I've lost my freakin' mind.

And I don't think I can blame the drugs.

Other than raising a kid, I've had a few things going on. You know, dyeing yarn, knitting, designing, writing the occasional article. So what do I do this morning?

I went into the craft store this morning to get black and white Fimo to make some buttons for my steeked jacket. (My thought on buttons is this: either you match them perfectly, or you make them stand out. No middle of the road.) After a half hour I find myself staggering out with $50 worth of polymer clay gear, including two 'collections' of colors of clay. What am I supposed to do with this stuff?

I'm thinking stitch markers.

My mojo has returned.

The weekend's dyeing:

From the top, Primrose, Tribble, and Practically Purple. All laceweight. You know you're doing well when you want to keep everything you've dyed. (The Tribble wound up with minimal fuss, once I got it on the swift properly. It was getting it on the swift that was tricky.)

And what is this?

Why, it's knitting. For a Knitty pattern, so this is just a teaser. (Netter, the yarn is glorious. FANTASTIC. I don't think I've ever knit up pure alpaca before. It's almost as nice as reeled mulberry silk. In a way, even better because it's not nearly so fragile. Looooove it. Thank you again.) So obviously it's my own design. Wanna hear something fun? According to one refrence I have, I've got juuuust enough yarn to knit this project. According to another, I'm 400 yards short. For my own refrence, I knit up one skein of yarn, measured how many square inches it produced, then figured out how many square inches were in the sweater, did some division... and by MY figures (I checked twice after I got the answer), I've got FIVE HUNDRED YARDS EXTRA. Even allowing for my iffy math skills, someone's been smoking something not quite legal, if you get me. And it hasn't been me.

As for my hand, well, I'm tinkering with my medication again. (Bad side effects.) If anyone remembers the cuss-fest of last July, we may be holding another one soon. If you're new to the blog, you're in for a... well, not a treat. Laugh, maybe. If you think creative swearing is funny. But the bottom line is, so far I feel BETTER. And that's what matters. Well, I'd prefer The Baby's first sentence NOT be "Fuck off."

So far, so good.

Oh yeah. This is good.

That's 880 yards of laceweight yarn.

If I ever get it untangled.

Books? Did someone say books?

Remember when, at the beginning of the year when I jumped onto the Knit from Your Stash bandwagon, I said that I'd probably wind up spending the yarn budget on books? Um. Yeah. I'll try to keep this short.


"Andean Folk Knits" by Marcia Lewandowski. I got this book at overstock.com (lovely for low-priced knitting books that have been in print a while, check them out), and my first and foremost thought is "I'm damn glad I didn't pay full price for this." There's a lot of nice cultural information, but the projects suck. It's almost entirely screwy looking bags with a few chullo hats and a knitted doll. Don't bother spending the money. If you're desperate for Andean motifs, get it from the library.




"Spin to Knit" by Shannon Okey. It's a little thin on spinning stuff, but I think even non-spinners would like the book for the patterns. It's got all kinds of great stuff to knit with a varied amount of yardage. If you've got one skein of cool yarn (hand spun or not) and want some idea what to do with it, this is your book. And it's never bad to have some idea how yarn is made, whether you intend to spin some or not.




"Historic Costumes and how to make them" by Mary Fernald and E. Shenton, and "Medieval Costume and how to recreate it" by Dorothy Hartley. These are both geard toward sewers, but they give a good idea how to construct the same shapes in knitting. They're reprints of older books and economically priced. Useful if you're gearing up for an epic design project, which I am. If you don't write your own patterns, though, I don't know what you'd do with it.




"Make your own patterns" by Rene Bergh. Another book geared toward sewers, but useful for figuring out construction methods in knitwear. In fact, it's made me appreciate knitting a lot more. We can construct fabrics that sewers have to do all kinds of darts and tucks and everything to get. This is a good book for that, but of course if you're not doing design it's not worth the bother.




"Dyer's Compaion" by Dagmar Klos. This is more like a chemistry book than anything else, but if you dye yarn, ever want to dye yarn, or think you might dye yarn, it's a great book. It's got nice things like lists of chemicals in order of safety. There are some really nice safety charts, and includes how to make a 44 gallon indigo vat in a garbage can. You could dye half of Charleston with that. Hahah. But it's a good book for quick refrence.




The history of costume, from Dorling Kindersley. There are no words to describe the depths of my love for DK. Their books are wonderful. Full of great pictures, captions, and interesting information. This was an afterthought purchase from overstock.com, sort of "Oh heck, it's DK." and of course it's my favorite of everything I ordered. Love. It.



And lastly, for extreme knitters,

The Second Book of Modern Lace Knitting, from Marienne Kinzel. I have the first book, too. See the cover doily? I knit that. It's at least three feet across. At one point I had 1100 stitches on a size two needle. Insanity. Love them. There's some less extreme stuff, like squares and rectangles. If you sort of read between the lines, there's a lot of good stuff on how to adapt round doilies to ovals and that kind of thing. Extreme lace. Woohoo.



Okay. I've actually bought more books than this, but it's getting humiliating. I'm gonna go dye some yarn or something.

Then again...

I just looked at the Knitty deadlines and the next one is June 15 (for the fall issue). Eeek. That sounds like plenty of time, but I want to submit a pattern this time, which leads me to think of several things. Like how Amy likes photos (who doesn't?) and I suck at photography, and that my pattern-writing in normal conditions can at best be described as 'minimalist'. So maybe it'd be good to start on the project NOW, rather than spend the first two weeks of June knitting like mad and shrieking at people. (There will be enough of that in September, with the state fair deadline, anyway.)

So I'm gonna swatch for that, using the alpaca that Netter sent me. Don't worry, it's lightweight and stockinette. I'm kind of behaving. Kind of. Sorta. Maybe.

Damn hand.

Taking the day off knitting yesterday just about killed me. I laid on the couch last night, watching TV with no knitting, and it was strange enough for the hubby to comment on it. There is a Sci-Fi marathon on tonight - Stargate all night - and I seriously doubt I'll be able to resist again. So I'm going to try knitting something in straight stockinette on small needles. That usually agrees with me. It's heavy yarn (steeked jacket) or manipulating stitches (lace shawl) that usually bugs me. We'll see.

What am I working on, you ask? The mate to this:

And when that's done - shouldn't take long, it was designed to be a fast knit - I'm thinking I could knit a plain baby sweater for the goober. Think knitted sweatshirt. With stripes of these:

Should look cool, with enough left over for socks for me. The pink is more superwash I dyed last night, along with the Cotton Candy.

It's funny how different fibers take up dye so differently. These were all dyed with the same freakin' dye. SAME DYE. Yet take a look. Even with the bad photography, you can see the superwash on the right is a lot brighter than the merino/silk blend on the left, and the silk/merino also seems a little bit bluer than the superwash. Speaking of, when it comes to what yarns I choose for what dye job, it often has to do with this - how the fibers take up the dye. For brights I use superwash, for subtle colors I use regular wool. I intend to keep experimenting with the silk/merino to see how it works. And I'm considering some alpaca/silk laceweight to experiment with.

And another Sekhmet you fucker. This one, she really is in trouble.

She's been sleeping in my cheapass light box (the one made with a cardboard box). I wondered why it seemed to be getting so dilapidated when I handled it carefully. Now I know. THE CAT HAS BEEN NESTING IN IT. When I went into my office for this shot, she was curled up in a happy little ball in there, but took off when she saw me. I grabbed for the camera, and this is what I wound up with.

Sekhmet, you fucker.

Um.

New yarns are posted, and due to overwhelming positive feedback, well...

I dyed a double batch of Cotton Candy. It and more coffee yarn will be posted soon.

Thanks, everyone, for all the feedback. You make my job so much easier.

This could be a problem.

One of the most annoying things about chronic pain (other than the obvious), is that you get used to ignoring pain. So used to it, that you ignore it even when you shouldn't. You know, when there's something wrong and you should do something about it? (Often the way I notice I need more painkillers is when I realize I'm grinding my teeth.) I've been having hand problems for about a week now, made worse Monday when I took a nap and woke up with my hand twisted up under my chin, unable to feel my fingers. I kept telling myself that not knitting anything heavy was good enough.

So last night I'm knitting away on the lace shawl and realize that not only do my hands hurt, but I can't quite make a fist with either one of them. (My left hand is also goofy, from doing extra stuff that the right hand can't do.) That was the first I'd noticed quite how much the knitting was bothering me, but once I started paying attention, I realized I was having quite a lot of trouble.

No knitting for the next couple days. Nothing else that uses fine motor skills like that either. (Don't mention typing. Don't. For one thing it's never really bothered me, and for another, if I have to give up the internet too, I will lose my freaking mind.) It would also do me some good to not do heavy lifting (like, say, thirty-five pound babies), but figure the odds of THAT happening.

All that leaves is yarn winding and dyeing to do. Shucks. I know you guys are heart-broken.

I've wound up all the Easter Egg Rainbow, including the skein I plan to keep.


I wound my skein into a little cake for easy stashing, and I've gotta say, when I look at the cake of yarn I feel like a freakin' genius.



Once the baby's down for her nap, I hope to wind up all the Purple Trainwreck, then I'm going to post it all over at Etsy, either late afternoon or tonight. That includes the coffee yarn and a single skein of neon experiment I'm calling "Technicolor Yawn".

Otherwise, who knows how much yarn I'm going to dye while I can't knit. Probably a lot. At the least I'll get it wound up for later.

Oh, and one last thing.


Sekhmet, you fucker.

Heeheehee.

There's nothing like dyeing two miles of yarn to make a girl feel productive.


I am particularly happy with the way the Easter Egg Rainbow turned out. I'm keeping a skein of it for myself. (That still leaves three more for you guys to squabble over.)

What I've been doing.

With photos.

Yesterday, first thing, I wound up some yarn for gifts.

In the back is the thousand miles, uh, yards, of worsted weight Purple Trainwreck. In the front is a skein of merino/silk fingering/sock weight in color "Cotton Candy". This new stuff is WONDERFUL. Takes dye beautifully and has a nice sheen to it. When I pulled it out of the washer, after spinning the water out of the freshly dyed skein, my first words were "Oh, that's NICE." Even under the lousy garage lights, the yarn gleamed. I'm keeping back a skein of this for myself. Unfortunately, due to the cost of raw materials, it's going to sell for more than the regular sock yarn does. Sorry about that. But there's still 440 yards to a skein.

Anyway, after that, I dyed some coffee yarn. (Yes. Yarn dyed with coffee.)

I don't know exactly what went wrong - the fumes, me getting overheated winding yarn, my migraine medication, or most likely some unholy combination of all three - but I spent a good part of the day throwing up. Once I got the coffee smell out of the house, I was all right. If I ever make this stuff again, I'm doing it outside on the barbecue grill. That's why there was no real post yesterday. Even after I quit puking I had a killer headache for most of the evening.

During all the other activity, I was winding off literally miles of yarn into extra-long skeins for dyeing (I have to rewind into long skeins to get any kind of striping effect).


This morning I got up and wound the coffee yarn into cakes, because the skeins were too horribly tangled to send out to someone in good conscience. (Odds are, if you recieve yarn from me that's been wound into a cake, it's because I tangled it into an unholy mess during the dye process.)



At the moment, I've got a mile of Purple Trainwreck in the pot (that's a quadruple batch.)


And there's another mile of yarn soaking, waiting for it's chance to be turned into Easter Egg Rainbow. (I bought more egg dye - Easter sales start Sunday. Woohoo!)


If I'm feeling particularly motivated, I'll wind up some double batches of Mermaid Tail, and some single color dips like Raspberry Ripple. Plus I need to play with this merino/silk blend. I've got some good ideas. Heh heh heh.

Sorry I haven't announced the yarn contest winner yet. I'm going to get to work on that tonight, after The Baby goes to bed. Hopefully we'll have a winner tomorrow.

As for knitting, remember when I said I thought I was almost done with the first part of the half-round shawl? Hah. Turns out I need to increase until I have 381 stitches, not 281. A slight difference of 25 pattern repeats. So it's still in the works. I'm doing a repeat or two a day.

And there's still a cat face mooshed into my boob. She's purring and making my chest rattle.

Dumbass thing of the day.

I'm not sure if I'm disturbed or amused.

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

Pretty sure I'm amused.

From over at Working So I Can Knit.

You know it's gonna be a good day...

When you follow a mosquito around the house, beating on it and chanting "Die die die you motherfucker die." I swear I hit that damn thing three times before it finally croaked.

Now my hand really hurts.

Presents!

We got a box in the mail today (actually three boxes, giving the hubby a stroke wondering what I'd ordered) but the best box, the most important box, the most FUN box, was from April.

It contained baby gear. And chocolate. She knows what keeps a mumum running. (Plus I've been bribing The Baby to walk with chocolate, so I'm running low around here.) There were some jackets, and a really cute pair of pants (so cute I wish I had a pair in my size), but best of all was the COW JAMMIES. Yes. Footed jammies covered in cows.

That's The Baby, very unhappy to be put to bed, even wearing cow jammies. (Please note the stuffed rat above her head. She sleeps with it every night. It's named Scabbers.) And here is a closeup of the cow fabric, taken as The Baby tried to climb out of the crib:

She also loved the mini See and Say that was in the box - she played with it all afternoon. And I was thrilled to hear a song different from the ones she usually plays. Thank you, thank you, thank you.


The other boxes, incidentally, contained yarn for dyeing. I'm not out any more, and production of more sock yarn will begin tomorrow. First up, Purple Trainwreck and more Easter Egg colors. Interestingly, buying all this yarn to dye seems to be having a 'work in a candy store' affect - I buy so much for resale that temptation to buy other yarn for stashing isn't really there. (Of course, I've already got a closet full and I've never been much of a stasher to begin with.) I may be buying some for a new design, though. We'll see.


I vowed to take some time off knitting to give my hand a break. That lasted about six hours. But I am working on lace, which is lighter and easier to manipulate than the steeked jacket, which is not only heavy, but the snaggy barbed-wire aspect of the lopi I'm using gives me fits (love it once it's knit, though).


DAMN GOOD DYE QUESTION:
I had a question in the comments, asking me about fading and bleeding and why, if a dye bled OFF something in the laundry, does it then stick ON to something else and not wash off? Damn good question.

When you dye a fiber - any fiber - what you're doing is chemically bonding a coloring agent to the surface of the fiber. There are various ways to do it (heat, acids, mechanically rubbing it in, etc), but that's what it comes down to: sticking the dye and the fiber to each other. Dyes and fibers vary, but I'm sure when you think about it, it stands to reason that each fiber only has so many places/bonds to stick a dye to. In the case of yarns or fabrics that bleed, what's happened is that extra dye has come to rest on the fibers and is just sitting there, not bonded. When it gets wet, the dye washes off like dirt does, and floats around in the water. If there's something ELSE in the water, something that doesn't have dye bonded to it (or that PARTICULAR dye bonded to it - different dyes can bond to different places, chemically speaking), then the loose dye will stick to the new fiber instead. BAM. You have pink underwear. (Did this make sense? I hope so. I'm drugged and not good at explaining chemistry to begin with. Let me know if there are questions, and I'll try it again.)

That's also what's happening when you buy yarn and the colors rub off on your fingers or needles: The dye hasn't bonded to the yarn, and is bonding to you instead. A couple good washes, or another go at bonding the dye with heat or chemicals, will usually fix the problem. Sometimes, something has just gone horribly wrong - I used to have a sweater that bled every damn time I washed it for ten years, and went from a dark brick red to a salmon color before I threw it away.

There are, of course, a lot of finer points to it (chemical bonds vary according to dye type, fiber type, and fixatives, among other things) but that's the gist of it.



There's a cat face mooshed into my boob.

Nothing but good times ahead.

The baby got a plastic Easter egg stuck in her mouth this morning. There was an air seal around it and I couldn't get my fingers in to pull it out. Eventually I turned it, to try removing it that way, and the seal popped and it came right out. There was a moment there when I had visions of a trip to the ER to explain how my kid got an egg stuck in her mouth, and I wasn't looking forward to it. Not as bad as taking the kid in damaged, but guranteed to make me feel like a moron. Anyway, got the egg out and she's fine and taking a nap. I'm busy finding eggs and throwing them away.

Then I spilled blue dye all over the kitchen. My first major spill. Happy times.

What was I making, you ask? A thousand yards of Purple Trainwreck in worsted weight.



My hand is still bothering me, so I'm knitting lace again today, though I think I'm going to expand out to a couple swatches for the first of the patternmaking projects I have planned. (Actually, the first two: one for fall Knitty and one for me to sell at Etsy.) Sorry if people are feeling underenthused about the steeked jacket thanks to my shining example, but keep in mind - this is the second time I've knit this thing. Remember? This is a copy of my father-in-law's Christmas present last year.

I think I'll be okay after the sleeve's done. It's the fourth one I've knit, so 'second sleeve syndrome' doesn't come close. Plus after this it's a quick zip up the shoulders, then across with the straps, and it's all done except for the button band and the eternal search for the right buttons. (Pretty sure I'll just make the damn things.)


Oh, and the spinning wheel? Apparently they're backordered into the next millenia. They're thinking of hiring help so they may only be backordered HALFWAY to the next millenia... they aren't sure. So I'm shopping around for a spinning wheel again. I'd like an upright, double-treadle. The Ashford Joy traveler thingie for about $100 less than the new retail price would be perfect. Haha. Anyone got any suggestions?

My hand hurts. Darn.

I hope everyone caught the sarcasam in that post title.

It seems that if I spend my entire day beavering away (love that expression) on my steeked jacket, the weight of the yarn does a number on my poor hand and I'm stuck knitting lace all day today to give myself a break. Aw. Shucks. That's too bad. Poo. (I was up 'til three last night, listening to my wrist throb.)

Three pattern repeats to go. I hope to get done with the sleeve by next weekend and join the whole thing up on one needle - it'll go fast after that. (But not fast enough to be done in time for cold weather this year, because I AM AN IDIOT. But I digress.)


Otherwise, I'm finishing up some undocumented knitting that I whipped through really fast as a baby gift for a friend who is having a little girl:

One of EZ's baby jackets from "Knitter's Almanac". I'd REALLY like to know what the hell that spot is on the lower left hem, but I'll blast it with the bleach pen and give it a wash, and all should be well. (All better be well.) The underarms need sewn and there are some pink ribbon roses to sew on, and it'll be ready to rock. Awww. Ain't it cute? (To add ribbon to the pattern, work a row of yo, k2tog across, the last row or so of the yoke before shifting to the lace pattern. Then just thread a ribbon through it and sew down the ends.)


IN THE HISTORY DEPARTMENT:



I caught a show on History International the other night as I was up late knitting (love that time of day; everyone's in bed and the house is quiet and the cat's on my lap and I can watch a documentary in peace and get some knitting done), and the show was a list of the top ten greatest

archeological finds ever pulled out of the ground in England (the island, as opposed to the nation). The second-best thing ever found was the treasure/tomb/hoard at Sutton Hoo, which was the grave of an Anglo-Saxon king/chieftan person of great wealth and (I would assume) power. In the grave was a whole 'suite' of matching Anglo-Saxon Man Jewelry: Belt ends and buckle, shoulder clasps for his cape, a purse 'lid', etc. (That's what
these photos are of.) It even included a sword with a matching hilt. This is a very famous bunch of artifacts (in archeology circles) and so I'd been aware of them for years and years and had always assumed that these pieces were enameled. (And now that I think of it, did the Anglo-Saxons DO enamel? Anyone?) Guess what. They're not. The red you see is GARNET. All those little bits were custom cut, they think by children, and then set into the gold. The gold was so pure and soft that it was then smoothed out to overlap the edges and hold the garnet bits in. I do believe my first words when hearing how the workmanship was done were "Holy fuck." Amazing. Just amazing.





Oh, and for you other history buffs? The number one find was the written tablets from Vindolanda. Gotta say, I agree. I wish I'd caught the first half of the show.

Self-bribery.

Anyone else do this?

"If I do a pattern repeat (or whatever the goal is) on this, then I can work on whatever else I want, the rest of the day." For me the goal is a pattern repeat a day. I actually met the goal yesterday - yay. And I'm six rows into the fourteen row repeat already today, so it's looking good. (Plus I'm out of yarn to dye, which helps the focus.)

The other project I want to work on is, of course, this:

The half-round shawl. Yup. Still working on it. In fact, I'm within a couple inches of doing a whole lot of garter stitch and then starting the knit-on edge. And after that - Happy Spider's Lace yarn! Eeeee! I don't think I realized how much I enjoy knitting lace until I got this huge pile of new lace books and suddenly have all kinds of new things to knit. Very exciting.

And speaking of books, I lost my head at www.overstock.com yesterday and bought a huge pile of books. They're knitting, patternmaking, and design books, so you should all be subjected to them soon.

I'm also considering an epic design project that would take about ten years' solid knitting to accomplish, but would produce a bunch of patterns for me to sell... I'm rather afraid of how seriously I'm considering it. I think I'd do it in blog form, with an entry per new pattern. Hmmm. Maybe I should work up a pattern first and then decide where to post it.

Otherwise, The Baby has figured out the See and Say and is sitting in the living room trying to imitate barnyard animal sounds. It's very cute.


Well, she was. Now she's flung herself on the floor, face down, wailing, in true drama queen style. Oh yeah. Loving motherhood today.

Um. For those who care.

There's purple trainwreck up in the shop. If you don't bag some tonight, I'm going to start doing quadruple batches once the new yarn gets here, so don't pout.

Books on the History of Knitting

Catie asked, and I figured it deserved it's own post.

Unfortunately, I have nothing to recommend. "A History of Hand Knitting" by Richard Rutt is the only big-picture overview of the history of knitting available in the English language, and, well, it sucks. He gives a biased, Christianized view of things that is pretty horribly inaccurate when faced with the archeological record.

Same goes for anything by James Norbury. He's worse than Rutt.

You can get bit-and-piece history lessons from other types of knitting books, though, and they're often really good.

"Folk Socks" by Nancy Bush has a good history of socks in it.
"Victorian Lace Today" by Jane Sowerby has an excellent history of lace-knitting-as-parlor art and the 'patternization' era of knitting.
"The Art of Fair Isle Knitting" by Ann Feitelson has a good history of Fair Isle knitting in it.
"Knitting in the Nordic Tradition" by Vibke Lind is like a history book with patterns in it.
"Poems of Color" by Wendy Keele has an excellent but very specialized history of Bohus Knitting in Sweden in it.
"Knitting in the Old Way" by Gibson-Roberts and Robson is another history book with patterns in it.

Not much help, I guess, but I don't think Rutt's worth the money it would cost to buy.

EDITED TO ADD:
Not to toot my own horn, but my own article on the history of knitting is here.
And a rant about what's wrong with most knitting history is here.

Let's talk books, hmmm?

I'm wide the fuck awake at an unholy hour of the morning (okay, nine-thirty isn't that unholy, but it feels like it since The Baby had me up every three hours last night) with a migraine, and for some reason I'm thinking about books. So you're getting subjected to it, too. First a question, then I'm going to hit a couple book memes that are going around. At the bottom will be that list of a hundred books, with the stuff I've read in bold, etc, that's going around. For those who aren't interested, of course, skip it. But read the question part, please.

THE QUESTION: There's a book I can't remember the title or author for. I read it when I was a kid, and it would now be classified as "Young Adult", no idea what it was called back then. 'Back then' would have been around 1975, 1980, so it's a book that has been published for a while. Anyway. It's the adventures of a group of boys living somewhere in the US countryside, on summer break. They're too smart for their own good - to use a phrase from my own childhood - and get up to a lot of hilarious mischief. Among their adventures, they create a sea monster in the local lake and don't know what to do when the press shows up. The adventure I remember most clearly is, the town legend says there's something hidden in the breech of the Civil-War cannon in the town park and the town decides to drill out the cement to see. So the kids go out the night before, use blow torches to expand the metal of the cannon, pull the plug out with a pully, and check it out for themselves. As I recall they don't find anything, so they put in a bunch of campaign buttons for the current mayor's election, and PUT THE PLUG BACK IN. Then they go to the town square the next day with everyone else and laugh their asses off when the plug is drilled out and the campaign buttons are found.

Anybody know who wrote that, or what the title is, or anything? It's been driving me crazy. I'd like to get a copy for The Baby for when she's older (using science and smarts for fun - oh yeah, do that, kid), and I wouldn't mind reading it again myself. If you know, or even think you know, please leave a comment.


Okay, the memes. First, people have been snapping a photo of one of their book shelves and then talking about it. No idea where this originated, but it's been around the 'net lately, so here you go, a shot of one of my knitting book shelves:

That is, indeed, a copy of "The Principles of Knitting" on the far right. It's a bit battered, but in fairly good shape for a well-used book that's fifteen years old. There's also a copy of "Knitting Lace" in there - it's beat-up too, and I didn't know when I bought it that the resale value would come close to $300 later, so I underlined it and wrote in the margins, thereby destroying it. If you're thinking of sneaking in my office window some dark and stormy night, be aware I have an attack cat who has already foiled one break-in attempt (when we lived in Hawaii). This shelf is the easiest to reach of my knitting book shelves, so I've got the quick refrence stuff over on the right. Otherwise it's mostly ethnic stuff, patterns, and dye books. The history section, such as it is, is there too. I started calculating the value of this shelf of books and got nauseated. Suffice it to say, it's taken me twenty years to accumulate all these books.


And last, the book list meme thingie. I've done something different - the books I've read I made larger (since bold and regular are kind of hard to discern in this font), the books in italics I READ IN COLLEGE. For a while I was an English major reading three or four novels a week for various classes, and so I sound very well-read when I start listing titles, but in reality I sit here going "Did I read that? I'm pretty sure I read that..." so don't ask me any detailed questions about Crime and Punishment or any other 'classics' in italics. Don't be impressed, either. Haha.

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo) portions of it, not the whole thing
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Good grief, no wonder I hated College Part One so much.

The rant on literature vs. entertainment reading, we can save for another day, I suppose. Suffice it to say I hate secret messages hid in lame symbolism in novels.

Oh, yeah...

I got my forty-thousandth hit some time at the beginning of the week.

FORTY FREAKING THOUSAND!

You guys are great. Thanks for reading. And commenting. And being a community.