Joining Kat and friends for Unraveled Wednesday.

Knitting.

I took my Boxy to knitting group last week, and the pro knitter pretty much agreed that I should bite the bullet and do the short rows, cutting the yarn after each one. I haven’t plucked up the guts to do that yet. Soon now…

In the meantime, I continue to churn out blue hats. Left, above, are all the hats I have made. Center, above, is the latest but one. Right, above, is the one OTN right now. It is a hodgepodge of 4-row stripes. No blue yarn shall go to waste, no matter how small the ball is.

Actually, I have found a use for my tiny leftover balls of yarn. A friend is picking up her weaving again, and she asked if I had any leftover bits of yarn. ::insert eye roll here:: Of course I do! So all my little balls shall go to her, amen.

Reading.

Like Wind Against Rock by Nancy Kim. This was a Kindle freebie from Amazon Prime, and it was worth exactly what I paid for it. There were half a dozen or so free Kindle books to choose from; I looked on Goodreads to see ratings to help me decide. This was rated 4.07, which is pretty good. My rating is somewhat lower. The story revolves around a a woman who finds herself living with her mother after a separation from her husband. She finds her long-dead father’s diary, but it is written in Korean, which she cannot read. In the process of having it translated she finds out more than she expected. 3✭

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Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness. This is the second book in the All Souls trilogy. Book one was set in present-day Oxford and New York state; in this one the two main characters time travel back to Elizabethan England in search of a witch that can teach the formerly reluctant witch to discover and refine her witchly properties. In the process, they encounter Queen Elizabeth, Sir Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe, and other historical figures. We learn that Elizabeth is petulant, Marlowe is a daemon and sneaky, and Sir Walter is a steadfast friend. Both of the series’ books are over 500 pages, but well worth the sustained effort. In general, it is a lot like Outlander; set in two different eras, a feisty woman and her equally feisty husband, peril, sex, danger, more sex, more peril, loving, conflict and more sex. 4✭

Lies We Bury by Elle Marr. Another Kindle freebie from Amazon Prime. I only started it because I was out of library reads and the library won’t open until tomorrow. 2.5✭

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Listening.

I am still listening to Obama’s A Promised Land and still enjoying it immensely. It is 29 hours long, which is why I am still listening. It may go a little faster now that many of the COVID-19 restrictions are being lifted and I can get out more. Hearing his steady voice was reassuring during the Times Of t***p; now it is a nostalgic sound. 5✭

Watching.

We finished watching Sherlock on Netflix. When that series was first aired on PBS I quit watching when it got too weird for me, somewhere in season three. This time we watched all the way to the last episode of the series, episode three in season four, which was the weirdest of them all. When it ended we turned to each other and said something equivalent to “well, that certainly jumped the shark.” 4✭

Whenever I have sole control of the TV I watch Rake, the BBC series about a ne’er-do-well barrister. Cleaver Greene is impulsive, sleeps with anyone in skirts, lies whenever the truth is too hard, and generally screws up his life at every opportunity. Smokey walked throughy the living room, caught a typical scene, and remarked, “He’s a real sweetheart, isn’t he?” Midway through season three (of five) and hoping that main character, while entertaining in the character’s coke-sniffing and alcoholic manner, changes his ways. 3.5✭