Books and Threads

There is a new-to-me meme hosted by Kate of Books are My Favourite and Best, called "6 Degrees of Separation", one of two that I came across unexpectedly the other day -- this one has you take the book chosen by Kate, and link it in succession to five more books, and see where it takes you.  (You don't have to read, review, or even have read them, just link them together by whatever occurs to you!)  The given book for October is The Turn of the Screw, which I confess I've never read, but I think you cannot get a degree in English lit without knowing all about it, so I lighted on the governess theme and went to Jane Eyre, which I have read, multiple times in fact.  It was happily part of a class I took in Victorian lit, in which we also read North and South, which was new to me but I liked very much.  (Also the series, which I thought was very well done.)  Gaskell reminded me in turn of Cranford, which I had started reading some years earlier but didn't get very far into before giving up, and then just a few months ago, after watching the series for the umpteenth time, I gave the book another chance -- though I was aware that there are quite a lot of differences between the two -- and really enjoyed it.  For nos.5 and 6, I made quite a jump -- I was looking at the cover illustration for Cranford, and I still don't know which came first, but I thought of bonnets and Laura Ingalls' perpetually-slipping bonnet ("Laura! Ma says you'll be as brown as an Indian!"), hence Little House on the Prairie, and of that fellow peering over the top of the fence, who reminded me immediately of Mr. Collins, hence Pride and Prejudice!  (To be honest, I'm more bothered now, looking at the Cranford cover, about that chair leg! I'm sure it will give way under that poor girl at any moment!)

I have also chosen these particular covers because I find them both appealing and appropriate to the book!  (Except for that wretched chair leg, of course -- do let me fetch you another chair, my dear! ...)

Steady progress on the "Quaker Virtues" sampler.  I like the "Driftwood" taupe-y brown, but I'm not entirely convinced yet, so I've put the one letter in so that I can think about it for a while.  A dark coffee-brown would be handsome, too.

But, oh, what is this?

I had ordered a piece of linen and the "Anna Ohman" sampler nearly a month ago, and shipment of the linen kept getting delayed -- one of the reasons I decided to go ahead and start "Quaker Virtues" -- but the linen arrived at last a few days ago, and looking at it and the chart, well, can you blame me?  I braved the 25 minutes' drive to the nearest needlework shop, which I was doubly happy to find open, in these uncertain times, and spent a happy hour browsing the racks and chatting with the owner on the other side of the shop.  The thread I was interested in trying, Classic Colorworks, didn't have enough in very many of the reds I liked, and so the owner recommended ThreadworX, which is not only a local company but comes in twenty-yard skeins, compared to Classic Colorworks' five.  I was hoping for a Falu red, that deep red so often seen on Swedish country houses --

so was delighted to find one that comes very close, and goes beautifully with the café au lait supplémentaire of the linen.

This is just the first piece of floss! worked with one strand, as the linen is 40-count.  Very small stitches --

-- but, oh, isn't it pretty?!

The other bookish meme I came across, when I was replying to a comment on my "Swallows and Amazons" post last week, is the weekly "Bookshelf Traveling for Insane Times" -- it was started by Judith of Reader in the Wilderness, and is now being run by Katrina of Pining for the West.  The idea is to share a bookshelf or stack of books in your house, and write a bit about them (read Judith's two original posts here and here) -- simply to share discussions about books literally and figuratively "un-hemmed in by spatial constraints or parameters".  I suspect that we are not the only bookish household to find ourselves short of shelf space, and one day I was looking without quite seeing it at the fireplace we'd been so disappointed to realize, after the excitement and confusion of buying our first house, was only a dummy with a gas hook-up and no chimney, and I thought now, "well, nothing's burning in there, might as well put books in it!"  It is clearly not ideal, having to stack books vertically, and it's even harder to dust than a proper shelf, but needs must ....

Most of our bookshelves have general themes -- the travel books are all in one place (along with foreign languages), the science fiction, mysteries, knitting, and so on -- but the fireplace, being a catch-all, didn't have any sort of plan, though as it turned out most of the books in it are history-related in some way, except for the D.E. Stevensons, the hardcover copies of which somehow found their way here from other places in the house.  I guess we've been on a history kick lately, though I do spy a few novels in there, and the Shakespeare books that wouldn't fit on the Shakespeare shelves.  Seeing this photo reminds me that I must finish The Wake -- it was very atmospheric and dense, I remember from the first chapter or so, but required considerably more of me than I quite had at the time, not unlike W.G. Sebald.

Comments

[Bev Baird]

What an interesting linking of books.Haven't read the Gaskell books but actually have them. Enjoyed the look at one of your shelves - looks like one of mine. Will check out this new book meme. Sounds intriguing

[Katrina]

I see you have The Lighthouse Stevensons that's such an interesting book. I have some of my books stacked like that and some in bookcases in the garage, not ideal but it's better than having them in boxes. Thanks for joining in with this meme. I love your cross stitch too, it's ages since I did any.