Who's on first? Krokbragd done

 This morning started too early. Here's a sample text thread with patient Handsome Son adjusting kindly to my confusion. I'm in blue. 

Things did improve after that. I walked early before it got hot, then spent the morning on the weaving and got it done 

Here it is, still on the loom

Here the moment of truth where you cut it off and see if it keeps its shape. It did.

Here's the back with all those ends woven in 

And the reveal, the front, with a row of pink tulips on gold,  and it's done. 

This was a great learning curve in several ways. I developed more skill in reading the work, and it's going to carry over to the bandweaving when I resume it.

Tea and cake arrived after a tuna sandwich lunch.

 Also strawberries.

I finished the Ayelet Waldman, hm, a bit long and drawn out, more years than I was up for, but still worth reading. It starts with a tragedy and goes in all directions from there 

Then there was Whistler, the latest Ann Patchett.  

As always, it's very readable and the characters are very annoying. It takes a while to find out what the title is about, and it's intriguing.

But, big minus for me, there's a lot of the publishing world in it, tiny world that writers think is significant and important. 

Well, they would, wouldn't they, to quote a very different lady in a very different but equally navel-gazing context.

And now I'm deep in The Matchmaker's Gift

 

At first I was all oh, not another East Side novel, then I got into it and it's not just another East Side novel. It's got generations and they're easy to keep straight when the story swerves back and forth, possibly a side effect of the wit sharpening involved in learning krokbragd. 

There's a steady forward drive of story.

There's magic realism, in good hands, it works. Take that, Allende! There's someone besides you who can do it. 

But there are plenty of writers who try and don't manage it, names redacted to protect the guilty. But I have a little list.

Anyway that's the current reading. Happy day everyone.  Read all the things worth finishing but stop when you want. We don't have to finish something just because we started it. So there!

Spring, Edward Tulane, Everything pizza

 Spring's nearly here. First crocuses

I give them one day before robins tear them up to get at the delicious pollen 

And I finished the Ann Patchett essays, just wonderful reading. About people who seem a bit different to outsiders, particularly to relatives, I speak as one, she points out "It's not who we're trying to be, it's who we are." So true in many contexts. One of those comments that stay with you.

I particularly like a writer who refers to other experiences  I can explore -- Donna Leon and food and opera references,  Barbara Pym's Protestant church protocol, and anthropology, here Patchett's references to writers. 

I read the wonderful poet Lucy Nealy as a result of Patchett's writing about her, and today I listened to The miraculous journey of Edward Tulane, by Kate di Camillo because Patchett pays attention to her (a Newbery winner, Steve!).

It's a so-called children's book, but good writing is for everyone, and I listened and knitted and cried and knitted and smiled and knitted and was glad I'd met rabbit Edward, alias various other names,  on his adventures. 

It reminded me too, that in our own lives some episodes read as adventures later, but seem to be anything but at the time. Our lives don't have a fictional arc, or any discernible shape usually, so the story arc of fiction is such a satisfying gift.

I have another diCamillo to read on my Kindle, too. 

Meanwhile, food is always needed. Today it's pizza with everything. A Misfits dough, tomato paste, the rest of the garlic spread, meatballs, spinach, mozzarella, mushrooms, Parm cheese on top. 

Everything but the tomato paste was Misfits, come to think of it. And I saved the oil and butter mixture from cooking the mushrooms, full of flavor, for future use.

A comment in passing on the current effort to seat a new woman, a WOC at that, on the Supreme Court

So familiar to any woman who has worked in a male dominated environment.

But hope springs eternal

Slava Ukraini!