My Pomme de Pin cardigan is so close to being done.  I’m nervous, because this is the part of the project that takes me ages to finish because it’s all the little tedious things.  For knitting, I just need to finish the sleeve cap on the second sleeve, and then I have to assemble it, knit the button band (I haven’t read that far to see the order of finishing), block out the lace so it’s not this little puckering texture as it is now, but the lovely open lace it’s supposed to be.  I haven’t even started looking for buttons for this beauty yet.  I’m hoping to work from my button stash…probably something very simple.

I should be thinking about moving onto my baby-knits.  I’m surprised how much less I’m interested in doing baby knits with this child, because he’s coming in the summer.  It’s a totally different nesting experience having a summer baby as opposed to the fall and winter babies I’ve had the last few times.  I know it will kick in soon.  It might just be after he’s born.  I hope he’s a good baby and lets me knit while he’s eating like Solveig did.  Ingrid wouldn’t share me with yarn so easily.

I finished the best fiction book I’ve read in a long time about a week ago.  It wasn’t a read aloud, it wasn’t a non-fiction book I needed to develop something in my life.  It was just a carefree light fiction that blessed my soul so much.  I haven’t gotten that lost in a book in a few years, where I would hide away every Sunday and try to get as much in as I could.  It was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  If I could find another book just like it, I’d be reading it right now.

But I’m back to my non-fiction stack, and I’m even going to share with you our new read aloud during our morning tea times as well:

I’m reading a pretty deep book from an online bookclub of classical homeschoolers.  Leisure, the Basis of Culture is a mind blowing book on the importance of leisure in our lives.  I was listening to a quote that my pastor read last Sunday from the Barna group, that used the words “leisure” and “amusement” interchangeably.  I think that we have lost the distinction of these words.  In this book Pieper says that the root word of “leisure” is actually the same root as “school.”  It means to ponder, wonder, think deeply about issues.  It’s that down time of processing, studying, learning.  Amusement, in contrast, comes from the root word “muse” which means to think, but with the a- prefix, which means “no.”  So to amuse basically means to “not think.”  It’s being entertained, having someone else think for you.

So this book is about adding “leisure” to our lives, not “amusement,” and like I said, our current culture doesn’t distinguish between the two.  It’s one of those books that was written ages ago, but you feel like he’s addressing current times.  I’m having to go through this book very slowly, and with a pen.

A Circle of Quiet is something I read at night when I need something slightly lighter.  I’ve picked this up and put it down several times in the last few months, and it’s currently picked up again.  I’ve been inching my way through.  Madeline L’Engle is certainly worthy of underlining all over the place as well, and has deep thoughts to share, but really it’s about her writing  life (something so dear to my heart).  It’s full of humor and delights along with the deep thoughts.  How I wish I could sit over tea with her!

Our new read aloud as we finish up the school year is The Father Brown Reader which I recently heard about.  The kids fell in love with this adaptation of Chesterton’s mystery writings about 2 sentences into the first paragraph.  (I normally don’t like adaptations for kids, but this might be the exception.  It’s so well done.)  It’s completely engaging, from my oldest down to my youngest child, and we’ve been reading on average 3 chapters a sitting because they don’t want me to stop reading.  There’s more in this series too, so I think those are going on my school wish list for next year.  Plus, if I can get my kids in love with Chesterton at an early age, I will feel a special accomplishment there.

So tell me friends, what are you knitting and reading these days?

I’ve been in a stash-busting mood.  I’ve also been in a non-thinking-knitting mood.  That means I’m knitting lots of patterns written by other people that I’ve been longing to knit for years.  This week I cast on Francie by Rebekkah Kerner.  This is such a beautiful, well thought out pattern.  It’s interesting but not all-attention-consuming.  The ribs in the sock are winding and gnarling like a tree, and the designer had the book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn  in mind when she was designing it.  (One of my all-time favorite books.)  I love patterns based on literary characters.  It’s like my 2 favorite hobbies hanging out.  Last time I was in the twin cities I stopped by a little yarn shop and was introduced to “Dream in Color” yarn.  I could not leave there without a skein, and picked this lovely, smoky blue.  I intended it for some kind of shawl.  But when I was looking up on Ravelry some great projects using this yarn, this pattern kept coming up.  I hadn’t connected before that this was the yarn used in the original design.

My reading has been limited to books for the kids lately.  In our morning hour, one of our subjects is Shakespeare and we are using How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, which is just so great.  We’ve finished all of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and are now moving to “Twelfth Night” now.  My kids are absolutely loving this unit, possibly more than any unit we’ve done in years.

For our morning tea time, I read aloud a chapter book directed towards the younger kids, but one the older kids would still enjoy.  This year it’s The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.  We read this author last year too and loved her then.  This book does not disappoint at all.  We are all in love with Edward Tulane, and are watching him slowly learn to love as well.

After the little girls go to bed at night, I read a book directed more at the older kids.  Little Britches has been on our reading list for awhile.  This story is told so well of a little boy moving to a ranch and learning to be a rancher, horse man, cowboy…he calls it by various names.  The kids have been begging me at the end of each chapter to read more.  My voice hasn’t been able to hold up to that, as the chapters are a bit longer than the books for the little kids.  But I have to admit, I wish we could too.