Fiber Fool

I didn’t quite have Still Waters by Tami Hoag wrapped up before my trip to MN, but I finished it just as we touched down in Minneapolis. I read during the times when you couldn’t have tray tables down because my knitting project requires a chart. So it worked out well.

Still Waters is the first mystery novel by Tami Hoag. It is set in Minnesota (surprised, aren’t you?) where a divorced Texan and teenage son retreat to for starting a new life. Elizabeth, a journalist decides truth is of the utmost importance when printing the weekly paper of the small town and it lands her and her son under suspicious light as various troubles fall on the sleep little southeastern Minnesota town.

If you have read Hoag before you will likely enjoy this book. It is full of the positive and negatives of small town life sprinkled with all the mystery, murder, and adventure of a typical suspense novel.

While in Minnesota I started Gunpowder Green by Laura Childs. I didn’t have much of any time to read with all the running around we did. Plus, there was now a TV in the room I was sleeping in so I fell asleep to that a few nights rather than ready :-} It was a slow start. It didn’t grab me as well as the other mysteries I’ve been reading lately. If it had grabbed me more I would have read it instead of watching TV.

That said, it did eventually suck me in and I finished it shortly after my return. Gunpowder Green is the second (no, I haven’t read the first, I can’t seem to get my hands on the library’s copy) in the Tea Shop Mysteries. Theodosia Browning, the owner of Indigo Tea in the historic district of Charleston finds herself caught up once again in solving the cause of a mysterious death that to many seems to be just an accident. But, in her gut Theo feels there was murder involved. So, she repairs some broken relationships and seeks out the truth behind the death of the man who was to kick off a big regatta that she was catering.

This book definitely does not make it onto my list of favorite mystery series, but I will likely give another one or two a try, though I’m not going out of my way to reserve the first or the next book. I’ll just read them if I come across them on the shelf when I go to the library. I think they are worth the trouble of placing a hold on.

I then jumped right into two more library books I had checked out before my trip that were due back soon. These were both culinary mysteries. First was Killer Pancake by Diane Mott Davidson. This if the 5th book featuring the Coloradoan catere, Goldy Bear. It was much like the others — enjoyable, a quick and easy read. There was a twist in that all the recipes were low-fat! I even remembered to copy down a few before I returned the book to the library this time!

Then I finally got the first book of the Joann Fluke series featuring a Minnesota cookie baker. Hannah Swensen, in a small sleepy town that is under assult of murders with startling regularity. Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder is another quick, easy, but enjoyable read. I think Fluke has a good handle on the various personalities of small town Minnesota. It makes me laugh because I can put people I know into some of the roles, LOL!

I had picked up and read one of her more recent books on a whim last holiday season as it was in the holiday display at our local bookstore. I’ll definitely be reading the rest of this series. In fact, once you get to book three I think NetLibrary has the remaining ones in e-Audiobook so I can read them while knitting or spinning or sewing even!

I don’t think these are written quite as well as Diane Mott Davidson. In fact, if you don’t have experienece with small town living or the personalities in the northern heartland you may not enjoy the books. But, if you like cookies and like stories of small town living you may find this series worth reading.

These niche mysteries can be kind of fun. I do have to wonder what niches haven’t been covered yet though as there is the home repair, various cooking ones, bed and breakfast ones, tea, coffee, Jewish food, knitting, needle arts in general, candlemaking, soapmaking, real estate, cats, and the list goes one. I jokingly said the only one I haven’t heard of is one that features a blind detective… Hmmm…. Maybe I should sign up for NANOWRIMO this year… LOL! Just kidding!

I’m now more than half way through The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. This is an abrupt departure from my reading mode of late. It might be a good thing for me, LOL! It is the first book club selection of the year. We meet next Monday, October 2nd. Having company has slowed me down on my progress, but once I got about 50 pages in I was sucked in big time; as in tempted to stay up all night if I wasn’t so darn exhausted from cleaning and entertaining. I’ll tell you more about it once I’m done and once I’ve seen where the book club discussion takes us.

* I must offer up some credit for this post’s title. Amanda of Amanda’s Weekly Zen posts most Sundays about books. She has also been the leader of several fun book and knitting “a-longs” though I have never officially taken part. So, thanks Amanda for Sunday Book Talks. I find it enjoyable to stumble across them in my blog reading on Sunday and Monday as I’m always on the look out for new authors to read.

Well, I did make *some* progress on two of the items in yesterday’s photograph, though I was hoping for at least three, but the design project I was kicking my butt yesterday. The charting and the figuring for at least two sizes was making my head explode. So since there isn’t much of any interest to show you I’ll catch up on my logging of movies and books today…

Well the first book I finished last week was A Good Yarn by Debbie Macomber. This is a follow-up to her first knitting-related book, A Shop on Blossom Street. If you enjoyed the first, you will likely enjoy the second though I would recommend leaving *plenty* of room between reading them because really they are the same book with a different cast of characters. However, even though the cast of characters have a different set of problems from the first they are part of the same formula - roughly the same ages etc. It was a good enough light read, but I’m glad it had been a year or more since I had read the first book.

Prior to this set of books I had read just a couple of Macomber’s books and now I’m curious of each of the “series” suffers this same problem. Anyone out there more familiar with Macomber and can shed some light on the other series she has?

Then I picked up the next Stuart Woods Orchid book featuring Holly Baker, former MP now chief of police of Orchid Beach, FL, Orchid Blues. This was *awesome*! I wanted to call my mom at about midnight her time and yell at her for getting me started on this as there is a HUGE plot twist within the first twenty pages that had me reeling! I couldn’t believe. I should have believed it, but it seemed too unreal.

It seems this series deals mostly with fringe groups. The first had to do with a highly secretive “town” within their town that no one knew anything about. This one had to do with a secret town that was on no maps that was rather curious. I’m not normally big on stories about militia groups or other types of fringe groups, but I have loved and devoured these two books and can’t wait to read the next two!

After the previous heart racer I decided something lighter might be nice so I picked up this coffeehouse mystery (learned about from Chris and Chaos) by Cleo Coyle. On What Grounds is the first in the series. It probably isn’t a “must read” but it was a fun and light niche mystery. It did make me want to learn more about coffee. I’m pretty new to the world of coffee (having gotten my first coffee maker for Valentine’s Day) and would love to learn about the different beans and the different roasts and all that. Not to mention, I’m sure I have plenty to learn on how to brew a cuppa properly. So, yesterday I checked out a couple books on coffee from the library. These I don’t think will be hugely helpful as they are mostly recipe books, but they both have some introdutory material. Then I have a few other more substantial books requested through Prospector (regional ILL) that I’m waiting on. It is always kind of fun to get your interest peaked to read some more non-fiction. Mostly my non-fiction selections revolves around my art and craft pursuits.

As I mentioned yesterday I’m not onto the first Tami Hoag, Still Waters. I’m only about 50 pages in so far, but it seems okay for 50 pages. We’ll see how it shakes out.

This past week we dusted off a few old favorites that aren’t sooo old. It was fun to watch these films that we hadn’t seen in such a long time.

Mystery Men is just hillarious and it was a blast to see Hank Azaria again not to mention Jeanane Garafalo, W. H. Macy, and Greg Kinnear. It did make me want to be Baby Bowler for Halloween, LOL! A costume design I don’t think I could pull off - especially on a budget. You can’t be Baby Bowler without the skull in a pink tinted translucent bowling ball can you?

Tortialla Soup is just a lovely movie about the evolution of family and it focuses on food. It won’t matter if you ate a five course meal before you watch this movie, when it is over you will be craving really good Mexican! It is based on Eat, Drink, Man, Woman by Ang Lee but set in LA with a Mexican family at its center.

Then on Sunday night we wrapped up the weekend with a lighthearded romantic comedy classic for us - A Big Fat Greek Wedding. That so could be our families in that movie! Thankfully we both came from large families so it wasn’t quite the shock that John Corbett’s character had. DH’s family was still a little crazy the first time, but now I love them all - now that I know who it is who is hugging me anyway, LOL!

Sunday afternoon on a whim we did end up seeing a matinee at the theater. We ate near there and as luck would have it Accepted was showing in just ten minutes or so and we had been talking abou wanting to see it. We were a little scared. It could be *really* bad, but it could be *really* good like The New Guy.

Well, we both loved it. We declared it this year’s The New Guy and figure we’ll probably need to make room for it in our DVD collection at some point. We did leave wondering how much of Lewis Black’s character was scripted and how much of it was him just going off. We’re betting most of it wasn’t scripted. I guess we may find out when the DVD comes out.

I guess if you aren’t familiar with The New Guy I haven’t helped you in deciding whether or not to see this film. There is a band of friends in high school that didn’t get accepted into college for fall, whether it was that they chose poor essay subjects or they put all their eggs into one basket, there are five students that do not have post-high school plans figure dout and one of their friends who does. Out of desperation, one kid decideds to fake an acceptance letter, but knows in order to dupe his parents they need a web site. Well, word of this school spreads due to the web site and before they know it, they have their own college on their hands. A non-traditional one by all means, but a college nonetheless. It is a fun, campy movie about underdogs that makes you laugh (and groan a few times).

This picture captures some of the projects I’m looking towards for this week. Today should mark the beginning of the first Tami Hoag mystery, Still Waters. It should also mark my casting-on with my hand dyed and hand spun BFL yarn for a new design, hence the design notebook in that photo. The two bobbins mark all the spinning I’ve done in August (terrible, terrible), but it is some of the samples I got from Cathy back in April for my birthday. I plan to get at least these two plied up and hopefully spin some of the other samples. I figured in honor of the neutrals it would be a good reason to dive into these guys. Plus, I wasn’t feeling inspired for any specific projects by any of my rovings so it made good sense. I’m also going to finally jump in and sew. I did a bunch of ironing this weekend in preparation and have been going over some of the patterns and feeling slightly confused. So, I decided to start with the plain bias skirt (the bottom right of the schematics). I’m going to sew it out of some Gilmore Girl blue linen (if you watch GG you know why I call it that - Lorelai and Rory are dressed in it often because it makes their eyes really pop).

This weeked was glorious! Especially so weather-wise. I got to wear my Gentleman Socks on Friday, I wore my Balance Socks on Saturday, and my Flatiron Socks yesterday. It looks like it should be cool enough to wear yet another pair of handknit socks. One thing I noticed though was that my socks don’t so much match my wardrobe. I either need to choose different sock yarns or I need to think about my sock yarns when buying clothes :-) There is one thing that I noticed while wearing these socks thought - they make me feel great! It doesn’t matter that I knit them myself, they make me feel special to wear them. They put a smile on my face and keep my often cold feet nice and warm, but not too warm even when we do finally climb into the low 70’s. I *love* wearing my handknit socks!

There was also more book reading and movie watching that I’ll write about later in the week.

This morning was especially cool and makes me think forward to fall! The house is down to a cold 64 degrees, but we’ll be glad for that when we work our way back up to 90 degrees on Thursday. Our outdoor thermometer was reading 45 degrees this morning at 7:30am! Brrrr! Blissfully so though! The other senesors around town were reading in the low 50’s as you can see in the image above.

I *love* fall! It is finally coming! Yeah!

Today I head to Aqua Susan’s house after water aerobics to do some work for my first (and likely only) paid sewing gig. She needs some adjustments made to a window treatment of some kind. I’m not real clear on what it will require right now nor do I know how much I’ll be paid, but it’ll be nice to do this for Susan too. It’ll be nice to get a few extra bucks in the pocketbook though, no matter how little.

There has been much reading going on around here. I read one book the same day I got the news about grandma and essentially read two on the trip and one since I returned home. There were also a few in there before the news came in too. Right now, my bed and a book are still feeling like my best company.

Last weekend (as in roughly 10 days ago) I finished up the third Diane Mott Davidson novel, The Cereal Murders. In case you’re new around here, this is one of my more recent fluff series I have started to read. I love reading books set in areas that I know quite well and I’m a sucker for mysteries and then add in good food and I’m suck in. Davidson’s culinary murder mystery series features a former easterner who now lives just west of Denver, Colorado, is semi-recently divorced from an abusive doctor of the small town. She has a pre-teen son who has his problems and often has other characters living in her home at any given time. Goldy became a caterer following her divorce and now cooks for most of the events in her small town. Each book features 7-12 recipes interspersed in the pages.

The Cereal Murders was a typical DMD book. It keeps you turning the pages but doesn’t necessarily keep you up at night until you finish reading it. This was the first of the series where there were some recipes I wanted to make. Unfortunately, I forgot to copy them down before I returned it to the library, LOL! One drawback to this series is that if you check the books out from the library they are spilled and splattered and the bindings broken. But it does give you a clue as to which recipes must me good, LOL! There was a slight cliff-hanger at the end of this one that was kind of nice too. At least good for me since I’m no where near caught up with the author yet.

Orchid Beach by Stuart Woods was up next and read in less than two days. This book had been recommended to me by my mom. She was just ecstatic to hear about Iron Orchid and that it had been recorded for NLS so I knew this series must be great. Mom and I generally agree pretty well on books, especially mysteries and romances. This is the first of four books so far featuring an ex-MP, Holly Barker, now serving as chief of a small PD in Florida. This book is the story of how Barker ends up in Florida and fights for her rightful position in the PD. It is full of mystery and suspense and was a real page turner for me. In fact, I can’t wait to read the next one in the series, but I’m pacing myself. Or trying anyway, the book is sitting in my stack of library books to read :-)

Saturday and through the night I read the next William Kent Krueger novel, Blood Hollow. I still think that WKK is improving with each novel. I found this to be a real page turner. So much so that when I got the call from my mom about grandma at about 1am I finished the 70 pages I had left. I need to start slowing my pace on this series though as there are only a few more books left in the series. Another is being released next week I believe, but there will likely be a long line of holds to get to read it too quickly after its release. As much as I enjoy these books I don’t see much reason to own mysteries because they just aren’t the same on the second reading and I don’t think DH has much of any interest in reading these.
I dislike traveling with library books. Call me paranoid. I’ve never lost a book while traveling but I’m always afraid I’ll loose a library book. So, last Sunday just before I left for Minnesota DH and I headed to B&N and I bought Summer’s Child by Luanne Rice to take with me. If you are unfamiliar with Rice, her stories are what Lifetime movies are made of. Heartwrenching, tear jerking, spirit lifting stories of often single mother’s and thier troubled children. I was turned onto Rice by my sister who has always been a lover of tragedies. In fact, several of her books have been made into made-for-TV movies. If you like Debbie Macomber I suspect you would also enjoy Luanne Rice. There is always some monumental obstacle that is also tempered by some tame romance.

Summer’s Child was no different. Though I did find myself wanting to hit the mom upside the head and force her to open her eyes to the man who has been helping her and her daughter for the past NINE years. Rice doesn’t often have a “series” though characters often appear in multiple novels as support characters. However, this one does have a follow-up that I’m looking forward to - Summer of Roses. When I had finished the first one I raided my sister’s bookshelf and brought back another Rice novel, this one Summer Light. I need to bring it back with me in September because she wasn’t sure if it was her’s or Anna’s book, but I finished it this Saturday. It was more or less the same sort of story, though this time a single mother and her gifted daughter melt the heart of a hardened professional hockey player.

Yesterday I finished the fourth Diane Mott Davidson culinary mystery book featuring Goldy, The Last Suppers. It opened with a twist that I should have been expecting, but wasn’t quite ready to admit would happen after the previous book. I chose this one on Sunday because I had a hold on A Good Yarn by Debbie Macomber that had come in while I was gone and knew there would be other holds on the book so I wanted to read it as soon as I picked it up from the library and I new these DMD books are real quick fluff reads for me. This one though had me reluctantly putting it down once I hit that half way point and that is the first that has really happened for me with her books. It has me a bit more excited to read the next one in hopes that it improves as well. Once again there are a few recipes in here I’m intriqued with. But I hope to remember to copy down the recipes first :-)

So, up next is of course the book that has holds on it - A Good Yarn. This is the knitting-centric story of female friendships and is a follow-up to A Shop on Blossom Street. Then it’ll be a tough call between an early Tami Hoag and the next in the Stuart Woods Holly Barker series…

I’m terrible. I like to withdraw when things get tough. My mind just races and whirls around the negative. When it gets that way it seems the best way to combat it is to withdraw into worlds of fiction - books, movies, and television.

I finished Purgatory Ridge by William Kent Krueger last Saturday night. I swear his books get better and better. Then again it may just be that I feel more and more invested in the characters which each book. This is the third in the Cork O’Connor series so once again is set in the small town of Aurora, MN in northeastern Minnesota. A lot of this book takes place on Lake Superior and involves lots of action from scuba diving, to bombs, protests, and even kidnapping.

My mom finished this just slightly before I did and the one thing both of us have noticed is that the first half of his books are kind of slow, but once we cross that half way point, don’t talk to me, don’t call me, don’t ask me if I’m hungry. I *must* finish the book! LOL! It was kind of fun to have our own personal book club.

Speaking of book clubs, the library book club that I have attended three our of the past four years is starting up again next week. I’m undecided whether to go. It conflicts with SnB every 6 weeks. I didn’t go last year because of that conflict but also because for whatever reason I couldn’t make it to the first meeting where we nominate and vote on the six titles we’ll read and what got picked was of no interest whatsoever to me.

I’m all about book clubs stretching your boundary of reading tastes, but the books were all either very heavy tomes or political non-fiction. I like when there are one or two sprinkled into the mix, but last year’s listing was over the top. Plus, I have found that when the titles are ones that I don’t have much interest in they take me the entire six weeks to get through and I don’t have time to read any titles that I *want* to read. I’m tempted to go on Monday to see what gets chosen. That meeting nearly always results in a handful of titles to add to my “must read list” that maybe wouldn’t have crossed my path otherwise. But, if I do go I have to nominate a book and I’m not sure what to nominate.

Anyway, SIL3 and DH patiently went to the library with me on Sunday afternoon and I came home with three more mysteries - another Diane Mott Davidson, a Stuart Woods, and my first Faye Kellerman. I decided to dive into the Kellerman novel that blogless Shelley recommended - Ritual Bath.

I only got the first chapter read on Sunday night before I had to give in to my nodding head. But I still got the book done yesterday morning. Now, it is a fairly slim book, but that was one of my fastest reads this summer. This one is a suspense/romance. There was a wonderful balance between the suspense and the romance and I loved that there were multiple mysteries in the book. That added a different element that you don’t often see in the mysteries. Part of me wanted to ignore the other two books I had checked out and go check out the next book, LOL! I can’t wait to see what happens with Peter and Rina and what sort of mysteries they find themselves wrapped up in next time.

I have to thank Chris profusely for pointing her readers to Stop, You’re Killing Me. I ended up copying down in my purse notebook the next several books in the series of some of my favorite authors so I can just browse the library shelves and choose whichever series has the next book that I need to read. I suspect it’ll come in handy when hitting the used book stores and/or thrift stores before my next trip Minnesota (I dislike traveling with library books for fear of loosing them and since they are often hard cover and heavier to tote around in a carry on). It has also been helpful for my mom as I can assist her in formulating her request list for the NLS for books on tape so that she can get the books in proper order. So, does anyone know of a similar sort of web site to SYKM that is for romance books??

Now I’m reading the third Diane Mott Davidson novel, The Cereal Murders.

There has also been some catching up on summer television series (The Closer, Psych, checking out the new Three Moons Over Milford etc.) and a little bit of movie watching going on. Last week we enlightened our friend, John, on the amusement that is Saved! It stars Jenna Malone, Mandy Moore, Macaulay Culkin, and Eva Amurri. It has a great supporting cast of Mary-Louise Parker and Martin Donovan as well. It is a humorous look at what self-righteousness gets you. I am always amazed at how well they walk the fine line between being anti-religion and just being anti-fundamentalist religion. It is very pro-spirituality.

This weekend we decompressed on Saturday night by watching The Bridcage on-Demand. I had forgotten how hillarious and brilliant Hank Azaria was. We had also forgotten that Calista Flockhart was in and was surprised to see Dan Futterman who later played Vincent in Judging Amy and more recently Danny in Related. It was a fun blast from the not too distant past.

What are your favorite ways to escape stressful events happening in your life that you have no control over?