Sara

  Here is Sara as she graduates from George Mason University with a Master's Degree.

Colorado Spring 2005

I am the wild woman who is floating in the air;
swept in for rare visits,
scattered and lofty
and swirling around
trying to come down
but the freedom sings to me
the melody of rapture.

Finding my Passion

It's fun to work at the library, and then find yourself teaching sock knitting for two hours every Wednesday. My sock knitting class ended last week and I am taking a break, but I miss it. One of the sock knitters showed up today, she had been in Florida for a few weeks. She was turning the heel on her first sock. I came over to offer a little help, and then I had to go to lunch. When I came back I wanted to check out her progress. Well, the heel wasn’t centered. I offered to help fix it because she knew she went wrong somewhere. As I ripped it out, I said, "I bet you hate me for ripping out all your work," and she said, "No, I didn't want to get all done and have a crooked heel." I have learned how to fix mistakes in knitting and I owe that to Sally Melville's excellent book in her series, The Knitting Experience: Book one: the Knit Stitch. When I was teaching my sock knitting class I would have my handy crochet hook with me and I would be pulling up dropped stitches all the time, ripping out rows of mistakes, and turning the twisted stitches on the needles back into the right direction. I recommend this book for the basics that need to be mastered to work quality knitting. My friend said, "You must have hated working with all of our problems," and I felt just the opposite. I loved helping teach this complicated knitting experience, but one that really makes you feel you have accomplished something as old as knitting a sock, with all its shaping and various skills. Because the ladies in the group all wanted to learn hand-pieced quilting, I will be doing that over the summer months. I will be using Jinny Beyer's book, Quiltmaking by hand : simple stitches, exquisite quilts / Jinny Beyer.

 This is the week of St. Patrick's Day, and I found this card at Mom and Dad's house and it reminded me when Mom and I would exchange Saint Patrick Day's card, one, because I always wanted to to go to Ireland, two because I had become Catholic, and three because it was like our special holiday that just the two of us understood why. I think I started this when I was in high school and in love with Irish poetry. Mom shared her love of poetry with me and thus it grew. Lucky me. I am wishing everyone the Luck of the Irish this week.

This card is from the 70's by Holly Hobbie

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This was our first book for our new Classics Books Discussion group at the Library. Meeting on Thursdays, once a month at 1 pm, we are choosing the books from the Big Read sponsored by The National Endowment of the Arts. We had a small group for our first discussion, but there is promise there, as people have shown an interest. We talked most about our own insecurities, our competition with others, and the American dream of acquiring wealth and what it means. All the characters in the novel were flawed in their own way. We find out that Gatsby is driven to New York to acquire his dream girl, Mrs. Daisy Buchanan, married to Tom Buchanan. After going off to the first World War, when he comes back to Louisiana, he finds that Daisy and her husband are on their honeymoon. He has to win her back by acquiring wealth and social status. He buys or rents the house across the Long Island Sound, to stare at the green light at the end of the dock at the Buchanan home. We discussed whether Jay Gatsby would ever really fit into Daisy's world. Just as Myrtle would never really stay with Tom, or that he would even take her permanently. Nick decided that the Buchanans are just careless, running away  to avoid the truth if it embarrassed them. Conspiring together over the kitchen table, Nick notices the intimate world they live in that Gatsby will never be able to separate them. Gatsby is stunned. He is so sure that Daisy will call, he is still not realistic at the end. Written by F. Scott Fitzgerald when he is just 29 years old, it seems so sad that the prominence this novel has achieved could not have been realized while he was still alive. Much of Nick is Fitzgerald, always the boy looking on, from early school to his Princeton years, he was socialising with the wealthy, but never quite meeting the mark. His whole dissolution with the wealthy types is portrayed in this novel extremely well. I think is is as great as everyone says, and his writing is poetry, and it is the type of novel I love to savor and revisit. Our next novel for November 17th will be The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, about the restrictions on the classes during the Gilded Age in New York.http://www.neabigread.org/books/greatgatsby/

My visit to the Botanical Gardens in Denver was one of the highlights of my Colorado trip in August this year.

Sock Knitting

Branching out of my comfort zone and will try something new at the libray. Teaching sock knitting. The five needle, knitting in the round will be the technique I will teach.
The yarn I will be using is

Debbie Macomber's Petal Sock Yarn:
Inspired by the softness of fresh petals, Petals Socks is a wonderful blend of fine merino and angora "with added nylon for strength" the perfect combination for soft and warm socks. Available in 9 tonal self-patterning prints and Machine Washable!

Yarn Details: Yards: 462.00 Grams: 100.00
Yarn Composition: Angora - 20% Nylon - 30% Super Wash Fine Merino - 50%
1 - Super Fine Weight Yarn
Knit STS: 6.75 - 8.00
Crochet STS: 5.25 - 8.00

Recommended Needles (US):
1.0
2.0
3.0
Recommended Hooks (US):
B-1
C-2
D-3
E-4
Socks

blogging

Here it is a beautiful day, the air is working at work, and I am enjoying this magnificent day. It's Flag Day, our neighbors were up early to Raise the Flag at 8 a.m., So there we were, outside to Raise the flag, celebrate flag day, with a new flag, and John playing his trumpet. They had installed a new flag pole and wanted to made a production of it's induction. The cute little boy next door was peeking out his curtain at the riduculous neighbors. I think his name is Hayden. My husband said we needed to go out and make a memory, so we did.
I was up early to make fruit pizza for Carol's birthday, or I would have slept through the whole thing.

Check our catalog for a book

check our catalog

Summer 2008

I am reading a Jodi Picoult book, Nineteen Minutes. It is very engaging, the story of a community wracked by a school shooting that leaves ten people dead, and the shooter in jail. The author creates an omnipresent view of the effects of the shooting on everyone, examining the community years before and the effects of friendships and relationships gone askew. Jodi Picoult has wide appeal for her character developement and story line.

Learning how to put a link into my blog

I did it with help from a great website that I think I should share and give credit to. tutorial in html

Moving my book comments

I haven't written lately, mainly because I have posted my book notes onto a blogger site that is available through my library website. And the library blogger site needs to relate to the library more than my travel rambles. I really like the fact I could write in my blog on my trip and share with many people all at one, and share my photos instantly. So to get to my new blog about more library things:
my new wedsite

Flower market

The Flower Market in Amsterdam

We had to visit the flower market. It was a rainy morning, but that didn't stop us from checking out the flower stalls and taking a dozen pictures. Amaryllis blooming in March, so big and beautiful. I was so tempted to buy bulbs and have them shipped home, but I couldn't buy everything. Leslie bought her Dutch wooden shoes here. She was told an interesting tidbit about the shoes. The plain ones are for working in the fields, the yellow ones are for church, the red ones for the bride on her wedding day, and the blue ones for the groom on his wedding day. Our Dutch friends said they never heard that about the red and the blue. Sounded good anyways.

Breakfast in Hoorn

Continental breakfast courtesy of the hotel we were staying at in Hoorn. We always took a window seat, which turned out to be a good thing, since Marleen stopped by three times when she noticed us there. I took a picture of the breakfast that was served between 7 and 10 am for the guests of the hotel. Our tablecloth is actually a woven Turkish rug. Our choice of coffee or tea is served with a plate of cold cuts and cheese, a basket of bread and rolls, a soft-boiled egg, and a glass of orange juice, fresh squeezed it seemed. On our last day we find out that in the basket of bread is a delicious gingerbread tasting bread wrapped like a cracker, and we never had tried it before. I'd like to have that recipe.

Amsterdam

One of our last nights in Amsterdam, at last the rain stops and we are able to take some shots with the sun hitting the building along the canal in the city.

The coast along the Atlantic is very rough this day due to the storm. We have had rain every day at some point. We also have experienced hail and snow, so it is a typical spring. Being so close to the coast water is everywhere.

We have come to walk along the beach, here we are being silly imitating the statue. This is along the dike. Many people were out to walk along the beach even though it was windy and cold. We drank hot chocolate after the walk. Leslie and I are joined by Marleen and her father, Nico and her mother, Marjo.

Nico, Marjo, Carolyn and Leslie