Well What Do You Know...A Book Update!

So what exactly have I been reading since I last regaled you with bookish delights?

Well, not a lot of crime actually. I did have a proof of the new Robert Crais book called Taken. Now I love Robert Crais' style of writing. He's very easy to read, has interesting characters and knows how to write a plot that moves along nicely. It will be no surprise to you then that I liked this book a lot. Elvis Cole gets kidnapped while looking for a missing girl and Joe Pike has to find him. It's set in the borderlands between California and Mexico and is about the people smugglers operating there. Not much else to say really except that it's as good as you would expect and I recommend it. If you've not read any Crais before then you really should. Think Lee Child but with more humour involved. These later books major more on Joe Pike as a character then the early ones where Elvis Cole was the main protagonist. but I like both of them so that's no problem.

The next book on my list is Before I Go to Sleep by SJ Watson. This was the first book selected by the new book group hosted by my shop so I did have to read it and I was quite intrigued as I did once meet someone who suffered from short-term memory loss after a car accident, and who wrote down everything he did in a notebook so he would have a record of what he'd been doing. The premise of the book is that Christine wakes up in a strange bed, next to a strange man and it transpires that she's had a head injury and that everytime she goes to sleep she forgets everything that has happened to her in her life, or the day before. Her husband leaves her little notes around the house to remind her of who she is, and explains to her every morning that she is his wife, what happened to her etc, then he goes out to work and leaves her on her own. I have to say that I hated this book. The premise was good but it was poorly executed, I thought. There were huge gaping holes in the plot and it all became rather unbelievable. Most of the book group liked it however so maybe it was just me being over critical, jaded cynical reviewer that I am. I don't want to give the plot away if you haven't read it (though I wouldn't recommend it anyway) but the major problems with the book were the style it was written in - Christine was writing whole chapters of her life in great detail like a novel, but supposedly in brief snatches when she was able to hide from her husband. Wouldn't she have written brief notes not great screeds of prose. Also she drove me nuts by just accepting everything that was told to her. She believed her husband, she believed her doctor, she didn't question anything, just passively accepted it all. I found it very unconvincing. That was the extent of the crime I have read recently.

The next two books for the shop reading group were Pure by Andrew Miller and Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman. Both of these were on the Costa shortlist and Pure won it. I read Pure first because I thought it looked dull and worthy and I was fairly pleasantly surprised. I did manage to read it all the way to the end, even though not a lot actually happened in the book and there was a lot of untapped potential in there. It's about an engineer sent to Paris in the 17th Century to empty the graves and crypts of the a Paris cemetary which is so full to overflowing that it is polluting the whole area with it's stink of corruption. All this happens just a few years before the French Revolution, so of course this is all huge metaphor for the cleansing of France, sweeping out all that old aristocratic regime, and replacing it with a newer purer France. I did like this book, though I was frustrated by the numer of times he seemed to set up a scenario that he then didn't explore.  Pigeon English was better, about a small boy growing up on an East London housing estate. The author foreshadows the end pretty effectively, so you know what's going to happen but you keep hoping it won't.  Well written but not perfect is my assessment.

I powered through the Hunger Games trilogy in a very short space of time and thought they were really good. I don't read much teenage fiction but I thought I'd see what all the fuss was about and I thought these were fine. I can see why they've been so popular, they certainly kept me wanting to read all the way to end.

I read some other teenage fiction too - I started the first book in the Morganville Vampires series by Rachel Caine.  This was because the lovely Rachel was doing a talk and signing at my shop so I thought I'd better read at least one of her books.  The book was a little too full of teenage high school angst for me - but then it's not aimed at me. I can see that teenagers love these books, and they're not badly written at all, just not my sort of thing.  Rachel, by the way was totally lovely - spoke for ages about writing, answered loads of questions from the audience (the shop was packed) and then signed hundreds of books.  She did mention a new series she's started about a woman who works in a mortuary who discovers her boss is bringing people back from the dead. I thought it sounded interesting (it's an adult book, not a teenage one) so I shall probably read that when I have time. The first is called Working Stiff.  Anyway Rachel was very generous with her time (she does seem to work very hard)  and she came to the pub with us after the event with her husband Cat Conrad who was also very nice and is also a writer. She's welcome to come back anytime she likes!

A lot of my reading time has been alternating between two different series of books.  I've been working my way through both of these series on my kindle - all the books are too fat to carry around! I never would have read any of these books if I hadn't had them on my kindle.  I am reading Game of Thrones (I've just finished book 2 - A Clash of Kings), and Harry Potter (also just finished book 2 - Chamber of Secrets.).  I resisted Harry Potter for a very long time, but the Evilpixie is a big fan and I'd seen all the films so in the end I crumbled and I have to say I'm really enjoying them.  They are a welcome piece of light relief (so far anyway - I gather the books get darker as the series progresses) from the bleak darkness of Game of Thrones.  I've been watching this on TV and I only started watching it because I knew the books were popular and I needed to expand my SF & Fantasy knowledge. I got instantly hooked on the TV series, tried the first book to see what it was like and got hooked to those too. Blimey - it even has dragons in it. You know I hate books with dragons, still they're only a minor part of it so far and there are no elves so I should be OK.

Currently on my bedside table is an Ann Cleeves book called The Sleeping and the Dead.  It's one of the Peter Porteous books and while it's not, in my opinion, as good as the Jimmy Perez or Vera Stanhope series it's still a good read. 

And on my Kindle I'm reading Alas Babylon by Pat Frank.  It's a post-apocalyptic novel set in Florida in the late 1950s.  It was written in 1959 under the threat of Russian nuclear missiles and it's a little dated but I'm still enjoying it. This is a little pre-holiday reading as I shall be in Florida for two weeks from Thursday.  I'm hoping it's still there.

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get this update done.  Looking back it seems I actually started tio write in in April which is shameful as it's now June.  Anyway, next report will be from Florida.  I think I'm ready for a bit of sunshine after this bank holiday weekend!

What I Did This Weekend

I had a day off on Saturday so I got to go spend it with some great people at a great place.

I went to the British Alpaca Futurity 2012. What's that I hear you say? Well it looks a bit like this....



It was in a big hall at the NEC and in the middle of the hall there were alpacas as far as the eye could see - that's a lot of alpacas, trust me. It's kind of like Crufts but for alpacas and the alpacas were all being judged in the ring in the middle. And all around the edge were stalls and tables where people were offering services to alpaca breeders and selling alpaca stuff and teaching people what you can do with alpaca fibre. That's where I came in. I was with my spinning group - the lovely Walsall Handspinners and Weavers and we were there to demonstrate how you can spin alpaca fleece into yarn, and teach anyone who wanted to learn. We had a blast and met lots of lovely people.

There were some great vendors there too - Janet from the Threshing Barn was there with her huge stall of temptation, filled with fibrey goodies and beautiful colours and equipment. There was a stall selling weaving looms (Greg Meyer Looms) - and there were just brilliant. They had an 8 shaft table loom that folded up and went in a backpack. How cool is that. They had developed the looms themselves and I was very impressed. They were lovely people too. Classic Carders were there with their great range of drum carders. And Fleecewitch who had organised the craft demo area and was so helpful and friendly.

We had a fantastic day. And honestly who wouldn't when you were surrounded by this -

And then to top off the weekend I got the most amazing Mother's Day present from the Evilpixie. She's just back from a few days in New York and I may have suggested to her that there was a yarn shop just a few blocks from her hotel, and that 100g of sockyarn would make a wonderful present if she thought she might looking for a little Mother's Day gift. Well, she excelled herself.

Look what she bought me -


There's a skein of Malabrigo sock yarn in a beautiful colourway called Playa which looks like dirty denim - it's all blues and browns, a copy of Whimiscal Little Knits 2, some Lantern Moon sheepy stitch markers, and it all comes in a little Knitty City tote bag. I am very pleased indeed. Remember that she's not even a knitter and she got all this. She said the people at Knitty City were absolutely fantastic and really helpful. I am one happy mother.

The book update should follow soon but I'm off to Bath for the day on Saturday so I'll try and do a little bit of touristy reporting - it'll all be bookshops and secondhand shops though, no Jane Austen stuff.

Weaving FO

Yes, I have an actual finished object for you.

This is a scarf in mercerised cotton which I have been weaving for EVER. Well, maybe not quite that long, but at least 18 months. It has a sister, done on the same warp but with a different tie-up and a different colour weft. (For non-weavers that means it has a different pattern to it and the cross-threads are another colour from the burgundy I used for this one). This is my favourite though. It made me fall in love with weaving again, not that I'd fallen out of love with it, but I'd been busy with other stuff and there are only so many hours in the day, right? Someone should do something about that. More hours would be a big help to me.

Because I am all about the weaving at the moment I immediately wanted to start another woven project. I couldn't find the right yarn in the right colours for what I wanted so I bought undyed 6/2 from Weavers Bazaar and today I have dyed it. In the end I dyed it in purple and burgundy plus a spray-dyed skein with both colours on. I probably could have bought those colours but I've changed my mind several times since I bought the yarn and it was only today when I got the dyepots out and had to actually make a final decision that it became clear what I needed to do.

Here's all the yarn drying in some lovely welcome sunshine.

The burgundy warp has swung round to the back so you can't really see it. It's going to be an L-shaped shawl with the purple, burgundy and multi as the warp and them more of the purple as the weft. The pattern is from the Ashford Book of Weaving for the Four Shaft Loom. I have to say I'm looking forward to weaving with a nice thick yarn, instead of the very, very fine cotton I used for the scarf above.

If you're in the Midlands and are looking for something to do this weekend then come and visit me at the British Alpaca Futurity where I will be demonstrating handspinning with my spinning group. The event is at the NEC on Friday 16th and Saturday 17th March. I shall only be there on the Saturday but it looks like a great event - lots of alpacas and handcrafts and a real bargain at just £5 for a family ticket for 4 people.

Apologies for the lack of links in this post. For some reason blogger won't let me select any text to insert a link. Both the British Alpaca Futurity and Weaver's Bazaar can be found through Google.

Back soon with a book update.

Holy Crap, Batman! Someone's stolen January!

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

I'm not sure quite how that happened.

I don't even have an excuse.

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

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

So, what exactly have I been doing?

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

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

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

Back soon with more quick updates.

Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated...

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

Craft Fayre - Sunday 16th October.

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

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

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

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

Nature's Harvest

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


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

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

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

Yum.

My Big Fat Booker Prediction Fail

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book Update

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


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



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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Post - Another Fibre Show

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Knit Nation Report

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

Hey Look - A Book Update!

Well hello there. Yes, finally a book update.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big News from Mysterious Yarns

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

"Stormy Weather" Merino/Silk Laceweight

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

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

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

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

Days 3, 4 & 5 - Along the South Coast

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



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


Isn't it great?


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


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



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



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


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


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


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


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


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



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

And here is my haul of crafty stuff -

That's the crafty books.

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

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


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

Day Two - Underwater

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next up - Exeter and the South Coast.

Day One - Bath etc

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Little Trip

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

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

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

TV Drama - US or UK??

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.