Camelama

Catch up!

Ok, let's go - about a month of stuff to talk about.

Crafty!

For a Frugality craft swap, I made a tote with ties as handles and a waterbottle holder out of ties, good ways to use up the ties the men in your life don't want any more!

 

I've been doing a lot of reading, though it does get difficult sometimes:

 

Lots of cat time:

 

I enjoyed the early Spring we had, before Mayvuary and Junovember struck:

 

More in the next post, this is getting photo-heavy....

Recent Readings

Here are a few books I've read recently that I recommend.

* The Gold Rush Widows of Little Falls, by Linda Peavey and Ursula Smith.  This non-fiction work tells the tale of a small Minnesota city (Little Falls) that lost a major portion of the male population to the lure of gold mining in the West. The men left their wives and families with no cash, no means of support, and for many, no thought of ever seeing them again. Letters to and from the families and men have survived to this day, and were used to recreate the time-line of events and conversations.  I found it a very good read, interesting and yet still informative, and it stuck to the truth more often than not. I dis-like non-fiction books that start making up conversations or waxing poetic about how a person felt (or even, in one horrific case, what philosophical questions a horse was asking itself!), but I only recall one extrapolated scenario in the book, and it felt allowable. If you like finding out why people moved where they did, and what drove some folks to pick up and leave all to chase a dream of gold, this is a good book for you! Also family histories, great details on how one moved across the country in those days, and plenty of examples of how NOT to run your life financially quite applicable to this day and age!

* Lady in Boomtown by Mrs Hugh Brown. A recounting of a young woman's life in the very early 1900s in a silver boomtown in Nevada. Great personal stories, descriptions of people and social outings, happenings and countryside. Not a lot of detail about the daily minutiae (other than the dust!), but a fascinating read nonetheless. Lots of good mining info written in easily understandable terms. The author has a lovely self-deprecating sense of humor, a charming lack of ego when it comes to recounting her missteps, and the ability to see good in those around her. A lovely read, one I looked forward to reading every evening before falling asleep. I could have wished for twice as long a book!

*   Open by Andre Agassi

My mother and I watched a lot of tennis in the 80s and 90s, following some hometown folks as they rose and fell in the rankings, and enjoying all the young talents emerging. Andre always had interesting, engaging matches - never boring! I had quite a picture built up mentally about what he was like, based solely on how he played tennis. This book changed all that completely. A very deep, intense, flayed-open to the world retelling of his childhood and his tennis career. Astounding what this man went through, that the public never saw, and that he came through it all and made it out not just alive, but open and caring about children. There is definite tennis statistics talk, tennis match details, but if the exact strokes and pattern of wins starts to make your eyes glaze over, you can skip them and not miss anything personal. I could not put this book down - this was one that led to a 2am bedtime as I just had to read One. More. Chapter.  

* This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection by Carol Burnett  

A very fast read, just a lovely light conversation with Carol. I grew up with her specials on TV, laughed myself silly at the curtain dress, and loved the Momma's Family sketches. And of course, I knew what I would ask her if I was ever an audience member (very unlikely, as I was a child of the Midwest!). This book brought that all back, and I enjoyed filling in the holes in my memory, and learning how it all came about.  I think I finished this in two bedtime reads (tho again, 2am came upon me without warning...)

* I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not by Rena Fruchter  

I've been on a Saturday Night Live kick lately, or rather ... early SNL.  These days SNL takes every joke, especially the bad ones, to excruciating lengths with one-trick characters. But I digress. :)  Chevy Chase opens up about his childhood, his struggles, etc. A very interesting read, another childhood I just can't imagine living through, and a wonderful man that came out of it all.  It's not a tell-all, it's more a musing on his own life and how it shaped where he ended up - and how it still to this day affects him.

Tomato Nation challenge - IT'S ON!

Lovely Day

Gorgeous day today - the excessive heat is gone, and we're back to perfect Seattle spring weather: sunny yet cloudy, good breeze, and everyone happy.

I went outside to read for a bit.  Took a blanket, a book ("Pigeon Post" by Arthur Ransome - a children's book that still pleases me long into adulthood, as do all of his books in the Swallows & Amazons series), and of course I took the cat.  She's been going crazy with the screen door lately so accompanying her oustide is the least I can do for her.

Oh yes - and we have Wildside Salmon snacks. I give her these whenever she comes running back to me when I call her.  These days I can call her name once and she comes from wherever she was, immediately, and even comes back inside the house. She really really REALLY likes these.

We lay in the shade of my gorgeous birch tree...

It shades the whole side yard and makes even the hottest day liveable, when stretched out beneath it. Peeking into the photo is my little apple tree - last year it had two apples.

*Someone* was extra cute this afternoon:

 And here she is getting into the picture when I was trying to photograph how the quilt is tied together:

This little faux-quilt was made by my mother about 30 years ago, for me to take to summer camp. We picked out a cheater material that already looked like a patchwork quilt:

Mom got yellow material that matched and we sewed two pieces of the top and two pieces of the bottom together to make the resulting blanket a bit wider, then sewed two long front and back pieces together. There's no batting inbetween the layers, I didn't need warmth from this - just coverage. Then in the middle of every large flower, Mom and I stitched a piece of red yarn through and tied in a knot on top:

I can remember sitting and tying these knots with Mom, debating how long to make each piece of yarn. These days they're just little yarn nubbins, they're so worn and washed and used.

I'm not sure how I'll patch this, I need a 6"x6" square and a 2"x2" square for two different rips. After that first summer, Mom patched one corner with the old 70's iron-on patch:

But that won't work for these larger portions:

The poor used worn spot, where you can see the backing...

Mom and I still joke about how we "made a quilt" all those years ago. We know it isn't really a quilt, it's just our silliness.

Thirty years later and I'm still using this blanket frequently. It went to summer camp many times when I was a camper, many times when I was a counselor. It went to the ranch in Wyoming with me, on numerous camping trips, to college dorm rooms and first apartments, cookouts on the ocean beaches, picnics on the shores of Puget Sound, and for many naps over the years it's covered myself or my friends. It deserves a really good patch so it can keep on blanketing for many years to come!

I need to start reading up on patching methods - this is 30 year old cotton material, soft and warn.

TOMATO NATION FALL CONTEST IS UNDERWAY!

Prize to be won!  Projects to fund!  Help a teacher help the world...

Plus!  ("Wait, there's more!")

If her supporters donate over $100,000 ... Sars will dance around in a tomato costume at THE WHITE HOUSE.

OH yeah.  This I wanna see.

Tomato Nation Fall Contest

Do it!  3 bucks! 5! 10! 100!  Whatever ya got.

Latest Read

"Seasons on Harris" by David Yeadon

A lovely work about a couple's time living on the Western Islands of Scotland.  A bit annoying when ever single comment about people who weren't natives was a negative one, especially considering that the writer himself is not a native, but I just started ignoring those and the intricate beauty of the prose more than made up for it.  Yeadon covers the history both human and geologic, and waxes poetic about the weather. I like cold wet winter weather myself, so was happy to read someone who could understand the beauty of a windswept wet rocky beach.

Wodehouse morning

It just doesn't get much better than this.

Woke up early (for this household, that is), and am now enjoying a sunny morning with the door open, a lovely breeze blowing through, and some spare free time.   I'm browsing Dan Garrison's "Who's Who in Wodehouse" to try to get ideas for my fancy dress outfit for the next banquet, and enjoying a cup of Irish Breakfast to get those corpuscles zinging. 

"The Places In Between"

"The Places In Between" By Rory Stewart.

Get this book.   Read it.   

Another Bas Bleu recommendation and spot on.   Mr Stewart walked across Afghanistan - Herat to Kabul - and this book is his story of his journey.  Fascinating, heartfelt, beautiful.   I couldn't put it down, and stayed up far too late a few nights because I wanted just one more chapter.   It was better than I expected - I had thought it might get preachy and political and while Mr Stewart does talk politics, it's not "we must do X!" or such.  He simply lays out what he saw and heard and leaves the rest to each of us to decipher as we see fit. 

"The Billionaire's Vinegar"

The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace

I picked this up on a whim, as I truly know next to nothing about wine.  I just know what I like to drink (Helllooooo, Montelpucianos and Syrahs!).  So I was a bit wary that this would be full of arcane terms and dry-as-dust proceedings.

Boy, was I *WRONG*!  From the first page, the author caught my attention and had me hooked.  It's a wonderful mix of wine (-making, history, culture, terms, fads, etc), history, people, legal proceedings, places, tastes, smells, and tactile sensations. 

I really couldn't put this down - I neglected my knitting, my writing, and I was almost late to work (temp job) because I started reading over breakfast and didn't notice the time!  So much for taking the bus.  :)  It occupied my thoughts when I wasn't reading it.  I couldn't stop talking about it to the people around me at work, man I must have been annoying!

The pacing of this book is marvelous, starting with a slow excitement of an auction of a bottle of wine we know nothing about, and then growing with more and more information, twists, turns, discoveries, frauds, breakdowns, tastings, revelations, lawsuits, and so many lives interacting.

I say: Get this book!

The Willoughbys

Picked this up due to a friend's recommendation, and I did enjoy it.  I think I'd have liked it even better if I wasn't in a bad mood to start - the book is full of people doing mean things.  It also has people doing nice things, which kept me going.  :)  Not that I need Pollyanna-level goodness in the books I read, it's just ... I probably could have chuckled at the mean things if I wasn't down in the dumps myself.  But that's just me.   The story was interesting, I liked how all the threads unraveled and were twined back in, and many of the characters were interesting.

I feel Jane got the shorted throughout the entire book, and even in the epilogue.  Wish she could have been given a wee bit more life and story. 

Loved the Barnaby twins.  Oh how I wanted to knit them a second sweater!

The Tim character got annoying VERY quickly, I was waiting for a safe to fall on him by the second chapter.  But then, I'm a younger sister of brothers, so perhaps parts of his character just hit a bit too close to home!

Why the glossary?  So that the author could show off some of her "wit"?  Boo.  Didn't need it, would rather have had those pages be given to actual story content. 

Still, good overall read, I don't begrudge the time spent on the book.  :)

"cupcakes!"

"cupcakes!" by Elinor Klivans

Goodness, do I expect too much of the publishing world?  This was the second cupcake book in a row that had limited number of pictures!  If you're telling me to do some specific unique tricky move with frosting or decorations, I want to see what YOU think the end result should be. 

The recipes were interesting, but far too repetitive.  Jazz it up a bit, give me a few more different kinds. I can take a basic structure and flavor it up myself, so go crazy with the different kinds of cupcakes, oh cookbook makers!

There were a few pictures, maybe one every 7 recipes, but far too few for me.  Back to the library it goes, and definitely not on my wishlist.

   Heh - checking amazon, I see whole gobs of people who agree with me re: pictures.  There was so much wasted page space in this book, they really could have had 20 more pictures easily, and 50 more with some real editing.

"The Countess and the Butler"

"The Countess and the Butler" by Elizabeth Brodnax

Yet another mistaken library selection, but this one felt much more comfortable and readable than the other romance about a countess.  It's a hardback edition, not the little paperback shown below, and it's quite un-romantic-novel-looking, so I was fooled enough to actually bring it home.  Heh.

In this book, the hero and heroine are more realistic.  The hero is not so handsome that servants faint as he walks past, and the heroine doesn't curtsy so perfectly that she sends the recipients of her genuflections into paroxysms of beatitudes.   Huzzah!   Perfectly reasonable nice people who fall in love.  The 'sidekicks' aren't too cliche'd, the "villain" is not too villainy nor do they have too much influence in the book, the characters learn and grow.  A nice readable romance that has a bit of intrigue (a bit, mind you - it's all rather kind of hand wave-y and not very menacing, which actually is kind of a good point - I hate "romances" that end up being all about gore, guns, menace, and multiple murders. Um, ew? not very romantic?) and a bit of made-up history.  She had to fit in a country where one doesn't exist - I like to think of all these fake countries getting together at some United Imaginary Nations and talking about how they can get their hands on some real acreage....

Hee.  Estavia does exist.  Well, in some other imaginary land, that is.  Hee.

Anyway, nice read.  It didn't send me to sleep, but that's ok, tonight's insomnia would have prevailed no matter what I was reading.   Even (shudder) Cisco networking tomes wouldn't have worked tonight.

Book Pron

When I was working full-time, I was rather careless with my spending when it came to book buying.

Now that I'm currently unemployed, my book spending has dropped to a painful ZERO dollars.

So when the Bas Bleu catalog arrived today, I was at first depressed.  Then I realized - huzzah!  It's a great library hold guide!

I spent a lovely hour going through the catalog and, via the web, putting holds on books I thought sounded interesting.

Thank you, Bas Bleu.  I swear that when I'm employed again, I'll buy a book from you to support you for mailing your catalogs to me for me to use as library guides.  :)

"A Countess Below Stairs"

"A Countess Below Stairs" by Eva Ibbotson

I got this book by mistake, actually.  I've been reading a lot of biographies of folks during WWII, and while looking for a certain book from a countess, who was in on a couple assassination attempts of Hitler, this title got selected also.  When it arrived from the library I realized it was a romance, and put it back on the "return" pile in the living room.

Well, the other night, 3am and I couldn't sleep, I didn't want to read anything about war and death, so that left out all the other library books.  This one was on top of the pile, so I gave it a try.

It was OK.  Rather iffy premise, and you could see the end result coming from about 20 chapters away, plus the "villains" are rather melodramatic vaudeville villains... why did they have to be *so* bad?  It just makes it all seem hokey.  Just make them "bad enough".  You don't have to overdo it and turn one woman into Cruella De Ville Meets Lucretia just to get rid of her.   And the ending was a bit too hackneyed.   I was rolling my eyes so hard I'm surprised they didn't roll out.

It did finally send me to sleep, though, so I guess it did one thing well!

 

Sunlight on the Lawn

"Sunlight on the Lawn" by Beverley Nichols.  One of the few Beverley Nichols books I hadn't yet read.  The third in the Merry Hall series.  A few sad notes, many amusing anecdotes, gardening tall tales, gardening methods, cats, Gaskin, village life, household troubles, shrinking, etc.

In other words, another splendid read from Mr Nichols.   

The Guynd

"The Guynd: A Scottish Journal" by Belinda Rathbone

Picked this up because Bas Bleu raved about it.  I'm a bit disappointed ... I would dearly have loved more actual concrete examples of changes made to the house, descriptions of the house itself, descriptions of things done in the past to the house, dealing with living in / changing a listed house and property, and more information about living in the house and the life of the village and area around it.   It seemed like one long skim of 10 years of life.   Which is fine, in itself, but from other people's descriptions I expected more oomph. 

I did enjoy reading the few bits about the changes she did make in the house, and enjoyed the interactions with neighbors and friends. 

Summer at Tiffany

"Summer at Tiffany" by Marjorie Hart

A lovely little book about one incredible summer spent in New York City.  Marjorie Hart came from Iowa with her best friend to work in New York City for the summer of 1945 and experience life.  And boy, did she ever!  From dating midshipmen, losing loose pearls in Tiffany, to being in Times Square for two very important moments in history. 

The writing is fun, with a few serious moments and the usual teenager issues.  I would love to read more of her writing, that's how much I enjoyed it. 

She reminded me very much of my own mother, who is going to get a phone call tonight telling her to go get this book for herself!

"Garlic and Sapphires"

"Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic In Disguise" by Ruth Reichl, about her life as the NYT restaurant critic.

We're talking serious disguises here.  Life-altering moments.  It's a *fascinating* read. She includes some of her actual reviews in the book which I enjoyed - you can see how her experiences translated into the writing.  She also includes recipes, which all actually sounded interesting to me.  Her stories of the people involved in restaurants really kept me going - I wanted to know who she was going to meet next, who she would BE next.  She doesn't go into the newspaper business too much, which turned out to be fine with me.  I realized, after the first restaurant anecdote, that I didn't care about the newspaper side of the business.  I wanted more of the personal stuff.  And she filled the rest of the book with it.

Her descriptions of dishes, ingredients, cooking methods, etc left me salivating.  It's strange, I love reading about, say, the seared crust of a pate' - but I'd never eat it.  And I love reading about a salad of
watermelon, avacado and calimari - how the ingredients slipped along each other, how the different crunch and crispness played off the next, how the tastes mingled and sparkled.  But I'd never eat it myself.  I don't want to eat it but I reveled in her description of the civet de lievre.

I think I'm a gourmet mind trapped in meat-n-taters tastebuds.  :)

"Born Standing Up"

"Born Standing Up" by Steve Martin.

I've always loved Steve Martin's humor, and also enjoyed his later works (sampled with trepidation - I was going to be sooo disappointed if his not-arrow-head-work was bad!).  So I eagerly picked up "Born Standing up", his book about his stand-up comic work.   

And again, I was not disappointed.  I wasn't blown away, mind you, but I wasn't disappointed.  It was an astonishingly fast read.  Very interesting - insights into why he did what he did, why he quit, how his act changed, grew, matured and ended. 

I think what makes it not blow-away stuff is that it's all the facts, and personal insights, but not a lot of external information.  I would have loved to have read more about his hosting SNL.  Or how he came up with the King Tut act.  More fleshing of the things that really hit home with me in his stand-up.

Perhaps it is unfair, though, as I read his book right after the Belushi book, which was crammed full of incredible wonderful anecdotes, stories, passions - a surge tide of emotions.  And then Steve's book is such a quiet, gentle retelling of his own life and a decision he came to over years of work - the two should not be compared, really.  Very different kinds of books looking to do very different things, about two very different people.

"Belushi"

"Belushi" by Judith Belushi Pisano and Tanner Colby

Fascinating read.  I was just a bit too young and too naive (and not a late-night TV watcher) to have really appreciated him exactly when he was at his peak, I kind of saw it all afterwards.  I still loved his work, even the somewhat reviled "Continental Divide", though I would have paired him with a different female actor. I don't think the chemistry was there, really, I never believed *her* while most people who dislike the movie didn't believe *him*.

My favorite quote from the book is this memory from Janis Hirsch:

"John could eat a chef's salad with his hands, but he also had a sweetness to him that most people can't imagine.   He was late once for a recording session, and people were getting really irritated.  "Where the hell is John?!"  So Judy called the house.  What had happened was that their cat, Chubbs, had fallen asleep in his lap, and she looked so cute that he couldn't bring himself to get up and leave.  And because he was John, that was the only excuse he needed."

Latest Literary Find

A couple of local works I'm quite happy to own, by Harry W. Higman and Earl J. Larrison:

"Pilchuck: the Life of a Mountain"

"Union Bay: The Life of a City Marsh"

Both are areas I go birding in frequently, so I'm pleased to have these.

Latest literary find: Sherlock Holmes vs Wodehouse Cricket

Today's literary find is a program printed up for the cricket match between The Sherlock Holmes Society and the PG Wodehouse Society in 2001.

Inside, a sticker indicates this is from the library of Richard Streeton .  How apt!  I see articles in here from Wodehouse Society friends, and much to read re: Sherlock Holmes & Doyle.

Comfort Reading

Needed some comfort reading to help me fall asleep last night, so I turned to some old favorites: the Swallows & Amazons series.

The title made me, at first glance, roll my eyes and think sci-fi, but no - they're wonderful charming lovely books about children in the UK in the 30s.  These kids spend their days sailing, rowing, camping, gold mining, skating, etc - and imagining.  Lots of imagination!  And lots of food stuff.  Always about packing lunches. 

When I read these, all outside troubles disappear.  Stress is gone, unemployment anxiety is gone, everything is a cozy rosy hue.

I highly recommend the entire series by Arthur Ransome.

Swallows & Amazons