Yarn Along

I have set aside Silje’s Ambroise for a bit, and started work on a shrug/cardigan pattern.  This was the pattern wrote and started knitting the sample a few weeks ago, but was stressing over the fact that I had to be stopping all the time due to the fact that the yarn I had picked out was half acrylic, and that makes my arms ache like crazy for some reason.

So after some serious internet shopping, I finally decided to get the yarn “Meteorite” in Shelter by Brooklyn Tweed.  I love using tweed for this project, although the sheen of Madelinetosh would have been perfect as well, but they just didn’t have the perfect brown I was looking for that Brooklyn Tweed had.

I’m reading Down the Long Hills by Louis L’Amour.  When my parents were visiting last summer, my mom and I and some of the kids went to my favorite used book store.  She found this book, and she asked if I remembered this.  Of course I did.  My mom read aloud this book to my siblings and I when I was little.  That may have been my first experience being read aloud a novel, and being on the edge of my seat for weeks.  So we got it so I could read it aloud to my kids too.  I have such good memories associated with this one.

It’s an old western about 2 kids, aged 3 and 7 who are traveling west in a wagon train, and wander off from camp before dawn to hunt down a pet horse before the grown ups notice it was gone.  When they get back to camp with the horse, they find that there had been a massacre, and they are now left alone in the wilderness, with a stallion who is so large that the little boy can’t even mount him by himself.

So I’m reading it before I read it to the kids, since I have such a list of books that we’re going to read aloud at night, I wanted to assess reading level and placement on my master list, but I got sucked in, and now I’m staying up, once again, past midnight every night trying to find out what happens next.

This is why I avoid suspenseful novels: not because I don’t like them, but I love them way too much!

I love how this book paints a picture of the wild west, from perspective of both the settlers and the indians.  I love the self sufficiency of the children, and how they conquer things that the grown ups thought were impossible for kids to do.  I love the relationship with the 7 year old and his father, who he was headed to meet out west, who comes looking for them.  They have spent so much time together that they practically read each other’s brains, and the dad can almost pinpoint what his son will do next, and is the only grown up who believes that this little boy will make it.

I love the relationship between the boy and the horse, how the horse looks out for the boy, even taking on a grizzly to protect him.  (That was the chapter I read last night.  I think my heart has slowed down now…)

Linking up with Ginny’s Yarn Along.