Monday Update on Tuesday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books update later in the week hopefully.

Wednesday Update

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

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

We built a compost bin -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Busy, Busy

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

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

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

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

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

Not Swine Flu but Still a Pig

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

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

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

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

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

Look What We've Got.....

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

A Welsh Weekend

We had a lovely trip to Wales last weekend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And liked it.

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

Astonishing Splashes of Colour

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Booky Update

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

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


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



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



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

Astrid and other shawls

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

And in greater detail -

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

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

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

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

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

Sunny Sunday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Canadian Literature and the Miners' Strike

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Serial Killer Fix

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


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



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


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

Books in the Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Knitting in Circles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is Getting Old..

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just Sitting

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

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

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

Brought To You By the Letter A

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday Monday

Just a quick update.

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

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

Book Update

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

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

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

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

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