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A Three Book Day (or a five book day, depending on how you look at it)

I finished reading three different books yesterday...

Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson -- Best book I've read by him to date.  Even better than Axis, in my opinion.  You have to love sci-fi with aliens and thinking computers. 

Spirited Away, Vol. 1 by Hayao Miyazaki -- I read this graphic novel in the afternoon becasue Maddie finished it and loved it.  If you have kids who love Japanese comic book stuff (Manga) and are worried about content, this is a great book.  (Some of the Manga stuff can be age inapproproate, so I find it's not always easy to find stuff my 9 year old can read.)  Lovely graphics -- exciting story.

Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman -- These little hardbound books that some authors have been putting out lately just kill me.  Nice illustrations, pretty book cover, great little novella -- you get the idea.  (Philip Pullman has done a couple of these, which I also own and love.)  This is a very short novel based on Norse mythology (Thor, Odin & Loki all appear) in which a crippled boy has an adventure.  Gaiman's voice shines through, so if you are a fan, this is a must read.

In addition to these three, Maddie and I are reading The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) by Rick Riordan, which fits nicely with our current curriculum.  She's been reading a lot of Greek mythology and history and just finished The Iliad and the Odyssey -- an illustrated version by Marcia Williams.

And since I can never go to sleep bookless, I started Kent Haruf's Where You Once Belonged.

I recenlty finished several other books, which I haven't posted on the blog yet, so when I get my act together, I'll get this updated.  (If I don't, I'll completely forget what I've read before the year is out.  The blog has become part book log for me.) 

What are you all reading?

My Baby is 9!

How on earth did that happen?  It seems like yesterday she was a baby, and now she's so grown up.  Crazy.

 

This year she is very into the Ugly Doll thing -- here she is hugging Plunko. I have to admit, that they are adorable and I am helpless around them.  As a result, she also has Ox, Turny Burny and a little Babo's Bird. Resistance is futile.   The books are a lot of fun too. 

Vacation at Home

No work for Pete this week, so were are doing a little at home vacation.  Yesterday it was up to Andersonville (in Chicago) to enjoy some Swedish pancakes at Svea (so good and super cheap!) and to pick up some Swedish carbs at the Swedish Bakery.  Then we drove down to the old neighborhood (Lincoln Park) for a bit of shopping and checking on our former homes (one floor in our old greystone is for sale!)  A nice day was had by all.

Holes by Louis Sachar

Maddie has been reading Holes by Louis Sachar to me in school and we have been loving it so much, that many days we end up eating lunch quite late because she asks to read "just one more" chapter 3 or 4 times. Then last night, she and I snuggled into bed and read for quite a while because we didn't want to wait until Monday to read more.

I guess what I'm saying is -- if you have an kid around 8 or 9 (maybe up to 11 -- Amazon says 9-12 yrs), get this book! I think you'll both enjoy reading it together.

End of Season

Well, it's that time of the year.  Tonight we are under a frost advisory, so I had to pull what I thought looked good from the garden -- the rest of the broccoli, a bunch of little jalapenos and some tomatoes that I think may ripen inside. 

I'll have to do a post on the successes and failures of the garden soon, while it is fresh in my mind.  I think things went better than expected for our first year of serious veggie/fruit gardening and I'm already looking forward to the 2010 seed catalogs arriving in my mail box.

Exciting Craft (& Cook) Books

Liberated Quiltmaking II by Gwen Marston. I have long had my eye out for a used copy of Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking, but at the crazy expensive prices they were going for it was not to be. So glad that a new version is coming out and at a reasonable price -- yeah!

Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day is the follow up to the wildly popular Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and will feature lots of new recipes which use whole grains, fruit veggies and even gluten free recipes. Sounds interesting.

Okay, I'll admit that I'm not a flowery, romantic type, so Cath Kidston may not exactly fit my style, but there is something about her things that I am attracted too nonetheless. So Make! is definitely on my list of books to check out.

And I have three new books, generously sent to me by publishers, that I need to share with you soon. Lily Chin's Knitting Tips & Trick, Haiku Knits and This Is Not a Book. All great books -- more on that soon!

Apple Cake Redux

This is not the apple cake I made this weekend -- it is the apple cake I made almost exactly one year ago.  This past weekend I used the same recipe -- from Smitten Kitchen -- which is very awesome, but makes a huge cake.  Much too big for the three of us.  However, as I browsed through the comments, I saw that someone had halved the recipe and made it in a loaf pan.  I tried it myself and it worked beautifully, plus the baking time was much reduced.  I think I only baked it for about 1 hour.  This year I used Liberty apples, and they worked wonderfully. 

Something New, Orange and Bumpy

I unearthed some funky, orange yarn from Habu while tidying up the new den.  This is A-48, Color 2 and is 100% silk.  The texture is wild and there is really no reason to use any kind of stitch pattern here, so instead I cast on 30 stitches and started knitting on the bias.  (Rows 1-3:  Knit, Row 4:  Kfb, knit to last 2 stitches, K2tog)

There are places where the yarn is almost as fine as a thread, and others were it is quite thick, so I actually find myself counting on most rows to make sure I haven't lost any stitches, thus it isn't the mindless, knit by feel, project that is best suited to TV watching, but I'm enjoying it nonetheless. 

And hey, it's orange!  It'll match my car, and that's pretty cool.

It feels like Christmas

While at IKEA last weekend, I picked up this cute set of Drommar cookie cutters and yesterday Maddie and I made a batch of sugar cookies using them.  I usually only make cut outs with her right before Christmas, so the holiday feeling is strong as I sit here and drink my coffee, nibbling on a "Christmas" cookie.

And since I'm sure many of you have Martha Stewart's Cookies, I wanted to let you know that the cut out sugar cookie recipe is *super* easy to halve.  (A plus for our little family of 3!)  If you don't have the book, I highly recommend it.  We have made *many* of the recipes in this book with great success.