So I promised you knitwear...

..and here it is.   This is the Sweet Scarborough pattern from Drops. It's a free pattern and I adjusted it a little bit. It's supposed to have orange and mustard in the Fair Isle section but I did it just in the red and white. I knitted it in the suggested yarn which is Drops Karisma. It was a lovely yarn to work with.  The only thing about this project was that the first time I knitted it I thought it might be a little big but I wasn't that bothered as I'd probably wear it over another sweater anyway, but when I soaked it ready for blocking it grew and grew until it was so huge it reached my knees.  I had to rip it all out and re-knit the whole thing. This time I knitted it on a smaller needle (I swear I had gauge the first time, really.) and I knitted it a size smaller around the yolk, though I kept the original size round the bottom as I'm wider there. 

I love this now that it's finished and wear it a lot, one day soon I might actually sew on the buttons.

 

I see from the website that there's a pattern for matching socks. I might have to knit those.

52 Books: #5 - The Killing Floor

The Killing Floor by Lee Child

I've read lots of Lee Child's books but I'd never read the first one, so I thought I'd go back and rectify that.

This opens (as several do) with Jack Reacher being arrested as he eats breakfast in a diner. He's never been in the town before, only just arrived there, knows no-one, but finds himself charged with a murder that happened the previous evening.  I'm not going to spoil the plot for anyone who hasn't read this by telling you anything else about it. I'm only going to say that this is really good and that I found the early Jack Reacher quite different from the later one. I wasn't expecting that. Next up some knitting news - including a finished project. I know. Actually finished. How amazing is that.

52 Books: #4 - The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog

The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog by Elizabeth Peters.

I have a bit of an addiction to these books.  I did start trying to read them in the right order but I've been distracted by a couple of the later ones. There's a really good one about the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun (and how much help the Emersons were to Howard Carter).

Anyway this is one of the earlier ones and comes just after The Camel Died at Noon which is the first one I read.  In this book the Emersons are in Egypt on their own, having left the children at home for once. Emerson gets himself kidnapped and hit on the head. Peabody goes to rescue him to discover that he's lost his memory and has no idea who she is.  Much hilarity ensues as you can imagine.  If you want a bit of light relief then these books are just the ticket.

52 Books: #3 - The Likeness by Tana French

The Likeness by Tana French


Detective Cassie Maddox gets called to a crime scene where the murder victim bears a startling resemblence to herself.  This gives her old boss Frank an idea - if Cassie goes undercover as the victim then they might find out who killed her.  This puts Cassie into a pretty dangerous position, impersonating someone who's actually dead but who the police have said is just injured, to a houseful of friends who may or may not have had something to do with killing her.   It's a fascinating concept and the plot is pretty intriguing too as Cassie gets more and more involved with her "housemates" and their laid-back Bohemian lifestyle.  I'm not going to say anymore about the plot as it would only spoil it for you. Suffice to say that this was another big hit and I'm on a kind of roll here with good books, even if I am only 3 books into what is looking like a bigger challenge than it seemed three weeks ago.!