Wednesday, May 21, 2008

During Hiatus I've been reading


I've found new cookie recipes, candy recipes, cake and cupcake decorating ideas, and quilting inspriration. The DH and I are doing Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. (Our stimulus check went to stimulating our savings account.) I've been researching the Christian Writer's Market. I also have been enjoying a lot of fiction.

Terri Blackstock's Restoration Series is highly entertaining. There are four books in the series: Last Light, Night Light, True Light and Dawn's Light. The premise of these books is a world wide power outage caused by pulses from a collasped star. No electricity, no cars, no nothing... anything with any type of computer chip in it doesn't work. The author follows a family and a small town as they struggle to adapt and survive. Blackstock is a Christian author and the books have a Christian world view.

The other series I've been pulled into is Jennifer Chiaverini's Elm Creek Quilter's series. (10+ books, I believe.) While not written with a Christian worldview, the stories are entertaining and focus around a circle of friends and the craft of quilting. If you love quilts or quilting then you will enjoy this series.

Okay, I'm off to start school... have a great day!

5 comments:

Kara S. said...

LOL! I'm reading Jennifer C's Elm Creek series too!!!! =) I just finished book 3, but I'm jumping ahead to book 7 next - I want to read them in the order she recommends on her website, not the order they were written. Have you seen the actual Elm Creek quilting books with the patterns in them? Our library has two of them, but only the 2nd one was available. I love the Castle Wall quilt! I want to make one but I don't have the first clue how to make a quilt or even own a sewing machine at this point!!!

Cyndi Lewis said...

Hey Kara,
I've read one and two in the Elm Creek series and have just started three. I was planning on reading them in order so I can remember which ones I've read. I'll have to check out her website, though and see what she says. I've been meaning to anyway. I haven't seen any of the books containing patterns. I wish, though, that I could... I really wanted to see what the finished round robin quilt looked like. I couldn't get a good enough picture in my imagination. I started learning to quilt with Lynne Edwards' Making A Sampler Quilt. She walks you through the entire process and you learn all sorts of skills. You don't actually need a sewing machine. You can do everything by hand. It just goes slower. As you may have picked up in the book... hand quilters do believe their method is superior. When are you going to blog again?

Anonymous said...

Glad you liked Terri Blackstock's series!
Sorry to hear about your tomato plant.
Loved the homeschool post!

Kara S. said...

Hi Cyndi!

My mom (the one who told me about Elm Creek) read the books in order. When I mentioned that I was going to read them according to the story line, she said she wished she would've known that order because sometimes the story didn't make sense. I think there's references to "historical" events in earlier books and then in a later book the "historical" story is revealed.

I'm back to blogging again - sorta. =) Our new house will be arriving next week so I'm going to be blogging off and on for the next couple of weeks. I've started a gardening blog too if you haven't seen it yet.

Hand quilting...I just don't know if I have the perseverance to finish it since I'm sure it takes much longer. I'd have to brush up on my hand stitching too. =)

Kara S. said...

Have you finished reading book #3 yet? I would recommend reading #7 Sugar Camp Quilt before #4 Runaway Quilt. Sugar Camp is strictly historical story with no modern characters. The storyline pre-dates the story referred to in Runaway and to me it made sense to read them in that order. The only "problem" in Sugar Camp is knowing who the characters are and how they are connected to Elm Creek. That connection is revealed in Runaway. I read #8 The Christmas Quilt out of order too. That storyline actually follows right after #1 so it was a little weird reading it after #3 and not right after #1 esp knowing the outcome of #3. LOL Did that make sense? =)