Four days?! How could four days have slid past me in the Bout!? I have been striving towards balancing life as its being lived with sneaking in lovely hours wrapped up inside of a novel! Thursdays are always quite busy for me, as its a quite stacked morning and afternoon! Having said that, whilst I did attempt to dash back into my ChocLit novel I currently held in hand, I was unexpectedly able to attend my very first knitting ministry which specifically knits &/or crochets items of warmth! I have been a member of a prayer shawl ministry for a little over of a year with one local church, before being asked to join the efforts of a second prayer shawl ministry a few weeks ahead of Christmas! I am always thankful they have enough donated yarn to supply the materials for the shawls as much as they are in gratitude I have the time and inclination to knit the patterns! I find myself drawn to knitting items for comfort, a snugglement of warmth, and of cheer.

In my first meeting of this kind, I was a bit anxious to see how I would fit into the group, as even though I knit alongside my Mum {we’re a knitting duo!}, we’re always a bit cautious at first when meeting new knitters! I think its because knitting isn’t a part of the mainstream culture here as it is in other states. Its a bit of a solitary endeavour, aside from the crafters group I mentioned earlier this week which apparently has been meeting in community centers & the library for nearly 25 years! This new group meets-up at another local church in a lovely large community room where you can spread out on large tables! Everyone was quite friendly and open to new knitters joining the effort, and they had this gigantic table full of donated yarn! Loads upon loads of yarn, all wound into skeins ready to go onto needles or hooks (depending on which way you roll with fiber!)!! I decided to try out colours I am not always akin to wanting to knit to push myself out of my ‘colour wheel’ preferences, which led me to a deep burnt orange! 

By the time we left, the drizzlement of rain was continuing, with a nice chill in the air which was refreshing rather than frightful! I love the hanging of fog and rain in the air, with a pure sense of ‘something’ lurking just outside your vision field. An unexpectedness which leads to the mysterious and the curious! If darkness hadn’t fallen it was perfect weather for a walk!

I am knitting my very first ‘hat’ of which will be of a variety of colours to add a bit of spunk and personality to the receiver’s delight of surprise!

Bout of Books Challenge Accepted:

I might not have accomplished as much reading, but the mini-challenges are rather exciting during this Bout! I accepted the challenge of the Double Date Book Challenge and must confess, it was such a heap of fun to write about, that I am now going to see which other books &/or first of series I can pair in this fashion as time progresses forward!

Interacting with Bout’ers on Twitter:

I must confess, one of my secret joys this Bout is the ability to interact with new Bout’ers via Twitter! I am thoroughly enjoying all the randomly brilliant conversations which are erupting inside of our tweets! So much so, I realised tonight as I was writing up this post, I have been remiss! I forgot to include the relaying of all of this joy in my previous Bout diaries! Therefore, on the morrow, I shall duck back through and make the edits as I truly want to give a proper shout-out to each Bout’er who has given me such a hearty dose of joy! I love gushing over books as much as finding inspiration in the books everyone is referring each of us to read next! One clever Bout’er even suggested that I start to ‘favourite!’ the books, which is such a simple solution to my vexation of forgetting to jot down each book title! Laughs.

Alas, I think I am going to miss using the #boutofbooks tag once Monday arrives and the Bout will be but a figment of our memories!!

Rendezvous with like-minded readers is such a pleasurable joy! Being able to alight into each other’s ordinary day, and delight the other with happy notes full of bookish delights! New authors to explore, books to absorb, and the hunt for the next story which will leave us breathless with pause! Oh! How I enjoy reading the #boutofbooks feed! Gleaming inspiration with each Bout’er who joyously and rather enthusiastically shouts, “I finished another book!” or “Which book do I choose next?” or even, “You.Must.Read.This.Book!” type of tweets! I’ll leave you with a tweet I sent out which I shall forevermore declare is the highlight of my experience as a bookish bloggger!

Makes the bookish world a comfortable place to participate because of the inertia of discovery, sharing, & joy of books! @rikkir77 @kingmod

— Jorie Loves A Story (@JLovesAStory) January 9, 2014

{SOURCE: Bout of Books Badge created by Jorie in Canva to give readers & visitors who come to her blog a way to know of  its existence and therefore increasing the mystery & lore surrounding it!! The tweet was embedded due to the codes provided by Twitter.}

Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2014.

Such a lovely time of the year to participate in a Bout! The air is rapt with electric energy pulsing into the winds whilst walking, noting the whole of the world is caught up in the grip of Winter! The whole of my being has been given such a beautiful gift this past week — temperatures have sunk and dropped into the lowest of degrees! For a Florida girl, this is especially keen if your quite used to a singular Season of such fiery wrath, any measure of a difference is a day of celebration! Winter! Oh, my dear stars! How I long for thee to be fully ensconced into my life! I’m partial to four seasons, with a bucket of snow, a yard of snow angels, and the blissful joy of standing in the stillness of glistening snow! If I were in a blizzard wrought area, I think I’d tuck myself away from computers completely and read until my eyes could no longer blink the words into being!

Words, Pages, Context Consumed:

Its a bit difficult to explain in full detail, but rather than being snuggled into a book, I was vexed beyond proportion by technical errors which set my heart a-fluttering with spasms of anxiety! First it would appear, my email server/client was either suffering under a MAJOR crash and/or my computer was turnt into a mild vexation of wills, where it would ‘pick!’ a night of a Bout & a night to tweak, edit, and post an Author Guest Post! Sighs. I lamented a bit on this during Day 2, as quite honestly, it started on Day 2, ended on Day 3, and at this point I was just thankful that not only did I resolve the technical issues with my browser (a succession of cleaning, reloading, rebooting, and letting it ‘rest’),… I learnt in the early morning hours after a bit of sleep was snatched my email server had indeed crashed and a secondary site had been set up in its absence! Oy vie! Who saw that coming!? Needless, whilst I was blogging and updating my site in general (did you check out the lovely new post lovelies provided by Parajunkee Designs? I have these wicked sweet “Author Interview”, “Guest Post”, “Blog Tour” extra badges for the top of me posts now! Is Parajunkee wicked awesome, or what!?), I was carving out a bit of time and space to READ!

Yes, READ! :) I wanted to dig into one of my ChocLit books, and that is precisely what I did! :) I left the computer behind, cosied up into my reading nook’s comfy chair, and allowed the words on the page to cart me off into a place where romance could bloom!

Hours Spent:

Ironically or no, I haven’t a clue about how long I was reading only that the joy I received whilst doing so far outweighs the numbers on the clock!

To read is part of our breathing of stories, to allow the essence of the story we’re absorbing to fully become alighted in our spirit, our heart, our mind, and play out in our imaginations! To give ourselves the space to enter into the world the writer has left behind, offering a bit of a legacy through a palette of words; more colourful and vivid than a film reel at times, as our imaginations are quite heightened and are without bounds of discovery! We soak into the world at hand, curious about what will round the next corner of a page, eager to see the dialogue and the narrative shape the destiny of whom we are getting to know! Oh, the parlay of suspense! Such sweet reverie will be ours to have, if only we can carve out the space we need to read!

{SOURCE: Bout of Books Badge created by Jorie in Canva to give readers & visitors who come to her blog a way to know of its existence and therefore increasing the mystery & lore surrounding it!!}

Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2014.