by StephCat on January 27, 2012
Extra Yarn, by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen, HarperCollins, 2012.
Extra Yarn is a charming book about a little girl, Annabelle, who finds a box of yarn one day.
It’s a very special box of yarn, however: it’s bottomless, supplying her with enough brightly colored (looks like handpainted to me, lol) yarn to dress her, her dog, and, basically, everyone in town, touching everyone’s life.
She continues her knitting, yarn bombing her drab town with cheerful knits, until an evil Archduke hears of her (and her box of yarn).
Needless to say, all ends well, though I won’t tell the ending.
I don’t have children, so can’t comment much on whether a child will like this. But the message of selflessness and kindness is clear. It’s a sweet book.
I received my review copy from the publisher.
by StephCat on January 19, 2012
Lots of introspection this month!
Up until mid summer I feel I was doing pretty well with workouts. I was improving running, feeling stronger, etc.
Then I started coughing. And coughing. I’d have bouts where I’d nearly throw up. Bouts that stopped me running.
I was also tired all the time. I was waking up at 3 am and not being able to fall back to sleep. I was so frustrated.
I’m feeling better now — the asthma seems under control, and I think my tiredness was in large part due to the stress of getting CRK to the publisher in what, in hindsight, was a terribly short (self-imposed) deadline.
So here are the goals:
Hiking: Go on a hike once or twice a month.
I have several books for hiking in Southern & Central California. Obviously, if I’m planning a hike once or twice a month, it needs to be a day trip, so that’s going to limit just how far south or north we venture. However, despite urban sprawl, there’s a lot of open space here, too: the San Gabriel mountains, the Santa Monica mountains, all sorts of beaches.
This last weekend we went to Eaton Canyon, a very popular (honestly, too crowded for our tastes) hike in foothills of the San Gabriels. I’d never been there before, so it was fun to see something new. Rosemary & Curtis came with us. Curtis made it to the falls, Rosemary stopped before all the stream crossings (quite wisely; on our way back we saw a poor woman with a hideous compound fracture — luckily, the park is so close to civilization there was cell phone service, so her friend called 911). It’s an easy hike, but the stream crossings can be a bit treacherous if you’re not good at bouncing about on rocks.
How to make this goal work? Research & plan at the end of each month what we’ll do for the next month. I don’t have any set goals regarding distance or duration. I just want to be outside.
Walk/running: I’ve started run/walking again, and am planning on starting up Couch to 5k officially next week (since I’m leaving for TNNA at 5 am tomorrow morning).
I am planning on going for a run/walk this morning with Rigel.
I’ll come up with subsequent goals at the completion of the 9 weeks. Overarching goal? I’d like to do a half marathon next winter. We’ll see. I’ve not done one of those in quite a while. If nothing else, I’d like to do one of the XTerra trail runs, probably the 11k Pt Magu run.
Bicycling: go on a weekly ride with Dave (probably on the weekend). We have some nice places to bike around here. The PV peninsula is great on a quiet Sunday morning. I actually like riding on the Strand, by the beach, in areas where there aren’t many pedestrians ignoring the rules that it’s a bike path, bikes only, no peds.
I should include some gym/core/stretching goals, but I need to dwell on that a bit.
