Tour de ... Fleece?

It's been crazy fun times around the C-K household lately. For one, we had a parental visit over the Fourth of July. It was fantastic to see my parents, and to get to share the holiday with them and my fiance. We had a pretty great spot to see the fireworks, out in a field near the Iwo Jima Memorial. We had some good food, some good times, and my mother and I analyzed the wedding gown situation.

The gown is too small. Seriously. It isn't my fault, though- although it is correctly sized in the waist and hips and such, it is a good inch smaller in the bust than the manufacturer size states. No wonder it won't zip up! After some serious freaking (would Mom make me a gown? Should we go to Goodwill? Should I sell it and buy another dress??)... we decided that it will all be ok. I called the woman doing my alterations, and she was unconcerned. We can either turn the gown into a corset back, which is what I really wanted from the beginning... or we can otherwise fix the issue. So hurray! I have a dress that will fit me by November! Without starvation, because I refuse to starve myself to fit into a wedding gown when I ordered it the right size. Now if only I had realized the issue was with it, and not me, I could have exchanged it for a properly fitting dress a month ago. Too late now.

Ahem. Other than that drama, and the excitement of our tasting at the hotel to pick out food for the wedding... it was a great Independence Day.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled craft content. As you may be aware, I spent the duration of the Giro d'Italia boning up on my cycling knowledge by watching two hours of bike race coverage. Every night. That was just early prep for the MAIN event in our summer activities: the Tour de France. It started July 4 (Independence! Let's celebrate with European bike racing!). Luckily for me, I enjoy watching the Tour, and I love spending so much time hanging out with my G and exclaiming over the falls and the gorgeous scenery. So far the Tour has taken our intrepid riders through Monaco (been there, loved it), Provence (lived there, loved it), and the insane TTT (Team Time Trial) through Montpellier (visited my friend there, loved it). It's like an en-cycle-pedia of my memories of France! And I've had the perfect project to work on while I watch the cyclists speed through Southern France. I am on the bind-off of the Hemlock Ring Blanket, after these few evenings of Tour coverage. They are not kidding when they say that binding off this thing takes time- after two nights, I'm still only 1/3 done. I figure by the time I finish my blanket, Lance will be back in the Maillot Jaune. After last night, he was practically there!

Never fear, however... I have plenty more to knit once my blanket is complete. For one, I am on the third ball of yarn for my Svale cotton shell. There is a slim possibility I could finish it in time to wear it this summer. I also have these crackpot ideas of doing some wedding-related knitting. We'll see how that goes.

In addition to the usual knitting, I've been stuck in my summer reading due to our book club selection. We are reading Katharine Graham's Personal History over the summer for our August meeting, and the book is equally interesting and enormous. My shoulder hurts from carrying the darn thing in my bookbag between work and home every day! I am about 1/3 of the way through, and am hoping to finish it up quickly, so I can get back on track with some lighter summer reading. Both in the figurative and the literal sense- my shoulder could do with carrying some graphic novels or young adult fiction!

Reading 2008 Recap

I knit pretty voraciously. All the time. But I am still a reader first and foremost. 2008 was not a particularly strong year for my reading habit- in the end I only finished 56 books. And a fair number of them (as usual) were comics and graphic novels. But I also tried to explore new genres this year. I was introduced to some new sci fi authors (Richard K. Morgan and Cory Doctorow). I finally read The Moonstone, which has been on my shelf since middle school at the latest. I finally plogged through Middlesex, which gets so very much better in the second half.I discovered a love for China, a thing for bad addictive vampire fiction, and generally this was a great year for entertaining and thoughtful reads. I also vowed to get a bit more nonfiction on the list... which was successful only in comparison to last year. Maybe 2009 will bring me more nonfiction joys.

I'm not sure which were my favorite books of the year. Good Omens was probably the funniest. The Stephanie Meyer books were the most addictive. World War Z and my first Anita Blake novels kept me up the latest on work nights. Promethea was the most mind-numbingly brilliant comic I read, but I have a special place in my heart for Scott Pilgrim and the Fables. There's only one book I actually detested - Bullies, Tyrants, and Impossible People. So there you go.

Full list appears below!

2008 Full Reading List

1. Bryan Lee O'Malley - Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus the World (1/2/2008)
2. Bryan Lee O'Malley - Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness (1/3/2008)
3. Bryan Lee O'Malley - Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together (January 2008)
4. Jim Collins - Good to Great (1/30/2008)
5. L. M. Montgomery - Rilla of Ingleside (1/31/2008)
6. Linda Medley - Castle Waiting (2/4/2008)
7. Brian K. Vaughan - Y: The Last Man Vol 1: Unmanned (2/2008)
8. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman - Good Omens (3/2008)
9. John Berendt - The City of Falling Angels (3/2008)
10. Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex (4/2008)
11. Sara Gruen - Water for Elephants (4/2008)
12. Patrick M. Lencioni - The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (4/2008)
13. Isa Chandra Moskowitz - Veganomicon (5/2008)
14. Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone (5/2008)
15. Ronald M. Shapiro and Mark A. Jankowski - Bullies, Tyrants, and Impossible People (5/2008)
16. Lisa See - Peony in Love (6/2008)
17. Richard K. Morgan - Altered Carbon (6/2008)
18. Marjane Satrapi - Persepolis - The Story of a Childhood (6/15/2008)
19. Cynthia Ozick - The Shawl (6/15/2008)
20. Charles Stross - Singularity Sky (6/15/2008)
21. Brian K. Vaughan - Y: The Last Man Vol 2: Cycles (6/2008)
22. David Sedaris - Me Talk Pretty One Day (6/22/2008)
23. Lisa See - Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (6/23/2008)
24. Pearl Buck - The Good Earth (6/27/2008)
25. Marjane Satrapi - Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return (6/29/2008)
26. Mark Dunn - Ella Minnow Pea (6/29/2008)
27. Bill Willingham - Fables Vol 10 - The Good Prince (7/2/2008)
28. Brian K. Vaughan - Y: The Last Man Vol 3: One Small Step (7/7/2008)
29. Brian K. Vaughan - Y: The Last Man Vol 4: Safeword (7/13/2008)
30. Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policemen's Union (7/13/2008)
31. Gilbert Hernandez - Heartbreak Soup (7/14/2008)
32. Deborah Madison - Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmer's Markets (7/19/2008)
33. Max Brooks - World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (7/19/2008)
34. Brian K. Vaughan - Y: The Last Man Vol 5: Ring of Truth (7/21/2008)
35. Brian K. Vaughan - Runaways, Vol. 1 (7/26/2008)
36. Laurell K. Hamilton - Guilty Pleasures (8/6/2008)
37. Stephanie Meyer - Twilight (8/9/2008)
38. Stephanie Meyer - New Moon (8/10/2008)
39. Scott Westerfield - Uglies (8/12/2008)
40. Cory Doctorow - Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (8/15/2008)
41. Laurell K. Hamilton - The Laughing Corpse (8/2008)
42. Markus Zusak - The Book Thief (8/26/2008)
43. Scott Westerfield - Pretties (9/1/2008)
44. Laurie Perry - Crazy Aunt Purl's Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair: The True-Life Misadventures of a 30-Something Who Learned to Knit After He Split (9/1/2008)
45. Rebecca Alpert - Whose Torah?: A Concise Guide to Progressive Judaism (9/2008)
46. Angie Sage - Magyk - Septimus Heap, Book 1 (9/23/2008)
47. Scott Westerfield - Specials (10/2008)
48. Eion Colfer - Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox (10/8/2008)
49. Zadie Smith - On Beauty (11/2/2008)
50. Alan Moore - Promethea: Book One (11/7/2008)
51. Alan Moore - Promethea: Book Two (11/17/2008)
52. Alan Moore - Promethea: Book Three (11/19/2008)
53. Mike Mignola - Hellboy Vol. 1: Seed of Destruction (11/29/2008)
54. Brian K. Vaughan - Y: The Last Man Vol 6. Girl on Girl (11/29/2008)
55. Stephanie Meyer - Eclipse (12/4/2008)
56. Christopher Buckley - Boomsday (12/7/2008)