Lemon Tree Tales

Book Review: Comfort Food

Imagine my delight a month ago when I discovered an email from the Penguin Group publishers regarding my book review of Kate Jacob's The Friday Night Knitting Club. They wanted to know if I, along with others who had reviewed her book, would be interested in receiving a review copy of her newest book, Comfort Food. How could I pass on that since I really enjoyed her first book?

The story starts out enjoyably with thoughts about the importance of birthday cake. Gus Simpson (short for Augusta) is a successful TV chef/personality. She's the type of warm hostess that makes sure that every possible need of her guests is addressed while serving delicious home-styled food and of course that most important component, dessert. The problem is that she's about to turn the big 5-0 yet she doesn't feel like she's that age. Suddenly her comfortable world begins to turn on its ear - from dealing with her two grown yet not quite adult daughters, a beautiful and young competitor to her TV hostess domain, and being the one person who always has the right answers for everyone else. Now it's time for Gus to get answers for herself.

Just like Kate Jacob's first book, this one is filled with strong female relationships and characters that you don't ever want to let go. It's also a good behind-the-scenes peek at food television. Of course like all good stories, it had to end. Immediately I missed reading about the characters and couldn't help but wonder about the future of these interesting characters. Definitely a good enjoyable read. You'll like getting to know Gus.

Book Review: The Friday Night Knitting Club

This past weekend while Steve was racing around the racetrack (in the rain!) I read this great book, The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs. Although it says knitting in the title, it's less about that and more about the special type of friendships that women share. Fair warning, it's not all warm and fuzzy. In fact at one point I was crying and hoped that no one around the racetrack noticed. The characters are fully realized and you're left wanting to know more about each of these amazing women. There's also a few male characters that make appearances; but don't worry, they too aren't cardboard cut-outs and have rich histories and stories to tell. I wonder if this would ever be considered as movie material? So if you've seen this in the bookstores and wondered if it was worth the money, my vote is yes. Go read it. Then tell me what you think.

Book Review: 500 Handmade Dolls

This amazing book from the delightful folks at Lark Books arrived yesterday, 500 Handmade Dolls. WOW! What can I say other than it's pure eye candy and inspiration for anyone who likes to make dolls or other sculpted figures. Some of the artists I was familiar with already, but others are new discoveries. The book is printed on beautiful glossy paper with luscious vibrant colors. The photographs are all lit in a museum catalog manner. Such a treat to look through. I'm sure that I'll pour over it many, many times before I even think of soaking in all the details that it offers. Here's just a few random selections:

Patti Culea's latest book

Yay! Patti's fourth book Creative Cloth Doll Beading is finally here. Well actually Steve ordered this for me a while back and I'm just now writing about it. This is an amazing addition to Patti's doll-making series by Quarry Books. As always there are beautiful color photographs and line drawings to illustrate how to do beading techniques. A new body pattern with extra goodies are in the back pages of the book. I was lucky enough to see some of the dolls from the book in person when I was at the San Mateo Sew Expo a couple months ago. Wow, they are even more stunning in life!

Here's the other three books in the series: Creative Cloth Doll Making, Creative Cloth Doll Faces, and Creative Cloth Doll Couture. I think they're a must have for any cloth doll maker. And what's even better is that you don't have to worry about buying separate patterns since Patti includes a variety of pattern pieces at the back of all of her books. I can't begin to tell you how fabulous these books are ... the quality is outstanding and the explanations are very clear and easy to understand. Now maybe I'll be able to use some of the seed beads that I've had since college days. I've only used them in little bits for past projects. It'd be nice to use them for more beaded embellishments on my dolls.

Now I just have to get back to work on my Secret Pal doll for next Tuesday's Gals & Dolls doll club meeting. I'll show you pictures next week!

Finished Object: Noro Scarf

May I present to you, my first official finished knitted object, the one, the only -- Noro Silk Garden Scarf! Yay! This was finally completed the other night and I can't fully describe how many ways I'm pleased. First, this was the result of teaching myself to knit. I used books ("The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Book of Needlecrafts" by Cecelia K. Toth) and websites (learntoknit by lionbrand and knittinghelp) as my knit gurus. I used the uber simple garter stitch and since then I've become familiar with purl, 2x2 rib, stockinette, and the slip stitch. So now I am formally adding knitting to my list of artistic interests. Second, I'm happy to have found something that I can do in the evenings while enjoying my husband's company. It's not too fun to sew in the other room when he's home after work. I'll keep that as a day endeavor, unless it's a sewing emergency. You know what I mean -- when the gift is due the very next day and you're only a third of the way to completion -- not that I plan on doing that anymore, oh no sirree, not me.

As a result of my newfound interest, I chose the following book to read -- "Chicks with Sticks (It's a Purl Thing)" by Elizabeth Lenhard -- as this week's reading. I didn't realize that it was about teenage girls, but that's okay. No matter how old I get, there's still the odd teenage moment of awkwardness. Thank goodness it's not often, but it does make such a book interesting. I'll let you know what I think after I've finished.

And the next knitting project is a Mason-Dixon washrag. I know, it's a simple project, but it's so cute. After that I'll have to get a good pattern for a man's watchcap to make for Steve. My dad calls them felony caps because it's what you always see the tv show felons wearing. So if anyone has any good suggestions for one, please give me a holler.

Book Review: Atlantis by David Gibbins

I just finished reading this book last night and enjoyed it so much that I thought I'd share it with you. It's one of those action-adventure books with quite a bit of history (some accurate and some fictionalized), archeology and art, very much in the same vein as the Dirk Pitt stories by Clive Cussler. To a certain extent it's also like The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown ... an exciting "historical" mystery leading to different treasures. It's a fast-paced read and would make a great action flick, but only if it's less than two hours.

After finishing it I kept thinking back to those art history classes in college that kept showing all the beautiful mosaics and frescoes from Crete. I'm especially taken with the little snake goddess figurine that they found in Knossos. There's something about the beautiful layers on her skirt and that little apron that I'd like to work with. Perhaps I need to add another doll to my list of projects. Wonder if the colors were originally so subtle and earth-toned? Or were they once extremely bright and more jewel-toned instead? Anyway, I think that I'll just put this on the back burner and let it simmer for a while.

On the house front, we met with the insurance claim rep and made a recorded statement. It went pretty well, but the next step is for their internal auditors to calculate what it would cost to replace the stolen items. Hmmm, see here's where I can see a dark room filled with people hunched over computers checking out discount sites and ebay for the best bargains. Hopefully we will be compensated enough to cover the losses. Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile I still am waiting for the new computer. They've sent the monitor but it's pretty useless sans PC so it remains in its box, unopened. The nice people at Dell said that it should be here October 23rd so I'll just have to be patient a bit longer. And I've been wanting to try out EQ5 for the last week or so since it arrived. Ohhhh, okay, guess I'm not a super patient person ... but I really want to try it out. I've been sketching some quilt ideas but have a feeling that it'd go so much faster, and more accurately, with EQ5. But I have been able to work on a couple of my list items. I'll just have to wait a bit longer before I can get pictures of them up again.

Creative Chaos

I've been reading this book lately, trying to figure out how I can organize my own mess of an office/craft room - see here. So far the only thing I've been able to accomplish is to get everything off the floor and into the closet. But it's not organized in there - oh no! It's just thrown in willy-nilly, and in lots of plastic bags to boot. I've decided that I really must get things under control.  This has been an enormous inspiration as well.  And this room is spectacular! So no more projects or swaps (I finally finished the wristlet swap and will post pics once Carrie has received it) until I have some sort of handle on this chaos. I will definitely have to purge lots of stuff (okay, to be fair, a whole bunch of stuff sitting under the desk needs to be sold on ebay for my mom.) So my next step is to figure out what needs to go, what needs to stay and how I'd like to organize it.

Any other suggestions or links to organized craft spaces would be greatly appreciated. How have you solved this problem?