Millinery - week 2 (and the Book at Blogtime)

 Week two of my millinery course yesterday and something to show for it!  Here is my hat...

It is a work in progress, as you can probably see, but that is, or will be, the crown.   It's blocked onto a hat block and the pins and elastic band are to hold it all in place so it takes the shape of the hat-to-be. It was so much fun doing it, and I'm really excited about next week already.

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Oh, and I finished The Host.  It took me two days, snatched into any spare second I had.  Which probably means I enjoyed it.  This one was borrowed from my friend E, who also lent me all the Twilight books.

I'd like to say that I found this trite, or unintellectual, or predictable or whatever one is supposed to say about books that are not supposed to have any "literary merit", but I devoured this rather as Ms Meyer's more famous hero would a passing mountain lion.  Clearly the plot is nonsense, and afterwards it all felt rather silly, but somehow, when you're reading it that doesn't matter.  I really cared about the characters and I totally bought into the whole world she created.   And yes, I cried.

That said, I've now moved on to "the best antidote to [Ms Meyer's] toxic guff" I could find (or be recommended). Lucy Mangan suggested Grow up Cupid by June Oldham in her Guardian column a couple of months ago, and L bought it for me for Christmas (it's out of print and I'd been hunting for it (in a rather desultory fashion) ever since).  And although I enjoyed Twilight too (although not the fourth one which is utter drivel) I'm find I'm now rather looking forward to a bit of healthy British cynicism...