Working on ..., Reading...

I've been working on several projects, experimenting, building on ideas, changing my mind, moving on. I like all of them; not one is finished; they get to the point of where I can do handwork and are then set aside for watching television and completion of details. I'll take some pictures later that will reveal small portions and still keep some mystery. Especially since I've not decided which to use or how to go forward on some of them, they need to remain engimatic. I worry when making something for other people - about the quality, the creativity, whether they will be good enough, whether the recipient will be pleased, ...then try to remember that doing what I can, what satisfies me, is really all I can do.

I finished The Lost Child. I hurried on through it never finding it completely satisfying, so eager to get on to something else. Last night, I began reading Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, thanks for the encouragement, Jane Ann.

Here is an excerpt from the Author's Note:

Storytelling, in my family, was highly prized. While my father walked home from work he rearranged the events of his day to make them more entertaining, and my mother could make a trip to the supermarket sound like an adventure. [from what I've read about the author's mother so far, it probably was an adventure] If this required minor adjustments of fact, nobody much minded: it was certainly preferable to boring your audience.

The good stories, of course, were repeated endlessly until they took on a life of their own...

Isn't that tempting? Near the end of the Author's Note, Reichl writes, "Everything here is true, but it may not be entirely factual." Then she takes off on the first chapter, titled The Queen of Mold. I haven't gotten very far yet, but a few chapters on have fallen in love with Aunt Birdie and Alice.

This book is about the appreciation of food, but also about family and personal myth. Every family has these, but Reichl's family is unusually eccentric and creative, and therefore, perfect fodder for a book, or in her case, several books.

One of those happy synchronicitous developments: Reichl's mother knew Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999), child prodigy, violinist, composer. After putting down Tender at the Bone, and picking up The Light Years again, the Duchy and Sid are discussing Menuhin and his performances in the 1930's. Love the way that some books about entirely different times, in different countries, about different topics...sometimes just mesh in unexpected ways.