A Wee Giftie - The Winner!

So here it goes: the two dishcloths, 1 still on the needles, the bag full of "I'd like thats" and the moment of the draw.

And the winner is.....drum roll please!

Congratulations Pauline, please send your postal address to wisewebwomanatgmaildotcom and I will mail out to you this week along with one of my cards :)

Thank you all, my dear readers. You are truly special.

The Books of 2017

Late to the gate on this one. It was a year of illness, discombobulation and moving. All very stressful. But I managed 59 books of various interests and genres.

There were many goodies, some dreck, some re-reads, but over all some stellar reads. Now I must start on listing 2018 so far. You can click on the sidebar for updates.

Here's the list:

(1)Leaving Earth - Helen Humphries *****
(2)Commonwealth - Ann Patchett *****
(3)The Last Half of the Year - Paul Rowe *
(4)A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara *
(5)Single Mothers Speak on Patriarchy - Anthology *****
(6)212 - Alafair Burke ****
(7)More than a Mountain - T.A. Loeffler **
(8)The Bridge Ladies - Betsy Lerner ****
(9)Vinegar Hill - Manette Ansay *****
(10)The Couple Next Door - Shari Lapena ****
(11)Picture Perfect - JOdi Picoult ** done with Jodi.
(12)Booked to Die - John Dunning ****
(13)Did you Ever Have a Family - Bill Clegg ****
(14)A Complicated Kindness - Miriam Toews {BC} 2nd time reading. Fabulouos book.*****
(15)The End of the Line - Clayton D. Cook ***
(16)The Nest - Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney *****
(17)The Bookman's Wake - John Dunning** (off him now)
(18)Things I overheard when talking to myself - Alan Alda***
(19)Unholy Orders - Michael Harris
(20)Saving Grace - Jane Green 0
(21)When the Moon is Low - Nadia Hashimi*****
(22)Red Bay Labrador - Tuck & Grenier *****
(23)Come Thou Tortoise - Jessica Grant ***** 3rd Re-read {BC}
(24)The Girls in the Garden - Lisa Jewel * {BC}
(24)The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Attwood *****(again)
(25)Racket - Anthology - Various *****
(26)The Condition - Jennifer Haigh*****
(27)The Cellist of Sarajevo - Steven Galloway*****{BC}
(28)In the Cold Night Wind - Owen Hiscock**(terrible editing)
(29)Wolf - Mo Hayden*****
(30)The Humans - Matt Honig****
(31)The Necklace of Occasional Dreams - Kathleen Winter*****
(32)The Wonder - Emma Donoghue*****
(33)The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - David Wroblewski (1/2 thru realized I'd read it before)***
(34)Poppet - Mo Hayden****
(35)Iron House - John Hart - Dropped at page 272, violence and predictability was too tiresome**
(36)Wild Life - Molly Gloss
(37)The Girl in the Red Coat - Kate Hamer*****
(38)The Labrador Fiasco - Margaret Attwood*****
(39) Song of the Humpback Whale - Jodi Picoult
(40)The Gate to Women's Country - Sheri S. Tepper
(41)Annie Freeman's Fabulous Travelling Funeral - Kris Radish *{BC}
(42)Behind Closed Doors - B.A. Paris*****
(43)Baker Towers - Jennifer Haigh*****
(44)Medicine Walk - Richard Wagamese*****
(45)The Day I died - Lore Rader-Day**
(45)Creaking in their Skins - Michael Winter **
(46)Swim Back to Me - Ann Packer*****
(47)Crying for the Moon - Mary Walsh*
(48)Don't Say we have Nothing - Madeleine Thien***{BC}
(49)Please Look After Mom - Kyung-Sook Shin****
(50)The Heart Goes Last - Margaret Attwood**
(51)First Snow, Last Light - Wayne Johnston*****
(52)Dear Everybody - Anne Budgell*****{BC}
(53)The Heart's Invisible Furies - John Boyne*****
(54)Songs Without Words - Anne Packer*****
(55)Salt to the Sea - Rita Sepetys****
(56)Away From Everywhere - Chad Pelley**{BC}
(57)It Never Made Sense - Ross Morton - a friend, not rating.
(58)The Art of Mending - Elizabeth Berg*****
(59)On Dublin Street - Samantha Young 0




TOTAL TO DATE: 59 {BC}=Book Club}
Ratings:0(awful) *(poor)**(fair)***(good)****(very good)*****(excellent)

A wee giftie

If you'd like a pair of my hand-knitted wee wash/dishcloths just send me an "I'd like that!" in the comments and I will have a draw in the next few days and send a pair to the winner. They can be used in the kitchen or the bathroom or the shower and as one of the old folks around here says: no matter how damp and how long you leave them, they never smell. And they wash beautifully. 100% cotton.

I've been around here a while and I love your comments, concern and faithful readership.

So this is just a small token of my appreciation.

The Strange World of Predawn

I haven't done this in a while. Write in the pre-dawn hours.

There's a good reason.

Pain.

Intermittent and weird.

Tests are being conducted. Daily it seems. Various hospitals, clinics.

I've become a medi-bore overnight. Not about the symptoms. No. They're brief and troubling. But all these blood tests, scans, etc. My life is filled with medi-treks every day this week. Which exhaust me. And then I'm flooded with relief once they're behind me. Like I'm joining the real world again. I do these treks alone, by choice. I don't know what it feels like to have a partner/loved one journeying beside. I don't think I'd like it. I pursue my own thoughts in these waiting rooms.

"Ah, The Galway Shawl" I said to a pacing man yesterday in the nuclear medicine clinic. He'd been whistling it under his breath. Waiting for someone, I speculated.

"I don't know what else to do," he whispered, walking slowly around the pod-like room.

On top of that a friend of over 30 years has been diagnosed with liver cancer so he just recovered from surgery on Tuesday and another acquaintance messaged all of us yesterday that he is refusing any further treatment for cancer and is going to die with dignity in the next few days. He's 63.

So a fresh batch of pain strikes me before 5 in the morning most mornings. And I get up and take some meds but they take a while to kick in.

They say it's a good time for writing. Blank slate of a brain. So here I go.

I trek off to the doctor later on this morning.

I hope we get to the bottom of this.

I was waiting in a coffee shop yesterday to sign some papers for my real estate agent and I deliberately sat across from a man who was knitting a hat very similar to one I just finished for a friend (see above). And I showed him a pic of it.

We chatted and he let me feel the hat he was working on(silk and merino) and then he let me feel his hand-knitted scarf (muskox from the North West Territories) and then he admired my Kipling knapsack so I offered him a feel of it (parachute material, very light, very old) and he searched on line for one like it as he loved it. And he told me of a sealskin mitten workshop happening at the end of the month, and I told him about my story shawls that I create and we had such a lovely time. And then my realtor arrived and I never even found out what my new friend's name was.

Or maybe it was just one of those jewels of a connection and should lie where it is, you know?

I mean it's kinda special when you get to feel a stranger's clothes and can ooh and aah together over the sensuous nature of beautiful material, right?

Where do you take it from there?

Inheritance

From my mother I inherited thick hair and good skin.

I also inherited her love of music, live theatre and reading along with a passion for needlework: sewing, knitting, crochet and embroidery. She was skilled in all 4 of these disciplines, I in but 2 but she would tell you that I exceeded her ability in those two: knitting and sewing as I took them further into designing.

She was a woman of her time, born in rural Ireland in 1914, traumatized by the explosion of her village barracks ("it shook the ground I was playing on") in 1920 when she was 6 resulting in her becoming a life long Irish republican. She was self-educated and was managing a large grocery store when she married at 28, thus thwarting any further ambition of her own {"he wore me down"). It didn't kill her thirst for learning and she could converse readily on the novels of Charles Dickens. She took advanced cooking classes and singing lessons when she was in her forties.

She found it easy to make friendships, her outgoing personality and overall petite prettiness and "style" attracted even strangers drawn to share their confidences with her.

She knew quality from a mile away and would advocate owning only a little quality versus a lot of cheap trash. She loved roses and hydrangeas and field mushrooms and blackberries and the sea. No matter the temperature of the water, she'd take one sight of the sea and before we could blink, her ever-ready swimsuit was on her and she'd be diving in, breathless, waving her arms telling her shivering children: "it's lovely, you'll warm up in no time!"

She was a true gameball as we Irish say.

From my father I inherited bright blue eyes and one of those faces that shows visible displeasure when things are "not going our way."

I also inherited his love of words, new ones, old ones, complicated ones, words with multiple meanings and interpretations, words of obscure etymologies.

He gave me my first library card when I was 4 (he taught me to read) and our routine, every night after tea till I was at least 14, was that I'd sit on the arm of his easy chair and we'd complete the Evening Echo crossword together. I learned about newts and tors and bitterns. Later we played Scrabble and when we traveled together in later years we packed the Scrabble board for our after dinner game. Once, he bought a beautiful hand crafted turntable in a prison workshop in Maine which I still use for Scrabble.

He taught me knitting - he had 5 older sisters and had observed them. I remember his patience one time in a wool shop in Camden when I took hours poring over obscure old knitting patterns talking to him about Guernseys (ganseys) and Jersey fishermen sweaters and Aran patterns and Shetland wedding ring shawls and convent lacework.

I asked him once what he would have done with his life if he had the resources. He answered without hesitation: "I'd have created new varieties of roses."

I was gobsmacked.

And then I realized, for the very first time, how he and my mother were drawn to each other.