A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb. Remembered it last night while reading Berenstain Bears to my kids. Weird how the brain works. Anyway, this book was memorable because it was from adult viewpoints in teen bodies. Plus the writing was just really compelling. I only read books that cause me to care about the characters and their outcomes. Very much so in this case. I can relate to the characters feelings of discovery, regret, confusion, and longing.

And in crochet news...the sunny side up egg from anapaulaoli.etsy.com. The designer uses safety eyes, which i think are cuter but don't have. So this one is just french knots.

Yarn: Caron Simply Soft yellow and white, bits of black
Hook: E
Time: 1 hour?

Most amigurami patterns using worsted weight yarn call for G hook but I use E or F, depending, so I don't have to hook tightly for a nice effect.

I just finished this stupendous book about a girl ghost who haunts a high school english teacher and meets a boy in his class who can see her. And i cant remember what it was called. This book made me cry rivers and i cant remember who wrote it or what title was. I know it was a new book, or first book for this woman author...just returned it and am desperately trying to look it up again so can post intelligently about it instead of going on like a ninny about how i canna remember it...

gotta put the kids to bed. they are having too much for right now...

Merry After Christmas, all.

I should be bathing. Myself. The kids. Or shopping for groceries for tomorrow's dinner. Or some other useful gettng ready for Christmas thing. Instead, I'm doing stuff like this quiz about my accent (see sidebar) and cleaning up my bookmarks folder on mozilla. While the kids fight and not get ready for bed. Ah me. Well. See, it's all the fault of this excellent book I didn't read but readily discussed at my Moms Club book group today:

Finding out that we just have to let our kids have play space and play time and let them try and let them fail and and...just be there for them to become happy, well-adjusted individuals. That and, get a pet, help them feel part of some kind of community or group, and a few other really key things thay my friend K had the total skinny on. Highly recommended book. Now I HAVE to read it. She and I both wanted to wave it in our mother's faces and say "see! see how you warped us!!" I guess that's a little disturbing. But honest!

But there are finished object pictures to share:
beaded choker






dinosaur washcloth & soap


dino wash cloth and choker (not a set)


wristlet






I wrapped all our pesents in this brown craft paper with a simple, boldly colored purple ribbon and it was SO EASY! Usually I moan and express great anguish over bulk present wrapping. I get stressed, my back hurts, and the gifts come out looking like my kids wrapped them anyway. With the craft paper, I was so arted-out over the lovinly hand-crafted things inside, that I just wanted something simple, fast, easy, and preferably low-cost (read FREE) to gift them in. The plain paper was perfect. The kids helped decorate it before and after wrapping, SOMETIMES, but there was a lot of little things to wrap and after awhile, my eager artists wandered away. So I happily completed almost all the gift-wrapping for friends' kids in a few evenings, while listening to harry potter on CD, and a few knitting-related or harry potter related podcasts. I LOVE podcasts. They are the coolest things ever for this book-on-tape girl.

I WILL NEVER GO BACK TO REGULAR WRAPPING PAPER AGAIN.

Parent book.
Picked this up from my kid's scholastic book fair. Title reminded me of Confessions of a Slacker Mom which I thoroughly enjoyed. After reading, plan to pass around among my mom friends, make that $10 cover price s-t-r-e-t-c-h.

Another dino wash cloth pau. Got pattern here: Knitted Kitty on yahoo groups. I think I can pump one out while watching a movie. The crocheted stuff I have to do while listening to podcasts so I can look at the stitches. I can even watch a foreign film and read the subtitles while knitting one of these dish cloths!

Hubby and I checked out Kill Zone most recently. Better than expected. I liked checking out Donnie Yen's muscles. Hey, not often a girl gets to check out some Chinese hunky guy's bod in American cinema. One of my favorite Chinese films is Infernal Affairs, upon which The Departed is based. Yeah, I got a thing for Andy Lau (House of Flying Daggers).