Alrighty, I'm not going to beat around the bush here. It has been a long time since I have blogged. I actually forgot how to log on to our blogging site. That is how much time it has been!
So let's review my blogging fails...
First, I tried the Short Attention Span Challenge and I couldn't keep it up. It was too, well, challenging. But truthfully, it's because I went back to school (after this post) and I just couldn't do all those projects combined with working full-time, parenting my kids, and grad school every week.
Then, I tried Miss Moneypennypincher's money-saving blog. Here's the deal, I ran out of money-saving ideas. I guess if I was Suze Orman or Dave Ramsey, I would have more than a blog at ssjcpl.com (not that there is anything wrong with that, mind you!).
If you won't, then I will!
Now (and hopefully forever-ish), I am undertaking a whole new blog! And here is the premise:
I love book reviews that mention other books. Comparing and contrasting books, especially popular titles where even if you haven't read them you know the general idea behind them, is a easy and quick way to know if I'm possibly interested in reading the new title. One of my favorite websites to read book reviews is Goodreads. You can
post your progress on the books you're reading, read your friends
reviews (if you're linked through Facebook), and even get status updates
from authors on their latest works.
If the review compares the books to books I haven't liked in the past, then I usually won't bother reading it. But every once in awhile, there's a review that compares a book to more than one of my favorites and then I try to get my hands on that title as soon as possible. That's how I ended up reading Divergent, which I ended up liking more than The Hunger Games.
A recent example of this is when I was reading reviews of popular new releases, and I came across the book The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman. I'm not going to quote the review, because it would give away major spoilers (Thanks reviewer!) but it compared it to the Night Circus and Water for Elephants. Since I enjoyed both of these books, I'm hopeful that I'll enjoy Hoffman's new book which I'm now officially putting on my bucket list.
Fans of Jane Yolen know her books can be fun and informative (like the How Do Dinosaurs...? series of picture books.) If you have read her chapter books for children, such as the Young Merlin Trilogy (that series really deserves a separate blog post,) you know that she has a talent for taking traditional folktales and turning them into compelling stories of her own. If you have not yet discovered her books for teens, I suggest starting with one of her books based on fairy tales; they have a tendency to focus on the darker side of the stories. In some cases, we hear more about the fairy side of things than the human side.
Snow in Summer: Fairest of Them All We think of the Snow White story taking place in some unnamed kingdom in Europe. This is a retelling of the Snow White story, set in post-war Appalachia. Snow in Summer (or Summer, for short) is a beautiful young girl; her happy childhood turns dismal after her mother dies in childbirth. Her grieving father loses all joy in the things he used to love, like his daughter and singing. Then he is captivated by the charms of an evil woman, who becomes Summer's Stepmama. Summer bears the brunt of her Stepmama's cruelty; as it becomes more clear that Stepmama is truly wicked, Summer escapes into the woods and over the mountain, where she meets seven odd little men. This story is hard to put down; I couldn't wait to find out what happened, but I was sorry when it ended.
Snow-In-Summer, or Cerastium Tomenosum, courtesy of John Stratford's photostream on Flickr.com
Fun Fact
Snow in Summer's name came from a flowering plant called Cerastrium Tomenosum.
The three titles below are all related to the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale:
Briar Rose is an award-winning adult science fiction book from 1992. Yolen juxtaposes the present day story of Becca, a journalist researching the holocaust, and her memories of her grandmother, Gemma's, telling of the a fairy tale blended with her own experiences in a Polish prison camp during the Nazi holocaust.
The Hostage PrinceThis is the only book I have ever read with a troll birthing scene! This is the first book of the Seelie Wars Trilogy, which Yolen is writing with her son, Adam Stemple. The main characters are a bumbling midwife's apprentice named Snail, and the unhappy Prince Aspen, who is being held hostage in an unfriendly kingdom.
The Curse of the Thirteenth Fey: The True Tale of Sleeping Beauty This tells the other side of the Sleeping Beauty story--not the version the humans tell. The main character in this tale is Gorse, a clumsy young fairy with twelve older siblings. Her family is bound to an evil king's land, and required to do his bidding. She falls ill, just when it is time for her family to bestow gifts on a new princess. It looks like she may not make it to the bidding, but she recovers from her illness, and hurries toward the castle to catch up with her family. That's when things go terribly wrong.
Persian New Year (Nowruz) is right around the corner and for millions of Iranians, it is the start of a new year.
Did you know that the Persian calendar starts on the first day of Spring?
This year, our Persian New Year falls on Thursday, March 20th at 9:57 am. It is going to be the year 1393 in the Persian Calendar.
There are a few things that we have got to do before the New Year and Spring cleaning is one of them.
Spring cleaning is a rite of passage to the New Year. In my parent's house back home, we washed and scrubbed and cleaned everything and anything including every dish in every cupboard. I am not kidding. Char Shan Be Soori is the other one. On the last Tuesday of the Iranian year, we get together with family and friends to make rows of bonfires in our neighborhood and we jump over them one after the other while chanting. There are also fireworks in every corner of every neighborhood back in Iran.
Jumping over bonfires. Picture from the Web
A few days before the New Year, we set a very special table called" Haft Sin". There are specials items that are placed on this table year after year. We place seven items on this table and they all start with the letter "C" in Farsi.
My haft sin from a couple of years ago
We keep this table for 13 days after the New year.
Haft Sin at Roya's house
Here are the items on this table:
Sib (apple)
Sir (Garlic)
Sekeh (Coins)
Serkeh (Vinegar)
Samano (A special sweet paste made from wheat)
Sabzeh (Germinated wheat or lentil. They look like grass)
Sonbol (Hyacinth)
Senjed (Fruit from lotus tree)
Saat (Clock)
Picture from www.anobanini.com
Beside these items, you should have a mirror, candles, a large bowl of water with a few red goldfish, and colored eggs.
Depending on your taste, Haft Sin table
can be as fancy as you want to make it or as simple as you wish for.
No matter how wealthy or poor, you will find this table in every
Iranian's household.
Here are a few examples of Haft sin table from my friends:
Haft sin at Roya's house
Haft sin at Zari's house
Haft sin at my house a few years back
You don't find a mountains of presents on our New Year's table just a few from parents to their children. Kids also receive money as present from relatives and friends.
During
the Iranian New Year, you are obligated to visit family and friends, It is called " Eid Didani". In Iran, schools and universities are closed for 13 days during NowRuz. Most offices are also closed for a few days as well.
On the 13th day of our New Year, we all go to parks to have picnics. This is called "Siz Da Bedar."
In Stockton, we all get together in Oak Grove Regional Park. We all cook and share delicious foods with about 200 other Iranians in that picnic.
I will post some pictures of this year's Iranian New Year celebration real soon.
Children love the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. The half drawn, half written books center around a middle school student named Gregg Heffley and his adventures dealing with friends, school, and family. There are currently eight books in the series as well as a special movie diary book.
The first four books have been adapted into three films, Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010), Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules (2011), and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days (2012). The plot from the third book, Last Straw, was split between the last two films. The films seem to generally fly under the radar a bit, but like the books they are silly fun for kids.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about some of the series that have new books coming out this year. One of them was Ransom Rigg's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. The second book in the series, Hollow City, was released earlier this year. And while I wrote about them, I had never read the actual book so checked it out on my Kindle over our Overdrive app. I finished it in two days. It was fantastic and the most I've enjoyed a fantasy book since Harry Potter. I put myself on the hold list for Hollow City and finished that quickly too.
Jacob, a self described average teenager, is bored of his life as a privileged kid in Florida. He works part time at a drug store and is constantly trying to handle his eccentric grandfather. Jacob's grandfather has always had a mysterious past, but once the circumstances involving his death are suspicious, Jacob is drawn into a world he thought only existed in fairy tales.
Hollow city, the sequel, takes off exactly where the first book leaves off. There's no break in the action, and it's easy to dive right back into the story. (Though in my case there was no break between finishing the first and starting the second book.) There is more action, more character development, and definitely more peculiarity in this sequel.
The books also contain real photographs that have had little to no doctoring. The strangeness of these real photos adds a lot of realism to the otherwise fantastical books.
Knitting a scarf from chunky yarn is one of the quickest ways to get some knitting satisfaction. Admittedly, I like my knitting fast and fabulous--the chunkier the better. I like plush and chunky scarves piled high, right up to my ears, with big visible stitches. So, imagine my excitement when I came across arm knitting. You heard me right, arm knitting! You knit with your arms...YOUR ARMS! Forget the needles, right on your arms with yarn so chunky you have to use your arms to knit with the stuff.
So, off I went to the craft store to find the right kind of chunky yarn since, of course, none of the super bulky number 6 yarn I had was quite bulky enough. In other words, I had my excuse to go find some new yarn and off to the craft store I went!
Meet, Orchid Shimmer. Isn't she lovely?!
Now, to the internet to learn how to arm knit. Kaye passed on a few links she got from a knitting for charity newsletter and once it directed me to YouTube, I poked around and found a few tutorials myself. Honestly, it's quite easy. You might have to pause and rewind a couple of times to see exactly how loops are passed and where hands are supposed to go, but after figuring out what the yarn was supposed to do, easy peasy! Much easier than learning how to knit with needles that are not arms.
But honestly, the tutorials are not as clear as I hoped to pass on to newbie knitters with the claim that "arm knitting is waaay easy--here, try this before learning how to knit to get your confidence going." It really is waaay easy--so, my advice for beginning arm knitters: keep at it until you get it because it really is quite gratifying. Just remember, pause and repeat. Pause. And. Repeat.
Here are the two tutorials I used to learn:
For this veteran knitter, figuring out how many stitches wide to make my piece with the width of yarn I was holding posed the biggest hurdle. Not including my learning swatches, I must have made and unmade at least five scarves. I went from 12 stitches to 10, to 12 again (I'm not exactly sure why) back down to 10, to 8. I kept trying to follow the stitch count of the tutorials I was following not keeping in mind that my yarn AND my arms are twice as big as the ones found in the video. I love my arms but small needles they do not make.
My finished piece is a cowl8 stitches wide with as many rows as I thought was necessary to go around my neck--and then some. Unfortunately, a little too much "and then some" for my taste. I plan to take it apart and make and infinity scarf half as wide and twice as long so I can double it up and mess with the final wrap a bit to get it juuust right. It took me a whole 30 minutes from casting on to stitching the cowl into a closed loop, with a pause in the middle to watch a tutorial one more time to make sure I was passing the loops the right way.
Glasses and latte included for size.
Arm knitting is fun, quick, and--with a bit of finessing the variables--easy. If you like chunky scarves, wonderful and wide cowls, and snazzy blankets you can knit in a day, then you need to try arm knitting.
