There’s less than a month until Christmas, which means all the current projects are gifts I can’t show you. I can, however, show you my latest finished project, my Christmas mitts!
I cast these on three years ago to be a pair of socks when I realized that the other stripy Christmas yarn I had, which has white stripes as well as red and green, would not hide the grime of holding onto Metro escalators nearly as well as this pair. So I switched things up and these became a pair of improvised fingerless mitts, and the other yarn became socks.
Last Christmas I bound off the first one with a sewn picot bind-off similar to the cast on I’d used, but I wasn’t happy with it. This year, I ripped that back and experimented with a different picot bind-off. Then I ripped it back again to get a unified color bind-off. And once more to add in some seed stitch in that final stripe to try to control the rolling. (It wasn’t successful.) I will give it the season to see if I can live with it, and if I can’t, I’ll try to come up with a new solution next year. I also bound off the thumb at least three times, trying to find a non-ridiculous solution to that with a picot, but eventually conceded it was beyond my ken and just did a garter bind-off.
I also had to duplicate stitch over the thumb join on the second mitt when I rejoined the yarn in red, rather than the green of the first one and didn’t notice until after I’d sewn in all the ends. I can see I’ve done it, but I don’t think the casual observer would notice.
The yarn is Beyond Basic Knits Stripey Superwash Sock in an undisclosed colorway. She seems to have shuttered her shop since I bought this yarn at the Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival back in 2009. I probably only used half the skein, so there could be more Christmassy knits in my future, particularly since there was yarn leftover from the socks, too.
There was not a ton of time for reading last week, so I didn’t finish either book I was working on, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi and The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill. I did start three new books this week, though, to add to the collection: Jay Asher’s new Christmas YA novel, What Light, about a girl growing up on a Christmas tree farm; Dear Data, a nonfiction art book of weekly postcards exchanged between two visual data compilers, Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec; and Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas by Stephanie Barron. I’m listening to that last one, part of a historical fiction mystery series starring author Jane Austen as the sleuth. I started that series years ago, but got sidetracked from it. I recommended it as a seasonal read to someone from my Twitter book club last year and she enjoyed it, so I decided to give it a go myself out of sequence this Christmas.
For those who don’t know, Rudi is my partner of 22 years. When I shared with him I was second-guessing my decision not to run the Advent Tour this year, he nonchalantly said I had until December 1st to make a final call. Clearly he knows me well. Then, not only did he volunteer to write two posts, but he also pitched in when I got stuck in Photoshop editing my own poorly crafted Christmas ornament photo for the badge. So, thanks, Rudi, both for today’s post and for all you’ve contributed behind the scenes!
Check back here tomorrow for the next stop on the Virtual Advent Tour. And if you’re interested in taking part in the tour, badges, details, and sign-up info can be found here. We’d love to have you participate.
I’ve got a lot of books to tell you about before the end of the year. Here are three more I read back in June:
The Entirely True Story of the Unbelievable FIB, by Adam Shaughnessy
This book, written by a fellow English-major classmate of mine from college, is the second book in June in which Baba Yaga makes an appearance. Prudence aspires to solve mysteries just like her police detective father, who was recently killed while on duty, but her sleuthing tends to get her into trouble. But then she and ABE, the new puzzle-solving boy in town, team up to answer the question, “What is the Unbelievable FIB?” written on a note slipped under Prudence’s bedroom door one night while she slept, a pretty big mystery indeed.
In the course of the book, they’ll meet a talking squirrel, several Norse gods, and Mr. Fox, who spent some time living with Baba Yaga. But, in addition to figuring out about the note, they’ll also need to solve why their town seems to be suddenly shrouded in perpetual bad weather or the consequences could be dire. Good for the kid who’s read every Rick Riordan, but still wants more gods come to earth hijinks.
Pages: 272. Personal copy.
Summerlost, by Ally Condie
Pages: 272. Library copy.
Cedar and Miles and their mom are spending a couple months in the small town outside Salt Lake City where Mrs. Lee grew up as a way for them to get through the first summer vacation since Mr. Lee and their youngest brother Ben were killed in a car crash. Twelve-year-old Cedar is understandably resentful of being yanked away from her friends, but is intrigued when she sees a boy her age riding down the street dressed in a costume. It turns out Leo works for the local summer stock theater, Summerlost, and Cedar gets a job there, too, selling programs.
Soon, though, Leo and Summer are leading illicit tours about the life of the mysterious actress who died in Iron Creek decades ago, while performing at Summerlost. Her ghost may haunt the theater. And now there seems to be a ghost haunting Cedar, as well, leaving her small trinkets of the sort that her youngest brother used to be attracted to.
This story had an old-fashioned feeling to it, despite its modern issues. Probably a good fit for those who like other kid lit books set during summer, such as The Penderwicks or The Great Good Summer or Gone-Away Lake.
Love & Gelato, by Jenna Evans Welch
Apparently I was on a roll for reading books featuring dead parents, because there’s one in Love & Gelato, too. In this case, Lina is 16 and her beloved artist mom has recently died after a battle with cancer. Her dying wish was that Lina be sent to live in a Tuscan cemetery with Howard, a man her mother has never before mentioned, but with whom, her grandmother informs her, her mother lived with just before returning home to have Lina. When her mother’s journal of her year in Tuscany arrives at the cemetery (care of the assistant curator of the museum, whom her mother also knew), Lina figures this is her mother’s way of explaining things to her herself. As she reads along, she sets out to see the things her mother described, from the gelaterias to the dance halls to the museums, all with the company of her new friend, Ren, whom she meets while out running. The two of them will work to unravel the mystery of Lina’s and her mother’s past and to help Lina find peace in her new circumstances.
Recommended for fans of 13 Little Blue Envelopes and Stephanie Perkins’ and Sarah Dessen’s books.
Pages: 390. Library copy.
One more installment to get us through the June reads. Hopefully coming soon…
Category: books. There is/are Comments Off on into the stacks: june 2016, part 2.
Thank you, Kat, for a great post and for your willingness to take part!
Check back here tomorrow for the next stop on the Virtual Advent Tour. And if you’re interested in taking part in the tour, badges, details, and sign-up info can be found here. We’d love to have you participate.
My 20th annual tree-trimming party is today, which meant we spent Saturday buying groceries, cleaning, and, most importantly, buying a Christmas tree.
My family and Rudi’s both share the tradition of having live trees. Rudi’s family, though, living in a city as they did, bought their Christmas tree from a lot.
I grew up in a large town that was, to the east, surrounded by farming communities. So when Christmas rolled around, my folks would head to the farm to cut down a tree. Please note that I don’t say that I went to the farm; I so loathed the trekking up and down the hillsides hunting for the perfect tree that by the time I was six or so, my parents had found it a far less painful experience for everyone if they dropped me at my grandparents’ house for the duration of the trip.
However, when it came time for me to have a tree in my own apartment, there was never any doubt in my mind that I’d head off to the farm to cut one down. And, we did, right to that same tree farm I’d whined about visiting 15 years earlier.
When we moved to D.C., it was more challenging. People get really pissed when you cut trees down in their yards in the city, and it’s a crime to cut them out of the parkland nearby. So the closest living trees are at least a 45-minute drive, often further. The first couple years we compromised by buying a tree at the farmers market. But after that I was back to wanting to get the tree ourselves and we set aside the first Saturday in December as our day to do so.
I do tend to prefer to pick out my tree quickly. One year the farmer told me I hadn’t even gotten a walk out of it (to be fair, we did cut down literally the first tree we came too). But some years, a speedy choice is more challenging, and this year was one of those.
We’re onto our third tree farm of the region, and we’ll probably have to move on from this one next year. (The first one gave up farming trees, and the second one had a few in-between years where they didn’t have trees the size we needed.) Clagett Farm is located in Maryland and is owned by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, who operates it as a nonprofit.
The most important thing when picking out any Christmas tree, be it artificial, still growing, or at a tree lot, is the dimension of the space it’s going into. You don’t want a tree that’s going to crowd up against your ceiling, and you don’t want one that’s going to encroach too much on the space around it. So know roughly how tall your ceiling is and how wide your desired location is.
Too short…
Too tall…
A lot of the trees at Clagett are still growing, so they’re shorter than I would like. (I’m somewhat flexible, but have a strong preference against being able to look down at the top of my tree.)
The second-most important thing to consider is how heavy your ornaments are. If you’re decorating with lights, popcorn strings, and yarn ornaments, it doesn’t matter what kind of tree you come home with. You’ll be fine. If, however, you’ve got lots of heavier ornaments, you’ll want to be pickier. Around here, almost everyone grows some combination of four trees: Norway and blue spruces and white and Scotch pines. Occasionally you’ll see firs, but less frequently than they grew in New England. White pines (on the left) have long needles and very supple branches. Scotch pines (on the right) have pointier needles and less flimsy branches, but they’re still going to bend under heavier ornaments, like we have. Spruces are very prickly, particularly the blue variety.
This year, the Eastern seaboard had the added challenge of drought. At the tree farm my parents went to this year, the farmer said he’d lost thousands of dollars of trees. The mid-Atlantic region fared slightly better, but we still saw a lot of trees that looked like these.
Ultimately, though, we did find a tree — a blue spruce. It’s got a definite backside, and there’s a bare patch that we’re going to have to work to cover by dangling ornaments through it. And it’s shorter than we would have liked. But it’s got strong branches and fits well within the parameters of the space.
(This is a recreation. We realized as we were walking back to the barn that we should have taken a shot of one of us sawing down the tree. I started the process, but ran into trouble with the dull bow saw, so Rudi finished it off for me.)
After last year, when our tree had severe leaning issues (I tie it up just to make sure it won’t fall if the cats get too curious or gravity gets too strong), we made sure the base was flat, going so far as to get one of the farm hands to level it off for us with his chain saw. And because Dad and I had just measured their stand, I knew we’d need 8.5 inches of branch-free space at the bottom, so we lopped off those there, too. Then we fastened it to the roof and drove back home.
Currently our tree is sitting in the hallway, relaxing in a bucket of water, waiting to make its debut later today. We’re all very excited.
Check back here tomorrow for the next stop for the Virtual Advent Tour. And if you’re interested in taking part in the tour, badges, details, and sign-up info can be found here. We’d love to have you participate.
We’re suckers for Christmas short films in the Burrow, so I thought I’d share a few for today’s post.
Much like the commercials Hallmark used to air during their Hall of Fame movies (do they air them still now that they have a whole channel to themselves?) or some of the Super Bowl ads, companies in the U.K. create long-form, story-based commercials they air during the holidays. Here’s the one for H&M this year, filmed by Wes Anderson and starring Adrien Brody:
While many of us know H&M by name, at least, in the U.S. John Lewis is a distinguished civil rights leader, Congressman, and award-winning author, rather than a department store. Looking at their website, I’m guessing they’re maybe somewhat similar to Target. But whatever they are, they’ve got a cute commercial:
A couple voices you might recognize:
Stephen Fry, from the Alzheimer’s Foundation UK:
James Cordon, from Sainsbury’s (a grocery store):
And maybe my favorite, from Marks & Spencer (another Target-like store):
You can see some more of this year’s UK Christmas adverts here, including the one that the article’s writer thinks is the best.
Stop back here tomorrow for a new post for the Virtual Advent Tour. And if you’re interested in taking part in the tour, badges, details, and sign-up info can be found here. We’d love to have you participate.
A few other Advent-y things going on around the internet:
Book Riot has a holiday short story, song, poem, or essay every day for Advent.
Riveted, an online community of YA literature fans, is running the 12 Days of Reading. For the first 12 days of December, they’ll be sharing the complete text of a book a day. They’ll all be online and free to read (with site registration) through the end of the month.
12 Days of Christmas Book Giveaways from the Roanoke Times Books section (Today’s is Matt Haig’s A Boy Called Christmas, which I have on my shelf to read this season.)
