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• Crafty Reads for Your Vacation

Crafty Reads for Your Vacation

If you don't want to take along supplies with you, how about taking along a crafty-themed novel to enjoy on your trip? Here are my favorites with some of the publishers' comments.

1. Waking Up in the Land of Glitter, A Crafty Chica Novel, Kathy Cano-Murillo, 2010. With glue guns, glitter, twigs or yarn, the ordinary can become extraordinary ... especially at La Pachanga. Owned by Estrella "Star" Esteban's family, the restaurant has a rep for two things: good food and great art. La Pachanga brings people together -- even when it looks like they couldn't be further apart. One ill-fated evening, Star jeopardizes her family's business, her relationship with her boyfriend and her future career. To redeem herself, she agrees to participate in a national craft competition, teaming up with her best friend, Ofelia, a secretly troubled mother whose love for crafting borders on obsession, and a local celebrity, Chloe Chavez, a determined television personality with more than one skeleton in her professional closet. If these unlikely allies can set aside their differences, they'll find strength they never knew they had and learn that friendship, like crafting, is truly an art form.
2. How to Make an American Quilt, Whitney Otto, 1994. The story centers on the stories of several women in a quilting bee as they construct a wedding quilt as a gift for a member's granddaughter, Finn Dodd. Finn is a Berkeley graduate student visiting her grandmother and great-aunt Glady Joe over the summer to work on her master's thesis. During her stay, the women share their stories, which lead Finn to reflect on her life and where it is headed. A major motion film starring Winona Ryder was made in 1995 based on this novel as well.
3. Sew Deadly, Death Threads and Pinned for Murder, three books in the Southern Sewing Series, Elizabeth Lynn Casey, 2010. Pinned for Murder, the latest in the Series, will be available in October, but a brief description of Death Threads is as follows: "Yankee librarian Tori Sinclair is basking in the warmth of her new circle of friends from South Carolina's Sweet Briar Ladies Society sewing circle. That is until local author Colby Calhoun reveals an unflattering secret about the town's historic past and then disappears, leaving a bloody trail behind him. And when Tori begins to see a pattern of the townsfolk's age-old Southern pride standing in the way of justice, she knows it's time to unravel the mystery."




4. The Friday Night Knitting Club, Kate Jacobs, 2007. Walker & Daughter is Georgia Walker's little yarn shop, tucked into a quiet storefront on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The Friday Night Knitting Club was started by some of Georgia's regulars, who gather once a week to work on their latest projects and to chat -- and occasionally clash -- over their stories of love, life and everything in between. Georgia has her hands full, juggling the demands of running the store and raising her spunky teen daughter, Dakota, by herself. Thank goodness for Anita, her mentor and dear friend, and the rest of the members of the knitting club, who are just as varied as the skeins of yarn in the shop's bins. There's Petra, a prelaw student turned handbag designer; Darwin, a somewhat aloof feminist grad student; and Lucie, a petite, quiet woman who's harboring some secrets of her own. However, unexpected changes soon throw these women's lives into disarray, and the shop's comfortable world gets shaken up like a snow globe. James, Georgia's ex, decides that he wants to play a larger role in Dakota's life -- and possibly Georgia's as well. Kat, a former friend from high school, returns to New York as a rich Park Avenue wife and uneasily renews her old bond with Georgia. Meanwhile, Anita must confront her growing (and reciprocated) feelings for Marty, the kind neighborhood deli owner. And when the unthinkable happens, they realize what they've created: not just a knitting club, but a sisterhood. Remember me mentioning Julia Roberts earlier? She is starring in this movie set to release in 2010.
5. The Lady in the Attic, Tara Randel. Grey Gables is a romantic, stately old house that holds as many secrets as it does memories for Annie Dawson. After her grandmother's passing, Annie's plan is to lovingly sort through her grandmother's possessions. But after wandering through every room in the house, it's no wonder that Annie has so many mixed emotions when she steps into the large and dusty attic. Suddenly, the purpose of her trip to Grey Gables weighs heavily on her heart. Annie is still trying to sort through her new life without her recently deceased husband, Wayne, and now she is overwhelmed with the task of sorting through years of memories and a mountain of Gram's treasures. Then she remembers her grandmother's mantra: "One stitch at a time," and knows she is up to the challenges of this new adventure. The Lady in the Attic is the first book in the Annie's Attic Mystery Series. Find out more by clicking here.