Knitted Fall Hat and Rose Wilder Lane

I finished my hat. It turned out pretty well, but I don't know if I really like it well enough to make another one. I'm looking for another pattern that would be easy. I may make a flower for it, but the pins is cute.

I'm still trying to cut down my expenses. I had a blanket put on my water heater. My strategy for my food budget of trying to stay away from the groc. store as long as possible has worked pretty well. I think I'm actually going to end up within my budget this month. I've ended up going to the store about once every 2 weeks. That's when I run out of eggs and milk. It forces me to use up what I have on hand. I wanted to add that the other things I'm doing is reminding myself to buy basic ingredient, not premade items. Why pay someone else to make something I can make myself. I usually shop this way, but sometimes am tempted by something that looks good. I haven't tackled the insurance yet. I got my gas at the cheapest place I could find this week and I'm keeping my use of the car to a minimum, combining errands. I've added some chard to my container garden. I'm going slow on the garden because it's early yet.

I've finished reading all the Rocky Ridge LH books. They were about the Rose years written by MacBride. Someone said there was some question about how accurate they were and how much they were fictionalized, but I enjoyed them and they seemed authentic. The period of Laura and Manly's lives after Rose leaves is not well documented. Now I'm starting the Caroline years written by Maria D. Wilkes. There is also a few books by the same author about Caroline's mother and grandmother.

Because the books are fictionalized accounts of their lives I wanted to know more about Rose and what really happened to her. I wondered why she made the choices she did. So far I haven't really found the answer to that except that she was searching for something. She was very bright and bored with the life she knew. So I'm started reading bio's and the information is very contradictory. You get a generally idea, but the details change from book to book. So far I've read her own fictional version of her life which I didn't like. I'm almost done with Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder by John E. Miller that talks a lot about Rose and information from her journals. I'm throwing out my old journals after reading this. She had a lot of depression and wrote a lot of stuff that she may not have wanted published. We often pour out our frustrations and doubts into journals, but that doesn't mean that's what we really feel. This book makes it sound like the LH books are a pretty good description on Laura's life, some things are left out, but the gists of it is there. Another small book I read is "Laura's Rose" by William T. Anderson. It was published by the LIW Memorial Society and I think it is kind of a sanitized version.

I would like to read some of the books that Rose wrote. You can get them on Amazon. She was a liberationist and believed in personal rights. She didn't approve on the "New Deal" and the government giving people hand outs. Laura and Amanzo felt the same way. There is a cute story of him throwing a government agent off of his land who was questioning what he was planting. It's quite interesting knowing where we are now. They dealt with the depression by working harder and they thought everyone else ought to do the same. They certainly knew how to live a frugal life, they had been doing it for years. I have some other book with Laura's writing for the farm journal. She wrote about being a farm wife and it should be very interesting. I'll get to those later.

I know everyone is thinking about Easter, but other than going to church I'm not doing much this year. I haven't even changed my decor to spring yet. We've had some sun, but it is still cold at times and I keep hearing about snow flurries here and there. Well I hope everyone has a nice holiday and enjoys each other.

Linda