Yarn Along, June 5

~Two of my favorite things are knitting and reading!  I love seeing what other people are knitting and reading as well.  So, what are you knitting or crocheting right now?  What are you reading?  Take a photo and share it either on your blog or on Flickr.  Leave a link over at Ginny's Yarn Along to share your photo with the rest of us!~

This week I am continuing to work on Amelia's Acacia.  I am making slow progress on it but progress nonetheless!  I am planning to finish it this week and have a trip to a new (somewhat) local yarn store scheduled for this weekend with my mom, where I hope to buy some new yarn for a new project or two!!  This is very exciting, since it has been 6 months since I set foot into a yarn store.  This new shop is still about an hour away but that is closer than any I've had access to for a while now!

I finished reading The Secret of the Fourth Candle this week and was charmed by the delightful three stories included in the book.  While perusing the children's picture books for my girls at the library this week, I saw Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Desperaux on the shelf and I grabbed it.  We have watched the movie several times and I have had the distinct impression that it is probably an excellent book.  It is different from the movie and I am enjoying it, even though the characters were, some of them, changed drastically for the movie- even Desperaux!  I am also listening to a fun new-to-me podcast called Craftlit that includes knitting/crafting chat and a chapter and discussion of one of my favorite books, Jane Eyre.

  

The other old little book pictured is one I keep handy every day these past few years. It is a book of poetry called Kitchen Sonnets written by Ethel Romig Fuller. It is one of my favorite books ever and each poem stirs up in me gratitude for the joys and work of motherhood and spurs me on to appreciate the mundane, simple pleasures around me here and now.
Here is one of my favorites:

A Song of Home

Were I to make a poem of a day

Of housework, I'd not write of dust and brooms

So much as of the sun in spotless rooms,

Of bowls of freshly cut sweetpeas- I'd say

Less of vegetables and kinds of bread,

Of endless dishes washed and scraped and dried,

And more of children's hunger satisfied-

I'd tell of warm soft lips on mine instead.

O more than ceaseless duties I would sing

Of happy hearts and of contentment, of

Ambitious dreams - yes, more than anything 

I'd tally every blessing, wherein love

Is the greatest of them all: is the leaven

Exalting toil, turning home to heaven.

Isn't it lovely? It makes you want to go kiss your babies, pick some flowers, scrub some pots or hang laundry on the line, doesn't it? At least it always does me.