BBC and Reading

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE. (I added a - sign for the ones I didn't like)
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total.

How many have you read? 31


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X+
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien  *
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X+
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X 
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X  
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X  
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X 
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens  X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott *
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien  X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X 
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X+
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell  X
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 X
34 Emma - Jane Austen *
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen *
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell  X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - 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 X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan X
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 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  X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold  X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville 
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker 
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X  
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath  X-
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker  X
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 Alborn X
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 AdamsX
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

The Palindrome Reversible cable scarf is knit in Cascade 220 Steeler gold.  Notice the lovely reversibility of this pattern.  This is third Palindrome scarf  I knit this winter.  The first two were gifts for my best friend Pam Logan and my sister Pam Clair.  This one is for myself. The pattern is found on Raverly at Palindrome Scarf.

My Thorpe hat is completed.  Sophie always likes to get in the picture.

I used Misti Baby Alpaca chunky yarn for the main part of the hat and Cascade Pastaza for the edging both from Knit One North.  This hat was absolutely lovely to knit.  It knit up fast and easy.  The yarn is gorgeous.  Very soft on the skin.  Perfect for these cold wintery days.  

I was knitting with the Tuesday afternoon group at K1N when I was working on the edging for the hat.  The pattern called for a row of single crochet but  Connie showed me the Crab stitch or reverse single crochet which finished off the hat perfectly. It was divine timing that she was there when I was ready to edge the hat.  I absolutely love the hat.  I would like to line the hat, but that is coming.

I'm going to have to frog the Lacy Cable cap. I did not do a swatch gauge because I usually am right on gauge.  But the hat is too small.  It will not fit on my head. I learned this lesson the hard way--always do a swatch gauge.  I could either go to a larger needle or add more stitches.  I have not decided which to do so it just sits on my needles... until I take measurements to see how many more stitches I may have to add and how many more rows to add before it will be necessary to start the decrease pattern.  This is the joy knitting.  Getting the project fitted just right.

I am tired of seeing the same socks on my feet, day after day, week after week, month after month and literally year after year, so I decided today to start knitting socks again from my sock stash in order to see a new view on my feet.

I found this pic of Angel from when I went on my trip to Mexico. Since Sophie made it on the blog I thought Angel deserved equal timing.

I started a new project yesterday--a lacy cable cap. I am using pale yellow Shibuiknits sock yarn that I bought at Knit One North in Mars. The cap is for my friend Kylie. I'm sitting here knitting with my mother. She is working on a lace shawl. Her first. It is going very slowly for her, but she is persisting.

It is still bitter cold out and windy. The days are getting longer which is very nice and feels great. But it is still cold. I am longing to see greenery out there.

Knitting Festival

Today mom and I went the knitting festival. It was a lot of fun. We ran into Connie and Nora, spent time with Karen and Dawne from Knit One North and Cosy author of Knit One, Embellish Two. I bought some Misti Baby Alpaca chunky yarn for the Thorpe earflap hat. I had it almost finished but decided it was too small, so ripped back to the beginning to start again and add one more row of increases to make it a little bigger around. I almost had it completed in one sitting.

Friday Vilma and I chatted in Espanol as we knit. I probably have a few errors in my knitting from trying to concentrate to speak Spanish and knit at the same time. Vilma is a wonderful teacher and tutor.

Booze & Books

I started a new book group which meets at my home.  We had our first meeting last Sunday.  We discussed The White Tiger, by Adiga.  It did not receive very good rates--just ok.  I liked the book though it was not my all time favorite book.  Our next book selection is Slammerkin. Definition of Slammerkin- 1. loose gown  2.  loose woman.  If you are interested in joining the newly formed book group and are local to this area, please email me.

I had a nice relaxing day of knitting at Knit One North  with Connie while Dawne worked.  Please support your LYS Knit One North in Mars.

I cooked a delicious Broccoli Spinach Fettucini Alfredo meal tonight.  Gayle, my co-worker, gave me the recipe for the sauce.  It was delicious and easy.  Do you want it?  Here goes:

Saute several cloves of garlic in 1/2 stick of butter.  Add 1 pint of heavy cream.  Add 3/4 cup of shaved parmesan cheese.  Cook slowly while stirring. Salt and pepper to taste.  Steam fresh broccoli.  Boil fresh spinach fettucini noodles 3-4 minutes.  

Delicious!  Easy!

Add 1 bottle of beer to cook. 

My life could not be better....

Life is getting very fun and exciting. First for those who may not know, I have a degree in mathematics and thought I wanted to teach high school math. I became very disillusioned when I student taught at an inner-city school in North Carolina. I tutored high school and college math while in college. I love math. A very good friend approached me the other day about tutoring her child in high school algebra. I am so excited! God has just dropped a wonderful gift in my lap.

And, another gift. I've been wanting to learn Spanish for a very long time. I've taken high school and college courses in Spanish. I started studying it on my own by listening to CNN in Spanish, studying from books, reading a Spanish comic strip and practicing flash cards. Then yesterday I met a woman who is eager to help me learn Spanish. She is a native of Columbia, South America. I am so excited!