Joining Kat and friends. Go see what the others are up to.

Knitting.

I find myself knitting small projects of fingering weight yarn these days. I came upon this skein of Zauberball in the stash that I didn’t remember buying and thought that would make a great hat, a Sockhead, I think.

Those two balls of variegated yarn on the right have been sitting next to my chair for at least a week. One night I thought There is green in there. Which led me to imagine a pair of socks with contrasting heels, toes, and cuff. I think I will replace the yellow yarn with some periwinkle if I have it. These are traditional one-strand-of-yarn socks, not the two-strand heavy ones I usually make, so they will be late spring/early fall wear.

One night I work on the hat, the next night Iwork on the socks. Someday they will all be done.

Reading.

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Verity by Colleen Hoover. Not sure how I got this Kindle book, but it was more-or-less worth the time to read. Suspenseful, creepy, twist at the end. 3★

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It has occurred to me that most of the freebies I get from Amazon/Kindle fall into a particular genre: female protagonist who finds herself in peril. Her husband dies and in the aftermath she finds out he was not who she thought. Next-door neighbor may be a serial killer. An elderly relative dies and protagonist inherits haunted house located in creepy village whose inhabitants may be extra-terrestrials (and who may or may not be serial killers). Okay, maybe not that last one, but the Plucky Woman in Peril seems to be the standard plot. Upon further thought, though, it may be that I always pick the PWiP from the six or eight freebies from which to choose.

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Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris. Set in the depths of the Great Depression, when parents might sell one or more of their kids in order to get enough money to be able to feed the rest of the family. A reporter photographs two boys playing on the steps of their house with a sign tacked to a post: 2 boys for sale. The photo goes viral, and the reporter is assigned to get the story. He and his boss’s secretary (Plucky Woman) set out to find the children that had been sold and return them to their mother, who can now care for them. 3.5★

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Murder at the Lighthouse by Frances Evesham. British, semi-cozy, okay mystery. Goodreads said it best: “Love cosy crime, murder mysteries, clever animals and cake? Don’t miss Murder at the Lighthouse, a cosy animal mystery set in Exham on Sea, a seaside town in Somerset.” 3★

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The Spires by Kate Moretti. This freebie was a cut above the rest. A group of five friends rent a house for the year after they graduate from college. A fire that ended their first summer haunts them for years. Protagonist is Penelope — Pip — who is, 20 years on, married with two teenage children, an unemployed and philandering husband, and a successful but stressful career. Then Willa, a friend from that fateful summer, shows up. 4★

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Listening.

Vanishing Fleece by Clara Parkes. I finished this a couple days ago. Such a nice listen. Clara follows her 675-pound bale of New York state-grown wool through its processing into yarn. She divided the bale and send the quarters to four different mills to compare their operations and finished yarns. The mill owners and managers are delightful characters who love wool. She also traces the latest history in the US wool industry, which is not a happy story. Most textile production has shifted overseas to cheaper labor markets. I finished listening while in the parking lot at Walmart (the irony, it burns!) while waiting for my passenger to finish her business. I immediately went on line with my phone and ordered the physical book… from an independent bookstore in an almost local city. Shop local! 5★

Watching.

The Hunt for Red October. Smokey showed me something on YouTube that referred to Red October. We agreed that it was a good movie that would be fun to watch again, so I requested it from the library. (Libraries are excellent places to find things that are not on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. And they are free.) It was good, and had a lot more well-known actors than I remembered: Sean Connery and a very young Alec Baldwin, but also Scott Glenn, Sam Neill, James Earl Jones, Tim Curry, Stellan Skarsgård, whom I remember from River on Netflix, Fred Thompson, and Courtney B. Vance. One of the reasons we liked this movie so much was that Smokey’s job in the Naval Reserve was radio operator on a P-3, a sub hunting plane.