Spincerely yours,

This week was mostly dedicated to the act of taking my children swimming and just trying to make it through to the end of the heat wave. We had some accomplishments though. IHA finally fixed my (whoops, I mean, our) garage doors. The Little Agents and I started our Hoops and Yoyo album and we completed 10 pages and 2 partial pages. I finished a knitting project and a book…
Knitting:
I finished my Colorwork Sling Bag! Yep, I finished weaving in all the bajillion ends, made the braided cord, and ran it through the wash to felt it.

Before felting:

After felting:

Project details posted in Finished Objects page on the sidebar.

Reading (warning, may be a spoiler if you plan on reading either of these books):

I finished reading The Virgin Blue today. I was reading before bed last night and it hit me like the weight of water, or rather, The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve. A couple of years ago I went through an Anita Shreve binge. (Can you tell that I tend to do that?) While most of her books had some heavy sadness, or strange twists, I did not expect what happened in The Weight of Water. I can deal with the sadness or death of adults, but when it involves children, I don’t want to read about it. I never finished that book. I just stopped reading when the child died. It took me a while to get over that and I didn’t read any more Anita Shreve books without “getting clearance” first. I guess it was a bit different with The Virgin Blue, there were hints along the way that something terrible was going to happen. I could tell that Ettiene was planning something. I just thought (hoped) that Isabelle would be able to save her daughter before it was too late and all would be fine. So as I was reading last night, I found that I was wrong and Marie was going to die. I threw down the book and decided that there was no way I would read anymore, at all, I was done, how could she (Tracy) do this to me?
Today I felt different. It was not the same as The Weight of Water. I thought – I really have to know what happens with Ella. Does she find out what the blue dream means? Does she stay with her husband or does she end up with Jean-Paul? So I picked up the book and finished it. It was worth it. I think the difference for me was that in The Weight of Water, Billie’s death was senseless (and I’ve heard that it was not incorporated into the movie version even). I think she could have made her point in a different way, but in The Virgin Blue, Marie’s death (and her mother’s grief) were the whole substance of the plot. Without it the story would be different, there would be no dream, and Ella would not change and her life would go on as it always had. I’m glad that I went back and finished reading it. Of course, I still don’t love it as I did The Girl with the Pearl Earring or The Lady and the Unicorn, but it was worth reading. Now I’m going to have to wait for her next book – according to her website it is due out in March 2007.
Coming next:
I have some big-time plans for this weekend. The first thing is to catch up with the housework! Whoohoo! Hopefully, IHA and Little Agents will all be on-board. I also need to mow the lawn and weed my garden. I need to apply another bag of Milky Spore to my lawn. I am going to fight those grubs to the death!

Craftwise though – I have a lot on my plate:
I have some black alpaca fiber that I need to card to finish spinning. I bought it in Maine last summer to make IHA a pair of socks.

I have some sock yarn waiting for me to practice my tubular cast-on and make a new pair of socks.

I have a baby afghan project for work using Unser Renner.

While reading Fricknits this morning, I remembered all the squares our Girl Scout troop knit this year that still need to be seamed into an afghan.

I want to organize my dyeing supplies and start dyeing up some spinning fibers.

I still have to blog about Sock Wars!

Most importantly, I have to work on the sweater that I am designing before I forget everything that I learned at my classes at TKGA!

I better get some sleep tonight!

Have a great weekend!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 4th, 2006 at 8:16 pm and is filed under children, felting, knitting, reading.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.