Ends and beginnings...and middles

 The final eight:

A young girl and her friends take the complicated strands of life and weave them into something beautiful.
Nobody Owens, who is raised  in a graveyard after his parents were murdered, searches for a true light.
Escaping from an oppressive juvenile correction facility, a boy (who had been accused of a crime he did not commit) digs through the holes of the past and fills the holes of the present.
The young runt of the litter rat learns about having to choose and choosing to chose between light and darkness, love and anger, sin and forgiveness.

The people (high, low, and in-between) of a medieval village are presented is a series of 17 monologues.
A summer visitor to a small post-Depression/recession town in 1936 uncovers treasures, mysteries, secrets, revelations, scams, and hopes through the stories told about the same town in 1918.
Through several storylines, photos, illustrations, and drawings, the paths of several young people cross and recross as they wait for things to happen.
A young girl learns life lessons when she is sent from Chicago to live with her eccentric but devoted grandmother in a small "hick" town.

Hooray! I have read all the Newbery Award winners from 1922-2011. The basic joys and pains of growing up- fears, mistakes, thrills, sorrows, discoveries, separations, laughter, tears, journeys- have not changed...they are manifested in a myriad of ways. And writers still love to personify animals and delve into science fiction and fantasy to help us understand reality and the inevitable changes in life.

The Newbery challenge has ended, but I am still in the middle of the hat challenge.

I have decided to move on from the blues. Earth, air, fire, water... the four elements are my organizational pattern for using up acrylic and knitting 52 hats in 2011. There is still some water left, but I am ready to move on to earth.

 Here is my transitional hat: another helix, with blue and green.










These are some of my earth skeins...

And some of the earth hats... The first two patterns are from Socks a la Carte 2 by Jonelle Raffino and Katherine Cade.

58 Chevy

Whosit

This brown one is another "double-bump/waffle/stitch.

The beginning? I have decided on a new reading program, which will be presented in my next blog. Stay tuned...

The beginning of the end

Lest you think my journey through the Newbery books has ended, I still have the winners from 1996-2011 to read.

In this group, I read about a 14th century boy learns that "living by answers is a form of death, but that it is questions that keep you living;" a Depression era boy searches for his father; a 12th century apprentice in Korea learns to read the world through pottery: a modern era New York City girl reads "A Wrinkle in Time" and tries to unravel the mystery of time travel while her mother prepares to be a contestant on the "$20,000 Pyramid" TV game show; a Japanese-American girl in Georgia and her friends; a sixth grade academic team and their every day lives lead them to the knowledge they need; and a Dust Bowl era girl describes the trials of wind and dust and pain through free verse.


I'm getting closer, also, to the end of the blues and the goal of 52 hats:

 Another helix hat...

 And another helix hat...

Finally, it is the beginning of the end of a long, hot, dry summer. It was so muggy after the refreshing rain that the drops were still on the leaves 3 hours later!

Can't think of a catchy title...

I have finished reading all the Newbery Award books listed in the 1996 yellow pamphlet I picked up at Barnes and Noble. These final titles are some of the ones I had read a long time ago but decided to reread.

These told me about a 14th century waif who learned to try, to risk, and to try and to risk again and again; an elder twin in the 1940's feeling spurned by her "younger," more successful twin; a mail order bride from the blue seas of Maine finds herself in the grassy seas of the midwest; a mysterious game arranged by an eccentric millionaire for 16 residents of an apartment building; and the friendship, imagination, and tragedy experienced by a city girl and a country boy.

Of course, the best are saved until last. A number of years ago I was so fortunate to attend not one but two conferences at which Madeleine L'Engle was the keynote speaker. I did not take any photos, but I do have reams of notes in a box somewhere. Not only did I sit in awe and joy as she spoke, but also I swam a few laps with her in the lake! I do have autographed copies of several of her non-fiction books. They are treasures. "You don't have to understand things for them to be," but "just because you don't understand doesn't mean an explanation doesn't exist." "A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points."

My final treasure is my very own Hitty. Unfortunately, I do not know much of the story of her life, other than she belonged to my Boston grandmother. I'm not even sure of her name. For most of my life, she lived behind glass doors in a monstrous antique secretary, at my Mom's house. I guess "modern" children are considered too wild to play with a china doll! She now lives with me, behind glass doors in a somewhat smaller secretary. I need to give her a pen and paper for her memoirs, but I'm afraid her adventures would be rather dull compared to Hitty's!

There is even a knitting connection: somewhere along the line, she acquired a knitted petticoat!

Now I just have 15 more books to read...and 18 more hats to knit!