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All Creatures Great and Small, An Irish Country Doctor, Andrew Thornton, Inspired by Reading Book Club, JeraLunaDesigns, Patrick Taylor, Shipwreck Dandy Supply
The March book for Andrew Thornton‘s Inspired by Reading Book Club is An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor. It’s the first book in a series, and I expect I’ll read more of them because I really enjoyed it. Just reading the title, I thought it might be a little bit like the All Creatures Great and Small series, and it was in tone and the variety of wonderful characters. In the Author’s Note, Taylor says that the simple life in the Ulster he writes about no longer exists, but it sure is fun to visit.
The character that inspired my jewelry-making mind the most was Sonny. He’s a man for whom stubbornness has overtaken everything else in his life – love, comfort, self-preservation. The scenes featuring Sonny were rich with imagery. He lives in a veritable junk yard. There is a caravan, but that is, literally, for the dogs. He lives in a car.
My first introduction to Sonny in this book let me settle on two of the bead colors (and I even had the specific beads in mind) that I would use in my piece. Yellow is a prominent color in Sonny’s life. Yellow is the color of the dogs’ caravan, extension cords strung about the place and the sou’wester he is wearing when we first meet him. In addition, he had ruddy cheeks, iron-grey hair and a tinge of blue in his face. We find out the blue comes from the beginnings of heart failure.
In a later scene, Sonny takes seriously ill. He’s having trouble breathing. Talk of lungs and pleural cavities made me think of a glass bead I have with wavy separations tipped with a bit of blue. As a kid, I pictured lungs as these big things with long fins that moved when we breathe. Of course that’s not quite accurate, but the image has stayed in my mind.
In my bracelet, I included a brown and tan bead by Shipwreck Dandy Supply. When the doctors go check on Sonny and find him ill, it has been raining. I imagine it to be all muddy around his yard. I included a turquoise bead just because I found it pleasing with the other colors. The small tan bead used for the clasp is by JeraLuna Designs.
This was another fun challenge to create something inspired by reading. Thanks to Andrew Thornton! Visit the other blogs below and check what everyone else was inspired to create.
Bead Love 