O Canada

For the past week I have been distracted from my stitching.  No, it was not a loss of mojo.
Rather I was engrossed in a book.

Over the departmental intranet we receive notice of new books added to the departmental library.  Usually these are ponderous sounding tomes on criminology or psychology but last week one title caught my eye.   Instead of trusting departmental lending,  I logged into my wonderful local library and they had a copy available on Overdrive.  So for the past four days I have been absorbed in this.

O Canada!   I did not fall in love with Margaret Attwood.   I adored Lucy Maud Montgomery's red headed Anne of Green Gables. Now I have fallen in love with 'Ann without an E'.
'Ann without an E' was traumatised by a mugging while living in England which definitely shook her faith in the fundamental goodness of human beings.   But once back in Canada she was persuaded by her friend Carol to become involved in a book club in a prison. This book follows the lives of six particularly involved book club members and at the same time traces the growth of the Prison Book Clubs in Ontario and other parts of Canada.   An amazing selection of books is read and discussed by the book club members and it is notable how their lives and thinking are changed, but even more notable is how Ann is enabled to move on from her own trauma.   I loved this book and have already been recommending it to colleagues at work.  I am so grateful to have read it.

This afternoon I have been sewing a warm woollen skirt and tonight will be stitching up the hem and doing the last hand sewing.  it is definitely cold now so it is tights and wool skirts weather.