Mysterious Yarns

Holy Crap, Batman! Someone's stolen January!

2012-02-06T08:06:00.002Z

I seem to have blinked and missed the whole of January.

I'm not sure quite how that happened.

I don't even have an excuse.

I do have a plan though to get back on track.

I had a great long catch-up post written (but no photos to go in it because everytime I was home it was dark). I'm going to abandon that and just do a little series of quick updates.

So, what exactly have I been doing?

I've read a couple of books. Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch. This was shortlisted for the Booker but that notwithstanding I enjoyed it anyway. Also Storm Front by Jim Butcher. I've not met Harry Dresden before and I did enjoy this. Next up is a pile of proofs that started small and seems to be growing by the day so I ought to get started on them really before the pile gets any bigger.

I knitted some stuff. Some fingerless mitts for the Evilpixie because she's off to New York for a few days in a couple of weeks and I didn't want her to get cold hands. They have no thumbs yet, so technically they're not finished but I think thumbs are vastly overrated anyway. Also a cardigan for myself. It's an Ysolda Teague pattern in yarn I dyed myself. It's taken way too long to knit as I had to do the sleeves twice before they were right. I am now in that dangerous place between knits where anything could happen. There are so many projects in my Ravelry queue but none is quite right. I need something new.

Photos will follow for all these things but as usual it's still dark and it will be dark again when I get home so it might be next week before the photos get taken. Just warning you all.

Back soon with more quick updates.

Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated...

2011-12-13T08:25:00.005Z

Yes, I am still alive. No, I have not fallen down a well or been kidnapped by aliens.

It's just that in order to write a post I really need to have something to write about and just going to work and then coming home and collapsing in an exhausted heap doesn't make for a very exciting blog post.

Recently though it has occurred to me that it's Christmas next week (EEEK!) so I really ought to get my ass in gear and get organised. I think I might be leaving things a little late. As I write this there are 11 days to go until THE BIG DAY and I have a total of 3 of those when I don't have to go to work. One of those days is already allotted to family obligations, leaving me 2 whole days to do my Christmas stuff. I think I may be kidding myself that the cards will get written, the cake iced (I did bake it, so that's one thing off my list), the knitting finished ( I have frogged the cowl I was knitting twice now, the last in a fit of temper when I couldn't fix the glaring error I had made - Frost Flowers Cowl 1 - Knitter 0). I still have two articles to write, all the presents to wrap, some last minute shopping to do, Christmas cupcakes to bake and I really ought to do some housework at some point. My email is looking scary, I have over 350 unread posts on my RSS feed and I lost track of twitter and facebook about a week ago.

Oh well, if it gets done, it gets done. The real point of this post is to highlight a few books you might not have noticed which would be great gifts this Christmas.

Charts for Color Knitting by Alice Starmore is a reprint of one of her earlier books which I have been lusting after since I saw a copy in Birmingham Central Library. It used to cost over £100 secondhand so I am delighted that it's been reprinted and this edition has been revised and expanded too. It's an absolute treasure trove of information for the knitter who likes Fair Isle. So if the knitter in your life likes to knit with lots of colours then this is the book for them.

Booze for Free by Andy Hamilton is a great little book filled to the brim with all manner of recipes for homemade beers, wines, liqueurs, teas etc. If you like to make sloe gin or hedgerow wine or nettle beer then this is the book for you. In a side note we did manage to bottle our own sloe, damson and ginger gin last weekend so you can imagine that we will be having a very Merry Christmas indeed. Anyway this is a great gift for those who like a bit of foraging (and who doesn't, after all when David Cameron's finished with us, it's all we'll have left!)

MetaMAUS by Art Speigelman is published for the 25th anniversary of his classic graphic novel Maus, one of the most brilliant graphic novels ever published and one read by more than just geeks. This is the story of how he came to write the book and it contains background info, interviews with his father who's story Maus was based on, fabulous artwork and a whole ton more fascinating stuff. If there's a graphic novel fan in your house then this is for them.

OK, that'll do for now. All these books are available now in your local Waterstones, and probably in your local independent bookshop too if you still have one. Either way, don't forget to support your local bookshop this Christmas. And come back in the New Year to spend all the lovely book tokens you get for Christmas.

Have a great time and I'll see you on the other side!

Craft Fayre - Sunday 16th October.

2011-10-14T07:20:00.002+01:00

Just a quick post to let you all know that I'll be doing a craft fayre on Sunday (that's October 16th) at Newhampton Arts Centre in Wolverhampton from 11am to 5pm.

I'll be there with lots of yummy hand-dyed yarn, so if you're in the area do pop along. Also there will be my good friend Andi and her Wererat Designs steampunk jewelry. She makes Dr Who inspired Tardis Keys and all manner of other lovely stuff.

There should be lots of great crafty goodies at the Fayre which is organized by I Love Making Things so it's a good chance to get a little bit of Christmas shopping in!

I'll try and get a regular update posted after the Fayre.

Nature's Harvest

2011-09-11T18:01:00.002+01:00

We've a creative week here. Look at the evidence -

That's (from the left) 3 jars of sloe gin, 1 of ginger gin and 1 of damson gin. We're looking forward to a very Merry Christmas. :)

We have enough sloes picked to do 2 more bottles. Then we'll have to go and pick some more. The damsons came from a friend in my spinning group, and the ginger gin recipe is courtesy of my SIL Rosemary who gave us some of her own gorgeous ginger gin when we stayed with her recently.

Now we need to find a source of little bottles so that when it's ready we can bottle it up for Christmas.

Yum.

My Big Fat Booker Prediction Fail

2011-09-06T14:16:00.003+01:00

Long time readers will know that I am not a fan of Booker books. In general I find them to be pretentious, over-written and lacking in plot. (You can see that I'm not sitting on the fence here.)
Anyway, I've actually read 3 of the longlisted books this year and had selected the next three that I wanted to read and guess what - the only one which made the shortlist was the one I have liked the least so far. In fact five of the six that I liked the look of didn't make the shortlist.

For the record I read The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness (it's wonderful, you really should read it), and The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers. I liked this one too but not as much as TLHD.

The others that I was tempted by were Derby Day by D J Taylor (I shall probably still read this), On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry and A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvette Edwards.

The one I read that got shortlisted was Snowdrops by A D Miller. It's on a similar theme to TLHD, a young man adrift in a foreign country, but not nearly as well written and entirely predictable. I really was not impressed by it at all. However given my form with Booker books it should really be no surprise that anything I wanted to read, or liked would stand no chance of winning. Publishers should probably make note of this.

Ok, I took a short break there as Pete came in and said he'd found some ripe sloes where we walk Bubba so we nipped out and picked a couple of kilos. We love a bit of sloe gin, and we already have some damson gin in progress. A couple of weeks ago at Pete's sister's we had a little libation of ginger gin which was gorgeous so we shall be trying our hand at that too.

So back to the books - what do you think will win? I might try the Julian Barnes, on the grounds that it is quite short. And I understand Patrick Ness is tipping The Sisters Brothers. I just don't think I should put the kiss of death on any of them.

Book Update

2011-08-23T14:17:00.007+01:00

Yes, I know, you wait all month for a post then you get three all at once. Still, don't knock it. You never know when you'll get another update. LOL.

So, I finished The God of the Hive by Laurie R King, which was excellent as usual. I wouldn't recommend this book as a starting point though if you've not read any of these before. It follows hard on the heels of The Language of Bees published last year and is a continuation of that book so I wouldn't recommend you read just this one. Of course I'd say that you should start at the beginning with The Beekeeper's Apprentice, but I actually read all these books out of sequence, starting with Locked Rooms which is the 8th book. And I've just this week finished O Jerusalem, which is the 5th. Mostly this has been due to the books being out of print in the UK for quite a long time and so I read them as I found them. I bought O Jerusalem ages ago but had misplaced it and although The Beekeeper's Apprentice has been republished here along with The Game (no. 7) and the following books, sadly numbers 2 through 6 have not yet been re-published. Lots of customers have asked me about them but I don't know if they will be republished here. I hope they are. Of course, if you have an e-reader some of them are available in e-book format, though of course if you do that you don't get the fun of spending time in your local bookstore.

Anyway, I then read something completely out of character for me. I read a fantasy novel. I was at work and I didn't have a book with me so I had nothing to read (in a bookshop, how inconvenient!) anyway, there was a copy of Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence on the staffroom table so I picked it up and had a look, and before I knew it I was halfway through. Now I've not read any fantasy in a long, long time. I think Stephen Donaldson was the last book I read all the way through and that must be at least 30 years ago, probably more. The only other time I looked at a fantasy novel was a day I was out somewhere at an auction and finished whatever book I was reading. Lying on the back seat of the car I found a book of fantasy short stories. I can't remember if they were Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms or some other such tosh but it pretty much reinforced all my preformed prejudices against fantasy novels - full of elves and dwarves and highly implausible plotlines. And I'd not touched a fantasy novel with a bargepole ever since. However, it seems I was wrong, or fantasy has grown up maybe, that seems more likely than me being wrong! Anyway, this Prince of Thorns, this was good stuff. This had good characters in it, with proper, believable personalities. And it had a plot that didn't hinge on something highly unlikely happening. In truth it was more like a historical novel with a little bit of sorcery in it. Well, of course it had a bit of sorcery, or it wouldn't have been a fantasy novel would it? But the sorcery was done in a believable way, that fitted with the world it was in. Oh yes, and it was dark. It was very dark. I liked that. I liked that so much that having read a few crime novels in between I am now reading another fantasy novel. I'm now reading Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself and I'm liking this too. But the first sign of a dragon or an elf and I'll be off.

Never fear there has been reading of crime novels too. I read Crucible of Secrets by Shona MacLean, which is the third in her series about Alexander Seaton. Long time readers may recall that I loved the first one after a couple of false starts, wasn't so keen on the second one which was set in Ireland, and I'm happy to report really liked this third one which is once again set in Aberdeen. A full review will appear over at Eurocrime when I've written it.

I also read Crocodile on the Sandbank which is the first in Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody
series. This is where you get to know how Peabody met Emerson and the whole series kicks off. It's a delightfully silly, lightweight piece of nonsense and I have to be in the right frame of mind for one of these but they are great fun.

I finally got round to reading The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, long after the rest of the world have read and loved it. And I have to say that I agree with them. It is a fantastic book. I did want it to be illustrated though. I spent quite a lot of time with the laptop open next to me as I read, so that I could see the Renoir painting with his Great-Grandfather in the background, or look at the pictures in his website of some of the netsuke as he was talking about them. What an extraordinary family! It's also a very tactile book, in the manner of those netsuke. The way he described them really makes you feel as though you could almost reach out and pick them up. It reminded me of The Children's Book by AS Byatt which has that same quality.

Now The Children's Book was the last Booker listed book I read, as I didn't fancy anything off last year's list, and as you may remember I have a bit of a problem with "Booker Books" in general, finding them mostly pretentious and lacking in substance.

And lo and behold it's that time of year again, where I look at the longlist and think, "Is there anything on there that I really want to read?" And more often than not the answer that is a resounding "NO!" This year however my eye was caught by the first novel by Patrick McGuinness called The Last Hundred Days. It's the story of a young English graduate who is offered a post lecturing at Bucharest University. This is odd as he didn't actually apply for the job, isn't qualified and didn't turn up for the interview he was invited to. Nevertheless this unnamed young man accepts the position and finds himself in the nightmare reality that was the last days of Ceaucescu's failing regime. It is a state where the Securitate keep tabs on everyone, and the old city is being bulldozed daily to make way for Ceaucescu's New Bucharest, built on shifting sands and without heed to the needs of the people. Our narrator documents all this among the many small details of life in the city. It's full of wonderful characters, like Trofim, the old Party loyalist who is writing both an official autobiography and a secret, explosive version that tells of the inner corruption of the Party, and Leo who's also a lecturer at the University but walks a dangerous line supplying black market goods from the West to half the city's ruling regime. This is a wonderful book. I just could not put it down, especially towards the end when the Berlin Wall comes down and the waves of change in Europe begin to spread eastwards towards Romania. I finished this two days ago and I'm still thinking about it. I even think I might want to go back and read it again. I certainly want to re-read George Galloway's excellent non-fiction book Downfall: Ceaucescus and the Fall of Romania. Sadly that is out of print as it's an excellent recounting of the Revolution. We do have a copy of this somewhere if I could just lay my hands on it! Anyway, you should read The Last Hundred Days even if you don't read anything else from the longlist.

I'm actually planning to try and read a couple more off that list. I have Snowdrops by A D Miller and The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers. I'll let you know how I get on.

Another Post - Another Fibre Show

2011-08-23T13:13:00.009+01:00

Just after Knit Nation I had the chance to go to a new fibre event called Fibre-East. It was held in Bedfordshire on a farm that was pretty much right out in the middle of nowhere.

I loved this show. It was so well organised. Everything was laid on for the attendees including a nice dry, mostly sunny day. The event was held in a large field and there were two large marquees for the vendors, plus a tea tent, shearing demos from the Sheer Sheep Experience.

There were lots of sheep. all waiting to be sheared throughout the day including this chap -
Sue Blacker from Blacker Wools gave her wonderful talk on selecting a fleece which was very interesting, even for me who doesn't normally have anything to do with raw fleece.
And there was a tent where they were selling fleece too. I got carried away and bought some fleece. Only a little bit though. I bought 300g of Wensleydale curls from a lovely black/dark brown sheep called Treacle.

Here's a shot inside the fleece tent. I must point out to protect the innocent that in no way were the women in this photo buying any fleece at all. No sir, not one fleece. Honest, guv.

Well, maybe there were one or two fleeces that went home in the car with us, but they were only small ones!

There were plenty of vendors too in the big marquees selling all kinds of spinning and weaving equipment, fibre and batts. There were several guilds there demonstrating and exhibiting. I tried out the new Schacht Sidekick wheel at the Threshing Barn stall and loved it. If I was in the market for a very small, more portable wheel (which I'm not!) that's what I would go for.

I can only say that I thought Fibre-East was great and I look forward to next year. It was a really good day out with just enough stuff to keep us busy but not so much that we didn't get a chance to look at everything.

Knit Nation Report

2011-08-15T07:22:00.005+01:00

I just realised that I am so far behind with my blogging that this show happened over a month ago and I still haven't reported on it.

Knit Nation, for those not in the know was held at Imperial College, London on the weekend of 15-17th July. It was a huge event with many classes and workshops, covering lots of different knitting and spinning skills and with tutors from all over the world.

I wasn't doing any classes, but I did want to go to the marketplace because I wanted to check out the competition - ie I wanted to see if the many independent yarn dyers who would be there were selling the sort of stuff that I am planning on stocking in my little Etsy shop. Plus, I just love to see what everyone is knitting, what the new products are, talk to people etc etc.

I went with Philippa from my spinning group and we had a lovely time mooching around the stalls and talking to the vendors. There were some great stands - Habu Textiles, Loop (they had lots of Wollemeise which was selling like hot cakes), The Yarn Yard, Juno, Brownberry Yarns and Krafty Koala to name but a few. I was very restrained and actually didn't buy any yarn at all. I did buy some alpaca fibre to spin from John Arbon Textiles, and a blocking wires kit from Brownberry Yarns. All in all it was a very inspiring day spent with some lovely knitters. We went to Ysolda's booth and tried on her samples from the Little Red in the Big City book and now I want to knit them all. I definitely need to knit myself some cardigans before this winter though so it was great to try her samples and see which ones look best on me.

When we felt we'd had enough of the shopping we headed back towards South Kensington tube station and went to the Hummingbird Bakery which is just around the corner where we had fantastic cake, and I bought some for Pete and the Evilpixie too.

You will notice that there are no photos from this day - I did have my camera with me but somehow in all the excitement, and overcome by the sheepy fumes I just didn't take any pictures. I am such a rubbish blogger.

Next up is my report from Fibre-East - I took pictures there, honest.

Hey Look - A Book Update!

2011-07-29T07:07:00.004+01:00

Well hello there. Yes, finally a book update.

Actually I have to admit that there hasn't been a whole lot of reading done here, due to work and some deadline knitting I was desperately trying to finish.

Furthermore, I have had a few books recently that have just failed to thrive.

I had a copy of The Cleansing Flames by RN Morris which I was supposed to be reviewing for Eurocrime but to be honest I just could not get on with it. Now, I loved his three previous books in this series which features Porfiry Petrovich from Crime and Punishment as the detective (Prosecuting Magistrate if you want to be technical). But this one just didn't grab me at all. It starts with a body being found in a river in St Petersburg just as the Spring Thaw starts, co-inciding with a string of arson attacks across the city as revolutionary fervor begins to build. So far so good, but after a promising start it rather loses the plot (quite literally in this case) as the next 50-60 pages I found to be very tedious, with a lot of political discussion and some waffling by Profiry Petrovich, and not a lot of action. I really tried, because I do feel that I should finish review books but I just could not make myself finish this. I got to page 179 before I gave up. (Sorry, Karen!) I think this is a shame as the previous books were good and I've read all of them.

I even tried to tell myself that I couldn't read anything else until I'd finished the RN Morris, but I could only hold out for so long on that because I had in my possession the latest Mary Russell book from Laurie R King. Now you know that I absolutely love this series, and this one is no disappointment, thankfully. The God of the Hive follows on directly from where The Language of Bees leaves off, so it would be difficult to tell you much about it without major spoilers for that book, so I'll just say that it's great, that Mary Russell is wonderful, the plot is complex, there are big shocks along the way, and that I cannot wait for the next installment.

Luckily Ms King has provided us with a little something to keep us all going until The Pirate King comes out in September. Beekeeping for Beginners is a short novella in e-book format which recounts that first meeting on the Sussex Downs between the retired Sherlock Holmes and the fifteen year old Mary Russell which is told in The Beekeeper's Apprentice. But this novella tells us the story from Holmes' point of view. Go read it, it only costs £1.50 and it's well worth it.

Pretty much anything that I read after that was going to pale by comparison so perhaps I was a tad unfair on Aline Templeton's Lying Dead, which also did not grab me. It's not a bad book, I just wasn't that interested in most of the characters. I've read one of these before and I liked the main detective Marjory Fleming, but this book was spending far too much time with a cast of shallow undeserving characters with whom I did not wish to spend my limited reading time. Perhaps it just wasn't the right time for this particular book.

Anyway I'm now reading The Hare with the Amber Eyes and absolutely loving it. To the extent that I was almost late for work this morning. I was sitting in Starbucks having a Flat White and reading and was so engrossed in my book that I didn't notice the time. Ooops.

Back soon with reports on Knit Nations and Fibre East, plus the strange rumour that I read a fantasy novel and enjoyed it.

Big News from Mysterious Yarns

2011-07-20T12:17:00.010+01:00

I've been really, really busy over the last few weeks dyeing yarn and fibre and photographing it, and now I am ready to announce to the world that my new venture is up and running.

"Stormy Weather" Merino/Silk Laceweight

I've opened an Etsy shop so now you can buy yarn and fibre that I have hand-dyed. Please go take a look. I hope there will be something there that you like. It's not super-stocked with yarns yet, as I'm starting slowly and keeping it manageable. All the yarns and fibres are named after crime novels, so now you can knit your favourite book or your favourite author, or even just pick a colour you like and you might discover a book you'll love.

"Field Grey" Elementary sock yarn, dyed so it graduates from pale grey through to charcoal along the whole length of the skein.

I came back from Knit Nation at the weekend full of inspiration for new yarns, and I shall be going to Fibre East this weekend for more research (well, that's my excuse anyway). Say hello if you see me there and get a free MysteriousYarns keyring. I'll have my Ravelry badge on and I'd love to meet you all.

To celebrate the new shop and because it's Fibre East this weekend I'm offering free UK shipping in the shop. Just use the code EAST1 at checkout and please tell all your knitting friends about the new shop.

Days 3, 4 & 5 - Along the South Coast

2011-06-23T17:00:00.007+01:00

So, after our damp Sunday in North Devon we stayed overnight again in Taunton and spent Monday morning scouting out the charity shops of Taunton.

Waterstones in Taunton have made a great mural out of the little tags that we use to seal the totes the books get delivered in -

Isn't it great?

Then we hit the motorway and went south to Exeter, along the coast to Exemouth. Did you know that Exemouth has an amazing 12 charity shops? I don't think we actually bought anything in any of them, but there were loads. Sidmouth next, which is a pleasant little town with lots of little galleries etc.

I do have one thing to say about all these places. Don't you think they should be encouraging people to stay as long as possible and browse happily without having to watch the time because they only have 2 hours in the car park? If the parking was free people would be more inclined to stay and shop, wouldn't they? I hate to think how much we spent just on parking in the week that we were away.

Anyway, after Sidmouth, where we declined the overpriced room in a seaside hotel (who would obviously rather the room was empty than offer a reasonable rate), we hopped inland to Honiton where we booked a room in a hotel/guesthouse via my iphone from a layby just outside Honiton and the delightful, if slightly eccentric, Thai lady owner was all ready for us twenty minutes later when we arrived. I love my iphone.

Next morning in Honiton was market day - and they just set up the market all along the high street at the side of the road, with no worrying about the traffic.

From Honiton we moved on to Poole, where we had a lovely icecream on the front from a very rude woman. If she worked in my shop she'd get a rocket up her arse, I can tell you. The icecream was nice though. :)

There was a little bookshop in Poole with interesting stock, though we didn't buy anything, but he recommended their other shop in Bournemouth, which was the direction we were heading anyway so we got very lucky in that shop. Pete bought some graphic novels. They had a lovely selection of craft books too but nothing that I didn't already have. It's Winton Bookshop in Cardigan Road in Winton, Bournemouth. The chap who runs it was a total delight. Very knowledgeable about his stock and really helpful. We could have chatted to him all day. It's not very often you can say that about second-hand booksellers. Anyway I highly recommend them. They're well worth checking out if you happen to be in the area.

We spent that night with Pete's sister in Gosport and the following morning we did Fareham, Chichester and Arundel before heading for his other sister who lives near Horsham.

Thursday we went to Brighton where we had a good mooch along The Lanes and drank a lot of coffee and walked along the prom. The pier looks very sad. We had a really good day, just wandering around aimlessly looking at the lovely little shops and galleries.

Friday was Pete's birthday and had booked the Eurotunnel to Calais. We were hoping to find a local flea market but working on duff information from the internet the only market we found was a general one, though we did have a fantastic cup of coffee in one of those surreal little cafe/bar establishments with odd local people in that only seem to exist in small French market towns. Back to Calais then where we managed to avoid the traditional row about directions and who is the better navigator and why can't the French put proper signposts up. We got well stocked up on wine and cheese and other goodies as you can imagine.

So we got home late on Friday night, totally exhausted.

And here is my haul of crafty stuff -

That's the crafty books.

And the crime books. You may be able to see that I am on a bit of an Elizabeth Peters kick. How odd - no serial killers.

and the magazines. I bought some bits of fabric too in Bath but they're not in the photo for some reason.

And this is our painting, bought in Ilfracombe. Again it is by a Devon artist called Kevin Powell. Here's a close up of the little man. It's called The Leafkicker.

Day Two - Underwater

2011-06-14T07:09:00.006+01:00

We woke on Sunday morning to pouring rain. It was absolutely torrential. That rather scuppered the plans we had made to hit the car boot sales round Taunton. Instead we headed for the coast.

We started in Ilfracombe where we had a huge breakfast in a little cafe called Pandoro - lovely fry-up, very friendly place.

Just up the road was a little gallery with an exhibition by the local art society and let me tell you the quality of the work was outstanding. We bought a watercolour by a local artist called Kevin Powell. Most his work is of dragons, but the piece we bought is different. I'll post a picture when we get home - It's safely wrapped up in bubblewrap at the moment. There were some other pictures that I really liked too including some by an artist called Aline Forde - abstract seascapes using mixed media. There was even some beautiful knitting. The exhibition was quite a find and far above the usual local art exhibitions.

We walked around Ilfracombe, along the prom and down by the harbour. Some of the colours and textures in the rocks were amazing

We were pretty damp by this time and it was still raining so we skipped down the coast to Croyde where even the surfers weren't out. We did have some ice cream though.

Coldharbour Mill is an 18th C wool mill which still works. Sadly it only operates a few weekends in the year and this wasn't one of them. However it was still fascinating to see all the ancient spinning machines and looms. I'd really like to go back and see it running. The displays are very interesting and I particularly liked the upstairs part where the local weaving society meet and all their looms were set up. This part is closed off so you can't go in, but I had a good peer at them from the sidelines and there are some lovely looms there.

So that was our soggy Sunday in Somerset and Devon. Taunton it should be noted does not seem to eat out on a Sunday evening. We had a bit of trouble finding a restaurant open. Midlands people eat out regularly on Sundays, but I guess Somerset people don't as most of the restaurants we saw were closed for the evening.

Next up - Exeter and the South Coast.

Day One - Bath etc

2011-06-14T06:46:00.004+01:00

The internet access in Somerset was a bit hit and miss so I'm a tad behind with the blogging but here's what we did on Saturday.

We were up early as usual and off to Bath. It only takes 1.5 hours from home which surprised me. The M5 was pretty quiet though.

It was a lovely day and we had a great time mooching about and finding lots of interesting shops. We started off with a coffee in Starbucks – they have posh mugs in the ‘Bucks here.

I knitted a couple of rows on my Hitch-hiker as it was WWKIP day.

There are a couple of stand-out book shops in Bath – Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights and Topping & Co Booksellers. Both of these were stocked to the rafters with books to drool over – lots of lovely art and textiles books. We had a great lunch in a little pub in one of the little lanes, great fresh sandwiches and homemade chips.

I stopped into the Makery and bought a couple of bits. And I found a great weaving book in a charity shop. I'll do an update of my purchases when I get home and show you my total haul.

After lunch we headed out and went to Midsomer Norton, Shepton Mallett, Glastonbury and Street, where we went to the Clarks Outlet Village (but I didn’t buy anything). The charity shops of Somerset were not very forthcoming with their goodies. I don't think we bought anything in any of these places.

We spent the night in Taunton, ready for the next day’s adventure.

A Little Trip

2011-06-09T17:36:00.003+01:00

I know, I know I'm just rubbish. I seem to have been so busy recently that I've done hardly anything except go to work, come home and veg in front of the TV, and really that doesn't make for very good blog material.

However, we are off on one of our little trips this weekend. We start off in Bath then we spend a couple of days in North Devon, across to Exeter, along the south coast and ending up with a day trip to France. It's just Pete and I - the Evilpixie (who was 21 this week - eek how did that happen) is house/dog sitting. It's been ages since we went away anywhere so we're really looking forward to it.

Internet service willing I shall blog as we go and will try and take some interesting photos if I can. In the meantime - bookshops, wool shops and car boot sales of the South West be prepared - we're coming your way!

TV Drama - US or UK??

2011-03-25T08:51:00.006Z

As you know I do love a bit of TV. My all time favourite TV series is The West Wing but I've recently delved back in to my previous love of SF with a Battlestar Galactica marathon. I've always loved science fiction TV, from Blakes 7 and Star Trek back in my
youth, through ST:NG and Deep Space Nine. I kind of drifted away from SF round about Star Trek: Voyager, though I have dipped in and out of that too. I picked up on Stargate Universe, because I like Robert Carlyle, though I'd never watched any of its previous incarnations. I'm currently eagerly awaiting its return from a mid-season break. (Why does US TV do that - it drives me nuts). I'd been hearing good things about the new series of BG though and succumbed to a great deal on the complete boxset. There's really not much better than a good, well structured, well-written, TV series that doesn't feel the need to talk down to its audience. Geek TV and knitting go so well together too. I did almost all my Christmas knitting on my days off while watching Starbuck fall apart on BG. This is why I prefer a DVD boxset of a series - I can watch as many as I like back-to-back without having to wait for the TV schedulers to provide my fix.

I do like American TV. I know we usually only see the best of it over here, but
they do produce some great stuff. I am already in love with Sky Atlantic. Totally the best thing on TV at the moment - Treme. A series about New Orleans, set in the area called Treme where lots of musicians lived pre-Katrina, and following a group of people trying to put their lives back together in the wake of the hurricane. I love it. It's fantastically well-scripted, but even if it wasn't, the music is wonderful. It makes my week. The boxset of this will be available soon so I can heartily recommend it, and a second season has already been commissioned.

British TV is not doing quite so well for me at the moment. I had reasonably high
hopes for Outcasts, the BBC's first foray into SF for quite a while, and I could see what they were trying to do with it. Definitely aiming for the BG audience and with Jamie Bamber in the first episode. But ultimately it was a disappointment. It had that old BBC need to pander to the audience and explain things that really we had already understood. If you're aiming an SF series at people who are already literate in that genre then it's really not necessary to state the obvious at every turn. It used a lot of the same themes that BG used - escape from a doomed planet, the sense of history repeating itself, a humanoid appearing people in conflict with humans. But the handling of these issues was very ham-fisted. Some of the acting was distinctly ropey too, which didn't help. Anyway, no-one watched it, it got swiftly shuffled off to a late slot on BBC2 and has now been cancelled.

However I can't be too hard on the Beeb because they have brought us the wonderful
The Killing - OK, so they didn't make it, and they put it on BBC4 so they haven't pushed it too hard, nor did they shout about it too much. It was people on twitter that alerted me to this series. And I was a bit dubious - it's a 20 part series, set in Copenhagen, about a murder - yes all 20 episodes, just about the one murder, and it has sub-titles because I don't speak Danish, which means I can't knit while watching. But let me tell you - it is utterly fantastic, totally gripping and if the BBC don't repeat the whole series on a more mainstream channel then they are just as much the fools I always thought they were. I have been watching this on iPlayer on my laptop (with a small screen) because I missed the first episodes and have been desperately trying to catch up, and even in that format it is fantastic. It finishes on Saturday. I can't wait.

Just one more thing to say - BBC, please do not try to make a series like The Killing. All the evidence shows that you are incapable of doing this. Here's a suggestion though. Commission more from the quality writers you already use like Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. How about something steampunk?

Picture of the lovely Avon from Blake's 7, still from outcasts and cast photo from The Killing, all courtesy of the BBC, still from Treme courtesy of HBO

Failing the 50 Page Test

2011-03-22T08:40:00.007Z

I used to try and finish every book that I started but these days I am so swamped with things that must be read, should be read, are long overdue to be read and cry out to be read, that I have developed my 50 page rule.

If the book hasn't grabbed me within 50 pages then I put it down and let it go. This is a major achievement for me. I'm the sort of person who once I've started to watch a film, can't stop. Even if I can tell where it's going and I can't stand the acting/script/direction, I will watch a film to the end just to see if I'm right about it. I used to be like that with books too. I would drag myself through the most turgid prose and ridiculous plot right to the bitter end. Of course there are books with which I can't do that. If I'm reviewing a book I will read all of it. Sometimes I will have to read all of it in a vain attempt to find something positive to say about a book. To write a review I need to have read the whole book or I'm not giving it a fair review. And sometimes it's not the fault of the book - it's just not the right book for my frame of mind at that moment. These books, while they do get put down, usually get picked up again further down the line somewhere. But in general, so many books pass through my life that I just don't have the time / energy/ will to read dull or ludicrous or badly written books. So I don't.

Here are a couple of examples of books which failed my 50 page test recently.

Too Close to Home by Linwood Barclay. I liked Linwood Barclay's first book No Time for Goodbye, the premise for which was "What if you came home from school and your family had gone?" I liked the characters of the woman who's family disappeared when she was a girl. I liked the way Barclay dealt with some of the issues this brought up for the woman. And I didn't think it was at all badly written. The premise for this one is "What if your neighbours get murdered and you find out that the killers went to the wrong house?" I just couldn't get into this one. There didn't seem to be any subtlety about the way it was constructed. Details that were obviously important to the plot were telegraphed in such a way that they seemed to just leap off the page. I just couldn't continue with it, though I did persevere for about 100 pages to give it a fair trial.

The other book that was a fail for me was Great House by Nicole Krauss. Now this book is getting great reviews all over the web and
in the papers so this is probably just me. I liked the idea - this is a multi-stand story about a woman in New York, a man in London and an antique dealer in Jerusalem. All the stories are linked by a desk which we hear about first with the woman in New York. Back in the 1970s she spends the night with a Chilean poet, who asks her to look after his desk for him. He then goes back to Chile where he is arrested by Pinochet's secret police and never heard from again. So far so good. I like the idea of the desk linking the stories. As someone who has worked with antiques on a minor scale this is an idea I've pondered from time to time - how a piece of furniture or an object has an importance in or influence on people's lives far and beyond it's importance as an object. I liked the Chilean poet though we only met him briefly, but the woman was horribly self-obssessed and I really didn't want to spend any time in her company. I'm not entirely sure that I managed 50 pages. She's supposed to be looking after the desk for the poet but when his daughter turns up to claim it all she can think about is how she can keep the desk. Now that I've savaged it this book will probably win the Booker prize - it's one of those books. Some people obviously love it. I just hated it.

Do you have a 50 page, or a 100 page rule? And what's failed your test recently?

Long Overdue Book Update

2011-03-08T09:10:00.005Z

The books I've been waiting to blog about have been sitting on the desk in the office for weeks waiting for me to get the chance to write this post. They've been taunting me - demanding my attention and I'd just been putting them off and ignoring them. Well that'll teach me because now that I finally have the time, the books seem to have walked. So you'll have to bear with me while I try and remember what it was I wanted to say about these.

I started the New Year with Telling Tales by Ann Cleeves which is one of the Vera Stanhope series. I enjoyed this very much. It's set on the coast in one of those isolated, insular communities that Cleeves does so well. The indomitable Vera is an outsider, come to look at an old case. That old case is unmistakeably mixed up in a more recent murder, but Vera is not supposed to be looking at the new murder. You can imagine that's going to remain the case, can't you? It's very good. I'm looking forward to seeing what the ITV have done with the character when the TV series finally airs. It's still billed on the ITV website as "coming soon" but there's no mention of a date yet.

I also read Findings by Kathleen Jamie, which was a recommendation from a podcast, though I can't remember which one. Anyway I was delighted as I read to realise that I recognised some of the places she was describing and that she lives in Newburgh in Fife which is where my parents used to live and where I lived for a few years before I left home. She's a fantastic writer with a way of bringing the landscape alive whether she's describing an osprey's nest in Fife or the ancient tombs of the Orkney Isles.

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill is a fantastic book which I knew I wanted to read as soon as I saw it. I waited for the paperback to come out and it was worth the wait. It's the tale of a woman, kidnapped into the slave trade in Africa as a young girl, and her subsequent life in Virginia, Canada, Africa and London. A bit like a female version of Alex Haley's Roots, though it's just the one life. Aminata is a wonderful character and her life story is gripping and real. I loved this book. It's beautifully written and a great mix of sadness and gentle humour.

A change of pace was called for so I picked up The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly. This is not a Harry Bosch book, but a return for Jack McAvoy, who we first met in The Poet. Now The Poet is one of my favourite books. It was the first thriller I picked up after I been on a female only fiction kick for quite a while and I remember being totally gripped by it and not wanting to put it down. Sadly that was not the case for this book. I couldn't really connect with Jack in this book. He's just being made redundant from the newspaper he's been working for and he has the chance to do one last big story. The story turns out to be very different from the one he thought he was writing however and it puts his life at risk. To me this book was a tad too formulaic. Early on in the book there's a description of a place (I shan't spoil the plot for you if you haven't read it) and I thought immediately "that's where the denouement takes place". After that all the pieces fell into place and I knew exactly what was going to happen. I was disappointed. On the other hand I've always thought that Connelly's standalone books (apart from The Poet) have been inferior to his Harry Bosch novels. I'm not a big fan of the Mickey Haller books either - but that's because I'm not really into legal thrillers not because I think they're bad books.

I like to try and read all kinds of different crime novels so I know what I'm talking about if called to recommend things. So I had to read a Carola Dunn, though to be honest I thought they probably wouldn't be my thing. I randomly selected Rattle His Bones. (By randomly selected, I mean "found in a charity shop!). I have to say that I was right about them not really being my cup of tea. This one features the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple stumbling over a murder in the Natural History Museum. It's light and fluffy, and the characters are amusing, and I guess if you start at the beginning and work through them then you see Daisy develop and her relationship with Alan blossom. And if you like that then you'll probably like these. They're not at all badly written, quite sweet without being too sickly, just not for me. I started off fine and was quite amused for a hundred pages or so then my attention started to drift. I began to be irritated by Daisy and I wanted something grittier. It's a matter of personal preference. I don't like cosy crime. Give me a serial killer any day. But I know what they're about now and can happily recommend the series to those who like their murders fluffy.

A proof of My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young came my way with warnings that the ending shouldn't be revealed so as not to spoil the book for anyone else. It's set just before and during the First World War and is the intertwined stories of two relationships. It's well written and I enjoyed reading it. I have a bit of a thing for WW1 writing - those who've been reading this blog may remember that the novel I am currently failing to write is partly set during WW1. Anyway the title of the book comes from the preprinted postcard that was sent to next of kin when a loved one was injured at the Front - a very unspecific and general communication that told very little. And this book is all about miscommunication, about people who can't say what they need to say, or just don't say what they need to say and the effects this has on those around them. I loved reading it, thought the characters were interesting and original, though there were some I wanted more of who got rather sidelined. The end, however, about which as instructed I will say nothing, the end was a little bit of a disappointment to me. I think I was expecting a big set-piece ending or a huge shock and it didn't come. It's not that the ending was bad, or even wrong. It was fine, but I had predicted it, then discounted my prediction because "the end is amazing". Perhaps I just read too much crime fiction. Anyway I did enjoy the book and I would recommend it, though I thought the end was not as strong as it could have been.

Back soon with a couple of books which failed my 50 page test. And some FOs. Yes, really. Finished Objects. I have actually finished some knitting. Amazing.

A Party

2011-02-23T12:48:00.006Z

A couple of weeks ago it was the 25th Anniversary of my spinning group. We are the Walsall Handspinners and you can find out more about the group on the website here.

Anyway such a momentous occasion called for a party and that's what we had. We had a whole day of spinning and chatting and eating and a great time was had by all.

The Threshing Barn came with lots of goodies for sale, and there was a raffle and the competition (for which I had been making the hideous corn fibre object).

And yes before you ask - here is the thing I made -

It's a little beaded shawl, and while it looks all innocent and butter-wouldn't-melt lying there on the chair, trust me it was the work of the devil. I didn't like the corn fibre (I may have mentioned this once or twice) and it was hideous to knit with. I used a shawl pattern from Spin Off magazine because it happened to call for exactly the right yardage I had. It was only when I was almost complete that I realised I had been knitting the pattern wrong (the two sides of the shawl weren't symetrical. I ask you, who writes a pattern like that?). Then I tried to block it (I suspected this would be difficult - this fibre is not at all like wool). It doesn't block. So I tried to press it because the edges were curling up. And I melted a hole right at the point of the shawl. So I had to rip back about 10 rows and reknit as far as I could with the yarn I had left. There was some swearing.

Unsurprisingly I did not win the competition. There are some seriously talented people in my group, and they did far better things with the surprise packs of fibre than I did with mine. However it has taught me something so it wasn't a total waste of time.

Next up on the blog - some book reviews, a tale about stash re-organisation and a trip to Shrewsbury.

Back soon(ish).

A Couple More Things You Might Want to Know About Corn Fibre

2011-02-08T16:33:00.003Z

If you are considering spinning with corn fibre at all (and I can't say that I would recommend it) here are a couple of things I've discovered today that you might want to bear in mind.

A - It doesn't block well. I had a feeling this might be the case is it has none of the stretch or memory of wool. I was right. The mystery object (it's for a competition remember, to be judged anonymously) looked great on the blocking board but as soon as I took it off it reverted pretty much immediately to it's previous unblocked state. And the edges curled in.

B - You know when you have a really bright idea to fix a problem. I had one of those. I thought if I steam pressed the edges they would stop rolling in and look better. Here's where I learned the other thing you really need to know about corn fibre. IT MELTS!!!

Aaaaagh.

Summing Up and Looking Ahead

2011-01-21T16:54:00.005Z

I had a little look back at January's posts from 2010 to see if I'd actually done any of the things I'd planned. And the answer was pretty much a resounding NO!

I wanted to read some great new authors this year - and while I've read some good books there have been precious few of them by authors that were new to me. It seems that when my reading time is limited as it has been this year then I turn to the tried and tested, not wanting to waste any of that precious time on a book I don't like. It's not looking as though I will have any extra reading time this year either as I am now working full-time, 5 days a week. I promise I will at least try some new authors this year though - even if I just read a few chapters and don't get any further, I will try.

Crafting time has been in rather short supply too. I have done almost no quilting at all, dabbled in wire jewellery making and liked it, but haven't taken it any further due to those time restraints. When I've knitted, I've either knitted for other people - there was a lot of gift knitting this year, or I've knitted little shawls. Socks have been barely touched - I haven't even finished the two pairs of socks I had on the needles last January. However I have a few weeks holiday booked for the spring so I'm hoping to get cracking on some of the great ideas that are floating around in my head. I'm hoping to make some clothes for myself, and I'm planning to knit something bigger than just another shawlette. Much as I love to knit shawlettes, really do I need another one? What I do need are a couple of stylish, practical skirts for work, and a go-to, wear with anything cardigan. Other than that there will be more dyeing, some jewellery making, and I will try and finish the quilt that is on the go at the moment.

We did make it to Woolfest and I had a good time, despite the best efforts of Travelodge. And we had a fantastic weekend in Brussels for my birthday. Other than that we had a couple of day trips to London and a few of our pottering about days in Gloucestershire and Derbyshire. It must be time for a trip to Shropshire - eeeh we know how to have a good time, don't we? The long planned trip to Seattle is still on hold and seems to be slowly morphing into a trip to San Francisco instead (probably couldn't afford both). If it will be this year or next remains to be seen, depends on the exchange rate (and whether or not we can afford it). If the US is a stretch too far for this year then we shall almost certainly get up to Scotland again at some point, as we didn't go last year.

I would like to say that I will write more this year, but I know I probably won't. I'll keep making notes though, and you never know - another of those short stories like the Christmas one might appear here from time to time. There just isn't the space in my life for more prolonged writing than that at the moment. I'm not altogether happy about that but I'm being realistic here. The novel is just not going to happen this year.

So that's what this year has in store for me. I'm not setting any unrealistic goals, but will continue to blog as and when I can, will knit and spin and weave as often as time allows, and try and be more time efficient. Here's hoping it will be a good year.

Taa Dah!!!!!

2011-01-13T07:02:00.007Z

Big drum roll please to announce the ceremony for the Annual Mysterious Yarns Books of the Year Awards. I hope you all have your posh frocks on in readiness.

I've not read as many books as usual this year, with work conspiring against me. I am constantly amazed by people telling me who lovely it must be to work in a bookshop, with all those books to read. Wouldn't it be great to be able to read all day, they say. If only. Somewhere in amongst serving the customers, stocking the shelves, doing the paperwork, returning the unsold books, ordering more books to replace them and wrangling the team, I'm lucky if I can snatch 10 minutes of my lunch hour to actually read a book. Which is a shame as there is that constant flow of interesting and tempting books through my hands all the time, with not enough time to read any of them. But I digress.

My Crime Novel of the Year this year goes to Dark Water by Caro Ramsay. It was a close run thing, not many votes in it, but this just edged it over the competition. A well written, smartly plotted book with an interesting and developing team of characters. It's all I ask for in a crime novel really, so why is it so difficult to find?

Non-Crime Book of the Year goes to The Small Hand by Susan Hill. I've read remarkably few non-crime books this year, despite my avowal earlier in the year to read more general fiction. It seems that when I just want a good read I will still always pick up a crime novel, so there weren't too many nominations in this category. Runner up was also by Susan Hill with Howard's End is on the Landing, so she's done very well.

The Fiat Punto Memorial Award for the Book Hurled into the Back of the Car with most Vehemence goes to The Twelfth Card by Jeffery Deaver. Now generally I like Jeffery Deaver's books but this was an audio book, so was listened to mostly in the car (sadly not the Fiat Punto which died a horrible and expensive death this year, to be replaced by a smart VW Golf who's backseat has not yet had a book hurled at it). It seemed to go on for ever (that's the audiobook, not the car), and became very tedious with it's innumerable plot twists. That bit Deaver does in all his Lincoln Rhyme books where he sums up the clues they have on their board - let me tell you that gets very old very quickly when you've listened to it 6 or 7 times. So this audio book very nearly was actually hurled into the backseat on several occasions and it was only the fact that it was a library book that stopped me.

Sadly there is no winner this year for the I Can't Believe I Paid Good Money for That Award. Looking back over the list of books I read, there were very few on the list that I actually paid for - and those that I did buy I enjoyed. That's not to say that I didn't buy any books this year - of course I bought books, I just haven't read many of them yet. I expect there will be a few candidates for next year's award among my TBR pile.

Honorable Mentions need to go to the following books which I loved -

The Language of Bees by Laurie R King, latest in the wonderful Mary Russell series.

Sweetsmoke by David Fuller which was the first book I read in 2010 and was a fantastic read

Saints of New York by RJ Ellory which is the first of his I've actually read, despite having several of his earlier books. It's an interesting study of a cop in meltdown.

Rome by Manda Scott, taking the characters from the end of her amazing Boudica series and moving them on in time and place. I loved it and am eagerly awaiting the next installment which is not out until May.

There are some more great books to look forward to this year, with Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane at the start of February - he returns to his roots with this one which features Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, some 12 or so years after Gone Baby Gone. I got a proof of this and it's definitely been worth the wait. Most exciting for me is the news of a new James Sallis book in August. Roll on Summer.

Spinning with Corn Fibre

2011-01-11T16:22:00.002Z

Every year at my spinning group we have a competition which is judged by the group and a prize awarded at the annual party. Previous competitions have been for making a peg doll, a Christmas decoration, woven squares etc. This year, as we are celebrating our 25th anniversary we came up with something a bit different. Everyone donated 50g of fibre of some kind which we drew at random and we must each make something with this fibre, in time for our 25th Birthday Party in mid-february.

I drew a bag of corn fibre. It is not something I've ever spun before but that's all part of the fun, isn't it? Isn't it? I tried to do a bit of research about how to spin this, but there was nothing very helpful out there. It's odd stuff - very white and lustrous and the fibres are very fine. I'm not sure it has a natural staple length (see below for how it gets made) but the staples in the stuff I got are about 2-3 inches. Corn fibre, in case you're not aware, sounds like it should be one of those great natural fibres like linen or flax, but the process by which it's extracted from the plant involves quite a lot of chemicals. Basically the fibre is dissolved into a gloopy substance by means of various chemicals and then is it slowly extruded into long, fine fibres. It doesn't take dye well, so I've not attempted that. It was a complete pig to spin - too much twist and the fibre snaps, too little and it just drifts apart in your hand. It has none of the crimp of wool , so it's slippery and I kept letting the strands slip through my fingers and losing them. If I didn't pay attention the fibres clumped together and I got lumps. God knows how - at other times it would barely hold together. So now I have just over 200m of this bright white shiny yarn, with a few lumpy bits in it. It's not terribly well spun - I just wanted to get it done as quickly as possible, it's such an alien substance, and I really wasn't enjoying the experience.

You'll have to wait and see the end results, which won't be revealed until after the party on Feb 12th. I'm not sure that it's going to resemble what I have planned in my head - we'll have to see.

Anyway you'll all be pleased to hear that the voting for the Mysteriousyarns Book Awards is now closed and the votes are being counted and verified. Results soon, I promise.

Year's End

2010-12-31T07:18:00.003Z

I'm really not sure how I manage to kid myself that I have enough time to blog, read or knit much in December, but I fall for it every year. Somehow, between one December and the next I forget that it's not just the extra day of work each week that sucks up my spare time (such as it is) but also the weariness that comes from working extra, extra hard for those few crucial weeks in the shop. Someone remind me next year, will you?

Anyway it's all over now, bar the January sales, and I have a few days off (in a row!) now so I can get back up to date with the blog and the housework and all the other sad neglected stuff.

I'm having a little trouble remembering what I've read since the last update. I went on a bit of a Stuart MacBride kick, reading first Dark Blood (out in paperback in January) and then the proof of Shatter the Bones (thanks to Karen at Eurocrime for that). Both are excellent. They seem to be getting darker though as the series goes on, less of the gallows humour, more of the stuff that makes you wince when you read it. They're not for the faint-hearted these books, but they are well-written and the characters are wonderful. I do think, should you be reading this Stuart, that it may be time you gave Logan McRae a break - how much misery can you heap on one man? Can something nice happen to him? Just once?

I had a proof (courtesy of Little, Brown) of the new Dennis Lehane novel Moonlight Mile (out in hardback in January), which is a long-awaited return to his Kenzie-Gennaro partnership. The story is set some 12 years after the events of Gone Baby, Gone in which the four year old Amanda McCready was kidnapped. Amanda's aunt contacts Patrick because Amanada is missing again. Patrick, who's doing corporate investigative work to pay the bills (and hating it) really doesn't want to open that old can of worms again, to rehash all those old moral dilemmas, especially as he's still not sure he did the right thing back then. Eventually though he gets dragged back into the case, and into a world he thought he'd left behind. This is intelligent crime fiction at it's best. I love Lehane's writing style. He's not afraid to pose difficult moral questions of the reader and of his characters. And it's immensely readable, just sucking you straight into the story and keeping you gripped, right to the end. I really didn't want to put it down. This caused me a problem with my Christmas knitting, but more of that later.

Now I'm reading Telling Tales by Ann Cleeves, which is one of the books being adapted for TV by ITV. The series will be called Vera (after the main detective Vera Stanhope) and stars Brenda Blethyn. My copy is a battered ex-library paperback, but they've been repackaged for the TV series with new covers and are in the shops now.

Also at the moment I am reading Findings by Kathleen Jamie. This was recommended by someone, either a fellow blogger, or on a podcast somewhere, I really can't remember, but it sounded interesting. It's very much a book to dip in and out of meaning that it's been perfect for December when I haven't really been able to concentrate on anything for long. All I knew about this book was that the writer lived in Fife and that it was a sort of travelogue of her journeys around Scotland. Reading the first few chapters however I realised that I recognised some of the landscapes she was describing, and it turns out that she lives in Newburgh, where my parents used to live, and where I lived myself for a few years before I left home. This makes it all the more interesting to me, quite apart from the fascinating detail about wildlife and the landscape and history which pepper the narrative. She's obviously very influenced by George MacKay Brown who is one of my favourite writers, referring to him often thoughout the pages. If it was you who recommended this then I thank you. One of my favourite books this year.

Talking of favourite books - it's that time again. Time to figure out my favourite European crime books of the year for Karen's annual list over at Eurocrime. And next up - drumroll - the traditional Mysterious Yarns Book Awards.

A Little Christmas Present

2010-12-24T16:59:00.002Z

By way of an apology for my lack of posting though December, (and apparently November too) I've got a little story for you. It's a little Christmas present for you all. I hope you like it.

The Winter of the Wolves

It started, this endless winter, back in December of 2010. There was an unseasonable cold spell and deep snow covered Northern Europe. Up here in the valley, on the Welsh border, we scoffed at the soft city dwellers as they floundered in the drifts and the airports closed and the trains stopped running. By the end of January however it was no longer a joke as the country ground to a halt and food rationing was introduced.

Scientists argued constantly on every radio and TV program as to the cause of the extreme weather. Climate change, said some. New Ice Age, claimed others. No-one seemed to have an explanation. They just knew that the polar ice cap had expanded and that the ice now reached down over Europe, North America and most of Asia. No one knew when it would end.

March came and brought no let up. There were riots in the cities where local services had stopped entirely and there were shortages of bread, milk and other essentials.

By June, the government had fled to Zimbabwe, from where they issued edicts on how to keep warm. Europe was forced to go cap in hand to Africa and ask for its help. Africa declined. It could barely feed itself. There was nothing to spare for Europe.

There were fewer angry broadcasts now, blaming people with gas-guzzling cars, or frequent fliers. The Pope, broadcasting from his tent in Buenos Aires, blamed godlessness, and told the Frozen North it should repent. The Frozen North ignored him and went on trying to survive.

Here, at home, we carried on the best we could. Lambing was late, causing problems for the ewes, and we lost a few. The lambs didn’t thrive anyway with no spring grass to nourish the mothers. Our winter stores of feed began to dwindle, as did our larder.

It was in August that we first heard the wolves. We never did find out where they came from. Over the frozen seas from Scandinavia maybe, or through the Channel Tunnel from France. The howling seemed to carry on all night. There were reports in the neighbourhood of missing children. People began to venture out less, and only then if armed with guns. We saw less and less of our neighbours until it seemed that we were the only people left in the valley, just Trevor and I.

We slaughtered the last of the sheep, salted the meat and retreated into our ever-narrowing, monochrome world. Staying warm was top priority so we shut up and abandoned most of the cottage, using just the one room with the wood-burning stove. Collecting wood for the stove became almost our sole occupation. When we had used the logs in the woodpile, we burned the fence posts, the doors from the outhouses and most of the furniture. We avoided the woods for fear of the wolves. In the beginning Trevor used to bring back birds he had shot, or the odd skinny rabbit, but they became fewer and fewer until we realised we hadn’t heard any birdsong for weeks. Every night I could still hear the wolves.

Three weeks ago Trevor went out to gather wood and didn’t some back. He left a note that said “I’m sorry.” I used the note to restart the stove. Paper was precious as kindling. We had burned almost all the books we had.

Last week someone came to the door, knocked loudly for a while then left. I was too afraid to open the door. I just sat in the dark and waited for them to leave. Some hours later then I looked out there were footprints in the snow, leading away up the valley. A wolf howled somewhere near so I shut the door again and bolted it tightly.

The world is crisply white as far as the eye can see, and totally silent. There are no birds anymore to sing, no insects to buzz. The water in the stream is frozen solid. Everything is quiet and still. It should be beautiful but instead it is menacing.

There is almost no food left. A few dried beans, a scrap of sinewy, dried mutton. I need to go out and get some wood or the stove will go out. I don’t dare let it go out these days for fear that I won’t be able to get it relit. Without the stove there is no heat and no way to melt snow for water to drink.

I venture out, bundled tightly in many layers of clothing, in search of fuel. There is a strange air today, something different about the sky. I dismiss this fancy and concentrate on finding sticks. It is not easy. I have been over this ground so many times, but there has been a little wind and a few trees have shed some twigs in this direction so I collect enough to last a few hours, enough to get me through the night.

When I go through the door of the cottage something odd happens. A drip of water falls on my face. I stop and look up. Another drop lands in my eye. I put down my bundle of wood and walk back across the yard to look down the valley. I can see nothing different but I feel the breeze, and realise that it is coming from the south. Then far, far off I see a faint glimmer of sunshine break through the clouds briefly. It is meaningless in this wintry world, but still it warms my soul. I turn and go back towards the cottage.

I have left my pile of wood in the doorway, letting in the cold air. I curse and drag the wood inside towards the stove, closing the door tightly behind me. I bend and warm my numb fingers on the faint heat of the metal and fantasize about a cup of hot coffee.

It is then that I feel the hot damp breath on my cheek and hear a faint low growl.

On and Off the Needles

2010-10-18T09:11:00.012+01:00

Apart from all that shuffling of TBR piles (more to come on that theme) I have been knitting.

I started and finished a Coquille shawl in Noro Kureyon Sock - all purple, green and grey. I love how it turned out. Not a long or complicated knit at all - perfect TV knitting. It's just right for this colder weather, wrapping round the neck securely and lovely and warm.

I then started a shawl that I spotted in the new issue of Spin Off. The pattern called for handspun but I was too impatient to knit it now so I didn't spin the yarn for this. I used a dark green 3ply alpaca from Forsell that I had in the stash. There's nothing to see - it's just a pile of unblocked lacy nothing at the moment.

I've been spinning laceweight, using the Very Fast Flyer attachment for my spinning wheel. The fibre is some BFL that I dyed in the summer. It's proving to be very easy to spin finely and I've already plied a small amount - the lace bobbins don't hold a great deal. This is just 15g and of course I've already forgotten the yardage I got. I shall wait until I've spun it all - a couple of fridays at spinning group should finish it off - and then see how many yards I've got before deciding what to do with it.

(sorry the pic is a little blurry even with the supermacro setting)

I've been reading too. I had a proof of the new James Lee Burke novel - The Glass Rainbow, due for publication in November. It's a Dave Robicheaux book and I have to say that it is really good though I had reservations about the ending. I'm not going to say any more about the plot than that because I don't want to be spoiling it for anyone. The writing is fine as you would expect from JLB and it has the usual cast of well-known, well-loved characters from Clete Purcell to Alafair Robicheaux as well as a fine cast of secondary characters. I'm just not sure about the end.

I had an audio book of Jeffery Deaver's The Twelfth Card which was my book group read for last month. Now I'm quite a fan of Mr Deaver and I've liked most of the previous Lincoln Rhyme books but I'm not sure they are cut out for audio. The pace seemed to be very slow and the plot unnecessarily complicated. The bit where he lists all the clues Rhyme has written on his whiteboard, which I would normally skim over if I was reading, just drove me nuts when I had to listen to it over and over again. The others in my book group liked it, but they were actually reading not listening, so I think if I have one of his to read again I'll take a pass on the audio option and just get the book.

I very much enjoyed The Small Hand by Susan Hill. I had won a signed copy from dovegreyreader in one of her draws, but I'd have bought one if I hadn't - it is such a lovely little volume. Very creepy story, just what Hill excels at. I can really recommend this one. A book dealer is driving home from a client's house late one night when he gets lost and finds himself at the gate of an abandoned house. He gets out of his car and stands for a bit looking at the house, wondering about it, then he feels a small hand taking his.......

Wonderful idea - I wish I'd had it.

Other books I've read recently include The Moor by Laurie R King (still working my way through these - all out of order). This one hasn't been republished here yet so mine is an old hardback bought in Hay-on-Wye a couple of years ago.

Dark Water by Caro Ramsay - a great police procedural set in Glasgow where the small Partickhill police station is under threat of closure until a big (and nasty) murder case lands right in their laps. I really like this series, very well plotted and with great characters.

Stealing Shadows by Kay Hooper - this was my book group read for this month and it was OK but not great. Very similar to Charlaine Harris' Harper Connolly books - psychic woman solves crimes and communes with the dead - a bit run of the mill.

I also read Red Dog, Red Dog by Patrick Lane which is set in Canada. It's not an easy read, but it's well worth the effort. Young men scrapping and trying to survive, but beautifully written and very detailed. Like a cross between Richard Allen and Alice Munro.

Lastly I just finished The House at Sea's End by Elly Griffiths, (many thanks to Quercus for the proof). This is the third in the Ruth Galloway series. It's difficult to tell you much about it without spoiling the plot, or ruining it for those who may not have read the first two, so I'm just going to say that it is really good and if you haven't read this series yet then you really should, and if you've read the first two then you'll love this third one which is due out in January. I love the character of Ruth - she's a real woman with all the conflicts and problems of a normal woman and crime fiction could do with more like her and a few less of the supermodel crimefighting superwomen who seem to prevail in some books. There is nothing more guaranteed to make me want to put a book down than a stick-thin, super-smart, ultra beautiful heroine, especially if she starts to toss her long red hair. Thankfully there is none of that with Ruth Galloway, who is intelligent, practical and believable.

Now I'm on The Reversal by Michael Connolly, another of the Mickey Haller books, just out last week. It's got quite a lot of Harry Bosch in it too which is a bonus. I never did get back to Nine Dragons for some reason but I'm enjoying this so far.

Back soon(ish) with more book and knitting chatter.

Voyage Round my TBR pile - Part Two

2010-09-14T09:24:00.005+01:00

So, now we come to the pile on top of the bookcase in the bedroom. This is not a good place to keep books as it's right under the window and they have a tendency to get faded/yellowed by the sun. However needs must so here they sit.

These show off the full extent of my failure to read books that aren't crime - there's are only two that are not crime novels and they are Life Class by Pat Barker, because I like Pat Barker and I've not read any of her more recent work, and Red Dog, Red Dog by Patrick Lane, bought because dovegreyreader recommended it (and it's got a dog in the title!).

There's a true crime book - Homicide by David Simon . The Wire is one of those TV series that I keep intending to watch and have never quite got round to. We have the DVDs of the first 2 seasons - they're in the TBW pile. :)

Currently our spare TV watching time is being taken up by watching The Onedin Line - obscure TV channel Yesterday (found somewhere far, far down the Sky planner) is showing all of it (seems there were 92 episodes) right from the beginning. I have a vague recollection of it from the 1970s but don't remember any of the storylines in detail but we are enjoying it. Even Pete who has been known to scoff at my predilection for drama with "bonnets". It seems that bonnets are OK if there are also ships involved. Part of the fun is playing Onedin Line bingo where you get to spot the same ship masquerading as another by a change of sail colour and a handily placed lifebelt with the name on; and the same shots of "Liverpool" docks used over and over again. You get 50 points for the shot where the sailor winds the rope round the cleat (?) which is used in almost every episode.

Anyway back to the books. I had a lucky day in a charity shop in Banbury a few months back and picked up a selection of crime proofs - Daisychain by GJ Moffat, Snow Hill by Mark Sanderson Thee Weeks to Say Goodbye by CJ Box and The Anatomy of Murder by Imogen Robertson. I'm not sure most of these had been published when I bought them and I intended to read them and review then before they came out but they missed their moment and so now they hang around like so much wet washing, slapping me in the face when I pass and taunting me with their neglect.

There's a lot of George Pelecanos in this pile. The Way Home and The Night Gardener are his more recent work and I shall get to them soonish, but Soul Circus is a replacement for a battered paperback. I like hardbacks if they are books I want to keep, though I do prefer a paperback for actual reading. Does that make sense? I can carry a paperback around easily. I'm not usually bothered if it gets creased in my bag or has a yoghurt incident with my lunch. They're easier to read in bed too. A hardback when I drop it as I fall asleep has a tendency to fall to the floor with a loud thump, waking me up and possibly killing the cat. If we had a cat. Which we don't.

Other books in this pile - City of the Sun by David Levien, sent to me to read for a promotional thing at work and it was the last of the books I had to read. I ran out of time but I'd still like to read it sometime. The Bricklayer by Noah Boyd - American, likened to Lee Child, ex-forces guy meets FBI superwoman. Oh and I think there's a serial killer. I'm probably going to hate it, but I like to try all sorts at least once. The Disappeared by MR Hall - I'm still on the fence about the previous one (The Coroner) so this one might be here a while. Lastly Bad Boy by Peter Robinson, bought when he came into the shop a couple of weeks ago to sign copies for us. He's a very nice man. I've tried a couple of the Alan Banks books and not been bowled over by them but I'll give this one a try.

Next post - should have been about the pile on top of the bookcase downstairs - only reachable by standing on the sofa - but we have exciting news - a new bookcase has arrived, been assembled (bless Ikea and their wonderful Billy bookcase) and squeezed into the narrow space between the aforementioned bookcase and the fireplace. I have a new bookcase. It's already full.

Voyage Round my TBR PIle - Part One

2010-08-27T11:06:00.006+01:00

I've been reading Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill, which got me thinking about the number of unread books that are littering my house. It got me thinking too, very briefly, about whether or not I could go for a whole year without buying any books. As I said, it was a brief thought, very very brief. I'm not sure that I could go for a whole week without buying a book in some form or another. And that is the root of my problem. I have so many unread books in the house that they are beginning to swamp me.

Now I'm not going to pretend to be as well-read as Susan Hill. I don't have many stories about how I met Kingsley Amis or Ian Fleming at a party. But I did meet Peter Robinson a couple of weeks ago and I can confirm that he's a very nice man, and that he is a fan of the Grateful Dead. Moreover, interesting bits of paper and hand-drawn Christmas cards do not tumble gracefully from within the pages of my books, which are more likely to contain bus tickets, bits ripped from the corners of bills and invariably tedious postcards from someone's Aunt Maureen, though I did once buy a David Gemmell paperback where someone had once marked their place with what could only have been a slice of pizza.

I have various ways of justifying my book-buying habit. Firstly, well I'm a bookseller, so I have to keep up to date with what's happening in the book world.

Secondly, I'm trying to expand my reading horizons from pretty much solely crime fiction to more general fiction. I've only been partially successful at that - I read quite a lot of historical fiction now, but I still haven't managed to read very much literary fiction, or, for want of a better term, women's fiction. (I don't mean chick lit - sorry, I know it's what lots of people read, but I have an allergy to pink books). The allure of blokey books such as spy thrillers and the whole Dan Brown type genre escapes me. Still I do feel that I should at least try and dabble in these areas so that when asked for a good read like the Da Vinci Code I can recommend something confidently.

Thirdly, I buy a lot of second-hand books, so it's not like I'm spending a whole lot of money, which is good, especially if you're trying authors (or genres) you've not read before. I don't feel bad if I only manage 50 pages of a book I've only paid 50p for. However if I've paid £7.99 then I feel I want my money's worth. I do buy new books - all that temptation passing in front of me all day every day means that I succumb and buy new books not infrequently but if I bought all my books new then I'd have to live in a gutter (which is not a good place for books).

Fourthly, I've been buying a lot recently because it's the summer (allegedly) and the carboot sale pickings are great just now. Once the winter arrives and there are no decent car boots I'll have a whole winter's worth of reading laid in ready. Convinced yet?

When books first arrive into the house they get stacked on top of the hifi speaker on the mantelpiece. I've very fickle in my reading. I always want to read what I've just acquired. These books stand the best chance of being read immediately because they are new (at least to me), they are in my line of sight from my preferred reading location on the sofa, and they are handy when I want to snatch up a book to take to work or stick in my bag in case I get a free moment during the day. If these books get tidied away to the bookself at the top of the stairs (where other unlucky titles languish unread, forming a second row in front of my lovely first editions), then they are likely to remain unread for a while as they are replaced in my mind's eye by newer shinier books. Currently in prime position are these books -

The Game by Laurie R King is the 7th in the Mary Russell series. I've read this series all out of order, starting with No. 8, backtracking to the first one and then reading them haphazardly as I've managed to pick them up second-hand because they've mostly been out-of-print. This is one of the new reprints from Alison and Busby who, in their infinite wisdom have republished the first, seventh & eighth books along with the ninth and newest. I'm hoping they are planning to do the rest because I think I'm still missing a couple of the earlier ones.

Wolf Hall - I tried to read this when I did my little Bookerthon last year (well, I tried to read three - and I liked two of them, so that's pretty good for me.) I'm going to try again with this. This is because reading last year's winner is much more appealling to me than any of the books on this year's longlist.

Howards End is on the Landing - that shouldn't be in this pile. I've finished it. It needs to be shifted to a whole different (smaller) pile of books either going to the upstairs shelves in case I want to read them again sometime, or to the box destined for my SILs where they will either be passed round and read or donated to charity.

Testament by Alys Hawkins, Dark Water by Caro Ramsay, The Snack Thief by Camilleri and the two Dexter books are just because they are my sort of books and I'll get to them when the time is right. I always have a crime or historical novel on the go somewhere either to read in bed or in my bag to read at work.

2066 by Roberto Bolano - trying to expand my reading horizons with this one - perhaps I should have picked up a smaller volume, but as I recall it was 50p each or 3 books for a pound and this was the makeweight book - I always like to take a chance on that third (free) book and pick something I wouldn't normally read. Am I going to read this anytime soon? Probably not but it's time will come...eventually.

The Time Traveller's Wife - is one of those books that people expect you to have read, and I haven't so I shall give it a whirl, just to see what all the fuss is about.

Join me later for Part Two in which we investigate the pile on the bookcase in the bedroom, books on top of the bookcase downstairs, an odd pile in the office (where they shouldn't be) and probably a few others.

Back Again

2010-08-24T07:20:00.005+01:00

Ok, so I never did get around to that book update I was taunting you with. What can I say, I'm a rubbish blogger.

Anyway I'm drawing a line under that and starting afresh with the book I just finished, which is The Language of Bees by Laurie R King. If you're a long time reader of the blog you'll know that I love this series, and this one doesn't disappoint. Mary Russell and Holmes get home from their trip to California to be greeted by Holmes' estranged son, whose wife and daughter are missing. What follows is a great romp through bohemian London, dodging the clutches of Inspector Lestrad and culminating in a great set-piece ending. Now I really want to read the next one.

Good news for those of you who haven't tried this series yet is that they are being republished from the start with
The Beekeeper's Apprentice now available in paperback after being out of print for ages. This one sets the scene, tells how the nineteen year old Mary meets the retired detective and gets involved in some investigative work with him. They're well worth the read.

Clean Slate

2010-07-09T10:59:00.010+01:00

I'm really rubbish at this blogging thing. I promise I'll try and be a bit more regular. I'm just not sure where all the time has gone. What with work and football and general hecticness I don't seem to have had time to do anything recently.

Still the World Cup is all over now and I think the right team won. So now we should be able to get back to real life, though I'm missing the football already. It's great for getting lots of knitting done, even if England matches do make for dropped stitches and much yelling at the screen.

It is nearly 2 months since my last post and in that time the Evilpixie has turned 20, and she's started a part-time job. She's all grown-up (most of the time) and I'm very proud of her and the way she's turning out. She'll be staying on at college next year to do the next level in her catering course. Now she just needs to practice a bit more at home I think. I'm looking forward to more meals cooked by her (are you getting this hint?!)

Here she is looking a bit on the wet and muddy side on a recent walk in Sutton Park. Oh yes, and here's the cause of the muddiness -

I went to Woolfest and had a great time. I was quite restrained in my buying. I bought a bobbin winder as I was totally fed up winding them by hand, and I bought some fibre to spin and some yarn to dye, but mostly I just wandered round looking at the lovely colours and beautiful displays and filling myself with inspiration. It was very hot and very crowded and we'd had an issue (or two) with our hotel stay the night before so I was feeling a bit tired and grumpy which kind of took the edge off the day.

I haven't really got a lot of knitting news to report. I've been knitting a present for someone and as usual I've forgotten to photograph it before giving it to the recipient so I have nothing to show for all those evenings in front of the football. I did a bit of dyeing yesterday though and had some really good results.

The four hanks of purple across the top are in fact one skein. I was trying to get a graduated effect from a silvery grey through to a deep purple along the full length (all 800m) of a skein of laceweight. I'm not sure it turned out quite right. I might need another go at that. I'm thinking that 4 gradations of shade are not enough, but it's a bit tricky to do even with 4 so more than that might be a tad too tricky. The aim is to be able to knit a top down shawl so that it starts pale and gets darker towards the edges.

More successful was the rainbow skein at the bottom. It's a skein of sock wool that shades through all the colours of the rainbow. Again the aim is to be able to knit a shawl with this that starts red at the top and ends up purple at the edges. Also in the photo are some small amounts of roving which I used to exhaust the dyepots as I was going along. The main purpose of my dye day (apart from the graduated yarn experiment) was to dye lots of small skeins of 4-ply in many different shades of blues, greys and greens for my next knitting project. Which is this -

Now I'd never wear a jumper like that, but I loved the image and thought it would make a great cushion. The pattern is from a book found in a charity shop (in Tewkesbury I think). The book is The Knitting Book, published by Conran Octopus in the 1980s. I think it was originally published in France as it uses a lots of French and other European yarns. Most of the patterns are very 1980s but I couldn't resist the book just for this one chart. So I've been planning carefully and have dyed all the greens and blues and greys needed, just need to do a few browns. There are 13 different colours in this and a whole lot of intarsia. You may remember that intarsia is not my favourite knitting technique, so there may be swearing involved in this project. I've done 3 rows so far and can see that keeping the many bobbins of different coloured yarns untangled could be the major source of the swearing (and I'm only using 4 or 5 colours so far).

We've been out and about a lot recently, with trips to Preston and Lancaster (on the way to Woolfest), to Ashbourne, Buxton and Matlock on Friday this week and Fareham and Winchester yesterday. That's a lot of charity shopping and so I did score a few bargains with some quilting books, a couple of jewellery making books and a few knitting books. The best result was from Worcester (on the same day as Tewkesbury, a couple of weeks ago now) when I got these in Oxfam.

Yes, that's Shirley Paden's Knitwear Design Workshop and Northern Knits by Lucinda Guy. I paid £7.50 for the two. I think I might have done a little happy dance outside the shop.

So that's everything all up to date with the textile stuff. You'll have to wait till next time for the books I've read though. It's been so long I'm not sure I remember what I've read. I promise it won't be as long till the next post, honest!

The Big Catch Up - Part Two

2010-05-14T10:56:00.004+01:00

OK, election fever is over and I can't say I'm looking forward to the next few years under DC and his new best chum. Still, that's democracy for you - you don't always get what you want.

So, back to the book update and then I'll fill you in on the weaving stuff and some dyeing I'm doing right now (even as I type this).

The next book I read was The Merchant's Mark by Pat McIntosh. I love these medieval mysteries, all set in Glasgow. Scotland had some very odd laws at that time and it makes it all very interesting. Gil Cunningham is a great character and he works with a French stonemason, father to his fiancee, who is also a bit of a character. The series is shaping up nicely, though I'm about 3 or 4 books behind now. I'd recommend these to anyone who likes a bit of historical crime.

After that I had some stuff to read for work and for Eurocrime. I read A Razor Wrapped in Silk, third in an excellent series by R N Morris, which feature Porfiry Petrovich (from Crime and Punishment), as the investigating magistrate in late 19th century St Petersburg. These are very good and very atmospheric. A full review will appear on Eurocrime shortly but I did like it very much and seem to have got over my confusion with the Russion names, finally.

Two debut novels from last year were selected for me to review for an upcoming promotion at work. So I read MR Hall's The Coroner and Winterland by Alan Glynn. I liked both of these very much. The Coroner I had started previously and laid aside for some reason but after I picked it up again I got really into it and could barely put it down. The main character Jenny is not a particularly likeable person, very abrasive, but by the end I had warmed to her and was rooting for her. I don't think there's been a series about a Coroner before (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), and it's not a job I know much about so it was all very interesting, even if Jenny is not doing everything quite by the book.

Winterland is a dark, gritty thriller set in Dublin with a grim character list of ex-terrorists, drug dealers and dodgy politicians. It's really well plotted and I loved the main character, Gina Rafferty. It's difficult to believe that this is a first novel. I shall look forward to reading more of him.

So I managed to read those and get my reviews in for the deadline, which was today and now I'm reading the new John Connolly, The Whisperers, just published yesterday and kindly provided by Karen of Eurocrime again. I'm only 10 or so pages in so it's a bit early to tell but I'll keep you posted and will be sending a full review to Eurocrime in due course.

That doesn't seem like many books and I think I might have missed a couple somewhere, but I can't think what they were. Also my reading had been rather curtailed by my current obsession with weaving. I love weaving but it does take a lot of time. It takes a very long time to set up the loom with the wool, ready to weave. Then the weaving takes quite a bit of time (I expect it gets quicker as you get better, but I'm still a newbie) and the light's not very good in the dining room where my loom is set up so although I can weave there in the evening with the aid of a few well positioned spotlights, I can't really do any of the setting up in the evening as you really need good light to be sure that it's right. Anyway I did my first real project - a scarf/wrap thing in a two colours of green wool. It's not perfect, there are a few errors in the weaving but the finishing means it has a slightly felted finish so that hides a few sins and generally it's big enough for the mistakes not to be noticeable.

Here's the technical bit for anyone who's interested - this is a huck lace pattern from Handwoven magazine (can't remember the issue number and I can't find it right now), woven at 15epi with 20/2 worsted wool from Fibrecrafts.

I loved weaving this and I've already wound the yarn for my next project, but I've not warped the loom yet as I need 3-4 hours uninterrupted time with no distractions to get it all set up right, and I've just been too busy for that to happen. Maybe this weekend, though I have a vast pile of books to read, some of which need to take priority over weaving.

This morning I am doing a spice dyeing workshop using instructions provided by the Online Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers. They do a different workshop every month an this month is about dyeing with foodstuffs. So this morning I have been dyeing roving with paprika and turmeric, and then as I had my dyepots and equipment out I've also done a bit of dyeing with coffee and am just boiling some wool with teabags. I have this vague idea that I will knit a Kitchen Garden Shawl in some kind of modular, stocking stitch pattern, using handspun wool that I have dyed with stuff either from the kitchen or the garden. That should keep me busy for a while.

On the needles currently is a secret gift project with a closely looming deadline so I have been speed knitting at every opportunity this week and am just about finished. More on that once the gift is safely despatched.

Right, next up - a cup of coffee and the new John Connolly book. Don't bother me for an hour or so!

Todays the Day

2010-05-06T07:09:00.002+01:00

Yes, after 4 weeks of posturing and posing and kissing of babies Election Day is here. I bet you Americans are jealous of us right now - only 4 weeks of electioneering. We've had our first ever live TV debates. We've had laughs and groans (thanks for that, Gordon), we've unexpectedly agreed with people on occasion (even with Nick once or twice) and we've yelled at the TV in frustration when no-one has answered the question.

But it's here so remember to get out and vote today. Exercise your democratic privilege and remember that women died so everyone could do this, and that people all over the world can't for many reasons who should be able to.

Just one thing, before you place that X in the box of your choice, please cast your mind back to the 1980s and remember what the Conservatives did to the NHS, to public services and to schools. Bear in mind that the ME, ME culture pervading the country today is their legacy and above all don't forget that it was them who stole Leonie's milk!

The Big Catch-Up

2010-04-30T09:52:00.003+01:00

I've done loads of stuff recently that hasn't reached the blog for one reason or another - been busy, been weaving (see later), been lazy, yada yada.

Just after we came back from Brussels we had a day out in London, primarily for me to go to the Quilts 1700-2010 exhibition at the V&A, but we did some other stuff too.

The quilt exhibition was wonderful, filled with great work and fantastic inspiration. There are of course no photographs of this because photography is not allowed, but there's a lovely book to accompany the exhibition which is well worth a look if your local bookstore or library have it. The workmanship and detail of some of the quilts was breathtaking. I was less than impressed with the V&A itself which seems blithely to assume that you know where you're going and does not feel the need to signpost anything, though it does provide an incomprehensible map. One of the attendants was very rude to Pete, who was carrying my backpack (no bags in the temporary exhibitions - but also no obvious cloakroom where it could be left, unlike in the Brussels Museum of Modern Art.) I was misdirected twice by members of staff. It just took the edge off what should have been a wonderful morning. A lot of the textile exhibits were not on show for various reasons which seemed a shame when there were so many textile lovers in the building. Still the quilts were fantastic and they were the main point of the visit.

After that we got on the tube up to North London and went to the Handweaver's Studio so I could get some weaving yarns. Mission accomplished. What a lovely shop. I'll love to do a workshop there, having seen all the looms and equipment they have as well as all the pretty yarns of every colour imaginable.

Holborn was our next stop where we had a spot of lunch and visited the Cartoon Museum. This is well worth a visit if you happen to be in London. On the ground floor it currently has an exhibition on Ronald Searle and some examples of cartoon art going back to the 18th century. Upstairs they have some comic art from the likes of Leo Baxendale, Ken Reid etc with original artwork from The Beano, Dan Dare, 2000AD etc. It's all great stuff, I just wish there was more of it on display. It was the Easter holidays and there were lots of young people doing workshops in comic art which was great to see. As I said the museum is well worth visiting if you are in London already, but probably not worth a journey in itself. It's a start but we need more of this!

At the end of that week I went to the National Exhibition of the Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers which is on at the Mueum in Mansfield. It's full of fantastic work, very inspirational. I did take lots of photos for my own reference but don't feel I can post them on here for copyright reasons. If you're in the area I'd recommend the exhibition if you're at all interested in textiles.

It's been so long since I did a book update that I'm not sure I can remember what I've been reading. With me on the trip to Brussels were Blind Eye by Stuart MacBride and Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid. I started with the Stuart MacBride and really enjoyed it. It's a bit gruesome in places but as usual the characters are interesting and the plot worked well. I didn't get such a strong sense of place from this one as some of the others; while still set in Aberdeen it could easily have been in a number of other cities in the UK. Perhaps it was because it was set during a heatwave - very un-Aberdonian! Still you always get a good read with these and as his next one is out this week I shall probably read that fairly soon. The Val McDermid was my back-up book on this trip - I wasn't impressed with her previous Tony Hill book, Beneath the Bleeding , but this one was much better. Well written and tightly plotted, this book is about a string of abducted teenagers. These later books while still good don't have the impact of Mermaids Singing or Wire in the Blood and are much less gruesome. I wonder if this is so as not to alienate people coming to the books from the TV series, or if it's a deliberate move away from that excruciating detail that made you want to read the early books with your eyes shut. I've read some books where the nastiness seems gratuitous and voyeuristic and it's not a direction I feel crime writing needs necessarily to go in, but McDermid's books, although sometimes grim and uncomfortable reading, never felt voyeuristic to me. I'd still rank The Mermaids Singing as one of my top 10 crime novels.

Back soon with part two of the big catch up!

What I did on my holidays.. and a bit of a rant

2010-04-13T16:42:00.009+01:00

I'm back from Brussels and we had a totally fantastic time there.

We did all sorts of touristy things - eating Moules Frites and drinking beer in pavement cafes, and eating frites with mayo in the street. We walked for miles and miles through the streets of Brussels looking at the comic strip murals, checking out fleamarkets and browsing in antique shops, second hand bookshops and comic shops. We went to the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Comic Strips. We ate bouillabaisse and drank lots of coffee. It was pretty much the perfect weekend. We totally loved Brussels.

There were a couple of highlights - the fleamarket at the Place de Jeu de Balle which is on every day from about 7am. We went on Saturday and Sunday (because there's nothing we love better than a good fleamarket)

It takes place in a square and it's just filled with people selling (mostly) tat out of boxes - there is everything here: comics, books, furniture, postcards, buttons, art, photos, spectacles, laboratory equipment (need some pipettes - this is the place), astounding collectables and all manner of unidentifiable stuff. Most of it seems to be straight out of house clearances - everything just shoved into boxes and brought here for sale - we saw biscuit tins with the biscuits still in them, the contents of kitchen drawers, people's whole lives spread out to be pawed through by the dealers and the curious. We loved it. And if you ever wanted to replace a missing bit of a chandelier then this is the place to come - whole stalls of bits of chandelier!

The other big highlight for me was the Museum of Comic Strips. The Belgians love comics. They seriously love their comics. I've never seen so many in one place (there are apparently 49 comic shops in this one city). The Museum has a great display of all the greatest comic artists from Belgium comic history - Herge you would probably have heard of, Willy Vandersteen you might know, but there were many many others I'd never heard of who were just amazing. And the museum doesn't just celebrate the founders of this great industry (and it is still a great industry in Belgium). It has original artwork from comics right up to the present day and they have a huge rolling display of pages of this original art which changes continually, on rotation so that the paper is not exposed to too much light. I have discovered a new found love of E P Jacobs, whose Blake and Mortimer series I knew of, but seeing some of his artwork up close in the museum just blew me away. Hardly any of this stuff gets translated into English which is a shame as I saw some fanstastic stuff, old and new, that would go down a storm here.

Also at the museum was an exhibition about Tove Jansson, creator of the Moomins. There was beautiful original art here too. You may (if you are old enough) remember that she did a comic strip of the Moomins for the London Evening News from 1954 to 1959. Sadly, none of the art for that particular series survives as it was all destroyed by Associated Newspapers. And this demonstates the difference in importance placed on comics in the UK compared to Belgium.

Much of the artwork for early British comics no longer exists, destroyed as worthless as publishers disappeared and publications were merged. The one British publisher who holds a big archive is D. C. Thomson, publisher of The Beano, The Dandy, The Beezer, Bunty, Mandy, Warlord and Victor. They published all those comics you grew up reading. They also publish The Sunday Post - home of the Broons and Oor Wullie. They've been publishing comics since 1921 and they have a huge archive. But do they make anything of this huge, fantastic resource? No, they do not. Is this wonderous stuff available for the public to see? No, it is not. Is there a museum where you could go and learn about the early days of comic books in the UK? No, there is not. Don't you think we ought to celebrate the people who brought us all so much fun and laughter in our youth. Don't you think we should have a museum blowing the trumpet of the great comicbook artists and writers produced in this country. Would you go to someplace like that? I know I would.

A Few Knitting Disasters

2010-04-08T20:19:00.002+01:00

Just in case you all thought I was some kind of knitting goddess (hardly) I've been brought down to Earth with a bump recently with my kntting. Several projects have fallen by the wayside.

First there were the Cookie A socks with which I was challenging myself - they were frogged due to gauge issues and have never been restarted.

Then there was a shawlette in some handspun that I have finished but it has no drape at all, it's just as stiff as a board. Seriously you could hang-glide with that sucker.

You may remember that I started a pair of Skew socks and I got past the heel and halfway up the leg before I realised that they weren't even remotely foot-shaped. Gribbit.

I'm now back on a pair of simple top down plain old boring socks. I needed a small portable project that I can knit on the move as we are off to Brussels tomorrow. It's my birthday this weekend so we're looking forward to a trip involving beer, comic strips, flea markets and moules et frites. Not sure if there will be any wool shopping, but you never know.

See you when I get back

Blogger Problems

2010-03-29T20:37:00.001+01:00

I've got this really great post lined up for you with lots of photos of getting my loom set up and weaving - but there's a problem with Blogger and it won't load any photos at the moment.

Just as soon as Blogger is fixed I'll get this post up.

Sorry!

First Steps in Weaving

2010-03-29T17:17:00.019+01:00

This post is rather picture heavy, so be warned.

As you may have read I bought a loom last year, put it together with the help of the Evilpixie and discovered it wasn't at all what I thought I was buying. It was listed as being probably an Ashford loom but it turned out to be a countermarche loom from Frank Herring. This made it a much more complicated bit of kit than I was prepared for and I'd been putting off using the loom as the thought of it made me nervous.

However, there was no point in having it if all we were going to do was drape coats over it, so I rescued it from it tempoarary starus as coat-rack and got it warped up last week.

First I had to put new Texsolv heddles on the replace the old string ones that were on the loom when I got it.

Then I wound the warp - this was 8/2 worsted wool from Fibrecrafts, half of which I dyed in a nice bright turquoise for contrast. I have been following the instructions in "Learning to Weave" by Deborah Chandler. I'd have to say the book is pretty brilliant and explains everything in easy to understand steps that even I can follow.

This is the cross (that stops the yarn from getting all tangled and helps when you come to put the warp on the loom).

Here it is ready to warp up.

Sleying the reed (threading the yarn through the reed which is at the front of the loom and which you use to keep the woven cloth nice and even and at the correct tension)

Threading the heddles (these move up and down, making the yarn move to create the pattern when you weave)

Tying up the treadles (these foot pedals are tied onto the shafts containing heddles above and move them up and down as you press them)

And finally some actual weaving, actually woven by me.

There are some problems with this sample - the tension was wrong on the right hand set of warp threads, meaning that the selvedge on that side was a bit wobbly, also there turned out to be a knot in one of the warp threads and it snapped so there is a little blip in the middle of the sample where that one warp thread is missing. Yes, I could have replaced it but it was just a sample. Also, despite the fact that I checked every 4 ends as I threaded them (as suggested by the book) I still managed to get one end in the wrong heddle, so it didn't rise and fall in the right place and I had to manually pick it up every other row. Finally it seems that my shafts (that hold the heddles) weren't level so the shed (that's the space between the yarns that you pass the shuttle through) was quite tight at one side. I've fixed that now and the shed is much better.

I continued with the sample from here as the book suggested and did several sets of rows with different tightness, and then wove some twill patterns.

I'm really happy with the sample (despite the odd error) and I've really learned a lot about how the loom works, how important even tension is, and how I need to check the threading more than once (possibly more than twice). Plus now I've tweeked the loom a little and the action is better.

More weaving fun next week when I try to weave something real - ie not a sample, and hopefully with a use at the end of it. I'm planning a scarf to start with. Expect swearing!

Finally a book update...

2010-03-19T09:47:00.010Z

I'm a bit behind with my book blogging so I'd better do a quick catch-up.

Way back in January I read A Game of Sorrows by Shona MacLean which is the sequel to The Redemption of Alexander Seaton. I have to say I was a little disappointed in this one. The previous book had been very atmospheric and had a great sense of place, which I felt was lacking slightly in this second book. It was still a good read, just not as good as the first in my opinion (such as it is).

Next up was The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths. This is the second in her series about Ruth Galloway a forensic archaeologist working in East Anglia. I loved this. Ruth is a really great character and the book is such an easy read, it simply flew along. Highly recommended!

I started Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly and normally I love Connelly's stuff, and this one is a Harry Bosch too, which I usually prefer to the stand-alones. However I seem to have got stalled with it. I'm stuck with Harry mid-air on his way to Hong Kong and can't seem to summon the enthusiasm to pick it up again. Most odd.

I had better luck with Justice Hall by Laurie R. King. It's one of her Mary Russell books and you probably know how I love those. I'm reading them all out of order as I find them (almost all are out of print in the UK at the moment, though I think I read somewhere that they would be republished to coincide with the publication of the next one later this year. I hope so. These are just too good to remain out of print.

While I was on a Sherlock Holmes theme I read Prayer of the Night Shepherd by Phil Rickman, one of the Merrily Watkins series, this one about whether or not Conan Doyle got the idea for the Hound of the Baskervilles while in Ledwardine rather than in Devon. This is the second of these I've read and I'm quite liking them. Of course, again I have been reading them all out of order, reading so far just the first and this one which I think is the fifth. I did like the first one, and this one has seen me through a short bout of insomnia so it must have been OK. (Certainly not one for hurling into the backseat, Jill!) I shall try again with one of the earlier ones, as I do like the characters, just not too sure about all the religious stuff (heathen that I am).

I only finished the Rickman this morning so I'm currently between books. I know I got a proof from the lovely Karen at Eurocrime last week, so that should be next, but I can't remember what it was, or where I've put it. (Found it - it's the new R. N. Morris, A Razor Wrapped in Silk, another Porfiry Petrovich mystery - all those Russian names!)

Oops, forgot one. I also read Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell, which is pretty much what you expect from Mr Cornwell. It has an interesting character who is a bit player in a major battle or historical event, he has a bit of love interest and some backstory, the plot is fast and the historical detail just hits the spot - just enough fascinating stuff without boring the pants off you. You know what you're getting with almost any Bernard Cornwell book and this did exactly what it said on the tin, which is fine by me. Long-term readers will know that almost all the English history I know has been gleaned from the pages of Mr Cornwell's books. (Scottish schools were none too hot on the teaching of English history when I went to school - this may have all changed now but all I ever learned was about Mary Queen of Scots.)

I think that's it for now. Next post will be (hopefully) on my progress with my loom. Yesterday I started to put the new Texsolv heddles on and today I hope to finish that and start to warp it up. There may be some swearing....

Old Dog in New Tricks Shocker

2010-03-15T13:52:00.003Z

I am feeling inordinately proud of myself this morning. The above little scrap of knitting has involved the learning of several new things - firstly it requires the magic loop method of kntting, something I've never quite got the hang of until now; secondly I had to learn a new cast-on method, which is the Magic Cast On (I love this and can think of lots of ways it could be used); finally there are, in that tiny example two completely new increase stitches I've never heard of before, never mind tried.

This is of course the Skew sock from Knitty. What a fantastic design. Go marvel at it. Then come back and see how I get on - will I master it or will it make my head explode?

More Dyeing Action

2010-03-12T13:14:00.007Z

I've been hitting the dyepots again this week, experimenting with various combinations of colours and techniques.

These rovings (from the top left) are a randomly dyed, hand-painted superwash merino roving using a combination of blues, yellows, reds and green, set in the microwave; a kettle-dyed superwash merino roving in oranges and browns; the bottom two are matched hand-painted sockstuff (merino and nylon) roving which graduates from red right through the rainbow to violet. I love the effect you can get from these in socks or in a shawl. There's also a number of ways you can spin them for differing effects. I never seem to get tired of these.

I haven't just done roving though. The top is a kettle-dyed sock yarn in beautifully rich tones of burgundy. This is exactly the sort of semi-solid yarn I was looking for the other week for the socks I started from the Sock Innovation book. (I had a few gauge issues and frogged them, though I'll restart them this week hopefully). The bottom two are vaguely matching skeins of sock yarn (these will be fraternal rather than identical socks) in reds and purples.

Spinning Fleece

2010-03-12T12:32:00.005Z

The spinning of fleece is not something that I do a whole lot of. I tend to like my fibre all clean and processed and preferably in a pretty colour (or two).

But, my spinning group will be at Middleton Hall on Easter Monday and decided we would spin the wool for and make a peg loom rug to demonstrate spinning and peg weaving. Sadly I shall not be there as I'm working but to get the weavers off to a good start we needed to pre-spin some fleece for them.

So last week at the meeting I was handed a bunch of fleece to spin. Now it had been processed, so it had been washed and carded (this was done by a professional processor) but it was still full of bits of vegetable matter and I did keep having to stop and pick out bits of grass and moss and other unidentified things as I was spinning. The idea was to spin it as thick as possible. I'm not sure I succeeded there. My default yarn (ie what I naturally spin if I'm not thinking about it) is something like a sport weight or lightweight double knitting. Recently I've been trying to spin thinner stuff - not quite laceweight yet, but certainly similar to a commercial 4 ply or fingering weight. It's been a long time since I spun anything chunky.

Anyway here's my feeble attempt. It's thicker in some places than others and it's still full of little bits of leaf and moss. It's not washed yet though, hopefully it will look better once it's been washed.

Did I learn anything? Yes, I did. I learned that I was right - I do prefer the clean and pretty stuff over fleece anyday ( and this wasn't even raw fleece - this had been partly processed already). But I also learned that I could spin chunky if I wanted to.

Bonus - I now have nice soft hands from all that lanolin.

A Little Dyeing

2010-03-04T16:34:00.009Z

My good friend Maggi came over one day last week and we did some dyeing together which was lots of fun.

(making a mess in the kitchen)

( some sock yarn ready to go in the microwave)

(some of the end results)

(sock yarn all skeined up and ready to go)

(more sock yarn and some loopy mohair)

As you can see we had lots of fun doing this and made some lovely coloured yarns. I've been doing a little bit more today so there will be more yarns tomorrow when they are dry and skeined. There's also some roving which I haven't photographed yet so you'll see that tomorrow too.

In the meantime have a happy World Book Day!

Citron Shawlette and Challenging Myself

2010-02-21T14:34:00.004Z

I realise that it is now nearly the end of February and I'm still lingering hoplessly on the letter C when I should have progressed through the alphabet much further by now. What can I say, I don't do deadlines.

I have a few C-shaped things to report though before moving on to D.

I finished my Citron shawlette, knitted in Malabrigo laceweight, colourway Red Mahogany.

(Here it is held up to the light so you can see the ripple effect.)

(and here, modelled beautifully by the Evilpixie)

I added an extra round of the ruffle and then ran out of yarn before the end of the edge-frill, however I am pleased with the overall result. Given the choice (or another skein of the yarn) then I'd have made it larger. While it will sit happily on the shoulders, this is not how I would normally wear a shawlette. I liked them looped around my neck, and this is not quite long enough for that. As a knit though I enjoyed it, found it stimulating enough to want to keep knitting, but not challenging so good for watching TV or taking to Knit Night. Several pub quizzes were won during the knitting of this shawl! I grew to like the colour in the end and it sparked in interest in semi-solid yarns that will continue into next weeks post (hopefully).

But it wasn't challenging. Nothing I've knitted recently has been at all taxing, and that's been fine, but now I want to stretch myself and tackle something more complex. I've been taking the easy options and knitting things that look more difficult than they are, letting the yarns do the work and taking the credit. Now I want to knit something that will make my brain work as well as my hands.

So I'm starting a pair of socks from Cookie A's Sock Innovation book. I have a skein of Paca Peds sockweight alpaca that I bought in Florida in 2008 that's been languishing in the stash. Now that I've wound it into a ball it's looking a lot more variegated than it looked on the skein. Twisted, the dominant colour seemed to be purple. Now that dominant colour looks to be the green and I'm thinking it will stripe rather more than I want it to. Here is where I need a nice deep semi-solid colour. I'm going to have a try with this anyway. I read through the book and some of the instructions are already making my head ache. Stand back - there may be swearing.

Charity Shopping

2010-02-10T10:15:00.009Z

I'm all behind with my alphabet challenge. Let's face it I'm just rubbish at this. (Letter C from a building at Cotefield Farm, Bodicote, Banbury.)

And I promised a post about Banbury so here we go rolling it all into one.

A couple of weeks ago Pete and I went to check out an auction near Banbury because Pete wanted to buy some comics they had for sale. (And yes, he did get them, very pleased.) The comics were late on in the auction so we had a bit of time to kill and we went into Banbury for one of our usual shopping trips - coffee, charity shops etc.

I got a phenomenally good haul in the charity shops (known in our houisehold as chazzas). The first shop (PDSA) had a wonderful stack of proofs, some of books not even published yet.

Just around the corner the RSPCA offered up a couple of hardbacks I hadn't read and some quilting patterns for cushions with cats on. I shall use these to make a bright cheerful cushion for the MIL for her room.

Just around the corner the Barnardos shop had some great vintage 1950s fabric - slightly faded in places but lovely just the same.

I also bought a cord skirt I can wear to work and beautiful green velvet hippyish skirt.

On the way back to the car I spotted this pub sign by where we were parked -

Finally, just to top the day off where we were at the auction I spotted a big sign on another of the buildings just round the corner - Hagger's Mill - Alpaca Spinners and Textile Centre. Sadly it was shut but hopefully next time we're in that area it will be open and I can bring you a little peek.

New Yarn Shop!!!!!!

2010-01-26T13:54:00.004Z

I'm all behind with my blogging, having been laid low by a nasty cold which left me gasping for breath and woolly headed.

However, before the hideous cold virus struck I had a great day on Thursday of last week. Firstly I went to visit my good friend Maggi (ravelry link) and we did some knitting and she kept us supplied with lemon cupcakes. What could be better than knitting AND cupcakes with a friend?

And after that I carried on a bit further to Stone (Staffordshire) where there is a lovely new yarn shop just opened.

It's just opened and I went and met the lovely owner, Jeanette, and looked at all the goodies she has. There were some fantastic sample shawls knitted up, very tempting. I was quite restrained and just bought a little ball of some hand-dyed 4ply in autumnal shades and a ball of Opal sock yarn. (Because you can never have too much sock yarn, right, and she had some great shades). Some of the stock was totally gorgeous, including some Artist's Palette laceweight. I've used their fibre but never seen the yarn - it's seriously lovely. I can see that this will be a regular yarn shop outing especially as I know Jeanette has great plans for adding to the stock she already has.

It's so nice to see a new yarn store opening, and if it's not exactly local (Stone's about 20 miles from here) then it's certainly worth a trip on a day out. It could easily be combined with a trip to Stoke to Abakhan Fabrics for example. Anyway I wish Jeanette at Yarn Gathering all the best and hope the shop does well. I shall certainly be visiting it again and I can recommend it. Her website's not up and running fully yet as she's been so busy getting the shop ready but I've given the link anyway so you can bookmark it.

I'll be back in a couple of days with a belated alphabet post featuring a day out to Banbury.

Keep knitting.

What's next on the TBR pile

2010-01-19T14:08:00.006Z

So that's where I'm going next on my reading journey, starting in Michigan at the top, then Medieval Glasgow, Victorian London, Spain during and just before the Second World War, 16th Century St Andrews, Hong Kong and finally Montana.

That should keep me busy for a while.

I had a little moment last week when I was neither reading a book nor knitting anything other than the perennial socks which was a tad disconcerting. I felt a little bit lost for a while. But I soon got over that, cast on several new projects and started a new book.

Currently I am reading South of Hell by PJ Parrish, which is the pseudonym of two women, Kristy Montee and Kelly Nicholls. I first read one of these last year, A Thousand Bones and I did enjoy it, then I read a second one, Dark of the Moon, which was just as good and which delved into the backstory of one of the characters. However I realise that I am reading them all out of sequence and that there are apparently 10 in the seies, not all of which seem to have been published in the UK. Anyway I spotted Dead of Winter in a charity shop last week. It is the second in the series so I'm jumping back and forth a bit here.

I just finished the other 2 books I was reading - Rome by Manda Scott or M C Scott as they seem to be calling her now, and Sweetsmoke by David Fuller.

Rome was an excellent read - just what you would expect from Manda - lots of great characters, historical detail aplenty, a cracking storyline and a touch of mysticism. Her books are really such an enjoyable read. I just get caught up in them and swept along. Reading this made me want to go back and re-read the Boudica series, and I'm glad to see that she's planning more in this Roman series.

Sweetsmoke was enjoyable too but in a different way. It's set on a tobacco plantation in Virginia during the American Civil War and is about a carpenter (a slave) trying to find out who killed a local free woman. So it's a crime novel of sorts but really it's just a very involving story about this man, Cassius, and his struggle to come to terms with who he is, and who he is allowed to be. Wonderfully written and beautifully told from Cassius' point of view. Interesting too to read about the war from the perspective of a slave. I love the cover - the hands are so expressive.

Then there is the pile to be worked through - which one first? Decisions, decisions...

What's on the Needles

2010-01-17T15:35:00.007Z

This is what I have on the needles at the moment..

These are handspun merino socks. I started to spin these at the advent gathering and I finished spinning over Christmas. As you can see there is one finished sock already. They are a quick knit because the wool is roughly DK weight. The yarn is really soft and cosy. I should have had these finished before that cold spell - I really could have used them then.

These are Opal socks with the sock yarn that I bought at Twist Fibre Craft Studio when I was in Scotland. I'm not at all sure about the colours and the way they are knitting up, which is why there is only the cuff and calf of one sock knitted. I keep picking them up and knitting a few rows and putting them back down again

Anyway I got a little sidetracked with this, which is Citron from knitty.com. It's a beautiful semi-circular shawlette. It's handily designed to use just one skein of Malabrigo Baby Merino Lace, which is quite reasonable. The shawlette in the pattern is done in a beautiful lime green which I loved but I couldn't find that colourway so I'm knitting mine in Red Mahogany. The colour is not quite what I envisaged having seen the colour on the internet. In real life the yarn is more brown and less red, more a semi-solid and less a hand-dyed effect than I had expected. I still like it though and I do wear a lot of brown so it will come in handy. The yarn is soooo soft that I may not want to take it off ever.

Next time...what's in the TBR pile and what I'm reading now.

B is for.....

2010-01-13T10:42:00.006Z

......all manner of things.

Firstly this lovely Bloomsbury Classics edition of The Wide Sargasso Sea.

B is also for Boots and I'm very glad that in the Autumn I invested in a pair of Berghaus Walking Boots. They have been much appreciated through all this snowy weather. Lovely and warm and waterproof and with great grip. It's snowing again today and think I've had enough now. At least today I haven't had to try and get to work. I did try and get to the mile and a half to the dentist this morning and gave up after ten minutes sitting in traffic going nowhere.

Bubba, despite the evidence of this photo, (actually taken last year, not during this latest snowfall), is not enjoying the snow. It keeps balling up in his paws so he has to keep stopping to chew the ice out from between his toes. Poor thing. Plus this prolonged cold spell has brought on a slight limp which is probably arthritis inflammation. He'd much prefer to be fast asleep on the sofa and I have to agree with him. I'm getting rather bored with not being able to get anywhere and all my groups, reading spinning etc have been cancelled.

B is also for Black Country Knitters. I have found a lovely location for my Knit Night in Walsall. Every second Tuesday evening from the 26th January we'll be meeting in the Black Country Arms pub in Walsall High Street (that's at the top end of the market, next to Sofia's Restaurant). It's a great friendly pub with a huge selection of real ales and lots of little corners and nooks to sit and knit in, depending on how many people turn up. Come and join us.

A is for....

2010-01-07T17:28:00.003Z

...is for Awards.

Yes it's that time of year again when I dish out the annual Mysterious Yarns Books of the Year Awards.

I'd have to say that the quality of the books I've read this year has been very high. There have been one or two duffers of course but in general I've been pleased. I've even liked some of the Booker shortlist.

Fiat Punto Award for the Book Hurled into the Back Seat with most Vehemence goes to - Library of the Dead by Glen Cooper. Not a crime novel at all really, though there is murder aplenty, not a convincing thriller, not even really about a library and very badly written to boot. Unsurprisingly there is a sequel, called Book of Souls. Guess what - I shan't be reading that.

The I Can't Believe I Paid Good Money For That Award (nominations in this category must be books I actually paid something ressembling the cover price for (342 or staff discount notwithstanding) goes to Sweet Smell of Decay by Paul Lawrence. Quite the most unpleasant protagonist in a novel this year - ignorant and self important, not someone you'd want to spent any time with. Billed as the First Chronicle of Harry Lytle, one can only hope that it is also the last. Also the title was so unmemorable that every time I've had to write about it anywhere I've actually had to go and look it up to see that it was called.

Enough of the whinging, on to the good stuff.

Favourite Crime Novel of the Year - Salt River by James Sallis, final part in the outstandingly brilliant Turner trilogy. What can I say. It made me cry. I loved it and didn't want it to finish. I'd say you should rush out and read these but sadly the first part of the trilogy, Cypress Grove, seems to be out of print in the UK at the moment. Someone at No Exit Press needs a nudge I think.

Favourite Non-Crime Book of the Year - The Children's Book by AS Byatt. This was a big surprise to me. I'm famed for my dislike of Booker nominated stuff, but I'd just read The Little Stranger and I was on a bit of a roll. This was another book that I just couldn't put down. It was a sumptuous book filled with beauty and style and wonderful prose. It wasn't perfect, rather losing it's way towards the end, but on the whole still a wonderful book. It may not be to everyone's taste, but as it's out in paperback this week I'd recommend that you give it a try.

And finally there are the Honourable Mentions - some books that made my year and deserve a bit of praise.

White Nights and Red Bones by Ann Cleeves - loving this series, can't wait for the fourth book at the beginning of February.

Rain Gods by James Lee Burke. A beautiful, heart-rending epic tale that people were likening to Cormac McCarthy. Let me tell you that Cormac McCarthy could only write an ending like that in his dreams. Not that I'm biased.

The Girl Who Played With Fire, by that Swedish bloke everyone keeps talking about. Enthralling and fast-paced, hard edged and Scandinavian. Bizarre that I like this but I do.

The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths. I liked this when I read the proof which was handy because they quoted my review in the paperback edition, prompting me to leap about in Waterstones in Nottingham waving the book at Pete yelling "Look, look, I wrote that!" Quite one of my moments of the year.

So it's been a good year for reading. I managed to dodge almost all books set in Edinburgh, though I did enjoy The Complaints from Ian Rankin. On my TBR pile I have books set in St Andrews, Glastonbury, Canada and Hong Kong so I'm planning to be quite the gadabout this January.

I'm going to range far and wide this year and will be doing some time travelling as well.
Currently I'm in Alexandria, though I expect to be in Rome before I turn too many more pages. Simultaneously I am in Civil War period Virginia. It's looking like it might be another good year.

Summing Up

2010-01-04T16:47:00.003Z

I'm all behind schedule, but I've got a day off at last so here's my review of 2009.

I had a look back at what I posted at this time last year, to see if I had accomplished any of the things I had wanted to this year, and I wasn't too far off the mark. I said I was hoping to read some great books this year and I really have. I've found some great stuff, not all of it crime, as I also said I wanted to expand my reading horizons and I think I've managed that. There have been some really good fiction titles published this year and I've tried to read some that I wouldn't neccesarily have tried if I wasn't pushing myself. Next post will be the Annual Mysterious Yarns Blog Awards so more on books then.

I wanted to knit more Norah Gaughan designs and I finished the Astrid shawl and also knitted the Loppem cardigan. I finished the Civil War Quilt and started another more modern one (not finished yet, though the top is done, just needs backing and quilting. Just!)

I planned to do more weaving this year and I have done a little, mostly on the Ashford Knitters loom, but I also bought a 4-shaft floor loom this year and I've been waiting for the time / chance to get it warped up and will hopefully teach myself to weave on it this year.

We managed a trip to Scotland and a weekend in Wales at Wonderwool and in Hay-on-Wye. Seattle was postponed for another year as the exchange rate is still pants (and we still have no money).

So, looking forward I want to do more weaving, knit some good and complicated and clever stuff - something stretching and technical, plus lots of quick plain socks and stuff. I want to carry on quilting, get some more blocks done for the Teach Yourself quilt and make some bags and little projects.

We want to get to Woolfest this year so that's one weekend, and we'd like to go back to the NE of Scotland, rent a little cottage so we can take Bubba and explore a bit more of the area. Barcelona would be nice if we can get cheap flights but I'm also quite tempted by Brussels and I expect that the presence of the TinTin museum could persuade Pete that he'd like it too.

Finally I want to get a Knitting Group up and running in Walsall. I think I've found a venue for this, just need to check with the people in charge. Knitting and real ale, anyone?

The End of the Year

2009-12-31T17:09:00.003Z

I've just realised that it's the last day of the year. See, that's what bookselling at Christmas does to you. Lol.

I somehow had it in my head that the beginning of next year was still about a week away, instead of just tomorrow. Did someone mess with the days again?

I hope you all had a grand Christmas and got lots of lovely pressies, or time with your family, or both, whatever you wished for.

I got a fantastic new digital camera for Christmas. Of course I already have a camera but it's a digital SLR and it's quite large and not very easy to stick in your pocket, so I asked for, and luckily got, a small, pocket-sized camera that I can carry around with me and so will use more often.

In order to get myself into the habit of taking pictures and also to make me look at my world a bit more I have set myself a challenge for the first half of this year. Each week I will do a blog post on a subject beginning with a different letter, starting with A and working through to Z. It might be a simple photo post or it might be a subject I want to witter on about, and hopefully it will be a bit of both.

Come back later this week for the annoucement of my annual Blog Awards, a quick recap of the past year and a preview of 2010.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-25T11:53:00.005Z

Just a quick post to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, now that the last book has been sold, the final giftcard swiped and the last sale sticker affixed.

(Miniature Mittens from Latvian Mittens by Lisbeth Upitis)

I hope you all have a peaceful holiday. I shall be sitting knitting socks while Pete and the Evilpixie take care of the refreshments and vittels. Dr Who is on the TV later and I don't have to work until Tuesday.

Happy Christmas!

A Grand Day Out

2009-12-06T15:43:00.002Z

I had a lovely day out yesterday at the Advent Gathering, hosted by the Staffordshire Moorlands Guild of Spinners and Weavers.

I went with my spinning group (we hired a minibus so we could all go together) and we had a great time. There were lots of lovely spinners, many wearing fantastic hand-knitted, hand-spun garments and accessories - very inspiring.

There was food too, a great spread, because you know all that talking and spinning makes you hungry.

And there was shopping - The Threshing Barn were there with lots of beautiful fibres and some very interesting books, and the chap who's name I can never remember who does the woodturning and makes beautiful spindles and bobbins and stuff. I was very good and I didn't buy anything. There wasn't anything that I thought I really couldn't live without.

I did buy some raffle tickets though (and I won a prize - a large bar of Carbury's Fruit and Nut chocolate) and i bought a Fleece Log, which is for recording the different fleeces you process as you go, noting how you washed them, spun them etc. I am more than likely never going to use it - I never ever use raw fleece if I can avoid it - give me nice clean, preferrably prettily coloured roving any day - but it was for a good cause as the proceeds were going towards a Sudden Infant Death Syndrome charity.

All in all it was a very good day. Just what I needed to set me up for the mayhem that will be the next couple of weeks in the run up to Christmas. Blog posting may be infrequent during this time.

Finally I really can't let another week go by without saying how sad I am that Borders have gone into administration. It doesn't look as though there will be any buyers for the business, though a few shops may be taken over by Waterstones/HMV. Borders had a unique place in the book market, with a greater stock of American titles than most in this country, and a great selection of magazines. Borders in Oxford has long been one of my favourite bookshops in the UK and I will be particularly sorry to see it close. I hope that the booksellers all manage to find other jobs, but with the economy in the state it's in at the moment it will be tough. You have my sympathy.

Mysteriousyarns in Blog Update Shock!

2009-12-02T08:54:00.003Z

I can't believe that it's been nearly a month since I last posted. I guess that's what Christmas in retail does to you. I have lost all track of time and usually have no idea what day it is.

I have been reading a bit though, finishing Simon Beckett's Written in Bone which I enjoyed, even though I had figured it all out before the end. Good characters and an interesting setting - see, I'm easily pleased.

Then I read American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld which I didn't enjoy so much. It started well, a well-turned story of a woman whose life has been overshadowed by an early tragedy, and it's based (at least in part) on the life of Laura Bush so you get to see how "Alice" gets to the White House. I have to say that the final chapters were a big disappointment - once Alice becomes First Lady the story loses all its focus and the last part is very dull. However, after I'd finished it I kept thinking about Alice and while she had been quite irritatingly self-centred throughout the book once I'd finished she kept popping up in my head and I got quite annoyed about her selfish misuse of a fantastic opportunity. She was so wrapped up in herself and her marriage to the nauseating "Charlie" that I wanted to slap her. It's not often that a character gets under my skin like that, so if that was your intent Ms Sittenfeld then I salute you - but that last section of the book was still terrible.

I'm now reading Instruments of Darkness by Imogen Robertson (due to be published in paperback in April 2010, but available now in hardback). It's set in the 18th Century, is full if interesting characters and has really grabbed me so far, but I'm only 50 pages in so time will tell.

All my Christmas knitting (that I can report on here anyway) is done and dusted. My new loom now has a proper home in the corner of the dining room. I have a day off today and I've just remembered that it's Wednesday so it's the Christmas Party at my reading group tonight. And on Saturday I'll be at the Advent Gathering hosted by the Staffordshire Moorlands Guild of Spinners and Weavers. Hey, things are looking up!

And the winner is......

2009-11-07T16:51:00.002Z

....sadly not me. The Booksellers Bursary went to Russell and Sara, whose entries I haven't read yet but I'm sure will be excellent. Several people were very complimentary about my short story, and it was really good just to be shortlisted. It makes me realise that I have been neglecting my writing of late and that I really should try and make a space for it somewhere in my hectic schedule.

We had a good day out in London anyway - any day that involves bookshops, a couple of glasses of good wine, a stroll around someplace you haven't been before (ie. Marylebone High Street) and some sushi, will always be a success in my book.

I could have done without the totally freezing journey home in a very draughty train with no heat, but that was the only dampener on the day.

Next post - knitting update, honest!

A Blustery Day

2009-11-03T20:13:00.003Z

We had a fantastic day out in London on Sunday, despite the rain and the wind.

The first thing on our agenda, after a cup of coffee of course, was the ABC (Art. Book and Comics) Show at the Royal National Hotel. By the time we got there we were drenched, as not all the tube lines were operating and it seemed easier to walk, even in the wet, than try and work out how to get from where we were to where we wanted to be by tube.

The show was great - lots of great comic artwork for sale, lots of comics and some interesting books. I wandered round for a while then went and sat in the foyer with the coats and purchases and my knitting to allow Pete to carry on looking.

When we got out of the fair the rain had finally stopped so we took a tube up to Holborn and walked down through Covent Garden and down Charing Cross Road stopping off in all the bookshops,as you do. In Foyle's I picked up Ghost of Flea by James Sallis, the last of his Lew Griffin novels and the only one I was missing.

A quick detour up Oxford Street and down Regent Street to Hamleys finished our little tour. It reminded us of when the Evilpixie was small and a trip to London just had to include a trip to Hamleys. Sunday was the last day of half-term and Hamleys was absolutely heaving.

It was a good day, despite the wet start. And I'll be back in London again on Friday because I've been shortlisted for the Booksellers Bursary - a writing competition open to all employees of Waterstones. I'm not expecting to win, but the prize of £500 and a Arvon Foundation writing course would be lovely. I'm really just pleased to be shortlisted as I know there are some really great writers among my fellow booksellers. I'll let you know how I get on!

A Pile of Booty

2009-10-30T16:12:00.005Z

I never did update you on what I managed to buy while we were in Scotland.

There was this, not inconsiderable, pile of crafty books -

There's, from the bottom, a lovely book on William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, Designers Design for Themselves which is about American Arts and Design, Knitting in Vogue (Patterns from the 1930s to the 1980s), Knitting Nostalgia - Knitwear 1920-1950, Amish and Menonite Quilts, Designing for Weaving, The Knit Kit, Handknit Style, Simplicity's Quilts and Patches, and finally Spinning and Weaving at Home which includes instructions for making a spinning wheel out of a bicycle - not sure I'll be trying that but it's a interesting book anyway.

I also had a little Stash Enhancement Moment which resulted in the following -

That's 200g of merino in lovely tones of green and a ball of the brightest Opal sock yarn I could find. I have to say that stash enhancement opportunities were few and far between. I had a vague plan of buying some Jamieson & Smith shetland in various colours with the aim of some fair isle knitting but I never actually saw any in any yarn shop I was in. Sadly it seems that yarn shops in Scotland have fallen by the wayside exactly as they have in England. Perth didn't seem to have a yarn shop at all, most of the other shops I was in were full of acrylic stuff and baby yarn. Twist Fibre Craft Studio in Newburgh was a beautiful shop, with lovely stock (and it was there that I bought the things pictured above), but by and large I was disappointed with the quality/choice of the yarns available elsewhere. I'd got it in my head that there would be lots of great yarn shops lurking in the many places we visited but alas this was not to be. Maybe we were in the wrong places, or maybe our timing was bad - certainly there were shops I knew about that we didn't get to because we weren't in the right area when they were open, or we just didn't have the time to spare to make a detour. Probably just as well - if they'd all been great shops I'd be bankrupt!

Next post on Monday hopefully, when I will be reporting on my trip to London on Sunday - to a comic fair primarily - might manage to squeeze a yarn shop in somewhere if any are open on a Sunday.

Also I have exciting news about something happening later in the week, which involves another trip to London. I have such a cosmopolitan lifestyle.

Finally.....a connection.

2009-10-17T16:39:00.009+01:00

We are home again after our little (but very busy) trip into the Northlands.

Sadly I was unable to take you along with me due to the lack of internet access up there. I'd planned to blog a little every day but it was not to be so you'll have to make do with a few update posts.

We left here early on Sunday morning and after negotiating the many sets of roadworks on the M6 (there were 10 lots of roadworks between Birmingham and Carlisle!) we arrived in Glasgow where we spent a couple of hours mooching around the Barras market.

It's a funny old place, a real mix of stuff - secondhand books, antiques and all sorts of new tat. We always enjoy a wander around though even if we didn't really buy very much. Getting out of Glasgow proved a tad more difficult than we expected as they seemed to have removed all road signs directing anyone East and also closed some of the on-ramps to the M8. We got away eventually but it was very frustrating.

We were headed for Perth where we based ourselves for a few days while we explored round Fife, Perthshire and Dundee. Highspot of the stay for me was a trip to Twist Fibre Craft in Newburgh where I bought some fibre and some sockwool. Pictures of this to follow.

We also visited an exhibition in Dundee which featured sculptures based on the Starblazer comics and had some of the original artwork from the comic. It was fascinating but not as large as we would have liked. Sadly it is the only exhibition in Dundee of artwork from DC Thomson's archive. More on that in a future post.

On Wednesday we headed further north to meet up with some friends we hadn't seen for a very long time. By this time I was beginning to remember all the things that irritate me about Scotland - the lack of decent places to eat, sketchy internet access, the scarcity of decent coffee, the terrible roads. If you'd asked me on that morning if I would ever move back to live there I'd have said you were mad.

However a couple of very busy days in the North East near Aberdeen soon had me back in love with that part of Scotland at least. Aberdeen is such a vibrant, cosmopolitan city and the Moray coast is just beautiful. We spent a day exploring along the coast with K&D, our very lovely and hospitable friends. Portsoy in particular is just amazing.

I really wouldn't mind living somewhere near there.
We had a fantastic time and it was great to meet up with K&D. Apologies to everyone else up there who we didn't manage to get hold of - time was very tight - but we promise we will be back sooner rather than later.

We didn't manage to get as much done as we had originally planned, and there were lots of people we'd love to have got together with and didn't, but we had a really great week (though with hindsight we should have gone for longer - there wasn't a lot of downtime in that week - we were on the go most of the time.) Ah well, there's always next time.

No News from the North

2009-10-12T15:50:00.001+01:00

Internet access is a bit sketchy here so you'll have to wait till later in the week for my scintillating report on The Barras market, roadworks and charity shopping.

Back soon.

Holiday reading

2009-10-10T18:09:00.003+01:00

Just a quick post as I'm in the throes of packing for our trip to Scotland and tidying the house and generally getting organised. I'm usually very particular and have lists and things about what needs done and what I'm taking etc but I am totally flying by the seat of my pants here and just throwing some clothes in a bag and hoping for the best. I'm especially hoping it's not going to rain much as I can't seem to find a waterproof jacket in the house anywhere.

So my final choice of holiday reading is this.

Written in Bone by Simon Beckett - it's set in Scotland, though not in any part we'll be in - it's an isolated community, with dark secrets and a murderer in their midst....and a big storm coming. Sounds just right to me.

The other is Library of the Dead by Glen Cooper, which is a Dan Brownesque thriller but with books - I suspect it's a bit of hoary old tosh but sometimes that's just what you need - especially on holiday.

Just two books, I hear you cry! Ah yes but the chances of me being in at least one secondhand bookshop, and probably a few other bookshops too, are quite high. Bit of a certainty. I'll keep you posted.

I'm a bad blogger

2009-10-05T17:20:00.002+01:00

I've not been posting...mostly because I've not done anything interesting enough to merit a post, which is sad.

It seems there are only so many posts you can make out of going to work, coming home, walking the dog and then vegetating in front of the TV.

However, next week we are off to Scotland for a short break. We're hoping to start in Glasgow, spend a day in Perth, swing though Fife, go to an exhibition in Dundee then meander up the east coast to Aberdeen where hopefully we will be able to meet up with some people we've not seen for a very long time.

As usual we will be visiting secondhand book shops, charity shops, wool shops, comic shops and anything else that takes our fancy so I hope you'll join us through the medium of the blog and I promise I will try and take lots of photos of where we've been.

Now I'm trying to get the house into shape ready to be left in the hands of the Evilpixie for the week, working out just how little I can get away with in terms of packing (so there will be more room for booty) and selecting my holiday reading.

Holiday reading for me needs to meet the following requirements -

It should be plot-driven but not too complicated - ie I need to be able to put it down and remember what it's about when I pick it up again - so no Booker winners
It should be a good read - but not so involving that I don't want to put it down as this could lead to marital disharmony
It will preferably have cost no more than £1 as I will not feel guilty then if I discard it in a hotel room once read to make room for another book (or books)
It will ideally be set in the country/state/city I am visiting, though if it is then it should probably NOT be about the murder of hapless British tourists on a bookstore trail
It may be about the murder of hapless British tourists on a bookstore trail if it is NOT set in my chosen destination (I'm warming to this idea - I feel a short story coming on)
It must be paperback as hardbacks are too heavy to lug about
There should be a murder (at least one), preferably on page one, page three at the latest.

I'll get back to you later this week with my chosen books - let's see if they conform to my guidelines (you will note that these are already, mere sentences later, referred to as guidelines, not requirements - anyone would think I was a politician)

In Which I Learn a New Skill.....

2009-09-21T19:07:00.007+01:00

....loom assembly.

Project for the day was to turn this -

an unholy tangle of string with a few numbered bits of wood into something resembling one of these -

I had the help of the Evilpixie, who was wonderful and didn't seem to mind when I said that I thought we'd done it all wrong and we should pretty much start again. There wasn't even much swearing.

Here we are at the halfway stage, just getting to the discovery that it was all arse-about-face. And we did have these two odd bits of metal that we weren't too sure about - what were they and where did they go?

A quick email to the previous owner of the loom shed some light and we got it all sorted eventually.
So here it is in all its slightly tired and shabby glory. It should fit in well around here. I've still got to tie up the treadles. I had to cut the treadle tie-up cords or it would just have been too complicated getting the whole lamm/ heddle/ treadle assembly onto the frame of the loom. I shall get some new cord, some plastic connectors and a new batch of texsolv heddles to supplement the ones on the heddles already. Then it will be ready to go.

I am delighted with my new loom and hoping to have lots of interesting weaving journeys with it. And I now have a really, really good understanding of how it works which is very handy.

Thanks to the Evilpixie for her glamorous assistance, to Bubba for keeping (mostly) out of the way, and to the previous owner for listing it on eBay, taking it to bits and sending it to me when I'm sure she'd rather I'd just pitched up with a van and carted it off.

Booky update

2009-09-20T17:34:00.002+01:00

I've managed to fit in a few books since my last post. I finished The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly. It was good, as you would expect from a writer of Connelly's quality but legal thrillers are never really going to hit the spot for me. I liked finding out a bit more about Harry Bosch though and even Jack McEvoy put in an appearance.

Then I read Tempting Evil by Alison Brennan. This was for my crime reading group, though I didn't manage to get there to discuss it. Probably just as well. It was a thriller of a sort that I particularly dislike - a beautiful and talented main character, stalked by a psychopathic prison escapee, saved by an incredibly handsome and charming sherriff. Apparently this is part of a series she's written, all around prison breaks. Can't say I'll be seeking out any more of them. It wasn't particularly well-written and it had a gratuitous graphic sex scene towards the end that almost caused it to be hurled across the room (except it was a library book so I couldn't do that). There was no empathy with the characters and nothing surprising or original about it at all. Oh, and I still have no idea what relevance the title has to the book.

For a bit of a change I then read Touching Distance by Rebecca Abrams. This is a novel set in Aberdeen in the 1790s and is about a doctor who is trying to solve the mystery of why so many women are dying just after they've given birth. There's a lot of medical stuff in here but it's all fascinating. Alec Gordon is the doctor in question and he's fighting against the establishment, and against the ignorance and traditions of the local midwives. He's got a pregnant wife himself and is desperate to discover the cause so his wife won't be in danger too. I'd highly recommend this book for the excellent writing, period detail, fantastic sense of place and interesting characters.

While I was in Scotland (bookwise at least) I went a bit further north and devoured Red Bones by Ann Cleeves. This is the third in her Shetland quartet and it's a cracker. This book focusses more on Jimmy Perez's sidekick Sandy as the death that opens the book is that of his grandmother. Sandy is drafted in for his local knowledge of Whalsay, a very small island community that, of course, has secrets aplenty. I really liked the way Cleeves developed Sandy's character in this book and let us see Perez through Sandy's eyes. As usual there is the high quality plot and a wonderful sense of the remoteness and otherness of the Shetlands. I love this series.

Quite by chance just as I had finished Red Bones I got hold of a copy of Sacrifice by S.J. Bolton, also set on Shetland. This however is a very different place from Cleeves' islands. Tora Hamilton is a consultant surgeon recently moved to the islands with her Shetlander husband. She's digging a pit to bury her dead horse (as you do) when she finds a woman's body. There are Nordic runes carved into the body, just like the ones on a fireplace in Tora's cellar. Everyone keeps tells her to leave well alone but Tora can't help but get drawn into the investigation. I liked this. I'm not sure I'd like to live in her Shetland though - full of suspicion and corruption and prejudice. The plot's good though and the characters are mostly believable. I would certainly read another of her's.

Now I'm reading The Incendiary's Trail by James McCreet. I've only just started it, so it's a bit early to tell but it's off to a good start. It's set in Victorian London and seems to have an authentic feel and an interesting detective. More on that later.

Tomorrow I will be playing with lumps of wood and probably swearing a lot as I try and assemble the loom I bought. It arrived yesterday and currently resembles an explosion in an Ikea factory. It came with no directions and doesn't seem to be the same model as the downloaded directions I've got off the internet. Should be fun.

Knitting is Back

2009-09-08T20:51:00.016+01:00

I have found my mojo.

I have FOs.

But first, I didn't show you the pics of the fibery loveliness from last week.

I turned this (some rust merino, some natural grey merino and some unidentified natural dyed stuff from our dye day last year) into this -

You can't see in the photo but it has gold angelina in it too so it's all sparkly.

I also made this

From some very dull and uninspiring mauve fibre I used to finish up the last of some purple dye I was using a couple of months ago. I added some turquoise and pink merino and some silver angelina and it will probably make some sparkly socks. So shoot me, I like sparkly things!

Lastly I made this

It's Corriedale fleece bought from Freyalyn at Wonderwool with a bit of added silk. I'm hoping it will keep some of the colour banding when I spin it as I'm planning stripy socks.

After all that creativity Bubba was worn out.

Now I'm wondering if I would really use a drum carder enough to justify buying one (I've been saving up for one), or if I should just borrow the club one if and when I need to use one. This would mean that I could put the money I've been saving towards something else. I'm thinking about a loom. I already have an Ashford Knitters Loom and a small 4-shaft table loom but I'm hankering after a nice wide foldable 4-shaft floor loom. I just missed out on one on eBay the other day - got outbid with about 6 seconds to go. Don't you just hate that!

So, I promised you FOs and indeed I do have them. Firstly there is this -

It's Loppem by Norah Gaughan knitted in Forsell Touch of Silk DK in basalt from Silver Viscount (it was on sale too!) Sadly they seem to not have any more of this at the moment as it was a very good deal. Luckily I have another 400g cone of the same colour and one of the black. Technically this is not an FO as I haven't added the buttons yet but that should happen this week so I'm claiming it anyway.

The other FO I have to show you is a shawl -

This is the Trinity Shawlette pattern available as a download on the P/hop website. I knitted it in Rowan Botany 4ply and then dyed when it was knitted. I love the pattern. I loved knitting it. Some people might get one of these for Christmas. The pattern is free and the idea is you should donate a sum towards Medecins sans Frontiers for the pleasure you get out of knitting it. I would highly recommend this pattern (though possibly not for a beginner, or if you haven't knitted a similar shaped shawl before because I (and some others) found the pattern a little hard to follow). Once you get started though it's a great knit and has several variations you can try.

Take a closer look at the detail.

Isn't it lovely.

Books update in the next post.

Oh, and I might have just accidentally bought a loom.

In Which I Learn a Few Things....

2009-08-25T13:00:00.008+01:00

...mostly about the properties of yarn.

I spent yesterday playing with the drum carder I have on loan. Did I tell you I have a week off work? Anyway I borrowed my spinning groups drum carder to have a play with and produced some lovely batts of fibre to spin. Photos of all that tomorrow.

Today I thought I'd do a bit of weaving. I got out my Knitter's Loom and rummaged in the stash and found some lovely purple Rowan Dk and some matching mohair. There was only a little of the Rowan and my plan was to use it as the warp and some handspun and some mohair as the weft. But there wasn't enough of the Rowan so I added some warp strands of the mohair. I can't imagine what I was thinking. Warp yarns need to be strong and SMOOTH. (for non weavers the warp is the long threads that run the length of the weaving that you weave the shuttle over and under to create the fabric.) Well this mohair was strong but it was very, very fluffy. So fluffy that it stuck to itself with the slightest of provocation. My first problem was that when I tried to wind the warp thread onto the back beam the mohair fluff wound itself round the heddle bars and clung on for grim death. I poked and teased it and eventually got the warp all set up. When I started to weave a few rows with scrap yarn at the start though I hit the next problem - the mohair was so sticky I couldn't beat the threads into place! At this point I gave up and cut the mohair off the loom.

Lesson learned. Need to rethink this project.

BTW...still knitting.

Shhhh.....don't tell anyone!

2009-08-24T20:26:00.001+01:00

But I think I might have found my knitting mojo.......

Can't say any more - I don't want to jinx it.

I'll have an E please, Bob.

2009-08-19T07:11:00.002+01:00

Here's my letter all knitted and ready to send to The Poetry Society for their knit a poem project.

So while we're on the subject of the letter E I thought I'd share a little...

Things I like that begin with E

1. Eggs - lovely and brown and still warm, fresh out of the hen!

2. Evergreens - nothing like a bit of green to cheer you up in the depths of winter

3. Evanovich, Janet - great, funny, light-hearted crime fiction for when you're in that sort of mood

4. Easter egg chocolate - somehow always tastes better than normal chocolate

5. Enthusiasm - just love people who're passionate about their hobbies or even life in general

I expect there will be lots of enthusiastic people at Fibrefest this weekend but sadly I won't be one of them. I shall be working and missing all the fibrey loveliness. If you're going can I ask that you stop by the p/hop stall, pick up one of their lovely patterns and donate a little to MSF. We all get so many hours of pleasure from knitting, and this is a nice way to give something back.

Book Update Part 2

2009-08-17T18:15:00.003+01:00

Pete pointed out that I'd missed a book in my crime write up in the last post so first, before we get to the non-crime stuff I did also read The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson. Some of you will know of my deep and abiding loathing of translated fiction but I'm doing OK with this series so far. The translation seems to be of a high standard, as does the original writing. I'm really looking forward to the last book which is due at the beginning of October.

So, moving on, I had a brief flirtation with teenage fiction and read Twilight. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. So I've read it, I think I can see why teenage girls are flocking to the book in droves, and I did quite enjoy it in an odd spectatorish way. Parts of it are very badly written but the plot moves quickly and some of the characters are endearing in a teenager-ish way. What annoyed me about it was the really quite clumsy flag-waving for the abstinence brigade. Blood-sucking, that's fine but sex is totally out of the question!

Back in the land of grown-ups I had a Bookerish turn. Now, my loathing of Booker winning (or even nominated) books is pretty much on par with anything translated. But I've just read two of this years nominated books and liked both of them. Shock horror!

I started with The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. A beautifully written ghost story, set in a crumbling mansion in Warwickshire just after the war. It had me gripped from start to finish. Well, I thought, this really ought to win.

Then I read The Children's Book by A S Byatt. It's a whopping great book, over 600 pages, so that's a big chunk of reading time, but I just couldn't put it down. The book runs from about 1895 through to just after the Great War following the children of an extended family. Woven throughout is the development of the Arts and Crafts movement, the building of the V&A museum and the political upheaval of the period. It's a wonderfully textured book, filled with ceramics and textiles, puppets and theatre. The language of the book draws heavily on that of the creative arts. It's skilfully woven together and in the background looms the threat of a war which will destroy everything. It's a masterpiece.

So now I'm torn. I've never read a Booker winner that I liked, so I guess that ends any chance either of these books had of winning. Now I'm wondering if I should read another of the longlist. Anyone care to suggest which one I read? William Trevor? Colm Toibin? Any recommendations?

While on a roll with quality fiction I read Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. I'd not read any of her before and I knew I should sort that out. I'm hoping to get around to Gilead before the end of the year. I thought Housekeeping was excellent with a fantastic narrative voice. It put me in mind of Alice Munro, who has long been a favourite of mine. Which reminds me that I haven't read any of her more recent work.

What am I reading now? I'm trying to catch up with Michael Connolly who has been producing 2 books a year lately. I hope he's not going all James Patterson. Anyway I'm reading The Brass Verdict, follow up to The Lincoln Lawyer. So far it's pretty good.

I'm off to The Festival of Quilts at the NEC on Thursday where I'm hoping to be inspired and possibly do a little fabric shopping. Full report later in the week.

Book Update Part One - Crime

2009-08-14T15:53:00.003+01:00

I've actually read quite a few books in the time that I was MIA, more than usual I think because of the not knitting thing.

Anyway there are rather too many for just one post so I've decided to split them up into the crime fiction and the non-crime. Today's post will concern just the crime fiction.

I finished A Darker Domain by Val McDermid and liked it. Better than the previous one, though still not my favourite McDermid book. I liked the descriptions of the pit villages in Fife and found the new police characters interesting. I don't know if this is planned to be the start of a series, but I think I'd read more.

Then I read White Nights by Ann Cleeves, the second in her Shetland Quartet, which I'd been waiting to come out in paperback for seemingly ages. I liked it a lot, possibly even more than the first volume. She's definitely got an ear for language has Ann Cleeves. Not sure I can hang on for the paperback of the next volume as it's out now in hardback and not due in paperback until February. This one's serious contender for my crime novel of the year so far. A full review will appear on Eurocrime.

I took a little detour after that as I had a couple of books to read for crime reading group. The first was David Hewson's The Sacred Cut which I had on audio. I had a little trouble with this. Firstly it was too long. The audio book was over 13 hours and it seems to go off at tangents and lose all pace and tension, while the detectives drank a lot of coffee. The narrator was a tad irritating - there was one voice that he did with a thick New York accent that was really grating. The final straw was that the discs wouldn't play in the car, so I ran out of time and had to skim-listen to the last hour or so, most of which seemed to involve coffee drinking and reflection and not a lot of plot resolution. I think if faced with another Hewson I would read as opposed to listen so I could go at my own pace, which might improve things a bit.

The other book was Steven Saylor's House of the Vestals. This is a collection of short stories that fill in the gaps between some of Gordianus the Finder's investigations. Now I've read some of Saylor's novels and they're not an easy read - bit heavy on the politics and the history for my taste, but the short stories were much lighter, funnier - Steven Saylor-lite if you will. I quite enjoyed them in a detached, not-too-serious way. I didn't get them all finished, due to the overrunning of the Hewson audio, but In liked the ones I read. However if I hadn't read any Saylor before and then went to the novels on the strength of this book I may have been in for a shock.

I had a review to write about Blood on the Cowley Road by Peter Tickler. It's set in Oxford, in an area of Oxford that I know quite well so I was hoping for good things which it sadly did not deliver. Some of the characters felt underdeveloped and the plot was not very strong. Again there will be a full review on Eurocrime when Karen gets the time to put it up, but overall it was a disappointment.

Lastly I got my hands on a proof of the new Ian Rankin, The Complaints. This is due for publication on 3rd September. I was a bit wary as I didn't especially like Doors Open but this was the real deal - a well crafted, well-plotted intelligent crime novel. It's about Malcolm Fox who works in the Complaints and Conduct department - he's a man who does everything by the book and hence is about as far as Rankin could get from Rebus and still be on the right side of the law. It's not a book about serial killers or even about murder though there is at least one in the book. This is a book about ethics and about trust and it's a book that makes you think. I wavered while reading it between thinking maybe it wasn't so hot, and absolutely loving it. By the time I got to the end I was totally convinced. Rankin is a very clever writer. Again a full review will be wending its way to Eurocrime but I'll need to find the pad I wrote it on and type it up first.

Tomorrow, well maybe Sunday because I'm working tomorrow so will be brain dead by the time I get home, I'll catch up on the non-crime I've been reading - some of it very unexpected and with totally unpredicted results.

Sorry I've been AWOL

2009-08-12T07:32:00.010+01:00

I've been AWOL from the blog for a while, trying to get my head together and I think I'm finally getting there. My knitting mojo is beginning to return and I have been doing some other stuff in the meantime. Tomorrow I will do a big book update but today I'm being all crafty.

I had a Kirstie Allsop moment at a carboot sale a couple of weeks ago and bought a lovely old patchwork quilt.

I love the colours. It's all hand stitched. I have no idea how old it is, but it has been well used (well loved, as we bookdealers like to say) and is rather tatty in places. In my mind that somehow adds to its charm. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but it just called my name from its cardboard box in a muddy field and it only cost a fiver!

I've been doing a little quilting of my own

This is the Diamonds at Large quilt from Pam & Nicky Lintott's Layer Cake, Jelly Roll and Charm Quilts. It's a great thrifty quilt that can be made from just one layer cake and the one I used was Moda's Arcadia. A mix of blue, mustard, brown and orange - very summery. It will be a throw for the back of one of the sofas when it's done. That's just the quilt top in the picture. I still have to add the border and do the quilting. Sewing machine time is difficult to snatch during the summer holidays as there are often teenagers watching the TV where I do my sewing. The Evilpixie has not been very well this week - a nasty virus with stomach pains and headaches. Poor thing.

Finally I have been doing a little knitting. I did finish the Simple Yet Effective shawl that has been on the needles for ages -it was my carrying around knitting and I wasn't getting very much done. Desperate to prod my missing mojo with an FO I sat down and completed it while watching DVDs of The Unit.

I added a frilly edge just to make it a little different from the other one I have. This meant that I ran out of yarn during the cast-off (about 2 feet from the end) and had to substitute some handspun to finish it off. Luckily I had some in a similar colour to one of the stripes and it's not too noticeable.

So, I now have new portable knitting - a sock

It's my standard sock recipe in Patons Croy, bought in Florida last year. The stripes are a little thicker than I wanted/expected. I might frog it and knit a sideways sock - seen a few patterns floating around the web that look pretty cool, and that would narrow the stripes a lot.

And at last I'm beginning to plan a new project, something I seem to have been unable to do lately. So, where to go when you need an inspiring knit, something to get those creative juices flowing again - you go to Norah Gaughan of course (well, I do anyway). Next up on the needles, providing I can find the right size of needle and can get the gauge right will be Loppem from Norah Gaughan book two.

Next post will be books......

Harvest

2009-07-14T19:01:00.004+01:00

Please be distracted from the fact I haven't blogged for 2 weeks by the lovely photo of todays harvest from the lottie. There in all their magnificence are 4 small courgettes, a lovely little round courgette, some broad beans and some radishes. That was all I managed to collect before the heavens opened and I had to make a dash for the car to avoid drowning.

The weather has been conspiring against us - whenever we have a bit of free time it has been raining - not just a little bit of namby-pamby rain that you could garden in but full scale SAS strength torrential rain where you would need scuba gear to do any weeding. Hence the lack of allotment updates on the blog.

I have no excuse for there being bo other sort of posts other than that I've had nothing to write about. I did knit a pair of socks for a work colleague as a leaving present, but I've forgotten to photograph them. Duh. Hope you liked the socks, Bex.

I finished reading The 19th Wife which I did enjoy but I thought it lost it's way a bit towards the end. Now I'm reading A Darker Domain by Val McDermid. I seem to remember not being overly impressed with her previous book (Beneath the Bleeding) but this one appears to be good so far. I've also been reading Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years - Women, Cloth and Society in Early Times, which is a fantastic social history of women and textiles right back to neolithic times. Because textiles have very rarely survived from those periods the writer has used language and the specific words which refer to weaving or spinning or to clothing which have survived and spread across Europe, plus the depiction of women working with textiles on ceramics and in pictures, to trace the evolution of the various types of textile work, almost all of which was done by women. I found it totally fascinating.

Still not knitting...

2009-07-01T17:15:00.007+01:00

But of course, even in the almost complete absence of knitting from my life, there is still crafting of one kind or another.

I have finally completed the Civil War Crossing quilt - you may remember that I bought the fabric for this way back in last September when we were in Florida. Today I finally finished quilting it and did the binding. It had spent a long time in limbo while I pondered on a pattern for the quilting. I could see that it might become a UFO so I made myself a quilting rule - I couldn't start a new project until I'd finished this one. In fact I've decided that will be a general rule in my quilting - one project at a time. There is the exception to this of course (hey, I'm still me, what did you expect?) The block-by-block quilt doesn't count as a project until I start to assemble the blocks -that's only fair because at the current rate of completion I will be 167 before I finish it and that seems like a long time before I start another quilting project. The block-by-block quilt was always going to be a long-term thing given that I am teaching myself a whole lot of new techniques as I go.

This quilt was pieced using the Garden Trellis pattern from Jelly Roll Quilts by Pam & Nicky Lintott and a jelly roll in Civil War Crossing by Barbara Bachman for Moda. The border is not part of that range, but was bought from a US supplier who specialises in repro civil war prints, to be authentic. (Sorry, I can't remember who it was.) I used some of the same fabric in the quilt to balance the fact that it there was a bit more pink in the jelly roll than I had anticipated. The backing is a bit of fabric I bought on eBay and it was this fabric that decided me on the quilting pattern. The backing fabric has long snaking vines with stylised roses - I just followed the path of the vines and added a few swirls to pick out some of the roses. It seemed obvious when I'd thought of it - I can't believe I spent all that time dithering.
So, what's next? You can be sure that I have another project lined up - how else was I going to get the push to finish this one?

Here's a hint -

A Grand Day Out

2009-06-19T13:03:00.004+01:00

Yesterday we had one of our increasingly infrequent days out. We went to Gloucestershire for reasons I will tell you about later in the post but it was a day of ups and downs.

We started off in Cirencester where we turned the corner from the carpark and Pete said "There's a wool shop over there." Never one to miss a wool shop I headed straight over. First thing I saw was this sign in the window -

Now if there's one thing I like better than a wool shop - it's a wool shop with a sale on.

Then we saw this -

Aaaagh! A wool shop with a sale on - that's closed for the day! The fates are conspiring against me. How am I ever going to get inspired and recover my knitting mojo.

The charity shop gods were not on our side yesterday either and pickings were slim in Cirencester and later in Gloucester. We enjoyed mooching round though and had a cup of coffee or two.

The main purpose of our visit to Gloucestershire was to go to an auction. Those of you who have been long-time readers of the blog may know that we used, in a previous existence, to be second-hand bookdealers. In those days it was not uncommon for us to go to three or four auctions in a week. Now that we're not dealers any more we hardly ever go to an auction. Yesterday though the auction was so special that we really just wanted to go and look at the stuff that was being sold. We thought we might buy a couple of bits if the prices were right - it was Pete's birthday this week and he collects British comics and comic art. Dominic Winter are primarily a book auctioneers but a good proportion of yesterdays sale was British comics, artwork and related books. It was the sale of someone's collection - his life's work by the look of it, and what an amazing collection it was. There were thousands of beautiful comics, and many many lovely books and a couple of lots that we really wanted to buy (including one that included a couple of boxes of Textile History journals that I had my eye on). Sadly we came away with nothing. It seems that the secondhand book and comic market is not suffering from much of a recession. The prices that some of the lots sold for were astronomical. We were astounded. We came away a little sad that we hadn't managed to buy what we wanted, but also relieved that we were no longer competing against all that to try and make a living.

Bear with me

2009-06-15T20:45:00.003+01:00

I'm still finding myself curiously out of sorts with the world. I just cannot settle to anything, be it a book, a bit of knitting, sewing, spinning. You name it I've been picking it up and putting it down again recently. I am bored with my current knitting projects but cannot summon the inspiration for something new. I have started several books and not got any further than a few pages with any of them. I have a lovely quilt-top finished and waiting to be quilted but I cannot decide on a pattern to use. I am feeling flat and listless, which is most unlike me.

I have nothing of interest to report from the allotment either, bar that weeds are growing faster than anything I planted.

Please bear with me. I'm hoping this will pass soon and that normal service will resume shortly.

Knitters in the Rain

2009-06-10T11:54:00.005+01:00

I haven't told you yet about the Ravelry Day last week.

I went with Maggi (Ravelry link) and her Mum and we had a great time despite the rain.

And it really did pour down - all day which was a shame and it did detract from the day a little. It would have been a much nicer day if we'd all been able to sit outside the hall on the lovely wide stone benches and knit and chatter. However the good old British summer let us down as usual so we had to make the best of it - as only knitters can.

It was so cold and wet even the alpacas were shivering.

There were lots of great stalls with some great indy dyers and yarn producers, and although a few had been put off by the weather there was still plenty to choose from. I was quite restrained and just bought a couple of bits -

So, here we have a carded batt of unknown composition (my fault not theirs) from Fyberspates at the top. It's mostly pale turquoise with strands of blue, yellow, green and purple with sparkly stuff through it. Only about 40g so it won't go very far but it looks lovely and I'm sure it will be fantastic to spin. Also from Fyberspates is the skein of laceweight superwash merino & nylon called Faery Lace in colourway Java. I'm planning a shawl with this. The fibre is an alpaca/silk blend in colourway Stormclouds from Krafty Koala. Very soft and beautiful. I'm hoping this will help me find my knitting mojo which has still not returned. I'm blaming the stressful last few weeks and the fact that I've been ultra busy but I just can't seem to concentrate on anything at the moment. I'm even struggling to find a book that I really want to read. I've picked up several and put them down again because they're not quite what I wanted. I suspect I'll be the same with knitting at the moment - lots of casting on and lots of frogging again when I don't like what I've knitted. I'm sure it will all come back to me eventually.

Anyway, apart from the stalls there was lots of stuff at the Ravelry Day - workshops, demonstrations, spinning, knitting. We met up with some of the knitters from the Birmingham Stitch n Bitch group which I haven't been to for absolutely ages. It was great to see them all again. I was wearing my Astrid shawl and it was very much admired. One lovely lady even went as far as to say it looked better than the one in the photo in the pattern book. As you can imagine I was well chuffed.

One of the odd things about the blogosphere is the way you read other blogs and you feel you know the person behind it and you forget that they don't know you from Adam. I may have surprised Jo from Celtic Memory Yarns a little by leaping out of the crowd at her saying how nice it was to see her, totally forgetting that she doesn't actually know me. I read her blog but I'm not a big comment-leaver so of course she doesn't know me. It was still nice to meet you Jo. Loved the Noro waistcoat.

I'm at home today having a well-earned day off and grumbling about the weather - it's sunny outside which is not at all what was forecast. Today's forecast was for rain all day so Pete has gone off to work with all the gardening tools in the back of his car and there's no point me going up to the allotment with no tools - it's very frustrating. The sooner we can get a shed up there the better.

Allotment Photos

2009-06-09T17:18:00.006+01:00

It rained all weekend here so we didn't get to the allotment at all but I've been up today to check everything was Ok and I've taken some photos.

The potatoes are growing well - they'll need earthing up again this week. These were the very first thing we planted so I'm pleased they are doing fine. We have another bed of potatoes just starting to come through as well.

The Little Gem lettuces, radishes and beetroot are all coming up in their rows. Soon be time to sow a few more of these.

The sweetcorn is doing well - I still think they should be further apart but I was overruled.

The courgettes seem a bit on the spindly side but a couple of them have lots of flowers so that's OK. In the cage behind the courgettes the salad leaves, rocket and lollo rosso are getting better after a ropey start.

The broad beans (to the left of the courgettes) are a mixed bunch - some look good but a couple are very sad and one's been very eaten by something. I have more broad beans and several different varieties of other beans to plant out this week. I'm hoping the weather will be dryish for the next couple of days (not a big chance of that) so that I can get some planting done.

Has anyone seen my mojo???

2009-06-02T20:28:00.003+01:00

I've been really, really busy over the last few weeks and there have been all kinds of other stuff going on and it seems to have resulted in the loss of my knitting mojo. I completed the intarsia project I mentioned - it was a baby jumper with fish all over it. I was so out of it last week that I forgot to take a photo of it before I parcelled it up and gave it as a gift. Anyway it looked like this - Sorry for the really bad picture, taken in the pub. I don't blog about work as a rule but it's been a stressful time lately and we were in the pub together to mark the end of an era. Our lovely manager was going on maternity leave and we have lost four member of our fantastic team through redundancy. It's been a tough few weeks and I'm glad it's over - happy that I still have a job, but sad that everything is changing.

I've not had a lot of reading time as you can imagine but I finished the Charlaine Harris and enjoyed it. I'm not sure it has converted me to the evil ways of Paranormal Romance but as a one-off it made a pleasant change.

I've given up on The Sweet Smell of Decay - it just wasn't doing anything for me at all.

I then read The Property of Blood by Magdalen Nabb. When the Evilpixie was small she was a big fan of Magdalen Nabb's children's books, about a girl called Josie Smith and I think I've read all of those (over and over again as you do when your kids love a book), but this was the first of her crime novels that I'd picked up. I liked the character of the main policeman, Marshall Guarnaccia, but I thought the plotting was a little weak.

Allotment news will appear later in the week - if I actually manage to get some photos taken.

Monday Update on Tuesday

2009-05-26T17:47:00.004+01:00

Hey, I'm getting better...only one day late and it was a bank holiday yesterday so I'm all behind with myself.

We had a busy weekend, with many car boot sales and a trip to Villa Park to watch Aston Villa beat Newcastle, so we didn't get up to the allotment until Monday. The lettuces that the Evilpixie and I planted last week are surviving, though something has had a nibble at them.

We built another veg cage and dug over another section and we planted sweetcorn. I have no photos of this as it seems I am incapable of remembering to take the camera (or even my phone) to the allotment.

Today (still with no photographic evidence) the Evilpixie and I have dug another small section and sown some lettuce, radish and beetroot seeds. We've also planted up some leeks we were given by a passing fellow allotment holder.

The Evilpixie is really enjoying the gardening, much to our surprise. She's even planning to transform the miserable plot beneath our front windows at home, currently hosting many stones, lots of ants and a couple of very straggly lavender bushes. I'll let you know how she gets on.

I am almost finished one of my secret deadline knitting projects - photos later in the week providing there are no disasters in the meantime. It's been my first foray into Intarsia since the 1970s. It was never my favourite style of knitting even then.

I am really looking forward to knitting something else but I still have to finish the MIL's waistcoat, and I really ought to do that before I knit anything for me. I'm sorely tempted though so I've been keeping off Ravelry in case I see something I can't live without.

Books update later in the week hopefully.

Wednesday Update

2009-05-20T17:09:00.005+01:00

Hey, only two days late this week. I'm getting better.

Not much happening at the allotment over the weekend as it was rather wet, but the Evilpixie and I spent most of the day there today and got a lot done.

We built a compost bin -

And we built a cage to keep the pigeons off the lettuces -

In front of the cage there you can see my newly planted courgette plants and the broad beans we planted on Sunday (in the rain). The beans were a bit of an unplanned planting as they had been doing very nicely at home in large pots with plastic bags over the top. However on Saturday we had a chicken and bean related incident which resulted in one of my pots being reduced to a few sad stalks. The chooks then started to eye up the other pot and we had to take emergency action and relocate the beans to the allotment. If they ever figure out how to open the zip on my little plastic greenhouse (home to all my tomatoes, squashes, and other types of bean) I am sunk. Given that chickens are incredibly stupid - I should be OK. I did try pointing out to them that if they wanted to avoid the pot then stuffing themselves with beans was maybe not the best way to go about it.

Dovegreyreader alerted me via her wonderful blog about a project the Poetry Society are running. They want knitters to each knit a letter which will become the world's first giant knitted poem. It sounds like a good idea to me so I've signed up. The details are here if you'd like to take part too.

I'm progressing slowly with my various deadline knitting projects. One must be finished by next week which should be OK. The other is already overdue but must wait till the first is finished before I can get going on it. More details once they are safely with their respective recipients.

I've read a bit though. I've been horribly remiss about book blogging but here's what I've been reading. Lee Child's Nothing to Lose. Jack Reacher wanders into a small town in Colorado and gets promptly run out of town again charged with vagrancy. Jack of course wonders what they have to hide and there's nothing anyone can do to stop him opening that whole can of worms. If you've read a Lee Child before then you know what to expect - crisp plotting, a conspiracy or two and a bit of love interest for old Jack. It's all good stuff and this one is no different. I wouldn't want to read too many of these close together but now and again they just hit the spot.

Then I picked up A Letter of Mary by Laurie R King, the third in her Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series. By all reckoning I ought to hate these - historical crime novels, set in England, using a fictional character created by someone else, written by an American - but I love them. Sadly some of the series are out of print in the UK but I understand that Laurie King is working on a new one so perhaps we will see the backlist reprinted. I hope so, I've been picking these up in a piecemeal fashion as they are not easy to find here but I scored mightily over that weekend in Wales and bought three. I will have to ration myself and try not to rush on and read them one after another. Anyway this one is about the strange death of an archeologist friend of Mary, just after she has been to visit Mary and Sherlock in Sussex and has given Mary a mysterious scroll of papyrus. It's good strong stuff with plenty of period detail and a really authentic feel.

Hidden Depths by Ann Cleeves is one of her Northumberland novels, which I've not read before. I'm waiting for White Nights to come out in paperback (it does seem to have been a long time coming) and this is one of my Crime Reading Group selections this month so I thought it would fill a gap for me. It took a little while to get into this, in fact I nearly put it down about 20 pages in as it just hadn't grabbed me, but if it's for reading group (or a review copy) then I usually try and persevere and I was really glad I did in this case. Once I got involved with the plot and the characters I really liked it. I thought that the main detective Vera Stanhope was wonderful and although I wasn't entirely convinced by the plotting or the resolution, overall it was a hit. Certainly I would read another of the Northumberland books, though I still think I preferred the Shetland series.

I'm struggling through The Sweet Smell of Decay by Paul Lawrence. From the jacket and an initial quick scan of the first few pages I thought I would really like this but it has been tough going. The main character Harry Lytle is an odd fish and I can't seem to quite warm to him. It's a historical novel set in 17th century London, just after Charles Stuart has claimed the throne. A woman is brutally murdered in a church and Harry Lytle gets a letter from his father to say the woman was his cousin and he must find out who killed her. I'm just over halfway through now and I'm really not at all convinced. I'm not even quite sure why I don't like it, other than that Harry is a bizarre young man with some very odd ideas. I'm still trying with it but I'm not sure if I shall get to the end.

The other reading group selection for this month was not at all a book I would have chosen otherwise. It's An Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris. (I think our theme this month must be serial killers). Anyway this is about a girl, Harper, who was struck by lightening as a teenager and as a result can find dead bodies. It seems that they talk to her, so if the body is missing she can find it, or if she knows where the body is she can find out what killed them. I don't do paranormal as a rule, but one of the reasons for joining the reading group was to read different books so I've tried to approach it will an open mind. And actually, so far I'm enjoying it. Obviously it involved the suspension of a little bit of belief but the character of Harper is engaging and the relationship she has with her half-brother Tolliver is well-drawn. She is called to a small town in North Carolina by the local sheriff because several young boys have gone missing over the last few years and they're concerned that there might be a connection. Harper is attacked and injured just after finding the bodies all buried together on an abandoned property, forcing her to stick around while she recovers and so involving her in the investigation. I've not got to the end yet but so far it's been an enjoyable read and I'm looking forward to reading what happens.

Somewhere back in the mists of time just before I was ill I think, I also read Singing to the Dead by Caro Ramsay and I don't remember ever blogging about it. I did send a review over to Eurocrime though and I can report that the book was really good, that I thought the characters were all plump and well-rounded and that the plot had me fooled almost to the very end (which hardly ever happens). I believe I may have likened Caro Ramsay to Ian Rankin - she really is a good writer and I have very high hopes of this series.

Busy, Busy

2009-05-14T07:31:00.002+01:00

I said to my self at the start of the week that I would do a regular Monday update about the allotment, which makes sense as Sunday is the day we are most likely to get a lot done. However, here we are on Thursday and I haven't written it yet so I'm off to a good start.

Progress so far - when we got the allotment 2 weeks ago it had been roughly rotovated and looked not too bad on the surface. There are 3 large tree stumps however that the association say they will take out for us. These aside, the ground was fairly clear. So we started to dig. We got one corner dug over and planted a few potatoes just to get something going while we worked on the rest.

One corner has the remains of an old greenhouse under the surface, so every spade uncovers more bits of broken glass - this will take some clearing. There's an old concrete foundation from a shed - not a problem, we'll just site our own shed there when we get it. The rest of the plot, it turns out, was a bramble patch. Rotovating this has probably cut the roots up and distributed them everywhere, but since it had already been done once, we bit the bullet and rotovated the whole plot on Sunday. The soil looks quite good but is very stony and of course it's full of roots which all need to be dug out. So now we're in the middle of digging the plot over, section by section, and pulling out all the roots and stones - backbreaking work but it will all be worth it in the end.

The first weekend we had the plot Pete and the Evilpixie dug over a small section by the back fence and I have finally got some strawberry plants in there. That's all we have planted at the moment but here at home I have some peas and beans growing on in pots, so they can go up to the lottie when the ground is ready. I also have too many courgette plants and some squashes waiting to germinate. Rain is predicted for the next few days so progress will be slow this week - the ground is a bit on the clay side so it's almost impossible to dig when it's wet. Shame, as I have three days off in a row this weekend and we could have got a lot done if it was dry.

Another update on Monday (ish) and I'll try and get some photos - though bare earth is not terribly exciting!

Not Swine Flu but Still a Pig

2009-05-04T19:01:00.002+01:00

I have been laid low this week by a hacking cough and flu-like symptoms. I've not been to Mexico, or anywhere further than Wales recently so you can rest assured that it's just an irritating and inconvenient virus.

However said virus has robbed me of all desire to knit this week. I couldn't read either, found myself on the same sentence several times over. Over the weekend I lost my appetite (so unlike me) and, more disturbingly, my usual appreciation of a good cup of coffee (horror!).

I'm feeling better today thankfully and have managed a little light Lee Child (nothing too complicated) and some pasta bolognese. I may try some simple knitting later while the football is on.

I came round from my fuzzy state to find 53 unread posts in my Google Reader account which I am still catching up on. I am horribly behind with some of the reading I need to do this week and have some knitting with fast-approaching deadlines.

And then there's the allotment - news on this next post. Got to go - playing catch-up here.

Look What We've Got.....

2009-04-29T20:45:00.004+01:00

Here in all it's glory - our new allotment. It's just half a plot which will be plenty for us - more than enough work for the moment anyway. It already has a big apple tree and a gooseberry bush so we're on a winner before we've even started. I'll keep you posted with pics of our progress - first big digging day will be Sunday. We can't wait.

A Welsh Weekend

2009-04-28T16:42:00.005+01:00

We had a lovely trip to Wales last weekend.

Started off on Saturday in Hereford (yes, I know that's not in Wales), where we trawled the charity shops and had some coffee and I bought a couple of books on quilting in a secondhand bookshop. Then we proceeded westwards and landed in Hay-on-Wye, book capital of the universe, where we spent the rest of the day happilt mooching around, dodging the showers. The good thing about Hay is that when the rain starts there's always another bookshop you can pop into until the rain stops. We didn't buy much in Hay but we saw some lovely books. I did buy a copy of The Moor by Laurie R King, the next one I wanted to read in the Mary Russell series. We spent the night in Hay, had a good meal and a couple of local beers.

Sunday we went to Wonderwool in Builth Wells. I thought that the whole show was a little less inspiring than last year, but Wingham Woolwork were there, which was a first for them, and there was plenty to see, and plenty to buy. I was quite restrained and just bought a few things...

There's some Rainbow Merino and some Merino/Silk in lovely turquoise shades which I'm going to card together with a bit of Angelina (also in the picture) and spin some sparkly blue socks. They were from Wingham as was the space dyed green yarn on the left which is destined for weaving with some plain greens I already have. I also bought some Olive soap as I'm planning some felted wall hangings. In the middle of the picture is a bag of Corriedale from Freyalyn. I wasn't intending to buy this but the colours caught me unawares and I bought it by accident - beautiful shades of orange and green and purple and red which I'm going to card in a random way and spin for more socks. Top of the picture is some boucle loop mohair in three slighly different shades of blue/black which will also be woven into something, probably a scarf. That's all the fiber goodies but I also bought some buttons - fantastic silvery ones which I just love and had to have - I can't believe they were only a pound! And some wooden ones in natural and red and green, and some stitch markers - I don't know if you can see in the picture but they have chickens on them!

There's also a pack of miscellaneous plain buttons in oranges and greens which will be made into some jewellery when I have time. Last but not least I bought some sock blockers to replace my sad old coat-hanger ones which blocked your socks to different sizes. I have no excuse now with my lovely new wooden ones with sheep on the top.

That pretty much sums up my purchases. I did enjoy the show, but I think we might go to Woolfest instead next year. Pete was very disappointed in the Mid-Wales Mouthful Food Festival which was very small compared to last year and not nearly as interesting.

Back later this week for a book update and some interesting news!

In Which I Make a Terrible Confession......

2009-04-16T14:12:00.003+01:00

.......I've been doing this in secret for the last week. I am so ashamed. I didn't want to have to admit to you all but....I've been reading translated crime. What's more I've been reading translated Scandinavian crime. Even more shocking - I have been enjoying it.

Now is the time to come clean. This week I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

And liked it.

A stray copy came my way so I thought I'd have a little browse to see what all the fuss was about. Fifty pages in and I was totally hooked, couldn't put it down. Now, I know that I swore I would never touch a book in this genre ever again, but you know, I think I might just have to read at least two more - I'll have to finish the trilogy now won't I?

Astonishing Splashes of Colour

2009-04-02T15:00:00.007+01:00

I've been having a crafty week and I've been busy with the dyepots.

Most of the fibre is still damp - too damp to plait and photograph, but I also dyed some commercial yarn - some Aran weight stuff I had lurking in the stash.

The colours are a little washed out in this photo - they're much more vibrant in real life. I'm very happy with the colours - I'm calling this The Way Through the Woods. There are two identical 50g skeins here and I also have a couple more skeins using the same colours but a bit more of the green - there's more yarn in the skeins too - photos and weights etc when it's dry. I think they will be thick wintery socks.

Please note that I have actually tried to get some decent photographs today - instead of just throwing the yarn/knitting/book on the nearest worksurface and snapping away, today I have actually got the light-tent out and tried to get a decent shot with no clutter/mess/drying underwear in the background. I did vow to myself (though possibly not on the blog) that I would try and improve the standard of my pictures on the blog this year, something I have utterly failed at so far. Given that I have an excellent camera, a light-tent and some pretty good software I really ought to take better photos than I do.

While I'm on the subject of colour here is the next Simple Yet Effective shawl, started last week and progressing nicely -

I know it doesn't look much but the colours are fairly accurate in this photo and you really can't see the shawlyness until it's finished.

I decided a couple of weeks ago that my wardrobe was in dire straits and desperately needed an input of a few new things. One of them will be an incarnation of this -

It looks like the type of garment that will cover a multitude of occasions and could be dressed up with linen trousers or dressed down with jeans. Now I just need to decide on a fabric!

Booky Update

2009-03-28T18:08:00.008Z

I've been doing a lot of reading this week - I've been back at work for a few days now - and I've finally finished The Given Day by Dennis Lehane which fulfilled all it's early promise and was a really good book with a fascinating storyline and interesting characters, plus as you would expect from Lehane it was very well written. I took my time reading it as I wanted it to last. It's the story of a young policeman, from a family of policemen, in Boston just after the First World War. It's a time of strife in Boston with riots and strikes and much poverty and Lehane weaves a lot of historical detail into the plot. It's just wonderful.

Meantime I've fitted in A Thousand Bones by P J Parrish - a serial killer crime novel in the Northern US - Illinois or Michigan I think it was - almost Canada but not quite. It was one of those books that I picked up on a whim, not expecting anything great. I'd actually picked it up because I thought it was set in Florida, but it turned out that, though it had book-end chapters set in the Sunshine State, all the main action took place Up North. The main protagonist was a rookie female cop, desperate for a chance to do something other than make tea and hold hands. The plot revolved around some bones found by a dog in the woods - did they belong to a particular missing girl or did they come from multiple skeletons? Was there a murderer in that small Northern town or had a hiker got lost and died? I liked it. In addition to being well-plotted and carefully written it posed some interesting ethical questions along the way and didn't solve everything in a trite or obvious way. I'd certainly read another of these.

I moved on to The Chemistry of Death by Simon Beckett. He'd been on my mental must-read list for a while. Customers in the shop kept raving about him and he's now on his fourth (or fifth?) novel so I thought I'd better try one. The Chemistry of Death is the first one and I have to say that I found it a bit clunky in places. There was a little too much emphasis on the back story of Dr David Hunter - former forensic anthropologist, now humble GP in a little village in Norfolk. There was also a tendency to try and educate the reader just a little too much about all the "Chemistry". It just felt a little heavy-handed in places. Still, it was his first novel and he very nearly had me fooled about the identity of the murderer, I only just cottoned on right at the end, so I'd certainly try another one and see if he managed a slightly lighter touch as he gains in experience.

I've been dipping in and out of Sherlock Holmes in America - an anthology of short stories by leading American writers. As with all of these things there are some that work better than others, but mostly these are pretty good so far. More on this as I get more read.

Just as I finished The Chemistry of Death, what should flop onto my doormat but a review copy of The Death Maze by Ariana Franklin. You may recall that I raved about it's predecessor Mistress of the Art of Death and I've been looking forward to reading this one which is out in paperback next week. Looking around the blogosphere opinion appears to be divided about whether or not it's better than the last one, but all I can say is that I think it's great so far and I've only got a hundred or so pages to go so it's keeping me pretty hooked.

Astrid and other shawls

2009-03-18T17:40:00.006Z

I promised you all a photo of Astrid, now that she is finished, so here she is in all her glory -

And in greater detail -

The techie bit - this is Astrid from Norah Gaughan Book One, knit in Jaeger Alpaca, unknown shade (from the stash). I love this shawl, which is just the right size to sit around the shoulders and fasten with a pin on one side. I might knit another in a different colour / texture.

Before I do that though, I accidentally cast on and knitted a Simple Yet Effective Shawl - I couldn't help it - they were all over the web tempting me. Here's mine. I don't know what the colourway is but it's in Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn, bought in Florida last year.

And because this turned out to be just the perfect no-brain knitting project, suitable for knitting while watching TV, talking, drinking wine etc, I finished it and went straight out and bought some more Noro to knit another one.

That was on my day out to North Staffordshire yesterday when I visited P2Tog, fine knitting shop near Newcastle-under-Lyme; passed briefly through Newcastle and on to Stoke on Trent where they have a fantastic independent book shop - Webberleys, and a great fabric shop - Abakhan Fabrics and a number of charity shops (which were sadly disappointing in their wares) and a new Starbucks which wasn't there last time I was in Stoke. I came back via Stone for more charity shops but the charity gods were not shining upon me and the pickings were slim.

Today I have a cold and am feeling very rough - hence there has been very little gardening done, which was today's allotted task, and just a little bit of knitting because my head aches and my fingers are stiff. Hopefully I will be feeling better tomorrow. The spare parts for my spinning wheel have finally turned up so I shall try and get it back up and running tomorrow, so I can get a bit of spinning done before the end of the week.

Sunny Sunday

2009-03-15T15:06:00.004Z

Don't you just love a spring Sunday when the sun's shining?

For us it meant a trip to a car boot sale, on the way to visit the MIL. Sunny mornings are just made for excellent booty and the good people of Oxford were very obliging with their loot.

Today's little haul is pictured above and comprises a cone of wool/alpaca blend 3ply yarn in a pleasing heathery beige, 25 vintage silvery buttons and a necklace of unidentified black stones strung on black cord.

The books are Practical Knitting Illustrated (undated but published by Odhams in the 1940s) - full of wonderful patterns for everything you could think of and then some more; Pulp Frictions - a collection of hard-boiled detective stories from the likes of Chandler, Hammett and MacDonald, edited by the sadly late Peter Haining; Good Housekeeping Knitting - a pocket guide to over 90 beautiful patterns - and just the right size to slip in a knitting bag for when you're out and about; Depths by Henning Mankell - not a Wallander but a thriller set in 1914; and finally there is Alice Starmore's Fair Isle Knitting Handbook. When you take into account the three pots of herbs and the pile of bamboo stakes for the garden it all adds up to a very successful morning's bargain hunting.

I've finished reading The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths, proof kindly supplied by Karen at Eurocrime. I shall be sending her a full review this week but in the meantime let me just tell you that I thought it was great. Fantastic characters, good plot, wonderfully atmospheric setting. It was a great example of just what I was saying in my last post about how I don't mind not being fooled by the plot if the other stuff is good. I had seen the ending coming but I was enjoying the book and the company of the characters so much that I didn't care. Highly recommended.

Astrid is finished. Photos tomorrow (probably) but she's lovely and met with much approval when I wore her to spinning group on Friday.

I'm off work for a few days now so there will be much gardening, housework (yuck!) and probably a trip or two to report.

Canadian Literature and the Miners' Strike

2009-03-09T11:21:00.009Z

My reading this week has been mainly based in Canada for some reason.

I started off the week with a crime novel - The Calling by Inger Ashe Wolf. A serial killer is crossing Canada preying on the elderly, "helping" those who are already dying. No-one even realises he's doing this until he makes a mistake in the small town where Hazel Micaleff is in charge of the police. I liked the main character in this - she's in her sixties, divorced and living with her elderly mother. This is not a profile that would fit most fictitious detectives. The book was only okay however - the plot was a trifle on the weak side. It seemed obvious to me where the story was heading but I thought that it must be a bluff and there would be a twist at the end. I was disappointed however - the expected twist never came, leaving me with a feeling that I'd been cheated. I know that it's difficult to fool me in a crime novel - I've read so much crime fiction that I can spot a misdirection or a red herring at twenty paces, so I can forgive an author who doesn't quite manage to blindside me provided the plot or the character or the setting is original enough. This, for all it's promising start, original serial killer slant and just-the-other-side-of-middle-aged detective, failed to impress me in the end.

I stuck with Canada however for my next read as I'd got hold of a proof of the first novel by a Canadian writer called Shandie Mitchell. Under This Unbroken Sky is about a family homesteading on the prairies in the 1930s, about children learning how tough life is, about how some people can take the strain of that kind of life and some can't. It's a wonderful novel. It's not due for publication here until August but I can heartily recommend it.

For a bit of a change, because I had been meaning to read it for quite a while, and because this week was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the beginning of the miners' strike, I started GB84 by David Peace. It's typical Peace style - much jumping around between characters, different fonts, etc etc. It's harsh on the police, on the NCB, the government, Special Branch and the unions. I'm not finished it yet, I'm just about to hit the Battle of Orgreave, so there's a long way to go and Peace is just getting warmed up. I wonder if he ever gets the urge to write something fluffy.

Back to Canada then in the meantime for a bit of respite from at that eighties angst and violence. Three Day Road is set just after the end of the First World War. Niska, the last Canadian Medicine woman to live off the land, collects her badly injured and morphine-addicted nephew from the train which has brought him back from the Great War. It's a three day journey by kayak to get him home. I'm thinking I'm going to like this one just as much as I liked Through Black Spruce.

I've finally finished knitting all those circles for Astrid. Here are the final ones blocking, flanked by the pile of ready-blocked circles.

Now I just have to lay them out in the right order and stitch them together - all 52 of them!

I was slightly distracted mid-week by the sudden urge to knit a Simple Yet Effective shawl (Ravelry link). I blame my fellow bloggers for my failing - you know who you are.

The shawl requires a ball of Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn - well, there just happened to be one in my possession, though I had started to knit those Hypnosis socks with it. Gribbit. They were soon frogged and the shawl started. It's perfect TV knitting so this week it has been the accompaniment to Red Riding on CH4, to almost a whole series of the Sopranos on DVD and this morning to the final part of Being Human. So much great TV drama, so little time. Better get some more Noro sock yarn!

Serial Killer Fix

2009-02-27T17:16:00.005Z

Much as I've enjoyed many of the books I've read over the lst month or so, something has been missing. I've been in need of a good serial killer fix. Now, some of you may disagree, but as far as I'm concerned no-one does serial killer fiction like the Americans. I like British crime fiction, I like a bit of European crime fiction now and again, but for a really good serial killer you need to cross the pond.

So, I picked up a little selection on Sunday at a car boot sale - all authors I'd never read before - and settled down for a good fix of serial mayhem.

The first book off the pile, though it looked like a crime novel from the cover, turned out to be a romantic novel in disguise. The Murder Ballad by Jane Hill (she's British!) was a sheep in wolf's clothing. It was about a woman who meets an American folk singer, marries him with undue haste and moves to the backwoods of North Carolina with him. Unsurprisingly he turns out to have a few skeletons in his closet. It wasn't a bad book, and once I was resigned to the fact that there was ne'er a serial killer in sight, I kept going and enjoyed it in a half-hearted sort of way. Having just watched and loved the BBC's Folk Americana series I was interested in the old ballads that were mentioned throughout the plot, but you never got all the words or all the story. If you wanted to read a better book about traditional music (though these are set in Tennessee, not Carolina) then you should take a look at Sharyn McCrumb's Ballad series, and in particular, The Songcatcher (which seems sadly to be out of print in the UK). It charts the passing down of a song though the generations of a family. Much better fare.

Still on my quest for sequential murder I picked up The Calling by Inger Ash Wolfe. This is actually set in Canada, not the US of A, but at least it has a killer, and he's onto his fourth (and I'm not even half way yet) so that definitely makes it a series. I'm liking the main character who is, unlike most detectives in this genre, a lady in her sixties living with her ageing mother. So far so good. This is different enough to pass muster, but it has those familiar markers common to the genre - mysterious killer (probably a sociopath), experienced police chief, rookie cop. Suits me.

Books in the Post

2009-02-18T13:48:00.004Z

The postman has been busy this week bringing a selection of lovely books to Austin Towers.

First there is Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden (as recommended by dovegreyreader). I'm still researching the First World War (for the book I am currently not writing) so a tale about a Native American man's experiences of Ypres and the Somme is right up my street.

Next on the pile is Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen. This a re-working of his Watson Legend trilogy which had been out of print for a while. It was billed in the Times as not just a Great American Novel but a Great Florida Novel. How could I resist. It's not published in the UK and was a bit tricky to get hold of. I had to resort to eBay in the end.

Finally there's a great quilting book called 101 Fabulous Rotary-Cut Quilts which is an absolute mine of great block patterns and quilt patterns and inspiration.

Before I get to these though I'm still working through The Given Day, slowly, savouring it, making it last. It's not too often I grant a book that luxury. Review books need to be read quickly, notes taken and thoughts recorded and there are always too many more waiting on the TBR pile for most books to be treasured like that, but every now and again I find one that warrants this treatment.

Because The Given Day is a mighty tome and too heavy to carry around for day to day reading I've got through a few others. I started with The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I know, everyone else in the world has already read it, and I'm way behind you all. It was still worth it. An excellent little volume. I've already passed it on to someone else to read, who happened to mention that they would like to, the day I'd finished it. Luckily I still had it in my bag and could oblige.

For a bit of a change I slotted in A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian which had languished on the TBR pile for a long time. It was interesting and amusing but I'm not sure I shall rush to read Two Caravans (which is also in the TBR pile).

I'm now halfway through Bleeding Heart Square, just out in paperback. It's very good, as you would expect from Andrew Taylor. More when I'm finished it.

Knitting in Circles

2009-02-11T16:48:00.005Z

All my knitting this week seems to have had a circular theme. Firstly I am almost finished the circular yoke cardigan - just the button bands to go. As the main body of the cardy is black this will have to wait for a day with more light - I just looked out the window and it's snowing again! That wasn't forecast.

Anyway here is the almost finished cardigan with the bands of colour at the yoke -

It's mostly knitted in Stylecraft Charleston with the yoke in random stripes of Wendy Fusion in Berry and some handspun in various shades of green. It's very heavy and rather on the large side making it the perfect sweater for snuggling into on cold days. I'm planning to put odd vintage buttons on the front.

Also on the needles at the moment is Astrid from Norah Gaughan 1 (picture from the Berroco website). Here is one of the large circles blocking.

There will be 14 of these large circles (so far I've only done 4), and about 35 others in small and medium which are all stitched together to make the scarf. I'm knitting it in some old Jaeger Alpaca in a lovely petrol blue. It may take some time as knitting the circles is a bit fiddly - the large circle needs three different sizes of needle!

Next up will be a Mobius shawl from Cat Bordhi's Treasury of Magical Knitting. This book was a Christmas present from Pete and this will be the first thing I'm going to knit from it. I'm planning to use that purple handspun from the fibre I got from Gnat and Sheryl in Florida, mixed in with some odd strands of other stuff to give it a bit of extra texture and pizzazz.

Today while knitting I've been listening to C J Sansom's Shardlake series. I'm on Dissolution at the moment and enjoying it very much. I have read the book before but I'm still enjoying the audio (though it is abridged).

This is Getting Old..

2009-02-07T18:17:00.005Z

I'm getting twitchy from sitting on my butt for three days. Ordinarily I'd be happy for the chance to sit around doing not much for three days but when it's forced on me and I really can't go anywhere, or do anything very much, it's really not much fun.

So, to alleviate the boredom here are some pics the Evilpixie took of Bubba and the chooks in the snow the other day.

Bubba has got over his fear of the hens and now seems to think they are small dogs - he will insist on sniffing their arses.

Here's the snowman she built, very fetching in a handknitted Noro hat. Note that it has no nose. It had a mushroom (we had no carrots) but Bubba ate it.

Here's Bubba looking very handsome. He's been limping a bit this week. We hope this is just a touch of arthritis brought on by the cold and not anything more sinister.

Marooned on my sofa I have started the new Dennis Lehane, The Given Day. So far so good. The opening chapter, about Babe Ruth and a scratch baseball game with some negroes by a railroad track is fantastic and would stand up as a short story in its own right. I can't wait to see what Lehane does with it as the book progresses.

Just Sitting

2009-02-06T18:33:00.002Z

Yesterday, as the weather was bad I decided I would take the bus to work. This turned out to be a big mistake as I slipped on a patch of ice on the way to the bus stop and twisted my ankle.

Today (and most of yesterday) I have been on the sofa with my foot raised. It hurts to walk and I can't drive. So I'm marooned in the house again. I don't have to go to work again until Tuesday though so I'm just resting the ankle and doing a bit of knitting and a bit of reading and a bit of netsurfing on the laptop. Photos of the kntting etc tomorrow as it's dark now and the camera is upstairs. Going upstairs is too painful just for the camera!

I've had enough of the crap weather now, so can it please go away.

Brought To You By the Letter A

2009-02-02T18:07:00.005Z

I have been randomly allocated the letter A by Roo over at Roo Knits so here are a few things I like beginning with that lovely letter.

Apples - most versatile of fruits, loved by me in pies, cakes, on it own and turned into cider.

Alpacas - they're cute and they produce great fibre - what's not to love. Here are some of the Shi'Loh Alcapas I met in Florida last year.

Androids - I've always had a thing for androids - from Marvin the Paranoid to Data from Star Trek. I'm a geek, I admit it.

Acorns - not sure where this came from but I love the look of these and the fact that whole oak trees grow from them. Perfectly packaged little nuts.

America - Yes, I love all things American - the way of life, the climate (well, in some parts anyway), but mostly the people. Americans never do anything by halves. They just dive right in and immerse themselves in everything while we Brits are just dipping our toes in. People with great enthusiasm (bordering on obsession) are a delight to me.

Aran Jumpers - remind me of when I was small and we used to wear the ones my mother knitted for us. Now I appreciate the skill involved (and still love the warmth).

Aberdeen - my home town. Actually I only lived there from the age of eighteen until I was about twenty five, so only for about 7 years, but all of my family originate there and it if I were ever to move back to Scotland that's the area I would move to. The Granite City, the Garden City. Catch it on a good day - in the sunshine - and it's beautiful.

Monday Monday

2009-01-26T10:04:00.003Z

Just a quick update.

Not much knitting has been done over the weekend, due partly to my inability to count. I sat down yesterday to knit a few circles of Astrid and duly cast on. 84 stitches it said. So I divided it in my head and cast on three needles with 16 stitches on each needle. Duh. After two attempts to get the pattern to work ( and rather a lot of swearing) when it was obviously wrong I realised what I'd done. I'm not sure quite what has happened to my brain these days. It seems to have turned to mush. I gave up on knitting for the evening and finished my book instead.

I'm storming through The Red Riding Quartet by David Peace. I finished 1977 on Friday and 1980 yesterday. I wouldn't normally read two books by the same author one after another. I like to take a break in between. But these are very much in the same vein, and they follow on after one another as halves of the same story. Both were excellent and I'm looking forward to 1983 but I will just find time to fit in this before I start that.

Book Update

2009-01-21T09:44:00.006Z

I have been sadly remiss in my postings bookwise this month, being distracted by all that time off and all that craft stuff.

But I have been reading. I started off the new Year with a surefire favourite. Without Fail by Lee Child. I've been reading his books all out of order, so this is one of the early ones. This one came before he could tell the time without the aid of a watch! It was quite a surprise to me - I was so used to him needing no such instrument that I was quite taken aback when he looked at his watch in one chapter. Anyway, that'll teach me not to read them in the right order. So, what was the book like. Well you know what to expect with a Lee Child - snappy plotting, great main characters, bit of love interest and everyone wants to get Jack Reacher. This one is no exception. He gets summoned to Washington by the Secret Service to check out their security on the Vice President Elect. Seems there's someone doesn't think he should be the VP-Elect. Who you gonna call? I found all the presidential security stuff fascinating, and there's quite a bit of backstory to old Jack himself - all about his brother. which I also liked as you don't normally get much on Jack's history or family. A really good thriller that does just what it says on the tin.

I moved on after that to Salt River which the final part of James Sallis' John Turner trilogy. It's a fine piece of writing, very much character-driven rather than plot-driven and I loved it, which may surprise some of you as I usually prefer a plot-driven book. This is just so beautifully written though that it just sucks you in. It was one of those books that you read slowly because you don't want it to end and there is no greater compliment I can give a book than that.

Next up was a complete change of time and subject. Company of Liars by Karen Maitland was one of the Waterstones New Writers promotion last year and also one of their Books of the Month. I do love the cover which totally sums up what the book is about. The story revolves around a group of people thrown together by chance, travelling across 14th Century England in search of work and to escape the plague which is on their heels. It's narrated by Camelot who sells fake relics. The other members of the company are a magician, a musician and his apprentice, a pregnant woman and her husband, a story teller and a strange white-haired girl. I'm not sure what to say about this book. I was enjoying the story as it meandered along but it was meandering and it didn't seem to be really going anywhere, much as the band of wanderers were going nowhere really. I kind of expected there to be a big revelation at the end, and while there were several smaller revelations I had already seen them all coming so there were no surprises. The plot seems to lose its way towards the end and fizzled out in a disappointing way. It was a shame as I'd been enjoying it but I felt let down by the end. Maybe this is a result of reading so much crime fiction. You come to expect a certain level of resolution and a certain level of tension at the denouement and this just didn't deliver in that department. This was a first novel and I'm hoping there will be better from her in the future. Her next is called The Owl Killers and is also set in the 14thC. It will be out in March and I shall certainly take a look.

I'm now reading The Man in the Moss by Phil Rickman, which is one of his more supernatural titles, not a Merrily Watkins mystery. And 1977 by David Peace. More on these as I get further into them. On the basis of the first few pages though I'm preferring 1977 to The Man in the Moss and I'm thinking that 1977 is a better book than 1974 which bodes well for the books to come in that series.

It Was Nice While It Lasted

2009-01-13T14:23:00.007Z

I'm back at work tomorrow after my couple of weeks off so I thought I'd better update you on the crafty stuff I've been doing.

I started off the break with a nasty dose of startitis and I cast on three different knitting projects in the first week. I blame the cold weather as I suddenly felt the need to knit a cardigan, a shawl and a pair of mittens simultaneously.

The cardigan is of my own devising with some (quite a lot of) help from Ann Budd's miraculous Handy Book of Sweater Patterns. It will (hopefully) be a round yoke cardigan and the main body will be in Sirdar Charleston. It's a funny yarn - quite weighty and warm and with frizzy bits sticking out all over - sort of like what you might get if you crossed a mohair with a yak - but totally manmade. It feels nice anyway and it was in the stash so I feel virtuous. Actually all the things I cast on were from the stash (and hence were either bootsale finds or bought in some sale or other) so I've been very frugal. The yoke is destined to be some handspun from Artists Palette Yarns - merino in a lovely foresty dark grren with hints of yellow and paler greens. There's a possibility it might disappear into the black and if that's the case I shall intersperse the rows with something lighter - a heathery purple probably. I've knit the body and am halfway up one sleeve so it's going well so far. I've spun the green stuff too as you can see from the photo, despite ongoing wheel problems. I went to the first meeting of my spinning group since Christmas and was merrily spinning away (slightly lopsidedly) and the other connector snapped too. Luckily there's a new set already on order for me. I managed to shorten the connectors and cobble the wheel together but doing so has changed the angle you put pressure on the treadles and the wheel now slowly walks itself across the floor when I'm spinning. Grrrrr.

Anyway, also on the needles is a pair of Snowflake Mitts (Ravelry link). I blame Jo for this temptation as I first saw them on her blog and knew right away I wanted to knit them. I'm using some Rowanspun 4ply in a range of greens and neutrals and while I don't like them as much as I do the original blue mitts, I think the mossy green effect is very nice (plus I didn't have enough shades of blue in the stash).

Finally my third project is Astrid from Norah Gaughan Book One. I believe I may have said in my New Year Would Like To List that I wanted to knit more of Norah's patterns and here I am already on the first. The yarn is some Jaeger Alpaca in a beautiful petrol blue (from the stash, she says smugly). So far I have done 6 of the circles. There are about 50 altogether and they are a bit fiddly to do so it may take me a bit of time. The alpaca is also possibly not the perfect yarn for this as it is sticky and the large circles involve several dropped stitches which are allowed to run - they need a bit of encouragement in this yarn!

The other thing I've been doing is quilting. When I was in Florida I bought a jelly roll (Moda Civil War Crossing) from Rainbow's End in Dunedin. And when I bought my new sewing machine last week I thought I'd have a little go at making the quilt I'd been planning. This would be my first quilt ever and my first large project since an ill-fated patchwork skirt in the 1970s. The new machine really made a difference and while I'm by no means an expert yet, and some of the piecing leaves a lot to be desired, here is the quilt top -

I love the colours, especially the faded blues. It still has a border to be added and then it needs binding and quilting but I'm really pleased with it so far. The pattern is Garden Trellis from Jelly Roll Quilts . I only started it on Friday so as to test the new machine. I think if I was to do it again I'd choose a pattern that didn't use bias cut squares as they were a bit tricky to handle for a relative beginner (the pattern did warn of this, but I chose it anyway!). Next up though, apart from the ongoing blocks for the sampler quilt (I think I'm still only at block 4 of 75) will be something bright and modern.

Definitely Not a Luddite...

2009-01-09T17:57:00.002Z

I have on my desk the Yarn Harlot's page-a-day calendar called Never Not Knitting and yesterday she was espousing sympathy with old Ned Ludd, knitter and smasher of that heinous object the knitting machine.

I'd have to say that although I love my spinning wheel and prefer to hand-knit over machine knitting, I'm not in agreement with her. You see I'm a lazy crafter. I like to get my crafting materials when they're ready to use. Not for me the bags of filthy, smelly, just off the sheep fleece. I like my fibre all clean and combed and preferably in a nice pretty colour - all ready for me to spin with. Of course I can wash a fleece and card it if I need to, I just choose not to. I can even dye it if I want, but why go to all that trouble when there's usually someone more talented and with more time on their hands who can do it for me.

When I sit down to spin (or to knit, or quilt or weave) I want all the enjoyment of the craft without all the hard work. If I've only got half an hour to spend I want to be spinning - not up to the elbows in greasy water! So I'm thankful for all the machines - the washers, carders, combers, blenders and industrial dye-baths that produce the fibre I like to spin with.

Agree with the Luddites - never!

Things I've Learned This Week

2009-01-08T14:22:00.006Z

While marooned in the house this week by weather and the need to recuperate from the minor op I had on Monday I have learned a few things.

1. Chickens don't like snow.........

2. Chickens have no idea of portion control........

All our chicks are roughly the same size and age, though they are different breeds / hybrids. One seems to be under the impression that it's crossed with an ostrich.

3. The internet is an instrument of Satan and I have no will power. I bought a new sewing machine. Honestly, I was just looking, just thinking about maybe, possibly, at some time in the future, replacing the sturdy old workhorse I have been using for the last twenty five years, (which has a cracked case and only does basic stitches.) And my finger must have slipped because a brand new shiny machine arrived this morning - and it can do things I didn't even know sewing machines could do! Can't post about it now - too busy playing with it.

PS the scattered bodies in the chicken photo are not roadkill or even henkill but Bubba's abandoned toys.

Vintage Knitting Books

2009-01-07T15:30:00.007Z

As I've been sorting through my books I've come across a number of fascinating vintage knitting and craft titles.

From the bottom of the pile upwards they are - The Pictorial Guide to Modern Home Needlecraft, published by Odhams in 1946. This is a lovely book (with great endpapers - see left) covering all kinds of tailoring and is a must for the dressmaker.

Modern Needlework in 600 Pictures dates from 1937 and covers much of the same ground but is full of great photographs which explain everything in great detail. It's really good for explaining how sleeves are set in and all that technical stuff!

The Knitter's Craft by James Norbury was published in 1950. It has a great picture on the endpapers of Wensleydale Knitters dated 1814 (see right) and apart from some great tuition at the beginning has some wonderful vintage patterns.

The next two are both Odhams titles - Knitted Garments for All and Modern Knitting Illustrated. Neither of then are dated but they seem to be from the early 1940s. Both contain a multitude of patterns - everything from Fair Isle Mitts to a Vest and Pantie Set and some great Camiknickers.

Then we come to Mary Thomas. I've got Mary Thomas's Knitting Book and Mary Thomas's Book of Knitting Patterns - both of these are excellent books. I think you could pay a lot for early edition of these in nice condition, but mine are reprints and well-loved (that's bookseller speak for tatty). The patterns are great though and they both include photos of early knitting history.

The next book on the pile is in a very sad state indeed. It's Fleming's How to Teach Needlework. This is quite a rare little volume, undated but the preface is dated 1887. I guess if it was in good condition it could be valuable. Mine is not at all in good condition. It has handwritten notes and patterns scrawled on the endpapers and in the margins and patterns cut out from magazines pasted over some of the pages. The lady who owned it was obviously a knitter as the knitting patterns are pasted over all the sewing pages! I love it. As a piece of social history it's just superb.

Finally perching on top of all that lot is the beautifully pocketsized Encyclopedia of Needlework by Th. De Dillmont. My copy is a little olive cloth bound hardback, published by S. N. Cooke of Birmingham but not dated. I've had a little look and I can't see when it was published. It covers all kinds of needlework from embroidery and tapestry to knitting and crochet. It's just the most delightful little book - it fits just right in your palm and begs to be read. Wonderful.

Most of these books have been out of print for a very long time but secondhand editions are mostly available at very reasonable prices from www.abebooks.co.uk (or www.abebooks.com if you're over the pond.) I'll continue to collect vintage craft books whenever I find them (at a reasonable price!) and I'll update you with any finds.