I didn't reach 52 books, but I didn't expect to. With the shuttling back and forth from the old world to the new and back again, and preoccupations with issues (the usual), and the availability of quality, English, reading material, it was hard to keep on track. I did manage to read a few good books while in SoCal (#s 8–16 and 29–50), but the rest of them were from our English friends (and therefore you'll see British authors). The differences in spelling and labels made me think of growing up with the Queen's English in Nigeria, and then facing American English in junior high. Ah, culture.

This year marks the 5th year that I've been doing the "52 Books in 52 Weeks" meme (see lists on my About page). Memes are strange things, part popularity contest, part true competition, part snobbery. Reading parallels rock climbing: there is a personal challenge, a variety of selections, a goal, and a tangible reward (of sorts) at the end. No wonder it endures. When it started out (I'll laregly credit Large Hearted Boy for this) and spread through the knitting blogs, I wasn't the least bit surprised because the knitbloggers of 2005 were a smaller community with a handful of marquee names, and very open to all kinds of viral marketing, polls, and memes. Now, with book lists so commonplace on blogs (and I've made lists to read once I return to the US), it was surprising to read that this meme is once again making the rounds, this time through design blogs such as this and this. What's old has become new again.

Here's to 2010 and many more books in your bookshelves!

1. One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night, Christopher Brookmyre. Funny in a twisted way. Reading the thick accents was a bit difficult.


2. Slumdog Millionaire, Vikas Swarup. Good book.


3. In A Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson. Touches on the Aborigines, which bears addressing even more.


4. The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett


5. The Perfect Spy, John le Carré


6. Revelations, Jerry Moffatt. The climbing legend's story in his own words. Could have been edited a lot better.


7. Scarpetta, Patricia Cornwell


8. Righteous Pork Chop: Finding a Life and Good Food beyond Factory Farms, Nicolette Hahn Niman


9. High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed, Michael Kodas


10. Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America, Morgan Spurlock. An older book, but still relevant.


11. Ender in Exile, Orson Scott Card


12. The Brass Verdict, Michael Connelly. Good writer. This book brings together Bosch and Haller in a very unexpected way!


13. The Overlook, Michael Connelly


14. The Last Coyote, Michael Connelly


15. Sandworms of Dune, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. These two books are what the authors claim would have been Frank Herbert's 7th in the Dune Series. They're good, but I disliked the ending because it has an unrealistic, fairy tale quality. I think I would have liked it if it had been written *better*, it just seemed so rushed. I do, however, like the very last line...


16. Hunters of Dune, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson


17. Jacquot and the Waterman, Martin O'Brien


18. The Full Cupboard of Life, Alexander McCall Smith. Good book, great series!


19. The The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith.


20. Tears of the Giraffe, Alexander McCall Smith.


21. The Kalahari Typing School for Men, Alexander McCall Smith.


22. Deeper, Jeff Long. The sequel to The Descent; less creepy. The first is a must-read. But not before bed!


23. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernières. I liked this very much. I don't intend on watching the movie; sometimes books are better left alone for the individual to imagine the characters.


24. The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman, Louis de Bernières. This wasn't very good. De Bernières' writing style was rather tedious here.


25. The Showa Anthology: Modern Japanese Short Stories


26. The Transformation and Other Stories, Franz Kafka


27. Mr. Nice, Howard Marks


28. Slam, Nick Hornby


29. The House at Riverton, Kate Morton


30. Genghis, Conn Iggulden


31. Moriarty, John Gardner


32. The Whole Truth, David Baldacci


33. The Appeal, John Grisham


34. Book of the Dead, Patricia Cornwell


35. Predator, Patricia Cornwell


36. Secret Prey, John Sandford


37. Phantom Prey, John Sandford


38. Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, Ruth Reichl


39. The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School, Kathleen Flinn


40. Come to the Table, A Passion for Eating and French Living, Louise Luiggi


41. I'll Never Be French (No Matter What I Do): Living in a Small Village in Brittany, Mark Greenside


42. The Billionaire's Vingegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine, Benjamin Wallace


43. Echo Park, Michael Connelly


44. Lost Light, Michael Connelly


45. The Overlook, Michael Connelly


46. Still Summer, Jacquelyn Mitchard


47. The Inner Circle, Mari Jungstedt


48. Chasing Harry Winston, Lauren Weisberger


49. Alexander & Alestria, Shan Sa


50. Personal Velocity, Rebecca Miller. Short stories of women.

Would love to read Susanna Clarke's The Ladies of Grace Adieu

Not every post has to be about knitting, after all.

Photo by Cesare Naldi.

The Big Picture recently covered National Geographic's International Photography Contest and the first photo in the gallery touched me: The image of Rajan, a swimming elephant, supporting his mahout Nazroo is beautiful because it speaks of trust and the bond (sometimes over a lifetime) between handler and animal.

For some reason when I think of elephants, I think of them swimming. It's incredible that such massive hulks of mammal can actually move across water (when, um, I can't), and to see them in action is priceless. I've collected a few videos for you:

This is Rajan, the elephant in the picture above. Rajan lives in the Andaman Islands, in the Indian Ocean. Lots of water! What to do, eh?

This second video has a particularly nice story behind it. The owner (who is not the filmmaker) saved the video because she liked it so much and posted it for all eternity (or until the BBC claim copyright violation). There are apparently quite a few swimming elephant lovers out there.

This third features a memorable scene in The Fall (2008; IMDB). Tarsem (Singh) directed this, with Krishna Levy doing the music; in this interview, Tarsem mentions that male elephants will swim in the ocean to get to a female. He's also known for directing REM's Losing My Religion music video, another favorite of mine for its look and feel.

It should be noted that Tarsem has a thing for elephants going back to 1994. Read on.

Elephants are good for comic relief, too. No water, but elephants and trampolines are another improbabe combination. Also, it's rendered, but let's suspend reality.

And of course, the magic combination is elephants + swimming + comedy, which resulted in one of the most memorable commercials I've ever seen. This 1994 commercial by Fallon McElligott (now Fallon Worldwide) and directed and produced by guess-who (Tarsem, of course) put them on the map. (They also created the Sony Bravia play-doh bunny commercial.) According to this, the scratchy phonograph music was made especially for the commerical and is unavailable for purchase, and that it was filmed at Koh Phi Phi Ley at Maya Beach in Thailand. 

And if you haven't had enough, check out this list of fictional elephants.

Snail shells, bleached white in the sun, are everywhere at our home crag. They are all over the dirt trails, the patches of wild thyme, or the various bits of exposed rock. I've found them in handholds, even. They come in all sizes and shades of white. I feel sorry for the lowly snails sometimes, but they leave behind such a wondrous legacy of geometry, evolution, and pure... wonder. The most notable thing about their shells is the form: a spiral, always curving clockwise, always growing. I do believe it's Nature's most beautiful line.

It's no surprise that the spiral, and artists who use it, are the inspiration for this set of hats I've designed (and am still working on). I sketched, charted, revised and tore up notes, knit up and frogged samples, and employed tests knitters on Ravelry to do some work, and this, dear knitters is the result. May I present Smithson and den Arend, now available on my Patterns page:



Smithson is a reversible spiral hat that can be knit from the top down or the bottom up. The best part about it is it can be made in a variety of yarn weights (although I'd advise against laceweight), so it's a truly flexible pattern. It should also be noted that this is the simplest hat of the three, and the one that my guy friends favor most.



den Arend features a single spiraling cable section that continues into the brim. You can make it a snug hat, or as is the fashion nowadays, a long and slouchy one. It's the color that makes it masculine or feminine, I think. In pink it is absolutely girlie. My niece would approve.

Goldsworthy, the last of the three, is a work in progress. I cannot tell you how many iterations I created of it, and how many spiral progressions I figured out, but the one thing I can say is that it is not finished, and will possibly be done by January. I want to make something that is worthy of the artist it is named after, and like his work, it can be a fleeting thing. Please be patient.

Enjoy the spiral.