Knitting on the Green

2012 books, #1-5

2012-01-15T08:39:00.001Z

So much for my new year plans to blog more! However, here are some books. I hope to have some knitting to show later!

False charity, by Veronica Heley [audiobook]. Read by Patience Tomlinson. Whitley Bay: Soundings, 2007.

Bea Abbott returns from New Zealand newly widowed and has to decide what to do with The Abbott Agency, a business dealing with domestic crises. Her son, an MP, thinks she should sell the house to him and move to the seaside, but Bea isn't keen. While she's been away, her son has hired a secretary, Maggie, who turns out to be great at housekeeping but a dead loss in the office; Maggie in turn has brought in Oliver, an 18-year-old computer whizz who's estranged from his family. In addition, Bea's late husband has also enlisted her ex-husband, Piers, to look after her. When Coral, an old friend and long-term client, reports losses due to fraud from a party-organising company working for tsunami charities, the unlikely household investigates. Very entertainingly written and well-plotted.

The house at Sea's End, by Elly Griffiths. London: Quercus, 2011.

Ruth Galloway's baby, Kate, has now been born, and Ruth is returning to work after maternity leave. The first case she is called out on is the discovery of six bodies in a grave on the sea-coast, in an area affected by severe coastal erosion. The bodies are tied together in pairs and seem to have been executed sometime in the middle of the 20th century. What should be an archaeological puzzle suddenly becomes an active police investigation when a contemporary body washes ashore - someone is killing the witnesses to the event and those investigating. As well as an excellent plot, the relationship between Ruth, Nelson and their baby is also intriguing, and Griffiths also explores the guilt a single, working mother feels around childcare and trying to juggle two full-time jobs.

Play to kill, by P J Tracy. London: Penguin, 2010.

Another extremely good Gino and Magozzi thriller which discusses wider issues. This time, what starts off as the mildly bizarre murder of a transvestite in a wedding dress leads to a more serious problem - someone is killing people and posting the videos to YouTube. Are the murders linked, or is there some sort of group forming which is performing these killings? As with anything (knitting, for instance), there's strength in numbers out on the Web, and people encourage each other along, in this case to carry out more and more extreme killings. As ever, the Monkeewrench geeks are also involved. The characterisation and tight plotting is great, and the relationships between the various characters are lovely. A slightly odd ending to this one - I'll be intrigued as to what happens next.

Pirate king, by Laurie R King. London: Allison and Busby, 2011.

The latest of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes mysteries. The plot setup for this one is really bizarre - Russell is despatched to investigate a film company which is making a film about people making a film of The pirates of Penzance. To add further complication to the story, once the crew reaches Portugal they recruit pirates to play actors playing English gentlemen disguised as pirates. The absurdity of the situation isn't lost on Russell and King really does run amusingly with it, possibly at the expense of a comprehensible plot and some of Russell's usual common sense. There isn't as much interaction between Holmes and Russell as usual - Holmes only appears at least halfway through the book - but it's an enjoyable read.

Moon over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch [audiobook]. Read by Kobna Holbrook-Smith. Oxford: Isis, 2011.

Sequel to Rivers of London; I'd been warned it wasn't as good as the first book, and it couldn't really be, because the entire setup was surprising the first time round and the author is sort of riffing on the atmosphere he's created. Which is appropriate, as someone seems to be killing jazzmen in Soho clubs. The sense of humour and absurdity in the style is carried on into this second novel, and the plot barrels along nicely. The geographic accuracy carries on, too, which is always fun - you can really follow them around the streets... One of the best elements, though, is that actions and damage are shown to have real consequences. So many times in novels, our heroes are shot, beaten up, tortured, etc., etc., and bounce back to appear in the next book with only the odd twinge to remind them. One of the main characters in the previous novel still isn't back at work, or anywhere near it, at the end of this novel, and there's a very moving final scene in this book.

2011 books, #126-130

2011-12-31T21:22:00.000Z

Blood ties, by Lori G Armstrong. Kindle edition.

Julie Collins is a sheriff's secretary with a huge chip on her shoulder and the unsolved murder of her half-Native American half-brother hanging around her neck. Then a girl's body is found in a river, and an investigation is launched. Shortly afterwards, Julie's best high-school friend Kevin, a private investigator Julie helps out on occasion, tells her that the dead girl's family had hired him to find her. The plot twists and turns nicely and stays pretty gripping from start to finish. Julie is a bit irritating, and her choice in men is absolutely terrible, but her relationship with Kevin is interesting and makes the book more likeable than it would otherwise be. One criticism - did it have to be set in a county called Bear Butte when no other humour is derived from this??

A cold day for murder, by Dana Stabenow. Kindle edition.

Former detective Kate Shugak is a hermit of sorts, after the end of an investigation left her with a ruined voice and a huge scar on her throat - she has retired from Anchorage to her homestead a long way outside Niniltna, Alaska. However, a game warden has gone missing, and the investigator sent out from Anchorage has vanished too; the investigator was a friend and former colleague of Kate's and she reluctantly agrees to pursue the case. The cast of characters here is interesting, and the Alaskan scenery is fascinating (and very, very, very cold...) I'm hoping there are more of these.

A land of ash, by David Dalglish et al. Kindle edition.

Five authors imagine a catastrophic volcanic eruption in the Yellowstone National Park, with an eastward drift of an enormous ash cloud. A dozen or so short stories tell stories of the event, the deaths, the immediate aftermath and the struggle for survival as the ash hardens and begins to destroy buildings. There are one or two stories which make very little sense, but most of them are fascinating in the John Wyndham tradition, and show the best and worst of humanity in the face of an apocalyptic event.

The water room, by Christopher Fowler [audiobook]. Read by Tim Goodman. Rearsby, Leics.: W F Howes, 2004.

A Bryant and May mystery, and oddly the one I listened to after Rivers of London - there are many of the same elements here, with a supernatural component to the underground historical rivers of London, and a number of deaths in inexplicable circumstances. The Peculiar Crimes Squad with octogenarian detectives John May and Arthur Bryant investigate. The plot is maybe a little over-complicated in places but the relationships between Bryant and May and the other characters are beautifully written.

Flash and bones, by Kathy Reichs. London: Heinemann, 2011.

Tempe Brennan investigates a body found embedded in asphalt in a metal drum in a landfill site near a NASCAR race-track. This leads in turn to the cold missing-persons case of a young couple who were seen leaving a nearby site almost 20 years before. One of the investigators of that case is working as head of security for NASCAR, having been discredited as a policeman. It's a good Tempe case, spoiled only by some really unconvincing scenes between Tempe, her ex-husband Pete and Pete's airhead fiancée Summer, and the lack of Andrew Ryan; but if you like the plot bits of Reichs's story but get fed up with the female members of her family, this is a good one.

2011 books, #121-125

2011-12-31T20:55:00.001Z

Snowdrops, by A D Miller. Kindle edition.

A Kniterati book club book. A confessional novel written by a Briton called Nick to his fiancée shortly before their wedding, with an account of his time in Russia in the middle years of the last decade. It's a hallucinatory story, full of oil, booze, drugs and beautiful sisters, who may or may not actually be cousins. There's a feeling of impending doom throughout the novel, and a sense of a general moral slide... Pretty compelling stuff, and really draws you in.

Tilting at windmills: how I learned to stop worrying and enjoy sport, by Andy Miller. London: Viking, 2002.

(Not the same A Miller as the first book, as far as I know!) Andy Miller hates sport. All of it. Well, very nearly all of it - he has a love of minigolf, known to most of us as crazy golf. Using minigolf as a starting point, he explores the reasons people enjoy sport, from supporting QPR to the Boat Race, tennis at Wimbledon and the British Open golf. He talks to PE teachers, leading members of the sporting authorities and proponents of sport-as-entertainment such as publicists from the World Wrestling Federation. Meanwhile, he plays in minigolf tournaments including the European finals in Riga, where the Baltic Times dubs him "the Eddie the Eagle of miniature golf". It's a slightly puzzling book, in that there is one sport Miller wants to excel in, but it's also fascinating for those of us who were just a bit useless at sport in school, but keen on following sport from our armchairs - there's an interesting window into the psychology of real competitors such as Steve Redgrave.

Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovich [audiobook]. Read by Kobna Holbrook-Smith. Oxford: Isis, 2010.

Peter Grant is a trainee detective in the Metropolitan Police who tries to take a witness statement from someone who is dead; this brings him to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England. Becoming a DC and trainee wizard simultaneously means that Peter's world becomes somewhat more complicated. There is something very horrible going on in London, and Grant and Nightingale need to follow this to the end, or die in the attempt. Thanks to Jackie for the recommendation for this - told with considerable wit and inventiveness and a huge amount of humour. I also loved the reader, who can do everything from Nigerian grandmothers to upper-class twit with facility...

Locked in, by Kerry Wilkinson. Kindle edition.

This was an interesting story - middle-aged people are being found strangled in their own, locked, homes, with no sign of who may have been able to get in and kill them. There's no obvious collection, and new DS Jessica Daniel is also being hounded by a news reporter who seems to be acquiring information before the police. The plot is really tight - the main problem seems to be Daniel herself who is just incredibly grumpy for seemingly very little reason, and also prone to jump in without thinking. It's a little difficult to admire a novel entirely when you think the main character is a little bit of a pillock.

Suicide run: three Harry Bosch stories, by Michael Connolly. Kindle edition.

Effectively a publicity trailer for the new Harry Bosch book The drop (on order from the library), these three short stories are excellent and from different periods of Bosch's history. If you have a Kindle, definitely an interesting addition to the Bosch canon, and well worth the 99p cover price.

When geekeries collide

2011-12-29T00:09:00.000Z

I should probably be saying something about Christmas and how lovely it was. It was.

But this has it all. Neil Gaiman, "Firefly" and academic freedom. 7 minutes of glorious liberal self-righteousness. (With added Nathan Fillion and plastic dinosaurs.)

Unilateral declaration of Christmas

2011-12-18T15:00:00.000Z

I'm still not feeling particularly Christmassy - but it's the last chance I have to put up decorations even though the house isn't tidy and the presents aren't wrapped!

This year, the tree has graduated to the dining table - it's not that the Bug was destructive, but she was inclined just to lean on things persistently enough to push them off the table, and some of these ornaments are fragile, and all have a story attached to them... As this is a Flickr link, Blogger having changed (yet again) the way it posts photos) you ought to be able to click to embiggen...

Anyway, Tiny Clanger's in her heaven, and I'm off to a friend's house for dinner tonight... Merry Christmas, all!

2011 books, #116-120

2011-11-30T14:35:00.000Z

A full dark house, by Christopher Fowler [audiobook]. Read by Tim Goodman. Rearsby, Leics.: Clipper, 2003.

I enjoyed this immensely while it was happening, but found the plot pretty confusing and the motive unclear. This may well have been due to no fault of the author though - three of the CDs, including the last one, were really badly damaged. The final disc looked as if it had been deliberately scratched... This has a dual setting in the early 2000s and in 1940, when Arthur Bryant and his partner in detection John May first meet at the fledgeling Peculiar Crimes Unit. It has a great deal of humour and period detail; I'll definitely read another, preferring to believe that it's the jumps in the recording rather than the author's skill which was at fault with this one!

The best American mystery stories 2010, edited by Lee Child. Kindle edition.

Well; if these were the best American mystery stories of last year, it wasn't a great year. There are a couple of gems - Doug Allyn's An early Christmas, Kurt Vonnegut's Ed Luby's key club and Philip Margolin's The house on Pine Terrace are excellent, but the rest were a combination of the confusing, the somewhat unpleasant, the overly gory and the just plain badly written.

Fell purpose, by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles [audiobook]. Read by Terry Wale. Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear: Soundings, 2009.

A young girl's body is found on parkland near Wormwood Scrubs prison. Fleetingly, Slider's team believe she may have been a prostitute, but it soon turns out that Zellah Wilding was a nice girl from a strict Christian family. Trying to discover what was happening is steadily more confusing for Slider, as the more he finds out about Zellah, the less he knows. Excellent vintage Bill Slider, with all the humour and humanity you'd expect.

Open season, by C J Box. Kindle edition.

The first of the Joe Pickett novels - not available on Kindle when I started reading the series. Joe's daughter tells a tale about a monster who came into their garden the night before - when Joe goes out to reassure her, he finds the bloody body of an outfitter (professional hunter who acts as a guide to amateurs), clutching the handle of an empty cool-box with animal scratch-marks on the inside. As Joe tries to investigate the murder, all the authorities seem to be against him; he is suspended from his job, and his life and that of his family is threatened. Box always takes the theme of a good man pushed one step too far; but it's always far more interesting than that.

Betrayal, by Karin Alvtegen [audiobook]. Read by Sophie Ward. [S.l.]: BBC Audio, 2008.

When Eva discovers her husband is having an affair, she plans her revenge. Before she's able to put her plans into action, she has a one-night stand with a young man who has been keeping vigil beside his much older girlfriend, who has been in a coma for two years. There's the betrayal of the title in the story, but there's also desperation, and a growing sense of impending disaster. It's very much in the tradition of the Barbara Vine stories - damaged people coming to a seemingly inevitable collision in the dark. Not the most cheerful of reading...

N is for... New ventures

2011-11-26T21:13:00.000Z

Not mine; but I'm enjoying the reality, and the prospect, of other people's!

Made my first visit to The Sheep Shop this morning - it opened on Wednesday. And, as ever, I have what a-blogger-whose-name-I-can't-remember dubbed "camnesia" - so no photos. Picture a traditional Victorian corner shop, with windows on both sides of the corner - but painted white and full of yarn and notions, and fleece and pattern books. Lovely choice of yarns, nicely labelled; and masses of natural light to examine it in. While the shop is still a WIP (I have a lovely handwritten receipt because the till, although present, still needs programming), it has some excellent yarns, a sofa, a table, a coffee machine and a friendly proprietor (thanks for welcoming me, Sarah!). There was the soft hum of a KnitPicks podcast in the background which was just perfect - not silence, not music, knitting-relevant.

For the public transport user, the location does mean it's a little bit of a trip from the city centre (although it's only 10 minutes on a 10-minutely bus route followed by a short walk) - but if you're in a car and planning to go to the big DIY/business park just opposite, or the Tesco just down the road, it's extremely convenient. And worth the trip as a completely different alternative to anything else available in Cambridge - this is a true, modern, LYS run by someone who's net-savvy, and we really haven't had that here until now.

I'd love to reveal what I bought - but it's all destined for gift yarn for people who read this, or gifts for people who might read this! I also got some wooden 4mm KnitPro tips and some small locking stitch-markers for myself.

When I left, clutching my nice paper carrier bag, my stomach reminded me that I was 5 minutes up the road from The Wrestlers - it's been best part of a decade (and possibly more) since a red chicken curry and a pint was part of the routine on a cold Saturday lunchtime. When my ex and I were doing lots of DIY, it was part of the outing; and in fact I've been going there for more than 20 years. I love the food there; and for the amount of time I'd been away, the prices hadn't gone up as much as I'd have expected. It was lovely sitting there - with the Kindle rather than the Saturday paper; time moves on - and noting that the clientele is still half-Thai, half-geek. (I imagine there's an overlap, but it's not very obvious...) Anyone visiting the Sheep Shop, take note...

The second new venture is CJ's, a café opening on the Green , next to the SPAR which is opposite my house. It's the first caff to open in the village as far as I know (well, certainly in the 18 years I've been living here!), and they're doing breakfast and sandwiches and toasties and so on. I hope it does really well, although its opening hours mean it doesn't coincide well with when I'm around. The prospect of wandering over the road for a toastie on a lazy Saturday morning is very enticing, though... And I'm tickled pink by the idea of a local caff being named after a West Wing character. All power to Cheryl and Elaine who are distributing flyers and cards all over the village. They're offering Free Stuff on Saturday 10th December, prior to their opening on Monday 12th.

I'm slightly in awe of people trying to start up small businesses in the current climate. If you're in the general area of either of these and have the slightest interest in their stock, please pop in and spend money.

2011 books, #111-115

2011-11-19T11:22:00.001Z

Carved in bone, by Jefferson Bass. London: Quercus, 2008.

The first of the Body Farm novels; I was a bit worried that I'd spoiled myself by reading later books first, but there's much more to this than a case which comes up later. A corpse is found in a cave in a backwoods county of Tennessee, preserved in adipose state, and with a dog-tag around her neck. Bill Brockton is brought in to find out how she died and when, but after threats are made he becomes intrigued as to who the woman is and what her story might be. This does absolutely nothing to challenge some of the 'southern redneck' stereotypes, but many of Bass's characters tend not to lend themselves to typecasting.

No second chance, by Harlen Coben [audiobook]. Read by George Wilson. [S. l.]: Recorded Books, 2004.

This reminded me (in a good way) of Coben's other book Tell No-One. Marc Seidman wakes up in hospital to be told his wife is dead and his 6-month-old daughter Tara has been kidnapped. A ransom drop for the child fails after her grandfather involves the police, and it seems that Marc's sister Stacey was also involved. 18 months later, another ransom note is sent, and Marc and former girlfriend and FBI agent Rachel set out to try to find Tara. There are so many twists and turns in this book, particularly towards the end, that it's slightly dizzying; and I'm not completely sure how convinced I am of the eventual outcome, but it's definitely worth hopping on for the ride.

Dead man's grip, by Peter James. London: Macmillan, 2011.

The latest Roy Grace novel, and a good one. A student is hit by a white van while riding down the wrong side of the road to university, and falls under the wheels of an articulated lorry. Meanwhile, a solicitor on her way to work takes evasive action, ends up hitting a café wall and subsequently tests positive on a morning-after breathalyser. So far, so tragic - but the student is from a New York mafia family, and their rules are somewhat different. Meanwhile Grace is dealing both with Cleo having problems in pregnancy, and trying to have his long-lost wife Sandy declared dead. This all wraps up pretty satisfactorily in terms of the plots for this book, but the characters' ongoing personal circumstances are going to continue to make for good reading in future books.

Free-range knitter, by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. Kansas City, Miss.: Andrews McMeel, 2008.

Christmas and birthday books always seem not to be read straight away - I think it's the 'having a new hardback and keeping it for best' syndrome... I started this book and for some reason put it back down in the pile, which is a shame, because it's vintage Yarn Harlot - witty, insightful and occasionally very moving. It's a bunch of short essays which talk about knitting's place in a knitter's life, bite-size pieces but there's always something which makes you want to stop and think.

Dead run, by P J Tracy. London: Penguin, 2005.

Four Corners is a pretty dead town in northern Wisconsin even before it is literally a dead town when a milk tanker full of poison gas overturns, killing all life; and Grace MacBride, Annie Belinski and Sharon Muller are heading straight into the area, on their way to help the Green Bay police. Another cracking plot, and the development of the relationships between the characters is part buddy-movie, part Stephanie Plum, and extremely touching and funny.

M is for... Merci

2011-11-18T18:13:00.006Z

Thanks to everyone who sent commiserations and best wishes after my last post - and to those who e-mailed, texted and remembered the Bug at knitting night. Much appreciated.

I think it'll be a while before I have another cat (and sorry, yes, dog people, it will be a cat - I know some lovely dogs now, but I've just never even imagined myself owning a dog...). The Bug and I had got used to each other for 6 years before I started the new job with the insane hours, which mean feeding happens at Unacceptable Times; introducing a new cat to an owner who's out of the house for 12-15 hours a day during the week would just be unfair (to both of us if the cat resorts to the usual retaliation of shredding-stuff or peeing-on-stuff...). If someone were moving continent and needing to rehome a cat, that might work, but it'd have to come with the equivalent of a current MOT and a full service history, after the insurance travails this year and the realisation of what even a basic set of tests costs... Dealing with vets is a salutary introduction into the world of private medicine. I will comment no further.

Meanwhile; I've discovered my nephew is keen on monkeys these days (up to now his favourite animal has been "spiders" which is somewhat difficult in toy-shops... yes, I have a pattern...). He has the very nice chimp and gorilla I had as a child. My mam was after* a toy orang-utan and I found just the thing on Thursday. Having checked cuteness and price-points are correct, I need to go back and pick him up tomorrow and post him North.

I won't tell you where he is. I need him still to be there tomorrow morning!

*I used this construction, then changed it, then reinstated it. To be "after" something in the North East of England means you're looking fairly seriously for something.

Bye bye, Bug

2011-11-12T17:25:00.004Z

Amelia (Jarrahkatt Aimee)

4.9.01-11.11.11

Sadly, after a long hard year of vet's visits and a major operation in the spring, the vet's opinion last night was that it would be kindest to let the Bug go - her kidneys had nearly stopped functioning, she was anaemic and she'd lost yet more weight. It was a horrible decision to have to make but they were brilliant at the surgery. So there's another patch of turned earth in the garden, this time in the border she slept in for most of this summer, and a big empty space around the house.

It's going to be very strange living in a house without cats.

NaBloPoMo - oops...

2011-11-11T15:55:00.002Z

Well, that didn't work, did it. Last year I didn't post until the 4th - this year I posted until the 4th and then Massive Fail intervened... Oh well.

I'd say it was a long week at work, but I only did 4 days of it; today has been spent taking the Bug to the vet's and waiting for test results. I'm still waiting for a pancreatitis test, and to find out whether they're going to do an ultrasound... sounds likely that they'll keep her in at least overnight, though.

Think I'll go and do some knitting now...

Knitty Saturday

2011-11-05T19:53:00.002Z

Good day today - got up late, and meandered into town, snagging the odd Christmas present, disposing of an old camera by giving it to someone who might make use of it, returning a couple of books to the library, picking up materials to make things, and odd bits and bobs from my shopping list. Had lunch, and went knitting.

We were slightly less comfortable than usual - there was a meeting of Serious Gaming Geeks (old-style - cards and dice) somewhat hogging the same space. But there were only a few of us, and it was nice.

I finished up on a test-knit with Katie [Ravelry link], and collected some yarn from Sparkleduck to make a sample of one of Woolly's hats; she'd also brought some yarns she'd dyed in response to my request for a particular colour for a swap.

Really wanted to take a picture to adorn this post, but although the yarn is the purplest purple ever, it's come out as royal blue in all the photos I've been able to take! Trust me, Sparkleduck knows how to enlist my co-operation...

Friday feeling...

2011-11-04T23:38:00.000Z

... of complete and utter exhaustion. It was a long week at work, and an irritating one, saved by two wonderful guys and their competence with SQL - next week will be better!

It was one of those weeks with a task which was both boring and complex, leading to some interesting dreams when my imagination was set free at night - the dream where Neil Gaiman was driving a bus and then borrowed one of my parents' radiators before he went to a cat shelter was possibly the strangest.

Anyway, a video; read about this in the Standard this evening and it was quite heartwarming.

Apparently after this was all set up, the girlfriend decided she was going to drive in after all that day; at which point the boyfriend went out while she was in the shower, and disconnected the battery on the car...

2011 books, #106-110

2011-11-03T06:42:00.000Z

A very private murder, by Stuart Pawson. London: Allison and Busby, 2011.

A Charlie Priest novel; and another excellent one. The girlfriend of a royal prince and the local mayor open a shopping precinct and business park, only to open the curtains on a carefully-crafted swear-word in foot-high lettering. When said mayor is then found dead, the hunt really is on. There are some lovely characters in here, alongside some good detective stuff; and the sort of graveyard humour one hopes for in a Pawson novel.

Silence of the grave, by Arnaldur Idridason [audiobook]. Read by Saul Reichlin. Rearsby, Leics. : Clipper/WF Howes, 2006.

A new author to me - picked it up because of Saul Reichlin's reading, and the recent tales from Iceland told by Franklin. Pretty dark, this one - Detective Erlendur investigates a dysfunctional family from the 1940s after bones turn up during excavations for a new development, while waiting to hear whether his own estranged, junkie daughter will emerge from a coma having lost her baby. There's also domestic violence galore; I think Reichlin's reading of this is the only thing which kept me going with it. I'll try another because Erlendur is an engaging character...

Act of treason, by Vince Flynn. London: Simon and Schuster, 2006.

Another Mitch Rapp thriller, this time dealing with corruption at the highest level of government. When the Republican presidential candidate's wife is killed in an attack on the campaign motorcade, Rapp is called in to track the assassin, but this only really starts a deeper level of intrigue. These books are a somewhat guilty pleasure, given that they can sometimes provide a justification for such modern US "security" measures such as rendition and what constitutes torture. It's a very different mindset.

Hope and glory: the days that made Britain, by Stewart Maconie [audiobook]. Read by the author. Bath: AudioGO, 2011.

Maconie is a bit of a genius - here, he takes ten days, one from each decade of the twentieth century, and uses the themes raised to explore what it is to be British through them. Whether it's the death of Queen Victoria or the Live Aid concert, the Somme or the arrival of the Empire Windrush, he takes the wider ideas of empire and celebrity, war and multiculturalism, and riffs on them as only a former music journalist can. If you've ever heard Maconie on the radio (currently 6 music from 1-4pm, irritatingly), it's impossible to read his books without hearing him reading them, so this audiobook is a special treat.

Solar, by Ian McEwan. Kindle edition.

This was a book club choice (mine) and one that none of us liked very much. Michael Beard is a Nobel prize-winning theoretical physicist; he's also now fat, balding, middle-aged and his fifth wife is shagging his builder. Beard is a very unattractive man in all senses, and his constant womanising, and constant eating of rather disgustingly described food of all sorts, don't help us like him. Sections of the book are curiously old-fashioned, reminding me of Malcolm Bradbury's Eating people is wrong, a Kingsley Amis or an early David Lodge, with its implication that the academic conference circuit is rife with sex and drugs. There are a few funny moments, mainly to do with Beard's chronic lack of self-awareness, but there's a lot of eating without pleasure, having sex through a sense of obligation, earnest banging on about climate change.... As one of my fellow book club participants said, it was difficult to tell what sort of novel this wanted to be, and I'm not sure McEwan ever decides.

L is for... Lovely socks

2011-11-02T21:12:00.003Z

Yes, I know, cop-out on the alphabetical front. Hope you agree with me on the socks, though...

So at the beginning of the year, I signed up for another KAL - this time for Cookie A.'s bookknit.sock.love - so popular it's sold out and is being reprinted at the moment... There are 19 pairs of these socks, and we're knitting them over 20 months. The Ravelry group attached to this KALis an extremely nice place to be - it's a group of generally pretty knowledgeable and skilled knitters sharing information, techniques, and bits and bobs about their lives; it's friendly, it doesn't seem to go round in the endless circles a lot of groups do when people don't read the rest of the thread; and the moderators are excellent. And I now have nine-going-on-10 pairs of extremely nice socks. I'll share the first 5 here, and the second 5 this time next week - I have a reason for this!

All these are knitted top down, and the book is divided into Columns, Tesselations andDiagonals, which express pretty accurately what each category of pattern is doing.

First up, Hedera. This is one I'd sort of been avoiding because a friend had submitted a pattern for the very issue of Knitty this first appeared in, using one repeat of the pattern up the back, and a very interesting construction; it didn't appear in Knitty, but did achieve paid publication in a calendar; but I'd never had the heart to knit these. When I did, though, they're lovely - very stretchy and comfortable, in yarn in a colour called Legolas which Jan had dyed me for Christmas.

The second pair, somewhat more variegated. Again, a pattern republished from a Knitty issue, but this time resized for several widths of foot. What made these fun to knit (as I'd already made one pair when the pattern came out) was the yarn; Lorna's Laces Shepherd's Sock in Franklin's Panopticon colourway, and a gift from the man himself a couple of years ago.

I loved the way these striped so much that I really didn't want to go for the flap-and-gusset heel - so this was my first attempt at an afterthought heel. I'd certainly do that again if I had such very nicely striping yarn - it doesn't break up the colour the way a gusset would, because you don't change the number of stitches on the basic sock.

March/April's pair - wow. While this wasn't a complicated knit in the end, it was a complicated start, with 10 markers on each sock and lots of travelling stitches. This was the first of the Diagonals section, and you can tell... These were a birthday present for my friend Sue. The yarn was some from the Socktopus sock club - Enchanted Knoll Farm in Emerald Lake.

Next up - beautiful colourway, autumnal colours in Cairn from The Yarn Yard. These were a once-only colour so it was difficult to give them away, but they went to Jackie for her birthday. The pattern is Mona, and it was really delightful to knit...

And then finally for this post, May/June's pair, Rhombus. This is definitely the most difficult pair of socks I have ever knitted. And they look so innocuous! I don't know whether it was the two types of make-one-stitch involved, or the fact I never quite managed to memorise the pattern repeat, but I've never been so stymied by a pair of conventionally-constructed socks.

However, eventually they were done, and went to my mam for her birthday in August. She likes purple...

I'm enjoying the KAL immensely but I hadn't realised quite how much of a month is taken up by knitting a complicated pair of socks each month! I've taken nearly a month off this time, because we're slackening up slightly for Christmas, and have got lots of Christmas and test-knitting done in the time I'd normally be making fancy socks...

Speaking of which, there's a hat calling me. Talk to you tomorrow.

K is for... KAL (which is for KnitALong )

2011-11-01T22:53:00.005Z

I always say I'm not a joiner. I never was. I don't do competitive sports (although I love to watch cricket and, these days, cycling.) Somehow, though, if I do something as rash as going to a church or joining a knitting group I always end up on the committee, or as one of the people who you ask about stuff... And every now and then I rebel and wriggle out of my commitments for a while, only to create ties again. I'm one of those people who puts her hand up even at the moment of thinking "oh, no, here we go again"...

And I can't resist a good KAL. Which is why I'm in 3 at the moment, as of this morning. One is very long-term, and I'll talk about that tomorrow. These are the two one-project KALs.

The newest, first instalment November 1, is WoollyWormhead's annual Mystery Hat [Ravelry link]. Or indeed, hats. I'm going to be doing Hat A this year, in some lovely russet possum yarn. But it's not cast on yet as the first bit of the pattern just came out this morning, and I bought my needles for it at book group this evening. Nothing to see here. This might be for my cousin's partner or it might be for me... It's an alternate cable cast-on which I absolutely love as a method (and stop sniggering, Wibbo, that was a variation 2x2rib alternate cast on [with a double dismount], worked while in company). Tomorrow I will stick my earphones in and listen to Calming Music for 10 mins or so while casting on.

The one which is sort-of-in-progress-but-a-bit-late is Ann Kingstone's Tess slippers. Not tardy from Ann's point of view - she's posting the instalments just fine...; it took me a while to get going. Toe-up is not my favourite way to go with socks, and I was doing a couple of test-knits at the time (and I have no idea how many times I needed to watch the YouTube video to make it make sense...) But I have a toe of one, and a cast-on on the other, and while I'm not convinced my colour choice is doing the best justice to the pattern, it looks rather fabulous to me...

Possibly foolish...

2011-10-29T08:43:00.002+01:00

... but I've signed up for NaBloPoMo again, posting daily in November. I think it'll cheer me up on the long dark nights, and might finally get me posting some of the things I've knitted this year!! I'll hope to do some more of the alphabetical posts, and dig out some of the photos I've taken and not blogged anywhere... wish me luck.

2011 books, #101-105

2011-10-22T19:59:00.000+01:00

Good omens: the nice and accurate prophecies of Agnes Nutter, witch by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman [audiobook]. Read by Stephen Briggs. Oxford: Isis, [n.d.].

I had forgotten quite how good this was - both the Pratchett/Gaiman team and Briggs's reading. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse meet William and the Outlaws (or Adam and The Them, in this case), with the attendant presence of angels and demons; and it's hilarious. There are some elements I'd imagine are pure Gaiman - such as the notion that every tape left in a vehicle for long enough eventually morphs into Queen's Greatest Hits - and others which are pure Pratchett - but they blend perfectly. I hadn't read any Gaiman last time I listened to this, and it's much more fun having done so.

The Oyster House siege, by Jay Rayner. London: Atlantic, 2007.

Brilliant. A pair of gunmen fleeing from a failed raid on a jewellery shop end up in the kitchen of a Jermyn Street restaurant on Election Night, 1983, and a hostage situation is on. Some of the events are genuinely terrifying, and some extremely funny. The importance of food is never undervalued, and forms an extremely important part of the plot. This is genuinely unputdownable and I'll be looking for anything else Rayner's written because he really can tell a story, and he captures the attitudes and politics of the early 80s in a very perceptive way.

Want to play? by PJ Tracy. London: Penguin, 2004.

Someone is killing people in Minneapolis and the surrounding areas, but the second murder is so bizarre that Grace McBride and her Monkeewrench game-designing team realise that someone playing their test system must be recreating a version of their serial-killer-detection game. They go to the police (and the team of Gino and Magozzi), and another game begins - are they helping the police, or are they suspects?

I started reading this a couple of years ago, I see - and I had a bookmark at page 150 or so and couldn't remember anything about the book. I started again from the beginning, having read Snow Blind (review from the last couple of book posts), and found it completely riveting; I started the next one in the series immediately. The relationships between characters are brilliant, and there are some genuinely moving moments - not something you generally expect from a serial-killer thriller...

The reversal, by Michael Connolly [audiobook]. Read by John Chancer. Bath: AudioGO, 2011.

Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch get together, which is always a good thing. While Chancer isn't quite as good a reader as Jeff Harding, he's still pretty impressive, and this is a tremendous courtroom drama with a lot of compassion and some very interesting twists and turns.

Live bait, by PJ Tracy. London: Penguin, 2005.

Someone in Minneapolis is killing old people; and as facts emerge, the nature of the murders becomes more confusing and more tied up with the past. Gino and Magozzi again investigate; and the relationships they've developed with the Monkeewrench crew from the first book are carried on in this book. For the mother-and-daughter team behind PJ Tracy, relationships are important, and it's very seldom you end up in tears repeatedly during what's essentially a serial-killer novel. I'm really hoping I can get hold of the next in this series soon.

2011 books, #96-100

2011-10-16T09:45:00.002+01:00

Missing, by Karin Alvtegen. Kindle edition.

Again, I'm going with blurb from the author website here...

Sibylla Forsenström doesn’t exist. For fifteen years, she has been excluded from society. As one of the homeless in Stockholm, she takes each day as it comes and has all her possessions in her rucksack. To find food for the day and somewhere to sleep for the night demands all her time and effort. But it does not help her in keeping the thoughts away from the past – from the questions about why her life has turned out the way it did. Then a catastrophe happens. One night, she is in the wrong place at the wrong time. A man is brutally murdered and too many circumstances lead to Sibylla as being the murderer. For fifteen years nobody has asked for her, but suddenly she is the most wanted person in Sweden. She knows how to survive, but now she has to flee…

I really enjoyed this, although there was a tiny bit of anti-climax at the end. Sibylla and Patrik are both very sympathetic, compelling characters, and there are some heartbreaking incidents here. It's a novel about survival, and about whether you compromise with the world to ensure your own safety; and to a large extent, the thriller plot is just about secondary although it's also well worked out. (And without wanting to introduce spoilers, although this book was written in 1999, it was translated at about the same time as many other authors were jumping on the same plot bandwagon, so it would have been much more difficult to guess what was going on if you were reading it in the original Swedish when first published!)

The fifth witness, by Michael Connolly. London: Orion, 2011.

A Mickey Haller novel - a woman whose house foreclosure Haller's firm was dealing with is accused of murdering the chief executive of her bank. The client, Lisa Trammel, is her own worst enemy, but the evidence seems to be circumstantial and the police appear to have cut corners with their investigation. There's more time than usual spent in the courtroom and the cross-examinations are fascinating; well up to the usual standard.

Flesh and bone, by Jefferson Bass. London: Quercus, 2008.

Another very good Body Farm thriller. (Not to be confused with the recent TV crime drama - I thought I'd have a look on iPlayer as it'd normally be the sort of thing I'd like - I lasted about 5 minutes!) A bizarrely dressed body is hung up in a tree in the experimental site to determine cause of death, and shortly afterwards it is joined by the body of the visiting medical examiner, one of protagonist Bill Brockton's closest friends. Brockton is suspected of the murder and the evidence seems compelling. Well-plotted and with an excellent ending.

The spire, by William Golding. London: Faber, 2005. Originally published in 1964.

A book club book, and one which inspired the best discussion we've had for a long time. Dean Jocelin is told by a vision to build a spire on his great cathedral; the builders insist that the foundations won't take the strain, and the congregation is forced to move out as building works continue. How much of Jocelin's vision is due to madness or physical illness is always in doubt, and there are some fascinating contrasts between faith and science in the medieval era, with a large dollop of sexual jealousy dropped into the mixture.

Relentless, by Simon Kernick. London: Corgi, 2007.

The title's pretty apt - a fast-paced thriller set over 24 hours. Tom Meron is enjoying a Satuday afternoon at home with his kids when the phone rings - it's a friend he hasn't heard from for 4 years, who is obviously terrified and being attacked, and the only information he hears is the first two lines of his own address. Tom packs the children into the car and takes them to grandma's and goes to search for his wife at the university, and his life begins unravelling from there. This story really doesn't let up, and one twist after another means that Tom gradually realises nothing in his life so far has been as it seemed. This would make an absolutely terrific film.

2011 books, #91-95

2011-09-30T12:48:00.004+01:00

The vows of silence, by Susan Hill [audiobook]. Read by Steven Pacey. [S.l.]: Chivers, 2009.

This was a hard book to read originally, and a harder one to listen to on audiobook; I got it out of the library thinking this was the next in the series and it turned out to be the last one I'd read. Very good reading, though.

Dead I may well be, by Adrian McKinty. Kindle edition.

This was one I nearly gave up on several times. A 19-year-old from Belfast leaves the city and travels to New York to work for gangster relatives. It's quite shockingly violent at times; the only thing which keeps you reading is the central character who is quite compelling. There's a mesmerising section in the middle about captivity in a Mexican prison; but I won't be reading the other two books in the series.

The interrogative mood, by Padgett Powell. Kindle edition.

Another book group book, and not one I particularly enjoyed although reading it was interesting. This is a book written entirely in questions, and while it starts off as an intellectual exercise, as the questions continue they circle around some quite dark obsessions and the book becomes darker and darker. There are a few laugh-out-loud moments and a few questions which make you put down the book and think. Mainly though, the only way I can describe it is as rather like the video for Bruce Springsteen's Brilliant disguise, where the whole thing is taken in a single shot which narrows very, very slowly down from a kitchen scene to Bruce's face, in a slightly menacing way.

Banish clutter forever, by Sheila Chandra. Kindle edition.

Really enjoyable and useful book on de-cluttering, on the "toothbrush principle" that all of us have some daily systems which sort of work for us. And contains the radical idea that if you're going to clear things off surfaces, possibly clearing the cupboards for those things to go into first is a good idea. Wibbo recommended this one and she was absolutely right. If Sheila Chandra's name sounds familiar, she's also a singer, musician and teacher who's brought out many solo albums and also performed with the Imagined Village project. I've started on the house using these principles and am happy with the small amount of progress made so far!

Fear not, by Anne Holt. Kindle edition.

A child escapes from a wedding reception in one of Oslo's top hotels and is almost run over by a tram; an immigrant worker is discovered drowned; a woman bishop is murdered; a rich businessman contemplates his annual charitable donations, and it's the week before Christmas. Anne Holt delivers another wonderful, complicated thriller here, with a cast of characters we've sort of met before but haven't been the focal point of her books so far. There's a small cameo appearance by the wonderful Hanne Wilhemsen; and a continuation of Anne Holt's campaigning liberalism.

2011 books, #86-90

2011-09-30T12:25:00.002+01:00

Shadow, by Karin Alvtegen. Kindle edition.

I'm going to use the author's website blurb for this book because I can't do much better:

How much is glory and fame really worth, when counted in the suffering of the people closest to you? The death of the housekeeper of the fictive world-famous Nobel Prize laureate Axel Ragnerfeldt becomes the starting point of an investigation into the claustrophobic family ties, mysterious disappearances and dark secrets surrounding a man shrouded in myth. With her fifth novel Shadow, Karin Alvtegen has achieved her darkest and most complex thriller to date, in which the disturbing truth of a sick family is gradually and mercilessly laid bare.

The atmosphere of this book is what I remember best - everything is somehow in sepia, with an aura of menace. There's a sort of impending dread here, which also reminded me of Accolade, the play with Graham Seed (formerly Nigel in The Archers) which a group of us Archers fans went to in February. Very striking.

Unlikely killer, by Ricki Thomas. Kindle edition.

I enjoyed this although it had some quite serious proofreading (or maybe Kindle-conversion) issues! A serial killer is re-creating historical murders, and we see the book via both the killer and the journalist tracking the killer down. I did, however, find the final twist one jump of credibility to far... I'm not sure even Jeffery Deaver could have pulled off a switch like that though!

The unquiet heart, by Gordon Ferris. Kindle edition.

The second Danny McRae novel, after Truth dare kill, again set in immediately-post-war London and Berlin. It's not the most sparkling of plots, but the settings are excellent, and it canters along very nicely. I'm very encouraged to see that Truth dare kill has now appeared in paperback after being a best-selling e-book - it's good when the different publishing formats can feed off each other in this way.

Playing the game, by Simon Gould. Kindle edition.

Detective Michael Patton of the LAPD has been targeted by a serial killer who has already killed two girls; he has 24 hours to save a third. The plot rackets along quite nicely, but the ending is disappointing, and there are just too many typographical and grammatical errors for a stickler like me to enjoy!

The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell. Kindle edition.

Well, this one has just about everything - a love story, some swashbuckling, lots of information about the various trading companies with Japan in the 18th century... This was a book group book, not one I'd ever have picked up otherwise, and I enjoyed it immensely.

2011 books, #81-85

2011-09-30T12:11:00.005+01:00

Is it cowardly to pray for rain? the online Ashes chronicle of a nation's office-bound nervousness, by Mike Adamson, James Dart, Sean Ingle and Rob Smyth. London: Abacus; Guardian Books, 2005.

Reading the Guardian's over-by-over chronicle of a 6-year-old Test series really shouldn't be huge fun, but actually it was. Partly it's the Ashes, but mainly it's the comments coming in from people who are quietly hitting Refresh on their browsers every couple of seconds to get the score and ball-by-ball commentary, because of course that wasn't at all how several of us in our office spend at a few days of our summers (and in fact part of the winter too, while the World Cup was on...) A couple of people I know are in the comments; one of them even has her name spelled correctly - good old Grauniad. The fun is enhanced by knowing that the commentator isn't even at the game, but relying on the TV commentary which will sometimes, quite literally, go off to the races. A little bit akin to listening on Long Wave and going off to the shipping forecast at the wrong moment.

Savage run; Trophy hunt; Out of range; Three weeks to say goodbye, by C J Box. Kindle editions.

I don't normally review four books under one heading, but I'm catching up on the books read on the Kindle over the last few months (it's a lot easier to keep track of print books!); and the main thing about C J Box's writing is that he puts basically good, family men into extraordinary circumstances, and shows that the veneer of civilisation is sometimes just that. The first three of these are Joe Pickett novels, and the fourth a standalone, but the analysis of character and this basic theme is the same in all of the books. That's not to say they're interchangeable, and they're all very enjoyable.

2011 books, #76-80

2011-09-30T11:58:00.000+01:00

WG Grace ate my pedalo: a curious cricket compendium, by Tyers and Beach. London: Wisden, 2010.

Wisden describes this as "a spoof 1896 periodical from The Wisden Cricketer archives that looks at cricketing events of 2010 through a Victorian lens" which is just about right. Some of it is outright hilarious, some just make you smile. There are regular features such as the etiquette column by Miss Cecily Beasting, and small ads such as "WANTED for import to England: South Africans who can and will play cricket. Apply at Lord's." The writers have a somewhat interesting relationship with KP Pietersen, too... If you've been following international cricket over the last few years, there are definitely enough in-jokes to keep you going. Not to mention an ongoing (non-sparkly) vampires-at-Lord's serial thrown into the mix.

Consent to kill, by Vince Flynn [audiobook]. Read by George Guidall. Rearsby, Leics.: WF Howes, 2006.

Well, without trying to spoiler anyone else who might be working their way through this series of books, this one contains the only thing the author could actually do to make further books in the series at all credible. Mitch Rapp continues his rampage through the ranks of both Al-Qaeda and the senior staff of other government agencies.

The business of dying, by Simon Kernick. London: Bantam, 2002.

According to the blurb on the back, this is Kernick's debut novel - another one from the second-hand book sale at work. Dennis Milne is a deeply corrupt DS who also hires himself out as a contract killer; this time, though, instead of three drug-dealers he finds he's murdered two customs agents and an accountant outside a pub. In the day job, an eighteen-year-old prostitute is murdered by Regent's Canal and leads Milne into the teenage vice trade in London and its relations with the social care system. The plot is very tightly written, and Milne is a character you like, hate and are repulsed by at different points of the novel.

Game over, by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. Whitley Bay: Soundings, 2008.

A Bill Slider novel, and one I'd somehow missed until picking up the following one in the series and realising the characters' lives had moved on substantially while I hadn't been paying attention! This has all the humour and wit of the other Slider novels, but with more of an edge of danger; an old enemy of Slider is on the loose and is trying to kill him. Meanwhile he's trying to solve the murder of a BBC correspondent, Ed Stonax, and Atherton is drawn into a relationship with Stonax's daughter Emily. On top of that, Slider needs to find a moment to marry Joanna before their baby is born. It's vintage Slider and it doesn't get much better than that. Since reading this I've found I actually missed two Slider books. Harrod-Eagles is so amazingly prolific...

Now you see me, by S J Bolton [audiobook]. Read by Lisa Coleman. Bath: AudioGO, 2011.

Another excellent book by S J Bolton, with many twists and turns. DC Lacey Flint returns to her car one evening to find a woman dying - she has been stabbed and horrifically mutilated. Lacey begins to realise that her own lifelong fixation with the Jack the Ripper murders has been replicated, and that she is the person the new Ripper has decided to taunt. Bolton is a master of suspense, and there are some genuinely creepy moments. Nice reading, too.

J is for... Janome

2011-09-29T20:54:00.003+01:00

I don't think I've talked a lot about sewing and embroidery here, mainly because I was coming out of my embroidery phase somewhat when I started this blog. But embroidery used to be a huge part of my life, in particular while I was doing my City and Guilds certificate and diploma, and also from around 2003-2005 while I was teaching embroidery classes for the county adult education service.

I was reminded of this while on holiday this week, because I remembered how much I love my sewing machine. Here it is.

While I have the compulsion to name things with wheels (Tallulah the trolley, for instance, and Louis the Louët spinning wheel; my bike's called Helga), for some reason my Janome XC 33 has neither a name nor a gender. I went into the shop with a couple of requirements - not too much complication in the computerised line (I didn't need one which scanned in pictures, but I did want one with 30 or 40 stitch patterns to play with), and a strong and sturdy motor. A friend had this one and really loved it, having had a hate-hate relationship with her previous machine, so I was already somewhat biased in its favour. When I found out that it was a model sold to schools because of its relative indestructibility, I was even more sold.

Here's the usual view from the sewing machine - the hanging in the background to the right was also largely embroidered with this machine.

I think I've had this machine for 9 or so years; it took me through Part II of the City and Guilds, and through three years of membership of the Fibrefusion experimental textiles group (and I'm glad I found that link - they have a new book out!), and then beyond. It's not elegant, and it doesn't have the beautiful lines of an old-fashioned machine; it just does everything well and without complaining about it, and that includes up to 6 hours of free machine embroidery in the course of a session, where the motor is being absolutely hammered. (Maybe this is the reason I've never had occasion to name it; it has absolutely no quirks, unlike anything I've owned with wheels.)

One of the things I love about all needlecrafts is the prettiness of the stash - this is part of one side of my double-sided thread box shown in the top picture. I think this box now has all my threads in it - at one stage I had an overflow box but free machining takes up quite an astonishing amount of thread!

This little device for holding bobbins is wonderful - it's rubberised so the bobbins hold in there, but you can remove them easily with one hand, and they don't unwind, and if you drop it, they all just stay there. I chuck it in the same drawer in the chest as my ball-winder.

So anyway; what massively exciting thing was I embroidering?

Nothing at all so far (that comes later in the week/month) - I cut out and made 4 pairs of trousers this week because the machine also works really well for dressmaking. The top one is for daytime-type casual trousers, the bottom three pyjama trousers...

I is for... IKEA

2011-09-27T16:29:00.006+01:00

I realise going to IKEA is many people's idea of hell. It's never been mine. Partly because it really hasn't happened that often, and also partly because my idea of heaven is looking at some furniture and imagining assembling the flat-packs... (I'm on holiday this week, and with any luck there'll be some more flat-pack heaven later in the week. Stay tuned.) Mostly though, I just really like enough of IKEA's stuff to walk around there and have an excellent time and get some ideas, but not so much of it that it confuses me; and if you pick up an impulse buy it really doesn't break the bank.

However, as a non-driver, I don't have many opportunities to get to IKEA, and although I've explored the public transport options before, I've never really taken them. Until today, when a need for clothes-storage boxes (possibly temporary and therefore foldable) and glass tumblers (cheap) tipped me over the edge.

I did take a companion of sorts. This is Tallulah.

Tallulah was acquired on the principle that if you're going to have an old-lady shopping trolley, it may as well be as garish as possible. And she's done me well. She hauls bags of logs over the Green from the shop, she and I go around Tesco and try not to run anyone over (she hooks to the front of the trolley...) and today we were having a Big Day Out.

Has to be said, it started off rather foggy, which boded well for fine weather later. The 8:11 out of the village...

The glories of Tottenham Hale Tube, rail and bus interchange, waiting for the 192 to Enfield.

And the Arrival, well into "browsing time" but just before official opening time of 10am.

So, wandering and roaming... While I wasn't intending to buy anything other than storage and tumblers, some things (like a lint roller and some cupcake cases) may have fallen into my big yellow bag, as well as a couple of Christmas presents; and a couple of lightbulbs for the lamp in the dining room which might actually light the room. When I realised the tumblers I liked best were going to cost me less than £1 (this is for a box of six, you understand), I was glad I'd picked up the other things as I went round.

I really liked this ensemble (particularly the baskets with the holes in the centre, and the "knitted" one third drawer down on the left)

This is the sort of thing I'd like in my living room, but with some of the spaces filled with stereo/speakers/photo albums etc. And the sort of thing you need to go there for, and look at, rather than choose out of the catalogue. (I may actually need to get something like this built, or build it myself, because the bit of the living room it needs to go in also contains quite a lot of pipes, the consumer unit, etc., but it's always good to get ideas.)

Late breakfast was had halfway round, and by 11:30 Tallulah and I were all packed up and ready to go. The main point of the exercise, some folding (purple!) clothes storage boxes (called, with classic Ikea naming-flair, Skubb) is well in evidence here... She's a bit overloaded, but she only complained once, when the driver belatedly let down the floor of the bus for her to get in, and jammed the foam bit of her wheels under the vehicle...

The journey back was made under considerably better weather conditions, and much knitting was done (for Christmas, unfortunately, or I'd show you...)

It was positively summer-like by the time we were back at the station - this is T saying goodbye to the train. (We were meant to be going to King's Lynn yesterday but this happened. Maybe tomorrow.)
Arriving home just before 2pm, there was a surprise - one of the (many) nice things about living in a village is that this time of year, people have surplus produce and bring it to you... Sometimes in co-ordinating bags!

Wet walnuts.
Nom.

And of course I bought tea-lights. Isn't it compulsory?

2011 books, #71-75

2011-09-18T21:39:00.002+01:00

Snow blind, by P J Tracy. London: Penguin, 2008.

The bodies of two off-duty police are found inside snowmen at a children's competition, and then another snow-covered corpse is found by a country lake by rookie elected sheriff Iris Rikker, a former English teacher. Soon Detectives Gino and Magozzi are heading north in the midst of the worst blizzard seen in Minneapolis for years to join the two investigations. But some things should remain buried. And as the cases unravel, it seems the snowmen weren't alone in hiding dark secrets. The old barn next to Sheriff Rikker's isolated farmhouse also appears to have some strange connection to the killings... Extremely well-constructed thriller with some interesting characters, not least Rikker.

Faithful Place, by Tana French [audiobook]. Read by Gerry O'Brien. Oxford: Isis, 2010.

The course of Frank Mackey's life is set by one defining moment when he was 19. The moment his girlfriend, Rosie Daly, failed to turn up for their rendezvous in Faithful Place, failed to run away with him to London as they had planned. Frank never heard from, or of, her again. Twenty years on, Frank is still in Dublin, working as an undercover cop. He's cut all ties with his dysfunctional family. Until his sister calls to say that Rosie's suitcase has been found...

Lovely reading.

Innocent, by Scott Turow [audiobook]. Read by Edward Herrmann (and ??). Oxford: Isis, 2011.

A return to a cast of characters last seen in Turow's Presumed innocent in 1987. Once again, Rusty Sabich is prosecuted by Tommy Molto for murder, this time of his wife; and this time Sabich has even more to lose having been elected to the state Supreme Court, and with the desire to cover up an affair with a former colleague. His son Nat, a child at the time of the previous novel, is now a junior lawyer and also keen to investigate the case. Another extremely good tense courtroom drama by a master of the art. The reading is very good - Herrmann sounds just enough like Harrison Ford for the image of Sabich in the film version to stand, and the (completely uncredited) female reader is also extremely competent.

Last rituals, by Yrsa Sigurdardottir. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2008.

This was one I picked up at a book sale at work, with a slightly back-handed recommendation from one of the library directors who had donated it. It's certainly atmospheric - Icelandic landscapes and a plot involving both folklore and witchcraft - and occasionally unpleasant. Definitely worth reading although the final dénouement isn't as surprising as you might wish.

The rapture, by Liz Jensen. London: Bloomsbury, 2009

This is a very strange, and extremely good, apocalyptic near-future story which combines detective, speculative and science fiction. A very disturbed and violent teenager in a mental health facility tells her art therapist about visions she has about an environmental catastrophe. As the art therapist investigates whether any of the facts Bethany gives are scientifically possible, she draws a physicist friend into the intrigue, and puts her career and his in danger. If John Wyndham were writing now, he might aspire to this.

H is for... Hove; and Human kindness

2011-09-10T19:01:00.006+01:00

I still need to tell you about the other bits of Knit Nation and Fibre-East, and the Knitted Maze at Saffron Walden; but while this is still fresh in my mind and I'm making the pics available for Hove Daily Photo; What I Did on My Holidays.

Wibbo and I had an absolutely lovely day at the cricket at the Sussex County Cricket Ground at Hove on September 1 - watching Durham bowl out the home team and then have a bit of a bat themselves. We were at the second day of a 4-day match (which Durham won. Yay. Yes, I'm partisan; Durham's Riverside/Emirates ground is about 5 minutes' walk from my old primary school and less than 15 mins from my parents' house... But ahem. Hove.)

Not knowing what we were doing, we walked right round the ground (the entrance is near the block of flats to the left) and sat ourselves at ground level. (Sadly, there isn't a corresponding JETS stand at the other side of the stadium but that's because the local T20 team is the Sharks.) This was actually lovely - very peaceful, and a couple of sections' seating was in blue-and-white deckchairs - and we absorbed much additional cricket knowledge via the chaps (and they were mostly chaps) in front and behind us.

At lunchtime, the spectators occupied the outfield, and whacked tennis-balls about. Hugely encouraging number of boys and girls, mums and dads with bats and balls. I understand this is pretty standard practice, and it must be a huge encouragement to want to play on the ground...

And proof it's never too soon to start.

In the afternoon, we moved to the SHARKS stand; which turned out to be only marginally less atmospheric but a much, much better way to watch play. And to observe favourites as they fielded on the boundary.

Paul Collingwood!

Monty Panesar!

Callum Thorp signing autographs! This was a feature of all the boundary fielders - the Durham ones were slightly mobbed but then of course they would be; presumably the keen kids have all the Sussex ones already...

There were seagulls...

There was knitting...
And there was a somewhat inevitable seagull-on-knitting incident. Suffice to say this project is registered on Ravelry as the Seagull Poo Socks.

It was a lovely day and I hope we'll do it again.

In fact, it's only posting this which reminds me it took five hours to get home afterwards due to some mindless wazzock wandering about on the lines at Thornton Heath. Scenes at Victoria, after I staggered off the train nearly 2 hours late, were insane; one woman screaming "this is just unacceptable!" in a cut-glass accent, over and over and over again, as I tried to get through the throngs of people hurling themselves against the barriers... OK, she was obviously a bit of a Special Snowflake; but I hope Mr Anonymous Trespasser was happy with his evening's work.

Otherwise, though, my faith in human nature is currently at a bit of a high. I managed to lose a very lovely knitting bag on a train the Friday I started my week's holiday, complete with Jan's half-finished birthday present (I should say this was a second attempt, the first having come out too small despite blocking), several Addi needles and my little toolkit box; and reclaimed it the following Friday after understated heroics from the lost property chap at Cambridge station.

And then on the train between Brighton and Hove on the intervening Wednesday, I texted Jan and then promptly left my phone on the seat - it was retrieved by the conductor and we collected it at Brighton station that evening before knitting due to Brighton station being really sensible and texting Jan with the information on where it could be collected... Finally (I thought), I bought a fantastic bargain pair of purple suede Hotter boots while in Norwich with Rosie and due to a moment of extreme excitement in a second-hand bookshop, left them there. An hour later, I got those back, too.

I thought that was the end of it. However, sometime between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning the Bug went missing, and turned up finally lateish on Friday night just before I started printing flyers; and on Thursday afternoon I had a meeting with a colleague, after which she left her knitting bag in a public area, and retrieved it on her way home...

I know there's some horrible stuff out there. I've travelled through areas hit by the riots and there are some mindless thugs around; I listen to the news. But sometimes you just need a reminder that most people are honest and kind, and I've had that over the last couple of weeks.

G is for... Gothenburg; or Knit Nation Part the First

2011-08-29T10:51:00.000+01:00

So... it's been a while since I posted anything but book reviews. Which is not to say knitting, travelling, spinning, working, etc. etc. hasn't happened; but somehow there just hasn't been time to note anything down.

However; after the recent trouble and violence in London, I thought I'd bring you some of the wonderful London weekend which was Knit Nation 2011. For me, the weekend started on the Thursday evening, with a trip to the National Portrait Gallery, a meal at Rossopomodoro and most importantly a chance to introduce two friends, who previously knew each other online but hadn't met. Franklin and Gavin are both knitters and leading lights of the Archers group on Ravelry. (That's a packet of Duchy Originals shortbread with them; you had to be listening to the Archers in January or February, otherwise it's a long and pointless story)...

After an even earlier start than usual on the Friday morning, I got to the reception desk with SarahAbroad and signed up for all my classes. All very smooth and efficient - thanks, Jaq!

The first full-day class was the Gothenburg connection - Bohus Stickning, with Susanna Hansson who was a superb teacher. Bohuslan, the area where the knitting was done, is north of Gothenburg. What I liked was that the focus was very much on the social justice element of the Bohus project, and also the emphasis that this is not folk knitting, but a completely new style of couture knitting which was intended to compete with the likes of Ralph Lauren and Nina Ricci in the post-war period. Garments commanded very high prices, and knitters were paid enough that in some families, the balance of financial power was shifted from the man to the woman of the household which caused some contention.

Meanwhile, while listening and looking at slides, we started knitting wristlets in the Blue Shimmer pattern. The yarn is lovely to work with - you could really feel the angora content and it was incredibly warm.

In the second half of the day, Susannah spread out the wonderful collection of Bohus garments she'd brought with her, and we all looked, touched (with gloves, of course!) and photographed. What I love is both the colour combinations, and the way these interact with the texture in Bohus (which includes purl stitches on the front of the work, unusual for colourwork), and the gently felting angora content, to produce a wonderful blur of colour...

Susannah explained the construction (no steeks, seamed, cardigans worked back and forth in 20th century style, not the traditional cut-and-edge style in Fair Isle knitting, small couture-type buttons).

We had a show and tell at the end - lots of wristlets. Mine are destined to become the cuffs for a pair of gloves, probably fingerless. One was completed later that day, the other is underway again after a bit of a break for other projects!

One of the best things about the charity Bingo night on the Saturday is that one of my classmates won a fabulous Bohus kit, which was a fabulous coincidence given the numbers of people playing on the evening - congratulations, Elaine!!

More from Knit Nation, Fibre-East and another event soon - I'm on holiday this week so may have more time to sort out photos...

2011 books, #66-70

2011-08-21T08:55:00.001+01:00

The Blackstone key, by Rose Melikan [audiobook]. Read by Jane Collinwood. Rearsby, Leics.: W F Howes, 2008.

In 1795, Mary Finch sets off from Cambridge to the Suffolk coast to visit her wealthy uncle and end a family estrangement. However on the way she encounters a man dying after a coach accident who is carrying a watch very similar to one she inherited from her father, and with her uncle's initials. On arriving at White Ladies, the uncle's estate, she finds her uncle has died. The plot turns to intrigue, the Napoleonic wars, contraband and espionage, and rattles along very nicely. I'm not a great fan of historical novels, but this one doesn't overdo the period details while making it clear that this is a very different world.

Body work, by Sara Paretsky. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2010.

Another extremely good VI Warshawski novel. I like the way Paretsky is allowing VI to age naturally - although her instincts are still to go and tackle the bad guys, she's also extremely aware she's not in her thirties any more! This time she also has a grown-up niece to contend with, and a client accused of murdering a young woman outside a nightclub. There's also a strange elusive character called the Body Artist who performs naked onstage and allows people to paint her (possibly the least convincing part of the setup, but vital for the dénouement). Despite the unlikeliness of one or two elements of the plot, Paretsky's writing makes this very difficult to put down.

The Oxford murders, by Guillermo Martínez. New York: Penguin, 2006.

This was a present from a friend in Toronto; a quick, fascinating read. A visiting Argentine postgraduate mathematician finds his landlady murdered in her Oxford living room - the landlady is a former Bletchley Park employee, and a note sent to one of her friends, also a mathematician, indicates that this is the first death in a series. There are some good twists and turns along the way, and some very surprising reversals towards the end, which make this a little gem of a novel.

Bones of betrayal, by Jefferson Bass. London: Quercus, 2009.

A new-to-me author although I've seen these on the shelves in libraries a few times, and will have to see what we have in the village library. In fact, not a single author - it seems that the books are largely written by Jon Jefferson but from information provided by Dr Bill Bass, a forensic anthropologist who runs a facility called the Body Farm depicted in the novels, where studies in decomposition are carried out. In this book, the body of an elderly nuclear scientist is found in a frozen pond; the cause of death, a pellet of iridium-192 found in his gut, puts everyone in the autopsy room in danger of death and makes the pathologist carrying out the autopsy critically ill. Trying to discover how and why the scientist was murdered leads to another body, and into the history of the Manhattan Project and the Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory, along with discussion of the ethics of nuclear bomb research. Very well written, and the subject matter is fascinating; you do care very much about the characters by the end, too.

The bone thief, by Jefferson Bass. London: Quercus, 2010.

The previous book was one with the first chapter or two of the next book at the back, so as this was a two-pack of books (thanks, Wibbo! I'll bring them down when I next see you!) I went straight on with it; particularly as one of the more important human-interest elements of the previous book was left in limbo! This one takes up six weeks later when the characters are still dealing with the damage caused by the radiation leak. However, a routine job - the exhumation of a body to obtain a DNA sample for a paternity suit - turns into a mystery when it appears that the body's limbs have all been removed prior to death. Later, a woman dies of a virulent infection when she is given a piece of contaminated bone in a spinal fusion operation. Brockton is recruited by the FBI to investigate the world of black market body parts, and put in touch with sleazy Ray Sinclair. Meanwhile Glen Faust, R&D director of a medical technology company, is also interested in the Body Farm's work, donating a CT scanner and research funding. Because of the secrecy involved, Brockton can tell nobody, and realises he is risking his professional career, the respect of his colleagues, and perhaps his life. Again, very tautly-plotted, and written with a great deal of humour.

2011 books, #61-65

2011-08-07T13:30:00.000+01:00

This body of death, by Elizabeth George. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2010.

In contrast with the Kate Atkinson, this intertwining of improbably coincidental stories is, in the end, just annoying. I keep reading because I like Barbara Havers; there's just enough Havers in this one to keep me going, but I can understand why this one has provoked exasperation in Elizabeth George's fans. There's a parallel narrative which is allowed massively too much space and detail for the eventual connection, and a very unsympathetic senior female police officer as a major character. I ploughed through this one but never warmed to it.

Harry Potter and the deathly hallows, by J. K. Rowling [audiobook]. Read by Stephen Fry. London: Bloomsbury, 2007.

A re-read (or first listen) in preparation for seeing the film, as I'd largely forgotten what had happened in the first half of the book/seventh film! Fry's reading is, as ever, masterful, and the book definitely bears re-reading.

Mortal remains, by Kathy Reichs. London: Heinemann, 2010.

Tempe Brennan is called to the scene of a death which looks like autoerotic asphyxiation; the problem? the victim supposedly died in Vietnam in the late 1960s. The father of the Vietnam war soldier refuses to accept the DNA results, and the story is complicated further when other unidentified bodies turn up, some unclaimed Vietnam casualties and some in the present day, mauled by sharks off Hawaii. While I enjoyed this one - Reichs has wry moments which keep you reading - I had two problems with it. The first is (the Ellery Queen Problem) that at least part of the eventual dénouement does depend on medical knowledge which hasn't been exposed to the reader before this, so there's a slightly "not fair" element. The second is that there seems to be a rule that Forensic Examiners Have At Least One Irritating Female Relative or Nearly-Relative, and this one is played out to an annoying extent here.

Angel with two faces, by Nicola Upson [audiobook]. Read by Sandra Duncan. Rearsby, Leics.: W F Howes, [n.d.]

The second of Upson's Josephine Tey novels; this one set in Cornwall at the family home of Tey's friend Archie Penrose. Penrose is also an inspector at Scotland Yard, which comes in handy when he returns home for the funeral of a friend, only to find that there are suspicious elements to the death. Somehow this one doesn't work quite as well as the previous novel, partly perhaps because both Tey and Penrose are outsiders in a tight-knit community so some of the opportunities for extracting information are somewhat forced. However, the style is still very much Golden Age writing, and the reading here is extremely good.

Body line, by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. London: Severn House, 2010.

It's a Bill Slider; really, no extra comment needed. Puns, Porson's malapropisms and general bad jokes and wordplay abound, alongside a tightly-written, compelling plot. A supposedly very successful, wealthy, womanising doctor is murdered in his flat, but as Slider, Atherton and the wonderful DC Connolly investigate, the facts seem to slip increasingly through their fingers. One of the things I love about these books is that Slider now has a happy, successful home life, friends, and family. My only peeve is that there must have been something in the water a couple of years ago - the business behind the crime being committed seems to have been used by several crime writers published in 2009/2010 (I wonder if there was a pub session at the Harrogate Crime Writers' festival!) - I'm sure "oh, no, not again" wasn't the reaction Harrod-Eagles was going for. Still totally worth reading, though.

2011 books, #56-60

2011-08-07T11:30:00.000+01:00

The God of the hive, by Laurie R. King. London: Allison and Busby, 2010.

This follows on immediately from The language of bees - it's almost like one novel chopped in two. Another tremendous thriller, with a wonderful character in Robert Goodman.

One of our Thursdays is missing, by Jasper Fforde. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2011.

I didn't enjoy this one as much as I was expecting - somehow, it's got even more meta-meta-textual and has sort of disappeared in a puff of its own cleverness. I haven't been in the "all these novels are the same" camp, so Fforde trying something different with the Thursday series wasn't entirely welcome... There are a couple of very good one-liners though - the idea of giving advice on how to deal with "Robert Pestons in the wainscotting" was funny.

Shark music, by Carol O'Connell [audiobook]. Read by Regina Reagan. Oxford: Isis, 2007.

This was a good sound thriller which plodded along quite nicely - but to be honest, if it hadn't been a reasonably decent reader, I wouldn't have carried on with it. I don't find Kathy Mallory particularly appealing or convincing as a main character, and it should have been more tightly edited to shorten it considerably. I'd try another of this authors on audiobook with another good reader before I give up on the series though.

Memorial day, by Vince Flynn. London: Simon and Schuster, 2005.

Another in the Mitch Rapp series; this one takes a sharp and somewhat unpleasant turn into the post-USA PATRIOT Act world. Previously we've seen Rapp as an assassin but a man with a strict code of honour - here, working for the CIA, he's both involved in, and keen to justify, torture as a means to an end.

Started early, took my dog, by Kate Atkinson [audiobook]. Read by Nicholas Bell. Rearsby, Leics.: WF Howes, 2010.

A Jackson Brodie book, set in Yorkshire where Brodie is investigating the background of Hope McMaster, a New Zealander trying to trace her birth-parents. At the same time, a middle-aged security guard and ex-policewoman buys a child from its uncaring mother in the street. Stories become intertwined, sometimes slightly implausibly so, but as with Atkinson's earlier books, a series of disparate characters whose lives should be entirely separate are brought together by fate. I found the very ending slightly disappointing, but definitely worth going along for the ride.

(Just an aside here, caught up with the television version of earlier books in the series on iPlayer, and although Jason Isaacs wouldn't have been in the frame for Brodie in my imagination, I thought he did an extremely good job; I have to admit to being a longstanding Isaacs fan. I was disappointed with the Edinburgh setting for the first one, as Atkinson did such a brilliant job with Cambridge geography in Case histories.)

2011 books, #51-55

2011-06-18T10:02:00.004+01:00

The jury must die, by Carol O'Connell [audiobook]. Read by Cristine McMurdo-Wallis. Rearsby, Leics.: W F Howes, 2005.

I got about half a disk into this and realised I'd had it out of the library before, remembered all the characters - but then had no idea what happened in the end! I'm hoping it was one I couldn't renew and had to return unfinished! I gather this one is also known as Dead famous in the US. There are some fascinating characters in this, including Johanna Apollo, a psychiatrist and hunchback, in witness protection since she was part of a jury which found a radio shock-jock not guilty for a crime he almost certainly committed, and since the jury members began being systematically murdered.

South: the story of Shackleton's 1914-1917 expedition by Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton. Kindle edition.

This is a completely fascinating and frequently quite gruesome account of Shackleton's ultimately failed journey to the Antarctic, frostbite and all. Although not one you're likely to want to read while you're eating - too much mention of eating partially-cooked seal blubber for that... Shackleton first covers the part of the expedition he was on, including the loss of the Endurance to the ice, and then takes his men's accounts of the other aspects of the expedition (there was the exploring party, and another party at the other side of Antarctica charged with providing supplies for the exploring party when they got to their goal). The first part of the book is absolutely riveting, as the climate ultimately becomes the winner and the goal becomes survival. However, Shackleton is unstinting in criticism of the landing party at the other side, who waited much longer to be rescued and lost three men - you do get the impression that he's unwilling to give the credit for good management to anyone else. There's a great deal of pathos, too, in the fact that when the explorers finally reach land in South Georgia in late 1916, they want to know who has won the war, and have no clue that it's still going on; and also in the fact that they all signed up, and lost as many men in the last year and a half of the war as they did in three years of endurance on the ice.

I went for the free Kindle edition, but there are many of these at different prices - I'm assuming the more expensive ones have maps.

The darkness of bones, by Sam Millar. Kindle edition.

Sometimes you get a book which is just awful on many levels. I kept on with this with a sense of horrified fascination. It purports to be set in Northern Ireland (and is based on a child sex scandal there) but apart from mentions of Dublin, Belfast and so on, it may as well be set in Joe Pickett's Wyoming or Charlie Parker's Maine woods. The spelling veers wildly between British and US usage - "the colour of the center", for instance - and there are some quite weird malapropisms - "voyageur" for "voyeur" - and many uses of homophones (the usuals, reign/rein, breaks/brakes, tire/tyre but also some bizarre ones like begin/begging). The plot is also pretty distasteful with a lot of badly-written graphic violence which seems to be included for effect, and no sympathetic characters. Not recommended. I would say 'you get what you pay for, and it was only 70p' but actually, you usually get an awful lot more than you pay for!

Silver, by Steven Savile. [S.l.]: Bad Press, 2011. Kindle edition.

This, on the other hand, was 70p extremely well spent!

Thirteen people burn themselves to death simultaneously in public squares across the world, while announcing forty days and nights of plague and terror on the world. Shortly afterwards in Berlin, there's a sarin attack on the underground. The shadowy Ogmios unit, an ultra-secret Special Ops team, go in pursuit of the Disciples of Judas, who have declared war on the West. The action concentrates on Berlin and Rome, with a very nicely- (and geographically-accurately)-written short episode in Newcastle. Highly recommended to anyone who would have liked The Da Vinci code to have been written with skill and imagination. The heresy at the heart of this one is original and fascinating, unlike the tired old "sensation" Dan Brown doled out, and the writing is taut and well-crafted with some interesting and likeable characters. Oh, and the word "symbology" isn't mentioned once...

Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín. London: Penguin 2009.

A Kniterati book - not one I'd have picked up otherwise, but this time that's not necessarily a good thing. Eilis, an innocent in her early 20s, leaves her home in Ireland for a job in New York organised by a friendly priest. It's a fascinating look into New York in the 1950s, and a window into a different world of constraint, and standards of behaviour, and so on - ultimately I didn't enjoy it because the great "choice" Eilis has to make is largely determined for her - she's almost a cypher, and a bystander in her own life.

E is for... many things; and F is for Feast

2011-06-11T19:15:00.011+01:00

Well, bizarrely enough, the theme for this year's Feast was "E is for..." So I'm combining two letters here... If I'd kept up with the programme, Saturday would have been J and I'd have gone for "Jolly", which would also have worked.

So, it all started: the view from outside my front door on Friday night at about 8pm... The Bug was unimpressed. [Quick Amelia update: vet was very pleased on Saturday morning, and she can now go out, which she's loving. I loved it slightly less yesterday afternoon when she came in, leapt up onto the table and plonked her wet self down on my inkjet-printed, rather complicated, knitting pattern...]

I am a veteran. I know this is the Thomas the Tank Engine Train, as ever; while I'd rather the commercial stalls were elsewhere on the Green because of the canned music, my nephew is a Thomas fanatic so these days, I think of him while they're unpacking it...

The next morning at 9:30am when I started over to find the stall I was volunteering on, the Es were in evidence. The English Country Gardenists were next to the school's Ecowarriors

We were unthemed, sadly; but as our main organiser was told to rest up about 10 days beforehand, getting a stand together was OK in and of itself...

Now. Nothing says "Feast" like "construction of temporary bridge". At least, it doesn't in our village. We have enough 39 Engineer Regiment at home, after Iraq and Afghanistan, to do this sort of thing. Here they are delivering the equipment.

And here's the guy who drew the short straw and had to guard it all over the afternoon...

He wasn't armed or anything, and I'd have loved to have seen the people who dared to steal several tons of military equipment in front of a thousand or so people including large numbers of Army personnel, but there was probably some sort of Elf and Safety ruling which meant that if someone tried to make off with the odd huge chunk of steel and dropped it on his/her foot... (I'm actually a big fan of people not being killed at work, having been a H&S rep in my previous job and a fire marshal in this one, but the risk assessment form does seem to have gone over the top this year!)

I don't have pictures of the bridge construction, or the children running up and down and all around it afterwards; I was helping to pack our stuff away at the time. But I've seen it all done once before, and I saw bits of it this time; and my God, they're good. I realised they're trained for it, and they're meant to be some of the best in the world; but about a dozen of them take all that stuff and make a working bridge which will carry a tank in almost exactly 10 minutes flat. It's astonishing.

This year, there were also Interesting Animals. (Not saying that the Dog Obedience in previous years was dull... well, yes, I am.) The library stand was right next to a little cage of meerkats. A couple of times, stroking of meerkats happened.

Snakes were also present. I couldn't quite believe the colour (and size) of this one. (Yes, it is real.)

Dragging us back into the Usual, Waterbeach Brass played, and I knitted... it was lovely. Lots of people commented on the knitting. I should have had a little placard for WWKIPD, but I didn't.

Then there was the parade... This year, instead of the Arco Iris Samba Band, we had a Cadets band - pipe and drum band. The uniforms were certainly impressive. There was a short embarrassing pause as this lot, followed by most of the children in the village, confronted the number 9 bus to March at the corner. (The number 9 bus lost.)

There were Rangers, being an Everest expedition. (I hope that if they ever do make the trip, someone points out that shorts might not be quite the thing, but some of them had an impressive number of badges.)

There were Explorers.
The big ones had plastic pith helmets. The little ones had fabulous wild animal costumes. They did their best not to skid on the huge slough of detergent "snow" left by the Everesters while they were standing in one place during the Great Bus Confrontation of 2011.

There were also Egyptians.

I love the way some people go for complete historical accuracy, and some go for 'I'm sure I have a bridesmaid's dress somewhere'... that's the spirit!

And here comes the school contingent and its Ecowarriors.

And, just because NO village procession around Cambridge is complete without a samba band - the Arco Iris conductor had evidently been working with the school...

... and it had developed its own.

There were also Elephants, but the pictures weren't great; but there was also Easter, and Eggs.

So sweet.

The weather, as you can see from these, was fine. Not as warm as it might have been, but the forecast had been astonishingly horrible; and in the end, the rain didn't fall until Sunday, which was dreadful; but as we're officially in drought, I probably shouldn't mind getting a little bit soaked going to a friend's for dinner last night...

I love the Feast. Cottenham/Rampton are having a Big Family Festival next month, with fanciness including Bob Flowerdew; but we're not so shabby; and I'm moved to tears by the parade every year because so many people put so much effort into it...

D is for... DPNs

2011-06-06T17:50:00.004+01:00

As you can see - the 30 day blogging challenge has become somewhat theoretical. I am going to carry on with the A-Z thing though, because it's fun, and why not. With interspersed book reviews... and I'm going to try to make it semi-regular...

So - DPNs.

There are almost as many ways of knitting socks as there are people, I think. I'm in a knit-along (KAL) for Cookie A.'s book knit. sock.love. and there are people knitting on 4 DPNs, 5DPNs, one circular, two circulars, two at a time on two circulars, two at a time on one circular. Some are adapting the patterns to knit toe-up, and there are as many methods of knitting toe-up socks as there are top-downs...

I also remember being at the (sadly now closed) Stash Yarns in London when there were 7 knitters there, using 7 different methods of knitting socks, and a lady came into the shop and said "what's the best way to knit socks?" How we laughed. (And then explained why we were laughing and invited her to watch us all knitting and work out which might be best. Obviously.)

Me, I'm a fan of double-pointed needles in a set of 4 for socks. I like the triangle formation, and how stable it is.

I like wooden needles, because I'm a looser knitter and I like the grabbiness of wood. My favourite DPNs are a set of 3 (formerly 5) Colonial Rosewoods from Wibbo several years ago - I broke one, and left one on a table at work while knitting at lunch... I supplement these with KnitPro Harmony wooden needles, which aren't quite the same (and are half an inch longer) but do the job.

The only book I could find which made sense to me while I was trying to learn how to knit with DPNs was called America's Knitting Book by Gertrude Taylor (found in Oxfam in Ely, but I gather it's back in print at Amazon.com) . I warmed to this book on the bus home, when it said "If you are left-handed, you should not knit from left to right. Left-handed people write in the same direction as right-handed people do, so too, you should knit in the same direction as other knitters do, so that others will be able to help you." My grandma tried to teach me by getting me to sit opposite her and knit in the opposite direction, and it just didn't work - in the end I taught myself from a (right-handed) Ladybird book. I would love to find a copy of that book again. I have met a couple of truly left-handed knitters over the last couple of years and they do brilliant work; but I'm not sure I'd have carried on in the 1970s climate if I'd knitted entirely left-handed.

One of the legacies of Gertrude Taylor, though, is that she does say breezily "If you are going to knit socks without seams you will be using the four-needle method", and additionally shows all of her diagrams for both circular and DPNs with the knitter working from the back of the triangle, looking at the right side but with the wrong side facing, thus:

(This was a test knit for Erssie Major last summer; a lovely Christmas stocking in colourwork).

One of the good things about knitting "inside out" in colourwork is that the "floats" (lengths of yarn between one use of a colour and the next) are on the outside, so you're less likely to get all tightened-up...

The other thing I like about using DPNs for any circular stuff is their compactness.

Knitting is totally a matter of preference - and this is mine.

C is for... Cricket

2011-06-06T17:18:00.004+01:00

Not very impressive, getting two days into a month's blogging every day and then stalling, but I'd originally picked C for Colour, and got overwhelmed choosing photos. So I thought I'd go for something more manageable, and topical, on this 4th day of a murky Test at Lords after the umpires have just pulled the teams off for bad light yet again.

One of my first memories of family holidays is listening to Test Match Special (quietly, so as not to disturb the neighbours) on the beach. As most of the beaches we went to tended to be in Northumberland, there weren't many neighbours. I suppose the earliest one might have been the 1975 Ashes series; but I remember Botham, Gower et al against Richards, Holding and the fabulous West Indies side which is being commemorated in the new film Fire in Babylon (link to trailer).

I'm not that technically knowledgeable about cricket - I know where the fielding positions are, and the difference between the types of delivery. I'm a big fan of Test cricket as the purest form of the art; but the World Cup was pretty exciting this time round, and as someone who grew up about half a mile from the current Durham ground, following County cricket is pretty rewarding too. But mostly, I love the fact that a sometimes slow-paced game can give such excitement, that games which ought to go one way suddenly go another and that articulate people can be so utterly passionate about it. You could probably say most of these things about any sport, but mine's cricket.

To an extent, this is actually rather like knitting, or any form of craft. You graft on, sometimes without an end or any discernible result in sight, and then have the excitement of a finish; sometimes something you start very tentatively turns out to be exactly the right thing; and then sometimes you think you've picked the perfect yarn and needles for a project and it all goes horribly wrong. And knitters and cricketers all do seem to enjoy a good tea, with cake.

I really, really wish there was the knitting equivalent of Test Match Special. Even if there's no play, sometimes especially if there's no play, the commentators are wonderful. It's almost the original of blogging or podcasting - people sitting and talking about what they're passionate about. Oh, and then you get someone like Heston Blumenthal filling in the gap this morning with his recipe for roast potatoes. Or Imelda Staunton hoving into view at teatime with a home-made lemon drizzle cake. Or Scouting for Girls coming in to do a version of She's so lovely for Mrs Aggers because she has it has her ringtone...

Go England. At the moment, it looks as if we might be heading for an honourable draw and that'd be just fine...

B is for... Books

2011-06-02T17:18:00.005+01:00

(Before I go on about the actual theme, B is also for Bug - aka Amelia [Mealy-Bug], mentioned in the last post. She came home last night, about 24 hours before I expected her to, and seems pretty cheerful for a cat with a 5" incision in her belly. She's also, so far and touch wood, been very good about not attacking the stitches. We get the results of the biopsies sometime next week. She's sulking in the back bedroom, mainly because a) she can't go out and b) I attack her twice a day with painkillers and antibiotics, which are obviously The Enemy and I am Horrid Person. She has just come down and devoured half a very nice line-caught posh haddock fillet I'd originally put in the freezer for myself, though. [I'm sure she'd have had the other half if I'd let her.] I've been working from home today, will go in for the usual shorter Friday tomorrow, and am off on Monday - next appointment is Saturday for a quick once-over...

Thanks for everyone's good wishes.)

OK. Books.

As anyone who's read this blog over the last year and a half or so (since I started listing the books I've read) will know, I'm a bit of a reader. I cannot imagine a life without a heap of books to read. Sometimes this is slightly oppressive - even if I wished to play my severely out-of-tune piano, I can't because it has my "unread books" stacks all over it - but it offers a world of possibilities. So I thought I might give you my top 5 non-knitting books, and my top knitting book.

Non-knitting...

5. The silver pigs, by Lindsey Davis. 1989.

The first of the Marcus Didius Falco novels, and arguably the best - this sets up the series but is a wonderful historical/romantic/detective novel on its own. There are 20 in the series now and I wish continued health and inspiration to Ms Davis for many more.

4. TS Eliot: the complete poems and plays, by TS Eliot. 1969.

There's just something about Eliot. It might be his Catholicism and the use of biblical language to address modern subjects; it may just be his use of language, but I find myself dipping into this collection

3. Gaudy night, by Dorothy L Sayers. 1935.

For me, the best romantic novel ever written, and the detection isn't bad, too. Sayers cracks the ice on the Wimsey/Vane relationship quite wonderfully.

2. Gods in Alabama, by Joshilyn Jackson. 2004.

Jackson is just amazing. Every book she brings out is a tour de force of Southern fiction. I think probably the best thing I can do to describe this book is to give you the first paragraph. "There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel's, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus. I left one back there myself, back in Possett. I kicked it under the kudzu and left it to the roaches."

1. To kill a mockingbird, by Harper Lee. 1960.

I can't explain why my top two books are set in the American South, but there you are. I re-read this book every couple of years or so. The combination of innocence and knowingness, and a society which is so different and so much the same, always enthrals me. I don't know whether I read the book or saw the film first, but I love both equally, for entirely different ways.

Knitting

This was a difficult one. So many books have excellent techniques, and beautiful photos. But the top one, just for the eye-opener and a personal connection, has to be

Unexpected knitting, by Debbie New. [Can't find original date, in print again though]

Not the cheapest of books - but it will get you thinking about knitting as the creation of a fabric, if you don't already. This book was written by a woman with 8 children who regards knitting a log-cabin quilt using a photo of her mother, which ends up the size of a barn, as an entirely reasonable activity. There are some recipes for knitting here, and the odd pattern, but really, it's the inspiration which is the key. I've never had such an eye-opener.

The strange thing was that I first saw it the day I met Rosie/caughtknitting, on a chance meeting at the Mill Pond when we were both waiting to go somewhere else and I was knitting. She came over and introduced herself and showed me the book; and I was pretty standoffish because I was waiting for friends to turn up, and thank goodness, she gave me her e-mail address and the rest is history. Joining the Cambridge knitting group was a bit of a lifesaver at the time, and has been lovely ever since. April 24, 2004. Not difficult to remember as it was also my birthday! Nowadays, of course, I'd know what to do if approached by a fellow knitter in a public place, but it was the first time it had happened to me...

I am sure that even without that, it would be my top knitting book...

A is for... Animals

2011-06-01T06:41:00.003+01:00

I'm doing something a bit different this month, pinching an idea pitched on Ravelry by Tinks - she's going to be taking up a challenge of blogging all the letters of the alphabet this month on her blog. Some of the letters are going to be easier than others!

This one, however, has come to mind because of a couple of events this week. First, the little Circus Tyanna has come to live on the Green this week. For a spinner, the most exciting ones are obviously the llamas - wouldn't these two make a great sweater?

There's also this extremely cute white goat which is tethered just opposite my house
and a slightly less cute goat - there are quite a few ponies but this miniature one is probably the sweetest-looking...

I'm sort of glad to have animal distractions out there at the moment, as the Bug is in the veterinary hospital until at least Thursday - she had an enormous pancreatic cyst removed yesterday and they've sent off various bits of her for biopsies. I imagine she is not amused at the moment.

No knitting to sit on, for one thing.

Sometimes, I'm just blown away by my workplace

2011-05-28T21:45:00.003+01:00

I don't normally go on about where I work. Mainly because I suspect if my employers ever sort out a protocol on blogging, they might go for restrictive, and then I'd have to delete things.

But this Wednesday we had an Event... and I attended it!

I was on the Reserve List, so we had a slightly anxious 90 minutes sitting in a room off the Hall wondering if we'd get in or just have to watch it on the telly while feeling guilty about not doing work at the same time (I knew 15 people would have to drop out before I was admitted), but then we were ushered downstairs. In the end I was seated a long way back but only 4 places away from the aisle.

I had to do some swaying backwards and forwards to keep President Obama in sight while he was delivering his speech, but that was fine; and although the speech has had mixed reviews, it had the hair standing up on the back of my neck a few times.

The highlight for me (as well as the fanfare, which was astonishing) was his coming down the aisle, diving into the crowd (to the obvious exasperation of the clean-cut suits with earpieces) and greeting people with wit and humour. As a child of the 70s/80s, seeing him greet Floella (now Baroness) Benjamin was wonderful; and I also saw him meet Glenda Jackson MP with an instant recognition of who she was... Yes, I'm a fangirl; but I think he had many converts, too... and I've been within about 6 feet of the first US President ever to speak in Westminster Hall.

2011 books, #46-50

2011-05-28T18:29:00.000+01:00

Deed to death, by D B Henson. Kindle edition.

One of the interesting things about choosing the "under £1" option for Kindle books is that you get a real mixture - first novels by established author to get you to pay more for the others in the series, books which are only available electronically, and so on. This one appears to have gone out as a Kindle edition to test the waters for a print-run and is currently unavailable on Kindle but the paperback is in preparation.

Scott Chadwick falls to his death from the top of the hotel he's constructing, three days before his wedding. His fiancée is determined to prove that Scott has been murdered rather than having committed suicide, and her need for this increases when Scott's estranged brother Brian contests his will. It's a workmanlike sort of book - the plot's well thought-out and resolves satisfactorily, and while the writing style is a bit plodding, it's a nice fast read.

Street dreams, by Faye Kellerman [audiobook]. Read by Liza Ross. Oxford: Isis, 2004.

A Rina and Peter Decker novel but with the concentration on Cindy Decker. Thankfully, Cindy seems to be growing up a little since the last book she starred, in which she was extremely irritating. The story starts with Cindy finding a newborn baby buried under a rubbish heap, and tracking down her mother, a learning disabled girl almost as vulnerable as the baby. Further investigation uncovers a violent crime, and introduces Cindy to personal danger. Meanwhile she meets a handsome paediatric nurse who turns out both to be an observant Jew, which makes her stepfamily very happy, and also Ethiopian, which causes slight surprise at the Sabbath dinner table. Peter Decker is at his irascible best in this one, and with any luck Cindy's more recalcitrant days are behind her.

Unholy angels, by Karen Fenech. Kindle edition.

Liz Jansson's marriage was over well before she left her husband and filed for divorce; but Peter Jansson's suicide, a month after she moves out of their house, looks like a moment of despair at her betrayal; that's certainly what their son, Will, believes. Will is adopted by the adherents of a Satanic group which contains some of the most prominent members of the community, while Liz starts a liaison with the new sheriff, Doug McBride. As she begins to discover more about her husband's involvement in the cult, Liz realises there is nobody in the community she can trust. The writing style is quite basic, but it does have a tautly-written plot with a couple of good twists in the tail.

Gone, by Karen Fenech. Kindle edition.

This book starts with the execution of FBI agent Clare Marshall's mother for killing one of her children, and wounding Clare, twenty-four years before. After a chance meeting with a social worker during a shoot-out, Clare hears news of her younger sister and follows her trail to Farley, South Carolina. When she gets there she finds that her sister has disappeared again, and that the head of the FBI in the area is her former lover Jake. Clare tracks her sister Beth, but someone is tracking Clare...

Winterkill, by C J Box. London: Penguin Puttnam, 2010. Kindle edition.

Game warden Joe Pickett thinks his life is bad enough when he meets a colleague from the Parks Service who has gone insane and started shooting elk indiscriminately, to the extent that he's trying to fill his rifle with cigarettes. However, when the man escapes after Joe arrests him, he's found with two arrows through him and his throat cut. The case is taken over by a female bureaucrat who is truly scary, and meanwhile Joe's foster-daughter April is taken from school by her birth-mother who has come back to town in an encampment of anti-government survivors from Waco and other sieges. Joe is a good man, as is pointed out by one of the slightly more ambiguous characters in the book. The plot's good and it's a riveting read. I'm slightly amazed, given the number of basic errors in it, that this is one with a genuine publisher, but the plot does carry you over that to an extent.

2011 books, #41-45

2011-05-28T14:26:00.000+01:00

The whisperers, by John Connolly [audiobook]. Read by Jeff Harding. Oxford: Isis, 2011.

A Charlie Parker book. Brought in to investigate the apparent suicide of an Iraq veteran, Parker uncovers a network of smuggling, and an epidemic of deaths, among the former combatants. Another very gripping John Connolly book, with the usual slightly supernatural elements he introduces. Ironically, I listened to the whole of Saturday Live this morning wondering who the lovely avuncular Irish guest was, and only at the end I caught that it was John Connolly. Like Mark Billingham, obviously someone whose books aren't at all like his personality!

Aberystwyth, mon amour, by Malcolm Pryce. London: Bloomsbury, 2010. Kindle edition.

I'd heard good things about these books from people who also enjoy Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently books and Jasper Fforde, but this first one was disappointing. Louie Knight is a private detective in the Chandler mode, but working in an alternative present Aberystwyth run by Druids. His glamorous client, Myfanwy Montez, a nightclub singer, isn't as she first appears. Somehow, though, Pryce just doesn't really follow through on the premise, and the result is mildly funny but not really funny enough.

Identity crisis, by Debbie Mack. Kindle edition. Also available as print-on-demand from lulu.com

Tightly-written first novel . Lawyer Sam McRea is acting for a woman in a domestic abuse case when the woman's boyfriend is found dead. Sam's client has disappeared and she needs to track her down. At the same time, she finds she has become a victim of theft when someone has applied for a large loan in her name. The themes of murder, identity theft and the mafia intertwine. A very likeable and entertaining protagonist and an excellently-written plot.

Mennonite in a little black dress, by Rhoda Janzen. Atlantic Books, 2011. Kindle edition.

Rhoda Janzen's husband left her for a guy he'd met at Gay.com the week she got into a serious car accident. With no alternatives, she leaves hospital to go to her family home, among the Mennonite community she'd fled at the age of 18 and never returned to. Her family and the community welcome her back with strange food and stranger dating advice, and she remembers all the reasons she wanted to leave in the first place, but also the things she didn't realise she'd lost in return. This is a lovely heartwarming book as well as being sharply funny.

An expert in murder, by Nicola Upson. London: Faber and Faber, 2009.

Period thriller with the author and playwright Josephine Tey as the main protagonist. Tey travels to London from the Highlands in the same train compartment as a young milliner who is a fan of the author's work and is coming down to see her play Richard II. Shortly after the train arrives at Kings Cross, the girl is found murdered in the compartment. Tey's friend Archie Penrose, a police inspector, is called in to head the case and Tey finds herself becoming involved in it. A very interesting setting in theatreland of the 1930s with a wide variety of suspects and a few genuinely surprising twists and turns. A nice element is the setting of Scotland Yard where it actually was in the 1930s, in the Norman Shaw buildings in Derby Gate which now house MPs' offices; often the different locations of Scotland Yard, particularly this one, are glossed over.

2011 books, #36-40

2011-04-30T20:45:00.000+01:00

Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claude Izner. London: Gallic Books, 2007.

I loved this. It has a real sense of the 19th century French novel, with people knowing other people and moving in Certain Artistic Circles, and so on. The authors (a pair of sisters who are both bouquinistes on the banks of the Seine) are obviously allied to those people of the time who were fans of Balzac; and horrified by Zola. You get the sense of the huge development in Paris at the time (people are constantly asking other people for directions) and the sense of pride and progress the Tower produces... The detective plot is almost secondary, but also very satisfying... A truly French novel, beautifully translated.

Burn baby burn by Jake Burns. London: HarperCollins, 2010. Kindle edition.

Marcus Green planned the death of his father when he was 6 years old, and was convicted of burning down a house with his teacher and her two children inside it at the age of 13. Now he's out of prison and back in society again, and young girls are disappearing. Donna O'Prey and her boss Dexter, part of a private security firm, are engaged by the latest girl's father to find her. This book started out well but is ultimately a little bit disappointing. It does have an unexpected twist in the tail though, and some engaging characters.

More twisted by Jeffery Deaver. London: Hodder, 2007.

Another volume of very, very good short stories from Deaver. His tendency to pull the rug out from under the reader works just as well, if not better, in the short form, and there are more twists than a corkscrew. There's also a longer story, almost a novella, featuring Lincoln Rhyme in this volume. This really is a masterclass in how the crime short story ought to be written.

Dying to sin by Stephen Booth [audiobook]. Read by Graham Padden. Rearsby, Leics: Clipper, 2009.

Another extremely good Stephen Booth Diane Fry/Ben Cooper novel, read by a very good reader. Building work at an isolated farm unearths two bodies, seemingly buried several years apart. A combination of local superstition and the hard realities of migrant labour keep this story flying along; Cooper is almost absent from this one other than as an adjunct to his girlfriend, which is a shame, but there are some good Fry moments. The Peak District, as ever, features large in this story.

The language of bees, by Laurie R. King. London: Allison and Busby, 2010.

A Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes mystery - although these really need to be read in chronological order starting with The beekeeper's apprentice. Set in 1924, this one takes us from a mysteriously self-destructive beehive to peril in ancient stones in Orkney, via the intriguing idea that Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler had a son who is now approaching 30. As ever, the plot rattles along; unlike the previous book, Locked Rooms, there is little psychological analysis, but some fascinating period details regarding new spiritualist religions, and some perspicacious comments on the post-War era. And as ever, I continue to be stunned that the author is from the US and still lives there.

2011 books, #31-35

2011-04-16T11:00:00.000+01:00

Sinema: the Northumberland massacre, by Rod Glenn. [S.l.]: Wild Wolf Publishing, 2011. Kindle edition.

A man whose name we never discover decides to commit more murders than anyone in history, and methodically chooses a small Northumberland town near Rothbury. I really didn't like this book. It's gory, certainly; but that's not totally offputting in itself. I think it was the complete moral vacuum in the book. The only thing which makes a story like this at all fascinating is learning why the crime has been committed, and the character himself really doesn't seem to have a reason, so it's ultimately all very pointless. One tiny point compared to the general non-interest of the book, but an irritating one; all brand and pseudo-brand names are italicised and capitalised, so you get Parka-wearing characters carrying SPAR bags containing bottles of Coke.

Sweet little lies, by J T Ellison. Kindle edition.

This is a book of short fiction, some of it extremely short in the flash fiction mould. I'm not completely convinced that flash fiction works for crime (in the way it undoubtedly does for fanfic, sci fi and fantasy), and this hasn't convinced me. There's a really good story in there, Killing Carol Anne, but as this is the story which led me to this book in the first place, it was a bit disappointing. I'll certainly go back and read more of Ellison's full-length novels and longer short fiction, though.

The Goliath bone, by Mickey Spillane with Max Allen Collins [audiobook]. Read by Jeff Harding. Oxford: Isis, 2009.

This is a Mike Hammer novel constructed from Mickey Spillane's notes and written by his literary executor. Two young archaeologists have discovered an enormous femur in the Valley of Elah, and both the Israelis and Al-Qaeda are interested in acquiring it. Hammer, although well beyond retirement age, and his trusty secretary-fiancée Velda, leap into the investigation. This is an entertaining listen, despite the unlikely premise. I'm not convinced I'd have finished this in book form, but as ever, Jeff Harding's reading is as much fun as the book itself.

Careless in red, by Elizabeth George. London: Hodder, 2009.

When Elizabeth George killed off Helen Lynley I swore off these books, but a couple of people whose opinions I respect persuaded me that this was a return to form, and indeed it is. The Cornish setting is interesting given how urban so many of the Lynley mysteries are, and the interplay between Lynley and Barbara Havers is wonderful. This makes up for the plot itself panning out in a somewhat disappointing way.

The comfort of things, by Daniel Miller. London: Polity, 2008.

This was the April Kniterati book, and a non-fiction choice. Daniel Miller and his assistant/student spent 18 months in a single London street, establishing a relationship with its residents and learning about them through their possessions (or lack of them). Some of the stories, particularly of the single men in the street, are quite heartbreaking; others are gently funny or moving. I did wonder about the conclusions Miller seemed to pick effortlessly out of thin air though - I kept wanting to demand that he show his working. A very interesting book, but it's ultimately as much about Miller as it is about the people he's studying.

2011 books, #26-30

2011-04-16T10:30:00.000+01:00

The black ice, by Michael Connolly. London: Orion, 1993.

A Harry Bosch novel I somehow missed reading earlier. A corpse in a hotel room appears to be that of a missing LAPD narcotics officer. Rumours abound that the officer had also been drug-dealing in a drug called black ice, which had been coming over the Californian/Mexican border, and had committed suicide rather than being found out. Harry isn't so sure, and carries out a maverick investigation on both sides of the Mexican border, leading him into a web of police corruption and genuine danger. As ever, tightly plotted and well-written.

Blue heaven, by C J Box. London: Corvus, 2010. Kindle edition.

Two children, William and Annie, go on the run after witnessing a murder carried out by four men. Quickly we realise that the four men are retired police officers from Los Angeles who have retired to their relatively quiet rural backwater (the Blue Heaven of the title), and they infiltrate the search for the two children in order to kill them. As well as being a very suspenseful book set over just 48 hours, it also has time to talk about the plight of ranchers trying to continue to eke out a living in a picturesque area where everyone wants a detached house and a couple of acres of land. Excellent.

Painless, by Derek Ciccone. [S.l.]: Dog Ear Publishing, 2009. Kindle edition.

Billy Harper is trying to rebuild a life and rents a cottage from Beth and Chuck Whitcomb in a small, exclusive town in Connecticut. It soon becomes apparent that their six-year-old daughter Carolyn is very different, and when the family finds out what the problem is they barely have time to absorb the diagnosis before a covert operation called Operation Anasthesia starts hunting Carolyn to exploit her "gifts". There are some very surreal elements to this, and some of it's quite science-fiction-like; it's also genuinely scary in parts. Highly recommended.

Fifth Avenue, by Christopher Smith. Kindle-only edition, 2010.

It's rare that you get a review which compares a novel adversely with a Jeffrey Archer, but this is sort of Kane and Abel revamped for the 21st century, but without any of the whatever-it-is which makes Archer's books bestsellers. A cast of extremely unlikeable mega-rich New Yorkers seem to have nothing better to do than take out contracts on each other while swanning round beautiful settings. I did finish this book, but only because it also has the advantage of not being very long, but it was a close call.

Truth dare kill, by Gordon Ferris. London: Corvus, 2011. Kindle edition.

Danny McRae has just about survived WWII, albeit with severe facial injuries, frequent blackouts and the loss of a couple of years' worth of memories. He's scraping along as a private investigator, having been a detective in Glasgow before the war, when a client asks him to locate the very man who sent him to France as an SOE officer in the first place. Meanwhile, a serial killer is stalking and killing prostitutes in the area, and Danny can't be totally certain that the killer isn't him - only unlocking his memories is likely to solve the dual mysteries. This is a really fast-paced noir novel set in a bomb-ravaged post-war London which is almost an additional character.

2011 books, #21-25

2011-04-16T09:24:00.000+01:00

Stone kiss, by Faye Kellerman [audiobook]. Read by Jeff Harding. Oxford: Isis, 2003.

Another Kellerman I'd read but forgotten most of - this time set in the Orthodox community of New York, where Decker is embroiled in his half-brother's family's troubles - a murder and a missing niece. It rattles along quite well, but ultimately, there's something unconvincing about Decker going it alone in New York rather than letting the NYPD deal with the case, given his attitude when on home turf. Another excellent Jeff Harding reading though.

Sugar and spice, by Saffina Desforges. Kindle edition.

I think this is the first book I've read which is only available in electronic editions, which is interesting; and it's a strange one. Two boys find a severed arm in a canal, which turns out to belong to missing ten-year-old Rebecca Meadows. The usual (paedophile) suspects are rounded up, and one man in particular seems to be a likely candidate. After some somewhat extreme police brutality, he confesses, but his solicitor is convinced he's innocent. Meanwhile, a father who is increasingly concerned about his own fantasies about young girls is seeking help at a specialist clinic. In parts, this reads like an undergraduate abnormal psychology course, but Desforges makes her characters strangely compelling, and it's an interesting exploration of some pretty unpleasant human behaviour which fails to dehumanise most of the characters.

Invisible, by Lorena McCourtney. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Revell, 2004.

Ivy Malone's best friend dies, and she gradually becomes aware that she's all-but-invisible, as a little old lady, to the rest of the world. Rather than giving up and fading away, she decides to use this to her advantage in solving the mysteries of a vandalised graveyard and a missing neighbour. This is a gentle book, very much a "cozy" in US crime novel terms, but it rattles along very entertainingly.

Wading home: a novel of New Orleans, by Rosalyn Story. Chicago, Ill.: Agate, [n.d.]

This was another Kindle special offer, and it's a wonderful book. A young jazz trumpeter, Julian, is playing in Japan when he hears news of Hurricane Katrina, and goes home to New Orleans to find his father who had intended to weather out the storm. Going home means Julian has to confront all the reasons he left in the first place, and also brings him into contact with family and old friends who make him reconsider his life. There's a wonderful cast of characters, and it's a genuinely moving read from start to finish.

B**locks to Alton Towers: uncommonly British days out, by Robin Halstead, Jason Hazeley, Alex Morris and Joel Morris. London: Penguin, 2006.

This is just a lovely, gently funny, knowing book about the "characteristically British mistrust of ostentation [and] love of the modest, the enthusiastic and the unusual... We also seem to have a disproportionate affection for the barely-buttoned-down insanity of the Victorians... This is the antithesis of one-size-fits-all entertainment". From the Morpeth Bagpipe Museum to the Porteath Bee Centre, the David Beckham Trail to Diggerland, these are attractions mainly staffed by enthusiasts and usually catering to some overwhelming obsession. Throughout, the locations are treated with affection and wit; and you learn a smattering of history along with each entry.

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, Day seven (2KCBWDAY7)

2011-04-03T22:45:00.002+01:00

I'd gone to bed nice and early for a change, and then I remembered I hadn't posted today...

Write about your typical crafting time. When it is that you are likely to craft – alone or in more social environments, when watching TV or whilst taking bus journeys.

My typical crafting time these days, because I have a nearly-2-hour-commute each way to work, happens on trains. And it's semi-obsessive. I wouldn't say my commute is ruined if I can't get an aisle seat with my left arm in the aisle, but it's... in modern jargon... compromised...

I have a travelling project, and a knitting-at-group project in my bag; sometimes those are the same thing, but mostly I can concentrate more on a train project than on a talking-to-people project. I listen to podcasts while travelling - probably a subject for another blog post. I carry a nice little SIGG water bottle filled with home-made fizzy squash, and I like this small space at the beginning and the end of the day where nobody talks to me.

About a month ago, a knitter whose train I catch a couple of times a week realised who I was and friended me on Ravelry; and although I used to see her knitting quite regularly before she friended me, somehow I've not managed to get onto the same train carriage again! So, sorry - not at all intentional - talking to another knitter would be lovely!

At home I knit wherever and whenever. It might be propped up next to the cooker waiting for food to sort itself out, it might be standing next to the radio while cricketers decide what's happening. I do have a sort-of-dedicated-chair for knitting but equally I have a chair in front of the PC where I can knit while catching up with Ravelry or Radio 4...

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, Day six (2KCBWDAY6)

2011-04-02T21:15:00.002+01:00

So after yesterday's blip: today's theme:

Is there a pattern or skill that you don’t yet feel ready to tackle but which you hope to (or think you can only dream of) tackling in the future, near or distant? Is there a skill or project that makes your mind boggle at the sheer time, dedication and mastery of the craft? Maybe the skill or pattern is one that you don’t even personally want to make but can stand back and admire those that do. Maybe it is something you think you will never be bothered to actually make bu can admire the result of those that have.

I don' t really understand the idea of feeling "ready to tackle" a skill. In my experience, you see a project which demands that skill, and if you like it enough, you're going to make it. I haven't done much teaching of beginners, but I'd always say "whatever you want to" when they say "what should I make next?". I've seen people working on both-sides lace projects when they've been knitting for less than a year, and people happily cranking out garter-stitch blankets after many years' experience.

Having said that - yes, there are things which make me boggle. There were some fabulous crocheted scarves at the last two years' I Knit Weekender, made by someone with a French name (please, anyone)? in what looked like #8 perle cotton. There was an Irish crochet wedding dress, a photo of which was shown to me on a train, because the husband of the woman who'd made it in the 1970s wanted to take a phone-video of me knitting beads into a shawl using a crochet hook. (The bride had also crocheted bodices for her three bridesmaids; he didn't have pictures of those). Anything at all Debbie New does just alters my brain in strange and subtle ways.

I'm very glad I started knitting when I did, and where I did; there was no notion of what was easy, and what was complicated, because I really didn't know any other knitters, apart from girls my age and one or two of their mums. In some ways, obviously, this made the task harder; but in other ways, there were no boundaries. I've learned more in the last 10 years than I did in the previous 15 about knitting, because of the Internet, but I've also learned that some people think there's a right way, and a wrong way, to do things; and that's not always helpful.

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, Day five (2KCBWDAY5)

2011-04-01T22:48:00.002+01:00

Today's challenge:

This is an experimental blogging day to try and push your creativity in blogging to the same level that you perhaps push your creativity in the items you create.

I'm sure that if I'd left home later than 6:45 this morning or got home earlier than 9:35 this evening, I might have had some creativity... I couldn't even knit either way (rare) because I was stuck in a window seat next to one of those Daytripper Important Chaps (sort out the acronym yourselves) who thinks that sitting with his legs wide apart is the way to impress people on commuter trains; different chap, both journeys.

So - I'm just going to blog about the thing I don't normally blog about - work.

Tonight, I went to a leaving do for someone from my previous job. It was for someone I really, really liked while I was working with her, but I was also interested in catching up with people. It was a nice evening, after my initial entrance to complete embarrassed silence other than the few early arrivers who remembered me - it's been well over 3 years since I left ... I remembered why I loved working for the company -some seriously good sarcasm, genuine friendship and general intelligence - and why I left.

I love my current job (today's been a bit trying because it's been a lot like my last job!) but because we're all working in central London and living elsewhere, there really isn't the cameraderie. It's taken me a while to build up people I know and trust as friends; and ironically I had to pass on drinks at work to get to the leaving do in Cambridge...

Not a groundbreaking multimedia post; but at least a post!

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, Day four (2KCBWDAY4)

2011-03-31T22:54:00.007+01:00

Today's prompt:

Whatever happened to your __________?

Write about the fate of a past knitting project. Whether it be something that you crocheted or knitted for yourself or to give to another person. An item that lives with you or something which you sent off to charity.

I was mulling this one over last night on my way to knit night at I Knit London; and there, I met a couple of lovely women from Chicago who had met through knitting and had included IKL's knitting group on their itinerary of London. Totally aside from it being really interesting to meet more people from Chicago, a couple of the phrases one of them used struck me - charity knitting versus selfish knitting.

That sort of knocked me back. I knew exactly what she meant on one level; and then not on another. On a given day, in a given year, I suppose one of my on-the-go projects might be for me; but generally the other two (I try not to keep more than three things going) will be for someone else. Sometimes that someone else isn't terribly definite (I stash finished socks until they find the perfect recipient, or I just cave in and wear them myself; I do small amounts of test knitting which sit around until someone has a child who's the right size, that sort of thing...) but mostly, I do know the people I give knitting to. I do a small amount of charity knitting; but a very small amount. I wouldn't necessarily categorise the rest of my knitting as selfish though.

Before that - and I sort of had to get that off my chest without, actually knowing where I was going with that one - my subject for Where are they now? was a couple of baby/toddler cardigans I made quite some time ago.

The first one was made in the late spring of 1997, and I bought the yarn in a Phildar in Cahors, and cast on in the garden of the very first gîte (or, indeed, holiday) my ex-husband and I could afford after spending all our money in the previous few years making our house liveable-in. [On the way home, the car broke down irreparably around Orléans; and yet it still sticks in my mind as a really excellent holiday.] It had a garden full of butterflies, and, in between aiming the camera and the binoculars at them, I knitted this cardigan full of Weather. It had lightning clouds, and possibly ducks, and all sorts of little pictorial Fair Isle on it; and it was made for the prospective first child of college friends. All three of their children wore it; and then it was passed on to a sibling's children, and both of those children wore it. Somewhere, I have a picture of the Fifth Recipient wearing the cardi (and sorry, Anne, I can't find it). This was about 10 years later. The cuffs had almost entirely gone, and the general surface was pretty scrubbed, but it was a lovely picture of a small child, with food all over its face, wearing what was recognisably a completely knackered-through-wear Weather cardi.

The second was a cardi made in about 2001, in gold, orange and red DK cotton (three plies, one of each colour). Again, I made it for Big Sister, Little Sister wore it, and then it was passed along the road to the neighbour; which I realised when said neighbour came into the library one Saturday morning with her twins, and the little girl was wearing it, complete with the Fimo buttons I'd made for it, intact... We were ceremonially introduced (I was Suzanne's-Friend-Liz-Who-Knitted-The-Cardigan). I mentioned at that point that I had another of those buttons at home (they were made for a City and Guilds project). About a year later, the mother contacted me, to say it was a bit cheeky, but did I still have the button, as the cardigan was good as new but they'd lost a button and they wanted to pass it on to another family...

Seems to me that it's a very good reason to knit. You give knitted gifts to people, and sometimes they just don't connect, and are never worn. Sometimes they do connect, and the same person wears them and wears them until they wear out (my Dad's getting to that stage with the first Felted Tweed scarf I made him, I think; socks are good for that, too). And sometimes they do connect, and they're passed on, and whole families wear them, and friends of whole families.

It's heartwarming to know where things are occasionally; but it's not essential to making them in the first place...

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, Day three (2KCBWDAY3)

2011-03-30T22:15:00.005+01:00

Today's challenge:

How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised? It seems like an easy to answer question at first, but in fact organisation exists on many levels. Maybe you are truly not organised at all, in which case I am personally daring you to try and photograph your stash in whatever locations you can find the individual skeins. However, if you are organised, blog about an aspect of that organisation process, whether that be a particularly neat and tidy knitting bag, a decorative display of your crochet hooks, your organised stash or your project and stash pages on Ravelry.

I love the proviso that "organisation exists on many levels". My entire life seems to consist of small pockets of organisation surrounded by seas of relative chaos. But some of those small pockets of organisation are knitting-related...

This is my pretty-needle stash. It lives on the counter between the kitchen and the dining room, behind the digital radio and the bowl that, at the weekend, holds vegetables, but by this stage of the week is somewhat bare. (One lemon, one hunk of ginger and a head of garlic at the moment!) And, these days, behind my brand-new James Naughtie egg-cup. This is where pretty plastic needles (I particularly love the Durex brand ones from the 50s) and other favourites live...

Otherwise, when organising, throwing some purple at the problem always helps.

The folder on the left holds my fixed circular needles - it holds an amazing number. It's made of thick, rip-stop nylon, and has little tabs you can write the needle size on. It's quite brilliant, made by a company called Happy Bags which seems entirely untraceable on the Internet, and it was a present from a friend in the US, probably about a decade ago. I've never seen anything quite as useful for needle storage before or since.

The box on the right holds small/short DPNs and stitch holders. Both of these live in the top couple of drawers of a yarn chest in the dining room.

Otherwise, my main organisational tools are Ravelry (queue, projects, etc.) and a couple of spreadsheets on my PC. I start one each year for finished objects (dates, yardage, weight knitted up), and have a running one for the Stash Inventory; the main Stash is in 14 plastic crates in the loft so a spreadsheet is a bit vital to avoid running up and down there all the time...

Having said that, I also have baskets, boxes, bags, mailing envelopes, etc. etc. of yarn kicking around the place too... And thankfully, a near-photographic memory of what's where... Having said that, the Stash can still surprise me.

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, Day two (2KCBWDAY2)

2011-03-29T19:21:00.009+01:00

Today's theme:

Look back over your last year of projects and compare where you are in terms of skill and knowledge of your craft to this time last year. Have you learned any new skills or forms of knitting/crochet (can you crochet cable stitches now where you didn’t even know such things existed last year? Have you recently put a foot in the tiled world of entrelac? Had you even picked up a pair of needles or crochet hook this time last year?

Well; I think I learned a lot over the last year; but you wouldn't necessarily know it from my projects. I think that's because I have such a long list of projects that new techniques find it difficult to sneak in under the wire all that quickly - my project list is like trying to stop a supertanker in its tracks...

KnitCamp

I took a series of excellent classes at Knit Camp last year. Many things have been said about this event - and most of the stories about the organisation are true, particularly the more extreme ones - but the standard of tuition was impeccable. I want to finish my little Roositud sampler, do more double knitting (and we have a chap at knitting group who does double knitting all the time so I know where I can go for help) and after two years promising myself I'll steek, I still haven't done it, but this year...

One thing I have tried to put into practice this year is knitting things which fit. Joan McGowan Michael's class was a bit of an eye-opener, and proof that yes, I am actually an extremely awkward shape (and regardless of what I weigh, realistically always will be)! So I've tried to make things which don't swamp me. That means that I'm currently rather self-conscious about anything I've knitted recently because it feels a bit more fitted than I'm used to, but that certainly works better for work-wear. (I have no decent pics of either of these projects though, as taking photos with the self-timer really doesn't work; maybe when my parents visit in a couple of weeks I'll be able to get Dad to take some).

Lanthir Lamath

Another wonderful learning experience this year was knitting the Lanthir Lamath hooded scarf (Ravelry link; commercial pattern still in preparation) along with Ann Kingstone, a wonderful designer I met at KnitCamp. One of the (many) interesting things about Ann is that she's a true left-handed knitter (as opposed to me, a left-hander who knits); she does everything the leftie way round. And fascinatingly, she has a right-handed twin who's able to do demo videos the rightie way round. But that does lead to a difference in terminology in her patterns - Ann will talk about the active or passive needle rather than the left or right one - and that in turn really trips an "aha!" switch in leading to a different way of thinking about making a fabric. It's little things like that...

There were also several lovely technical twists in this pattern - a centred double increase which you have to watch the video several times to master, and then shortly after becomes almost second nature, and which matches the centred double decrease which I love; a different way of making short rows neat; some wonderful twisted cabling. And all in a lovely, friendly, supportive knitalong group.

Misc.

Small technical things - I think I've nailed the M1R/M1L/M1K/M1P increases thing so I don't get holes. This has been a problem for ages, so I'm glad to have sorted that out...

And although I say it in the linked post - managing to cast on 42 stitches in a long-tail cast-on and not spend the whole 3 hours of Nancy Bush's class doing so made me tearful with joy (thankfully not in the actual class; afterwards while contemplating the sheer beauty of my garish little sachet...)

Often I learn new techniques by teaching others, but I haven't done any formal teaching this year; need to push myself a bit further without that prompt, maybe. The technical thing I do really want to learn next is brioche - Nancy Marchant's brilliant book shouldn't be allowed to languish on the shelves any longer.

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, Day one (2KCBWDAY1)

2011-03-28T21:55:00.004+01:00

So, I heard about the second annual Knitting and Crochet Blog Week over at Wibbo's blog at the beginning of the month, and it seemed like a good idea to get myself kick-started again - if there's anyone still reading this, it's obvious that my blogging mojo vanished over the winter and I didn't want to put up another book review post (even though there's one just about ready)! But British Summer Time has started so I'm hoping I'll feel less like hibernating...

Today's topic:

Part of any fibre enthusiast’s hobby is an appreciation of yarn. Choose two yarns that you have either used, are in your stash or which you yearn after and capture what it is you love or loathe about them.

I should probably state now that I am not, and nor have I ever been, a yarn snob. I have a lovely test-knit on the go in James Brett Marble, a soft acrylic; and I'm just as likely to rhapsodise over something by King Cole as by Noro (in fact more so - King Cole don't have a nasty habit of knotting their yarns in the middle and losing the colour progression! But I digress).

However, sometimes you do knit with a posh yarn which just stops you in your tracks. Such is Casbah, by Hand Maiden.

Vital statistics: sock weight; 81% merino, 9% cashmere, 10% nylon. 325m/115g. Superwash.

It's not the longest yardage you'll ever see in a sock yarn, but the cashmere gives it a wonderful smoosh, and every stitch is enjoyable to knit. It comes with a fairly hefty price tag, but it's totally worth it. This is destined to make a Haruni shawl, when I can round up the nearly-a-whole-skein Gerard from I Knit London very kindly passed along to me after he ran out very near the end of his shawl, and get the two in the same place long enough to start knitting...

In terms of the "loathed" yarn, the only one I seriously hate is Rowan's KidSilk Haze. However, Wibbo's blog post today has summed up our mutual loathing of the stuff beautifully. (I'd also add to the litany of faults that it's the only yarn I've ever had problems with in terms of it snapping while I knit it - and I'm a loose knitter.)

So in its place, a yarn I love, but have found seriously difficult to use. Step forward, Cherry Tree Hill's Merino Lace in "Fall Foliage".

Vital statistics: 2-ply laceweight. 100% merino. 2195m/227g. Hand wash only.

I just love this combination of colours, and having 2km of yarn in a single skein is very cool. But as serious lace addicts will realise, a highly variegated yarn has its own problems when it comes to lace patterning - you can have colour or pattern, but if you try combining both...

Suffice it to say that a mystery Pi shawl knit-along was frogged about two-thirds of the way through when I realised that nobody could see the lovely patterns in the shawl, and a second attempt at a simpler lace pattern was also abandoned...

Eventually I took a leaf out of Jackie's book (sadly blogless, but jackier on Ravelry) and combined the yarn with something more subdued (an aubergine-coloured Artesano alpaca 4-ply), and it seems to be working.

This is destined to become a Botanical cardi. I'm hoping to get cracking on it again this week, as a couple of gift knits are nearing completion. I have the body made and one sleeve started, and it's not a complicated pattern...

I have History with CTH Merino lace - the first skein I bought was also too variegated for the pattern I wanted to use it with, too... In the end, I ended up knitting one project with it, and then overdyeing it because it had overwhelmed the subtle patterning... Here it is in its original state, with the overdyed project underneath it...

You'd think I'd learn, really! Well, I have, mostly - I'm still attracted to the really heavily variegated yarns, but then I step back and realise that unless I'm making something pretty plain, less is more...

2011 books, #16-20

2011-03-10T22:24:00.000Z

Death in Oslo, by Anne Holt [audiobook]. Read by Christopher Oxford. Bath: Oakhill, [n.d.].

The (female) US president is kidnapped on a visit to Norway; the Oslo police and the secret service reluctantly co-operate in trying to recover her. However, unknown to them, the motive for her abduction isn't political. Hanne Willemson, the police detective from 1222, read earlier in the year, also features in this one, and while her presence is as the result of a very unlikely coincidence, she's still a fascinating character.

Home, by Marilynne Robinson. London: Virago, 2009.

This is, as one of the cover reviews says, the saddest book I've ever loved. Jack and Glory end up at home in Gilead, both of them outcasts from their own lives in diffferent ways, and look after their elderly father. Glory has been rejected by her fiançee, Jack has been wandering for many years and has always been the black sheep. Nothing very much happens on the surface of this book, but the old man's dementia and religious conviction lead to a gradual stripping down of the layers, and revelations of what has happened to bring the characters home again. There are glimmers of resolution or redemption, but ultimately this is a heartbreaking book. Another Kniterati book I'd never have read otherwise. I'm glad I read it, and also that I had a good supply of tissues for the end.

The forgotten, by Faye Kellerman [audiobook]. Read by Jeff Harding. Oxford: Isis, 2002.

I realised a couple of tapes into this that I had actually borrowed this audiobook before - but it was a long time ago, and before I started reading this series in chronological order; and Jeff Harding could read the stock exchange prices to me and I'd listen. Another Decker book - the synagogue the Deckers have helped found is vandalised by a teenager called Ernesto Golding, a schoolmate of his Decker's son Jake. Golding confesses, much to the shock of his ultra-liberal parents, and is put into therapy as part of his reparation. However, this is only the beginning of his problems, and Decker gradually uncovers a web of deceit and intrigue, including some unpalatable facts about his younger son's life.

All the pretty girls, by J. T. Ellison. Richmond, Surrey: MIRA Books, 2010. Kindle edition.

For a change, I'm just going to steal the Amazon summary here, because it's better than I'd manage for this book.

When a local girl falls prey to a sadistic serial killer, Nashville homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson and her lover, FBI profiler Dr. John Baldwin, find themselves in a joint investigation pursuing a vicious murderer. The Southern Strangler is slaughtering his way through the Southeast, leaving a gruesome memento at each crime scene - the prior victim's severed hand. Ambitious TV reporter Whitney Connolly is certain the Southern Strangler is her ticket out of Nashville; she's got a scoop that could break the case. She has no idea how close to this story she really is - or what it will cost her. As the killer spirals out of control, everyone involved must face a horrible truth - that the purest evil is born of private lies.

This is a debut novel, but it certainly doesn't feel like one - extremely gripping.

The glassblower of Murano, by Marina Fiorato. London: Beautiful Books, 2008. Kindle edition.

This is a wonderful book, and the fact it's set in Venice is absolutely vital to the plot and atmosphere. Leonora Manin's husband has left her, and she leaves London for her father's city of Venice, to continue to make a living as a glass artist. She is engaged by a company in Murano on the grounds of her own skill and her ancestral name; her ancestor Corradino was a famous glassblower in the 17th century. Gradually her own growing curiosity about the mystery of her ancestor, and the possibility of a new romance, lead her to try and discover her past. Meanwhile, we begin to learn the story of Corradino through his own eyes. This is beautifully written and there are some very puzzling parts of the 17th century story which are gradually resolved as the novel comes full circle.

Quick single

2011-02-27T15:41:00.005Z

I have loads of things to blog. But for the moment, just posting this photo.

Square on the bottom, 22 sts, 44 rows, Peace Fleece 3.75mm needles, knitted while at Textiles in Focus yesterday.

Square on the top, 22 sts, 44 rows, Peace Fleece 3.75mm needles, knitted while listening to England's World Cup innings against India this afternoon...

I ought to be picking up stitches for a neckband. Don't dare though, in case of strangulation... This might be a good time to spin some laceweight...

2011 books, #11-15

2011-02-13T08:42:00.002Z

Another clutch of books - I'm reading a lot more this year, I think due to the Kindle - so much easier to read and knit on the train!

I shall wear midnight, by Terry Pratchett [audiobook]. Read by Stephen Briggs. Oxford: ISIS, 2010.

The fourth and last of the Tiffany Aching series; Tiffany's enemy this time is the Cunning Man, a creature who takes over human bodies to pursue witches. Meanwhile Roland, Tiffany's former beau, is marrying another girl. The Nac Mac Feegles add their usual comic interest, and as ever Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg provide a source of wisdom and weirdness. A very good finale to the series.

Executive power, by Vince Flynn. New York: Pocket, 2004.

The next in the Mitch Rapp series, set in the Middle East and among the upper echelons of the CIA. One of the things I like about Flynn is that the narration shifts ever so slightly depending on the point of view of the character being described; so while you're reading the Israeli's point of view you understand it entirely; and then you move to a Palestinian character with an opposite opinion and that's perfectly comprehensible too. However, there's still a sense that the US actually understands what's going on and knows best, which is less attractive. This thriller rattles along, albeit somewhat shapelessly. My only real criticism of it is that he's turning Anna Reilly, Mitch's wife, into a bit of a shrew, which is a shame.

Defending evil, by Charles Shea. Kindle edition.

Travis Knight and his partner Ray are up-and-coming lawyers in Atlanta, Georgia; and none too scrupulous about the clients they take on. When they take on the case of a former schoolfriend, and famous quarterback, accused of murdering his wife, they find out very quickly that the man is guilty. Then the threats begin... This is tightly written and plotted, and has a twist about two-thirds of the way through which is surprising but not entirely unexpected.

It's your time you're wasting: a teacher's tales of classroom hell, by Frank Chalk. [S.l.]: Monday Books, 2011. Kindle edition.

The title says it all; this is a collection of blog posts about life in what Alastair Campbell once described as "bog-standard comprehensives". The author is the same age as me, and seems to have gone to a similar (quite good) comprehensive school. Some of the anecdotes here are hilarious, some are just sad, and some made me quite fearful about the future. Throughout, though, there's a battered sense of compassion for the kids, whether they're there to learn or not.

The hanging shed, by Gordon Ferris. [S.l.]: Corvus, 2011. Kindle edition.

Douglas Brodie has drifted since being demobbed in 1945; he's making a desultory effort to be a freelance crime reporter in London, having left the police to join the Army in 1939. Out of the blue he receives a phone call from a former schoolfriend, Hugh Donovan, who has been condemned to death for raping and murdering a young boy. Brodie returns to his native Glasgow at Donovan's request. All the evidence points to Donovan's guilt, but he's convinced he's innocent, and Brodie reluctantly starts to dig into the case with the help of Donovan's barrister Sam Campbell. This book is as interesting for the period details - it has some elements of John Buchan or Dornford Yates, but written with today's frankness of gruesome details. I've downloaded another couple of Ferris's books on the basis of this.

Bit of progress...

2011-02-12T16:14:00.006Z

This week's progress has been socks, and more socks...

First the Hederas. Done! Possibly aided by a couple of Journeys from Hell this week...

And then the Monkeys.

This yarn is a reminder of an extremely nice day, and so I'm very glad it's behaving nicely with this stitch-count and pattern No guarantee it's not going to go berserk on the gussets in this sock - it would suit a sock without such things better, but the legs will be lovely...

I'm working on the Big Black Sweater this weekend...

Crushed by the wheels....

2011-02-08T20:50:00.003Z

For the first time ever (when it's not two weeks before Christmas with a stupidly overambitious list of projects in front of me, anyway) I'm feeling ever so slightly oppressed by my knitting.

I think I know why - on the 1st February I was working on 4 knitalong projects, and this situation obviously doesn't agree with me. One of those proejcts is finished, but I think the recipient calls in here every now and then, and one of the other non-KAL things I finished needs blocking...

In addition, I have finishitupitis. The Yarn Harlot recently blogged this and I realised that was exactly what it was. Normally, not a problem.

It might be having 6 WIPs on the go just after Christmas. It might have been starting KALs when actually, I still had a Christmas present to finish until about a fortnight ago! It might be something else entirely. Such as setting off from home and the temperature being 20C below what it's going to be in the office 2 hours later, and not having enough cardis. Whatever it is, it's sending me into paroxysms of indecision.

Everything I'm working on is, as far as I remember, enjoyable. Everything I'm working on is currently for me. (Maybe that's an additional problem; those usually end up at the bottom of the heap. It's fairly striking that everything I've finished since Christmas has been for other people...)

So I thought I might just blog them, and then blog progress on them, and maybe feel better about them...

WIP the first: Hedera

Started because: knit.sock.love. knitalong on Ravelry

Yarn: Legolas, dyed by Wibbo as a Christmas present.

Needles: 2.5mm KnitPro Harmonies

Reason I'm enjoying these: Lovely simple lace pattern, beautiful colour in the yarn (also, gift yarn which means I get to keep the result).

Oppressive because of the whole KAL ethos - there are always some people who will finish this project on day 1 - normally this is no problem. I'm sometimes one of those people. This time, not so much...

Progress: about 35% on this photo, but progress has been made since.

Theoretical deadline: end of February for the whole competitive KAL thing.

WIP the second: Monkey

Started because: knit.sock.love. knitalong on Ravelry

Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, in colour Franklin's Panopticon.

Needles: 2.25mm; combination of 3 Colonial Rosewood needles and one KnitPro Harmony to make up the set.

Reason I'm enjoying this: The yarn was a gift from Franklin (so I get to keep the finished object); I am very intrigued as to how it will knit up; I'm using my favourite needles.

Oppressive because: see WIP the first...

Progress: well, there you see it....

Theoretical deadline: end of March for the whole competitive KAL thing.

WIP the third: Lanthir Lamath scarf/hood [Ravelry link]

Started because: Ann Kingstone knitalong on Ravelry

Yarn: Bergère de France Baltic, in Tourmente

Needles: 5mm Addi Turbos

Reason I'm enjoying this: Nearly every stage has had something challenging in it - Ann is a superb technician as well as a really interesting designer.

Oppressive because: the KAL thing, but also I'm not getting the short rows neat enough at the top of the hood. Hence the rather odd photo - normally I'd take a picture at the end of the row. So I'll have to go back and study the directions. It's probably unfair to label this oppressive given that it's just technically challenging and that's always a good thing!

Progress: about 52%, unless I rip back to the turning point, in which case 50%

Theoretical deadline: end of February to keep up; and it'd be nice to wear it this winter.

WIP the fourth: Botanical Lace cardi

Started because: Need for work cardis...

Yarn: Combination of Cherry Tree Hill Laceweight in Forest Fire and Artesano Alpaca 4-ply, colourway unknown at the moment but basically aubergine.

Needles: 4mm Addi lace.

Reason I'm enjoying this: You know, I can't remember; it's so long since I knitted on it. But I do love the colours. The laceweight was almost impossible to knit into lace on its own so I took a leaf out of blogless Jackie's book and combined it with something else.

Oppressive because: it's still not finished, and I still need a cardi. And I can't find the pattern, which has the modifications I made scribbled on it...

Progress: about 60% - the body is done and one sleeve is started...

Theoretical deadline: well, none really; but I'd still like to wear it this winter!

WIP the fifth: Alpaka Tunic

Started because: liked the pattern...

Yarn: Rowan All Seasons Cotton - I think the colour is called Paprika. It's more orange and less pink than the photo.

Needles: 4.5mm KnitPro Spectra.

Reason I'm enjoying this: Uhm. Again, it's been too long. But I still want the finished object...

Oppressive because: Actually, this one isn't. It could be worn at any time of the year...

Progress: about 15%; one tiny sleeve and about a third of the front done.

Theoretical deadline: n/a really

WIP the sixth: Asteria cardi [Ravelry link]

Started because: NEEDED a cardi!

Yarn: Debbie Stoller Full 'o' Sheep, in black.

Needles: 5.5mm Addi Turbos

Reason I'm enjoying this: The way this pattern is written is really interesting - there's a chart for which decreases kick in when, and it's exactly the sort of guide I'd write myself if things started getting too complicated (it's set-in sleeves, knitted in the round from the bottom up, so you've potentially got underarm, sleeve, neck and back neck decreases going at the same time).

Oppressive because: it's too damned heavy to take anywhere, but I don't have enough knitting time to do it at home...

Progress: 75% in yarn terms, probably 40% in effort terms

Theoretical deadline: NOW!

So, there you go. Not sure what I'm hoping to achieve by this...

Anyway, if there's a lesson to be learned from this post, it's that things don't get knitted if you don't knit on them. I'm off to crank out another few rows on Asteria, and hope the people with control of the window in our office don't open it too far in the next couple of weeks...

And if you're either too old, or too young, or too cool, or too wise to know where the post title came from, I offer you this hilariously typical example of kulcher from my teenage years. Isn't it strange that the songs you actually like have completely escaped you, while this sort of thing burns itself into your head forever?...

2011 books, #6-10

2011-02-04T13:49:00.000Z

One of these days I'll post something other than book reviews. Today I'm off work (woke up feeling really flu-ey) so this may be the day! But first - book reviews.

Trick of the dark, by Val McDermid. London: Little, Brown, 2010.

This is a very good book. It dots around between different points in time while never making that fact irritating (and never having to make you work too hard); the narrator is interesting and sympathetic but complex; there are some really well-drawn characters. The book-within-a-book adds a great degree of depth to the story. However, without spoiling, I found the eventual dénouement a bit of a disappointment - there's too much of an Agatha Christie-style deus ex machina about it. Having said that, maybe I wasn't paying sufficient attention and maybe clues were strewn which I'd missed. I'd still recommend it as a genuinely good read though - McDermid really knows her stuff.

The barred window, by Andrew Taylor. Bath: BBC; North Kingstown, R. I. :Audiobooks America, 2008.

Another very strange and slightly scary novel by Andrew Taylor. The pleasure of listening to this was somewhat marred by disk 6 (of 10) being just about unplayable - does make a bit of a difference to a suspense thriller, really! As with many of Taylor's, it's quite difficult to work out what's happening when, and whether we're in the present or the past. Facts creep up on you gradually, and when the full picture's shown it isn't the one you imagined at all. Definitely recommended (although not worth bothering to get the Cambridgeshire public libraries' set - I'm intending to return it with a label pointing out the faulty disk...)

The hour I first believed, by Wally Lamb. London: Harper, 2009.

A book group book, and quite a substantial one at 600+ pages, this was a seriously good read, and not something I'd have heard of otherwise. Caelum Quirk and his wife move to Colorado to save their marriage, end end up working at Columbine High School. The 1999 shootings there send their lives into even more chaos, and they return to Connecticut. This is a big, shapeless, wide-ranging book which shows the flip-side of the American dream; characters are thrown around like flotsam in their own lives, the lives and dark histories of Caelum's family over nearly 200 years are examined, and although ultimately there's a hint of redemption in the title, and a flicker of it towards the end of the book, the soundtrack to this one would probably be made up of Springsteen's episodic meanderings in "Nebraska" and "The Ghost of Tom Joad", rather than the dark relentlessness of "Darkness on the Edge of Town".

Kill&cure, by Stephen Davison. Kindle edition.

This is a gripping story, centring around gene research for cancer and the lengths to which companies will go to preserve their secrets while trying to gain those of others. Ultimately it's satisfying, but while the first couple of chapters are meant to be fast action and deliberately drop you into the middle of the plot, the effect is more chaos and confusion. My other quibble was with the quality of the proofreading - missing words, and the odd tell-tale signs that the book had been OCRed and then not really re-read properly. Having said that, this was either a free or a £1 book by an author whose work I'll be looking out for in the future.

The burning wire, by Jeffery Deaver. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2010.

A Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs book, and well up to the standard of the first couple. This is a superb rollercoaster chase through New York, in pursuit of a criminal intent on using the electrical grid system to kill, seemingly indiscriminately. There are all the standard Deaver techniques - nothing's what it seems, terrifying scenes melt into anticlimax while the real action is happening elsewhere and so on. But there are some new twists - people who look like classic redshirts, something Deaver's used often before, turn out not to be so, and seemingly random incidents turn out to be connected. The final twist in the tale, another chapter in Rhyme's battle with his own body, is signalled out so far ahead that it might be visible from space, but that's OK.

2011 books, #1-5

2011-01-15T10:22:00.002Z

First thrills, edited by Lee Child. Corvus: 2010. Kindle edition.

This is an excellent collection, with only one slightly duff story in it. There are stories by well-known authors like Child, Jeffery Deaver, Alex Kava, CJ Lyons, Heather Graham and so on, and also (the point of the collection) stories by unpublished or just-published authors, which are equally strong. There are a mix of seriously creepy stories, one zombie tale, a couple which cross over into science fiction or fantasy and several with wicked twists in the tail. Highly recommended and a great first read for this year.

Cambridge blue, by Alison Bruce. Robinson, 2010. Kindle edition.

A new-to-me author; downloaded this, like the last one and the next one, as part of Amazon's £1 Kindle promotion over Christmas. The thing which always worries me slightly about books set in locations I know well is whether they twist the geography, but this is perfect; when the main character, a young policeman called Gary Goodhew, walks the streets of Cambridge, you know exactly where he is at any time. This covers a series of murders over many years, and the characters are largely believable. The one weakness may be Goodhew himself, though - he does go off being a complete maverick, in the Morse mode; but it doesn't seem realistic that he's able to do this as a DC, given the number of warnings from his boss he ignores along the way.

1222, by Anne Holt. Corvus, 2010. Kindle edition.

This is an amazing 'locked-in' type of thriller - the express from Oslo to Bergen crashes on a mountainside near a large tourist hotel in the middle of a snowstorm (at an altitude of 1222 metres) and the passengers are taken in. The weather gradually worsens and nobody can leave. Then the first murder is discovered... The only police seem to be guarding a mysterious personage on the top floor, and the only investigator present, Hanne Wilhelmsen, is a retired police officer who is paraplegic as a result of a shooting years before. At one stage, the author invokes And then there were none, but this is just so much better than that. I think it would make a fantastic disaster movie as the circle of suspects narrows and the weather becomes a main character in the drama. I'll be looking for more in this series.

Strange affair, by Peter Robinson [audiobook]. Narrated by Ron Keith. Rearsby, Leics: Clipper, 2005.

An Inspector Banks novel and not one of his best. It chugs along OK, and Banks is always an interesting character, but I had the feeling that it could have been about three-quarters the length without losing much of the plot or characterisation. The reading wasn't great either; the Banks books are usually narrated by someone else, and this reader hadn't gone with the same pronunciation - a character pronounced GRIZE-thorpe for the rest of the audiobooks suddenly becomes GRISS-thorpe, causing much shouting in the general direction of the CD player here.

Blood, sweat and tea, by Tom Reynolds. London: HarperCollins eBooks, 2009. Kindle edition.

I've been meaning to read this for a while; I started reading "Tom Reynolds" (actually Brian Kellet)'s blog three or four years ago in the wake of the 7/7 attacks on London, but hadn't gone all the way back to the beginning. Reynolds is an ambulance driver and first responder for the London Ambulance Service, based in Newham. He recounts his shift when he finishes each day, partly as catharsis and partly for the sake of public information. Sometimes it's euphoric, when he or his crew have actually saved a life, sometimes desperately sad. He worries about emotional burnout and the way the world's going, while trying to avoid suicidal pedestrians leaping in front of his ambulance. He comments on the emergency services and the NHS, drug and alcohol misuse and the increasing misuse of the ambulance service for minor injuries. He claims to hate everybody, regardless of race, colour or religion; but the amount of compassion in these diaries exposes this as a lie.

Stumbling towards Bethlehem...

2011-01-09T19:53:00.004Z

... and out the other side. Happy New Year, all!

The 6 weeks or so before Christmas passed as something of a blur of activity and tiredness. I had a work trip to Luxembourg - am determined to share some photos of that as I have some nice ones - and then a visit from the parents the following weekend, and then we went into the Christmas countdown...

And in the middle of all that, bouts of half an inch of snow, or a spot of black ice, or whatever, brought the transport system here to a halt. I could totally understand that -15C near Huntingdon didn't make the power-lines very happy on December 21 though. Temperatures of -7C here on the same day didn't make a fruitless hour standing at the station very happy either; thankfully I have limited work access from my home PC... Struggling back and forth for most of December from King's Cross (which was trying to operate trains to Scotland and back at the same time, and mostly failing) was incredibly draining and stressful. Unexpectedly so, given the previous winter, but that was just after Christmas when you generally expect everything to be just a bit shit.

Losing PC access for a chunk of November, equally so; thanks muchly to Nick who recommended a good, reasonably priced repairer (these guys, if anyone in the local area needs one!) and helped me get the Humungous CPU back and forth, while being optimistic that I was unlikely to have lost all my data; which I didn't. It was, as he'd originally diagnosed, a burned out power supply. (And I am so profoundly glad I didn't get rid of my sewing machine trolley last year when I was looking to tidy the cupboard under the stairs - it did the job womanfully.)

There's still stuff I haven't caught up on though - somewhere, there's a bit of paper with all the November and December knitting on it, in terms of weights and metreage. I think it may be in the pile by my left elbow. Doubtless I'll find it eventually. Hence no guessy-game competition this year (although Steph and Valerie had to wait over a month for their stash from the anniversary one, so possibly just as well!)

Anyway. The New Year's Resolutions generally centre around Getting My Stuff Together and Keeping in Touch More (again). But 2010 wasn't the best of years or the worst of years. There was KnitCamp, which was actually some of both (awful before and after, wonderful during); my parents got down for a couple of visits which hadn't happened for a few years due to cat issues; I saw some really good plays, knitted some excellent things, read some really good books...

Couple of Christmas-related photos. First, nephew next to my parents' Christmas tree, wearing his Birthday Jumper.

Doesn't look too distressed with auntie's knitting. Fibre snobs, look away now. That's James Brett Marble. 100% acrylic, supersoft, lovely colours, and priced very appealingly. And it fits the way it was meant to. (His Christmas sweater, not so much; but that was top-down so all I had to do was lengthen it a couple of inches and it ought to be back to them in the post tomorrow.)

Second, Christmas present from my parents.

It's a Kindle. You mightn't have guessed this because I do seem to have a compulsion to make any piece of technology I own look either cute or antiquated. In this case, I think I've achieved both with the slightly steampunk hemp cover which arrived yesterday. It's a lovely bit of kit - had a few teething troubles working out how to transfer books to it without Wi-Fi, but it turns out to be dead easy, although something which should possibly be included in the Quick Start guide rather than after half an hour's study of the help forums... The first two books I've read so far this year have been in Kindle format - am going to have to go back to Dead Tree Format for the next few though, because I've got a couple of best-sellers out of the library and am determined to diminish the Huge Heaps of Books on the Piano this year. And get rid of the piano, too. We'll see how we go.

Anyway, I'm sort of back. Hoping to blog at least weekly for the next couple of months, and probably more often after the Death of Winter.

I've finished two knitted items already this year, but can't blog either for different reasons; and I still have one Christmas item on the go - the recipient Knows Who She Is...

2010 books, #86-89

2010-12-31T20:30:00.002Z

Final booky things of this year; 89 books in total. It's been a good year for new authors, and for new books by previously appreciated authors.

U is for undertow, by Sue Grafton. London: Pan, 2010.

It's a Kinsey Millhone. It's well up to standard. What's different this time is that Grafton maintains a really complex timeline, which kept me looking backwards and forwards between chapters. Unfortunately I put this down somewhere in a pile of pre-Christmas stuff and sort of lost it for a while, so I did get a bit lost a couple of times (my fault, not the author's!) Excellent. And I'm already sort of starting to dread what happens when she gets to Z.

From the dead, by Mark Billingham [audiobook]. Read by Paul Thornley. Rearsby, Leics: WF Howes, 2010.

A wife comes out of prison to find that the husband she's served 12 years for killing, via a paid assassin, is very likely still to be alive. She hires an amateur detective who then gets in touch with Billingham's Tom Thorne. Billingham does his usual job of keeping you on your toes, while giving you his superb writing which retains graveside humour. There are a couple of real, genuine shockers in the course of this, while he continues the side-stories of his characters' lives.

Separation of power, by Vince Flynn. London: Simon and Schuster, 2003.

Another Mitch Rapp thriller - not necessarily one of the best ones, but we'll see what happens in the next one. Rapp is trying to get out of his clandestine involvement with the US security services while attempting to tie up loose ends. It all goes horribly wrong for him, professionally and personally.

One of the really intriguing elements of this book is that it has a narrative style I can only describe as style indirect libre, not having studied English literature - there are multiple points of view (the head of Mossad, the head of the CIA, the President, Mitch, Anna) and they all have their own worldview, all of which are presented as being equally valid. Israel is unjustifiably persecuted, the CIA is underfunded... and so on... This is definitely a series to be read in chronological order.

Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett [audiobook]. Read by Stephen Briggs.

The third of the Tiffany Aching series. If you loved the others, you'll love this (again though, reading the others first is definitely a good move). The spirit of winter falls in love with Tiffany but doesn't know what it is to be human. Meanwhile, he's terrifyingly scary. Also incorporated are Miss Treason (113, and borrowing eyes and ears from other creatures) and Horace the Cheese, as well as the full horde of Nac Mac Feegles. And, of course, Granny Weatherwax.

There are some lovely bits in this. At one point Tiffany goes home and scrubs floors, feeds chickens, makes cheese. "These things grounded you. Taught you what was real. You could set a small piece of your mind to them, giving your thoughts time to line up and settle down." I don't necessarily go to Terry Pratchett's books for fantasy - because he's also so very good at giving you stone-cold truth. I can't think of a better reason and explanation for knitting for the sake of it.

Best of luck for all our reading in 2011.

2010 books, #81-85

2010-12-31T19:42:00.000Z

I shall not want, by Julia Spencer-Fleming. New York: St Martin's, 2008.

A very good title for a book which is all about desire of different kinds; tightly plotted, compassionate, interesting in the development of its relationships, all the things you'd expect from this series up to now.

However, I have two criticisms. The first is that the opening cliffhanger (pp 1-11) is so overwhelming that you skim-read the following 300 pages until the timeline reverts to the "present"; which is a shame as it's fine writing. The second is that the next book isn't published until next April...

Just as I thought I couldn't like Clare Fergusson any more, we also find out she's a fan of both Lindsey Davis/Marcus Didius Falco, and Stephanie Plum (as she reflects, ruefully, having destroyed yet another car...).

The Attenbury emeralds, by Jill Paton-Walsh [audiobook]. Read by Edward Petherbridge. Audible, 2010.

Quite marvellous - this is fanfiction, of course, based on hints in the original Dorothy L. Sayers novels; but when fanfic is this good, it makes a wonderful addition to canon. Peter is 60, Harriet is in her forties, and it is the year of the Festival of Britain. A three-part intrigue, starting shortly after the Great War and reappearing in the present. Entirely true to character while answering all those questions which remain such as 'what did they do next'; and jigsawing in the tantalising little hints we have in some of the short stories. And Petherbridge's reading is, as ever, delightful - his Peter is always graver than Ian Carmichael's, but that's never a bad thing.

The dark water : the dark beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, by David Pirie. London: Arrow, 2005.

Very convincing Conan Doyle writing; again, working around original material and Doyle's autobiographical writings. Dr Joseph Bell and Doyle investigate Doyle's abduction at the hands of his enemy Thomas Neill Cream, and are led to Dunwich and the mustery of the 'Dunwich Witch' and her curse. The setting is eerie, the Suffolk coastal marshes; there's a real sense of fear here, as there is in the best of the Sherlock Holmes novels. Definitely one to read if you're a fan of Victorian detective fiction.

Blood on the tongue, by Stephen Booth [audiobook]. Narrated by Christopher Kay. Rothley, Leics.: Clipper, 2002.

One I must have missed at the time I thought I'd caught up on all the Stephen Booth books. The relationship between Diane Fry and Ben Cooper takes a back seat to the main story, which resurrects the story of a World War II bomber when a young woman is found frozen to death in the wreckage. Very good, interwoven story with some interesting characters. Probably not the best book to have been listening to over the last couple of weeks in that it's midwinter in Derbyshire in the book...

Broken for you, by Stephanie Kallos. New York: Grove Press, 2004.

A Kniterati book and another I'd never have picked up without being in a book group. Margaret Hughes, a widow in her 70s, lives in a mansion in Seattle full of valuable antiques. When she discovers she has an inoperable brain tumour, she decides to dare herself to change her life. The first step is taking on boarder Wanda Schultz, who has arrived in Seattle determined to pursue her deserting boyfriend, and working as a stage manager.

This is a lovely book. It's slightly hallucinatory as everyone in it is disfunctional in some way due to illness or inclination, and there are some amazing revelations in the woodshed.

2010 books, #76-80

2010-12-05T17:00:00.000Z

In the words of one of the characters in the first book reviewed here, I aten't dead. However, it's been a ridiculously busy/trying month! But as an inordinate amount of it was spent on trains, some reading was done.

A hat full of sky, by Terry Pratchett. London: Corgi, 2005.

The second of the Tiffany Aching books - the last, I shall wear midnight, has just come out, and I realised I hadn't read the third one, and possibly this one. As it turns out, I had read this one, and as always happens with Pratchett, by the time I realised that I was still hooked, so just read it again.

The thing I love about Pratchett's Young Adult titles is that he makes absolutely no compromises - in fact, it seems that they're often more complex in terms of what he, and the witches, would call headology. No allowance is made for the fact that Tiffany is 11 years old in terms of what she needs to understand about the mind of her enemies; and themes like being yourself and knowing yourself, usually so patronisingly and preachily explained in non-fantasy books for young adults, are such absolute staples of the fantasy genre that they just fit in naturally here (this is, of course, largely due to Mr P's superb imagination). And of course there are the Nac Mac Feegle (a terrifying clan of Pictish warriors who are, unnervingly, only 6" tall); and Granny Weatherwax, a magnificent creation.

Crossfire, by Dick Francis and Felix Francis. London: Penguin/Michael Joseph, 2010.

I really hope Dick Francis's death in February doesn't signal the end of the Francis books - Felix Francis's involvement in the last four has really revived the spirit of the early novels after a period where everything flagged for a while, and it would be intriguing to see what he'd produce in his own right.

This one stars the typical Francis action-hero character, but rather than being a bookseller-turned-detective, photographer-turned-detective etc., Thomas Forsyth is a Captain in the infantry, recovering at his mother's racing stables after losing a foot in Afghanistan. This rattles along at a tremendous pace, there's a genuine sense of malice and danger, and there are some extremely unexpected twists.

Jupiter's bones, by Faye Kellerman. London: Headline, 1999.

I'd forgotten how much I liked Peter Decker until I picked up the next in this series and wondered why I hadn't just read straight through. This time, the main focus is on a scientific/religious cult in a compound near Los Angeles. In other hands, this might have been much less nuanced, but as an observant Jew, Kellerman is aware that there's a fine line between some religious practice and cults in many people's eyes, and is careful not to fall into stereotypes. There's some gore in this book, and also a couple of quite hair-raising moments.

Stalker, by Faye Kellerman. London: Headline, 2001.

Hmm. And then, saying that, I forgot how much I disliked Cindy Decker, his daughter. I always want to snarl at her, "yes, he's a screwed up, miserable bastard because he's never got over Vietnam - what's your excuse, you brat?" But anyway. It's tightly plotted, and introduces a cast of people we already know in a new way... if you can get over Cindy's attitude, worth reading.

All mortal flesh, by Julia Spencer-Fleming. New York: St Martin's, 2006.

Elements of this book, the 5th in the Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne series, should be incredibly melodramatic and unlikely. But somehow it all does hang together, largely because you just like both of the main characters so much by now. Really tightly written again, with a twist I certainly didn't expect in the middle; and as ever, the author portrays the best and the worst in a small rural community and in a parish, and shows that even when everyone's trying to do the right thing, that often really isn't enough.

2010 books, #71-75

2010-11-06T09:15:00.001Z

Bit of a mixed bag this time round!

At home, by Bill Bryson [audiobook]. Read by the author. Bath: Chivers, 2010.

Supposedly a history of the domestic interior, based on Bryson's own parsonage home in Norfolk, this book has the usual broad strokes of popular history Bryson's become so famous for. It does tend to meander all over the place, but is immensely entertaining for all that, and has some fascinating facts - I think my favourite one of these was that Friedrich Engels came to England to manage his family's sewing-thread factory. Bryson is one of those few authors who read their own books well, and this is a very charming and enchanting addition to his other works. SamuraiKnitter has blogged about this one recently and was also enjoying it.

Parrot and Olivier in America, by Peter Carey. London: Faber, 2010.

Carey's contribution to the Booker shortlist this year. Parrot is a British engraver, Olivier a French aristocrat, but it's all more complicated than that; Olivier is sent, almost as a refugee, to examine the US penitentiary system as an envoy for the French régime, and Parrot as his servant. It's a strange, picaresque journey, with various sidetracks and flashbacks along the way. While Carey makes us aware that society in England, France and the USA are entirely different from the present day, he also makes wry comments about the way that human nature really doesn't change that much. After a series of alarums, excursions, love affairs and strange ménages, it ultimately doesn't really go anywhere, but it's immensely entertaining on the way. In the end, though, Olivier muses on the nature of democracy: It is a truly lovely flower, a tiny tender fruit, but it will not ripen well. You will see.

The burying place, by Brian Freeman [audiobook]. Read by Garrick Hagan. Bath: Oakhill, 2009.

I think this was a recommendation from Wibbo and a good one. The intertwined plots are pretty gripping and there's one Deaver-scale shift in the plot about three-quarters of the way through. The small-town Minnesota environment is also very well rendered, and you do really feel as if you're there... I'll be looking for some more of these as I gather this is the fifth with a recurring character.

The Guernsey literary and potato peel pie society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. London: Bloomsbury, 2009.

A Kniterati book - and another I wouldn't normally have picked up - the word "Charming" as the first word of a cover review usually rings alarm bells. And that would have been a mistake - I think this is possibly the most wonderful thing I've read all year, and it's been a very good year for new discoveries.

Juliet, a London journalist, is casting around for ideas for a book when she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams, a pig farmer in Guernsey, asking her for a recommendation for a good bookshop in London. An unlikely correspondence starts and a chorus of distinctive voices appear. This is entirely a roman à lettres, but given that this is a book set in 1946, the Guernsey voices have an urge to tell recent history through their letters. This is a book which has you laughing on one page and crying on the next; it doesn't shrink from telling some of the worst aspects of the Occupation, but it also reflects the absurdity in the minutiae of everyday life deprived of virtually everything. It genuinely is charming, but in the slightly creepier, harder-edged sense of drawing you in and refusing to let you go.

Totally, totally recommended. And wonderful for a book group because it rattles along, there are a lot of different themes there, and they pack a huge amount into the 250 pages.

Grave doubts, by Elizabeth Corley [audiobook]. Read by Charlotte Strevens. Bath: Oakhill, [n.d.]*

This is really quite creepy; a serial killer and rapist is arrested, but the spate of killings and attempted murders goes on. Louise Nightingale, a police sergeant, is viciously attacked leading to the arrest of the original culprit. Nightingale goes to her grandmother's old farm to recuperate, but finds out some fundamental secrets about her own family's past but is unaware that she is the target of her attacker's mentor in crime who is determined to track her down. I can't say this is the best reading in the world, but it's pleasant enough and not at all irritating, which is the main thing!

*There probably is a date on this, but the library have worked their usual magic and obscured the copyright information...

NaBloPoMoBlown

2010-11-04T20:45:00.010Z

Hmm. I have a feeling that it's not entirely in the spirit of the "blog-every-day-for-a-month" ethos to fail to post until the 4th, really. So I'm holding up the white flag now...

Monday night, I ended up calling my folks and making a cake for book group instead of blogging.

Tuesday night, I was at book group and it was fun, so I stayed and got home late. The book was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and I loved it. Hadn't expected to, but I did. Review in a later post - it's sitting on the desk taunting me, with another pile of books and CDs...

Wednesday - oh, we should really probably forget Wednesday. Suffice to say that I had 16 hours out of the house, 6 of which were spent travelling, and 3.5 of those 6 hours were spent on London buses. Next time I'll realise it's way quicker and healthier for body and soul to walk when there's a Tube strike, and just do it... We could call it the Bob Crow Exercise Plan.

And today, the arse-kicking knitting has had another chortle at me and I'm trying to work out how to salvage it.

So, in the absence of any actual interesting content, I fall back on the trick of bloggers everywhere, and bring you a photo of the Bug; who appears to be in exactly the same mood as I am at the moment...

She has an actual reason for being this pissed-off though - the Barracks fireworks were tonight, and I hadn't realised, and they'd started by the time I got home, and she was understandably a bit freaked out and hiding on the stairs. Those guys don't mess around - they're the Army. From the sound, it might be fireworks, or it might be an ordnance dump being blown up in a series of controlled explosions. Either way, the sky lights up for several miles around.

And yes; yes I do have leaves in my living-room. Doesn't everyone??

5-year draw results!

2010-10-31T16:11:00.004Z

Hello all: thanks very much to all 24 people who commented on the 5-year-anniversary entry! So good to read all the positive things people have done and made, particularly at a time of year where it's easy to be dull and gloomy

And sorry for being a very crap blogger over the last couple of weeks. Work has been really busy, I've been knitting away like mad over a Christmas present which is routinely kicking my arse (can't show you as the recipient reads this), and on the rare occasions I've been home it's been much more tempting to curl up in front of the wood stove in the dining room with knitting and a good book than venture out to the living room to blog...

Some knitting has been done though - and it's been received so I can show you. These are for Baby Eliza (I blogged about hearing about her arrival while SusieH and I were in Norwich Cathedral).

One baby blanket (the Chalice pattern by Lykkefanten) in James Brett Marble. E's big brother got the "heirloom" type one so this time I was going for washable, practical, soft and likely to get used over the winter. And the same consideration came into play with these three burp/dribble-cloths. No point in not having pretty ones, though!

OK - back to the comments draw.

The winner in the random number generator is Comment #11 by wuthering_alice (AKA Steph - you can't fool me with your clever Victorian wiles, my dear...) Congrats, Steph! PM me on Ravelry with your address, or use the link in my profile to send me an e-mail, and a packet of goodies will be winging its way to you in the next few days.

The winner in the completely non-impartial "comment I liked" is Valerie, who pointed out very sensibly that it's better to make as much time as you can for an activity rather than whining that you haven't time; but accept you're never going to do everything you want to all at once! I might know you in real life, Valerie (and your freeform stuff sounds very intriguing) but I don't think I know how to contact you online. If you're on Ravelry, I'm greensideknits - drop me a PM with your postal address - and if not, my e-mail address is in my profile (button on the top right of the blog).

I've foolishly signed up for NaBloPoMo again this November, so will definitely get round to telling you about my personal bests then.

Take two

2010-10-18T23:04:00.004+01:00

It's not often you knit a whole sleeve on a day's commute. Today was one of those days; but then, when the sleeve's only this long...

The tomato-soup coloured All Seasons Cotton is re-knitting up nicely to be an Alpaka Tunic (from the Fall 2009 Interweave Knits). I've needed to go down three (three!!!) needle sizes to get gauge, which is a bit unprecedented... I'm doing a couple of rows of moss-stitch rather than the slightly rolled edges in the original.

A couple of people asked about reskeining/washing after unravelling. I've never bothered if it's not been washed and worn, as it doesn't seem to go too kinky. I suppose if it had been washed and pressed and so on, I might reskein, but it's still enjoyable to knit with... I wind straight onto the ball-winder as I unravel, and that keeps the yarn slightly under tension, too.

Reverse engineering

2010-10-16T22:54:00.004+01:00

As part of thinking about the best things I've made (in the knitting sense), I was also forced to admit today that there are some things which are less than best. In fact, there are three sweaters I've made over the last 5 years or so which didn't even get fully sewn-up because I was already aware that they were All Wrong.

One was going to be a long-forgotten dark blue All Seasons Cotton sweater (having already been a failed jacket); one a Ragna in cardigan version in Wendy Aran, and one a She Gansey in red All Seasons Cotton. In all cases they were too big, or the wrong shape, or I'd just completely fallen out of love with the pattern by the time I'd got to the end. Here they are in their awful glory.

And here they were a couple of hours later. Back left, 776 grammes/1550 metres of Wendy Aran with Wool in a nice green/grey tweed. Back right, 764 grammes/1400 metres of Rowan All Seasons Cotton in dark Air Force blue. Front, 490 grammes/880 metres of Rowan All Seasons Cotton in Paprika (orangey red); I do have another unopened 500 gramme bag of that one having bought two packs in Liberty's sale a few years ago.

Half of me is happy to have reclaimed three sweaters' worth of yarns. The other half of me looks at 2030 grammes and 3,830 metres of unravelled, never-worn sweater, with all the time, effort and hope involved, and marvels What was I thinking??

Knitters' denial - it's an amazing thing.

Just a reminder of the blog giveaway from the last post. Leave a comment over there about the best thing you've made over the last 5 years for a chance of a prize.

Five; and a giveaway...

2010-10-15T12:15:00.006+01:00

Well, it's five years today since I opened my Blogger account, and 505 posts down the road, here I still am. I didn't put up my first post for a few days, so it's not quite my full five-year anniversary, but I'm at home today on a day's holiday so I thought I'd celebrate early, having spent the morning fiddling with the template.

I thought the blog needed a bit of a freshen-up for its birthday though - so I've stripped the Victorian wallpaper and gone for a cleaner look. Let me know if you like it!

I've done some stuff I never thought I would over the last five years; I've gained friends, and even family (3 little ones to knit for this Christmas!). I've met some wonderful knitters both online and in real life, gone to some excellent and/or interesting events, visited Venice, and Canada, and Vienna (which weirdly, I really didn't blog despite taking huge numbers of photos - here's the Flickr set though!).

I've also changed jobs for one which is both much more fun and much more structured, and where I'm finally using my qualifications fully; I've become a commuter, and Establishment, and have surprisingly found I enjoy both of those things. I've overhauled my garden (the back bedroom is next on the list) and learned to spin yarn which is actually knittable (more on that later, I hope).

Anyway, five years is a long time; and as with all these things, deserves some sort of contest/giveaway thing, to thank you for reading, and for continuing to read, particularly when I'm just maundering on about my garden, or showing you the next foot of unblocked lace in a big heap with a cat sitting on top of it.

So, please add a comment to this post before the end of October 30, telling me about the best thing you've made in the last five years. It might be a sweater, a baby, a pie, a decision... I'll use the random number generator to choose one prize, and give the other one to my personal favourite comment. The prizes are secret (largely because I don't know what they are yet) but will be yarn-related and fun.

Over the next few days I'll blog about two or three of the best things I've made over that time, too.

Sahar: proof positive of knitting life...

2010-10-12T20:24:00.007+01:00

I have been knitting; honestly. I'm just aware I haven't blogged any for ages. Some of this has been that delay you get where you knit a present, or do a test knit, and then can't present it for ages. Some of it has just been indolence. Most of it, frankly, has just been that all my blogging time (and honestly, most of my energy) over the summer and since has been sucked into the whole KnitCamp experience, and the earlier and later fiascos. Even from the point of view of a student and observer, it's been completely knackering. I hope to catch up at some point. And some of the things I've made have been really lovely even if I say so as shouldn't.

However, just about a month ago, Franklin put up a pattern on Ravelry for download which somehow just screamed "KNIT ME!!" in a way very few things have recently, despite the huge wealth of patterns out there, particularly as I knew exactly which yarn I was going to use. So despite having 114 things in the Ravelry queue ahead of this, and a lot of yarn at home, I found myself in John Lewis buying Rowan Felted Tweed a couple of days later, and casting on in the pub (yes, I had brought appropriate needles and the waste yarn with me. I was a Brownie and a Guide. On occasions, I am Prepared).

That evening I had this

and was sort of entranced. There's a switch every 6 rows in the first pattern which stops you falling into complacency, but it's a switch like the end of a long seam in sewing, or (for those of us just old enough to remember) the ding of the bell of the typewriter at the end of a row; not too jarring, just a little reminder that something needs to be done.

There's not too much of any part of the pattern to be boring (Summer into Fall and Wibbo's as-yet-unpublished Gallimaufry compare with it for sheer enjoyment) but the DK weight yarn also makes it a comparatively fast knit. There's a provisional cast-on at each end, grafting/Kitchener stitch in the middle, and then picking up and knitting around the edge to make a border (which isn't a huge border, but still takes up about a quarter of the yarn). The picking up and knitting is dead easy if you just follow the instructions. I found a tiny error on one square of the final row of the border; which is, of course, fixed now.

A little over a fortnight after casting on I had this:

and then a few days later managed to get a photo of the actual colour of the thing.

Pictures are clickable to embiggen (despite the Firefox upgrade which means I'm having to go back to IE to link to Flickr...)

Bravo, Franklin, and thanks for the pattern. It's been a while since I was this single-minded about a piece of knitting; I think this stole will be lounging negligently around on the sofa this winter, on the rare occasions when it's not wrapped around my neck.

2010 books, #66-70

2010-10-10T14:48:00.000+01:00

Ash and bone, by John Harvey. London: Heinemann, 2005.

A non-Resnick novel (although Resnick appears in a cameo), with the same characters as his earlier Flesh and Blood. Frank Elder is again persuaded out of retirement in Cornwall, this time to investigate the murder of an ex-colleague. Meanwhile, his own daughter is facing a drugs charge in Nottingham. This is very tightly plotted with some interesting characters, and well up to John Harvey's standard.

Little girl lost, by Susan Kelly. London: Allison and Busby, 2002.

It seems simple enough: a child is abducted from her home by her social worker, while her father is asleep. But it all becomes much more complicated, and things which had been known as facts turn out to have been so many lies. Another Greg Summers novel; Summers is an interesting character, and the relationships between the different police staff are as interesting as those between the protagonists. There's a heartbreaking side story about Alzheimer's, too.

To darkness and to death, by Julia Spencer-Fleming. New York: St Martin's, 2005.

Another one in this tremendous series; this time based around conservation versus logging, and land transfer deals. Clare's personal life also becomes steadily more complicated. Some of the plotting here seems less realistic than with the other novels, but the characters have almost become more interesting than the plot. (The next two books in the series are in the post from the US.)

Nemesis, by Lindsey Davis [audiobook]. Read by Christian Rodska. Oxford: Isis, 2010.

I put on the first CD of this book expecting the usual slightly comic opening to the most recent (20th!) Falco historical detective novel. I didn't expect to be reaching for the tissues within 10 minutes! The opening is amazingly touching, and the rest of the novel is excellent, too. Falco is now at a bit of a crossroads, established in his home life and now moneyed, but still with the sense of adventure which has led him into so much trouble. The sub-plot involving Albia, his adopted British daughter, is a great touch, too. Christian Rodska's reading is superb as ever - when I realised who the reader was, I happily waited the extra time for the audio version to come from the library. He gives Falco just the right slightly-wrong-side-of-the-tracks edge without caricature.

Things fall apart, by Chinua Achebe. London: Penguin, 2006.

A Kniterati book group book, and another I wouldn't have picked up if it hadn't been a group book, but was very glad to have read. I began with a great deal of exasperation for the main character who is so hard and violent with his family as a reaction to his father having been a weak man; but gradually, because the characters are so well-drawn and the traditions and relationships so well explained by the author, my sympathy transferred to him in his plight. And the ending is quite heartbreaking. It all made for very interesting discussion; thanks to Penny for her suggestion and the background information she had.

Meeting Across the River

2010-10-02T21:41:00.003+01:00

Weirdly, as I walked over the Golden Jubilee Walkways from the north to the south bank of the Thames, this song came on the iPod. Seemed very appropriate

It was a grim day, which looked like midwinter...

But I was heading to the Royal Festival Hall for lunch, drinks and knitting with a friend. Anyone who knows this particular friend will probably work out who it was by this photo...

Yes, it was indeed Yvonne (aka Stash on Ravelry); accessorising her purple cast with her beautiful new purple Louët yarn, and making an experimental foray into the centre of town since her unfortunate altercation with an unfriendly kerb.

And this was the view we had to gaze out on - or at least, part of the view. This bit wasn't entirely populated by people earnestly tapping on their MacBooks (or whatever those Mac laptops are called)...

The people-watching was excellent though - we didn't see anyone we could positively identify, but there were definitely Telly People arranging interviews and so on...

And on the way out, there was an exhibition of art made by young offenders, which was really interesting. This one was definitely one for Sparkleduck though!

Another really good day; despite being wet for quite as much of it!! I also knitted an Entire Item in the course of the day, but more of that later.

New Meetings in Norwich

2010-09-30T21:21:00.005+01:00

Well, I had a lovely day. At the weekend, I e-mailed SusieH to see if she was free to meet up, as we've been promising to for several years now, and I was on holiday; and she was!

We had a slightly rocky start - we'd agreed to meet at "the station" and I got to Norwich, hung around for a few minutes and then checked my phone (which even at full blast has a pathetic little ring, unless you're in the middle of a cathedral - see below...) to find that I was at Norwich, and Susie was at King's Lynn... Major crossed wires. S is blaming herself; I think it was definitely six of one and half a dozen of the other... But we met!

And we had lunch at the very wonderful Belgian Monk. Mussels, cheese croquettes and other wonderful things including, of course, frites with mayo, were eaten. (We'll have to meet up again; the next lunch is on me.)

Then I had the pleasure of introducing Susie to the wonder that is Country and Eastern, just behind the City Hall in Bethel Street. Half the attraction is in the wonderful things they sell, and half is in the beauty of the building. It used to be an ice-rink.

Here's the upstairs.
We ambled through the shopping streets, and went to the cathedral. I'll blog more about that later, because I'm hoping to do a post a day in October to celebrate my fifth blogiversary, but it was lovely.

Halfway round the cathedral, a text came in on my phone (which it turns out, despite being inaudible on a train, is incredibly loud in a cathedral) - to announce the new arrival of a bébé-cousine, a second child for my cousins, and a girl this time, to accompany her 3-year-old brother. As well as the good news on the text, the fact the message was being sent less than 2 hours after the birth was also reassuring!

In the circumstances, lighting a candle and saying a prayer seemed like a good idea. Welcome to the world, little as-yet-nameless one; you are so much wanted and anticipated, and it'll be a magic adventure. May you be happy.

While you're busy growing up, your semi-auntie will be on Ravelry queueing girlie stuff...

2010 books, #61-65

2010-09-24T22:25:00.000+01:00

The third option, by Vince Flynn. London: Pocket Books, 2001.

Another very gripping thriller by Flynn, which incorporates characters from his first two novels Term limits and Transfer of power. Covert CIA operative Mitch Rapp is sent to Germany to kill a prominent businessman with links to Saddam Hussein, but the operation goes catastrophically wrong. Simultaneously there's a fight for control of the Agency itself - the current director is dying and the political, military and intelligence communities all have their own candidates. Very tightly plotted, and with enough politics to be unputdownable. There's quite a lot of weapons technology, but Flynn writes engagingly enough that you don't have to care too much about the toys to enjoy the story.

Evidence, by Jonathan Kellerman [audiobook]. Read by Jeff Harding. Oxford: Isis, 2010.

I keep giving Jonathan Kellerman another try - I enjoy his wife's, and now his son's, books, and he writes well enough. I don't really understand why I can't engage with the Alex Delaware books, but somehow they just don't do anything for me. This one was read with Jeff Harding's usual panache, but I can't really remember what happens in it even one day after finishing it. I think that's probably my last encounter with Dr Delaware...

The slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. London: Tuskar Rock, 2010. Originally published in Australia in 2008.

This is a book club book - and not one I'd have picked up otherwise. By about 50 pages in I was really wondering whether I'd bother finishing it; a lot of the characters are pretty repulsive, and I didn't really feel much sympathy for any of them. The premise of the book is that at a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who isn't his child, and the characters at the barbecue are explored. Most of it's pretty grim, and examines how much people within families, and groups of friends, can hate each other while still sticking together. But there are moments of hope, and the final few scenes are full of light. I came out of it being glad that I'd read it, but I can't explain why; and it has to be said that nobody at book club had enjoyed it that much. It won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2009 and was longlisted (but not shortlisted) for the Booker this year.

Last rites, by Neil White [audiobook]. Read by Jack Paulin. Long Preston: Magna, 2010.

Strange one this - set near Pendle Hill, with all the history that involves; abduction, witchcraft and family history all blended in. Pretty compelling towards the end, although it loses itself a little in the middle. Good reading by Paulin, as ever.

The chalk circle man, by Fred Vargas. Translated by Siân Reynolds. London: Vintage, 2010. Originally published in French in 1996.

The first of the Adamsberg novels; and very interestingly French in its slight surreality. Some interesting characters; I could definitely see this as a Jean-Jacques Beineix film... Someone is drawing chalk circles around random objects on the pavements of Paris; the random objects escalate... Gradually, other characters are drawn in, including a very handsome blind man and a world expert on fish who becomes his landlady. I somewhat lost track of this because I lost it about three-quarters of the way through and found it in a basket of laundry, but it was very enjoyable.

Just, you know, gah

2010-09-22T22:50:00.006+01:00

Edited to update: Drama over... thanks all for your good wishes.

I got an e-mail from the lost property office at Cambridge station mid-morning to say they had my bag; went down there and picked it up just now...

Everything intact. Phew. And a good reminder of the fact that there are a large number of decent, honest people in the world; I think I've just had too much exposure to one of the few who isn't recently!

(Small moment of additional drama earlier when my one remaining card wouldn't let me have any cash, but it turns out it was the crappy machine at the village shop rather than the card...)

I just need sympathy here, frankly.

Complete train snafu this evening; lots of misinformation on whether the train was 4 or 8 carriages (as it was advertised from platform 9B, which means 4 carriages, and that platform has a kink in it which means that unless you go way up to the top of the train, you don't realise there's another, unadvertised, attached, train there. Which, apparently, there was.) Somewhere in this mess, while being bossed around and hurriedly made to change trains from Cambridge, I left my handbag behind. [I had two work carrier bags with me as well as the usual load, so the fourth bag passed unnoticed].

That would be the handbag with my purse, my travel card, my season ticket, cash, my credit and debit cards, house keys, work security pass, etc. [life?] in it...

[I also quite like the actual handbag].

I realised it about 100 yards away from home...

Thankfully, my lovely neighbour Edd helped me break into the back of the house with the aid of a sledgehammer and a towel (turns out the glass in the bathroom window is security glass!); I have cancelled all my cards... thankfully I'm working at home tomorrow but I have no idea how I'm going to get to work on Friday. (I have one credit card in a drawer at home and am hoping it will still remember me...)

Needless to say the First Capital Connect lost property office is managed "centrally" - from Plymouth; although the actual lost property office is at City Thameslink. I have no idea how that works. It gives me no confidence that I'll see my belongings again though.

Just to say, if you have to report cards missing, and you have a Smile/Co-Op card, I'd recommend you report that one last, as I did this evening, because it's so much nicer than the robotic script-stuff. I had the impression I'd stumbled into a party (they were all disputing where Manchester actually was, geographically, which was something I'd had occasion to wonder about during thel day, professionally), but you get professional, not-at-all-impersonal, service (both the previous lots were working from a script; this one was a guy saying 'so, you're pretty sure about the time'; 'yes, that was the time the whole handbag went missing'; 'oh, sorry; bummer... are you phoning from home? were you able to get there OK? Nightmare...')

I knew there was a reason I banked with Smile. Just-professional-enough will do me, in the circumstances. And although they kept me on hold, I liked the Madchester hold music.

I'll be interested to see which cards are replaced first.

Knit Camp 7: the aftermath - stories emerge

2010-09-18T18:37:00.005+01:00

I was going to post on the entirely positive experience which was the I Knit Weekender last weekend; but I couldn't avoid talking about this first.

Starting this post with a picture of the Stirling campus lake. Still waters, and all that.

I don't take back anything I've posted about my personal experience of Knit Camp while it was happening - I think I was honest. There's been a fair amount of criticism online of those of us who did post some positive comments, accusing us of Pollyanna-ish tendencies (which will come as a surprise to anyone who's actually met me in real life!), but I posted what I saw and experienced.

I was aware of some of the background shenanighans which went on before camp, because oddly enough I do talk to other people online and in real life, some of whom had first-hand information. I knew that a couple of people I know, think of as friends and was looking forward to meeting had decided not to participate as tutors because of problems with the organisation, shifting terms and conditions, etc. But by that stage I'd handed over my money...

Since the event, though, those of us who paid fees in good faith have become aware that that money has not gone to tutors, helpers who were expecting to be paid, people expecting refunds, etc. The British Yarn site has been taken down, and my understanding is that the company formed to organise the event has been dissolved. A minority of tutors appear to have been paid, some appear to have been part-paid, others appear to have received nothing.

I would like to present you a trio of blog posts, in chronological order.

First, one from the organiser (apologies if this link doesn't work when you get to it; communications from this source have a habit of disappearing post facto). This has the joint themes of self-justification and complete lack of apology we grew to expect. And of getting retaliation in first. It was a surprise to me to learn that I don't travel to knitting events; presumably that six and a half hour train journey was some sort of delusion.

(This blog post was put out shortly after Camp; at that point I think lot of us still had hopes that people who were owed money would be paid it; although we feared they mightn't. The 28 days in people's contracts, and cited in this blog post, have now expired without full payment, so over the last day or two, insiders have published more complete information on what actually went on.)

Second, one from an internationally known tutor (with whom I took an excellent class), confirming in print some of the things I'd heard by e-mail and conversation.

Third, one from the person who was KnitCampers' main link with the organisation in the month before the event. I have no idea how much worse it would have been without her, because she was really the only source of definitive information like where we were meant to go to register, etc., when she could get the information herself.

Don't think I can really add to these. Other than to say that organisers of large-scale events in the UK may well have difficulty in recruiting both UK and overseas tutors in the next couple of years, and that's both completely understandable, and an awful shame.

Shameless plug: KnitFest at Cocoon

2010-09-13T20:58:00.005+01:00

I was going to blog about IKnit - but this event starts tomorrow and it'll be lovely. Hope anyone from the area who was at the Weekender picked up one of the fliers!

Cocoon is a lovely shop in Hove run by very nice people who are trying to get the message out; so if you live in the area or fancy a day-trip, they're about 10 minutes' walk downhill from Hove Station. George Street is a wonderful (pedestrian, during the day) shopping street with very nice cafés, charity shops etc.

TWTW

2010-09-10T21:40:00.000+01:00

Well. Since I last posted it's been busy.

I went down to Jan's and we knitted on her balcony in the sun and ate a couple of very nice meals out, and nattered, and did a bit of clothes shopping for a college reunion in a couple of weeks - it was really useful having someone else along to say whether things looked OK. Last time we did this I bought a winter coat for my then-new-job and it was a seriously good choice.

I then had what felt like a very long week at work despite it only being 4 days; but ended it up in the Royal Festival Hall with some I Knitters.

I slept through 2 alarms today but still made it to the I Knit Weekender well in time for my class (more of that in a later post).

And it was the Bug's birthday last Saturday. She's had a bit of a hard year - dental surgery in February, blood tests for which revealed she has dodgy kidneys, so she's now on a low-everything diet; and then two visits to the vet for abscessed bites on her leg - still can't work out who she was fighting with, but at least we're able to verify that both the inhabitants of the house are lefties/southpaws/sinisters!

But she's still on the path to World Domination.

Knit Camp 6: Out and About at Loch Katrine

2010-09-01T22:58:00.008+01:00

Trip the Second: the Trossachs and Loch Katrine

Couldn't have been more glad that the outings were in this order - because this one was lovely from start to finish, with additional hilarious aspects.

We set off on time, in a single coach; checking in etc. was calm, with the main organiser's husband in charge; and we had a lovely, friendly, funny Scottish driver in charge for the whole trip up to the Loch. He gave us a commentary on interesting things to be seen to our left and right, and pointed us at some Highland cattle; he gave us historic background on the towns we passed through, and made everyone laugh at some point; and then he announced he was going to spend the evening having dinner with his wife. Aww.

We got to the loch and were divided into two groups - the first noticeably larger than the second, but it seemed to work. I was on the second group, and we did worry that the sun might have gone down before we got onto the boat. But then we got to eat first; and after two quite intense classes with Jared Flood and Nancy Bush, I was pretty hungry! Nice, simple, tasty, barbecue meal - cooked in the pavilion on the top level of this photo.

with good home-made coleslaw which is just about my only requirement with a burger and chicken and green salad - and then shortly afterwards it was our turn on the boat, the Lady of the Lake.

With her very amusing and informative guide. He was great.

One of the snippets of information he provided was that we were putting along largely powered by second-hand chip fat. There were surprisingly few deep-fried Mars Bar jokes.

Loch Katrine (pronounced without the final "e", like CATT-rin rather than Ka-TREEN) turns out to be the main water supply for Glasgow; it's always been a lake, but was turned into a reservoir in the 20th century.

Walter Scott was very familiar with the area and wrote the poem The Lady of the Lake around Loch Katrine; the paths he walked are now underwater.

Until recently, there were many sheep grazing on the banks, but after it was discovered they carry crypto they had to be removed because of the threat to the water supply. I gather some of them make their way back because sheep have homing instincts...

It really was a lovely boat trip.

The flags were particularly pretty as we came back into dock.

I don't quite know how to describe what happened after that... except for one word.

Midges.

I grew up with them, in the north east of England; and when we set off they were starting to group; on the lake, they weren't all that much in evidence... But when we got back into the restaurant/bar, they were certainly happily flocking around in hordes. Generally the whole Swipe gesture was used to attempt to get rid of them, with no success whatsoever...

We were called down to the coaches, and as ever people got in gradually; the poor driver was trying to keep as many flying menaces out of the coach as possible but was having to open the door every minute or so to let more people in, with accompanying clouds of ickletinybeasties... I suspect the various threads on Ravelry worrying our across-the-pond cousins didn't help either...

Apparently, what you do when confronted with midges, as a knitter, is to to get into your seat and then develop your very own personal ethnic clapping dance. The Katrine Knit Tangle, maybe? It involves putting on one's seatbelt, and then a gyration including the destruction of any small flying insect in the immediate vicinity...

I was sitting next to someone who was suffering badly from coach-sickness throughout the return journey, (and who womanfully controlled it) - which was the only thing which stopped me weeping with sheer amusement at the Sound of So Many Hands Clapping to So Little Effect.

The noise made by it sounded like someone doing strenuous Creative Play with a class of 50 or so children with auditory difficulties. Later on, Nic and I re-enacted this for people on the Saturday night. (I haven't listened to her podcast yet - I wasn't aware of it before the weekend- ; I'm hoping she'll do the description better...)

Just for a change, nobody could possibly blame the Management for the beasties; we were absolutely and totally warned.

We had enough time for everything, it was relaxed; it was a really lovely evening.

And just for the record; as someone prone to slightly extreme histamine reactions to bites, and someone who gets bitten really badly; I'd been taking the vitamin B1 tablets for a good month before the event, and had sprayed myself all over with Jungle Formula before setting out, and had antihistamine tablets with me. I got away more or less unscathed. I had a couple of annoying bites on my scalp for a week or so, but that was about it. B1; highly recommended!

Knit Camp 5: Out and About at New Lanark

2010-09-01T22:23:00.000+01:00

I booked on two afternoon/evening outings from Camp; and as with everything at Camp, it was a game of two halves...

Trip the first: New Lanark

I was aware of New Lanark's yarn well before I knew anything else about the place, and once I'd realised it was also a World Heritage Site with C19 mill machinery, I booked in immediately.

I think the most charitable description of the proceedings was "chaotic". As one who had to do the on-the-ground sheepdog-type work on this sort of excursion, repeatedly, over 6 weeks, as a 23-year-old new graduate (and managed it better), I'd personally go for "shambolic", though.

It started before we'd even left the campus - 15 minutes after we were meant to have set off, someone left the other coach, went dashing back into the building and emerged a good 10 minutes later with another person. Presumably neither of the organisers had a mobile with them, because although our coach had a microphone, no information was shared as to what the hell was going on (20 years ago I wouldn't have had a mobile either, but I'd have legged it out of the coach to find out what the problem was!).

Then we hit roadworks (OK; roadworks are basically an Act of God as far as a trip arranged six or more months in advance are concerned); but, again, presumably neither of the organisers had a mobile with them, because once we'd arrived and walked down the hill,

we met a couple of rather agitated guides who believed we'd be with them 1.5 hours earlier (5 minutes after we left Stirling)...

That sort of set the tone for the whole visit. I had the impression that we'd have been divided into smaller groups if we'd arrived when they were ready for us; and we got there an hour and a half before everything closed up for the day, rather than the 3 hours they'd anticipated... They did their level best, but there was a lot to see. They'd prepared a special tour for us focusing on the yarn production at the mills (which is one of their profitable areas - brilliant, given the entirely reasonable prices they charge!) but basically the general effect was Huge Flocks of Confused Knitters milling (sorry) about, not quite sure where they were meant to be going.
The first thing we saw was a bit of the turbine and watermill machinery

and then we went on the New Lanark Experience - which was a sort of fairground ride (think ghost train, but with tunnel-of-love style two-person carriages) focused on the experience of a 10-year-old girl called Annie who worked crawling under the spinning machines to clean out all the waste. It was beautifully done, and pretty moving. This is a terrible picture, but given as a general impression;

but there were lots of holograms and lights, as well as some more realistic models and so on, and snippets of archive film footage of other mills. Originally it was a cotton mill, but they got in the wool spinning machines more recently as this seemed to be a more local and sustainable way of spinning (and also healthier for all concerned).

I'd guessed, wandering down the hill, that this was a Model Community; and while work was obviously completely back-breaking, they were also keen to emphasise the work of Robert Owen, the founder of the mill and an early Socialist. It was a huge example of both the positive and the negative elements of Victorian Values, and absolutely fascinating.

We saw the ridiculously huge and beautiful carding machine, which is, brilliantly, behind a glass wall at the back of the shop, and produces 28 strands of pencil roving which correspond (of course) to the 28 spinnaret-thingies (I have no idea what they're called for this sort of spinning wheel, but I know what they are in spiders!).

We went upstairs and saw the spinning being done; and how complicated it is to rethread everything when it gets tangled.

Some of us knitted in company with 19th century mill workers.

And for the end (my favourite bit) we went down to the cellars with Alan (?), the consultant who got all the machinery in there, and saw the huge sacks of yarn waiting to be processed, and the blending machine - a sort of domestic-swimming-pool-sized metal vat in which all the colours for the tweeds are layered, and then blended using a set of wheels, and then sent up to the carding machine by fan and vacuum. Fascinating.

I thought I'd managed a photo of the blending machine; but evidently not. Here's a shot of the river above the mill, though...

We didn't, unfortunately, have enough time to see the rest of the attractions, like the mineworkers' cottages, Robert Owen's house and so on; it would have been lovely to do so. But we had an evening buffet booked for 5pm (which was extremely nicely done; and they also did a prize draw for a bag of yarn, which was very kind of them).

The yarn consultant was also around for questions after dinner; I asked about the organic yarn production they'd mentioned, as I have friends who've had to jump through the Soil Association's various hoops for a completely unrelated business. It turns out they have to process it on separate days, with different oil, and they have to clean everything really carefully beforehand...

We left more-or-less on time - further chaos as everyone on our coach was asked to keep the same seats on the way back so we could work out whether all our neighbours had returned; but presumably that message hadn't been communicated to people on the other coach who piled onto the nearer one to the exit, meaning that nobody had a clue.

Yarn was bought. Actually yarn was bought, and exchanged on the same afternoon - I picked up what I thought was a lovely granite colour with burgundy and green flecks; and got it out into the air to realise it was definitely lovely and granite, but the flecks were orange and duck-egg blue; I changed it for a generic mid-aran-type colour called "Pebble"...

In the evening, Stitch and Bitch with Debbie Stoller. A very nice evening; she was surprisingly shy (I'm only going by the impression from the photos on the cover of her books, you understand), and had a proof copy of her new book which looks very good... Photographic evidence of the evening courtesy of Lydia Jensen's blog (scroll towards the end.)

Knit Camp 4: More Skirling in Stirling

2010-08-30T10:00:00.000+01:00

So, I left you with the pipers rehearsing outside the Castle. The weather had cleared quite a bit since I set off, and the landscape was beautiful. The tower on the left of this picture is the Wallace Monument; I believe that means the University is just the other side of the wooded hill (but never trust me on anything geographical)...

The castle is a strange, eclectic mix of styles, and I didn't seem to take many photos. The audio guide was good, but maybe a little ponderous, in the style of Imagine this courtyard in the year 1756... followed by a lot of reproduction sounds of bulls lowing, carriages clopping, people throwing barrels from carts, etc. etc. I'm not a great fan of audio guides in general but had been round Buckingham Palace, where the guide was pretty superb, the week before so gave it a go.

Anyway; this is the Chapel Royal, built for the baptism of Prince Henry, son of James VI, in 1594. The wall paintings were restored in the 20th century after the Chapel had been used to garrison soldiers for many years.

There's also a tapestry project going on, with a fascinating studio in the castle buildings - some of the completed tapestries are shown in the next two photos.

And then once I'd been round the castle, there were those Rob Roy people again; this time in full dress with hats etc. They had a large and enthusiastic audience on the various balconies and around the walls.

And there were dancers, 13 of them in this case (note the dancer racing up the middle!)

It was all rather marvellous. And just as I thought the fun was over and they'd taken their bow, the pipes got louder again, and they marched out of the castle in formation.

Fabulous. (Preparing this post over the last couple of days reminded me to go over to their website and say thanks - got a lovely reply back, with the news they'd come 6th in the world pipe band competition on August 16th, so all that practice evidently paid off...)

And just at that point I bumped into Julia (aka Sulkycat, maker of wonderful knitting project bags, etc.); and she'd bumped into some other people, and in the end we had 7 knitters squeezed around the table at the pub at lunchtime with a very entertaining waiter. I think we were from 5 different countries and almost as many nationalities... And that was definitely one of the best things about the week - so many people from different places with different experiences.

We all scattered in different directions afterwards, and I went to look at a very interesting graveyard monument I'd noticed on the way up the hill. I've never seen one quite like this before!

Or an inscription like this:

Thankfully there was an information plaque next to it which read Statues of heroes of the Scottish Presbyterian Reformation, set up when the cemetery was opened, were part of the educational and 'improving' atmosphere of Victorian Stirling... These enclosed figures represent the traditional story of Margaret Wilson who, aged 18, was executed by drowning in the Solway Firth for refusing to renounce her Protestant faith. She had no connection with Stirling. The monument avoids the horror of her death and presents a more sentimental Victorian idealisation of women.

So now you know. Strange, the sort of things the Victorians found edifying, really.

And a quick picture from the end of the visit, from a bar which used to be the old Post Office: amazing beer-glass light fitting...

Next up: outings to New Lanark and Loch Katrine...