Yarn Along

So, last weekend, I was debating back and forth between which knitting project to bring on the plane. I was fluctuating between 2 of my current projects I’m designing, but in the end, I had the thought.  “Hey, I’m going to be on vacation!  Knit from someone else’s pattern!”  After I made socks for the kids for Christmas (that still don’t have the ends woven in…ahem…) I’ve sort of been on this sock kick, and fell in love immediately with the Irish Oats pattern.  I was honestly expecting on getting more done on the plane, but I forgot the flight was only 2 hours each way.  Most of the time I have a connecting flight, and so I wasn’t expecting such expediency.  So far I’m loving this pattern.  It’s very well written, and of course, I’m using some of my Quince Yarn on stash.  It’s my basic, blue jean, goes with every single pattern yarn.

When I was in Colorado, I bought a shameful number of books for the kids and Knut and I…again.  This is one area of my life where I seriously lack self control.  I’ll share 3 of them here today.

The Green Ember is a book I’ve heard about for awhile now, and I got it for Silje.  She loves her rabbits, and rabbits on an adventure seemed like a really good fit for her.  She was handed the book Sunday night, and by Monday afternoon she came to me frantically saying “Tell me there’s a sequel!  Tell me there’s another one!”  She was so disappointed that this book is relatively new.

We read a lot of classics at our house, mostly because I’ve really been trying to weed out the “candy books” as I call them.  Candy books are the quick, entertaining but not edifying books we find (usually at the library) that take her 30 minutes to read and she forgets what it was about the next day.  They’re not bad/evil, but I’ve learned that they set a level of easy-entertainment attention span for my kids that my kids resisted higher quality books with depth, which I want them to love.  So I started getting rid of them around the house, and stopped bringing them home from the library.  When good quality books are the only ones you can read, your palate for children’s literature changes a bit.

So many modern books are “candy books” in my opinion, but this one was recommended by Sarah Clarkson, and if you know my blog, you know that I haven’t struck out with her recommendations for my kids even once.  Every book she recommends for them has been a huge hit with my kids.  So since we read so many classics, Silje hasn’t really ever had to wait for another book to come out.  What’s out is out.

The rabbits with swords have this story to tell, and you just don’t see new books these days that are this epic.  She’s already started her 2nd read-through.  I think she just wants to hang out with the rabbits in there a little more.

Now, that’s not saying there will be a sequel.  I have no idea. But I posted a picture of her with the book on Instagram yesterday, and the author of the book sent us a message.  I was thrilled.

I got A Time to Keep for the little girls, which is just a precious little book with stunning illustrations and stories of how kids used to play to spur on imagination.  4 year old Solveig loved it, but 2 year old Ingrid kept trying to yank it away from us.  They both love it, and it’s such a pretty book.

Little Red Writing ended up being for Elias, not because it’s at his level to read by himself, but because I thought it would be a good book to have for our homeschooling library.  He loves all things funny, and this book is really funny as the little red pencil goes through an adventure writing a story, and has to go through forests of adjectives, and adventures with adverbs.  It’s full of puns, which is right up his alley, and he laughed pretty hard, and happened to learn many parts of speech and their uses in the meantime.

Linking up with Ginny’s Yarn Along.