Currently reading and working on....

The Rose Grower

This caught my eye at the used bookstore the other day because of this blurb on the back:

"If Jane Austen had been french, she might well have invented the family Saint-Pierre....stylish and uniquely crafted."- The Orlando Sentinel
I am now on page 145.

Here is a bit that I liked from the book so far about Sophie the protagonist:

"Think of her: a girl with just enough education to awaken curiosity but not nearly enough to satisfy it, a woman with neither beauty nor wealth and therefore little prospect of marriage. Think of her days: the unimaginable, unavoidable drudgeries like making soap and sewing every article of clothing and linen, the tedium of winter evenings when a few expensive candles shed such poor light that the easiest (and warmest) thing to do was to go to bed. Think of her world: elsewhere, horizons were expanding -oxygen had been isolated, the Pacific had been mapped, absolute monarchy was being dismantled-but science and history filtered down to Monsignac as anecdote and rumour, easily outweighed by a village scandal or the damage caused by an early frost.
You can see why Sophie needed roses."



I found this quote by Voltaire on page 120:

"Just as bad taste in the physical sense consists in being gratified only by overly piquant or excessive seasonings, so bad taste in the arts is a matter of being pleased only by affected ornament and of not responding to natural beauty."

It was so timely as I had just discovered this blog:

Eyes of Wonder

That blog is simply the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Her family is so beautiful that I think I might be jealous. Clearly I have not been so marred by the world's definition of beauty that I can not recognize true beauty.



I am also almost finished with both the brown and black versions of this shawl:

Half Moon Shawl



Today is a slow day because I cannot leave to do errands. The electrician is here to rewire the patio so that it might support the hot tub we got off of Craigslist. The girls made me sad because they said they would rather have lunch with me than have a hot tub. I didn't tell them that I agree, just that Daddy wants them to have this hot tub so we can have fun family times in it.

I have something special planned to make up for it. We are going to make doll clothes and work on learning to crochet after I pick them up. I have the perfect pattern for them to try:


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