I know I’ve been AWOL for the last couple of weeks. I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to finish reading even one book this month. I have been knitting (naturally) because that is something that you can do while watching your siblings play the same game five times in rapid succession. Also, it is easier to abandon my knitting when my nephew decides to take a break from snuggling with his uncle Rueben to drool on me.

Droooooool.

I know. He doesn’t really sit still long enough for me to get a solid shot. That’s him wearing the little girly beret I knit last week, but on him it looks like a super-masculine Rastafarian hat, right?

Today is Rueben’s last day of leave. I’m heading home after work to demand one more hug before  he heads back to a country where 14 more of our guys died on Monday. Fourteen. These are the thoughts that make me a praying girl.  Sorry I haven’t been around, but I have been on the road 12 hours in the last two weeks, taken two days off of work (and put in my full forty hour work week each week anyway) and been wrapped up in family while we can. I will be back soon. Don’t give up on me.

I think this is the first day in a week (or more) that I have not felt sick. Maybe this is because I let myself sleep in until 6:30, maybe this is because I’m actually better, maybe this is because I’ve just decided not to be stressed out today. Who knows.

I finished Glass of Time yesterday. I was surprised by the reviews on goodreads, because they appeared to (in a large part) think that it did not live up to The Meaning of Night. I think that the two as a matched set are so much better than Night all by itself, which is overdone, overwrought and in need of an editor. Edward Glyver is an unsympathetic character whom you’re not sure if you want to strangle or support. When everything comes crashing down at the end of the book, you feel sure that it was what everyone deserved, but if you’re a secret romantic, like me, you kind of wish that just one character got a happy ending.

The Glass of Time we meet Esperanza Gorst, sent on a “great task” and inserted as a lady’s maid to the infamous Lady Tansor, nee Emily Carteret. Some of the plot points are a little obvious to anyone – the identity of Esperanza, Randolph Duport’s love story. On the other hand, some of Cox’s subtleties are glorious and truly masterful – the naming of both Esperanza and Perseus Duport, the introductions of people from the past without seeming overwhelming. I just know that I enjoyed this book so much more than the last. There is a satisfaction to the conclusion of this book that was just lacking in the last one.

Just a note about the author. Cox wrote The Meaning of Night after a diagnosis of cancer that could potentially leave him blind. He followed his dream to publish a novel that he had been marinating for thirty years. This second book is his conclusion to it, published in paperback shortly before his death this past March. So I guess that in some ways, the more solid conclusion found in this sequel is fitting.

I’m highly recommending this book to gothic novel fans.

Today is a day of good things. I believe this.

In church, we read the entirety of the book of Esther in celebration of Purim. As one of my Sunday School kids pointed out, Esther was willing to sacrifice her life for her people just as Jesus was willing to give up His. What a great book of the Bible.

I was asked to be a part of a new ministry at the church, on the ground level of bringing something I care a lot about (adoption and family services) to our church.

I got to talk to one of the ladies at church I would really like to be friends with. Her son is in my Sunday School class and she assisted today. Got a chance to talk to her and am excited because she is just as cool as I thought.

I finished my book this morning (I will post about it later) and it was eighty times more satisfying than its prequel.

Now, I am going to go clean my apartment. Woot!

I know I’m in danger of losing a large portion of my readership. To you, I apologize for this continuing knitting ramble. I apologize. I’m obsessed, and not quite sure what I’m doing. As I stated the other night in my facebook status, I’m intimidated by my own design, a little. I think I could probably make it a lot better if I frogged it all the way again and started over, but I think instead I will finish this one as is and knit a second one to nail down the finer points, like using this on the edges of my wheat pattern to keep the ladders at bay.

Do you want pictures? Will you ask nicely? Will you promise not to steal my ideas and run to press with them? (I’m cracking up over here, in case you’re wondering.) It’s a vest, perhaps a sweater, if I’m in the mood for muddling sleeves on. (Can you just pick up stitches and knit sleeves out? Because I HATE seaming.)

The wheat lace inset.

Don't judge the shape, it looks more dramatic than I think it will come out in the end.

I have never knitted anything like this, so knitting the design from my head might turn out to be a massive mistake, but I haven’t woven in the ends as I go (a trick of a lazy knitter who hates to do it all in one go at the end) to keep my options for frogging the entire project open. What do you guys think? Maybe, if you’re super nice in the comments, the second one I have to knit will land on your doorstep. (No promises, folks, no promises.)

Is anyone else seeing my blog all wonky? I don’t know what happened to mess up the columns. Any brilliant ideas?

I finished the Colonnade shawl the other night, and it took way less time to dry from blocking than the sweater, less layers. I also finished the ribbing to my new project and started the pattern and frogged it…three times. I’ll show it to you if you promise not to steal my idea. I mean, I realize we are no longer in grad school and you are not all out to kill me while promoting your own future. But the only good pictures I have on my (new!) cellphone, and I haven’t figured out how to get them from there to here yet. I majored in three dead languages, so forgive me.

I re-read Sorcery and Cecelia and The Blue Sword instead of continuing on the straight and narrow of new books, but I’m going to count them, because I did, after all read them, even if it means that Atonement (I’m not kidding when I say that I get sick to my stomach in the climax moment of Briony’s lie) and In Cold Blood (a book that is good, even though I only picked it up because of Capote’s relationship with Harper Lee) and Wolves of Calla (I’m having a hard time staying involved with this one) and even the temptation of starting Stephen Carter’s New England White (his mysteries are complex and rich, with the additional result of being super-meaty and involved) stay put sadly on the bedside table. And then, yesterday I walked to the grocery store for some diced chilies and a jalapeno for my Mexican corn chowder and stopped at the bookstore and there waiting on the shelf was one copy of The Glass of Time, by the late Michael Cox, who died earlier this year of cancer, but not before writing a sequel to his first gothic tale The Meaning of Night, and (if the first 150 pages are any indication) outdoing himself in the process. Buffy, you will be happy to know that this one is less tedious to start with and, so far, has less of a hateful narrator to contend with. I even have high hopes of it ending on a less melancholy note. I’ll keep you informed.

That’s my life, folks. A lot of knitting, a lot of work, a lot of reading, and this past week, not much else. Although, fall has arrived full force and I wore sweaters several days this week. :-) Finally.

I’m wearing my favorite orange cabled sweater this morning. No, sadly, not one I knitted, although I have been tempted to take it apart in an attempt to replicate it. Outside, when I stopped at the grocery store on my way in to work, the air is brisk and blustery. There’s no sun, just the grey overcast just starting to turn blue.  It’s the best. Reminds me why September is my favorite month, even if it took it this long to remember itself this year. Yay! Fall!

Finished my purple leftover from the sweater wool shawl yesterday, except for the last bit of weaving ends in and the blocking, which I will do tonight, hopefully. I’m also working on a (nother) new pattern, with some sweet yarn I picked up yesterday at the same time as I picked up my perfect button for the Colonnade. Smoky purple, precisely what I would have been looking for if I knew at the time what I was looking for.

Not a great picture of the shawl with button, but best I've got.

I have been bad at reading recently. The knitting takes up my time, and I’ve been actually doing my 4-6 miles every day, which takes longer than I would like to admit, and I’ve been busy with work. Sorry I don’t have anything else exciting to report. Maybe later today.

I really can’t decide.

Half man, half beast! Erm. Chocolate and cookie, rather.

Delicious treat, or menace to society?

Sorry about that last post. It wasn’t really for general consumption (I mean, it’s good for general consumption, I just wasn’t trying to share) I just needed to make sure I wrote it down somewhere before one of the other recipes in my head pushed it out. I meant to publish privately but didn’t think that it was a big enough deal to tear it down after it published. It is very good, as I’m sure Ember would attest, and I’m considering trying to make it into a frozen meal, with cooked chicken and the sauce in ice cube trays for quick cooking. Melody was talking about some of her attempts at frozen meals, and I was intrigued.

I’ve been busy. Wally Lamb’s The Hour I First Believed was a good long read, lasted me a whole week, what with the 700 pages and all. And I did read all of it, which is more than I can say for the skimmed portions of Everything Under The Sky, more on that later. Lamb did a fine job of creating characters strong enough to pull off the complex and somewhat busy and distracting backstories he had in store for them. The most powerful part of this book was the first half, where Caelum Quirk deals with his guilt, both over his aunt’s death in Connecticut and his wife’s traumatic experience in Littleton Colorado while he was away dealing with it. Maureen, a school nurse, hid in a cupboard in the school library while Kle.bold and Har.ris accomplished their killing rampage’s last moments. Lamb’s use of true material, real names and stories really strikes a chord with anyone who has struggled with the face of evil. However, once Maureen and Caelum move away to the family farm in Connecticut to try to overcome her PTSD, the story becomes overly complex and less believable. Maureen becomes a drug addict, kills a boy while driving high, and ends up in the jail that Caelum’s relatives founded. There is much soul searching, intense self-pity, and some marital infidelity, which I’m sure you know I find to be truly a plot deal breaker. The story turns out to be so much more about Caelum’s identity crisis than about evil, as was (rather laughably) attested by a review that called him an American Dostoyevsky. All in all, I found it very well written but I was conflicted about whether I truly enjoyed it. I might read one of his others, though, so this was not a total bust.

I also read, as I mentioned above, Everything Under the Sky, a long awaited novel from the Spanish Matilde Asensi. I really enjoyed her first book to be translated into English, The Last Cato. The Last Cato was a better written Dan Brown-like thriller, without the gross historical inaccuracies and better Greek translations, following Dante’s work rather than a hacked up version of Scripture. My sister didn’t like it, but I enjoyed it as a light read that was interesting and well put together. Everything Under the Sky, however, was a disappointment. Elvira comes to Shanghai dragging her recently orphaned niece, in order to put her dead husband’s affairs in order. Having been married over twenty years but living on different continents, Elvira is not particularly cut up about her husband’s death, instead is mostly peeved that she gets swept into a complex pursuit of an elusive emporer’s tomb. I was so disappointed in this book. I didn’t connect to Elvira at all, and her neice Fernanda didn’t have enough personality to really believe, and the Chinese people ran in and out of the story so fast I could barely catch them. Serious sad face here. Elvira is described in the cover blurb as being “prim and straightlaced” but I found her to be more whiny and self-absorbed than anything else, fiercely (and anachronistically) fighting for respect as a woman in a country with so many greater problems. I did finish it, but it was more of a skim at the end. Maybe Buffy will like it more.

In other news, my sister Mel and my mom and I canned 100 pounds of tomatoes on Saturday. We came out with 28 quarts of tomatoes, and four different kinds of hot sauce. We made Roasted Tomato Bhut Jolokia hot sauce, Roasted Tomato Red Caribbean hot sauce, Jalapeno Hot Sauce, Mixed Pepper Hot Sauce, Pizza Sauce, Tomato Juice, and V8 (6 in our case) juice. I used the jalapeno hot sauce last night for a taco pizza and it was delicious. We are already plotting about applesauce later this year. It was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it.

And now, instead of another seven hundred and eighty-eight words:

Best Pizza Sauce ever...

Sweet and Sour Chicken

• Sesame oil
• 1 TB minced garlic
• 1/4 cup soy sauce (low sodium)
• 1 heaping TB cornstarch
• 1 TB brown sugar
• 1 TB vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon white pepper
• dash of red pepper (to taste)
• two chicken breasts, in smallish chunks
• 1 can pinapple chunks, with juice
• handful of dried cherries (I would use fresh, but I didn’t have any.)
• 1 red pepper (chopped)
• 1 onion (chopped)

Heat the sesame oil in a large skillet, throw in the garlic and allow it to brown a little. In a separate container mix the soy sauce and cornstarch until completely dissolved, then add the pineapple juice, brown sugar, vinegar, ginger, white pepper and red pepper Add the chicken to the skillet. When the chicken is cooked a little, add the pinapple, cherries, red pepper and onion. After a little, add the soy sauce mixture and bring everything to a boil. Then simmer until everything is cooked to your taste.
Serve over rice or noodles. Delicious – and healthy!