I Am Now a God of Crochet. Here are My New Fingerless Mitts To Prove It

Remember how I told you that I could crochet anything, as long as it was rectangular and done in single crochet on hook size K?

I did not lie, for here are my brand-new fingerless mitts!

I am sorry to tell you, however, that one is somehow two stitches wider than the other, and this is a terrible and obvious thing to me:

I still haven't completely cracked how to count my stitches and rows, at least not in a way in which I get the same answer two times in a row.

Before the older kid suggested that we learn together over Spring Break, I don't think that I've ever picked up a crochet hook with a serious intention to learn how to use it. I did once spend a couple of months fiddling around with learning how to knit, but it was quite fiddly, indeed, and ultimately I didn't like it enough to even finish a single project.

So far, I am really liking crochet, though. Reducing the number of tools down to one feels like it makes all the difference in the world, and I like that, unlike with cross-stitch, I can look up from it to actually watch the show that I'm binging while I work. Ugh, why can't Jed Bartlet be our president for real?!?

And obviously how can you know I've made something at all if there is not this glorious cat helping me model it? Spots and I started off the week in great alarm when I happened to notice that she was looking skinny to my eyes, and this combined with my casual observation over the past several weeks that she was eating her dry cat food quite pickily to send me spiraling into a full-blown Cat Health Scare. 

She's fine, though! Two hundred and ten dollars later, the vet said that senior cats just get picky and it's hard to keep weight on them. But what's even the point of working from home if you can't stop eight times a day and warm up some wet cat food to the perfect temperature, mix it with homemade chicken broth (no added spices or seasonings, of course!), and serve it to your cat on a Fiestaware plate?

Now I just need to figure out who the hell I can snooker into cat sitting this summer with that kind of nonsense routine going on...

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April WIPs, or, Nothing in My Life is Complete

Okay, *one* thing in my life is complete, because I finished my foster kid quilt last weekend. But do to various stuff and nonsense--

--I still haven't mailed it, yikes!

I keep doing the thing in which I start a new project before my last project is complete, and that has been going just about exactly the way you'd think it would, sigh.

So, for instance, here's the cross-stitch I'm making to teach myself how to cross-stitch--

And after that, I have at least four more projects that I want to make from Creepy Cross-stitch--it's so good! 

And here are the fingerless mitts I started before I finished the cross-stitch project:

I just need to finish weaving in the ends, now that I've figured out what that is, and then seam up the sides, and I'll have myself a super seasonal accessory, lol!

Also currently on the crafting table are the puff quilt blocks that I'm cutting, and will likely be cutting forever. 616 quilt blocks is a RIDICULOUS number of quilt blocks, and anything over 400 should clearly be outlawed.

Even more ridiculous, though, are the projects that I need to start but haven't yet. I want to mail my kiddo who will soon be celebrating her very first college birthday a DIY party kit to share with her friends, so ideally it'll have a decoration, a cake, snacks, a little craft project because I am physically incapable of throwing a party that does not have a little craft project, and party favors.

Do I know exactly what I'm doing for all of those categories? Ish.

Have I started making any of that stuff? Not even ish.

So yep, you've realized it, too, haven't you? I'll be starting this new project before I've finished ANY of these old ones...

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I Sewed a Quilt for a Foster Kid. I Hope They Like Flannel!

Y'all might remember when oh, so long ago, I discovered that the kid that I never could keep pants on really liked the feel of flannel, so I bought allllllll the flannel on clearance at Joann's and sewed her soooooooo many pairs of flannel pants. 

Girl wore those flannel jammies in every wild print and pattern for YEARS, and honestly I don't remember if she, herself, eventually got tired of them or if it was me that eventually got tired enough of them to sneak them out of her wardrobe. But to this day, my fabric stash contains the odd bits and bobs of that long-ago flannel: there's a horse print in there somewhere, a dinosaur print (of course!), and, until very recently, a cute print of cars and trucks on a white background. 

But no more do I have any cute--but babyish!--cars and trucks flannel in my stash, for now every single scrap exists in this equally cute--and appropriately babyish!--flannel quilt that I'm donating to Comfort Cases through sewist Stacey Lee's 2025 Quilt Donation Drive.

I wanted a simple pattern, so I decided to make it all 6" triangles. I cut every triangle I could out of the cars and trucks flannel, and then went looking for any other flannel I had that would match it, and I cut all that up, too.

I almost made it!

I'd already planned to buy new flannel for the back of the quilt, so I cut the final six triangles from that, and one of the better things about having a graphic designer in the family is that I could give him all my triangles and the dimensions I wanted, and he was the one who fussed them all around until he achieved a pleasingly symmetrical design:

Without the kids at home I've gotten into the habit of using the family room floorspace to lay out my quilts. But of course, it was never the kids who messed up my quilts when I was laying them out. Look, for instance, at this charming gentleman:

Such a sweet and innocent little guy. Clearly butter would not melt in his mouth. And yet how, then, do you suppose that this--

--becomes this?

And it's a mystery how this, left safely there on the floor overnight when I decided I was too tired to finish pinning it--

--by the next morning had become this?

We must have ghosts!

Binding is usually my least favorite part of the process, but one of my Facebook quilting groups has turned me onto the technique of glue basting. You literally get out your Elmer's school glue--make sure it says that it's washable!!!--and glue your binding exactly the way you want it, then iron it to set it:

Doesn't the binding look perfect? It's literally just glued! 

The glue basting is so sturdy that I was able to fold this quilt up, glued binding and all, and stuff it into my backpack to take to my mending group's monthly Mending Day at the public library. In between trimming the raveled edge of a vintage counterpane and then rehemming it, helping a novice quilter sandwich her very first quilt, and altering a pair of capris, I finished machine stitching the binding. 

And then I climbed on top of a rickety chair while menders and guests alike watched nervously to take my very first photo of my finished quilt:

And then I went home and took a slightly nicer photo:

I don't normally like a lot of quilting on my quilts, and I get paid back for that when my kids' quilts, which they use constantly, also constantly threaten to fall apart. So there I am during every college break, mending quilts until they have as much quilting on them as they would if I'd quilted them properly the first time.

I obviously can't have a stranger's quilt falling apart on them without me there to constantly mend it, so I had to quilt this one properly the first time. And ugh, fine, the quilting looked nice and added to the overall pattern in a lovely way:

I could have quilted a LOT straighter, but oh, well. That's how you know it was made by a human!

Fortunately, I did have some help with the photography, so that's why these photos turned out as cute as they did. Behold my helper:

Is there anyone who loves the first truly sunny and mild Spring day more than a housecat?

The last step before packing it up to send off was washing and drying it a couple of times to wash out the glue and get the quilting nice and scrunchy. It came out of the dryer scrunchy and adorable, and I hope whoever receives it SUPER loves it.

I want to use up every last bit of horsey flannel and dino flannel in baby quilts of their own, but making and donating those will have to wait until the 2026 Quilt Drive, because I am already in high gear making the puff quilt that my younger kid said she wanted. I want to surprise her with it for her birthday, but I'm still at the stage of cutting out 4" squares for the back of each puff and 4.5" squares for the front, stopping occasionally to re-work my math because SURELY this quilt cannot require 616 of EACH of those?!? Surely I have instead forgotten how to multiply?

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In Which the Fairy Smut Book Club is Punished for Its Sins by Reading A Court of Frost and Starlight

A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Here's my review of A Court of Thorns and Roses.

Here's my review of A Court of Mist and Fury.

Here's my review of A Court of Wings and Ruin.

And HERE'S my review of the piece of shit that is A Court of Frost and Starlight!

Did I just read the fury smut version of the Star Wars Holiday Special?

There are some book series in which I would happily read an entire book consisting solely of the main characters simply bopping around and living their lives. Outlander, for instance, if you omit Brianna and Roger and Ian and Lord John Grey. Percy Jackson, unless it’s more really shitty writing about Will and Nico, who are supposed to be AWESOME and I don’t know how on Earth Riordan managed to screw that up so badly.

ACOTAR is NOT one of these book series. I’m not entirely sure what I just read, but it was… wow. It was a combination of absolutely nothing happening and everything that did happen being really stupid. Is it possible that this novella is actually written by the winner of some sort of fanfic competition? They wrote the best Bryaxis/Tamlin dom/sub fic and as a reward Maas let them write this no-plot piece of fluff? Because seriously, it has ALLLLLL the fanfic tropes, not the least of which is the #foundfamily rhetoric that Maas keeps absolutely smacking us across the face with. I get it! They all found each other, and now they’re all family! But I swear to God they can stop overtly referring to each other as “my brother this” and “my brother that” and “my family blah blah blah” inside their own heads! Is consciously referring to each other as siblings the only way the rest of them can stop themselves from smutting each other as grossly as Feyre and Rhys are? Because if it is, it’s not worth it. I’d rather cringe my way through another entire scene of improbable wall shenanigans than hear the words “my brother” come out of their mental POV mouths one more time.

This novella reinforces my headcanon that everyone in this fairy crew is really stupid and that’s why they had such a hard time during the war. Their jokes aren’t funny, and their wine mom culture is boring. But boy, do THEY think their jokes are funny! You know they do, because every time someone says something that’s supposed to be funny, Maas forces us to pan individually to every single character and get their reaction shot that shows it’s funny. Like, Feyre says something stupid. Rhys smirks and says something horny into her brain. Cas snorts into his wine. Az laughs. Mor smirks but, like, sadly because she has daddy issues. Amrin gives a sly smile and makes a sexual innuendo. Even Elain giggles softly. And on and on and on, world without end, amen.

Everyone’s Solstice gift to each other is equally stupid, except for Elain’s gift to Nesta because books are awesome. I don’t care what everyone got each other or where they bought it, and I have no idea why Maas thought I would. Just saying, but the only time I would ever be interested in that kind of tedious minutiae is if I was writing a #cozy #foundfamily #fluff fic for a winter holiday-themed fest on A03…

I hate Nesta, and nothing short of the most traumatic backstory possible in the next book will ever make me feel sympathetic to her, but I actually am slightly looking forward to reading her POV in A Court of Silver Flames just for a break from this “we managed to save the world even though we made every wrong decision in the process” lovefest.

Also--jeez, are you elitist much, because I think Nesta’s ghetto apartment sounds… fine? I mean, sure, it’s no House of Wind, but it sounds pretty much like my own college apartment back in the day. Like, isn’t Nesta only in her mid-to-late 20s? Everything works in her apartment, the door has plenty of locks, and there isn’t any vermin--dude, it’s FINE! I get that we’re meant to see that Nesta is struggling and traumatized, and the alcohol and gambling and meaningless sex work with that, but adding the implication that she’s punishing herself by living with the poors is bigoted.

Predictions for A Court of Silver Flames:

• PleasepleasepleasePLEASE let Elain turn evil! She is so boring, and I don’t understand why on earth she’s there if it’s not to turn out that she’s suddenly evil and has been all along, mwa-ha-ha.
• OMG if Elain and Tamlin could just fall in love I would CACKLE. Instant 5 stars on Goodreads!
• Literally the only ACOTAR character I like and think is hot is Lucien, and that’s only before he soul-mated or whatever with Elain, and now he acts like a pathetic dog. So if he could, you know, get his groove back in ACOSF I’d love that. If not, I guess there’s always fanfic!
• As for actual plot, I don’t even care. I’m sure it will be something about the mortal queens and that Swan Lake-ish woman or whatever, but that all sounds so boring to me that I literally almost died of boredom while typing it out.

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I Read Feeding the Other Because We Are Entitled to Food

Feeding the Other: Whiteness, Privilege, and Neoliberal Stigma in Food Pantries by Rebecca T. de Souza
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I normally try to live (unsuccessfully, but I try!) by the mantra that I store my books at the public library, ahem, but this is a book that I wish I owned, because I wanted to highlight and underline and marginalia the ever-loving snot out of it!

As a middle-aged, mostly stay-at-home white woman with lots of experience volunteering, with lots of that volunteer experience having taken place with food provision programs, I quite resembled some of the remarks de Souza made about the practice of volunteering at food pantries, and I’ve also witnessed most of what she noted, both good and bad. I did think that her first-person perspectives leaned too hard towards overtly religious programs, because as a devout atheist I’ve mostly worked with secular programs, but in most parts of the country part of the problem IS that most/all food provision programs are overtly religious. Still, I think that spending more time with secular programming would have given de Souza a more nuanced perspective.

But regardless of whether the food provisioning is done through religious or secular means, the point of de Souza’s book is this: are we or are we not entitled to food?

If we ARE entitled to it (and I’d say that we are, as the “life” part of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”), then we should have entitlement programs that enable us to receive it with dignity and enjoy it and thrive from it. If we’re not entitled to it, as we’re currently acting like we’re not, then it becomes the province of charity, and all the meanings that the word “charity” entails.

Here’s what de Souza claims that charity entails:

“Charity depoliticizes the issue of hunger, making it a personal and a private issue, not a public one [...]. Unlike entitlements, charity does not confer upon people guaranteed rights, but rather traffics in the language of gratitude. Charity legitimizes the distribution of substandard products and services and makes it impossible to question the giver or the gift. [...] Charity reinforces social distance and hierarchy between givers and receivers and Us and Them [...]. Consequently, charity silences civic participation and resistance from those on the receiving end by creating subject positions that furthers their political and communicative disenfranchisement.”

Instead, de Souza advocates looking at hunger from a social justice standpoint, in which everyone is entitled to healthy, culturally appropriate, palatable food, and if some of us lack that, then it is because there is something amiss in the structure of our society and it must be addressed.

It’s interesting to see a societal blindspot just laid out like that, and it reminds me of other American ideologies that many people seem to blindly believe without cognition: patriotism, for example, and the fervent nationalism at its extreme end. The idea that with hard work and determination, your dreams will come true. Racism. Xenophobia.

Also, the ideology that “free” food, food you didn’t actively earn the money to buy through your hard work and determination, doesn’t need to be palatable, fresh, “fancy,” or desirable in any way. There’s a collective belief that people can “donate” the weird food they don’t want to eat, or expired food, or the absolute cheapest schlock they can find at the grocery store, and the recipients ought to be grateful to get it. Fuck them if they were craving fresh strawberries, or want to bake the same exact birthday cake their grandma used to bake them, or got food poisoning once and now have a healthy fear of products past their expiration date. If food is an entitlement, then you’re entitled to food that makes you feel satisfied both physically and emotionally. If food is charity, then you get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit.

Although de Souza spoke a lot about this, and about the low nutrient density in the highly processed, industrial food that’s the staple of most food provision programs, and how many people who wish to eat healthier, fresher, more natural food can’t access it through food provision programs, I think there’s much more to be said about how this type of food is also ruining the palates of generation after generation of children. Remember when Michelle Obama put more nutritious lunches in front of schoolchildren and lots of people pitched that fit? I mean, yes, most of that was racism, but there actually was a good bit of food refusal going on with kids who were all, “EW an orange!” and then came home and told their parents who are all, “EW they gave you an ORANGE?!?” Because when you’re used to the flavor and texture of highly-processed, overly salted and high fructose corn syruped industrial food, then fresh, healthy, nutritious food, even though it’s delicious and so much better for you, is not going to taste right in your mouth. And if you keep not choosing it, then it’s never going to taste right in your mouth. And that’s another win for the huge industrial food manufacturers.

If we have to have an ideology, then, let it be that all of us are entitled to food that is healthy, palatable, and culturally appropriate. We’re entitled to fun food. We’re entitled to fancy food. We’re entitled to comfort food. We’re entitled to both locally-grown sweet corn and novelty chicken nuggets, a bite of black truffle because we’re curious to know what it tastes like and a bowl of Top Ramen because that’s the only thing that sounds good when we’re sick. To legislate from that ideology, then, we need to increase minimum wages. We need to lower rents. We need to streamline access to food entitlement programs like SNAP and WIC so that half the purpose is no longer to stigmatize the recipients. We need to slap down political machinations and racist and sexist narratives the second they leave a politician’s mouth.

But also, we’re not nearly there yet so, you know, keep donating to your local food pantry.

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I Am Learning to Crochet. Please Admire My Washcloth.

When I asked the older kid what she wanted to do over Spring Break, she said she wanted to learn to crochet. 

I have had no interest in crochet, and not a single crochet skill, but when has that ever stopped me from commencing a craft project?

Well, at some point or other, *someone* must have had *some* interest in crochet, because I pulled out this full set of Clover crochet hooks while I was digging out the stash yarn, but y'all know how bad I've always been about buying shit whenever the kids expressed even the mildest interest in something. I hit that homeschool strewing lesson hard, and kept hitting it, ahem.

It's not a hoarder house, y'all. It's a hoarder HOME.

Anyway, this hoarder home comes with a complete set of Clover crochet hooks and enough cotton yarn to do any number of crochet projects (it's also great for latch hook!), but the how-to books you've got to get from the library.

Might as well get them all, then!

Of these, Everyday Crochet has the best illustrations for how to do a slipnot, a foundation chain, and single crochet. I've never even seen someone crocheting before, so I really relied on the illustrations.

Side note, but this is another way that generations lose this type of cultural knowledge. If we'd seen people casually crocheting all our lives, then the very act of how to hold a crochet hook and yarn wouldn't feel so foreign, and learning the skill set would be loads easier.

The kid also used this book to figure out how to translate everything into left-handedness. It's like regular crochet, only backwards!

Here's my glorious foundation chain:

I had a rough time figuring out single crochet, so I switched back and forth between Everyday Crochet and Crochet: Learn It. Love It. Neither really made it clear to my muddled mind exactly how to count your stitches or where to put your first stitch after turning, so the kid and I spent a lot of time crocheting a few rows, then frogging it all and trying a different way.

This got frogged, lol:

At this point I'd just about cracked how to keep my edges straight, but I had not yet cracked keeping even tension, ahem:

Couple of wobbles on the edges, but look at that mostly even tension. It's a keeper!

I spent another couple of evenings crocheting while watching TV (don't tell the copyright police, but the older kid also taught me how to bitTorrent, and then we got caught up on Our Flag Means Death), and then Everyday Crochet taught me how to fasten off and weave in my ends.

And now I have the one thing that I've always, always wanted: my household's fortieth washcloth!

I meant for it to be square, but I got thrown off by the fact that 25 stitches long is not the same distance as 25 stitches tall. Is it supposed to be? I haven't learned gauge yet.

Whatever. I love it.

Check out Luna guarding me from the neighbors, who have the audacity to be outside on their own property:

I don't know if it's her age or the older kid's absence, but she has gotten SO protective of me. There are a couple of badly-behaved free-ranging dogs who interlope on our property (the one thing that I HATE about the country. Well, that and the giant Trump flag flying on a literal flagpole in front of another neighbor's house. Why on earth would it occur to you to mount an honest-to-god FLAGPOLE in your yard?!? And he doesn't even fly a US flag! It's literally just I Pledge Allegiance to Trump over there!) and they genuinely frighten me, but when Luna's with me she makes it very clear to them that she will kill them before she lets them get anywhere near me.

She also investigated my yarn to make sure it was safe for me.

It was!

If I was smart and methodical, I would make two more washcloths so I could learn double and half-double crochet, but seriously, this time last year the younger kid died on the hill of having a specific and exact number of towels and washcloths in a specific color to take to college, and to achieve that amount in that color at the lowest price I bought towel sets that came with washcloths, then another whole set of just washcloths, but then when she actually saw what the whole kaboodle looked like she obviously walked her request back, because I promise you it was an objectively absurd amount of washcloths, but just kill me now I'd already washed them so now we still own an objectively absurd amount of washcloths, but they're in my linen closet where I have to look at them every day, and not in the kid's dorm where I could have happily forgotten about the whole thing.

So Jesus Christ NO, I'm not going to make two more washcloths.

Instead, I'm amping up my skills by learning how to change colors, and I'm making myself a pair of striped fingerless mitts. 

Counting stitches and counting rows are not going great just yet, and I'm currently ignoring the fact that I'm definitely making this too big for my hand, and I thought my two yarns were the same weight but now I think they might be slightly different and it's messing up the tension or something, but I'm confident that come next autumn, I'll be walking Luna with the perfect striped fingerless mitts of my dreams on my hands.

Also, if you want anything crocheted for you that's rectangular and done in single crochet on hook size K, I'm your person!

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Dragon Rider Smut Book Report: Iron Flame is Stupid But I Read It Anyway

 

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Welcome to the second meeting of the Dragon Rider Smut Book Club! Here's what happened in the first book. 

SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILIERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILER

In the second book, Violet and Xaden are still having the same fight over and over again.

Awesome.

@romantasysociety 🤦‍♀️ Did you prefer Vi in Book 1 or Book 2? Im seriously looking forward to who she’ll be in Book 3!🤷‍♀️ 🎥 @Tiaslibrary 🥰 📚 @Rebecca Yarros ’s Empyrean Series 🥳 __________________________ #ironflame #ironflamebook #ironflametheories #ironflametheory #ironflamebooktok #ironflamememe #ironflamemerch #ironflamespoilers #rebeccayarrosironflame #ironflame🔥 ♬ original sound - Fourth Wing

Sometimes in a book, a character will make me feel like a literal space alien thanks to relational choices that they make that are so normalized within the book. Like, am *I* the crazy one for thinking that You Must Tell Me Everything is a crazy rule to set for your partner, AND that You Must Ask Me Anything You Want to Know And I’ll Only Tell You Something If You Ask Me is a crazy boundary? This is such a stupid fight to have for most of two books, because these are such stupid relationship rules!

Or am I actually literally a space alien?

I also think Violet doesn’t need to keep the secrets that she’s keeping from her friends, but Fucking Malek, Rhiannon, you are as bad as Violet with wanting to know everything going on inside people’s heads! Can you not give Violet a little space, please? Am I a literal space alien for thinking that it’s crazy for friends who are older than twelve to be this wrapped up in OMG I can tell something’s wrong what is it, um I’m good nothing’s wrong, no seriously tell me I know something’s wrong, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

@emfunnsbooks now you can be all caught up for the emotional devastation that will be onyx storm!!! xoxoxo — #booktokfyp #booksoftiktok #onyxstorm #fourthwingrebeccayarros #ironflamespoilers ♬ original sound - em :)📖💭

Violet really started to also get on my nerves with how often she’s got a tummy ache in this book. Every time someone says something emotionally charged, or she can’t tell her bestie a secret, or there’s a lick of tension in the air her stomach hurts, or it drops, or it squeezes, or sometimes for a change of pace her throat might tighten or she might feel nauseated. I’d have to go back and check, which I really don’t want to do, to see if this is true, but it would be marginally cool and an interesting-ish authorial move if this only started to happen after Varrish tortures her. Like, Yarros has always made a point about how Violet lives in her body, with her constant pain and joint issues (she learned the word “subluxate” for this book, so that’s fun), but it would be interesting if the experience being tortured for several days has caused her to hold that trauma in her body and express it through the one place Varrish couldn’t physically hurt, her tum-tum. It’s very possible that I’m wrong, though, and her tummy hurt throughout the entire book and I only noticed it in the latter half when it started getting on my nerves.

Side note, but I’m glad that we’re not raping people here, even during torture. Yarros gets a bonus star from me for that. Also the torture scene was genuinely good! I mean, it's so sad that Violet was tortured, I guess, but it's amazing how the quality of the book jumps up when she's genuinely in peril and not overpowered and also continually pandered to.

@myproseandcons Be a good friend. Save this to send to your bestie after she’s done with her Iron Flame read through 👯‍♀️ #IronFlame #Booktok ♬ Originalton - 🥀 verenarenafee 🥀

The book’s big climactic battle is stupid, but I’m also giving Yarros a bonus star because it was so stupid but simultaneously fast-paced that I was able to relate it beat by beat to my entire family, who have not read this series, with much hilarity. It was a lot of “okay, so in the first book Violet had this enemy and she killed him, but then the administration secretly brought him back to life and he’d totally changed and was a super good guy, so you’re not going to BELIEVE what happened when they went to check on the ward stone,” and “okay remember how Andarna is the most special because she’s a baby, well it turns out that she’s actually the MOST most special,” and “so then Xaden couldn’t hold out and he was about to die and that means that Violet was going to die and THAT means that everyone in Basgiath was going to die before they could repair the ward stone and THAT means that everyone in Navarre was going to die so you are not going to BELIEVE what he did!” My audience was rolling with laughter. It was awesome.

And after all that the only super important character who died was Violet’s mother, who was underutilized anyway so whatever. I did not buy her redemption arc that she was only being the world’s worst parent so she could secretly be the world’s best parent blech. I wish Yarros had really leaned in and made her some kind of secret venin or venin collaborator--I am so sad to give up my headcanon that she murdered Violet’s father to keep the venin secret, but I guess I can still keep my theory that *something* suss happened regarding his death.

@the.booktok.girls The best hype dragon in the whole book. #booktok #bookish #fantasy #fantasybooks #fantasybooktok #fourthwingrebeccayarros #fourthwingbook #violetsorrengail #tairn #andarna #bookmeme #ironflame #ironflamebook #Meme #MemeCut ♬ original sound - Iowa_wendy

Onyx Storm predictions:

• Violet and Xaden are going to endlessly fight about Xaden’s venin status. They will fight the same fight every time they’re alone, they will say the same things every time they fight, and it will be boring.
• Violet’s father will turn out to have secretly been… something. A rebel working against her mother? Also a venin but he also never used it so he can be a model for Xaden? I dunno, but Yarros is obsessed with Violet’s entire family so there’s definitely more to the father’s story.
• I still think there’s going to be something weird about Violet’s ancestry. Maybe she was adopted or stolen from venin parents or she was a baby venin but forgot or her parents did experiments on her.

Final thought: the infantry was my favorite, and I don’t understand why they only had one scene together and then fell off the face of the Earth. I hope Onyx Storm has more infantry!

P.S. View all my reviews.

P.P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Six More Sites To Go Until I Win Wilbear Wright

Y'all know I love myself a quest. 

A scavenger hunt. 

A checklist. 

A BINGO game. 

A trail.

If there's a prize I can earn, even better!

So this Aviation Trail checklist of 17 sites in and around Dayton, Ohio, that are important to the history of flight, has me by the throat this Spring. I want to visit all the places on the list, from cemeteries to college libraries to what looks like a warehouse on the grounds of a county airport. I want to stamp little stamps on all the sites. I want to earn a stuffed teddy bear wearing a flight jacket and goggles whose name is Wilbear Wright. 

And I will drag along whomever in my family can be tricked into getting into the car with me.

This particular adventure was an easy enough start, since we had to drive through Dayton to return the older kid back to college on the last day of her Spring Break. Might as well detour over to visit the first stop on the list, the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park!

It's been 7 and a half years since the kids and I last visited this national park site (which means I could also snag its passport stamp, yay!!!), and my partner had never been, so even the stuff that the older kid and I have seen before felt fresh and new to explore:

I'm still astounded that Wilbur and Orville built this dresser as children. On my last visit, though, I don't think I noticed the signage that suggested that the boys got their technical minds and interest in working with their hands from their mother. Yay for strong female role models!

I really want to visit Kitty Hawk some day. There's a passport stamp for it, after all!

I want to cross-stitch this on a pillow. I think it's hilarious:

If the brothers hadn't also invented the aircraft propeller, their planes wouldn't have worked. This, then, is their greatest innovation:

OMG I found a display that contains my bear. Don't worry, Wilbear Wright, I'm coming to claim you soon!

There wasn't a ton of stuff to see from the brothers' childhood home, which Henry Ford bought and had moved to Michigan, but here's their porch bench:

The second floor of the visitor center houses artifacts from the Wright Brothers' print shop that was located here:

There's also a parachute museum on the site, and I was interested to see that we got some of our parachute innovation through Project Paper Clip, yikes:

Tangent, but this parachute museum inspired me to look up where I can go tandem skydiving. The older kid said she'd love to tandem skydive, too, so someday this might be us!

OMG look who it is. I'm coming back for you, Wilbear!

Our time at the visitor center happened to line up with a ranger-led program that took us across the park to the location of the Wright Cycle Company:

Here's a recreation of their workshop in the original space:

Check out the cork handgrips and wood rims on that bike!

This is the original floor, so we're treading the ground that Wilbur and Orville trod!

Huffman Prairie, the second location of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Site and another precious stamp on the Aviation Heritage Trail, is only open on Wednesday and Thursdays, for some baffling reason, but happily, Paul Laurence Dunbar's house, the third location of the national park site and another precious stamp on the Aviation Heritage Trail, is only open on the weekends!

Here's Dunbar's bicycle, purchased from the Wright Cycle Company:

I'm conflicted about Dunbar, who was a brilliant poet but who abused his wife and actually nearly killed her before she managed to escape. He had a tough life and was the target of racism at all levels both overt and institutionalized and it's not like they had therapy back then, but still, I can't like someone who abuses their wife. But look at his darling little baby dress that he wore back when he was fresh and new and didn't know what his life would hold:

Side note: the stitching is sublime:

The last time we visited, I was also struck by the thoughtful and compassionate caption for this cane that hides a secret flask of alcohol. Dunbar was one of history's best code switchers, and he seemed to move seamlessly through various economic stations and within various cultural norms, but it never quite worked out the way he probably wanted, and he seemed to have always felt like he had something to hide:

Afterwards, I longed to sneak in just one or two more heritage trail sites, but the kid really did need to get back to school, so I just sighed a petulant sigh and took her. Little does she know that the trip to bring her home at the end of the semester will encompass a couple more sites, ahem, and then maybe just one early summer day trip and I'll finally be able to bring my Wilbear home.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!