Here is the Plan

As the people who have read my blog know, I try to challenge myself in the New Year to learn something new related to knitting. I have decided to do something a little different next year; I am going to knit 52 hats. I intend to blog about each one. So we will see how this goes…

Here are the rules I have set for myself…

Even though there are 52 weeks in the year I am not going force myself to knit one a week. I figure there will be hats I do in less than a week and some I do in more than a week. So long as I get to 52 in the end, I am golden.

Baby (preemie) hats count as ½ a hat. They are so small…

There will be hats for charity. I encourage everyone else to make a hat for charity, too. It feels good and it is easy to do.

I have also signed up for the Master’s program through TKGA. Basically, I am going to knit nothing by hats and swatches next year! If someone wants something else, they will have to make it themselves.

All the Pretty Horses

I finished this book in little over a week, which I think is pretty good considering it was a hard book to get into. Overall, I liked it, but the writing is very sparse. No exposition, no quotation marks, which makes it a difficult book to follow. I understand why he writes the story this way; in order to show these are a certain type of man living in a hard land. I must say for a book banned for vulgarity and sex, this was one of the least gratuitous books I have ever read. The worst swear word in the book is damn. It was violent, but not overly so, although I am not the best judge of what is too violent…

Banned Book Week 2013

I have decided to read Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses” for my banned book. It has been removed from a school district in KS for "vulgar language, sexual explicitness, or violent imagery that is gratuitously employed."   I will let you know how it goes.

I also just re-read Stephen King’s “Carrie”. It is on the list of most challenged books, presumable because there is sex and menstruation and violence. I read it in two days. It is a quick read because I have read it before and it is only 245 pages. I have not read it in a long time, maybe 15 – 20 years and it struck me how young Mr. King was when he wrote this book. It is well written, so I am not being disparaging, but it is obvious that he was not far from the high school kids he was writing about. It is probably why it is so good; you can feel that these are real kids, doing what kids do. Of course, Carrie is also every kid who was bullied and beaten ultimate fantasy, that you could stop the people hurting you and hurt them back. It is not healthy, but it is understandable. How much can a person take after all?

I encourage everyone to find a banned book to read and then talk about it with someone: blog, tweet, facebook, or even speak to someone in person, do whatever you use to spread your thoughts around.

Books, Books, Books

I have a great love of books (I may have mentioned this) and we (The Hub & I) have tons of books. Currently I am reading Phillip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy. We own them all and The Hub has read them. However, I finished book 2 and I could not find book 3. It was not with the others. So I figured I would check it out of the library. However, we went to the thrift store on Monday and thought “let’s see if they have a copy”. I found 3 copies of The Golden Compass (book 1) and 2 copies of The Subtle Knife (book 2), but no Amber Spyglass. I find this interesting. Is it because people finished the 2nd book and could not go on with the series? Which I think is weird because after you have gone thorough 2 why would you stop? I mean these are not tomes which are thousands of pages long, they are young adult novels.        I can see stopping after the 1st one or starting the 1st one and not liking it, but really you get through 2… Anyway, I got it from the library.

Banned Book week is coming up, it is September 22-28th. Here is a website with more details. Everyone should have the freedom to read. We should not live in a society which is afraid of ideas. If your beliefs are so weak that you can’t defend them against the written word, maybe you need to re-evaluate them.

 

So I have to find some banned books to read.  I have been trying to decide what to read. There are some classics like “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing”, “A Farewell to Arms” and Huck Finn that I have never read, but then there are some modern ones like “Persepolis” which look good. Of course, I actually have some books lying around which I could read that I already own and have not read. I think I have “All the Pretty Horses” in the house. Or I could re-read “Slaughterhouse-Five” because it is the 50^th anniversary of its publication.

I will let you know what I decide to do.

Cicadas and Such

Cicadas mate every 17 years and this is the year. They are very noisy right now and they bother me when I am trying to sleep. Last night I was thinking about what I was doing 17 years ago.

It would have been 1996.

I had been married for 6 years. I believe my sister & her now husband were dating because I remember going out on a double date w/ them and my future BIL talking about the cicadas.  Of course, it could have been the year they got married…

My little sister was still alive. By this time of the year, I think she was in the process of moving to AZ to be near mom. Or she might have already moved there. I have to say, that I am not always good at remembering when stuff happened. I go off of how old people were when an event happened. The Girl would have been 4 and her brother 1 and that was when my sister took them to AZ. Of course, it could have been later in the year… I just don’t know. If I kept a proper journal, I would know these things.

On the Price is Right, they have a game called Then & Now where you have to choose products and decide if the price is from now or some date in the past (like 1986). Sometimes I watch it and think did they have that back in 1986? My life is just like that, I just ask myself “did that exist in 1996?”

I realize I have not blogged in over 2 years. I have no good reason for it, just less time to write them during work. The Girl has moved out… it was not easy at the time, but it is done. And I have a room of my own. I am going to turn it into a craft room. I have learned how to sew. I have made 2 things and they are not too bad. This jumper is one of them. It contains actual straight seams!

 

Next year I am going to challenge myself with knitting 52 hats, one a week. I will blog about it. I promise!