Here is my latest completed rosary with a Celtic theme:

The Ave beads are 6mm green quartzite rounds and the Our Father beads are metal plated Celtic knot squares. The rosary's centerpiece is a 3 way medal which features, and please correct me if this is not right, the Miraculous Medal, Sacred Heart of Jesus and St. Joseph. The crucifix has a Celtic cross design.

I have beads to make one more rosary at this point. I have two sizes of freshwater pearls to make a First Communion or Confirmation rosary before I'll have to go purchase more beads. I also purchased beads on Etsy to make a rosary for myself. There are aventurine beads coming from Greece and sandalwood beads coming from Hong Kong with my name on them! It gives me time to ponder what kind of centerpiece and crucifix to choose to go with them. More on that later.

I looked back into previous posts to see what I'd written for Melanie Dickerson's previous books The Healer's Apprentice and The Merchant's Daughter...apparently during my blogging hiatus after the Newtown sadness in December, I'd forgotten to write about The Merchant's Daughter (blogging was not on my list of priorities after that and during the holidays, plus I started a new job right after the first of the year...I probably missed more than just one book). I'm loving her re-tellings of classic fairy tales. She's managed to take out the magic and supernatural qualities but not lose any of the story's core integrity. The Merchant's Daughter is in the vein of Beauty and the Beast which is, as fairy tales go, one of my favorite stories (check out Beauty by Robin McKinley if you enjoy that tale too and haven't read it--or if you have already read it and want to read it again!). You will not be disappointed if you pick it up, but I digress...

Snow White has never been one of my favorite fairy tales, possibly because I am not a huge fan of the Disney-fied version of it. The Fairest Beauty's heroine, Sophie, is not as insipid. The tale begins when an elderly woman makes her way to Hagenheim Castle claiming that the heir's betrothed still lives and needs help desperately. Valten and Sophie had been betrothed as infants, but the family had been told that Sophie died of fever at age two. The claim of her identity needs to be investigated but the Duke cannot go and Valten has a broken leg that must heal first. Gabehart, the younger, more impulsive brother, sets off secretly to rescue Sophie from the castle of the evil Duchess and prove to his family that he is as capable as his older brother. Gabe does get in to the castle and with the help of some of the other servants and the huntsman who refuses to take Sophie's life, they escape to the cottage of the Seven. Only one is a dwarf, though, but all are kind. Gabe and Sophie fall in love along the way as they bravely save each other from the Duchess's attempts on their lives. But both of them are betrothed to others so they struggle with making the best decisions that will honor God and their families. There are a few surprises along the way.

Valten's not pleased with how things turned out, but I discovered on GoodReads this week that Melanie Dickerson will release a new book called The Captive Maiden in the fall that tells a Cinderella story. He gets his happy ending after all.

Here's my earworm for the day:

I learned of this book by clicking on a banner ad in Shelf Awareness...the website, found here at The Girls of Atomic City, was intriguing, so I put my name on the hold list for the copy at work. The full title is The Girls of Atomic City: The untold story of the women who helped win World War II. I think that era in American history is pretty interesting, but I'll admit I have not delved very deeply into research. The stories are particularly poignant as we are losing so many living figures from that era of history every day. I'm glad that Kiernan was able to interview these unique women, most of whom are in their 90s, and tell their stories.

Atomic City refers to Clinton Engineer Works and the artificially created city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The military bought up and/or seized land in this little corner of Appalachia to create a huge production and residential complex that employed some 70,000 workers and their families. Construction workers, office workers, and scientists of all stripes were recruited from around the country to provide manpower. But none of them knew exactly what was going on. All they and the surrounding residents in Knoxville knew was that trainloads of something went in but nothing came out. Workers were only told as much as they needed to perform their particular tasks and strongly discouraged from talking about it or asking questions. Wartime secrecy was absolutely key. Through the stories of these diverse women, you and I as readers can put the pieces together that did not fall into place for them until August 6, 1945 when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Suddenly, the secrets of Oak Ridge were no longer secret. Thousands of workers, mostly women, had been running machines to enrich Tubealloy, the code name for the uranium that would fuel these new weapons of destruction. For two years, the plants grew in size and production capability by running in shifts 24 hours a day. Product was measured in coffee thermos amounts. Women statisticians and machine adders toted up numbers; women sat on stools at calutrons sending atoms of uranium zipping around for enrichment; secretaries took notes for military officials who had no names; women inspected pipes for leaks in the gaseous diffusion plant. Other women followed their husbands for jobs, raising children in less than posh surroundings...constant mud, constant secrecy, rationed necessities, little to no contact with loved ones from home whose correspondence was heavily censored, in sub-par, pre-fab government provided housing. All the residents of Oak Ridge knew was that their efforts were supposed to end the war. Few had made it to that point unscathed by the simultaneous wars in Europe and the Pacific. They all did what they could do and had to in order to bring home soldiers and sailors serving overseas.

There are several women interviewed by Kiernan over the course of three years who are still living. Many still live in Oak Ridge, having stayed with families or jobs after the war's end. They volunteer to share their stories of hard work and sacrifice as well as mixed feelings...their efforts did end the war, but at great cost of human life.

I enjoyed sharing in these women's memories and contributions to America's history.

We took the kids bowling today and when we got home, they went down for a nap. I had some time to work on a rosary and out of the remaining beads from my Black Friday shopping expedition, these aqua glass and blue stars were the ones I wanted to use. I think I've finally got a groove for the process. My intention was to finish it about halfway and then complete it tomorrow, but since things were progressing smoothly, it actually was finished today in about 3.5 hours. (Which means I can work on a different one tomorrow!)

Here is the completed rosary:

The beads are a little larger than I normally choose but they do feel nice in the fingers and make a pleasant clicking sound. The aqua glass beads are about 8x11mm ovals according to the package. The stars are blue and aqua swirl. I used the darker blue for the Our Father beads within the decades and the swirly aqua stars for the Our Father beads in the stem. I chose the crucifix because it had a little bit of a starburst pattern, which you can see here:

The center is the Miraculous Medal with kind of a swirly edging. In retrospect, I would have chosen a larger center and crucifix to kind of balance out the size of the beads. What I really wanted was something to do with Our Lady Star of the Sea (Stella Maris), but I was not able to find affordable parts online and Our Lady's Rosary Makers does not carry any. Blue is generally associated with the Theotokos and this particular shade of aqua makes me think of the beach so it would have been perfect. But I am quite pleased with how this rosary turned out. I was much more successful in keeping the loops a more uniform size and shape thanks to a tip I read in an online tutorial...marking the spot on the pliers with a Sharpie keeps me from eyeballing the size incorrectly.

I have supplies to make two more complete rosaries, so now that I'm feeling more confident in completing the process in one session, I'll hopefully have them finished soon.

I must be the last YA reader to jump on the John Green bandwagon and I have absolutely no reason why that should be. I've seen some of his vlog posts with his brother Hank and I've read some of his blog posts elsewhere online. Blurbs of his books always sound interesting and other people have recommended this book in particular to me. What persuaded me? Well, John Green used to write for Mental Floss magazine, which I adore, and he's making a new series of fabulously fact-filled for them on YouTube, which are hilarious. And I found the browsing copy of The Fault in Our Stars last week while searching for lost books, so I really had no excuse not to pick it up and take it home.

If you don't like sad stories, don't pick this up. If you don't like incomplete endings, don't pick this up. If you don't like reading about sick kids, don't pick this up. If you think reading about sick kids and kids dying means nothing but Lurlene McDaniel novels from the 1980s, pick this up. It will blow those all away.

Hazel is sixteen and has cancer that started in her thyroid and metasicized to her lungs. She's been sick for three years, but thanks to an experimental drug, she's hanging on. Her tumors aren't growing but they aren't shrinking either. The side effect is fluid in her lungs that makes it hard to breathe, so she carts an oxygen tank affectionately called Phillip everywhere she goes. She's already gotten her GED and is taking classes at the local community college, but she's gotten to the point where she'd prefer to sit in front of the TV watching America's Next Top Model when she's not in class. Her mom sends her to a support group for kids with cancer, where she became friends with Isaac, a teen who lost an eye to cancer. The faces change at support group from week to week as her fellow fighters have relapses, ending up back in the hospital or worse. One week, Isaac brings his friend Augustus, who appears normal at first until he shares that he lost part of his leg to osteosarcoma about 18 months prior. Hazel and Augustus hit it off, sharing the same sense of gallows humor present in people who are fighting for their lives are entitled to have. They become friends and Augustus falls for Hazel first, but she's not terribly far behind. Of course there are health setbacks in their relationship, but it didn't turn out the way I expected, so I'm not going to tell you what happens.

What particularly struck me about Hazel and Augustus is how their illness has affected the relationships with their parents. I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like as a parent to have a child who is seriously ill. Hazel feels not necessarily pressured to survive, but unable not to fight to survive because of all that she feels her parents have invested in her care...as if her death would be like pulling out the final piece in a Jenga game and the family would collapse from the pain. Toward the end of the book, Hazel learns that for the last year, her mom has been taking online classes to earn a master's degree in social work to be a counselor for seriously ill kids and their families. Hazel lights up and it's like her flame was stoked because she now knew that even though her parents would be devastated to lose her, their lives would not collapse completely when she dies. Knowing that they will go on gives her the means to go on as well.

It's good, you should read it. It's about real sick people, not romanticized, saintly sick people.

I've been keeping my eyes peeled for the final book in the Revenants series by Amy Plum ever since I read Until I Die last year. After poking around on Good Reads, I found out that Plum wrote a 2.5 novella, Die for Her, taking place between Until I Die and the final book, If I Should Die. It was only released as an ebook, so I didn't have a lot of hope that I'd get a hold of it. Luckily for me, the public library added it to their ebook collection and I was only on the hold list for a short while. It was a quick read, but it recapped the major events of the first two books for me nicely so I felt up-to-date for finishing the series. (I find that's a drawback for me with trilogies...there's usually such a gap between releases that I forget a lot of details between books. But I rarely feel compelled to re-read previous books so I just hope for the best.)

Die for Her gives the details of events from Jules' viewpoint as Vincent's best friend. He has a closeup view of what happens inside the bardia homebase, but we also find out that Jules starts having feelings for Kate, which colors events to come in the third book.

I'm going to avoid spoilers as much as possible here. If you've read Until I Die, you know that Violette captured and killed Vincent in the final battle of the book. And if you read the final battle of the first book, I imagine you too will kind of get where the author's going with the Champion storyline. I admit I was vindicated in my guesswork, although I didn't quite guess how it was going to come about. I don't know that Amy Plum has any intentions of writing more books in this series; as far as I know it's complete, but, while there's an air of finality at the end, there is room for expanding the world and telling more stories in the future. There's always hope, right? And it was nice returning to Paris for more explorations of the city. I enjoyed it so much I spent most of my day off reading it so I could find out what happens.

I totally got on a roll today putting squares together. I got halfway done, then added another row and put things up for the night. I've lost a yarn needle somewhere in the living room and haven't been able to find it yet, so I meant to stop and take things up in the morning. But we put on Doctor Who Revisited with Peter Davison and then, after the kids went to bed, the RiffTrax offering of non-canonical Doctor Who and the Daleks so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to work on things.

Ta-da! Here is the finished blanket:

I did a single crochet around the edge and thought about doing something more elaborate with some of the leftover colored yarn, but in the end did not want to put a foofy border on it to compete with the colored circles popping out of the white background. I think the simple approach won out here.

I first tried a single crochet join on the top row and did not like it AT ALL. I ended up ripping it out (only five blocks, no harm no foul at that point) and re-doing the join with a back post slip stitch, which from the back looks like this:

It makes a windowpane border, but it's just not obnoxious like the single crochet was. This lies down a lot flatter and makes the front flatter too, I think because you just get a hint of the white stitches in between the block borders.

I took my inspiration from this guy, who will present the blanket to the intended recipients:

If you have never seen the book and are not sure why, take a look at the inside cover:

So while I'm out and about tomorrow, I'll give the blanket a good soak in salt water. I have no idea how much the color will bleed from cotton yarn despite my best efforts, so I wanted to get good pictures before in case the soaking is for naught.

**POST SCRIPT** It washed up quite nicely without any color bleeding at all. I trimmed off a few little puffs that poked themselves out and measured the finished product. It's coming in at 26 inches wide and 56 inches long.

I think that this is one of my favorite completed rosaries. I had the black beads and silver filigree beads in mind when I went to purchase parts and bought the St. Therese center by mistake. After reading about her, I knew that center would not be the right choice for this rosary, so on my next trip to the supply shop, I confirmed the product number for this Sacred Heart center. On the reverse, which I did not get a photo of, is the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I chose a simple but elegant papal crucifix for this particular rosary.

Here's a closer view of the center and some of the beads:

And, I don't know whether you can see it or not, but I finally got the bright idea (duh) of using jump rings to secure the wire wrapped ends to the center. It works out soooo much easier! I have no idea why I did not do that before. I certainly will now.

This St. Therese rosary was a bit of an accident. I wrote down the wrong product code number when I went to Our Lady's Rosary Makers shop to buy supplies and got this center. It wasn't the one I wanted for the particular rosary I was getting ready to make, but I didn't want to fiddle with taking it back to the store. I read a little bit online about St. Therese the Little Flower and found out she was associated with roses. I wanted rose beads for the Our Fathers but couldn't find what I wanted in any of the stores I visited. (I subsequently found them at a different store, but this was already completed, so the point was moot.) I loved these frosted glass faceted beads and found the painted rose beads to match.

This is a close-up of the St. Therese center. On the back is a small embedded relic of earth from her coffin.

If you are curious, you can read more about St. Therese at the Society of the Little Flower.

Finally, I took some pictures of the latest batch of completed rosaries. I had beads leftover from some of the other rosaries I made, so I used them to make coordinating auto rosaries with magnetic closures. They're single decades and will easily fit around rearview mirrors.

This rosary has blue glass pearl Hail Mary beads and small silver metal rose Our Father beads. All of the car rosaries have a simple crucifix. With the exception of the Divine Mercy rosaries, each of these has a Miraculous Medal center.

This rosary uses the blue pressed glass flower beads from the Flowers for Our Lady rosary I made back in November. It also has white glass pearl Hail Mary beads.

I love these pink cat's eye beads, so I was happy to have enough leftover beads to make this auto rosary to match the Roses for Our Lady full rosary.

I had quite a few of the beautiful red glass beads left from the Divine Mercy rosary, so I made four Divine Mercy auto rosaries. Here is one:

I got all the squares finished and decided on a layout to put them in order. Then I divvied them up into five square stacks to join into rows. Melita enjoyed lying on it so I had to shoo her away a few times to get a picture.

I decided to join them together using a back post slip stitch so the right side would not lose any of the single crochet color border. This is the halfway point in joining. It's going surprisingly quickly, to my delight.

After the rows are joined, I'm going to do a back post single crochet border to finish evening out the squares as they're all just a little bit uneven. More pictures to come!