March: Books, Knits, and Anything Else

After a nearly-eternal February, March just flew right past me.  Scroll all the way to the bottom if you want to see knitting pictures.  Library books have asterisks.

Eudora Welty on William Faulkner.*

Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age, Fiona Maddocks.*

The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver.*

The Fifth Witness, Michael Connelly.

The Black Bird Oracle, Deborah Harkness.*

Summer on the Island, Brenda Novak.

A New Song, Jan Karon.

The Wedding People, Alison Espach.

March was a month for either finishing a book I'd been stuck in forever or burning through a book in under 2 days.

Let's just get started. The collection of letters and essays Eudora Welty wrote to/about William Faulkner just nearly made me want to read William Faulkner for the first time ever.  I read a lot of Faulkner in college because it was assigned to me, but I usually hated it.  I became an English major because I liked reading, basically. But having to read something and then write about took some of the joy out of things.  And having to wade through the dense texts Faulkner on a deadline was rough.  I didn't have the patience to appreciate the world he crafted.  Now maybe I do.

It's also worth mentioning that this little book also made me want to read more Eudora Welty.  I'm reading Delta Wedding at the moment.

The Hildegard biography was published in 2001, so it's before her canonization.  But it was still very thorough and insightful.  Maddocks, who is mostly a music and culture writer (?!) talks a lot about Hildegard's wealth and status, and about the makeup of the abbeys she lived in.  I hadn't thought about the constant construction and what effect it might have had on the nuns in her first abbey, for example, and I enjoyed the warts and all approach to writing about a very human person engaged in incredible creative pursuits and inspired writings and very petty battles of will.  It was great.

The Bean Trees.  I kept thinking it was almost a Barbara Kingsolver book.  I know that's silly because she did write it.  But it's her first novel, and you can see the Kingsolver-y themes in a more raw form.  I enjoyed it for the most part.

The Fifth Witness is a Lincoln Lawyer book.  Parts of it were interesting but I think I'll be taking a break from Micky Haller for a bit.  The mood will strike again eventually.

The Black Bird Oracle is the fifth book in the 'trilogy' of the most special-est and best and also most undisciplined witch ever and some vampires and some demons.  This time, Diana reconnected with another side of her family that hadn't been mentioned before. It's a mess.  The resolution falls flat.  Everyone is an idiot. There are so many ghosts.  It reads like fanfiction.  I will check out every one of these books that come out for the rest of my life and have a blast.

Summer on the Island was in a box of books my mother-in-law dropped off after a decluttering project.  I read it because I felt like a beach read that takes place on a beach.  It was entertaining.  I put it in a little free library along with The Fifth Witness.  I'm sure people will enjoy it.

Lastly, I read The Wedding People.  My sister loaned me her copy before Christmas and I honestly started reading it just so I could give it back to her at Easter. But I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.  Lots of literary references.  Lots of realistic characters being ridiculous and doing their best.  I just really enjoyed it.

As for crafting, well.  I made a hat.  The pattern is called The Davie Hat and this was a fairly simple knit.  I wasn't too sure about the cables at first, but they opened up a bit with blocking and now I think I love this.  It was a gift for my boss.  

I found the crochet hook for the doily project and then made some mistakes and had to unravel a couple of rows.  This picture is from February, but it's still a pretty accurate depiction of what the project looks like.  It's fine.  

I started a pair of socks for my husband's birthday.  They're not done yet, even though I feel like I have been knitting them all the time for the past month.  If you follow me on Instagram, it's been almost all purple socks, all the time.  He wears a size 12 shoe, so that may have something to do with it.  The yarn is from a friend's destash and it's been a delight to work with.  

I haven't crafted much.  Work has been busy, parenting involves so much driving, and 2 out of 3 people in my little family had birthdays!  

I also got to see family people, go outside, take shelter in my hallway during a tornado watch, make a balloon banner during a tornado watch (second year in a row!), volunteer, register for 87 more things on behalf of my child, create so many passwords, schedule things and then reschedule them.  

I also have been going back and forth between marveling at everything that has bloomed in the last few weeks and wiping pollen off of every surface in our home.  April looks like it will have more of the same.  I have plans to finish some more socks and make a few more small dishcloths for the kitchen.  

Photo by my child while I drove.