I am a knitting knut (misspelling intended). I love to knit. I also work in knitting so I get to see a lot of neat things. This shawl was inspired by the beautiful classic, “Charlotte’s Web.” I think it is one of the most gorgeous pieces of knitting I have seen in sometime.

See how a book inspired a work of art!

Post from: Literally Blogging

I found the perfect solution. It was a moment of pure serendipity. Picture someone stumbling into a doorway and falling flat on their face in the entry hall. That is, in a cyber-kind-of way what happened to me. The Web site is called JiggerBug. It is to audio books, what Netflix is to films.

There are three plans. One allows you to have one audio book at a time. A second plan allows for two at a time, plus a downloadable audio book every 14 days, and another plan allows for five audio books at a time, plus two free instant downloads every 14 days. These are very reasonably priced plans – you can keep the CDs or tapes as long as you need to and it is all postage paid. And there is a two week trial – what more could you need?

Just like Netflix, they have a queue. So I have selected about a dozen books and they will come to me one after the other, as I return them. I chose the two at a time plan; my plan is to be reading one while the other is in transit.

They have classics, plays, genre fiction, popular fiction, nonfiction… you name it and they have it. And if they don’t, they’ll try to get it for you via a convenient request form.

I am thrilled. I love to knit, which is why I am usually hanging out at Hankering For Yarn, my primary blog. And there are times I want to read but I can’t do both! Movies I can at least listen to, but I have a HUGE stack of books to read. Now I can knit and read simultaneously. I have been doing the happy dance ever since I found JiggerBug.

JiggerBug

Post from: Literally Blogging

I have been writing professionally for about a decade now. In my “previous life,” I was a nurse but fortunately, I also studied journalism and have had an interest in literature, both American and European, since… well, forever. When I left nursing, I decided to just chase my own dream and stepped out on the proverbial limb and began writing for a living. There are days I can’t believe how fortunate I am and there are days I fight for every word. I have written freelance for several publications, a textbook publisher and have one book on the market about autism. I now am blogging about the things that I love the most and wish to share.

I define myself as a woman, a widow who was once a wife (and still is in some sort of spiritual sense), a mother, a daughter, and a friend. I enjoy reading, knitting, my cats, sewing, violin (I’m just a beginner though) and a myriad of other things that I never have enough time to do. I enjoy good music, ice cream, hot summer days, and snowy winter nights, and my favorite time of the year is autumn when the days are crisp and the memories are crisper.

I am looking forward to sharing with you our love for literature; I love the exchange and hearing from readers, and I hope you will comment and/or email me. I am sure this blog will evolve over time; a blog is merely a reflection of the individual writing it and people change, so it stands to reason that our blogs will change with us. I hope to inspire you, tell you about books you may not know about, share a wee bit of literary gossip, and touch your life in some way that makes for enjoyable reading.

Adelle Tilton Biography

Post from: Literally Blogging

Tom and Huck, those classic icons of boyhood, still color my perception today of what childhood should be like: sunrises and fishing trips, wholesome packed lunches and adventures with schoolyard chums.

Sometimes I longed to be Becky, receiving a first kiss of such awkward sweetness. But mostly, I wanted to be Tom, and Huck. I wanted to whitewash fences and flee down the Mississippi on a makeshift raft. I wanted dangerous caves and hidden treasure and running barefoot. In short, I wanted to be an adventure novel boy.

During my tenth summer, I refused to wear anything except my red-and-white Little League baseball uniform, long hair tucked under a red cap, black cleats kicking up dust as I roamed the broken countryside, looking for buried treasure.

Whenever anyone mistook me for a boy, my heart would give a wild leap of triumph. Being a boy meant spirit and independence. Being a boy meant fun.

The ‘girl’ stories I loved then and still cherish, did not offer these adventures. Their triumphs were found not in outsmarting villains, but in pleasing society.

Even the spirited ones never ventured far from home, mixing delightful bouts of tomboy-hood with sewing patchwork squares. Even the wildest, the Jo Marches and Caddie Woodlawns, ended up corseted and hairpinned, usually on the arm of some handsome suitor.

Years later, I gained a new appreciation for both my girlness and those girl characters I spent so many happy hours with. Theirs weren’t adventures of body perhaps, but they did share adventures of mind and spirit.

The tomboys, especially, those who fought against society’s limits, even if only for a few years, were heroes in their own way.

One of my favorite paintings is a portrait of Alice Liddell, the little girl who inspired Lewis Carroll. Carroll made his storybook Alice much more subdued and feminine, with her long wavy hair and starched dress and pinafore. But in the portrait, the real Alice’s spirit blazes through, with her challenging stare and ripped clothes, a wild, unbroken, spirited tomboy.

I hope she never outgrew that.

Post from: Literally Blogging