Still Life With Books and Knitting

I took the pictures of the snowdrifts along the drainage ditch on my way up to a dentist appointment. On the way, I stopped and picked up some books I had ordered from the library.

My local library is a member of the 41-library Lakeland Library Co-op, which includes libraries in eight Michigan counties, eleven if you count the three counties with one library represented each. I can access the Co-op's entire catalog online. For a bookworm, this is like a splash-down landing in chocolate.

The Invisible Sex, by J.M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer & Jake Page, is about the roles of women in prehistory. Some studies suggest that about 95% of the artifacts used by a hunter-gatherer society are "perishables": nets, baskets, mats, cords, and so on. The other 5% are the tough things like arrowheads and pottery. This book attempts to examine the scanty evidence of fiber perishables and the roles of women who have not been represented in museum dioramas showing cavemen with their spears.

I am fascinated by early textile history, but found this book a mite dry. I could have used a lot more pictures, personally.

Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, is a book I looked for after I read a review. Greg Mortenson got lost following an attempted ascent of K2, and ended up in the mountain village of Korphe. He returned to Korphe to build a school for the village's children.

I have only just started to read this one, and . . . I just remembered how much I hate writing book reviews. (Scarred for life by writing them in high school, I guess.)

Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan, was recommended to me by my brother, who is working in Colorado for Door to Door Organics. It ended up third in line, and I haven't started reading it yet.

On top of Botany of Desire are the two bookmarks I'm knitting. This brown leaf one is about one repeat from being finished. I started knitting a second heart, this one from page 62 of Marianne Kinzel's First Book of Lace Knitting, somewhat modified so the stitch count doesn't change so much.

It's such a luxury to be able to read any book I fancy. Bonbons and soap operas will undoubtedly be next. (But it does cut back on my knitting time.)