Saturday was glorious. The weather was cold and crisp, the sunlight pale gold, and I was standing in a field with nearly all my family. We were shooting, and looking down the line of guns I could see my brother, my dad and my uncle, with mum behind waiting to pick up. The late afternoon sun sparkled on people's breath and the dogs' coats. That is the sort of day that is good for the soul.
Last night the knitting girlies met up for a Chrimble meal at our usual haunt. Poor Claire had to stay home to babysit the 'feral child' (which conjures a great Quentin Blake image), so four of us did a bit of knitting and a lot of chatting. It's so nice to make new friends who don't care how much you talk about knitting, because they share the passion. I usually have to make do with just saying to people, 'look at this!' and people grunt and agree that it's something woolly, and then I have to change the subject before they either glaze over or think I'm a mad spinster before my time. It turns out that Rowan is also making great strides into self-sufficiency and has a homemade wine collection to rival that of The Good Life, so we discussed blackberry and elderberry wine and spiced mead. We all quietly envy her. One day I'll stop working full time and learn how to make cider and good bread and be able to sew and knit and grow my own veggies.
I didn't take any knitting needles last night, just a sewing needle to finish and sort the ends out on a pair of baby bootees, the first Next Generation sock, and a little heart I knitted on the train while bored, which might become a christmas dec if I add some backing and a loop to hang it by.
The Christmas social whirl is in full swing and I don't have time to get organised. I need to wrap some presents to distribute to people before xmas but don't have time. I need to do some laundry but don't have time. I need to get an outfit sorted out for the office xmas do, but don't have time. I need to do some back exercises (which take 10mins!!) but you get the idea. Next year I must make a note not to put more than three engagements in the diary per week. In fact I shall write a reminder in the diary now. Why do people save up for xmas to have loads of drinks anyway? What's wrong with the rest of the year?
Here are some more whys:
Why do other people write emails soooo slowly?
Why do I keep getting granny whiskers on my chin (and why to they have to start out as spots)? Why do people have to have birthdays during the festive season? Someone should ban sex during March.
Why can't I have a crystal ball to tell me if a better house will come onto the market in three months time?
Why did The Man decide to put my white bra in with the darks wash?
I think I need to sit down in a quiet room with a cup of tea.
Anyway, found this on Needles on the Move , and was shocked by the comment:
'Emma says, 'this one is originally from the Big Read. Apparently they reckon most people will have only read 6 of the 100, which I think is astonishing.' I do too.'
Here are my answers:
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Underline those you intend to read.
3) Italicise the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7.Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - Some, at school.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (audio books count right?)
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres Mans
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan - but saw the movie
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt - well, most of it.
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (don't waste your time with this one though)
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
52 out of 100. Interesting. The ones I've underlined are ones that I would like to read but I'm not going to lose sleep over. I wonder who makes these lists, and why it's these books particularly they rate? There are several I've not even heard of.
And just for good measure, one more quiz:
Spot on for me, and green is indeed my favourite colour.
Last night the knitting girlies met up for a Chrimble meal at our usual haunt. Poor Claire had to stay home to babysit the 'feral child' (which conjures a great Quentin Blake image), so four of us did a bit of knitting and a lot of chatting. It's so nice to make new friends who don't care how much you talk about knitting, because they share the passion. I usually have to make do with just saying to people, 'look at this!' and people grunt and agree that it's something woolly, and then I have to change the subject before they either glaze over or think I'm a mad spinster before my time. It turns out that Rowan is also making great strides into self-sufficiency and has a homemade wine collection to rival that of The Good Life, so we discussed blackberry and elderberry wine and spiced mead. We all quietly envy her. One day I'll stop working full time and learn how to make cider and good bread and be able to sew and knit and grow my own veggies.
I didn't take any knitting needles last night, just a sewing needle to finish and sort the ends out on a pair of baby bootees, the first Next Generation sock, and a little heart I knitted on the train while bored, which might become a christmas dec if I add some backing and a loop to hang it by.
The Christmas social whirl is in full swing and I don't have time to get organised. I need to wrap some presents to distribute to people before xmas but don't have time. I need to do some laundry but don't have time. I need to get an outfit sorted out for the office xmas do, but don't have time. I need to do some back exercises (which take 10mins!!) but you get the idea. Next year I must make a note not to put more than three engagements in the diary per week. In fact I shall write a reminder in the diary now. Why do people save up for xmas to have loads of drinks anyway? What's wrong with the rest of the year?
Here are some more whys:
Why do other people write emails soooo slowly?
Why do I keep getting granny whiskers on my chin (and why to they have to start out as spots)? Why do people have to have birthdays during the festive season? Someone should ban sex during March.
Why can't I have a crystal ball to tell me if a better house will come onto the market in three months time?
Why did The Man decide to put my white bra in with the darks wash?
I think I need to sit down in a quiet room with a cup of tea.
Anyway, found this on Needles on the Move , and was shocked by the comment:
'Emma says, 'this one is originally from the Big Read. Apparently they reckon most people will have only read 6 of the 100, which I think is astonishing.' I do too.'
Here are my answers:
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Underline those you intend to read.
3) Italicise the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7.Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - Some, at school.
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (audio books count right?)
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres Mans
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan - but saw the movie
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt - well, most of it.
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (don't waste your time with this one though)
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
52 out of 100. Interesting. The ones I've underlined are ones that I would like to read but I'm not going to lose sleep over. I wonder who makes these lists, and why it's these books particularly they rate? There are several I've not even heard of.
And just for good measure, one more quiz:
Your rainbow is shaded green.
What is says about you: You are an intelligent person. You feel strong ties to nature and your mood changes with its cycles. Those around you admire your fresh outlook and vitality.
Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com.
What is says about you: You are an intelligent person. You feel strong ties to nature and your mood changes with its cycles. Those around you admire your fresh outlook and vitality.
Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com.
Spot on for me, and green is indeed my favourite colour.
Update: The friend who I was due to see tonight has emailed and is just recovering from the lurgy and so has asked to postpone drinkies. While I was very much looking forward to seeing her and I'm sorry she's been poorly, yay, I have some time to wrap presents tonight to give to mum tomorrow to distribute to the rest of the family as I won't see them all before xmas! Phew.
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