Friends, it's been a while

So, many of you all ready know that the Duke and I have recently suffered through a failed adoption. It has been one of the hardest things I have ever experienced. I lost my child. . .

Life goes on even if we don't move with it at first, eventually we are pulled along and reality forces us to keep moving.

Much of my knitting, as of late, had been for the birth parents of our baby. I don't have pictures fo the things I gave them, nor do I really have the desire to blog about those things I still have. They are tangible totems of my pain that I am not ready to share with the world.

I have been doing some other crafting though, and thought it would be a good place for me to start- some of you may remember from my pregnancy that things shaped like mushrooms make me very happy!



Pin cushions. You can either make them into a ring or just have them sit near your sewing and make you smile!

I will send one of these little adorables to the first person who can correctly recall (or look up) what the mushroom shaped object that made me happy during my pregnancy was.

Have Fun!

Thank You Thank You Thank You!

Can I say it enough? THANK YOU!

You are all so wonderful! You have dramatically increased the traffic to our adoption blog. Thank you all so much. You are all wonderful people and wonderful friends.

Now let me say thank you with some gifts.

Because so many more non-knitters than knitters added the button, decided not to differentiate when I ran the random number generator, and it selected 2 knitters and 4 non-knitters. So I will add an additional hat or an additional set of magnets.

So, for knitters,
Stacey and Jill (Jill you are a knitter aren't you?)
Stacey send me your first choice, and Jill send me your first and second choices along with your addresses.

yarnnation at gmail dot com

For knitters:
-A Namaste needle binder in retired color camel with cranberry interior.
-100 yds of handspun yarn in the color(s) of your choice
-2 hanks of STR Sock Candy (200 yds each, cotton and elite) in colorway Autumn

Non-knittes
1. Sarah D.
2. Diana W.
3. Lindsay P. (I know you said you didn't need anything, but I want to say thanks, and you can't argue with the random number generator.)
4. Patrice

All of you send me your addresses, Sarah, send me your top choice, and all the rest of you send me your top 2 choices.

yarnnation at gmail dot com

For non-knitters:
-a cotton chenille knit washcloth with a bar of some yummy soap. (The washcloth is cream colored and oversized- very luxurious!)
-a knit hat in the colors of your choice
-a set of 6 magnets in the colors/theme of your choice

Thank you, thank you, thank you all again!

Getting it Together? Maybe one Day.

OK, the button is fixed, the link is fixed, and the code is fixed. (Can you tell I do this stuff in the middle of the night when I should be sleeping?)

Thank you to all of you who have all ready added our button to your blog, I am all ready seeing traffic from your blogs. You are all wonderful!

For those of you who haven't (I don't even have enough people entered in the contest to give all of my prizes away yet- help me out here) You still have until Sunday to enter the contest (of course, you can help us anytime, but if you want prizes. . . Sunday is just 3 days away.)

See my previous post for details!

Wow, you all came up with some great titles. There were no duplicates, only three that I had all ready read, and most of them I was not familiar with. There are some that I am very excited to read, and some I probably won't read, but that is how books go. There are some that I may read because one of you recommend it but wouldn't have otherwise read it.

I am so excited to get some quality reading time with no school to get in the way. I can hardly wait.

So, in case any of you want to read or learn more about the books I've created another widget that has most of the books listed here in it. That was easier for me than creating a link for each title. There were a couple that were not in Good Read's database, so they are not in there.

Now, here are the book:

1. Gambling With Virtue by Rosenberger (Sonya)
2. Hacking Matter by McCarthy (Sonya)
3. Color Photography by Henry Horenstein (Sonya)
4. Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle (Sonya)
5. The Edison Gene by Thom Hartmann (Heather)
6. Broken Things to Mend by Jeffrey R. Holland (Heather)
7. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz (Heather)
8. Appetites by Geneen Roth (Heather)
9. When You Eat At the Refrigerator Pull Up A Chair by Geneen Roth (Heather)
10. The Trouble With Poetry by Billy Collins (Heather)
11. The Last Lecture Randy Pausch by (Kelly)
12. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin (Kelly) So, I've read this, (AND LOVED IT) but it wasn't showing on my widget for some reason, so it counts.
13. Marley and Me by John Grogan (Kelly)
14. The Search for God at Harvard by Ari Goldman (Kelly)
15. Girl Meets God by Lauren F. Winner (Kelly)
Blink by Malcom Gladwell - I've read this and The Tipping Point and I have his newest one Outliers. It was on my widget, so it doesn't count for the contest, but you should all absolutely read it, in fact read all of his books, they are so fascinating.
16. The Parenting Breakthrough by Merrilee Boyack (An O. Mom)
17. The Simeon Solution by Anne Poelman (An O. Mom)
18. The Peace Giver by James Ferrell (An O. Mom)
19. The Broken Heart by Bruce Hafen (An O. Mom)
20. Becoming Christ by Stephen Robinson (An O. Mom)
21. Who Moved my Cheese by Spencer Johnson (Laura) I've also read this, a good quick motivating book for anytime you are feeling in a rut.
22. If Life were Easy, it Wouldn't be Hard by Sheri Dew (Laura)
23. Loving Frank by ??? (Lucy van Pelt)
24. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (Lucy van Pelt) Lucy, I'm glad you reminded me of this. I have wanted to read this, but some friends asked us to read his other book on Mormonism which was so wrong and so biased and so poorly researched and written that after reading it (about 50 pages before I had to stop) I didn't think about this one again. I know this one was based on a personal experience though, and I've heard it's wonderful, so I will try to put my bias aside when I read it.
25. The Omnivore's Dilema by Michale Pollan (Lucy van Pelt)
26. Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey (Stacey)
27. The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean (Rosie)
28. Parenting with Love and Logic by Foster W. Cline (Rosie)
29. Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead by Max Brooks (Rosie) I can't wait to read this! Sounds like the perfect book for the Duke to read to me while I knit!
30. Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot by Richard Restak (Rosie)
31. Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon (Melissa)

And, without further delay, using the random number generator at random.org, we have a winner: #7 HEATHER!

Heather, I all ready have your address, I will get the book in the mail to you in the next couple of days.

Thank you all for playing. It was so much fun to see what titles you all recommended!

Some time last week a kind of strange comment showed up in my inbox. It was an offer to preview a new knitting novel.



The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club
by Gil McNeil
set to be released March 10th.
Click on the image to see the Amazon listing

Well, as most of you know, I don't usually read fiction, so my initial reaction was to delete the email and move on sorting through the daily influx of communications. However, as my mouse hoovered near the delete key, I thought of all of you.

Just because this book doesn't peak my interest, doesn't mean that there aren't a good number of people out there who are ready to add it to their reading list. So, I emailed the publicist and told her to send me a copy. I got it yesterday.

I figured this could be win-win-win scenario. One of you wins the book (and the opportunity to read it before anyone else you know.) The author still gets her book mentioned on my blog (sans ranting.) And. . . well, what do I get? Ah, that is where the contest comes in.

Here is how it is going to work:

• To enter the drawing leave a comment with suggestion(s) of NON-fiction books you think I might like.
• Each book suggestion counts as one entry.
• You may enter as many times as you want (you may leave one comment with several book titles, or several comments with one book title, what ever floats your boat.)
• I will hold a random drawing of each entry to choose a winner.
  
• If you suggest the same title as another person or persons and I draw that title (with your name attached to it) then I will hold another drawing from all the entries with that title. (This is to inspire you to think of titles that I may have never heard of, as of yet.)
• Below these rules there will be a widget listing some of my favorite non-fiction books as well as some that I all ready intend to read. None of these titles will be accepted as an entry, so take a quick peek at them. (This is to help you get a bit of an idea as to what I like to read- and, frankly, I don't get much benefit if I just get suggestions of books I've all ready read- yeah, I'm picky that way :)
• Entries should be left on this post only and I will leave it open to entries until Sunday, the 1st of February at 5:00pm PST.

OK, I think that about covers it. I can't wait to see what interesting new titles I will be adding to my list for this year. I plan on a lot more reading time after June, you know!!!

A Contest at the Queen's Place

The Queen arrived here in Seattle tonight to hopefully keep me on the right side of sane (or at least protect me if I cross it.)

I am still not up for blogging, but maybe in a few days.

In the mean time, the Queen has been blogging up a storm about her spinning and knitting, about the dyeing with natural dyes classes that she took (I even got to take one with her- so much fun.)

She is also having a contest to help her feel better about being so far behind in life.

Click HERE to read about it and get yourself in on the deal. She promised that the prize would be better than a 3 foot zucchini, so you know it's going to be good!