Sunday Knitting

The grey tangled mass of lace weight yarn has turned into something beautiful.

Honestly, I had no idea how this would turn out. I'm so glad all that knitting time wasn't wasted. So many hours on the bus! When I wear this, I wonder if anyone on the #80 will recognize it as what they've seen me knitting on the way to and from work every day?

Not all went according to plan however. I followed the hand-felting instructions carefully but the thing would not felt. Why is it so easy to felt something accidentally, yet so difficult to do it on purpose?

Luckily, I really like how it looks. The brooch in the first picture is an owl. I can't even remember where I found it but I've had it for ages and I really love it, though I've never worn it before.

Pattern: Les Miserables
Yarn: Classic Elite Silky Alpaca Lace. The pattern calls for 3 skeins, but I didn't use much of the third one.
Needles: Size 8 (size 9 for the first and last few rows)
Started: May 20
Finished: September 19

I'm glad to see those dates. It felt like it took months, and it makes me feel better to see that it actually did.

The pattern contains no information about gauge or how big it should be before blocking (it was a free pattern) so I sort of felt adrift on this project. Plus, making something that deliberately looks a bit shabby is kind of a risk. It could look awesome, or it could look like something I found in the trash. When I failed at felting I only became more concerned. But after it dried and I draped it around myself, I was pleasantly surprised.

Maybe it's finally time to make a Matrix sweater.

Stolen

Stolen by Lucy Christopher, narrated by Emily Gray (2010)

Gemma is on her way to Vietnam with her parents, when she is suddenly abducted from the Bangkok airport. Her captor, Ty, takes her to the Australian outback where he says they will live forever. He doesn't hurt her - he wants her to be happy there, away from the city. As Gemma overcomes her fears of Ty, she slowly learns more about him and his formative years and her feelings begin to change.

Lucy Christopher has made the unusual choice of telling the story as a letter Gemma is writing to Ty - so it's almost like being in the second person. It's not easy to pull this off, but I think she succeeded. It felt a little bit awkward to me at first, but soon I didn't even notice. I think it could have been done in a more traditional first person, but knowing how it ended, I do think this choice was a bit stronger.

This is not a story of much action or dialogue. Mostly, there are long days in the desert during which Gemma reflects on her life back in England while worrying about Ty and how to get away from him. But it was fascinating. When Ty abducted Gemma from the airport, that wasn't the first time he saw her, and the back story is really quite unsettling and creepy. He also continued to insist that life in the desert is far better than life in the city, and that she is much happier. Gemma does begin to question some of her past experiences and relationships and begins to doubt herself. The changes we observe in Gemma's thinking were subtle and well-executed.

Stolen worked well as an audiobook. The narrator wasn't quite right - she didn't sound young enough, and pronounced "us" as "uz" - but still, she was very good. Her voice captured the haunting feel of the story, and Gemma's confusion, quite well. I've heard that the Australian accent is extremely difficult but she makes both the British and Australian voices sound authentic. (I thought maybe she was Australian, but apparently she grew up in England.)

Altogether I found the novel quite unique. There may be other young adult books about abductions, but this was so much more. I don't want to give away as much information as some of the reviews do, so I'll just say that I found it compelling and haunting and I think it would be great fodder for discussion.

Tessa Masterson Will Go To Prom

Tessa Masterson Will Go To Prom by Emily Franklin and Brendan Halpin (2012)

Lucas and Tessa have been best friends for so long, it seems almost inevitable that they will go to Prom together. But when Lucas pops the question in a very dramatic and public way, he is crushed by Tessa's response. Not only does she say no, but she reveals that she is gay and wants to attend Prom in a tux with a girl for a date. In true teenage boy fashion, Lucas doesn't take it well and reacts without thinking. The result is a maelstrom of media attention, a huge controversy, and - most upsetting of all - the apparent end of Lucas and Tessa's friendship.

Unlike most other YA books with gay characters, this isn't really a coming-out story, nor is there much about Tessa's relationship at all. It's more about friendship and supporting one another, but it's also fairly political, focusing a lot on the controversy, and you've got to give props to the authors for giving teens enough credit to be into that. Man, I wish I had read this book as a teenager, but of course we had nothing like it in the '80s.

The only flaws were minor - just a few conversations early in the book that didn't come across as natural - and I quickly got past that. I don't think most readers would even notice.

The characters were wonderfully imperfect. When faced with the first true test of their long friendship, neither Tessa nor Lucas responded in a particularly mature way, which is good - they're just teenagers and they are learning from this experience. Two-dimensional adult characters are common in YA books, but Lucas's mom was fleshed out with a personality and a history, and she was just fantastic. I also appreciated that the anti-Tessa crowd weren't complete haters. It's so easy to paint these situations black and white, but the authors didn't do that here. Some of them were totally anti-gay and protested in front of her family's store, but others were civil to her family and still supported their business.

There don't seem to ever be enough new young adult books that aren't paranormal or dystopias, so I was happy to spend time with these regular kids in their small midwest town as they navigate the sorts of problems real teens face. As a bonus, the cover isn't terrible. I even like the paperback version, even though the cover model's head is cut off. At least she's not wearing a fancy dress.

Both Tessa and Lucas were kids I'd be proud to call my friends, and I rooted for them - and their troubled friendship - the whole way through. In turn aggravating, nerve-wracking, and touching, this novel ultimately made me very happy in a warm, fuzzy glad-to-live-in-Massachusetts kind of way. I'm sorry it hasn't gotten more attention, but I'll be sure to recommend it to patrons at my library.

The Cellist of Sarajevo

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway (2008)

One afternoon in Sarajevo, 22 people were killed by a mortar attack while waiting in line for bread. A cellist who witnessed the attack from his window decided to play every day on that spot for 22 days. Meanwhile, a young father risks his life to walk across town for water. An older man reconnects with a friend while he is on his way to get bread. A young sniper tries to protect the cellist from afar. Their city now barely recognizable, the inhabitants try to reconcile this new terrifying environment with the familiar home they know and love.

The first chapter is told from the viewpoint of the cellist, and the rest alternate between the other three characters. The prose is spare but beautiful. Though most of the story is internal and there is little action or dialogue to propel you, it's easy to fly through this short novel.

Though subtle, there are complex themes and difficult questions, as each character struggles to make choices that could mean life or death. Their decisions are small, mundane, and may be totally inconsequential. As the sniper Arrow observes, "There are no grand moments where a person does or does not perform the act that defines their humanity. There are only moments that appear, briefly, to be this way." But we do see small acts of great significance. Simply walking across an intersection is an incredibly brave act of resistance. Playing a piece of music on a cello is transformative.

I should mention that although this is a work of fiction, it is based on real events. A cellist named Vedran Smailovic played in ruined buildings during the siege of Sarajevo. Although unusual, the story isn't completely unique - and it's exactly the kind of story we refer to when we discuss the importance of the arts. Galloway deftly illustrates how music inspires hope in a city that desperately needs it.

The Paris Wife

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (2011)

In 1920 Chicago, Hadley Richardson is living with her sister and brother-in-law, and still recovering from her mother's death. When she meets and is wooed by a man named Ernest Hemingway, her life changes almost overnight. After their whirlwind courtship and wedding, the couple finds themselves part of a group of American expatriates in Paris. Their new friends are mostly writers who seemingly spend more time drinking than writing and for whom monogamy is passé. Now with a young child, the unfortunately nicknamed Bumby, Ernest struggles with his writing and Hadley tries to support him emotionally, all the while desperately trying to hold their marriage together.

Hadley is committed to helping Ernest succeed, and is willing to make sacrifices. Yet she sinks into complete despair when he must leave her for a few weeks on a writing assignment. Surrounded by friends with open relationships and multiple lovers, they nonetheless try to preserve their relationship, but it's a challenge from the start.

Of course we know from the beginning that their marriage will fail, but McLain tells the story so beautifully that it hardly matters. Her clean prose is so evocative of that place and time that it transports you there. It's one of those rare books which you can enjoy for the writing alone; I read some of the passages over and over because they were so exquisite.

More than anything, this book made me want to re-read The Sun Also Rises, which I haven't read since high school. What I mostly remember about it was everyone getting drunk and going to bullfights, and that atmosphere of hedonism and disillusionment is captured quite well in this novel. Whether happy or troubled, every occasion or mood called for a drink. Out for a night on the town with their friends, or home feeling despair about their crumbling relationship, Hadley and Ernest frequently turned to booze to celebrate or smooth things over. The results were the highest highs, the lowest lows, and an all-around moody novel, which I mean in the best way possible. Normally, I don't like to read fiction that gets this close to people who actually existed, but I'm glad I made an exception in this case.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (2007)

Junior was born with a variety of medical issues and has grown up on an Indian reservation, getting picked on because of his glasses and speech impediments. Comforted only by his best friend Rowdy and his talent for drawing cartoons, eventually Junior is convinced that he needs to leave the reservation and go to a high school twenty-two miles away.

Though Junior makes this decision to improve his life, it comes with a host of new problems. His unreliable parents usually aren't available to drive him to and from school, so he makes the trip with a combination of bus, hitchhiking and walking. Everyone on the reservation turns against him because they feel like he's betrayed them by attending a white school, including his best friend Rowdy who will no longer speak to him. Plus now he has to try and fit in at a new school where everything is different. But Junior sees his sister leave the reservation and pursue a happier life and it only makes him more determined to do the same.

Peppered throughout the book are Junior's cartoons and drawings, breaking up the text while adding color to his narration. This is a quick, quick read. I zipped through in one sitting in an evening, extremely unusual for me. I first read this book back in 2008, and I'm glad my Not-So-Young Adult book group at the library picked it to read and discuss because it's definitely worth a second reading.

The most striking thing about this novel is that Junior is probably the most genuine teenage narrative voice I've read. It's so hard to strike a balance in young adult fiction, making the voices self-aware and appealing enough to make a good book but still genuinely young, but Alexie has done it. Part of what makes it so realistic is Junior's colorful language, full of exaggeration and the occasional use of ALL CAPS and, of course, the fantastic illustrations. Pictures are a great way to communicate what you are unable to articulate in words and they work wonderfully here.

Junior's life on the reservation is filled with tragedy and despair, yet there is a strong sense of community that is not present in his other community in Reardan. On the reservation everybody knows everybody else and they share in each other's tragedies and joys. At school in Reardan, people may be better off, but they are also more isolated. Trying to bridge the gap, Junior sees exactly what he is losing and what he stands to gain.

Last night at book group, we talked a bit about how much we want to know what happened later. Some very tragic events happened during the course of the book and I don't know how Junior recovered and moved past them, but I believe he could. I wish there was a follow-up so we could revisit this funny, compelling character. In the meantime, if you haven't read this novel yet, what are you waiting for?

Sunday Knitting

Hello! It's been a shamefully long time since I've posted about my knitting, and I'm afraid I have little to show for it. After posting about the Jack-in-the-Box Mittens lo those many weeks ago, they've languished in my knitting basket untouched until two days ago. When I picked them up again it took me a good twenty minutes to figure out where I had left off before I could start knitting again. I had helpfully left a post-it note over the part of the pattern where I had left off. Not so helpfully, the post-it had notes on it from a previous part of the pattern and I didn't realize for quite a while that although the post-it was relevant the writing on it was completely irrelevant. Anyhow, I eventually managed to pick up where I left off.

This will be so much nicer looking when it's done. Also! I totally forgot to take pictures of the back, which is where the cables are. So just imagine that you're looking at a really lovely cabled pattern.

I had forgotten the extent of my hatred for double-pointed needles. Honestly, how do any of you use these? Why do they still exist? They are the most fiddly, annoying, obnoxious tools that never fail to make me feel like I'm trying to juggle a porcupine. They manage to always be in the way of each other, yet not be close enough together to make the knitting come out right. They are so annoying they defy the laws of physics.

Anywho, in the picture the thumb stitches are on white scrap yarn and the palm stitches are on the purple scrap yarn. I'm knitting the top and just have another inch or so before binding off. Then I go back to the palm and thumb and finish those. Hopefully soon, then I can knit the other mitten, then I can burn those stupid needles so I never make the mistake of using them again.

I also finished my first Ribbed Lace Sock and have begun the second.

I know, it doesn't look like much, does it? But it feels great and will keep my feet warm this winter.

Progress has continued on my Les Mis Wrap as well, though I fear it may be a scarf instead of a shawl. More on that as it progresses. I only have 1.5 pattern repeats left out of a total of 12, so I'm nearing the finish line. I didn't take a picture because it just looks like a big mess of gray yarn right now and nobody wants to look at that. To be honest, I haven't even removed it entirely from my knitting bag in quite a while so I have no idea what it looks like myself. But it's definitely not pretty, I'm sure of that much.

It's sad to see summer coming to an end, but the bright spot is that summer is followed by knitting season. I intend to wrap up these projects and start on a whole slew of new ones - I've got pretty yarn and fun patterns just waiting for me. It's tempting to push these dull-colored projects aside and start on them. Seriously, I don't know what made me knit grey, dark green and off-white projects all at the same time, but I can't let that happen again!