New Month, Less Heat

It's August, which means it's almost fall! (Yes, yes, I know there's a ways to go yet, but Molly goes back to school at the end of the month, and I always think of the start of the school year as the start of fall.) After several days of excessive heat and humidity, a cold front came through yesterday, bringing a little rain but also much cooler weather. The high today is only supposed to be in the upper 70s -- that's something to celebrate!

Between the heat and some early mornings (Ruthie has decided to announce she's up between 5 and 6 a.m. lately), it's been a long week, so let's wrap things up with some good things, shall we?

First, I successfully donated blood yesterday, my fourth donation of the year to date. With five months left in the year, there's plenty of time for me to reach the maximum six donations possible in a calendar year.

Second, I got a little treat in the mail yesterday (not a surprise, because it was a treat I bought for myself). 

The photo is terribly due to cloudy weather and the plastic bags, but what you see here are four bags of fiber from Southern Cross Fibre. Yes, I am actively trying to use up stash, but with David retired from dyeing, there will not be any more of his fiber except if someone is destashing, which is what happened here. I got a fabulous deal (I basically paid for the price of two bags, shipping included), and what's more, among these are some of my favorite of David's bases to spin.

Finally, something that I hope will give you a laugh. Do you remember how the name Ruthie was given by the rescue was Kitty? We thought it was a silly name at the time, but it seems that it might have been more appropriate than we thought:

Either she's part cat or she's been looking over my shoulder at one too many pictures of Giroux.

Have as good a weekend as you can, friends! I hope if you've been in the heat, you're also getting a respite.

Home Sweet Home

After a whirlwind trip, Molly and I arrived home yesterday shortly before noon (we actually got in about 15 minutes early, something that almost never happens with air travel these days!). We missed the final breakfast and didn't really have a chance to say goodbye to a lot of people, but getting an early flight out made the most sense. And we got treated to a beautiful 360º view of Downtown Pittsburgh on our descent into Pittsburgh International Airport:

Let me catch you up on the rest of the trip. On Friday afternoon, we had our class on pin loom weaving with Angela Tong. I had learned how to use one of these looms before, but it had been several years since I'd done it last and I had forgotten a lot. We both really enjoyed it and can see how these little looms could come in handy for using up all those little bits, especially as each woven square takes only about 8 yards of yarn.

Both of these squares were woven using DK weight yarn; these looms are designed to use yarn in the sport/DK/worsted range. But Angela also showed us how to use fingering (the trick is doing some of the warping with the yarn held double).

Saturday was market day. I only had a couple of things I wanted to buy, and though I did end up going back for an impulse purchase later on, I think I was pretty restrained. The market opened at 9, and we were not among those waiting in line for the doors to open until just a few minutes before. I asked the woman who was first what time she got there, and she said about 7:20 (for reference, breakfast was served starting at 7:30).

I know some of you are really here to see what I came home with, so I won't keep you in suspense any longer! I came home with more than I expected, although only some of it was actually purchased at the market.

One of the perks of attending this retreat is that there is always a long table along the side of the wall in the lobby of the main building that's the giveaway table -- anything on it is free to a good home, and anything that's left after the retreat ends is taken to a local creative reuse place. There's always the usual acrylic/fun fur/novelty yarn that typically stays the whole time, but some people also drop off some really nice yarn, and if you happen to check the table at the right time, you can get lucky. That happened to me -- I found four skeins of fingering almost right off the bat, one from Miss Babs, one from lolodidit, and two 50 g skeins from The Loopy Ewe. I also found three skeins of Shibui linen yarn that will be enough for a summer tank, a skein of what looked to be DK or worsted with some minis, and a cute cotton drawstring bag from Quince & Co.

Here is what I bought at the market: a bag from Fat Squirrel Fibers, two skeins of self-striping Targhee sock yarn from Woolens and Nosh, three lotion bars from Tuft Woolens (not pictured), a pair of tiny yarn skein earrings from Oink Pigments, and a braid of Shaniko wool from Cesium Yarn. I actually went back to get the fiber because not only was it a breed I've never spun, but the colorway is Neighborhood of Make Believe, and I couldn't resist a Mister Rogers reference.

But wait, there's more! Another big feature of SSK is the door prizes! Vendors and attendees generously donate a ton of prizes -- yarn, fiber, project bags, accessories, etc. -- that can be won via a random pull of door prize tickets (everyone gets some to start in their goodie bag, and you can earn more through the knitalongs of teachers' patterns prior to the even and at random during the event). There are also special prizes on offer if you donate to the Scarritt-Bennett Center; every dollar gets you a ticket. I was lucky enough to win one regular door prize (two skeins of Lorna's Laces sock yarn) and a special SBC raffle prize (a hand-woven towel).

Let's not forget the aforementioned goodie bag, either! Molly and I both opted to just get the goodies included in the retreat fee, which was delightful without all the add-ons. We got a large zippered tote bag, a skein of yarn dyed by one of the vendors, a pen, a tape measure, a gauge ruler, and a set of point protectors. There were also folks from two local yarn shops (Haus of Yarn and Bliss) handing out goodies as we were waiting in line to check in on Wednesday. Needless to say, we were very spoiled! I'm happy to report that everything fit in my luggage, though Molly ended up using her tote bag as a second carry-on on the way home, mainly because we'd purchased some snacks and had a lot left and those bags wouldn't fit in our backpacks, so it was just easier to carry another bag.

I'm also very happy to report that Ruthie was a Very Good Girl while we were away. We'll ignore the fact that she chewed through two harnesses (a replacement for the newest one is on its way!), but she didn't have a single accident and didn't bark at the Mister at all! I think he is exhausted and very happy to have us home, and she was certainly thrilled to see us, but it honestly went much better than I expected and I am so relieved!

I predict she'll be a velcro dog for the next several days until she's sure I'm not leaving her again, but we all got through a challenging week and made it out the other end okay. You all told me it would be fine, but I needed to live it for myself to believe it!

This week it's back to the usual schedule, with a couple of medical checkups thrown in for fun (going for my mammogram on Thursday, so here's my reminder to get your boobies squished!). I'll be back on Wednesday for my usual update, and I'll try to be a little less verbose then!

Back to the Grind

It was especially hard to get up this morning, even for a Monday, but today it's back to the usual routine. After a major coffee-making fail over the weekend, I've got two cups in my system this morning to get me going.

It was a cold weekend, but I did manage to get out on Saturday to visit an LYS where my friend Amy was having a pop-up. I don't think I've seen her since I last went with her to Rhinebeck (that was in 2021), and she was absolutely gobsmacked to see Molly because the last time she'd seen her was, we believe, 2019.

It was my first visit to this particular store, so naturally I couldn't leave empty handed. Molly picked out this set of mini skeins, and I picked up a much-needed set of 40 inch size 6 needles (that was the size giving me trouble on the sleeves of my sweater). Amy also has asked me to design something new using her yarn, so I came home with this skein of her Funky, designed to be a dupe for Spincycle. She's going to be sending me a skein of a natural color to go along with it, as I have a colorwork pattern planned.

Much of my knitting time over the weekend was spent working on my brother's gnome. I've included a ruler in this photo because before I started knitting, I really didn't have a sense of just how big this gnome is.

The pattern does give the finished dimensions, but I didn't even glance at them until recently. Fully completed and stretched out, it'll be almost two feet tall! I should be able to finish the body today, so at some point I need to dig out the poly pellets and stuffing.

I am starting to get a little panicked about not having enough time to finish all my holiday knitting -- in addition to this gnome, I need to finish my sister-in-law's socks (sock 2 is started) and cast on my youngest nephew's gnome and a hat for my oldest nephew. I know that if I really focus, I should be able to get it all done, but I also have to work and do all the usual chores around the house and pack for our trip to Florida and do all the other social things on the calendar this month. Too much to do and not enough time -- must be December!

Feels Like Fall

Though we're due to have highs in the upper 80s later in the week, this past weekend felt decidedly fall-like. We had some much-needed rain overnight on Friday, with some lingering sprinkles and a chilly breeze on Saturday morning. And it was in the mid-40s when we got up on Sunday! But the sun came out both days and warmed things up enough.

On Saturday morning, the Mister had to go help a friend with some computer/internet stuff, so Molly (she's said I can now use her full name on the blog!) and I went to the art festival and met up with my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew. There was a lot of good stuff to see -- including my high school U.S. history teacher, who retired from teaching a couple of years ago and now makes jewelry! I did find the potter I was looking for and picked up a couple of pieces:

The lighting isn't doing these pieces any justice, but it was the best of several attempts. The one on the left is a spoon rest; I accidentally broke the one we had several months ago, and we'd been making do ever since with some silicone ones the Mister found on Amazon. This sweet one with the goldfinch is so much nicer and coordinates with the mug I already had (it has the same branches and leaves without any birds). The one on the right is a small-ish serving platter, about the right size for a wedge of cheese and some crackers or clusters of grapes or a selection of cookies, for example. I have quite a few large serving platters but very few smaller ones, and I thought this was such a pretty design.

We also found an artist who makes some really gorgeous batik pieces and bought a couple prints:

The photographer was slanted, not the artwork.

Molly loved the one on the left, so we will likely find a frame for it and put it in her room. I picked the one on the right -- definitely click the photo to enlarge it so that you can see that those lines in the top two-thirds of the image are tree trunks!

Much of my crafting time over the weekend was spent at my wheel, and I have two finished bobbins of singles to show for it:

This was a pretty quick spin, one in which I wasn't too concerned about consistency or smoothness (though I did pull out some of the add-ins when they were too bulky or rough). I have no idea what weight of yarn this will ply to or how much I will have, but it doesn't really matter; this is an instance of spinning the yarn that the fiber wanted to be and then finding a suitable pattern to go with it.

I also came into some new yarn this weekend. Now, you all know that I've been trying to work from stash whenever possible, and I've actually bought very little yarn in the past year or so. But I suddenly have a lot of baby gifts to knit, and as Molly has used up nearly all of my solid and semisolid partial skeins and leftovers in the scrappy granny square blanket she's been crocheting, I did have much suitable on hand. Fortuitously, Lisa of Fibernymph Dye Works was running an end-of-summer sale last week, so I ordered three skeins of DK in baby-suitable semisolid shades. The order was placed Wednesday afternoon, it was in the mail by Thursday, and it was delivered Friday evening. Occasionally the USPS does something right!

In addition to knitting for my niece, I have a coworker expecting a baby around the same time, I still haven't knit anything for a cousin who just had a baby this summer (I sent a board book about Andy Warhol because I didn't have anything on hand to knit at the time), and some of our neighbors also recently had a baby. For the sake of simplicity and speed, I expect all will be getting hats, which will also leave me some of these three skeins for future needs.

I expect the big work project to return this week (though apparently it's being cut in length by about half), and I also have Curriculum Night at Molly's school to look forward to on Thursday evening. I'll be continuing to work on the lace baby blanket whenever possible, and with any luck, I'll get to ply those singles in the next couple of days. Have a good start to your week, and see you back here on Wednesday!

Unraveled, Week 26/2024

Hooray, it's Wednesday! It's been a long week already, so I'm happy to have arrived at its midpoint -- especially because I will be off on Friday, so I'm officially halfway done with the workweek. As per usual, today I'm joining Kat and the Unravelers to talk about making and reading.

My second Bousta Beanie has grown quite a bit since you last saw it, and now those of you who couldn't quite imagine how the colors would look reversed no longer have to try:

I'm getting stained-glass vibes from this one, and the benefit of using the colored yarn as the contrast is that I'm getting mixed up less frequently and thus having to tink back less (I think I've only done it once so far). I've put the hat knitting aside for the moment, however, to do some swatching.

I got selected to test knit Kerri Blumer's adorable new tee for babies and kids (see it on IG here), so I'm going to be making a 6 month size for my niece. I pulled out some LolaBean Yarn Co. Bean Sprout that I bought at Indie Untangled at my second Rhinebeck, I think -- it was the last one before the pandemic, I believe. I'm doing a faux in-the-round swatch, though I'm pretty confident I'll get gauge with the suggested needle size because it's what I usually get with this size. As soon as I'm sure of my gauge, I'll be casting on to get my version done ASAP.

Last week I did something I hadn't done in almost a year: I bought yarn. I wanted to knit another Rift tee and didn't have any appropriate (read: non-wool) yarn in my stash already, plus I knew that Knit Picks' summer sale was starting last Wednesday, so I ordered some CotLin. And I'm sure you all know the siren call of free shipping, so I added some sale goodies to my cart to get it:

Ironically, the only thing that wasn't on sale was the CotLin, the whole purpose for the purchase! But everything else here was -- two skeins of hand-painted Stroll, a skein of Wonderfluff, and five skeins of Chroma Twist. The Chroma, at least, I'm planning to use for charity hats; perhaps the Stroll will become some hats as well. I haven't figured out just what to do with the Wonderfluff, but I already had two skeins of it in a lavender shade and figured I could use this hot pink together with those.

I've had another good week of reading, in spite of being busy at work, and finished two books.

The Comfort of Ghosts, the final installment in the Maisie Dobbs series (sob!) came out earlier this month, and though I thought I'd have a long wait from the library -- it said several months when I put it on hold -- somehow I ended up only waiting a day! Though there is a bit of a mystery in this book, it was resolved about two-thirds of the way through, and it really felt like Winspear was more focused on wrapping things up for Maisie in a satisfying way. WWII is over, and things are changing for everyone in its wake. In uncovering some secrets in her extended family, Maisie takes a good look back at her life and how far she's come from being a teenaged housemaid. I am sad there will be no more, but I also feel completely satisfied with where Maisie has ended up. I listened to this book and, in fact, the whole series. It's been a wonderful companion on many workouts and through many household chores. I gave this final installment 4 stars.

Speaking of long library holds, I'd been waiting quite a long time for Enter Ghost and finally got it a week ago. This finalist for the Women's Prize for Fiction and winner of this year's Aspen Words Literary Prize feels like a timely read for the moment, as it takes place in Israel and Palestine and follows a British Palestinian actress who becomes involved in a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. There were parts of this book that made me uncomfortable because of how Israel and its policies are portrayed, but I welcomed that discomfort because I want a broader view of the ongoing conflict. And I also really enjoyed the writing and structure of the book. This is one that I am going to be thinking about for a while and will likely seek out analysis and discussion on. I gave it 4 stars.

What are you making and reading this week?

It's Friday -- Right?

It has been one of those weeks in which the schedule has been atypical and thus I've been struggling to keep track of what day it is, but I have double-checked and it is, indeed, Friday -- thank goodness! Work hasn't been too busy this week, but in addition to the daily work meetings I've had three Zoom rabbi interviews, and I really need some time away from screens.

A plus side of the meetings is that I've been able to craft through them (a definite plus of working from home!), and yesterday I finished up the singles for my current spin, so I'm all ready to ply today.

I'm really excited to see how this looks plied up, so keep your fingers crossed that work is calm enough today to allow me to get it done!

I promised I would share a photo of the yarn Mo picked out for her sweater last weekend, so I snapped one when the sun was out yesterday:

This is Shirsty Cat Designs Just DK, an uber-soft superwash Merino, in the colorway Antique Gown. I am hoping that Mo will be able to get started on this project the week of Thanksgiving; the school musical she is in (she is Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast Jr.) will wrap up the week before, and she is off Wednesday through Friday that week.

Finally, I cast on a new design sample, a shawl I've been thinking about for several months now and for which I picked out yarn several weeks ago. While it's not quite exactly like what I was picturing in my head, I'm very happy with how it's knitting up.

This is a Hitchhiker-esque shawl, meaning it will be a long asymmetrical triangle, and the stripes will be made using a gradient set of mini skeins. So far, so good! Ideally I'd like to finish this up this month and, provided my tech editor has the time to edit it, publish it next month. I'm self-publishing, so it doesn't really matter when I do it, but I think I'm more likely to focus on it if I give myself a deadline.

Okay, time to hit publish and get ready for my work meeting. Have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend, friends!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Good morning, friends! I fully intended to post on Friday, but the honest truth is that I was too busy having fun. And even this morning I'm still processing it all, so I'm going to keep my wrap-up post fairly brief. Suffice it to say that I was having such a good time that I often forgot to take photos. I met some amazing people, including crafters from all across the United States and Canada and as far away as Ireland, England, and Iceland (I had some great conversations with Magnea and Heiða from Iceland about politics and language and what things are like in their country). I came home with great memories and some new friends -- and some new stuff for the stash, of course. So here are some highlights.

I shared a cab from the airport with three other knitters and one gnome:

L-R: Siri from Colorado, Sarah (the gnome lady), me, and Laura from Michigan

I contributed to the baby pool of fiber minis and brought home a bulging bag of them:

I took two fabulous classes, one on finishing details on toys:

and one on playing with color in spinning:

There was pattern twinning:

L-R: Amy Beth (aka The Fat Squirrel), Emily, and me in our Recalibrates

There was gnome gathering:

There were trips off campus to an LYS:

and to a bookstore on my bucket list:

And of course there were acquisitions at the market as well as a couple of door prizes. I know you all really want to know what I came home with, so here's the haul (and yes, I did need to check my bag on the way home and use a tote bag as my carry-on because it wouldn't all fit in the suitcase).

Click to embiggen!

On the left are bags of fiber from the minis swap (top) and from my spinning class. At the top are the two books I came home with from Parnassus, both signed (sadly Ann Patchett was not at the shop that day; she'd gone to Alabama for a book festival). I also preordered Tom Lake, which will be signed and personalized and sent to me after it comes out. The bags -- books for me, cats for Mo -- are from Fat Squirrel Fibers. The fiber on the right is from the two door prizes I won, Charollais from Into the Whirled and a set of two batts from Bricolage Studios. And the yarn, from left to right: a set of minis from Camellia Fiber Company, a skein of sock yarn from Old Rusted Chair (purchased at Haus of Yarn), a skein of Targhee sock yarn from Woolens and Nosh in the show colorway, a skein of Targhee sock yarn from String Theory Yarn Company (from the goodie bag), two skeins of linen/silk fingering from Miss Babs, a skein of sock yarn in the show colorway (called Dolly!) from Geektastic Fibers, and two skeins of fingering from Stranded Dyeworks.

Non-yarny things: a rope bowl from StarKnits, a lotion stick and lip balm from Tuft Woolens, and a set of sheep stitch markers and earrings from Twin Mountain Handcrafts (the other notions were all from the goodie bag, which was the big canvas tote they're sitting on; the other bag was handed out heading into the marketplace).

And the two little things I forgot in the other photos -- a mini bucket bag from StarKnits (to hang on my wheel and hold things like oil) and the bumper sticker they gave me at Parnassus. I also bought a sticker at Parnassus featuring Ann Patchett's dog Sparky, but it's already on my laptop cover.

I expect I'm going to be playing catch-up all week from a very busy weekend, but I regret nothing. It was an amazing trip! I certainly hope I get to do it again sooner than six years!

Half and Half

This weekend was a mixed bag. I told Mo that it was a good thing we had a fiber festival to go to on Saturday because the weather was just miserable -- it poured for most of the day. That made for pretty awful driving, but I had company, so it wasn't so bad. And the festival, though small, was really nice. We both came home with some nice stuff:

Let me preface this by saying that I did not have plans to buy anything, but I also was not forbidding myself from making any purchases. Mo wanted to buy some soap for a teacher who is leaving her school at the end of the year and also had her eye on some sock yarn. We both came home with a bit more than that. My purchases are on the left. I could not resist the set of four skeins of Fibernymph Dye Works fingering in the bag -- they are Lisa's Ridgetop base, a custom-milled blend, that's now discontinued. I've knit two sweaters from it and really like it, so I figured these would not go to waste. I'm thinking a striped sweater. Mo picked out two colorways from Lisa's new Signature Series: Brights on Bedazzled (her sparkly base) and Neutrals on Mountain Tweed BFL. She wants to learn to knit socks this summer, so these are good motivation! We planned to buy soap from Rebecca at Dusty Tree and picked out a bar for Mo's teacher plus three others to come home with us. She also had some special mystery bags in her booth, each containing a skein of yarn, a soap sliver, a sticker, and a stitch marker for $15, so we picked out two. I ended up with the peachy skein to the left, and Mo opened the dusty pink/gray on the left of her four skeins. At Ex Libris Fibers, Mo selected another dusty pink with gray speckles (yes, that's totally her color of the moment), and we each picked out a sticker. Mine is the one that looks like a tombstone and says "Bury me in yarn and books"; Mo's says "Overwoolmed." Finally, she found an adorable project bag from June Pryce Fiber Arts. There's a large reversible bag with a square base plus a smaller zippered bag. I think we did pretty well for being there for maybe an hour!

I did not get a ton of knitting done over the weekend, but I did finish up the Newborn Vertebrae sweater and blocked it on Friday, and today it's all packaged up and ready to go in the mail.

I didn't purposefully try to match the sleeves, but it somehow worked out that they looked more or less the same, and that kind of serendipity always makes me happy.

Most of my crafting time over the weekend was spent plying my latest handspun. I still have to measure it to get final yardage and photograph the finished skein, but I'm so happy with how it turned out. Here's a preview of it on the wheel just after I finished:

Yesterday's big activity was planting more of the garden. I picked up our plants in the morning and Mo and I put them in after lunch. None of the flowers had actual blooms on them, so it doesn't look too exciting at the moment. I'm hoping we don't have to wait too long for some color!

This is the smaller and shadier side of the yard. I put the hostas in last weekend, and we added the flowers (they're dahlias, supposedly -- hard to tell without any flowers!).

On the more exciting side of the yard, we have more dahlias in the line next to the grass. There's a small patch of coleus in front of the Japanese maple, and in front of the hydrangeas, there's a bunch of salvia. If you look closely (and click on the photo to embiggen), you'll see my new planter with my tomatoes. There will be more vegetables going in soon; I've got radish, beet, bell pepper, zucchini, cantaloupe, and butternut squash seedlings in the house (though not all have sprouted).

Today I'm hoping for a quiet day at work, especially because I have a four-hour Zoom workshop for tomorrow (thank goodness I can knit my way through it!). Here's hoping you have a calm start to your week as well!

Only a Little FOMO

This weekend spring finally returned to Pittsburgh. After a string of cold and rainy days, the sun came out Saturday morning, making for a thoroughly enjoyable walk and then some time in the garden. Of course, the weather was also beautiful in Maryland for the 50th annual Maryland Sheep and Wool festival. Rainbow and I had briefly talked about going, but given my sister-in-law's due date, we decided to stay home (but we do intend to go next year!). I have not been to MDSW since 2019, and I do miss it. It was the first big fiber festival I ever went to, and a lot of people I know were there. I had to make do with seeing the photos and videos people were posting on Instagram, and in the grand scheme of things, it's probably better for my wallet and the size of my stash that I didn't go!

Instead of enhancing my stash, I spent some of the weekend reducing my stash. I worked on my sister-in-law's Mother's Day socks (which will definitely be finished in time -- I'm just about ready to start the heel of the second sock):

And I spun up a bobbin of singles from my second-oldest Southern Cross Fibre club shipment (Dahlia on Merino/silk from March 2020):

At some point today, I hope to wind these off on my ball winder so I can ply from both ends. It's a good thing I spun these singles so quickly, because I got what those of us in the SCF club refer to as "a pillow" from David on Saturday, containing these beauties:

The blue colorway on the left is the latest club shipment, a Merino/Corriedale cross wool in the colorway Bali. The other two semisolids are South African Superfine wool (so soft!) that were a prize. David has started awarding prizes to two people every month among those who post in a thread in his Ravelry group as a way of encouraging people to share what they're spinning, and in April, I was one of the lucky winners! I was excited to win, although getting three bags of fiber in the mail doesn't really help in my efforts to spin down my SCF stash. I really enjoyed spinning up the latest singles a little thicker than my default, though, so I think I may do several spins like that and get through several bags quickly.

Today it's back to the grind, though I'm hoping work will be less hectic than it was last week. Rainbow's school play (for which she is co-stage manager) is this Wednesday and Thursday, so she'll be at school late for rehearsals today and tomorrow and then late for the performances. I expect that means I'll be dealing with a grumpy for much of the week -- though if I'm honest, that's not that unusual! I hope Monday is kind to you and brings you all the coffee you need to get your week started off well.

Unraveled, Week 15/2023

It's Wednesday, and I'm starting the day with an early dentist appointment, so I actually wrote this post on Tuesday evening so I wouldn't be too rushed -- after all, Wednesdays are my favorite blogging days because it means catching up with Kat and the Unravelers!

I've been doing a fair amount of knitting the past couple of days, but I can't show you what I've been working on because it relates to that design submission I had accepted at the end of March. I've got a quick turn on that (the pattern is due at the beginning of May, but I want to get it out of the way ASAP), so I've paused my other projects while I get to that. I have, however, been spinning, and I officially passed the halfway point on my singles on Tuesday.

I've been doing quite a lot of reading the past week, and somehow I finished four books! There's been a heavy focus lately on women authors in general and the Women's Prize for Fiction Longlist specifically.

I ordered a couple of the books from Blackwell's (which is such a great resource for books before they're released in the United States), one of which was Homesick by Jennifer Croft. If her name sounds familiar, you might know her as a translator who has worked with Olga Tokarczuk. I read the "novel" version of this book (there's also a memoir version that was previously released stateside), as that's the version on the Women's Prize list. Though this is categorized as fiction, it's very clearly about Croft and her sister as they were growing up. It's weird and sad but also touching. I understand that in the memoir version there are photos, but this version is all prose. I gave it 4 stars.

Because it's National Poetry Month, I decided to make a point to read more poetry, and last Thursday things were quiet enough for a bit to allow me to sit and read through Ada Limón's most recent collection The Hurting Kind. I've read a few of Limón's poems individually in the past, but reading an entire collection really allows you to get to know a poet, and reading this one left me wanting to get to know her more. I've found that like my favorite poet, Robert Frost, she uses imagery of the natural world as a canvas for her emotions. I expect I will go back and reread this collection several times in addition to exploring her other collections. I gave this one 4 stars.

I had bought Memphis, a buzzy debut novel from last year, when it was a Kindle deal several weeks ago, and I decided to read it given that it's on the Women's Prize list and already in my hands. Before I started reading it, though, Katie filled me in on some of the controversy surrounding the author's behavior in response to criticism of the novel, and it's possible that knowing about that may have influenced my feelings about the book. I found some really beautiful writing and some great characters, but the book did not flow together in a cohesive way, in my opinion. I'm not sure if that's a failure of the writer or the editor, but other way, I found it to be a bit unsatisfying as a result. And I also spotted several grammatical errors, and we all know how I feel about those. I gave it 3 stars.

Finally I listened to an audiobook I'd long had on my TBR list, a nonfiction work that's part true crime and part biography. Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee was not quite what I was expected. The background on the trial referenced in the title makes up more than half the book, and Harper Lee isn't really mentioned until the second half. It was well written and well researched, but didn't really contain anything revelatory about Lee. I will say that I learned more about her and her relationship with Truman Capote, but I felt that the background on the murder case and related life insurance fraud didn't add much. I gave it 3 stars.


Even though I said I wasn't going to try to read the entirety of the Women's Prize Longlist, I expect I will have read quite a few of them before the Shortlist is announced! I had already read three of the titles to start with, finished two more in the last week, and have started two more -- Cursed Bread, which Katie was kind enough to send me after she read it, and The Bandit Queens, which I got as a Kindle deal. After those, I have Trespasses (another Blackwell's purchase) and Stone Blind, which Margene sent me. I just have to hope that the Shortlist contains many of the titles I will have read by then!

In addition to the book, Margene sent me a skein of yarn she thought looked to be to my taste:

She was right -- would you believe I bought a skein of this exact colorway several years ago but had never knit it?! I guess Rainbow and I will have some matching socks in the near future!