Soleil is done. Photo to come. [ETA: here]
Crayon Parade socks are started; the feet are done, and I’m working up the legs.
Decent progress on the scrap hat. Minimal progress on the swatch hat. Two rows on Mesa. One seam on the shirt jacket. Visible progress on Fantasy sampler. Haven’t touched anything else.
Lots of Gutenberg findings lately….
Dorothy Canfield, Understood Betsy. I may have read this book as a kid; the title’s certainly familiar, but I didn’t recognize any particular plot incident. Anyway, it’s a very sweet children’s book, available at Project Gutenberg.
Mrs. Molesworth, The Cuckoo Clock. This book is mentioned several times in Jennie Lindquist’s The Golden Name Day. It’s an interesting little children’s moral fantasy; worth a read, though I don’t know if I’d have wanted to spend money for it.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Dawn of a To-Morrow, The Land of the Blue Flower, and T. Tembarom. More Gutenberg; first read for Blue Flower, second for other two. I have a couple more unfamiliar Burnetts in the PDA; should be interesting reading.
Non-Gutenberg:
Stephanie Laurens, On a Wicked Dawn. A romance novel in which the lead man is trying to convince the lead woman that he’s only marrying her for her money (and possibly her body), not for love, in spite of the fact that he’s head-over-heels for her. I wasn’t grabbed by it, and I found the writing style annoying; I’m sure Laurens was using the sentence fragments intentionally, but they bothered me. Annoyed me. Caused me to roll my eyes. Led to my returning the book to the library unfinished.
Loretta Chase, Mr. Impossible, on the other hand, was a much better read. It had a plot, entertaining characters, an interesting setting, a plausible romance, and good sex. I’d actually consider rereading it.
Steven Brust, The Phoenix Guards. First reading since I read the Viscount of Adrilankha trilogy; still a fun book; I wonder how many of the nods to the future were planned and how many were coincidence.
While my son was out of town in early April, I went through all the stuff in his room. One large box of outgrown clothes went to a friend with a smaller son; some broken toys went in the trash, and some unbroken were unloaded.* I cleaned out all the shredded paper from behind the dresser and under the bed. I got rid of the plastic desk and replaced it with the old nightstand from my room, so there’s now an accessible place to store diapers. It’s very nice in there now, even though the boy’s been back home for two weeks.
Now that it’s May, it’s time for the kitchen and dining room. On the one hand, there’s a LOT of stuff to cover, which is why I allotted myself until the end of June to finish. On the other hand, since I’m always out here anyway when I’m supervising my son, it’s easy to do part of a drawer or shelf at a random moment. (Unlike in the office, which still isn’t finished!) I don’t foresee any problems with getting this area done in the scheduled time.
*(Yes, if the boy were neurotypical, I wouldn’t be tossing toys behind his back, broken or not; an ordinary seven-year-old is old enough to be asked what toys they want to keep and what they want to unload. My son is a high-functioning autistic with very limited communication skills; he can’t tell me whether he wants to keep a toy or not. He shows me what toys he likes by playing with them; he shows me what toys he’s indifferent to by ignoring them. I make the judgement calls based on that.)
Soleil seems to be the most active project at the moment; it’s mindless and easy right now, so it’s great for the bus.
Not pictured because I didn’t feel like hauling them out and there’s not much to see:
Not pictured because they’re done!
Sorely tempted to start:
I’m not formally participating in Eat Local Month, but since my vegetable subscription has started up again, locally grown produce has once again become a large part of my diet. The chard is good as ever; I’m making lots of pineapple peanut butter chard stew, and I’ve found a great lentil & chard soup recipe (though I need to learn how to make my own beef stock). I’ve got a ton of onions and need to try some onion soup (again, beef stock!). The carrots are piling up, but I’ve learned from experience that they’ll survive happily in the fridge for quite a while and freeze nicely for soup. As for the beets, I still can’t stand them, so I’m unloading them on friends.
There wasn’t any asparagus this year, and very little spinach; no spring herbs; very few strawberries. The weird rain pattern and temperature extremes haven’t been friendly to the plants. But I’m still hoping for some decent tomatoes in a couple months, and of course there will be no shortage of okra in August….
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