A few weeks ago when I joined Julia at the Steveston Knitting Meetup, one of the gals (Petra, psophia17 on Ravelry) brought these delicious blueberry crumble bars. They are to die for. She posted the recipe link on the Terminal City Yarn Wranglers Group (ravelry link… it’s the Lower Mainland group). So I nabbed it, planning to use my usual batch of blackberries from camp to make these crumble bars instead of the regular ol’ blackberry pie. (I always think the pie is too runny, everyone else likes it).

Here’s some photos of the blackberries this weekend. Unfortunately, due to the wet June over half of the blackberries were not ripe. And of the ones that were, a bunch were over ripe because of the wet August too.

Distracted by the gorgeous Percheron next door to the camp… and her little baby (who was born last summer).

My Our haul (I suppose the BF was helpful and deserves credit):

Mmmm Blackberry crumb bars!

The fourth, and final, installment in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series was a huge disappointment to me. Meyer isn’t a particularly fabulous writer but she managed to hook onto a great story idea. The idea captured both YA and adult readers, and my reading of Twilight was really good. New Moon was good, Eclipse was good; but Breaking Dawn really killed the series. Instead of going out with a bang, it kind petered out and halfway through the book I thought, “okay… so why am I only on page 500 if everything is hunky-dory?”

I was borrowing the book from a friend of a friend, so I only had it for three days, but I’m pretty glad I did. My friend who bought the book (she’s bought all of them because she loved the first ones), she has gotten so fed up with Breaking Dawn that she has quit reading it halfway through. In fact, even Henry couldn’t understand why I was tearing through the book so quickly (excuse the cellphone picture). To be honest, it was just to get it over and done with (which is a terrible way to feel about a book).

ALERT! ALERT! SPOILERS AHEAD! SPOILER ALERT!!

Have you been sufficiently warned? SPOILERS AHEAD! Okay. That being said, I was so fed up with Bella by page 150 that I wanted to slap her. And I was so annoyed at Edward for still treating her like a balloon in a thumbtack factory! Then DUH you’re pregnant… what did you think would happen? And DEAR GOD the name! Who names a child Renesme? I don’t care if it’s a combination of your mom’s name and your mother-in-law’s name… that’s just stupid! And guess what her middle name is: Carlie, a mixture of Charlie and Carlise, her father and her father-in-law. UGH.

Then Jacob, well, I was expecting him to imprint on Vampire Bella… and I think it was kinda a write-off how Bella got out of that whole first-year-being-a-vampire craziness. Too easy and not even properly explained. I did like her powers and how she learned to use them though. And I thought Alice was brilliant; the only problem is because it’s first-person-Bella-narrative, we didn’t get to see anything when Alice went away.

END SPOILERS — MY FINAL COMMENTS BEGIN HERE!!

Maybe my expectations were too high?

To be honest, I don’t think this was Stephenie Meyer’s strongest work. I think she needed a way to end the series quickly before it got too old. Because everything was always starting to look Happy Ending and she sort of ran out of kinks to throw in their works. My favourite storyline was New Moon because something totally new and exciting was introduced (werewolves!).

I suppose now I should read The Host, Stephenie Meyer’s first adult novel, to compare her writing styles. To be honest, I don’t think her YA style is very strong — just the subject was quite unique for a YA.

So we don’t really cook the cat… but we have a granite island countertop and some barstools. The kitchen is basically social-central in our house, and Henry knows that. He sits on the barstool and watches everything.

Happy Whiskers on Wednesday!!

P.S. This week is super busy at the office — Mail Out to over 600 people with information about the Festival. So I might be sparse around here!

[You'll like this one Cass...] Yesterday night, I exercised one of the many uses of vodka.

I was casually walking downstairs (carrying my laundry I believe) and I stepped on something. I screamed and fell to the floor (on purpose fortunately), and my dad yelled from the other room — What? What is it?! I was on the floor on my hands and knees crawling out of the kitchen when I replied, “Come here. Turn on the light. I stepped on something.” He turns on the kitchen light and declares it is a thumbtack. Ugh. Then he just plucks it right out! I scream again.

I get up, carefully not putting any weight on my right foot, and hobble over to the closet to get the first aid kit. We don’t really keep the first aid kit on the main floor properly stocked. Dad says, “Get some disinfectant. I have some Bactine wash in my bathroom cabinet upstairs.” My dad is the master of accidents — he’s not exactly clumsy, he’s just not gentle. I thought about having to hobble upstairs, and instead limped over to the freezer and took out the vodka.

Then dad looks at his hand in the light and realises he’s bleeding too! Then he says, nonchalantly, “Oh! I wondered where that blood was coming from.” Then, I clean our cuts with vodka, and he puts band-aids on us. Team effort!

Saved by the Stoli.

Whether you usually read off of your own book pile or from the library shelves NOW, chances are you started off with trips to the library. What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

This is pretty ironic because in the past couple weeks, I’ve tried to reserve books at the library online and been told that my barcode is invalid. I haven’t been to the library and taken books out in about 2 years (I’ve got for research but not borrowed). So I called up the library and it turns out that they had “youth cards” implimented… so the 14 – 19 year olds had different rules. Now that I’m over 19, my card has to be swapped for an “adult” card even though I got this card when I was 14 and deemed an “adult” at the library. Stupid late fees.

Mmm but Library Memories… I have a lot. In Elementary School I was such a geek — I was a School Library Monitor! Ahhaha But I really loved it. I could do whatever I wanted there — check out books myself, organize the shelves, keep the carts tidy. It was really fun.

When I was about 11/12 I would bike up to the mall near my house and go to the Public Library there. One summer, I spent so many days there just taking out books. I loved that I didn’t have a limit on the number or late fees. Also, they had Summer Reading Bingo. I wasn’t part of a reading club, but I played the Bingo in one day. You had to read all different types of books by all different types of authors. So like “non-fiction by a Canadian author”. When I finished my card, I took it to the Librarian and got to pick a prize off the prize cart. She said I was the first person to finish. I picked Hook on VHS (with Dustin Hoffman & Robin Williams) and I still have it! I love that movie.