Kai Sweater before husband accidently felted it in the wash.

Kai Sweater after Husband accidently felted it in the wash.

I knit this for Sophia when she was still in the womb.   She wore it a ton.  It was the perfect size, the perfect weight, the perfect fit. Poor husband didn’t mean to do it.  My mother cleaned Sophia’s room and picked up all the cloths on the floor.  Unfortunately she didn’t notice the sweater and it made its way to the hamper where it was promptly washed by the husband.  We’re all a bit heartbroken.

Sigh.  I’m sure it will find another life as a sweater for Sophia’s dolls, bears, and other imaginary friends.

Tonight I lie here with heavy eyes.  The air outside is finally cool.  The rain fell today and left a kinder, gentler feeling outside.  It is one of those nights where you feel that in spite of all the crap that gets thrown in your path you can reach a bit of zen and peace.

Sleep well.

I had trouble buttoning my pants this morning.

Do you think it is perhaps, in part, due to my nightly dish of ice cream?

Vile Ice Cream.

I was able to get part of my sewing area together tonight. I bought a $15 table at a garage sale today. Voila – new sewing area. I went to the local chain fabric store (not by choice – it’s the only thing open on a Sunday) and picked up two patterns.

The product of all my work?

One ugly ass something or another. (not quite sure what it is).

I was so proud – the pieces are all recycled fabrics (the green is one of Rob’s old shirts, as is the blue, the patterned fabric came from my local thrift craft store). I read all the directions all the way through before I started. I cut, ironed and pinned. I did it all by the book.

After turning him inside out and first deciding not to stuff him and then deciding to stuff him anyway I realized I forgot to stitch the poor thing eyeballs! Ah, perhaps that was what was wrong. It was too late to do any stitching so I brought out my trustee sharpie and drew them in (at this point I knew the scary green booger wasn’t going to the intended wee baby) and continued to stuff. Nope – still not right. It took about thirty minutes to realize why the thing still looked off.

No mouth.

Clearly I wasn’t meant to be a sewer. I read and followed the directions and still manged to leave the little thing without a mouth! I just do not have the patience for this craft…the worst part is that you can’t rip back your mistakes!

I saw these the other day on Unclutterer.   They are sheer post it notes.  So, you can stick them on top of something…say a pattern and circle/edit/markup as needed!  So. Cool.

I think that they would absolutely be perfect for making notes on patterns.  What a great way to make notes on a pattern you’ve borrow or own but do not want to copy.

Taken last weekend at the Antique Boat Museum in the 1,000 Islands Region (one of my favorite places in the world).  Sophia’s hair is finally starting to grow.

Look how cool science is.  We bought these mushrooms at the Public Market a few weeks ago.  When I brought them home I left them on our cutting board for a few days.  There was a recipe on white paper underneath.

When I moved them I discovered that the spores went crazy and had a party! They left a cool stain on the paper.  I had inadvertently made a spore print.

Look I could make art if I really wanted to! 

……not paraphrase and only use direct quotes.

When I wrote yesterday I did not have the book I was quoting in front of me. I stated the following:

This one mentioned the basic premise of the book. Not in so many words it said – ‘After returning from the hospital room of their now dead daughter the author’s husband dies.’

As it turns out some of you took what I wrote as a direct quote. I apologize, I most definitely should have been clearer and explicitly stated that I was paraphrasing.

However, some interesting and thought provoking comments came through as a result and many made me second guess my memory of the synopsis. (Which – in the interest of full disclosure I had initially read well past my bedtime). When I got home from work yesterday I pulled out the offender and read the passage again. I think you all may be right. After my initial reading, my brain took what I head read and instantly allowed my soul to react without checking itself. When I wrote yesterday I was writing from a biased brain and, I now realize, a brain that swirled my memory a bit.

As it turns out the factual accuracy of the synopsis is correct. Each sentence by itself represents actual fact. However, I believe that the presentation misrepresents the book’s spirit and spoils the book.

Judge for yourself:

“In December 2003, Didion’s only daughter died from a runaway pneumonia infection. After returning from the hospital, Didion’s husband, author John Gregory Dunne, died so suddenly of a massive heart attack that Didion at first mistook the event for a failed joke. As the initial numbness wore off, she realized, “Widows did not throw themselves in the burning raft out of grief. The burning raft was instead an accurate representation of the place to which their grief (not their families, not the community, not custom, their grief) had taken them.” This unsparingly honest, often funny and surprising memoir of grief never reaches for cliche or banality.”

The magic of this book is watching it unfold. At the start you know her daughter is sick, you know her husband has died. The book is primarily about her husband’s death and the following year of grief and coping. You learn about her daughter’s illness and it is prominently featured throughout the narrative. It is never clear the illness if fatal and it is never the focus of the book. It is used more as a lens through which to see how the author’s grief and hope has manifested itself in her everyday life. In any case….the summary while factually correct misrepresents the book and, in my mind, takes away from a beautifully written story. So, I’m still pissed…albeit for different reasons. And I still believe that a fact checker would have worked to edit it so that the words and sentences landed a bit differently on our psyche.

Your comments also have me questioning my memory of the book itself. Unfortunately I do not own a hard copy of the book, just the audio file (a situation that needs to be corrected!) so I cannot review the ending. In my head I remembered an ending that did include the death of her daughter. However, now I think that I may have done what Jane did and googled to determine her daughter’s fate after I finished. (This book really moved me.) The knowledge I gained may have rooted itself in my mind as part of the ending of the book.

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{Day 13 – Wanted fact checker and/or Copy Editor: Did the memoir include the death of her daughter? Only those with an actual copy of the book in hand need apply. Temp to perm position as this blog could really use a copy editor and a permanent fact checker. Apply Within. Pay sucks. Benefits are better. Hypocrisy seems to run rampant if the author is left unchecked.}

WSBGD = What should Bookish Girl Do?

I attended my monthly bookclub meeting last night at our local big-box bookstore. Which, incidentally, is not all that bad. This is not to say that I am not still a staunch supporter of locally owed establishments and will ALWAYS seek them out first. However, the empty local bookstore niche created by this big-box bookstore has, in some cases, been adequately filled by its very existence. Which, I suppose is the point but not always the case.

In any case. I picked up a book that guides you through suggested books to read for specific topics. I enjoyed the topics; I thought the titles were well balanced. I noticed a typo in the table of contents. I bought it anyway. I am a sucker for these types of collections. What to read… What you should read… The X,XXX best books for blah blah… I find them stimulating and fun and they get my reading juices flowing.

The typo I forgave. Copy editing is hard. Things fall through the cracks. Too many hands in a pot etc, etc. Otherwise – shit happens. Typos get through to final published books. No one knows this better than a knitter.

I brought the book home and spent the rest of my evening going through the 1,001 titles checking off those that I had read with a pencil. There were brief descriptions under each title summarize the plot, salient points, and / or the merit of the book. Most of these I skimmed through. I had read the books and in most cases loved the books. I did not feel compelled, for the most part, to read what someone else had to say about them.

Toward the end of the book I came across an entry for The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I listened to this memoir via ipod during my commute while still living in Boston. I believe it is a book better listened to than read. The author narrates the audio book and she does it more justice than the voices in my head could ever do. (This is the case for most anything – my voices are a bit loco). It is a lovely story, one that I was deeply touched by and often recommend. In a fit of nostalgia I read the summary under the title. This one mentioned the basic premise of the book. Not in so many words it said – ‘After returning from the hospital room of their now dead daughter the author’s husband dies.’

I almost cried. This was wrong. wrong. wrong. The daughter was not dead – she was ill, very ill. This fact establishes a main plot line through this memoir. A very important poignant fact was blatantly wrong. The author of this fun new book of mine clearly did not read A Year of Magical Thinking nor did she (or anyone) fact check. The summary then went to on to say what a wonderful book it was.

I was really pissed. I hate being lied to. I hate paying for something that wasn’t properly researched. It is not hard to do good work…so why wouldn’t you?!! (This is totally not a James Frey type issue, this is a different beast. This isn’t someone’s recollection of reality.)

Now the question.

I have marked this book with pencil. I am mad about supporting this book financially and REALLY want to vote with my pocket book. Which, in this case, would involve returning the book. But – I marked it up?! Can I return it?

Now I realize that my purchase and return of the book is not a strong message to anyone. But I feel as though the universe receives all of these actions and balances them appropriately. So this is an important action in my view.

What would you do?

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{day 12 – The Bookish Girl Should… take a deep breath and untwist her panties.}

Sorry for the radio silence on Saturday.  I have been playing with the timestamp in wordpress.  We were out off the grid this past weekend at a family wedding.  I had schemed up some posts to hit the blog on Saturday and Sunday.  While writing I referred to my handy office wall calender – which has Jackie’s picture on May 31st and no date.  My brain dead self said, “hmmm, I guess there are only 30 days in May”.  And I screwed up the timestamp.

In any case…

Two NYTimes editorials for your Monday Morning Coffee…

Maureen Dowd, love her or hate her…she certainly has a way of putting it all together.

“Cult of Deception”

Friday I heard Brian Greene on NPR’s Science Friday.  I was pleased to see this op-ed in yesterday’s paper.  I love science and I hate that our kids are not exposed to it in a way that makes them love it too.  I love what he has to say about the role of science in our lives.

“Put a Little Science in Your Life” 

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{day 11 – i’m thunking that this is a pretty amazing world that we live in and i am proud to be a part of a culture of people who pushes themselves to think critically about the world around them.}