a few limits:

What with gardening season upon us and teacher burnout at its annual high, that should be enough.

Here's a little owl that Quarta made this week, with additional owls waiting to be assembled.  Aunt Carol found the instructions here.  Then she sent the kits for Quarta to assemble on the new Bernina.

Knitting is going very slowly.  This is a repeat picture, but not much more progress has been made. As mentioned above I'm getting a little burned out on socks.  This is a pretty twisted stitch pattern but my mental state might be better off with something in garter stitch right now.  Real Education by Charles Murray was a challenging book that deserves to be talked over quite thoroughly among leaders in education.  His thoughts on IQ testing and who should go to college, particularly, are very controversial but I tend to think he may be on to something.

Here's a new acquisition: my knitting buddy Joyce thought of me and passed along this 1900 edition of a Compendium of Dogmatic Theology in Latin.  The binding is falling apart and the only other language that appears in it is German (okay, there are a few Greek phrases too).

Closer examination of the title page revealed the author, H. Hurter, was a Jesuit. (The initials S.J. after the name are a giveaway).  Now, because of Henle Latin, I have a soft spot for the Jesuits.  I think they are the brain trust of the Catholic church the way Reformed theologians are the brain trust of the Protestants.  It's probably only fair to point out, as Steve does, that they were responsible for many of the abuses of the Counter-Reformation.  In any case, I had a hard time finding out where this was actually published (it's volume 2 of a 3 volume set, as it turns out).  I finally Googled "Oeniponte." Oenipons in Latin means "bridge over the Inn" or "Innsbruck."  So it was published in Innsbruck, where the University is the outgrowth of a Jesuit-founded grammar school.  The theological Latin is a little too dense for me to figure out easily.  What I'm mainly curious is, knowing the Higher Criticism that came out of Germany in that era, is this textbook a critical response to it, or part of the onslaught?

Wednesday Check-Ins

It's Wednesday, and that means it's the day for WIP Wednesday (quilting) and the Yarn-Along (knitting and reading).  I look forward all week to these progress checks, and I try to make both of them every week.  I've found so many interesting blogs through both of them.  Here's this week's progress:

Evaluating the crumbs blocks for the Cedar Tree auction quilt:  I'm going to need about 120 of them, and I have about 80-90.  They fall into one of these categories: tree blocks, double-height tree blocks, star blocks, abstract blocks with at least one small bit of patchwork as a focal point, completely abstract/whimsical crumbs blocks, orphan blocks made up of traditional patchwork like 9-patches or log cabins.  There will be the tree blocks and a dark green inner border to tie it all together, but I love the improvisational, free-wheeling process of piecing these little 6" gems.  And my sewing area's still a big mess!  Stay tuned.

This is Monday's picture of the progress on quilting Easy Street.  I'm about at the halfway point and I need to get more thread.  There are some ripples quilted into the back... it's such a huge quilt!  But I'm persevering with it.

The Circle of Fun bathmat is finished, at least the inner circle part is.  Now I have to seam up that center bit and figure out how to knit on a garter stitch border.  The Mason-Dixon knitting ladies have you knitting a garter strip for approximately 3 years and then sewing it on separately, but I really don't want to do that.

And I just read my first Asterix book!  Can you believe I've been a Latin teacher for 13 years now, and this is the first time?  I picked up Asterix and the Actress from the floor of my daughters' room the other day and actually read it, giggling the whole time.  Now I really need to check out the rest of them.  Woo-er!

And speaking of reading projects, here's Tertia with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire...

...and Star Wars.  She couldn't decide between the two of them, although she's 60% done with Harry Potter.  If you wouldn't use the word "retarded" to describe this bright and active girl, and there's really no reason why anyone should... would you please "spread the word to end the word" and help erase the R-word from being used as an insult or term of derision.  That's something that everyone should be able to agree on, regardless of politics.  Thank you!

WIP Wednesday and Yarn-Along

After the apalling tragedy of the felted socks I am determined not to give up.  I am working on a pair of Stashbuster Spirals with my odd bits of sock yarn, for Daniel.  These have proven to be enormously popular in the other incarnations I have made, and they are fun to knit because the colors are constantly changing.  Already they are large enough to be pockets to hold the little balls of yarn, which helps some with the tangling issues.  I'm reading Michael Medved's autobiography, Right Turns.  Aside from his goofy face on the cover (sorry, MM, I like your radio show a lot but you do have a goofy face) it is an entertaining read from someone who had a front-row seat for a lot of Baby Boomer history.  Like my husband, he also became a conservative at Berkeley.

In quilting, I made a modest amount of progress on Easy Street Saturday, when I was bitter about the felted socks and had a huge stack of ironing to do.  I bribe myself to do ironing by letting myself sew a bunch of patchwork together in between each garment that I press.  I finished 5 more "B" blocks and that makes all of the necessary ones of that type: I need to go back and make the "A" blocks now.

As leaders/enders I'm working on a bunch of crumbs blocks that I hope to make into an auction quilt for Cedar Tree.  Here's one.  I will need a lot more.

 

I'm linking up to Ginny's Yarn-along and WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.

WIP Wednesday and Yarn-along

There are very few days to "do stuff" before Christmas; Daniel is in Chicago waiting for his delayed flight to Denver and hoping to get to PDX late tonight; the other kids are bored with their vacation already, sniping at me and each other, and lobbying for screen time and shopping trips.  I spent over $270 on groceries at Winco this morning (that includes the Christmas ham, the New Years' steak, and a $30 bag of cat food, so it's not a bad as you'd think.  But still.)  This afternoon I cooked some ground beef for Sloppy Joes tonight, baked up a batch of homemade granola, and started a batch of Filled Raisin Cookies.  I was going to make Grandma's Fudge recipe, but I don't have marshmallow creme.  Looks like I'll have to go back to the store before long.

Not a lot of sewing has been done today.  None at all, actually.  But yesterday I loaded Barney onto the Megaquilter and began quilting:

Quarta likes nonstop meander quilting.  She says when she's bored she likes to run her finger along the line to try to find the beginning.  Ideally, there will only be 2 ends to this one continuous line, and if I have ANY time today I might even finish it.

I'm slogging along binding Jack's Chain.  About halfway there now.

Still enjoying the Easy Street mystery quilt, but I have to wait until Friday for the next clue.

Socks for Steve -- almost ready to begin the gusset.  They will not be finished by Christmas.

Source: google.com via Katherine on Pinterest

This is the book I most recently finished, and I quite enjoyed it.  Jane Austen fanfiction is always entertaining but this was a cut above most that I've read.  I really feel the author successfully got inside Mr. Darcy's head and told a story that merges and diverges from Pride and Prejudice in a totally believable way.  It will make you want to reread the original just to see which scenes are changed and how.

I took some time to make this collage of the 12 shawls in 2012 project I completed.  I was going to save it for another post but I may want to take some blog vacation time over the next week, so I might as well share it now.  They're in sequential order, clockwise from top left, with the center photo a closeup of the bottom right shawl.  Of the 12, they all used stash yarn (or handspun from stash fiber) since I did not buy any yarn this year.  Shawls #2, 3, 9, 10, and 12 were from handspun.  Shawls #5, 6, 7, and 9 used more than 500 yards (they make a big deal about that in the Ravelry group).  Shawl #7 "Black Roses/ Lady MacBeth" was more like 1000 yards of cobweb-weight cashmere, reclaimed from a thrift store sweater and dyed with Wilton's, and I beaded that one.  So it was definitely my agony-and-ecstasy project for the year.

Now that I know how to make collages with Photoscape, I'll have to do a retrospective for my 2012 quilts and the ufo's from this year.

WIP Wednesday and Yarn-Along

Ooh boy, is there a lot going on in the craft-blogging world!  Not to mention Christmas, grading, worrying about the fiscal cliff, and general end-of-year craziness.  Sew Mama Sew is hosting giveaways this week, which will easily take all your time if you let it.  I'm trying to visit all the fellow Easy Street quilt blogs too.

In quilting, I finished my purple Anita's Arrowheads top yesterday.  I'm calling it "Barney" for now.  It's 68"x85" and I was thinking about donating it to the Cedar Tree auction in the spring, but Quarta wants it for her own bed.  That's quite a bit of purple cleared out of my stash.  Funny thing about purple, all four of my kids went through a stage where it was their favorite color.  The boys quickly grew out of it once they became school age though.  The girls are still big purple fans.  I'm really not, although I can't explain why.  I like it, I just don't like it enough to work with it a lot, I guess.

These are for Bonnie Hunter's Easy Street mystery quilt.  I'm really enjoying the colors I've chosen and look forward to the next step coming out Friday.  I could stick with red, gray and white and be perfectly happy, but there will be aqua and lime green added to the mix soon.

I had some extra white triangles so I cut some greens to make another batch of geese, for transformation into trees.  I'm planning to make another signature quilt for the Cedar Tree auction next spring.

I've been digging into the scrap bin and making some crumbs blocks.  If you've been following, it was a crumbs quilt I donated for last spring's auction, and I really enjoyed the whole process of working on it.  In the blocks above you see remnants of the last several quilts I've pieced.  I just need to make enough tree blocks and wonky star blocks to pull it all together, and they make great leaders/enders projects as I'm working on other piecing.  I'm still putting off machine-quilting Jack's Chain.

In knitting, Wingspan is getting closer to finished, and lookit what fun book I found at the library: His Good Opinion by Nancy Kelley.  This is Pride and Prejudice told from Darcy's point of view.  I'm really enjoying it so far.
Finally, in honor of Sinter Klaas day, here's a story from Holland:  a flash mob in honor of an elderly knitter, Loes Veenstra, who has made over 500 sweaters in her knitting career.  Rotterdam parties in her honor:

Tour de Fleece, day 4

As before, Day 4's picture is of Day 3's spinning.  I now have 4 full bobbins, and most of the 5th is full.  I have 5 8-oz. bumps of superwash wool, each from a different dyelot.  My goal is to begin plying either tonight or tomorrow; there will be 3 plies, one always one of the 2 "true" oranges, and one always one of the 2  more experimental, far-ranging oranges.  The one on the bottom of this picture (it was supposed to be the right, why did the picture flip like that?!) is more brown with some spots of undyed fiber to dilute it further, and the one I'm spinning now has blackish/grayish bits in it.  So I should probably take careful notes of the different combinations in the plied yarn.  But my basic color recipe is to have lots of variation, in a controlled way.

I went on a thrift store shopping expedition last Saturday, and found a lot of neat stuff.  The plate is Delft, half price at Goodwill ($2.50!)  A dress for Quarta, a length of chambray for the quilt stash, a sweater to unravel, a couple of Redwall books for my prize box, an old volume of Horace in Latin, a vintage P.G. Wodehouse novel, Yoga book, a replacement for the Immortal Poems of the English Language book I had to bury awhile back, and a black Speedo swimsuit for me, in a size I don't like to think about.  This was to replace my Land's End swimsuit that vanished into the ether along with Tertia's and Quarta's sometime after Spring break.  (Sadness, because it cost $90 and looked half decent on me.  Maybe I will do lots of Yoga and Pilates and then look good in a swimsuit again.)

We have two teenage boys in the house who need practice driving, and I am finding it to be quite nerve-wracking.  The girls are both having swim lessons, and then will have another 2-week session starting next week as well.  The roof is patched but the drywall has not been, yet, and we will probably have to wait another week until the girls' closet is usable.

I think I'm going to relax and spin for the rest of the evening.

WIP Wednesday and Yarn Along

Time once again for the midweek progress report.  For the first time I'll be linking up to Yarn Along at Small Things, as well as WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

My Framed-In Quilt is on the frame and being quilted!  I'm using an allover squiggle-loop-star that has become something of a signature quilting pattern for me; it's easy, quick, and a mix of traditional and whimsical, so it seems to work with many quilts.  And the Megaquilter is behaving itself, which is always nice.

Jack's Chain is the other active quilt project at the moment.  I have a quilting day this Saturday at church and I hope to make a lot of progress then.  Also looking forward to Friday night, which is the Cedar Tree auction.  I have 3 quilts donated to it, and the signature quilt is in the live auction!

In knitting, I have finally gotten to the pretty lace part - with beads! - of my Black Roses stole, also known as Lady MacBeth.  Another 30 rows or so and I'll be at the halfway point.  I have been reading back issues of National Geographic.  That was my Father-in-Law's Christmas present from us; he always enjoyed them.  Now they are coming back to us.  I'm always amazed at how fascinating the different articles are.  I liked the special issue on China from before the 2008 Olympics, and the story of all the archeology behind identifying Queen Hatshepsut's mummy.

All my projects:

Framed In quilt - on the machine now.  It's my May UFO project

Jack's Chain quilt - plugging away a little at a time

Black Roses Stole - using Oral B superfloss to attach beads on the lace border.  I'm enjoying this part.

Traveling Companion Shawl - I'm past the halfway mark, I think. 

knitting cotton bath rug - no progress

knitting argyle-fest - no progress

startitis for both quilting and knitting continues to be a big temptation as the school year winds down and stress is everywhere

spinning - almost finished filling the second bobbin of Wensleydale.  I'm planning to take my wheel with me to quilting on Sat. so Joyce can try it out.

A Burial

... or rather, a recycling.  The sad truth is that Immortal Poems of the English Language, edited by Oscar Williams, in a cheap paperback edition probably dating from the 1950's when my late mother bought her brother's old textbooks in a bulk lot, was never holding up very well when I knew and loved it back in the 1980's.  I was a romantic teenager then, and I picked it up out of the jumble of other anthologies and history books in the spare room.  "I like poetry... I can even write poetry!"  (I wrote very bad poetry).  So it sat beside my bed for about a year, and every night I would read a few pages.  It changed my life.

It started with the medieval songs and ballads, many of them anonymous, most of them gory and depressing, with the quintessentially British love of the macabre.  Just ask Lord Randal or Tom O'Bedlam.  It seemed to me, as I was working my way through the archaic words, that the medieval world was much more rich and satisfying, albeit dangerous, than the modern one.  Every so often there would be a poem where some even more archaic words were mixed with the medieval ones -- stepping stones from ancient times.  I think this must have been the first time I ever consciously wanted to study Latin, although I'd certainly read Myths of Greece and Rome and loved the stories: but I hadn't yet been captivated by the language itself.

Even the moderns, though I preferred the older writers and could never memorize poetry that had no meter or rhyme, had an inspiring way with words that told me they were kindred spirits.

It took a long time to work my way through the Shakespeare section, but I felt that I had a good handle on the English sonnet form after that.

 

"Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song

...

Weave a circle 'round him thrice

And close your eyes with holy dread:

For he on honeydew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of paradise!"

"The world is charged with the grandeur of God,

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil..."

"Earth, receive an honored guest;

William Yeats is laid to rest:

Let the Irish vessel lie

Emptied of its poetry."

Yes, I'll miss this little volume.  But the poems themselves are, indeed, immortal.



Random Roundup of Spring Break

We're back from our Spring Break trip to Lake Tahoe, and skiing (and snowboarding) at the Heavenly resort there.  That was one day; our bodies and budget gave out before a second day.  I would ski again, but at the rate of one lesson a year, I'll be retirement age before I get good enough to go down a real hill.

Virginia City: great Old West town, ultra-kitschy, and of course no restaurants without a casino attached.  The one we ate lunch at was the closest to a family-friendly place, but when the inevitable trip to the bathroom occurred the sign said to go through the connecting door to the back of the casino.  So I took Tertia past blinking lights, whirling slot machines and (I think) the famous Suicide Table to the Ladies' room.  Now, Tertia has above all other things a phobia of automatic flushing toilets, so her first act in any public restroom is to check the toilets to see if they have the dreaded blinking sensor.  She saw they were "regular" toilets and said, "Whew! Regular toilets!  I'm so happy.  Mommy, this is just like church!"  "No, dear, this is most definitely NOT like church."

The pastor of the Presbyterian Church in South Lake Tahoe -- looks exactly like my mental conception of Fflewdur Fflam from the Prydain chronicles.

Speaking of Presbyterians... did you know there was a Presbyterian bucket list?  In Virginia City the 1st Presbyterian Church had a sign on it to indicate it was 301st on the list of American Presbyterian and Reformed historic sites.  I need to look up this list sometime.

We went ice skating on Wednesday and Thursday -- at least, we all went Wednesday and the girls and Steve went Thursday.  There was a problem with the skates -- the cheap blue plastic ones pinched Secundus' feet so badly he has huge blisters.  He did well skating though.  I had forgotten how hard ice is when you fall on it.  Ow, my poor knee.  Quarta is loving ice skating and wanting to go again soon, and Grandma Deb can skate backwards.

We all have disreputable-looking sunburns from our day on the slopes.  Steve's forehead is an angry red but the rest of his face is fine.  Primigenitus looks like he has a very red 5 o'clock shadow, Secundus has a red unibrow and mustache, Quarta has a falcon-like v-shaped pattern on her forehead where her goggles left off.  I have a little v between my eyes.

The girls and I went swimming in the snow Saturday night (I did one lap in the heated pool and then moved to the hot tub -- it was fun to hear the snowflakes sizzling as the melted into the water).  Going back to the room was not as bad as I thought it would be, and we went swimming/ hot tubbing for the next several nights even when the temperatures were in the 30s and 40s.

Vacation audiobooks were limited: we haven't quite finished Loamhedge, by Brian Jacques and a full cast.  But that has inspired a reading contest between Primigenitus and Quarta: read all the Redwall books in chronological order according to this list.  Primigenitus, who is nostalgic for the reading lists of his vanishing childhood, must read them all; Quarta can skip the ones she's already read.  I also read aloud several chapters of The History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer, which is really good and we ordered it from Amazon because it was on hold for someone else at the library.

Various family members watched quite a few movies while hanging out at the condo -- Prince Caspian, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Enchanted (twice!), The Princess and the Frog, He Walked by Night, Harry Potter (various numbers), and Rio (the one with the blue parrots).  Tertia always dances to the closing credits.

I fell back on my vacation knitting standard: my ballband dishcloth variation.  I finished 4 dishcloths and nothing else this vacation.  And my Aunt Carol sent a big stack of fabric that I will have to add to my stash account, which will probably tip it into the red.

When the boys packed up the dirty clothes on the floor of their room they gathered in at least three baby socks, none of them matching, that must have been left there by a previous occupant.  We discovered them today while doing laundry.  It's really funny because I found another baby sock (not matching any of the other three) when I did my last check before leaving yesterday morning.  I can just picture the little toddler throwing socks all over the floor of the room.

2011 Reading Challenge Recap

For the last 3 years now I have kept track of all the books or book-equivalents I've read, in a thread in the Ravelry Book Challenge group.  What... doesn't everybody use a social networking site for knitters to keep track of books read?  It makes perfect sense to me.  I met my goal of reading 100 books in 2011.  I do have a somewhat flexible definition of "book" and "read."  I count audiobooks, magazines (as long as I've read almost all of the issues in a year), craft books, children's books, and lecture series or classes.  It all goes to the improving of the mind.  Mostly.  I find it helpful to categorize my reading by the categories of fiction (which includes all fiction, bedtime stories for the kids as well as what I read for fun), craft-related nonfiction/ how-to, and other nonfiction.

I've managed a good number of book reviews on the blog (* beside the books I remember doing; I don't have time to link back to all of them now but you can search tags for "book review") and am planning to review a few of these still.  If you want to request a review of one of these that I haven't already done, drop me a comment! I love doing book reviews. I've got similar goals for 2012 reading, and will be trying to work in more reviews.

Fiction:
(1) Inkspell, Cornelia Funke (audiobook) Jan.
(2) Emperor: Time’s Tapestry Book 1, Stephen Baxter, Jan. *
(3) Calling on Dragons, Patricia Wrede (audiobook), Jan.
(4) Teatime for the Traditionally Built, Alexander McCall Smith, Jan. *
(5) Letters from Pemberley, Jane Dawkins, Jan. *
(6) Persona non Grata, Ruth Downie, Feb. *
(7) Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Feb.
(8) The Five Fakirs of Faizabad, P.B. Kerr, Feb. *
(9) The Double Comfort Safari Club, Alexander McCall Smith, Feb. *
(10) Death of a Valentine, M.C. Beaton, Mar. *
(11) Septimus Heap book 1: Magyk, Angie Sage, (audiobook), March *
(12) The Overton Window, Glenn Beck, March *
(13) Septimus Heap 2: Flyte, Angie Sage, March *
(14) Little Men, Louisa May Alcott, (audiobook) March *
(15) How Right You Are, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse, (audiobook with Ian Carmichael), Apr. *
(16) Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne, (audiobook) Apr. *
(17) The Sign of Four, Arthur Conan Doyle, (audiobook) Apr. *
(18) Vanity Fair, William Thackeray, (audiobook, partial) Apr.
(19) Septimus Heap 3: Physik, Angie Sage, Apr. *
(20) King of Shadows, Susan Cooper, (audiobook with Jim Dale) Apr. *
(21) Septimus Heap 4: Queste, Angie Sage, Apr. *
(22) Septimus Heap 5: Syren, Angie Sage, May *
(23) Freddy the Pilot, Walter Brooks (audiobook), May
(24) Dove Song, Kristine Franklin, June *
(25) Minders, Diana Hendry, June
(26) Saturnalia, Lindsey Davis, June
(27) Septimus Heap 6: Darke, Angie Sage, July *
(28) Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean Auel, July *
(29) The Child’s Homer, Padraic Colum, (audiobook) July *
(30) Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Laura Amy Schlitz (audiobook) July *
(31) The Time Machine, H.G. Wells, (audiobook) July *
(32) The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy, P.G. Wodehouse, (audiobook) July *
(33) Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates (audiobook) July *
(34) The Valley of Horses, Jean Auel, Aug.
(35) Redwall, Brian Jaques, Aug.
(36) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling, Aug. *
(37) Guardians of Gahoole book 1: The Capture, Kathryn Lasky, (audiobook) Aug.
(38) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling, Aug. *
(39) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling, Sep. *
(40) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling, Sep. *
(41) Guardians of Gahoole book 2: The Journey, Kathryn Lasky (audiobook) Oct.
(42) North by Northanger, Carrie Bebris, Oct.
(43) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling, Oct.
(44) Conqueror, Time’s Tapestry book 2, Stephen Baxter, Oct.
(45) Charlotte Collins, Jennifer Becton, Oct.
(46) Death of a Chimney Sweep, M.C. Beaton, Oct.
(47) Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Oct.
(48) The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, Alexander McCall Smith, Nov.
(49) Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan, Nov.
(50) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling, Dec.
(51) The Gray Wolf and other stories, George MacDonald, Dec.
(52) Inkdeath, Cornelia Funke (audiobook) Dec.
(53) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling, Dec.

Nonfiction, craft-related:
(1) Alice Starmore’s Book of Fair Isle Knitting, Jan.
(2) Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously, Adrienne Martini , Jan. *
(3) Knitting America, Susan Strawn, Feb.
(4) Socks from the Toe Up, Wendy Johnson, Feb.
(5) A Knitter’s Almanac, Elizabeth Zimmerman, March
(6) Tudor Roses, Alice Starmore, March
(7) Quilts en Provence, Kaffe Fassett, Apr.
(8) Quilt Romance, Kaffe Fassett, May
(9) Blogging for Dummies, May *
(10) The IT Girls’ Guide to Blogging with Moxie, May *
(11) Best of Fons & Porter Scrap Quilts, Sept.
(12) The Farmer’s Wife Sampler Quilt, Laurie Aaron Hird, Sept.
(13) 1001 Patchwork Designs, Maggie Malone, Sept.
(14) ABCs of Longarm Quilting, Patricia Barry, Nov.
(15) Lots of Scraps, It’s time to Quilt, Stauffer and Hatch, Nov.
(16) Denyse Schmidt Quilts, Nov.
(17) More Quilts from the Quiltmaker’s Gift, Joanne Line, Nov.
(18) Log Cabin Quilts with Attitude, Sharon Rotz, Nov.
(19) The Gentle Art of Knitting, Jane Brockett, Dec.

Nonfiction, philosophy, history, language, etc:
(1) The 10 Big Lies about America, Michael Medved, Jan.
(2) Clutter Cure, Judi Culbertson, Jan. *
(3) Textiles: 5000 years, Harris, Feb.
(4) Into the Region of Awe: Mysticism in C.S. Lewis, David C. Downing, Feb. *
(5) What’s so Great about Christianity, Dinesh D’Souza, March *
(6) 365 Ways to Drive a Liberal Crazy, James Delingpole, Apr.
(7) If Democrats had any Brains, They’d be Republicans, Ann Coulter, Apr. *
(8) Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World, Jennifer Armstrong, May *
(9) The “American Way”: Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity, Allan Carlson, May *
(10) Henle Latin I, May
(11) Henle Latin II, May
(12) An Unexpected Journey: Discovering Reformed Christianity, W. Robert Godfrey, May *
(13) Myths of Greece and Rome, H.A. Guerber, June *
(14) Life After Death: The Evidence, Dinesh D’Souza, June *
(15) Godless, Ann Coulter, June *
(16) Before the Flood:the Biblical flood as a real event and how it changed the course of civilization, Ian Wilson, July *
(17) The Teaching Company: Popes and the Papacy: a History, Thomas F. X. Noble, (CDs) July
(18) The Golden Bough, James Frazer, July *
(19) Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America, Ann Coulter, August *
(20) Veritas Teacher Training conference 2011 lecture series, Matt Whitling et al., Aug.
(21) 1st OPC Summer Bible Study on Joshua, Tom Bradshaw, Aug.
(22) The Parthenon Code: Mankind’s History in Marble, Robert Johnson, Sept. *
(23) Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog, Kitty Burns Florey, Sept. *
(24) 1st OPC Sunday School class on Westminster Confession, Dec.
(25) Muzzled, Juan Williams, Dec.
(26) World Magazine, 2011
(27) and (28) The Old and New Testaments. Counting this as 2 books (instead of 66), this brings me to a total of 100 books. I followed a chronological reading plan.

Book Review - Septimus Heap 5: Syren

If you've been following my kids' book reviews, you'll know I like the Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage as a family-friendly, tween-friendly alternative to Harry Potter.  Not that our family doesn't love the Harry books, but they start at tween-level and get progressively darker and more YA over the course of 7 books, leading many parents who had no problem with books 1-3 to be reluctant to give the go-ahead for books 4-7.  This is not a problem with the Septimus Heap books, and they have many of the same positive attributes: quirky and well-developed characters, inventive plots, a sense of playfulness with language, and a judicious amount of humor.  I remain pleased with the series after reading its 5th installment, Syren.  (The 6th book, Darke, is coming out soon).

Septimus Heap travels away from the Small Wet Country where he lives to transport back some friends.  In the process, he has adventures and meets new friends, and has to counter a dastardly plot to overthrow the Castle and Wizard's Tower.  Some of the old conventions of children's literature are called in: the few adults/authority figures are distant, clueless, too busy to notice, or all three.  Villains are scary and evil, but not too scary and evil, and they can be outdone by a clever child with the help of his friends.  Hints of romantic interest are there for those who wish to know, but the story proceeds with a primary focus on friends and family.

Septimus and his brothers Nicko and Simon feature in this story, as well as Princess Jenna, Snorri, Marcia Overstrand, Beetle, the dragon Spit Fyre, Stanley the messenger rat, Wolf Boy (AKA Boy 409) and Aunt Zelda.  Some of the fascinating new characters we meet are Syrah Syara, Miarr Catt, and Jim Knee the sullen jinnee.  As with all of Sage's books, characters separate and reconverge in unpredictable but believable ways, and no loose ends are left hanging.  Overall, very enjoyable, and there's room for the next two books to expand in other directions.