TV Drama - US or UK??

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

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

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

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

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

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!!!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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