Lines and Circles

We live in a highly literate world, the written word is everywhere, you need to be able to read to engage in society fully.  I love reading, I always have a book on the go.  Cameron loves reading too, he used to leave a trail of books around the house so I could tell where he had been.  We both started our reading learning at around the age of five, Alice turned 11 a month or so ago and reading is still very much a work in progress for her. 

It has been a long, slow, learning journey for her and for me, one that we are still working at.  I love that my children learn in completely different ways, that they are interested in completely different things, but Alice's difficulties in learning to read has laid bare to me that sometimes these difficulties are made so much harder when they are trying to gain a skill that we place a lot of value on in our society.  I am always so saddened when I hear about children who are not given the support that they really need to learn this skill that we place so much emphasis on.  Learning to read later than the 'required' age, which should not even be a thing. should not be seen as a negative, we all learn in our own way and given that reading is a skill that we place such importance on, we should be encouraging children and helping them to learn to read by considering their needs and how they learn.

I remember when Alice was about five she asked me to help her to learn to read.  It was the first thing she had ever asked help with learning, looking back, hindsight always makes things seem obvious, I should have realised by the way that she was asking that she was frustrated that she couldn't work it out, working things out was something she had been for some time, and still is, exceptionally good at.

I want you to imagine, for a moment, that you come across an object that you are not familiar with what might you do to work out what it is?  Might you pick it up and feel it, look at it from all sides.  Might you leave it where it is and walk around it looking at it from all sides.  What if you could move it around in your head, seeing it from all sides without actually touching it or moving it?   You might think that is not possible and nor would I had I not read that this is a skill.  I should have realised that Alice had this skill when she played the game in the photo above.  It is aimed at age 8 +, she was five when she first played it with my brother and I.  We played it four times and she won every time, this wasn't us letting her win, between us we couldn't beat her.  She could hold one of those tiles in her hand and turn it round in her head, rather than moving it around in her hand, to work out where to put it, she also played with strategy which is a whole other post.  I wished I had realised at the time how key this skill was to her difficultly in being able to read.  The ability to move something round in your head is a wonderful skill if you are trying to build, make or design something, work out how something mechanical works or fix a problem, it is however hopeless if you do the same with words.  

After Alice's initial request I used some of the resources that I had put together for Cameron to support him when learning to read.  I soon realised that she was not ready for those yet and I needed to come up with a completely different method to help her.  Those resources relied on her knowing her letters which she had yet to master so I started with that.  I created a story for each letter and using a variety of resources we slowly made our way through the alphabet, she created her own alphabet book with words, pictures and stories that she dictated to me and I wrote out for her.  Once she had mastered those we started to put them together and that is when things started to get harder for the both of us.  I couldn't fathom how she could read a word fluently one day and then have no idea what it was the next.  It took me a long time to realise that she was reading words backwards or jumbling the letters up like a she was making anagrams with them as she was reading.  We needed another pause so that I could work out how to help her next and she could have a rest.  Reading was exhausting for her.

It was around this time that I started to wonder if she might be dyslexic.  I knew very little about it except that it was a label given to those that had reading issues.  I headed to my local library to see whether there were any books that I could educate myself on how to help Alice.  I was fortunate to find many and one in particular was so good that I bought a copy for our shelves.  It had a suggestion for a test that you could try and then an exercise based on the results of the test (none of which involved reading).  They sounded so far fetched to me that I wasn't sure they could possibly work, but I thought nothing ventured, nothing gained.  The exercise would give Alice a means to stop the letters in words dancing around when she reached a word she couldn't read.  This book had bought to my attention something that I had failed to notice that she would reach a word she didn't know, pause try to work it out and after that word she would have difficult continuing but she managed it at a slower pace, by the time she reached a second or third word that she could not read she would not be able to read anything else.  The book call this a threshold of confusion where disorientation has set in as the symbols/letters have become so distorted that they are no longer understandable.  

The book also suggested that she may have a picture for every word, in fact some dyslexics think in pictures instead of words.  Words such as house, dog, car, tree are easy to create pictures of in our heads, the, and, if, of, other, just and many more the picture is not quite so easy.  I have established that this is how Alice sees the world and how she reads words.  This also means that every time she comes across a new word it is a complete mystery to her until she has created her own picture for it.  Can you imagine that?  How difficult that makes reading?  How exhausting that would make reading?  It is hard for those of us that read to imagine this isn't it?

We are now at the stage where Alice will pick up books and read them to herself, they need to ones with a basic typeface, those really flowery typefaces are an absolute no no, and with few paragraphs on a page for now.  Her absolute preference for learning is through combined visual and audio, the internet has been a life saver.  We spend time together searching for things that she is interested in, which we usually watch together, as they are often of interest to me too.  She still loves being read to and it gives me such pleasure to read chapter books to her that would take her months if not years to read.  

I do hope there is time when she can read without getting exhausted, I feel sure that time will come at some point.  Throughout the six years since she asked me to help her learn to read, all her learning has been driven by her and I am always in awe of her determination to master this seemingly to her at times, impossible task.  She is not ashamed to admit that she cannot read that well and will always ask for help when she needs it, another really useful skill that I feel sure will be useful to her in the future.

When I started home education nearly eleven years ago, I had no idea where that would take us.  It has been a wonderful journey and I have learnt more than I could ever have imagined.  What more could I ask for?

Around Here

Well that was a long break!  I hadn't intended to pause quite so long between posts but life has been busy trundling along and blogging has very much taken a back seat.

Inspired by this lovely blogger I have been doing some planning.  I usually think ahead to our next project(s) but these past few weeks I have planning much further ahead.  She planted a seed a while ago now when she blogged about planning for a whole year at a time.  When I first read the post I thought it would never work for us, but the thoughts stayed with me and so I found myself sitting down and planning a whole year for Cameron.  At the moment it is mostly just a framework, I have organised the first six weeks and will work on the next six soon, with our Advent project that will take us to Christmas.  I spend quite a bit of time each weekend planning the following week and whilst I will still have to do a little each week I am hoping it will reduce the time I need to spend.  In a way I had already started to do this as the work I am doing with Alice at the moment we started back at Easter and it will take us up to Advent.  I will plan her next year in early 2017.

We have been enjoying lots of lovely books recently.  I read a chapter book to them both every lunchtime, it always needs to be suitable for them both and is often aimed at Alice rather than Cameron, to balance things up for him I also read them a different book each at night.  We are on Swallows and Amazons for Cameron and the Little House in the Big Woods for Alice, these are both my old copies from my childhood, the latter I bought when I was seven the former when I was twelve.  It has been lovely to revisit these old favourites.  I am reading a fascinating History book myself, about the social history of the Home during the different periods of prehistory.  The author is an archaeologist who has been working on this period for many years, I have read other books by him and have enjoyed them.  I am glad I found this on the shelves of my library.

Last Friday I had intended to write a daybook post, the in the kitchen and around the house categories would have made interesting reading on that day.  I had taken delivery of a big food order from a wholesale company part of which was frozen.  We have a large chest freezer in our garage which was in desperate need of some attention, it is not it was full but there was not much space due to the large quantity of ice that had built up inside.  In order to be able to get the vegetables, fruit and butter in there I needed to empty it and scrape out the ice.  Have you ever emptied your freezer and found unexplained objects in there, perhaps it is just me, I think I went through a period of not labelling things thinking I would remember what they were!  The ice came out easily, not really knowing what to do with it I put it in the bath to defrost!  The unexplained objects were put in boxes in the kitchen to defrost along with several very old (2011) bags of fruit, we had a delicious blackberry and apple crumble for tea that night.  Now that the frozen items were dealt with I could check the rest of the order off which resulted in big bags of food on the hall and porch floors.  Cameron slept through all these goings on (he was very tired after a long cycle ride with friends the day before) and when he did he was most bemused by the ice in the bath and the food all over the floor!

We visited a local pick your own recently, it is a place that I have driven past numerous times but have never actually been too I wanted to take a look round to see what it was like.  It was a really wet day and we were the only ones there, but we came home with four kilos of plums and plans to visit again, hopefully to pick apples and pears in a few weeks time.  I have had a go at fermenting some of the plums, not sure how they will turn out but they smell good!  The emptying of the freezer made me realise how many blackcurrants I have in there so I have used a kilo to try my hand at blackcurrant vinegar.  We have tasted this but have never made it before, I will let you know how I get on.  The weather here has been cool and wet for the past three weeks but that has gone now and it has warmed up considerably and everything is drying out.  I have been wanting to pick some comfrey leaves to make into a salve, I already have some plantain leaves soaking in oil to do the same with them, but they need to dry when you pick them.  I think that will be this weeks job as long as the weather holds!

I would like to say a huge thank you for the wonderfully supportive comments on the recent post I wrote about home education.  They were very comforting to read, thank you all so much.

The ingredients of books

I listened to a book review recently, the title and the author were mentioned at the beginning it was one I was sure I had read, but as I listened I became less and less sure it didn't sound like the same book at all.  It was the same with an adaptation, also on the radio, of a book I read in the 80s so my memory is faded and I was a very different person then.  I now want to reread both these books to see how I view them now.

I studied English at A Level* the class sizes were very small (around ten pupils) there was no where to hide and I dreaded being asked any questions.  I just didn't get the analysis that was going on around me.  I couldn't tell you then or now why I favour one book over another any more than I can with music.  I have often pondered this, I read books to enjoy them not to tear them apart and look for meaning.  But listening to that recent review has bought home to me something that I have often thought, that when we read we do so through ourselves, through our personal experiences.  So how we are and how we think has a bearing on what we make of a book and its narrative.

I am not usually one for choosing a book by its cover.  When I was a teenager I tried reading many books by a publisher who were redefining publishing at the time, and still do to this day.  A series of books with distinctive covers.  I can't remember why I decided to read any of them, but I suspect it had something to do with them being 'a book to be seen reading', even if, as it was in my case, you don't understand a word of them.   I am sure like everyone I am guilty of choosing books by the covers, sometimes they are good.  I recently pulled a book off the library shelves simply because it stood out.  It was a good find.  A remarkable book.  The character descriptions were wonderful, the descriptions of place were so detailed, I was drawn in to the story and felt as if I was a watching the narrative going on me.  A book I did not want to end.  I am so glad that the publisher has reissued other books by this author, I am going to seek them out.  A lucky find in this case.

I read chapter books to my children.  I choose carefully.  I have a big age gap and I want it to appeal to them both.  Cameron is more than capable of reading each of them to himself, but having a book read to you is different.  Knowing how difficult it can be to find a book you want to read I never know how my choices with be received.  I found a secondhand copy of book by an author I have read as an adult, I had no idea that he had written for children too.   I have read two, by this author, to them now, both of them thought provoking to adults and children alike.  I love how when you read and discuss a book with children they raise issues that you have never considered, these books raised more discussions than most we have read and enjoyed together.

I go through phases of struggling to find books I really want to read.  I am a mono reader, if that is such a word, I need to focus on one book at a time.  When I am dipping in an out of several different books at once, I know I am in a struggling phase.  I am doing that at the moment.  A story that I am enjoying but am not drawn into, I am an observer and not wanting to engage.  Perhaps that engagement is what makes a book a good one for me.  The writing however is sharp and descriptive, but the books I mentioned at the beginning are tempting me, given how precious my reading time is I may not make it to the end.

So what make a good book for you, do you know?

********************

*A Levels are exams that are taken in England and Wales at the end of your school career, usually around the age of eighteen having studied for them for the previous two years.  It is usual to study three, sometimes four subjects.

Thank you to all of you who commented on my last post, it was wonderful to read what inspires each of you to blog.  A huge variety of reasons, which is what makes blogging such a great platform for sharing.

Creating

I am getting near to the birthday season, I need to make lots of presents between now and the end of May.  Perhaps I should rephrase that I don't need to, I could buy them, but homemade presents are so much better don't you think?  May feels like a very long time away, not least because I am hoping that the temperatures outside will be considerably warmer than they are now.  The last birthday is in fact 72 days away, I know this because it is Alice's and she asks me almost every day how many days............

So, I was hoping that I would have some sewing to show you this week but most of it is work in progress, either in my head or as a paper pattern.  I find that my making and finishing always comes in fits and starts.  It always has to fit round everything else I do, I am under no illusion on that one, but when I have lots to make it feels like it won't happen in time.  Then suddenly it all comes together and it's all done.

So I have lots of part finished projects including some knitting for Alice.  I decided I wanted to knit her a cardigan for her birthday and remembered that I had some yarn left over from a project I knitted her a few years ago.  I didn't have that much yarn left and struggled to find a pattern I liked which used such a small amount of yarn.  I realised that I didn't really have enough for a cardigan but when I found a pattern for a fairisle jacket in a book in the local library I knew that I had found the solution.  I don't have enough yarn for full length sleeves, in fact I am not even sure I have enough yarn for any kind of sleeve but I am sure I can sort something out.........

I had lots of ends of balls leftover from other projects which all match together perfectly, don't you think?  The downside of this pattern is it is knitted in the flat which is not really my favourite, all that sewing up at the end.  But given that this is my first fairisle knit I didn't think it would be wise to try and convert this to a knit in the round pattern, one thing at a time, eh?

I have been reading a history of astronomy trilogy which was a fascinating read, the science was easy to understand and I loved the social history interwoven into the story.  I can thoroughly recommend all three books.  I am sticking with history for my next read, I am rather liking this genre at the moment and they are easy to find in my library, they helpfully have a small sticker of a castellated tower on the spine.  I have just started this book so I have yet to decided whether I like it or not but I do love this period of history so I am hoping I will.  Set in the 1400s it follows the lives of two remarkable women, both called Margaret who are pulling at the strings of succession during the War of the Roses.  I am a few chapters in and am making good use of the helpful list of key characters at the front of the book.

Mismatch

Have you ever started on a project and then realised part way through that the materials you are using are not quite right?  Time is precious, I always strive to use it wisely although this ideal is not always the case!

A while ago now I bought three skeins of yarn, they were a bargain that was too good to miss.  The yarn I buy is usually for a specific project this yarn was not and it sat for a long while in my yarn drawer waiting for the the right time and the right project.  I found one, a pattern knitted in the flat that I was converting as I knit to in the round.  I had read the pattern itself very carefully working out how I could convert it, somehow the bit about the materials did not get read.  First time round I used a needle size that gave me an item that would have just about fit my five year old.  Second time round I knit as far as the collar and as I worked out what to do next I realised that I was not going to have enough yarn.  I knew that deep in my heart I needed to pull it out but it sat in a bag for a few weeks whilst I accepted it, other projects got knitted up whilst I ignored it.  One evening whilst watching a BBC Documentary I sat and pulled out all the stitches*, it was dark to ease the pain.  I then cast on another pattern which I do have enough yarn for, it grows slowly a row here, a row there.  I am adapting again this is my third make with this pattern somewhere in between the last two in size.  It is interesting to note the annotations I made first time round this was the first pattern I knit from Ravelry at a time when I was not able to count my rows of knitting with confidence.  How time changes things, perhaps frogging my stitches will also become easier.  I hope this will be ready for the spring when the warmer weather arrives, we have snow at the moment so I think I will have plenty of time.

Apart from making sure I am reading knitting patterns correctly I have been reading some historical fiction lately.   We are doing a topic on the solar system this month and I thought it would be interesting to do some learning of my own too.  I found, quite by chance on the library shelves, the first book in a trilogy on the history of astronomy based on historical facts.  I read the first book last month and have now started the second.  The first is set in the early 17th Century during the lives of Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei, the second Sensorium of God in middle of the 17th Century and the scientists, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley.

_________________________

*I am hoping to use all the time spent rewriting the pattern to knit this again in the future perhaps with some purple yarn, you are never too young for purple.......

Joining Ginny

Words

I am so lucky to live in a country where words are freely printed.  This month I have read a lot of them, from a wide variety of different books, some I have loved, some I have been left wondering why I read to the end.  Do you do that too?  Somehow it feels wrong not to finish a book I have started which I am not hating but not really enjoying it either.  Perhaps it is just me........

I started the month with a self published book that was written about an area near to where I grew up.    A Handful of Straw by Mary Rensten centres around a small village in the early 1700s where an old woman is accused by other villagers of being a witch.  The accusations eventually lead to a trail.  It was a fascinating book, not just because of the familiarity, to me, of some of the places mentioned but because it was a window into a world of the past.  There were many wonderful details in the narrative which were glimpses into what life was like for some at this time.  The connections, thoughts, beliefs,  conditions were all mentioned in some detail.  The novel is based on a trial that did take place and many of the characters actually lived at that time they are joined in this novel by some that are fictional.

My random finding of books in the library occasionally turns up a real treasure, I picked up Secrets from Chuckling Goat by Shaun Nix Jones because I was intrigued by the title.  It was a fun, interesting and at times thought provoking read, an American city girl who finds true love, in her forties, with a Welsh farmer.  The book is written like a diary, and is based on the authors own diary although when you read it you wonder how she found the time to keep a diary on top of everything else she was doing.  There were many things in this book that struck a chord with me.  Her writing about how were are loosing touch with nature, how import it is to make the time to grow food and cook, bake and preserve it ourselves,  the importance of real food to nourish and to keep our health.  The cycles of nature, producing compost to nourish our soils, to growing our own food which we eat and produce compost.  There is also interesting discussions on milk, kefir and sourdough.  There are recipes and a happy ending after a nasty health scare.  A lovely read!

I have a few unread book on my shelves, one in particular that I am not sure how I came to acquire but it has been there for a few months waiting to be read.  Letters to the Midwife is a collection of letter and unpublished writing to by and from the author of the incredibly successful books that started with Call the Midwife, Jennifer Worth.  I have only read part of her first book, dipping in and out randomly reading chapters.  Its not that I don't like it or I find it an overwhelmingly difficult subject matter but that I have my own memories that make reading it hard.  The author Jennifer Worth was someone who was very influential in my life when I was growing up.  I visited her house every week in term time for years.  If you have read the blurb in the front of the books you will know that after leaving nursing she turned to music and became a music teacher.  She lived (until she died) five minutes from the house I grew up in, she taught my mother to play the piano my siblings and I would play elsewhere in her house during the lesson.  Later I had lessons too which only stopped when I left home at eighteen.  She introduced me to many composers and their music through my lessons and the concerts that she would take me and a small band of other pupils too on regular basis. I came across her first book when I was pregnant with my second child, my midwife was reading it, I couldn't quite believe it was the same person but the photos in the book confirmed it.  I thought about writing to her and am sorry now that I never did, but others did and this is a delightful book of correspondence.

I have never been one to read books that are labelled as bestsellers or have won awards, I have always been rather put off by the hype.  Nominated for an award (the Booker) for her first book Clare Morrall is not an author I have read before, but if you are nominated for an award then your books must be worth reading, wouldn't you think?  So I tried one of them, The Language of Others some of the writing in this book was good, but not good enough, for me, to outweigh the rather lame plot.  I found it rather dull, despite this I still read to the end.........

Reading a book that is not what you expected is rather a knock to one's confidence, it makes me wonder at my ability to choose books in the library, so I was naturally hesitant to start the other book I had chosen at the same time.   So when I started to read it and find that it is in written in dialect, Scottish dialect to be precise, I was lost for words.  The last book I read in dialect was Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, it took me forever to read it.  But I found myself loving the dialect (this is not book to read with constant interruptions) and once I had been reading it for a while, it was hard to put this down.  Gone are the Leaves by Anne Donavan is a coming of age story set largely in Scotland in a period unspecified but is probably medieval.  The main character has a wonderful way of looking at the world, at odds with the rest of society, she is unlearned (in the eyes of her contemporaries) but yet, to me, so wise.  The story moves to Europe with twists and turns that had me hooked.  It was well worth persevering with the dialect which was singing to me, in its beauty, by the end.

In some way I came full circle with the last book I read this month.  A novel set in the 1600s, a work of fiction based on historical fact.  I have been planning a topic for March based around the solar eclipse that will take place on the 20th of the month.  It will be no surprise to me if you didn't know there is going to be an eclipse.  The best place to view it, a full eclipse,  will be the Faroe Islands, further south it will be a partial eclipse, around 90% in the North of the UK and around 80% in the South.  As the UK media is south centric it has yet to be deemed newsworthy.  Excuse my wee rant but sometimes it feels like there is little of interest to the media north of Birmingham.  Now where was I?  Ah yes, a topic based round the solar eclipse.  As well as finding learning ideas for the children I thought it would be fun to learn too so I had a hunt in the library to find any books that were were based on the solar system and/or astronomy.  I ended up with a wonderful book, The Sky's Dark Labyrinth by Stuart Clark which is part of a trilogy starting in the 1600s with Kepler and Galileo, as well as being an interesting read about life at this time it was also a fascinating introduction to the history of astronomy.  Both of these scientists were making amazing discoveries but they were at odds with the times.  The Sun revolved around the Earth, as set down in the Bible and believing the opposite was a heresy punishable by being burned alive.  I am really looking forward to reading the next book about Sir Issac Newton and Sir Edmund Halley, I hope the library has a copy............

...if not then I am going to read something completely different which I have been meaning to read for a while Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.

__________________________

I was interested to note that many of the books that I read this month were from very small publishing houses.  Perhaps I should be making note of this when choosing books as they were ones that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Linking with Laura

Reading

I took part in a challenge last year, one that involved reading 300 different picture books in a year.  When I decided to join in I didn't give much thought to whether it fitted in with how we read books, having realised that it didn't really I decided to carry on with it to see, out of interest, how many we would read.  All the books we read were chosen from our shelves or of those of the library by the children themselves.  We didn't quite reach 300 but we got surprisingly close.  What the challenge did show me was how sporadic our reading* has become in a week.  Whilst I would always expect that we would read more in some weeks than others there were many weeks when we read little or nothing despite it being an ordinary week at home.  I am still mulling over how to include it into our rhythm or whether I should just continue to let it happen when my children want it to, this would be on top of the reading that we do at lunchtime our chapter book and stories and poems related to our learning.

My youngest would like to learn to read, she has mentioned it several times over the last few months. My eldest never made such a request he 'taught' himself to read and now spends a large part of his time reading.  My children learn very differently, as I would expect them to, they have very different characters.  I read to my eldest as much as I read to my youngest but he liked talking about the story, the pictures, me pointing to the words as I read them none of which my youngest wants or enjoys.  I know that reading books to children is part of them learning to read but there are other things I can do to enable her learning if she wants me to.

My eldest learnt a lot from a programme, Alphablocks he watched it extensively and exclusively at this age (5.5), my youngest does so occasionally.  I made my eldest a set of road signs which we took out on journeys, they have either one letter or word on, we have looked at these but have yet to take them out in the car.  I also made a set of labels of words of familiar household objects which I have stuck to the object.  She has been very interested by this idea and has been 'reading' these labels on and off over the last few weeks.  She has also been asking about words that she finds all over the place.  When I tell her about a new, to her, letter she will go and find more.  Slowly she is adding to her list of letters she can identify, at her pace.

I have a set of picture cards which along with a board of letters (like a lotto board) we can use for sound development and the lovely game I-spy.  We have magnetic letters on our fridge which my eldest didn't really make use of and my youngest is not that interested in either maybe now I could remove them, they do drive me mad!  I have thought about making cards with each letter on using a tactile material for the letter, has anyone else used these?  I would need to come up with some activities for introducing them, if you have any ideas...............I like the look of this book and this book but have not seen inside them both to know which would be the most suitable, if at all.  This is a journey that I am excited about, I thought it would be a while before she was interested.  It could also be that whilst she aspires to read she is not ready for it yet.  We will see!

I have realised by writing all this down that I did actually 'do' a lot more than I had thought to enable my eldest to learn to read.

* | * | * | * | *

* my eldest can read independently so I am really talking about the reading I do to and with my youngest child who is not reading as yet.

Aftermath

There are some world events that are difficult for those who were not alive at the time to comprehend.  I wrote of this last month after reading Citadel by Kate Mosse a book set during WWII.  What anyone witnessed or lived through at that time I cannot begin to understand along with the continued effect in the years that followed.  I finished a book this month which tackles this subject.  It is the third book in a trilogy, a common theme amongst my reading of late.  The Summer Garden by Paullina Simons follows a young couple as they forge a new life in the US after the war.  The first two books in the trilogy, The Bronze Horseman and Tatiana and Alexander are set during the war and follow the couple during those years.  I have been amazed that some of the reviews I have read about this last book criticise it for 'spoiling' the relationship between the main characters.  How anyone could live through the events such as they have, and most likely millions of others despite this being a work of fiction, and not be effected by I am baffled by these comments.  This book takes this subject head on and deals with it very well and quite believably, it is an area that is not much written about as few wish to talk about it or discuss it, a fact which has most likely led to further problems in itself.

Hace you ever had that feeling, when someone has given you some bad news, that the carpet has been pulled right out from under you feet and you are watching the world carry on whilst you seems to have temporarily grounded.  This is the central premise of 70% Acrylic 30% Wool By Viola Da Grado a book which has nothing to do with knitting.  The central character, Camilla, learns at the start of the book that her father has died.  Her mother in her grief ceases to talk or care for herself so Camilla, who had just left for university returns to care for her.  They communicate with looks and body language.  Camillia slowly unravels (the only parallel with the title) she meets Wen with whom she falls in love, he teaches her Chinese but is unable to reciprocate.  The relationship unravels her further until in the end she has seemingly changed places with her mother, who has found a way to move on.  Despite its gloomy and slightly depressing nature I really enjoyed this book, it is not meant to be a work of joy.  It was marred by one, unexpected, reason.  This book is written in Italian and has been translated by an American Publisher.  The book is set in Leeds, a Northern English town.  The 'english' is American-English which I have nothing against but it jarred for me in a book set in England.

Another premise that I find it difficult to comprehend the effect of is to live in a country where what you read, write and watch is monitored and censored.  Twilight of the Eastern Gods by Ismail Kadare tackles this very subject.  Although a work of fiction it is based on the authors own experience as a student in Russia at the Gorky Institute of World Literature, I had heard of this institution before I read this book although I cannot for the life of me remember where I came across it.  Whilst he was a student there Boris Pasternak, a Russian citizen, is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his novel Doctor Zhivago.  It had not been published in Russia as it was deemed anti Soviet and a rejection of socialist realism.  I picked this book up in the Library as I thought it sounded interesting. Was it?  Honestly?  Not really, I found it rather disappointing.

The books I pick up to read in the library, where most of my reading material seems to come from these days, are usually chosen from those are closest to the children's section or the books near to where you return books where my library has a quick choice and a new section.  The last book I chose from the new section was one that I thought I would read this month but I had to return it before I had read much as it had been placed on request by someone else, how dare they!  A quick choice book turned out to be one that I had read about on other blogs recently.  Books are a very personal thing, don't you think?  Like the clothes we wear, the films we watch or choose not to, the places we call home, what one person likes will not be liked by another.  I love to read about what others are reading, it is often where I discover a favourite author has a new book out, but don't make a note of the titles, usually, as I prefer to choose books by picking them up and reading a bit first.  The final book I have read this month is Burial Rites by Hannah Kent.  I haven't read a book so fast in ages.   It is compelling, gripping and steeped in history.  I loved the insight into 19th century life in Iceland, harsh though it was.  I loved the fact that it is based on an actual event, though the narrative is mostly fictional.  It is both gentle and harsh at the same time.  Wonderful.

I read a lot this month which has surprised me.  Finding myself without a library book to read when finishing Burial Rites I searched my own shelves for something to read.  I have settled on a non fiction book which is likely to be all I read in October, it is a meaty book.  The Secret Life of Trees by Colin Tudge.  I hope to learn a lot.

Sharing with A Year in Books

Adversity

We are a pretty resilient species us humans, bouncing back whatever the situation thrown at us, I guess we wouldn't be the dominant species on the planet if that wasn't the case.  As the dominant species we seem to have decided that any resources are fair game and are ours for the taking, we are also heavily reliant on many of them including energy in the many forms it takes.  I cannot help feeling, as others have too, that one day the resources will be gone or severely depleted and needing to be rationed.  So what happens then?  Margaret Atwood in her MaddAddam trilogy gives her take on how our world might look in the build up and post an apocalypse of human creation.  In the society she writes about new species have been created both of animals and humans, spliced together from cells from different creatures.  The 'humans' or Crakers as Atwood names them are part human, part animal cells with the creator removing the parts in humans that he perceives are our weaknesses.  This month I read the final book MaddAddam, having read the first book about ten years ago and the second last month.  The world and most of its inhabitants has been destroyed by a disaster of epic proportions created by humans, those that are left have survived because of physical strength and brutality, because they are Crakers and immune to the effects or because they were far enough removed from the disaster at the time it hit.  In the aftermath all are attempting to continue to survive.  One group are particularly successful because they work together and because they are successful at foraging and know what plants can sustain life, can heal and renew.  They have, pre-apocalypse, been living and using these skills in tune with the world of nature and thus continue to survive.  I can't help feeling that at some point in the future, many centuries from now or possibly sooner, it will be the same.

It is also through nature, more specifically flowers, that the main character in The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh makes a connection to the world after a brutal life spent in the care system.  The novel starts with Victoria reaching her eighteenth birthday and having to leave the care system and make her own way in the world, by herself.  Through her love of flowers she finds a job in a florists shop and immerses herself in her work and flowers.  Interwoven into the story is the language of flowers, the history of Victorias first eighteen years of life and her meeting a man who falls in love with her.  It is a love story but one with an interesting twist, I could not put this book down.

When I was young no one ever talked about WWII.  It was not on the history curriculum at school.  It was too recent in the memory of the adults around me, most had lived through it, some had fought in it.  All my knowledge of this period I have gained for myself, slowly over time building a picture which shouts to me exactly why no one wanted to talk about it.  It is incomprehensible and impossible to understand how it was to live at that time.  Some of the literature based on this period is fictional but based on true events which Citadel by Kate Mosse is an example of, again the third book in a trilogy a bit of a pattern in my reading this month it would seem.  I read the first and second books a while ago now and could not remember much, if any, of the detail but it didn't seem to matter.  It is set in Carcasonne and the surrounding area during the last few years of the war, and follows the fortunes of a resistance cell or maquis.  The treachery is hard to stomach, even though it is fictional I have no doubt it is similar to what really happened at the time.  Neighbours watching neighbours.  I was reminded of the words to a beautiful song written by Tommy Sands and although this is about Northern Ireland it is true of any conflict

...But centuries of hatred

Have ears that do not hear

An eye for an eye

That was all that filled their minds

And another eye for another eye

Till everyone is blind...

...But I wonder just how many wars

Are fought between good friends...

The characters in this story are young, at the prime of their lives, their existence which is how they are living is difficult to comprehend.  It was a hard and tough.  Grinding.  As I was reading I couldn't help but be reminded that many in the world continue to live in a similar way.

I am now most of the way through Summer Garden by Paullina Simons, at over 700 pages this is a meaty book, I do seem to have read a lot this month!  When I have finished I have two books that I chose in the library to read, coincidentally both first novels for the authors.  After Me Comes the Flood by Sarah Perry and 70% Acrylic 30% Wool by Viola Di Grado just need to decide which one to read first..............

****************

The Peony can represent shame and to the Chinese is the King of the Flowers, the Orchid love and beauty and the Daisy innocence, loyal love and I'll never tell, although it depends whose language you are reading.

***************

Joining in with Laura over at Circle of Pine Trees for The Year in Books

Moments...

It is the beginning of the month so, once again, I have a slightly different Moments post.  This is a reflection on the month using the goals suggested over on Slow Living Essentials, so here are mine for February and head on over to see what others have been up to.

...nourish we are moving towards warmer longer days in my part of the world.  Despite the fact that it hasn't been that cold, it feels like we have been through a very long winter, grey and wet for weeks on end.  We are now looking forward to the change in the vegetables that the change in the weather will bring, much as we love our root veg you can have too much of a good thing.  Right now we are enjoying the odd salad, thrown together with whatever ingredients we have in our weekly veg bag and in the garden.  This has included a new recipe for us, remoulade, a crunchy and delicious salad made with carrot and celeriac, a great way to use up root veg on a warmer day.  I would usually make stew or soup with celeriac which is not what we want to eat right now!  We had our remoulade with broccoli fritters.

...prepare now that our days are getting warmer (think this is going to be a theme.......) we are having more time out and about which means more picnics.  So that I can throw one together at a moments notice I make sure I always have homemade rolls and bread in the freezer.  I have been making these up during this month and now have a good store ready for those lazy days outside.

...reduce my eldest does not own many pairs of trousers/pants, depending on where you live, and the ones he does own often have holes in the knees.  I have been busy patching a few pairs this month using material from a pair he has grown out of ( and which had a hole in both knees!).  We have also acquired a few old pallets which we have been busy chopping up for kindling ready for next winter, you can never have too much kindling!

...green a couple of years ago I spend much of the year suffering from the symptoms of what I now know is urticaria (hives) and eczema on my hands.  It took me ages to work out what it actually was and what could be triggering it.  There are several triggers which I have now removed some food and some external.  The external triggers meant that overnight I could not use a single item of household cleaning or toiletry products in the house.  They were all carefully chosen to be low impact on the environment and humans but still they contained an ingredient my body found intolerable, Limonene, an essential oil added to all of the products we were using.  So I had to, very quickly, come up with my own.  Two years on we are still using all those 'products' which we make ourselves, only buying toothpaste and washing up liquid neither of which we have been able to satisfactorily make ourselves.  We had several bottles of our original products in the house each containing a small amount which we have slowly been using up, either my husband using them, or me with rubber gloves when my hands are good.  What we have noticed is the smell.  Even though the smell is more natural than most products, they smell really strong to us, my children even commenting 'What is that funny smell' when I was washing the kitchen floor with some of these 'leftovers' this month!

...grow there is not a huge amount growing in my garden as yet, despite the warmer weather during the day we had heavy frosts overnight most nights last month.  I usually wait until April to sow my seeds otherwise the seedlings die of the cold, even in the polytunnel!  I have chitted potatoes, pruned and tidied the garden this month in readiness for sowing.  We are still harvesting last years crops, we have had cabbages, kale and purple sprouting broccoli and in the polytunnel some self seeded, hardy salad leaves, red mustard, corn salad and greens in snow.

...create I have been doing a lot of sewing this month.  A daisy headband for a friend's daughter recovering from major surgery, a purple bag and a fabric bucket there is a tutorial in the post if you wish to make one for yourself. I have also been knitting.  A cardigan which I frogged more stitches than I knitted and a fulled/fellted bowl depending on your take on such things.

...discover I read a wonderful book this month Kith by Jay Griffiths which was an affirmation to me that some of the decisions we have made for our children have been good ones, even though they ver far from the mainstream.  She also talks in this book about having a strong desire, sometimes from a young age, to follow a particular path in life.  This might be the career that you choose or a skill that you can hone and excel at.  Again I feel that she is right and I have been pondering what this has meant to me and the way I have lived my life thus far.  This book, unlike so many on children and parenting, is not lecturing in its tone.  It is an essay, the authors opinion which you can take or leave depending on your own opinion.  It is a book I would recommend all parents to read.

...enhance a couple of months ago I mentioned a dilemma I was pondering over the Scouts in my area.  I have now decided to concentrate on my local Explorer pack and have been much more involved with them since then.  I really enjoy all my time I spend in the company of these wonderful teenagers, it troubles me that they get such a bad press.  Perhaps if those that say such things were to spend more time around teenagers they wouldn't be so negative.  In any section of society there is always those who break the law or who are difficult to get along with but the whole group  are not tarred with that brush.  Teenagers are at a bridge in their lives a transition from childhood to adulthood they need supporting not persecuting.

...enjoy this has to be the warmer, drier days which have enabled us to have some wonderful days out, walking, cycling and bird watching.  Our rhythm has changed with the transition in the season.

*************

....and continuing from my usual moments posts....

...reading Awakening by William Horwood, All About the Bullerby Children by Astrid Lindgren, and these picture books* you can read a short review of them here. 93. The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning, 94. Rats and Mice by Honor Head, 95. The Princess and the Pea by Lauren Child, 96. No Place Like Home by Jonathan Emmett, 97. The Pirates Next Door  by Jonny Duddle, 98. Rita and Whatsit go on a Picnic by 

Jean-Philippe Arrou-Vignod, 99. The Bear in the Cave by Michael Rosen, 100. Boom, Baby, Boom Boom by Margaret Mahy, 101. The Knight, the Princess and the Dragon by Helen Craig, 102. The Talkative Tortoise by Andrew Fusek Peters, 103. This Old Man by Pam Adams, 104. What the Ladybird Heard by Julia Donaldson

*Joining in with 300 Picture Book Challenge

Knitting

Progress is interesting isn't it.  Every Wednesday lots of bloggers come together and write about what they have been making with yarn.  Usually the pictures show more rows of crochet or knitting than previous weeks, a work in progress is a project that is getting nearer the end, or is it?  What about the project that grows very slowly, or grows a bit shrinks a bit, grows a bit, stalls a bit, is that progress too?

For the last few weeks I have been sharing one project, my Shalom, which is doing just that.  I knit a bit, frog a bit, knit a bit more, frog a bit more.......and yet I am making progress.  Frogging, the art of ripping out stitches, is often seen a negative part of a project, a sign of a mistake but if we were to turn this on its head and view it positively what is it now?  Learning, improving skills, progress.  So my shalom as pictured here is not to stay, I have knitted a lot of rows this week but it needs frogging again I am just debating by how much.  I had spent all my time ensuring that the front of the cardigan looked right, the front as the pattern is written is not meant to meet, I wanted to be able to button the cardigan all the way down.  What I had neglected was the back, when I tried it on a couple of days ago I realised that the back was flapping about like a flag in the wind.  I was also a little perturbed  at the amount of yarn I had left, this project seemed to be eating up yarn at an incredible rate there was not going to be any left for the sleeves.  Not surprising really as I was knitting up a garment for two and as I am not proposing on mutating any time soon there is little call for that round here.  So now I am pondering my next move, progress it is, if a little different!

I have been busy, in the meantime, knitting up a bowl.  The pattern can be found here.  It is fulled or felted depending on your take on such things.

It would of course be rather odd to read a book by flitting about between the chapters, depending on the book, it may make no sense.  So my progress in reading has been forward through a book, an excellent one in fact.  I am nearing the end of Kith by Jay Griffiths, but I am sure I will return to it again and again.  Her take on childhood and all its many facets is inspiring, thoughtful and, for me, reassuring.  She laments the loss of so many aspects and offers her own explanations of why this may have happened.  What she doesn't do is preach or suggest what we should be doing.  This is her essay, her opinions and she leaves you to decide for yourself whether you agree or not.

As it's Wednesday I am joining in with Tami and Ginny head on over to see some progress!

Knitting

My hands have been very busy this week, mostly engaged in DIY with a little knitting on the side.  I have been sanding and painting architraves, door ones.  To look at my knitting you would think that there has been no progress on last week and physically there hasn't really.  I am good with that.  I finished the twisted rib and started on several rows of stocking stitch before deciding it looked odd, the twisted rib needed a garter stitch edge to complete it before starting on the stocking stitch.  So I ripped out the six or seven rows I had knitted and added in a garter rib.  I am liking this process, it is slow and steady but I feels good a stepping stone to designing my own patterns.....one day.......maybe!

I have been reading the wonderful Kith this week.  When you choose to parent differently from others it is sometimes hard to stay on that path, the draw to not have to 'justify' your decision making because it is different can be strong.  When you read a book like this, that confirms your decisions are good ones, it makes me happy to be forging the path that we do.

*************

The monochromatic picture this week is at odds with my world at the moment.  Outside my window the sun is shining, the sky is blue and life is good.  The grey world of winter has gone.....

It is Wednesday so joining in with Tami and Ginny for sharing of yarny projects.

Knitting

I have not been knitting much these past few weeks, after the mad rush to get my Christmas presents and then my mums birthday present knitted up I am having a wee rest.  Only picking up my knitting every now again knitting the odd row, progress is slow but I happy with that for now.   I have two projects on the needles and no urge to cast on any more for now.  My shalom is nearly to the point where I have finished the twisted rib and then I need to do so more measuring to work out how many more rows, if any, I need to do before dividing for the sleeves.  I am liking this type of knitting, not just following the pattern but working with the pattern to divise my own version of it, making it mine.

What I have been doing a lot of this week is reading.  I have finished one book, read two from cover to cover and started a fourth.  I ordered my own copy of Mathematics Minus Fear and finished up reading it early this week, I have loved this book from start to finish, there were lots of maths problems to solve on each page which were great for reminding me how to do things!  I have read a lot about Life after Life by Kate Atkinson and really wanted to read it for myself.  I have loved all the books of hers that I have read, which is most of them, bar one Human Croquet.  Life after Life was a wonderful read, it did take me a while to get into it, but once I had I could not put it down.  It seems like a strange concept for a novel, the life of one person, Ursula Todd, which she lives over and over again from her birth to retirement, but it works.  Dearest Rose by Rowan Coleman was a completely different book, tackling the difficult subject of domestic abuse.  I have really struggled to read books of this nature, particularly when children are included, since becoming a mother.  A friend of mine has recently walked away from an abusive marriage, I had no idea that it was.  This has helped me to understand why I didn't know and a bit more on why she may have chosen to stay as long as she did, I have never judged her for this I just needed to understand for myself.  I cried at the end of this book, it has left me with so many thoughts which I am now trying to process.  I am now reading another book, Kith by Jay Griffiths, which I have read lots about, this has been sat in my waiting to be read pile since Christmas and I can't think why I waited so long.  I am a few chapters in and it is a wonderful read.

So what about you what have you been doing this week?  Any knitting or reading?  Joining in with Tami for sharing of yarn works in progress head on over to see what others are making….

Knitting

My sock knitting is just not happening this year, first of all I cast on these but I decided the yarn didn't go with the pattern, then last week I shared these.  I had noted that the cables can make the socks tight so I cast on more stitches as suggested and went up a couple of needle sizes to make sure they fitted.  I had got to the heel flap and thought I would try them on to see whether I needed to make them any longer and I couldn't get them on, I couldn't even get them onto my youngest's feet, they might fit a baby......I have put them to one side whilst I decide what to do.  In the meantime I have cast on a cardigan for myself using the wool I frogged from a project I knitted ages ago and never wore.  I am going to add sleeves this time and have been using these notes to work out the pattern, so far so good....

I have read another book this week which I really enjoyed.  The Beautiful Truth by Belinda Seaward follows the journey of Catherine as she travels to Krakow to find out about her father who disappeared when she was child and in doing so makes discoveries about herself.  The story moves between war torn and modern day Krakow.   I particularly enjoyed this book as I have travelled to Krakow myself, the places described were familiar to me.  I am back reading Mathematics Minus Fear, I am away at the moment and only bought two books with me, I should've bought more!

Oh, and before I forget I finished the shawl and shared pictures of it here, my mum loved it!

Joining in with Tami and  Ginny for sharing of yarny works in progress head on over to see what others are busy with.....

Knitting

Usually when I have a frantic knitting time to get something made by a deadline, and I don't have the time to knit anything else in the meantime, I can't wait to cast on or get on with another project.  I did manage to finish knitting the shawl which I shared last week, I am still blocking it.  I was concerned about finishing off with kitchener stitch, it looks ok but it is not the best of finishes.  I think it was more about the provisional cast on than my kitchener stitch.  It looks a little better now that it is blocking, if I don't try these things I won't get better at them, I think I know what I would do differently next time!  So having the shawl off the needles I thought I would be eager to start the next thing but I found I didn't want to and had a break from knitting for three days.  I spent that time frogging a cardigan I knit ages ago and hardly wore because it looked awful on me.  I now have a big ball of wool which I have decided I will knit into another one of these with sleeves this time.  I have to confess I did also spend some of that three days searching on Ravelry to check there were no other cardigans I wanted to knit......I have now cast on another project a sock for me.  Those of you who visit here regularly may recognise this yarn as I have shared it before, I cast on one of these but frogged it as I decided it was the wrong pattern for this yarn.  I think this pattern suits this yarn.

I have also been reading a lot this week too.  I picked up two new books in the library when I visited on Thursday and have read one of them already.  The Still Point by Amy Sackville was a wonderful read that I could not put down.  The events in the book take place over the course of a day.  A hot summers day.  They are interwoven with events from one hundred years before in the Arctic and the old house that Julia, one of the main characters, is now living in and which has belonged to her ancestors for many generations.  She is trying to make sense and order in the belongings that are cluttering the house she has inherited and makes a totally unexpected discovery.  Julia's husband meanwhile is wrangling with difficult decisions of his own.  I read this authors other book Orkney last year and loved that too.  Next up I am going to read The Beautiful Truth by Belinda Seaward.

Knitting

It has been all about a shawl this week again, I am getting closer to finishing now, despite having to rip out three rows this week.  Somehow I had managed to knit two stitches together without realising it, it was in the middle of a section of knitting the same stitches right through the row, when I got to the patterned part, well it wouldn't work because my stitch count was out!  I managed to rip it out and get the 300 odd stitches back on the needle quickly this time and get back to where I was.  I now have  just eight rows to go which doesn't sound like much but I have 348 stitches and still increasing so each row takes about half and hour!  I would like to have this off the needles by the weekend so I have time to knit the provisional cast on and block it.  This is my first time knitting with a provisional cast on and I opted to have them sat on a cable wire rather than spare yarn, the pattern requires kitchener stitch to finish them off which last time I used I made a complete hash off, I am hoping I don't this time as it will be really obvious.  Just need some quiet time to concentrate!

I finished reading Consolation last night and loved it.  I read about half the book in the last two days as I could not put it down, I didn't want it to end.  I would love to read more by this author.  I got used to the flitting about in time and between a stream of consciousness, a first or third person narrative, I rather liked this by the end even if it sometimes took me a few sentences to work out which characters the narrative was about.  Now I need to decide what to read next, in the meantime I am going to finish off Mathematics Minus Fear first.

Joining in with Tami and Ginny head on over to see what others are busy making...

Knitting

I have had an up and down week with knitting this week.  I frogged the socks I started, I decided the pattern does not go with the yarn, I am going to make a pair of these instead.  I still want to make a pair using the original pattern just need to find the right yarn!  I have been knitting a present for my mum, the time I have to complete it is running out and the rows just get longer and longer.....
Last night I realised I had made a mistake and had to rip out six rows, six rows I nearly wept.  A few hours work gone in a second, it took me ages to get the stitches back on the needle and get knitting again.  It took me to ages to realise that the root of the mistake was at the end of the previous row, once I got that sorted I was off again but a few rows behind where I wanted to be!  I would like to get this finished by the tenth of next month to give me time to block it properly before we travel to my mums on the fifteenth.  I am trying to knit at least three rows a day in order that I am not knitting in a frenzy in a weeks time!  I hope I can get it done....I am, however, loving this pattern and would love to knit another!

This is a surprise present for a significant birthday my mother is celebrating next month.  When I last visited her I had a sneaky peak in her wardrobe to decide what colour would work for her.  I couldn't find any yarn I liked in my local yarn shops so I resorted to buying online, something I rarely do when I want a specific colour.  It is slightly lighter than my photo, it was hard to get a good one on this grey day we are having, and I was not convinced at first but it has grown on me.  The yarn is from The Natural Dye Studio, a 4 ply yarn called Dazzling in the shade Malsmead a shade that is not available at the moment.

I has taken me a while to get into the book I am reading, Consolation by Anna Gavalda.  It is written in a style I have not read for a while.  It is flits about in time and it is not always clear where I am in time or who the main character is thinking about!  I have got used to it now and am enjoying reading it.

Joining in with Ginny for a sharing of knitting and reading and Tami for yarny works in progress head on over to we what others are up to...