Knitting and Books Update (as promised)

So here is the promised update on book and knitting activity.

I went to check on the list to the right of this post to see what I'd been reading last time I posted and of the five books listed I am not actively reading any of them. They all reside in various states of incompleteness down the side of the bed (except Atonement, which is I fear hope lost forever, eaten perhaps by the dust buffalo that roam under the bed.) I feel therefore that a new start is perhaps required so next time I post I will erase the offending list and start again with books I am actually reading. Perhaps I need a new list at the bottom of books that I started but never finished. I should say that some of this is not the fault of the books themselves, or at least not the fault of the writing - I was really enjoying The Book Thief, but I have it in hardback and it's such a large heavy book that I find it impossible to read in bed and it's way too heavy to carry around. Consequently I am forever starting other books in its place. Atonement has no such excuse.



So, if I'm not reading those, what have I been reading. Well, I started An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upson, which is set in 1930s London theatreland and features Josephine Tey. Alas, I have abandoned this also. I'm not quite sure why, and it's possible that I may yet go back to it. It was quite enjoyable in a cosy sort of way, but it just wasn't gripping me. I think that while it was well-written, and as far as I could tell fairly well-plotted (though I hadn't got to the denoument of course) it just wasn't my sort of book. I'm feeling bad now for not finishing it. Perhaps I'll give it another go.


I did finish The Awakening by Kate Chopin. This was a classic that had eluded me. I have to confess that I'd never heard of Kate Chopin, but I picked up a couple of OU English Lit textbooks at a carboot sale the other week and when I flicked through them, this was one of the books that was studied. It's available in a lovely Dover Thrift Edition so I splashed out and bought myself a copy - a new one - not even secondhand! It was interesting, but I guess I just don't read enough of that sort of literature to be able to critique it properly. I can see that it could have caused quite a sensation when it was first published - a woman leaving her husband and setting up in her own house - how shocking!


Back on familiar ground I tackled The Watchman by Robert Crais. It's one of the Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novels, which I much prefer to any of the stand-alone thriller's he's written. This one is mostly about Joe Pike, and a woman he is trying to keep safe so she can give evidence. Great stuff.



Then from 21st Century California I hitched a ride on the Tardis to 12th Century Cambridge for The Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin. This is a first novel about a woman doctor (rare in itself in the 12th C.) who specialises in "reading" the dead. She is sent to Cambridge to solve a series of brutal child murders, with her companions - a Jew and a Saracen. These three travelling together cause a stir even before they start to uncover evil deeds in the heart of Cambridge. I really, really liked this. The main character, Amelia, is wonderful as she finds herself in an unfamilar situation and with unfamiliar feelings arising. Watching her grow throughout the book and discover herself is just great. It's a fascinating setting with good characters and I'm looking forward to the next one in the series, which is called The Death Maze.


Somewhere in the middle of all that I also read the new Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden. I liked her first novel, The House at Riverton (quite the best of last year's Richard and Judy books) and I liked this one almost as much. A light read, but a good tale, well told and with an intriguing narrator.


While I'm on the subject of R&J, their summer booklist is usually light on crime but this year has two, one of which I have read - No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay. I think this may have slipped through the blogging net somehow as I don't recall writing about it at the time, but it was OK. Quite an interesting proposition - a girl wakes up one moring to discover that all of her family have disappeared in the night. There is no trace of them and she is left not knowing whether they were abducted and killed, or if they just up and left her. In either case she still wonders why she was left behind. Now she's grown-up and married with a daughter and the past is starting to catch up with her. As I recall it was quite well-written and the plot didn't go the way I expected it to. This is normally a good thing, but I seem to remember thinking that it would have been better if he (she?) had written it the way I wanted it to go! Anyway it's worth a read if you like American thrillers.

I'm now reading Blood Lines by Grace Monroe. This is the second in a series, the first of which I reviewed for Eurocrime last year sometime. I've just started it, so it's a bit early to tell, but I think it may be a very irritating book. More later in the week.


I think that's it for book news. Now knitting. There is hardly any knitting news. If you have been patiently wading through all the book twaddle in hope of a knitting disaster I apologise. Icarus progresses along slowly. I am almost at the end of the plain bit, I'm on the second skein of yarn and have threaded all the beads (and quite a few extras) onto the yarn ready to knit them into place. This has slowed progress considerably as I have to keep shuffling them down the yarn at the end of each row. I have finished the Power of Three socks, but I haven't sewn in the ends yet, so I haven't photographed them. They're not very exciting anyway - just another pair of Plain Jane socks.


I do have big spinning news - the surprise payment of a little bonus at work has enabled me to buy this -

Isn't it lovely. It's a Lendrum wheel and comes with no less than 4 different flyers. (That means I can spin all kinds of yarns from big chunky ones to very fine laceweight stuff - in case any non-spinners were wondering). I bought it from a member of my spinning group and I love it. Here's a little close up of all the beautiful maple leaves running around the wheel -

I spun my first yarn on her over the weekend and here it is still on the bobbin -

Finally, I feel I must convey my sincere apologies to the people of Spain. You see I have tipped them to beat Italy in the quarter-final of Euro 2008 tonight. My record so far in the tournament is not good. Way back in the qualifying rounds I was supporting England and Scotland, neither of whom even qualified. Once the tournament started I plumped for Romania, who went out at the first stage. Croatia were my next victim, and they went out in their quarter final. Last night I was knitting my orange jumper in support of the mighty Holland, to no avail. I'm afraid that I am the kiss of death to any team. If Spain lose tonight I'm expecting the German manager to be on the phone begging me not to support them.

A Busy Week

It's been a busy week here at Austin Towers.

There have been birthdays to celebrate and things going on which haven't left a lot of time for reading or knitting.


The Evilpixie turned 18 last week, and is now officially an adult. I am left wondering just where exactly all those years have gone.


Pete's birthday is tomorrow but we already had his present which was a day out to the BBC Good Food Show Summer at the NEC on Thursday. We went on the train so we could fully partake of all the free samples of wine, cider, sloe gin. We ate quite a lot too. A good day.


On Saturday we toddled off to the Three Counties Show at Malvern where we saw a great array of chickens, goats, sheep, ducks and some wonderful Gloucester Old Spot piglets, plus merchandise of all kinds. We watched the White Helmets Motorcycle Display Team do complicated and dangerous things on motorbikes, we watched the wool handling competitions and the sheep shearing competitions and a gundog scurry. It was a very hot day (not forecast to be that hot!) and we both got a little bit sunburned. I was very bad at taking photos but here are some Badger-Faced Welsh Mountain sheep being judged....


This little chap was being shown for the first time and he wasn't at all keen.

We had a great time at the show and would recommend it to anyone. Unfortunately there were no alpaca at the show this year - something to do with the dreaded blue tongue, I think, but the breeders were there and I bought a little fibre to spin in a lovely pale caramel shade.

Today I have been indulging in my latest obsession which is quilting. I suddenly got it into my head that I wanted to make a quilt. (I am blaming Jane and Lene for this.) I was first drawn to it by the flashy Kaffe Fassett colours on Jane's blog, but when I did a bit of reading and acquired a few books and magazines I decided that what I really wanted was a proper old-fashioned traditional quilt. (Which is not to say that I won't make a bright modern one at some point in the future - I still love those Fassett prints.) A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across a little remainder book shop in Beeston which had a lovely selection of quilting books including this one. It takes you through all the skills you need to make a sampler quilt, block by block, and at the end you have a quilt. This seemed to me to be the ideal project for a beginner so I spent a few weeks collecting together some suitable fabrics and today I finally made a start.

Here is the result - block one of seventy-two!

It's by no means perfect but I think it's not too bad for a first attempt. I haven't done any patchwork since the 1970s when it involved a lot of cutting of templates and bits of card. This seemed much simpler and took me just an afternoon. I hand-stitched it - despite planning to use the sewing machine, when it came to actually sewing I felt the need to stitch it by hand. This may or may not continue. Further blocks will follow as and when I have time. This will be a long term project!

Books and knitting update later in the week. I've been a little distracted by Euro 2008. So much football, so little time!

A Meme about Me

I've seen this meme on other blogs and thought it was quite interesting. I don't often reveal stuff about myself on the blog, so here's a little insight...

What was I doing 10 years ago?

Living in Bicester in Oxfordshire, working in customer service for a scientific publisher. Working full-time, with a thirty mile commute and an seven year old daughter. It's a wonder I ever found time to catch my breath. I was not knitting at this stage in my life.

5 Things on my to-do list for today?

Plant up the tomato plants into their hanging baskets, then sow more lettuce seeds.

Descale the coffee machine. We have a wonderful Gaggia Baby, bought for £50 on eBay, and far better than the mucho-expensive super-dooper bean-to-cup machine it replaced, which always had something going wrong with it.

Research about keeping chickens in the garden. This is our new project, though we probably won't actually get the chooks until next spring. Just checking out the best places to get all the kit from, not to mention what kind of birds to get. Can't wait!

Go to my spinning class. Nearly finished my year of evening classes now and I've learned a lot, but mostly I think it's just given me the confidence that what I was doing was along the right lines and I've grown and added to the skills I already had. Tonight I will go and play with the drum carder. I have some superwash merino to blend, ready to spin and knit into, you've guessed it...socks.

Snacks I enjoy..

I love Ready Salted crisps, and Green and Blacks chocolate (though not at the same time).

Things I would do if I was a billionaire..

Live by the sea, most likely in Florida

Have a big ramshackle house full of dogs and wool

Run my own business - a book shop, or a wool shop or a coffee shop (or some combination of all three)

Places I have lived..

We moved around a bit when I was a child - Brechin, Saltcoats, Perth, Newburgh. Then I went to college in Aberdeen. Work has taken me around a bit too - Liverpool, Nottingham, Amsterdam, Oxford. And now I'm here in the Independent Republic of the Black Country.

Jobs I have had..

Bank teller, computer operator, office manager for a laundry, customer services for a publisher, second-hand bookdealer, bookseller

I'm not tagging anyone with this meme but leaving it up to you if you want to use it.

Spinning Around

An unexpected email from a family friend about spinning reminded me that I've not been writing about spinning much recently. This is not because I've not been spinning, rather that I've been so bad at posting that I keep forgetting what I've been up to.

So, I have been busy spinning. I made this necklace which I'm rather enamoured with....

Apologies for the picture quality. Here's the necklace in close-up...

I have to admit to pinching the idea from the latest issue of Spin Off which showed a bracelet of similar technique but with beads strung from it. It's made by wrapping a loose singles of merino (in this case my own hand-dyed), around a core of crochet cotton. The trick is to untwist the crochet cotton clockwise on a spindle while simultaneously twisting the singles over the cotton on your wheel in a counterclockwise direction. Basically you need three hands! Actually once I got the hang of it, it wasn't as complicated as I expected.

Here's some of the spun yarn from the merino/tencel mix that I bought from Wingham on my last foray...

I was worried that the colours would merge into one hideous browny/orange sludge colour when I spun this, but it seems to be ok. Some of the colours have softened and there is a slight sludginess, but mostly it is fine. I just don't know what I'm going to knit with it. There's about 200g.

Finally, my latest task, still on the bobbin, is some hand-dyed merino in lovely blues and greens...

This looks as though I have woefully underspun it, now that I look at it in the photo. Hopefully it's not as bad as it looks. Again I have no idea what to do with this.

Bubba had his stitches out yesterday and all is well so far. The heat I was feeling in his leg at the weekend seems to have gone now and he is using his leg more - in fact he seems to think that he's completely cured now and is demanding long walks and sulking when he doesn't get them. Back to the Other Vet in a few weeks for more x-rays to check that the bone is healing properly and then it's progressively longer and more demanding walks to build up the muscle in the leg again.

It's my day off today so I'm planning to knit on the Icarus shawl (almost finished the easy part) as everyone is out but me (and Bubba). Bliss.

Look What I've Got.....

Yes, I've got myself a loom. It's a Dryad Four Shaft table loom with an 18" bed. It does want a little TLC but as it cost me absolutely nothing that's OK. It just needs a couple of new springs on the bottom of the first shaft, and a few new heddles as it has some made from string which I shall replace with Texsolve ones. Other than that it just needed a little clean. I am chuffed to bits. I'm not sure when I'll have the time to get it warped up and get weaving on it. I really should finish the piece that is currently languishing on my borrowed loom before I start anything new, right? Besides, now that I have my own loom I need to return the borrowed one to my spinning/weaving circle.

Bubba seems to be progressing well, although he will persist in trying to stand on his bad leg to lift the good leg when he's out for a wee. Stupid dog. We've been taking him on left-handed (or should that be left-legged) walks to try and stop him doing this but he still tries. Today he fell over in the attempt. The leg is a little warm today, much warmer than the good leg. We are hoping this is not a bad sign. Back to the (local) vet anyway on Tuesday to have his stitches removed, so they will have a good look at him then.

We are suffering today from a dose of English Bank Holiday weather - very wet and windy. Tomorrow promises more of the same, though I'm working so it doesn't really matter much to me. A good day then to settle on the sofa and read and knit, and that's precisely what I'm intending for the rest of the day.

Monday Books Update

So, what have been reading since the last book update?

I finished Flesh House by Stuart MacBride. This was excellent, if a tad on the gruesome side. A full review will follow on Eurocrime as soon as I get the time to write it, but in the meantime I can only recommend this to anyone who likes their crime on the darkly humourous side. It's very bleak but also very funny which is a neat trick if you can pull it off and MacBride can do that. And it's set in Aberdeen - always a good thing. The more books set in the North East of Scotland the better as far as I'm concerned. This book is dedicated to the Aberdeen Tourist Board with promises that he'll set the next one in summer. As far as I recall the summers are still wet and gray, just a little bit less cold, then you get that wonderful thick sea haar (that's mist to you southerners). Very atmospheric but possibly not what the tourist board had in mind.

As an antidote to all that gruesome fleshy stuff I then read the next book in C J Sansom's Matthew Shardlake series, Sovereign. I had really enjoyed Dark Fire and I thought this one was just as good. My knowledge of English history, as you are all aware, is a little bit sketchy to say the least, but having read Philippa Gregory's The Boleyn Inheritance I had met some of the characters who surround Old Henry before and was a little less mystified than I might have been. That's not to say that the book wouldn't work on its own, without a little understanding of who the people were, but it enhanced it for me. In this volume Shardlake is again out of his beloved London and away up North in York where the King is on tour. There are some great north/south divide jokes in here, as well as a deftly handled and complex plot, where Shardlake's appointed task turns out to more complicated than he thought, causing him to do a bit of soul-searching and putting him in danger. I shall try not to read the fourth in this series for a while, though it's tempting to rush off and get a copy and get right up to date.

Moving on then to what I'm reading now - Blood Brother by J A Kerley. This is a proof as its not due to be published till July in the UK, and it doesn't seem to have a date for the US. I've read all his previous books, starting with The Hundredth Man, and I've enjoyed all of them. This is the fourth in the series which is set mainly in Alabama, a part of the world that should probably feature in more fiction. They're all about Detective Carson Ryder who specialises in crimes involving psychopaths and sociopaths - they must have a lot in Alabama as they have a special unit to deal with them. I've just started this and its going well, drawing on a whole heap of back story though so it probably helps if you've read the other books. I'm fairly certain it will work as a book in its own right, but if you know that back story then I think you'll get more out of it. My only problem with this so far is that for some reason the marketing bods have decided that he should henceforth (at least in the UK) be known as J A Kerley, when all his previous books have been published as Jack Kerley. What's that all about? If anyone from HarperCollins marketing department is reading this would they like to explain it to me? I know they do all kinds of market research for these things but are they seriously saying that more people will buy a book
by J.A. as opposed to Jack? Is it something to do with Jack being a man's name and therefore women might not buy the book, or is it just jumping on the bandwagon of P J Tracy et al? Would you hesitate over a book obviously written by a man in favour of one written by an ambiguous entity? Personally I don't give two hoots what the name of the author is, (so long as it's not Simon Brett, but that's another story). It's the content that gets me, and maybe sometimes there's something about the cover that I like, but what the sex of the author is....no way.

What do you think?

Update on Bubba 2

He's home!

He's not a very happy dog, but he's back home now. Today he is able to put a little weight on the leg and the wound / stitches looks clean and not at all sore. They've shaved the whole of his leg from ankle to hip though so he looks like a turkey....

The dangly thing is just a bit of tape which is slowly coming off which is fine. He's been moping around the house whimpering at anyone who will listen. Tomorrow we start the long slow process of recuperation. The advice has changed a bit in the last 5 years since the last time we did this. Then he had no walks for some weeks - this time he is to have 3-4 short 5-10 minute walks a day to keep the joint mobile and stop the muscles from wasting. He is also to have massage and physiotherapy (administered by us!) 3-4 times aday. That should be fun.

In between dog-sitting and work I managed to get to West Brom library last night where John Connolly was talking (and talking), allegedly about his new book The Reapers, though he covered a wide range of subjects from dating advice to mosquitoes. Anyway it was an interesting evening - John is always good value. Here he is in mid flow....

I promise a book update tomorrow as I've been a bit remiss on the book blogging front recently. I'm a bit behind on the reviews too. Sorry, Karen! I'll try and get them written tomorrow and email them over to you.

Many thanks for all your emails and comments wishing Bubba well. He seems (fingers crossed) to be OK and hopefully the convalescence will progress smoothly. We just need to stop him from chasing the pigeons in the garden!

Update on Bubba

Just a quick post to let you know that Bubba came though his operation OK and will be home tomorrow. As suspected he had almost completely severed his cruciate ligament so they have performed a TPLO on his left leg (to match the one he'd already had on his right).

Anyway he is awake now and probably trying to bribe the nurses to feed him!

More tomorrow, maybe even pictures!

A Trip to the Vet

A couple of weeks ago, Bubba started to limp a little on his right back leg. Mostly it was just a little stiffness when he's been lying still for a while. But last Wednesday while out for a short walk he started to limp really badly, unable to put any weight on the leg at all.

A trip to our local vet proved inconclusive, it was either a cruciate ligament injury or the onset of hip dysplasia. Both of these are ailments common to Golden Retrievers, and indeed Bubba has already had one cruciate ligament injury, to his other back leg, when he was just eighteen months old.

Today he has been to the specialists who have confirmed that he has ruptured his cruciate ligament completely. It is common for dogs with one damaged cruciate to also experience damage to the other, either because it is a genetic problem, or because they overcompensate for the weakness in the one leg by using the other leg more. However this repeat injury would normally occur fairly soon after the original injury. Bubba's rupture has happened five years after the original operation. So we're not sure what the exact cause is.

The remedy however is plain. He must have another TPLO surgery. This is a procedure which changes the angle of the tibial plateau by removing a section of bone and plating the leg back together. There's a full explanation of it here for those who like the science. It means he won't have full use of his leg for some weeks and will be on a very strict regime of very little exercise, no climbing stairs, no getting on the sofa etc. Even the step by the back door may be a problem and we may need to construct a ramp. He mustn't, to begin with, even cross the kitchen floor (which is tiled) on his own in case he slips. Then it's a long slow progress back to fitness with hydrotherapy and gently increasing walks. Last time we went through this with relatively few problems and I'm hoping it will be the same this time, but he's older now and doesn't have the same bouncebackability he did then. The operation has a 90% chance of success, meaning he should return to something like full mobility, though he will be susceptible to arthritis in later life. There is really no alternative that gives him the chance at a continued active life.

His surgery is scheduled for Friday, so keep your fingers crossed for him won't you. We know he'll be in good hands but sometimes these things are in the lap of the gods.

Friday Books Update

I haven't just been knitting and spinning and playing with fibre.

I have been reading as well. I finished Dark Fire by C J Sansom, which is a really good book. I was a little bit unsure about Matthew Shardlake when I first met him in Dissolution but I have really warmed to him in this book. Perhaps it's because he's on his home turf here. I also liked his new sidekick, Jack Barak, foisted on him by Thomas Cromwell who is not a man to argue with. I can't wait now to read the next 2 books in the series and get caught up.

Anyway after my sojourn in Tudor England I needed a fix of something more modern so I went for contemporary Glasgow and read The Twilight Time by Karen Campbell. This is her first novel, just published in hardback. I liked it, though there were times when I found the main character Anna Cameron a tad irritating. I'm hoping that the author meant me to feel this way, and if she did then that's fine and I shall certainly read more. A full review of this will wend it's way to Eurocrime when I've had time to write it.

Moving on then to a book I've been looking forward to - Flesh House by Stuart MacBride. I thought Broken Skin, the previous book in the series was the weakest so far, though still enjoyable. Hopefully this one is right back on form. I'll let you know when I get a bit further with it.

Just time for a few rows on Icarus before I head off to work. Enjoy the Bank Holiday Weekend if you're having one.

Wonderwool!!

On Saturday I went to Wonderwool where I had a great time, bought some lovely stuff, met some great people and was generally inspired by the fantastic work of the artists and craftspeople who were exhibiting.

I was quite restrained with my purchases, considering all the stuff that I could have bought. I tried to restrict myself to things that I wouldn't be able to get locally or that I hadn't seen before (though there was lots of new stuff).

What I did end up with was this -

Now, this looks in the photo like a pile of the stuff that comes out of your hoover bag, but actually it's 50g of Sari Silk Fibre and is full of beautiful jewel-bright colours that the camera hasn't picked up. I reckon it will look amazing spun through some merino or a merino silk mix. This came from TwistFibreCraft, all the way from Newburgh in Scotland. As I may have mentioned before I spent several years in Newburgh when I was growing up, my parents lived there for a long time and it's a place that's close to my heart. When I lived there it was a bit rundown, not much happening, but the nice people at TwistFibreCraft say it's becoming quite an arty little community and I'm really pleased to hear it.

I also bought some cream 4ply Merino wool (on the right) which I will dye in lots of lovely colours, and some pencil roving (to the left) which was incredibly cheap as it was slightly water-marked. Again this will be dyed so the watermarking doesn't matter.

Next on my list was some Schoppel Wolle Fingerwolle -

it's a twist of brightly coloured merino pencil roving with instructions for turning it into a great felted scarf like this one


I bought mine from ForestFibres at the show but you can also get them online from KnitnCaboodle. I'll show you how it turns out when I get the chance to make it.

My problem now is that I have so many ideas and projects in my head that I can't decide what to do next. Do I make the felted scarf? Or do I make the other scarf with the wonderful Wensleydale curls as a fringe? Or do I make a wrap using chiffon and merino like the great samples on the Moral Fibre stand.

I was totally re-enthused about weaving too, having seen all the beautiful work other people had done. It made me want to really get to grips with it. To assist me I bought a book from The Threshing Barn stand. I'd been trying to get this book for ages but it doesn't seem to be available through bookshops here - trust me, I've tried. I was really chuffed to be able to get it at the show. There were tons and tons of great books there but I did just buy the one.

Of course I had to get a little fix of fibre for spinning too and it was hard to resist all the colours and mixes but I just bought a little of this -

I'm not even entirely sure what it is (fibrewise I mean), and it looks like something and nothing on the screen but it's a steely grey shot through with subtle greens and blues and lots and lots of little neps of white stuff. Just lovely.

And that's about all for the woolly side of things, though I did get some wooden beads and a spare shuttle for my loom.

Because there was a whole other side to the day - along with Wonderwool the good people of Builth Wells had put on a Local Food Festival, with cookery demonstrations (Anthony Worrall-Thompson was there!) and tastings and lovely food to buy. I'd gone down for the day with Pete and he took the opportunity, while I was browsing the woolly wonders next door, to sample a bit of everything and we came home with some great local cider, some Welsh-brewed beers, olives (not sure how Welsh they were but they tasted great) and smoked nuts. There were sausages and cheeses and preserves and liqueurs and all manner of lovely tasty things which we tried but didn't buy as we couldn't buy everything.

All in all a great day was had by us both. I hope everyone else had just as much fun as we did, and that the traders did well and will want to come back next year. Thanks everyone for a fantastic day out!

The Long and the Short of it

I just wanted to reassure anyone who is worried that I have been frittering away my precious days off, sitting around knitting or reading or watching the TV......

that is exactly what I have been doing. I have finished Pete's socks, and knitted a pair for the Evilpixie -


Just a little difference in the sizes! These were helped by a daily dose of the old BBC drama Elizabeth R starring Glenda Jackson, which has been showing on UKTV History. Anyway I have now fulfilled my familial sock obligations for a while and can feel free to squander my knitting time on more selfish projects.

Icarus continues slowly. Although I'm in the not very interesting bit in the middle where the rows just get longer and longer, and the pattern is not at all complicated, I find that I can only knit this when there is no TV or radio, or conversation happening anywhere in the room. This is a definitely one of those for knitting when the house is empty. I'm finding the increasing rows and the steady monotonous rhythm quite relaxing, in a Zen kind of way, as long as no-one talks to me, then I find I have dropped a stitch or miscounted (and it only requires that I count up to seven!).

As I also need some knitting for when there are people in the house, or if I want to talk at the same time, I have cast on this -

Yes, I'm afraid it really is that orange. It's Rowan Cotton Tape bought a long time ago on sale somewhere and destined to look something like this when it's finished,
(only oranger!)

It may be a tad too bright, but it is for wearing in Florida where we shall be having a little holiday later in the year. All that glorious sunshine warrants a few bright colours.

Have I been reading? Oh yes. I finished We That Were Young by Irene Rathbone. It was interesting but not such a good book as Testament of Youth, probably as it was fictionalised and so I felt slightly removed from the emotions and events, which in Testament were laid bare in all their horror with no apparent filter. Not that I didn't enjoy the Rathbone book, I did, and for research purposes it was great, very informative.

I'm now reading Dark Fire by C J Sansom. I've only just started it but so far it is very good, as expected.

I had planned to get out into the garden and get some planting done in our new vegetable plot this week, but I'm waiting for the men to come and restore the garden after they drove a JCB over it a couple of weeks ago while digging a trench down the side. Half the garden bears a passing resemblance to The Somme and all the topsoil has washed down the nearest drain. Hence I am becoming more and more surrounded by broad bean and tomato plants that really want to be getting planted out and are currently occupying almost every windowsill. I wish they'd hurry up, some of these beans are beginning to look mean!

A Few Days Off

I've had a few days off work, using up some of the holiday time that's accrued over the past year. Here's a little clue as to what I've been up to -

That's the Icarus shawl, now on it's fourth or fifth incarnation after a few false starts with the wrong yarn, wrong gauge and an unfortunate incident with the vacuum cleaner. (This is one of the reasons I feel I shouldn't have to do any housework - it endangers knitting!). However, all is currently going well with Icarus (she says, tempting the knitting gods shamelessly) and I have finished the first set of repeats - now there are just another 115 ever-increasing rows of the same pattern until I hit the complicated stuff at the border.

I had a day out on Tuesday to Leamington where I scored a couple of lovely books in the charity shops (very good quality charity stuff in Leamington). There's Bliss and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield which I had been meaning to get to for a while, and then there's We That Were Young by Irene Rathbone. It's a semi-autobiographical novel which is an account of the work of women during the First World War. It's absolutely great for period detail and the everyday lives of these woman - just the sort of thing I have been looking for. Sadly, it seems to be out of print, at least in the UK.

I have just the one work day this week (Saturday) and then I'm off for another week. I'm hoping to get out into the garden next week and get some seedlings planted out. It's our first attempt at growing our own veg this year and we will be planting a herb border as well. Should be fun!

Sara Paretsky at the Town Hall

Last week, Sara Paretsky was in town (briefly) and she gave a talk at West Brom Town Hall (organised by the lovely Paul of Sandwell Libraries) and a good time was had by all.

I was very impressed with the turnout - over a hundred people turned up to hear Sara talk about growing up in Kansas and how she came to write her latest book, Bleeding Kansas, set unsurprisingly in the state where she grew up. She then read two passages from the book, both of which were very good. Obviously other people thought so too as there were lots of people buying her books (I was there in my official capacity as bookseller to the masses) . A very interesting evening. Here's Sara answering the many questions from the floor after her talk.

She was a real sport, arriving slightly late (as she had been on the radio in London until 4pm), having had no dinner, she still talked for over an hour and a half, then signed books for a huge queue of people.



Regular readers will know that Sara is a longtime favourite of mine, the one who got me reading crime to start with, so meeting her was a bit of a thrill for me.

The venue, West Bromwich Town Hall, was lovely. I'd never been there before. It's a beautiful high Victorian building with a fantastic pipe organ. I meant to get a photo of it but I forgot. This one is from the West Brom walking tour website, and while it's good it doesn't really do justice to the colours and you can't really see the organ which is beautifully painted in green and gold. Next time I'm there I promise I'll do photos.

The Wood for the Trees

So, I said I was going to compare these two books with similar titles and themes - In the Woods by Tana French and The Woods by Harlan Coben.

Even the covers are vaguely similar, in design if not in colour. Both feature lots of trees, which is hardly a surprise, but the French one has the more menacing looking cover - dark green with gloomy, forbidding trees. The Coben cover is pale blue with light shining through the trees, silhouetting a figure.

I'd have to say that the covers illustrate the books pretty well, with the French one being the darker of the two. The protagonist is Rob Ryan, a detective in the Dublin police, and a very troubled man. He was in the eponymous woods twenty years before when two of his friends disappeared without trace. To say it has left him scarred would be a bit of an understatement. When the body of a child is found on an archeological dig next to the woods, he is forced to look back into the past and the day his friends went missing. He apparently remembers nothing at all of that day, but as the case progresses, slowly memories start to resurface. It's a spooky and chilling book and the main characters, Ryan and his partner Cassie, are complex and interesting. This is no run of the mill thriller and it kept me guessing right to the end.

The Coben book, for all its similarities of title and subject is a very different kettle of fish. Here we are in the US, mostly New Jersey and the protagonist is a prosecutor, Paul Copeland. Cope, as he is known, is a single dad, bringing up his daughter after the death of his wife from cancer. Twenty years before, his sister disappeared from the woods surrounding a summer camp where their father was employed and where Cope worked as a camp counsellor. Two teenagers' bodies were found in the woods but Cope's sister and another boy were never found. Several years later a serial killer was convicted of similar killings and jailed, but he always denied those at the summer camp. One day, Cope gets a call from NYPD about a body they've found with clipping about him in his pockets. Cope is convinced that it's Gil Perez, the boy who disappeared with his sister all those years before. But is it really Gil, and if it is, why has he been killed now? Does this all link back to that night in the woods or is there another reason this is all being dragged up again, just as Cope is trying to prosecute the son of a local bigwig for rape. Again this is a complex and well-structured book. It's very slick and American - just what you expect from Harlan Coben - and the character of Cope is a bit too clean cut for my tastes, but it's still a good book.

And the verdict?

Well, I have to say that I preferred the Tana French book. I did like the Harlan Coben but it didn't surprise me. It did exactly what it said on the tin - and that after all is what Harlan Coben is all about. He's a good writer and his plots are plausable and suitably complex. You know what to expect with a Harlan Coben book and he invariable delivers. In the Woods however, is Tana French's first novel and it really surprised me. I was expecting a competent mystery with good characters (well, that's the very minimum I expect of any crime novel - not that I always get it!), but this one got right under the skin of Rob Ryan and it totally hooked me. I read it in a weekend and could barely put it down. Given my current state of ennui with the crime genre it was a fantastic boost to find this. I hope she's writing another one.

After all that wandering though the gloomy woods I had a bit of a break from crime and I read The Disappearing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell. This was a shortish novel about a woman locked up in an institution for almost her whole life, through no fault of her own . I'd say it was a slight book - enjoyable but not memorable. It had vague feeling of Muriel Spark to it, and I couldn't help but think how much more powerful it would have been if Spark had actually written it.

Moving on I then read The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory. This was a bit on the light, romantic side of historical fiction for my taste but enjoyable nonetheless - a good story helps of course and Jane Boleyn, Katherine Howard and Anne of Cleves made an interesting triumvirite of narrators. I think Gregory herself would admit to a fair degree of prosaic licence as to characterisation as it seems not a lot is known about Old Henry's 4th and 5th wives respectively, though it seems generally agreed that Ann Boleyn's sister-in-law was a real piece of work. By far the most interesting thing about the book was how it showed these women's lives and how constrained they were by familial duty and how dependant they were on a husband for status, reputation and security. It made me very glad to be a 20th century girl.

Tonight is the Sara Paretsky event at West Bromwich Town Hall, which I am looking forward to. I'll be taking my camera so hopefully there will be pics later in the week.

Cracked it!

I finally (I think) have the right yarn for the Icarus Shawl. I won a couple of skeins of Fyberspates laceweight mohair on eBay last week and and have just started to knit with it.

Hopefully you can see the beautiful delicate shades of green and lilac in the skein. The green is proving a bit more dominant than I had hoped but it's still lovely. Here is my fledgling Icarus - 25 rows done - quite a lot still to go.

Look - Buttons!!!!

Yes, Williamsro is finished. I will get Pete to take a photo of me wearing it for my next post, but in the meantime here's a still life -

I love it and feel that it will get a lot of use. A highly practical garment. I knitted it pretty much as per the pattern with a few minor alterations. The sleeves would have been very wide so I narrowed them down quite a lot. I don't like flappy sleeves - too drafty! And I added two small pockets which are cunningly disguised behind the border at the bottom. Other than that I followed the pattern, though it was full of hideous errors and took a little interpretation. The main body is knitted in New Lanark Aran (colourway - denim) used double and the border is my own handspun merino chunky.

There's been a lot of work this week and not a lot of spare time so although I have finished reading the two "Woods" books I don't have my thoughts down on paper yet so that will have to wait for the next post.

What I did get down on paper though was the start of the book I have been planning for the last year or so. Yes, I finally bit the bullet and started to write. I figured that if I didn't at least make a start then I would just go on researching forever (which I could quite easily do for this project). I won't update you on how it's progressing in every post but I shall let know know periodically. In the meantime, can anyone suggest a few books that an intelligent, middle-class, young Englishwoman might have been reading around 1910-1914?

No Buttons

The buttons for Williamsro still haven't arrived so it's still not finished.

I have finally finished the stripy socks though -




I love the way they turned out - not at all how I was expecting when I bought them.






I have of course immediately cast on another pair of socks, but they are just a few inches of rib at the moment so photos later when there's actually something to show.



I've been flirting with a lacy shawl, trying various patterns and various gauges, but nothing is quite right yet. I won some lovely green and lilac laceweight mohair on eBay this weekend and I'm hoping that will work better than the shades of blue wool laceweight I was trying out.



In the meantime I have this to play with -




A lovely Dryad 4-shaft loom, just about 18" wide. It's borrowed from my spinning group and I'm about to go and try to warp it up for the first time. I'm guessing that won't be as easy as the book makes it seem.

I read In the Woods by Tana French over the weekend. When I went to the shelf to see what I wanted to read next I was torn between this one and The Woods by Harlan Coben. Apart from the obviously similar titles they are both about children who went missing many years before and both main characters are from a law enforcement background - one's a policemen and one's a prosecutor. I thought it would be interesting to compare the two, so I've read In the Woods and am now reading The Woods. I'll let you know what I think when I'm finished.

Still Not Finished!

The Williamsro cardigan languishes still unfinished on the desk in the office. I've completed the knitting but I still need to sew it together. Plus I don't have the buttons yet.

I bought these -

And while they are lovely buttons and just the sort of thing I was looking for they are slightly too small for such a chunky cardigan. So I've ordered some others which are slightly different in design and larger. Hopefully they will be here this weekend and I will have no more excuses not to finish the cardigan.

I am now dangerously between projects. I did cast on an Icarus shawl in some angora that was lurking in the stash but it just wasn't right so I'm having a rethink. I have some laceweight in varying shades of blue that might work or there's also some Rowan Kidsilk Haze in sparkly purple, though there may not be enough of that. I will be stash-diving and rummaging throigh pattern books with a vengeance later.

I have 5 days off in a row over this weekend so I'm hoping to borrow a 4 shaft sample loom from my spinning group so I can have a play with it while I'm off. They also have a wider loom I can borrow later once I've taught myself the ins and outs of it all. Some swearing may be involved in this! I promise to photograph the proceedings.

Big News - those lovely chaps over at the Big Green Bookshop will be opening their doors on Saturday. So if you're anywhere near Wood Green please drop in and buy a book in the interests of supporting a new independent bookshop, run by two blokes who just love books. I wish them the very best of success in their endeavour, and if the work they've put in to getting the shop open is anything to go by then they deserve it.

I'm still reading Blacklist by Sara Paretsky, not because it's a slow read but because I have it in hardback and it's too big to be portable. In between I have finished A Monstrous Regiment of Women by Laurie R King, which is a wonderful Holmesian romp through post WW1 London. I avoided this series for a long time because I thought that an American could not possibly do justice to the great Sherlock Holmes and I was a bit affronted that she had the nerve to try, and to saddle him with a woman sidekick too. Then I had to read Locked Rooms (the eighth book in the series) for reading group and discovered that all my misconceptions and prejudices were unfounded. I loved it and couldn't wait to read more. I should have known better of course because Laurie King is a fine writer and I have always loved her Kate Martinelli series, I should have trusted that she would do a sterling job with Mary Russell. My humble apologies to her. My only regret is that I haven't yet managed to find a copy of the Beekeeper's Apprentice ( I'm on a budget here so many of my books come second-hand, hence my sometimes rather erratic reading schedule). I'd have liked to start with the first in the series. Finally I read The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill. This is the first of her Simon Serrailler novels that I've read and I shall certainly read more. He could turn out to be a very interesting character.

Last, and by no means least, in celebration of Gundog Day at Crufts, (which I would have liked to have gone to only Pete couldn't get the day off), here is a gratuitous picture of Bubba.

He's wet, muddy and having a whale of a time in the park - the perfect antidote to all those pampered and ribboned Toy breeds on display yesterday.