Another Book Down, Another Knitting Project Complete.

I just finished another book for the book clubs. This one, called On The Divinity of Second Chances by Kaya McLaren, was practically written to be a Lifetime Movie for Women. Great if you like that sort of thing, not so much my cup of tea. It's a dysfunctional family comes back together with the help of wacky outsider help-type of story.

Granted, I am partial to space battles and zombies and not so much the women's books, so I'm not the audience it was written for, but sometimes it came off as a bit TOO much. The youngest daughter is an Earth Mother-type, complete with bare feet and spirit guide/imaginary friend. But we discover there's more to it - she’s a reincarnated African-American preacher who died in a KKK-fueled church fire and was reborn into the body of a white girl; her constant canine companion was a dog who died in the church fire, and her spirit guide was a parishoner. The eldest daughter is the overachieving, power exec who lives with a loser slacker, only to dump him, discover she’s pregnant, and head off to live in a mud house she creates on her grandmother’s property. The brother is hiding a horrible secret, so he took off at the age of 14 to go live in a tree. In the woods. And then we have the tap-dancing troupe of elderly women – it’s the Red Hat Society in tights and taps. It just feels like it was constructed to have all the major elements of a ‘women’s book’ – it’s a good story that just tries a bit too hard to appeal to its audience. But like I said, I'm not the audience for this book, so I'm pretty sure I'm reading too harshly.

I've also finally finished a knitting project, after endless starts and pauses. Pictures to come, but it's a blanket for one of Heartbreaker's former teachers, who I always thought highly of and whose baby is due in a few short weeks. It was a pretty garter stitch (easy to work on while watching TV!) pattern that I put some color work into, and I think the end result was nice. I even tested by crochet mettle by putting a little border onto it.

Still trying to get an answer on the issue I've come up against with the Baby Boyd birthday gift - I e-mailed Interweave about it, but have yet to hear. Normally, when I've contacted a magazine about a problem with a pattern, I've heard right away - anyone have any experiences with Interweave?

My Ravelry queue/projects/stash is just a mess. I need to do a lot of updating. I've been spending entirely too much time on Facebook; need to get a lot of stuff buttoned down when the boys go back to school on Monday. I haven't even been spending much time on Ravelry, so I totally feel out of the loop.

Being home for this long is starting to weigh on me. Thankfully the weather's starting to perk up, because I find myself settling into this daze that takes up most of the day. I need to start moving around more, because I'm beginning to notice that it's all too easy for me to spend an entire day just zoning out at the computer. I need to give myself things to do and not tell myself they'll take too long - where am I gong?