Help!

Here's the thing...it may be two weeks until we go on holiday but the realisation has just hit me that I actually only have 2 more days off before we go (not counting Sundays which seem to disappear in a flurry of family stuff).

Now, I am an uber-organised sort of person when it comes to holidays (this is through necessity, not a natural leaning) and I like to have everything ready well in advance. I'm the sort of person who has a list of the lists I've made. So today has been a major rush to get some stuff completed that's been lurking around the workbasket for a while.

I finally sewed the hem on the blue fishy skirt, so that's finished now. I sewed the seams and the waistband of another skirt in some gorgeous Amy Butler fabric called Coriander. This had been cut out but was waiting for me to get the sewing machine out and start sewing. Just got to thread the elastic into the casing, make a cord for the waistband and stitch the hem.

For most of the week I have been frantically knitting this top in Sirdar Luxury Soft Cotton. I've only had the yarn for few days after giving up waiting for Angel Yarns to deliver it, cancelling my order and buying it from Get Knitted instead. I can't imagine what I was thinking when I didn't use them in the first place - it was delivered within 2 days with none of the excuses and delays that were forthcoming from Angel Yarns. The Amy Butler fabric came from Get Knitted too. It's quite a slow knit as it's 4ply - just yards and yards of plain stocking stitch and the yarn is very splitty so you have to watch what you're doing. I'm almost finished the back so I should be finished the front in good time and then there's just a little edging to the neck. I'm not panicking about this yet. Yet.

Chicken News!

We finally bought our chicken coop and will be collecting it on Sunday, so we can get it all set up and sorted ready for the chickens which we'll get when we come back from Florida.

I have been reading as well. I finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It is a wonderful book, beautifully written and very thought provoking. I'm not at all surprised that it won a Pulitzer. I progressed to a proof of the new Ian Rankin, called Doors Open, which is published on September 16th. It's set in Edinburgh (of course) and is about an art heist perpetrated by some amateurs. It was an enjoyable read with an interesting plot and good characters but it felt a bit lightweight. I think I was expecting something a bit meatier, something with a bit more profundity for Rankin's first Post-Rebus novel. Worth a read, but don't expect a great deal of depth.

Now I'm on Volk's Shadow by Brent Ghelfi, another proof. This is the second in the Volk series, and I did enjoy the first one. This one is, so far, proving to be just as good. It's really so not the type of book I would normally pick up - a tad on the violent side and rather too many guns, but like Lee Child, this series is turning into a guilty pleasure. Think Jack Reacher without the scruples and you've pretty much got Alexei Volkovoy. This one's not published here until November, though it's out in HB in the US now.

Lastly I am having a dilemma (as usual) about my holiday reading. How many books to take? Which books to take? What if I run out of books? What if every bookstore in Florida suddenly spontaneously combusts and I have nothing to read? More on this next time!