Reading group

I still go to a reading group once a month. It's a nice group with a mixture of working and retired people in it so a good mixture of ages and life experience. We choose the books from a lengthy list supplied by the library, basically of books they have multiple copies of. Last year's books weren't too good, but this year's have been a bit better. In March we had Lionel Shriver's "The post-birthday world", which I didn't get on well with. I found her "We need to talk about Kevin" compelling reading, but I just couldn't get into this one. It wasn't helped by being quite lengthy and with me attempting to read it at the same time as moving house. The plot is along the lines of "Sliding doors" as in two different outcomes develop from one point in time. Trouble was, I didn't care about the characters so I didn't really care about the developments in the story!

April's book was "The piano teacher" by Janice Y.K. Lee. OK, so it's not a great work of fiction, but it was a significant improvement on "The post-birthday world". It's highly readable and interesting, but not quite at the chick-lit end of the spectrum (not that there's nothing wrong with chick-lit by the way!). The action flits backwards and forwards between Hong Kong during the Second World War, and in the early 50s where people are dealing with the repercussions of the war. Some very interesting stuff, which made me want to go away and find out more about the history of the area. Some of the characters aren't particularly convincing though and seemed to be stereotypes rather than "real" though. A couple of reading group members had lived in Hong Kong back in the 70s so could tell us how true to life the book actually was too.

I'm not going to read May's book as the meeting will be when we're on honeymoon and I fancied a month off to catch up on some other reading. So the next reading group book I'll be reading will be Edith Wharton's "House of mirth" for the June meeting (actually in July!). Apart from the group books I'm still reading "Singled out" by Virginia Nicholson, which has been on the go for a while now.

Knitting-wise, I'm trying to decide what to knit next once Thermal is finished. I want to decide on a sock pattern to make with the Opal Cotton Farli sent me, I could do with some more cotton socks now the weather has finally turned warmer. I was also thinking about making the Tea Leaves Cardigan after reading LeafGreenKnits blog about it. I had thought about buying some yarn for this on honeymoon, but I also have this in my stash which would work?

We will be honeymooning in Stratford-upon-Avon and have rented an apartment in the centre for five nights. I've already identified one potential yarn shop to visit in Coventry (where we were planning to spend a day anyway) - the Yarn Gathering, which I read about on Knit the Knit's blog. We were hoping to go and see the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in action, but of course, have managed to choose the one week when there isn't anything on! But there are plenty of National Trust properties round there so we'll probably visit one or two of those.

Have you read...

... "Lullabies for little criminals" by Heather O'Neill? I'm meant to be reading it for Reading Group next week, but I'm not getting very far. It doesn't sound cheerful from the plot summary in the link above, but I'm not even that far yet - only on page 25! I just can't be bothered to pick it up and read any more of it.

I finished reading "The believers" by Zoe Heller last week, and I'm wondering if that had something to do with it? I picked this one up at the library as I'd enjoyed (probably the wrong word? More like "found compelling and got sucked into it"?) "Notes on a scandal" and thought I'd try something else by Heller. I wasn't too impressed with this one either, once I'd realised I couldn't care less about any of the characters and the fact that nothing really happened until page 82?!?! Apparently one of the things Zeller does is produce unlikeable characters but I'm not sure where the incentive is to keep reading if you don't give a damn what happens to anyone in the book? According to the reviews quoted in the Wikipedia article: "It has been called a "cruelly clever new novel", "an observant and unsentimental family drama that pits rationalism against faith", "at heart an American novel: a larger, more considered, layered and utterly assured study of a family driven by political passion whose personal lives refuse to comply with prescribed ideology", and simply "a brilliant, brilliant book".

Maybe I missed something? Still haven't decided whether to carry on with "Lullabies..." but if I procrastinate much longer it'll be the Reading Group meeting and I won't have read it so the problem will be solved.

In other backward steps I frogged (again) the Herringbone/No purl monkey socks and began pattern attempt no. 3 with the sock yarn. Has my concentration suddenly become really bad or something? I can't ever remember having this many book and knitting failures all at the same time?!

This time I'm attempting the Rib Fantastic pattern from the "Knitting socks with handpainted yarn" book. I'm loving the book (see, I can still read and enjoy something! Maybe it's weird novels that are the problem?) and found the introductory chapters really helpful in terms of different styles of handpainting/dyeing and what to look out for when you're deciding which pattern to use.


I've also knitted half of a tea cosy for a friend's birthday (which was on 3rd April, but I only gave her last year's birthday present at the beginning of March so I'm not doing too badly really...). The pattern is from the RYC Home book and the yarn is some space-dyed DK I bought from Wingham Wools.

I have also been playing hunt the button. I've nearly finished my Suri cardigan and needed five small buttons. Via Twitter Blueadt suggested trying Duttons for Buttons in Harrogate and Anne suggested Dragon Yarns, both of which I liked the look of. But then I got an email from Kangaroo, whom I'd forgotten sold buttons and they had some I really liked. Except of course there's a minimum order, so I ended up ordering more buttons...

These are cheap and cheerful black plastic buttons, along with some sweet little Rowan ones:

and I couldn't resist some of the Debbie Abrahams hand-made buttons, even though they're too big for the cardigan.


I've been playing around with my veg box delivery order too. I use Riverford Norton, which delivers from Hampshire, and I had been getting the mini fruit & veg box every week, but that never includes potatoes or onions, so I've switched to alternating between a mini fruit & veg box, and a mini veg box with extra fruit bag. Except I then invariably find I prefer the look of the other box contents that week so end up switching around again.

Still, this was last week's mini veg box - looks rather good, doesn't it? I consumed the last of it tonight with an omelette!

Twitter

So, there I was, reading blogs, when I stumbled over the Yarn Harlot talking about Twitter. Now I'd read about Twitter, but mainly in incredibly dull librarian things that don't inspire me to go and investigate further. But if the Yarn Harlot's doing it it's got to be cool, right? So I investigated and discovered exciting things like several other online friends using it, plus Stephen Fry, plus the Today programme and Greenpeace. Then I joined in myself.

I don't think my updates have changed the world. Was anyone actually interested in my desperate hunt for paracetamol in the event of Extreme On The Blobness Galloping Gut Rot? Or the headache-that-turned-into-a-migraine? Or the fact that I'd arrived at work and it was raining? Probably not. But I like other people's updates!

In other news. I've just started reading "Everyman" by Philip Roth, for reading group, although I'll miss the meeting for this one as I'll be on holiday. Ironically the only copy left was the large print one, which caused great hilarity among the other members, almost all of whom are a good 40 years older than me! When do you read books? I'm trying to keep the time I get to bed for reading books, and to keep reading newspapers and magazines to other times, but I always seem to end up with a backlog at the end of each week!

Most of my files are now on Claudius, although a few remain on Caligula, and I haven't tackled Nero yet... I haven't worked out how I want the file structure to look yet, so things are in weird places. Knitting pics seem to have ended up in a variety of folders, so I'm having trouble finding things!

I've unearthed the pics of White Lightning (but in green):


finished for a swop before Christmas. A quick and also fun knit! I used 2 skeins of Debbie Bliss Cathay, which feels lovely.
Just before Christmas I discovered Folksy (thanks to Nic!) which is like Etsy but in the UK. I bought a bag like this as a Christmas present from Nic's shop and have since been stalking various other exciting items!