Tomorrow is Memorial Day and the unofficial start of summer. In Southwest Florida, it has been summer for about a month now. The days are above ninety degrees and no one wants to spend time out in the summer. While the pool looks appealing, the air-conditioning is much more comforting. I’m about five inches into my light summer scarf/shawl after a week’s worth of work. I should have this done by Labor day if I’m lucky. Once it is completed, it’ll be my favorite summer accessory. The warm weather is a good time to work with lightweight materials such as cotton, linen, silk and bamboo. I’m using very, very fine wool. I’d love to make a skirt out of linen, but right now I don’t have the budget or the time to cover such a large project.
Summer is a great time for reading for those of us who love to delve into a novel while relaxing pool side or beach side. I recently finished The Help by Kathryn Stockett. This is something that I could not put down. If I only had five extra minutes in the morning before rushing off to work, I spent those few minutes perusing a few more pages. This is a story of the maids who work in the deep south in the early sixties and the families that they take care of. If you like reading, go out, buy or borrow this book and tell your friends. I hope that this will change how we think of people and class structure. Society has changes but in some ways, it never will. Kathryn Stockett allows the reader to empathize with Miss Skeeter – the upper class white woman who decided to write the stories of the black maids, as well as the maids themselves, Minnie and Aibileen. I read this in five days despite work, school and even a guest visiting (read a few pages, talk a bit, sneak back to read another page). This one will definitely win awards and hopefully be discussed in classrooms as part of regular curriculum some day.
Knitwerks 