Sunidesus Reads

The Quilter's Apprentice, by Jennifer Chiaverini

I finally figured out the library system here and picked this up recently. It's by Jennifer Chiaverini.

The basic idea is that there's this young gal you gets this older lady to teach her how to quilt and they end up becoming friends and start the whole "Elm Creek Quilts" thing.

I did enjoy it and I'm sure I'll keep reading the series. But it's probably not going to be one that I'll buy to have in my own personal library. It's fun, but it just kind of feels like something from the juvenile fiction section. As soon as the story got going I knew where it was going to end up and just wanted them to get to the conclusion already. That's just kinda annoying. I don't want to get impatient with my books!

It is fun to read about how a quilt is made, I found myself constantly googling the various quilt blocks they talked about to see what they looked like. And this next part you can blame on Ann & Kay... I kept thinking "I wonder if I could knit that?" when I looked at the patterns!

Round Robin, by Jennifer Chiaverini

This is the second in the Elm Creek Quilts series by Jennifer Chiaverini. I blazed through this and the next one because I had them as a single book (the first three in the series) and it's overdue at the library! It's really easy/fast reading though so it honestly did take me just a few days to finish.

This one follows each of the "Elm Creek Quilters" while they deal with some kind of crises in their life while they make a "round robin quilt". A cheating husband, a daughter who doesn't want to continue her education, a rowdy son, a stroke... I think I might be forgetting one. Oh well!

I have to say, the writing was a little better than the first one, not quite as predictable. I still had a good idea, but it wasn't as obvious as it was with book number one.

The Cross-Country Quilters, by Jennifer Chiaverini

OK, this is the third in the series by Jennifer Chiaverini. After this one I'm reading something else! Promise!

This one focuses on a completely different group of women. They meet at Elm Creek Quilts at the beginning of the book, and then it follows them over the next year. There's a similar idea as Round Robin, in that it follows them through crises as they make a "Challenge Quilt."

As far as I'm concerned this is the best of the first three. I actually wanted to know what happened to these characters. Unfortunately it didn't do a great job of portraying multiple sclerosis (one of the characters has it) and that's too bad. I'm not sure if the author got some bad information or what. Not that I'm an expert of course! But a little simple research and you'll end up with a much different idea of what MS is than what the author gives you.

OK, now I'm off to read something completely different! Probably sci-fi....

Wendy Knits: My Never-Ending Adventures in Yarn, by Wendy Johnson

It's another knitting book! This one is by Wendy Johnson of Wendy Knits. (go figure right?)

It's a combo of patterns and stories about her history with knitting. Personally, I quite enjoyed it. Lots of fun bits and lots of practical bits. (I'm using her generic toe-up sock pattern right now) A lot of the patterns for tops seem very approachable so I'll probably have to try one (or two, or three) of them at some point. I'm trying really hard to finish some WIP's before I cast-on anything else!