Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

I don't normally pick up non-fiction books but I'd spotted this book being promoted in the library under the 'green' or 'eco' section and as I really enjoy Barbara Kingsolver's writing I thought that I would give it a go. This is a book that follows Kingsolver's family's foray into growing their own food (not just vegetables) and trying to source the majority of the rest of their food from organic sources within a 100 mile radius of their home. The book takes you through the year, describing the different seasonal vegetables and the work that entails to go into producing them. What is really nice about the book is that her daughter and husband also write (husband factual snippets, daughter menu ideas and recipes).

What I found compelling about this book is that she goes into the food production that goes on in order to satisfy the huge appetites and surplus requirements of supermarkets. It's not just the food miles that are shocking, but the creation and breeding of gm crops, the creation of grasses that no longer produce seed, forcing farmers to continually buy seed from multinational giants year after year rather than saving and planting a proportion of their crop, food bred so that it will last the possible weeks of transportation rather than food produced for flavour. It is shocking. These examples are all from the States, but I assume that the case is not so different here. However in a Brexit scenario talk is of importing more food from the States and it is worrying. Shortly before reading this book I had just signed up to an organic veg box. Reading this book has made me more determined to try and get more organic and locally produced food into our diet. I don't have acres of land in order to produce our own food, but there is a part of me that would love to try and produce some of our own food. In our previous garden we grew courgettes and tomatoes one summer and they certainly tasted wonderful. As do our organic veg and apples, there really is no comparison! The taste of the tomatoes that we get is just divine!

Anyway, this was a very interesting book. It had the potential of being preachy, but I didn't find it that way at all. It was more of a diary with facts but really inspirational and thought provoking. I'd definitely recommend it, in fact I already have!

Exit West

I heard a podcast about this book that immediately caught my attention. It is the story of a number of people (but mainly focusing on a man and a woman, Saaed and Nadia) who migrate using doors. Saaed and Nadia live in a war torn city (possibly in Syria) where it has become more and more dangerous to live, and also dangerous to leave. Mysterious doors start appearing across the city and one day they decide to leave together, although they are unsure of where the door will take them.  This is a novel that has a very interesting take on the current migrant crisis in Europe, it feels real and yet there is a sci-fi element that is added due to the doors. The doors could easily take you anywhere in the world and they seem to just open up at random. They work both ways, as in a person in a rich country could easily enter a poor country, so this is also a comment on the socio-economic condition of migration. A very interesting section of the book was the part where the couple end up in London, and how Londoners deal with the sudden and unexpected influx of migrants in the city.

I sped through this book, completing it within a week, which in my life is more or less a miracle now! It has some very interesting concepts, although I felt that by the end the author had perhaps lost a bit of direction and the story weakened. Having said that, I still have recommended it to a number of people.

A Strangeness in My Mind

I started reading this when Alice was a baby, but it was just too big to pick up and hold over the baby. So I started reading it again the other day and struggled to put it down. It is the story of a boza seller in Istanbul. It follows his life from the village to the city, his marriage, kids etc. Throughout it all it tracks the changes of the city, from the changes in types of housing, the education and aspiration of its inhabitants, change in commerce etc. I really enjoyed this book. After about the first 50 pages, I really got into it. I couldn't read it for long chunks of time which was annoying, but I struggled to put it down. I wouldn't say that I emotionally connected with the characters particularly but I recognised the city that was being described. The protagonist went to a Turkish primary school at roughly the time I went to one (maybe half a decade before but it was recognisable) and the changes that were happening in the city reflect what I saw during my childhood. The Istanbul of his adulthood were what I no longer recognised when I went back to visit in my late 20s. I wonder whether someone who doesn't have that connection with the city will get quite so much out of the book, but then again, I did care about the lives of the characters to some extent, but then again the city is most definitely a character in Orhan Pamuk's books.

The Revolving Door of Life

This was given to me a little while ago. I've tried reading Alexander McCall Smith before but never really got into him. I was disappointed by this novel. It's supposed to be part of the 44 Scotland Street series, which I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that this was part of a detective novel, but there was no mystery. There were just a series of interconnected plots.

Baby quilt for Theodora

In what has become a family tradition, I have created another triangle quilt for my little niece. This one was delivered in person (but a year and a half late - been busy! Having a little one of my own is somewhat time consuming). Her parents asked for the same colour theme as a quilt that I made for my brother and sister-in-law. At this point I was quite grateful that I'd kept a document of the colours that I'd used previously. My little orange book is becoming a really useful resource.

 The back was a bit plainer than I normally would go for, or at least a little less fiddly. The only thing I was a bit annoyed by was the use of flannel material (the blue block) as it was really hard to cut as it kept stretching. I was running short of time as I had to finish all the machining before we flew off and it was the only type of fabric that I could find that was 100% cotton.

The quilt is bound in plain green which really helped to pull the whole thing together, although I haven't really taken a good photo of that for some reason. The photos that I do have were taken on the balcony of my sister-in-law's new flat. Stunning views!

The Giver

This was a revisiting of my teenage years. I read this book when I was around 13 and it left a huge impression on me. It was probably the book that nudged open the door to loving science fiction and dystopian literature. The book takes place in a community that is dominated by rules and roles, with each child being given a specific role or career to pursue from the age of 12. The protagonist of the story is given the role of 'the receiver', the person in the community who receives memories, not only the memories of the community but also of the outside world but also of the generations that came before. Receiving the memories throws Jonas' whole world into disarray and forces him to question everything that he had assumed to be true.

This was a really quick read, probably partly as I'd read it before. I was surprised at how much I remembered, which shows how much of an impact the book made on me. I've now passed it on to a friend to see if her son would be interested in reading it. I'd be really interested to hear whether the book still has an impact on a young person or whether it has dated a little.

A gift - patchwork cushion

 

It's my cousin-in-law's birthday and we're on a tight budget at the moment. I decided to make her a gift for her student bedroom so I raided my scrap bucket to find little bits of fabric. There was no particular pattern, just an idea of using blue triangles of different sizes and one yellow triangle.

It took a little while longer than I had anticipated to complete. The process was quite fiddly and I'm guessing as there was no particular size to follow it involved a lot of cutting. Perhaps this is also partly because I was using scraps so each piece of fabric was slightly oddly shaped and it was a little bit of a challenge to 'square' the fabric up. Perhaps to make it slightly easier I ended up making all of the triangles right-angled.

I've made it an envelope cushion and the back is an olive green as a bit of a contrast to the cushion front. I've tried making an envelope cushion before but I didn't leave enough fabric for the overlap, but this one worked.

This is a close up of the cover and shows my favourite bit; a tiny triangle that just peeks through. You can see that I've had to add white strips of fabric in order to square off the cover. Some of the patches ended up being less than 1cm wide. All in all this was a good little project to use up lots of scraps, not that you would know it from looking at my scrap bucket.

Three Daughters of Eve

This was a really quick read, pa=][/l[.lp[l'.[]
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partly because the Little One occasionally let me read whilst she entertained herself, but also because the short chapters meant that I could pick it up, read for ten minutes and then put it down again.  That's not to say that it is badly written, not at all. I really enjoyed this and wanted to finish it as quickly as I could because I was gripped and wanted to find out what happened to the characters. I think that this is the best of Elif Shafak's books that I have read so far.

The story mainly follows Peri, a Turkish woman who in 2016 is traveling to a posh dinner party in Istanbul with her daughter. Whilst sitting in a traffic jam (a common occurrence in Istanbul) her handbag is pinched by a homeless man, and in the chase that ensues a photo falls out of her handbag. It shows Peri in Oxford in the early 2000s with two other women, Shirin and Mona, and their professor. The book jumps from the 1980s, exploring Peri's childhood in Istanbul (ironically her timeline kind of follows mine, which may explain a lot about why I like the book so much), the 2000s when she starts university and the current day. Throughout the novel is a discussion of philosophy and spirituality. It explores her mothers conversion to religion and the decision to wear a headscarf, in contrast to her father, a staunch nationalist and muslim by culture and birth rather than practise. Peri is stuck in the middle, trying to work out what she believes. In Oxford she joins a class on God where her views are challenged by an outgoing professor with unconventional teaching methods, and the two women in the picture, fellow students Shirin, the make up loving, short skirt wearing Muslim by culture only and Mona, a woman of faith who chose to wear the headscarf. It is an exploration of Turkey, a State of nationalism which is becoming more religious, an exploration of being a woman in a Muslim environment and being a Muslim in a secular or Christian environment.

The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club follows the story of two or possibly three generations of Chinese-Americans. The older generation arrived in America after the war and set up home in California. They brought up their kids trying to instill in them the best of Chinese ways and the best of American ways, although this slowly builds up a distance between the generations because of the conflicts within the two ways of life. The older generation set up the Joy Luck Club, a group of 4 women who meet to play mahjong and converse. The story follows on after the death of the founding member. Her daughter is invited to take her place at the table and is told that her deceased mother's two daughters who she had had to abandon in China during the war, have been found. The book jumps around from character to character in each chapter and jumps around in terms of timings too. As a result you can begin to understand the clash of cultures and customs a little more. The superstitions of the older generations do not fit well with the younger generation who want nothing more than to blend in with their American peers. The older generation want their children to prosper and have given up a lot in order to make a life in the States, yet want their children to respect and adhere to customs that seem out of place in a modern American world. 

It is an interesting read and can be eye opening in terms of gaining an understanding of what it is like to be a third culture kid and forging that third way, amalgamating your parent's customs and those of the native peers to make your own culture.

Orlando

I've wanted to try reading Virginia Woolf again for a while, and I bought my copy of Orlando from "Monk's House", the former home of Virginia Woolf (now owned by the National Trust) several years ago. It's a lovely house, small but with character, but what a gorgeous garden. Once when we went there, we spent ages playing lawn bowls and it was just such a relaxing afternoon. They also have her little summer house there which she used to write in, and where she left in order to commit suicide. Seemed a little morbid to have that association with such a peaceful and beautiful setting.

Anyway, back to Orlando. This took me a little while to read but I think that was just exhaustion making it difficult to concentrate. Orlando is written as a biography, but is obviously a fiction. The author is all knowing and all seeing, so right from the off you question the reliability of the narrator, especially as one of the first stories involves kissing the hand of Queen Elizabeth I, and yet the book is written in the early 1900s. It follows the life of Orlando and he (then she) lives throughout several centuries of change. It was a controversial book in its time, but somehow slipped through the net of censorship. It explores sexuality, love, being female in a man's world (I was typing feminism and then changed my mind) and body image. The book is dotted with images of Zita Sackville-West playing the role of Orlando. At the time I didn't really get what all the fuss was about, I preferred Mrs Dalloway as a novel and I struggled with that one too. With a little bit of distance more and more of the scenes from the novel have been playing in my mind, so I guess it had more of an effect on me than I had thought.

King of the Cloud Forest

I have had this book on my shelf for a while from my teaching days but had never even opened it. I'm going through a bit of a bookshelf cull and thought I'd read a few pages of this before I gave it away. I ended up reading the whole book. It started off in a really interesting way, the story of a white boy, son of missionaries to China with the onset of the Japanese invasion. And then it moves into fantasy - (spoiler - he is rescued by yetis...) I carried on reading it none the less as it was quick and didn't require much brain energy, concentration or effort. Obviously I am not the target audience and a pre-teen would probably love it... I've not really understood the Michael Morpurgo obsession that some people seem to have. Perhaps this is not his best work? I mean, the man is prolific! Lets hope this was a dud. Still, it was quite satisfying to finish a book. Reading has become a lot more of a rarity since baby. I just can't concentrate for long enough and am simply too tired to read in bed anymore.

Diamond Quilt - Complete!

The quilt is finished! Twin sized, hand stitched quilt top using the English Paper Piecing method. It is bound with different fabrics that pick up the fabrics in the quilt.
 

I quilted it using the some of the lines on the quilt top as a guide. The lovely surprise was that the quilting turned out to be diamond shaped on the back and looks really good. It was quite an effort to wrestle all of the fabric through my little machine so I can see why people buy bigger or more specialist machines! 

I struggled to get photographs with accurate colours as it was such a lovely day and the colour of the orange backing kept on shining through. That, or the shadows of my quilt holder uppers. This close up gives a good indication of the colours. Mainly creams and whites, with pops of colour.
 

I presented it to my sister on her birthday. Although she knew I was making it I think it was a surprise that I had managed to finish it in time for her birthday given everything else that has been going on recently.

Diamond Quilt - an update

So, an update is required. I can't believe that I can actually write this, but I have completed the quilt top. It has been a long, but pleasurable slog and I have actually enjoyed the English Paper Piecing process.  It was really daunting to begin with but ended up being a fairly straightforward process and it felt like sections were quite quick to piece together.

I have also made the binding. The binding is made up of lots of different fabrics, most (all but one) of which can be found in the actual quilt top. As I was ironing the binding and winding it up I really liked the combination of colours and couldn't resist taking a few photos.

Next I will be basting and quilting the quilt. I've given myself a couple of weeks to do this, but I'm not sure how realistic this will be with a toddler who is now walking (well taking the odd step) to entertain.