Shrek the Sheep

Saw this on Facebook and had to share. Imagine what you could do with all that wool!

Summer Reads

I am I guess what could be called a "voracious reader." I've been that way since I was a kid. I lived about a half mile from the public library, and every Saturday I'd walk to my cousin's house and from there, we'd go to the library. There was a ten-book limit, and every week I'd go home with ten new books. I'm not saying I read them all, but the thrill was getting to choose those ten books to take home and savor all week during the summer.

The children's library was where I fell in love with books: the Betsy books,  Edward Eager's classic Half Magic, The Magic Tunnel, and my all time favorite A Wrinkle in Time. Later came Phyllis Whitney mysteries, Gone With the Wind, The Red Badge of Courage, Death Be Not Proud, and many others.

I've kept a book log for many years now, and once in a while I browse through it to see how my tastes have changed. I went through a phase where, I'm embarrassed to admit, I read smutty romance novels. That led to cosy mysteries, and now I find myself reading more what I'd call "challenging books." Not that I didn't read literature throughout the years, but now it's all I want to read.

With the that short history of my reading life, here are some interesting books I finished recently:

The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman

Hotel Angeline: a novel in 36 voices

The Arrivals by Meg Mitchell Moore

The Map of Time by Félix Palma

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Summer House by Nancy Thayer

They are all quite a bit different, especially The Map of Time (a time travel story, a favorite genre of mine.) Check them out; I loved them all. Happy reading!

Pancake dyed wool

Here are some photos of the wool I pancake dyed for the rug I featured in my previous post. The first photo shows all the wool I dyed in this batch.

The next is a closeup of the wool. You can see that the lighter piece was one of the topmost layers in the pan. The darker pieces soaked up more of the dye on the bottom.

If you are interested in trying out this method here is the formula. Pieces are approximately one eighth of a yard and I used seven of them. Pieces were natural, textured, light blue, lilac, celery, but you can experiment with whatever you have on hand.  I used ProChem dyes.

CUP 1:  1/16  +  1/32   419
CUP 2:  1/4  707  +  1/128  672
CUP 3:  1/4 816

Let me know if you have any questions!