Unravelled Wednesday - 21 days

We've gone 21days with a community COVID-19 transition, and I'm pretty excited. More and more things are opening up, and it's so nice.

This week's knitting was a bit of a continuation of last week. I finished the Sock Arms Jumper on our Saturday road trip, and cast on a matching pair of socks - using Dani from Half-Baked Handdyed (the striped yarn) new free sock pattern. I knit during the weekend, and we went to comedy at the Local (!) on Monday night, and I made quite a lot of progress. 

In "at home" knitting, I'm slowly chugging away at my Tracey vest. I finished the underarm-decreases and am now knitting the chest bit (the yoke?) it'll still be a couple of weeks, because it's slow going and I'm leaving the house more and more but I'm finding it very soothing.

In books, I randomly requested Vicarious Vacations by Michael Wojciechowskin from NetGalley. 

It's pub date was December, so I don't know why they were offering it, but I'm glad I said yes. I couldn't put this down, and read it in three days. It's the story of Paige, an Instagram addict who, through various somewhat shady methods, becomes an influencer. It reminded me quite strongly of Dave Eggers The Circle. They cover similar themes and both can be a bit soup-boxy and cardboardy. Both feature naïve protagonists and cover the themes of privacy and social media.  Vicarious Vacations was written eight years alter and you can really see the progress / havoc / infringement on our time and privacy that social media has made in that time. Unlike the Eggers book, this focussed a bit more on the personal rather than the systematic, particularly in the final 20 percent. I enjoyed the way, even though some details were invented (or rather, having done the maths, the book is probably set about five years in our future) he uses the real names of the social media companies. I once quit a Candace Bushnell novel because she kept referring to "Instaphoto". This book had a level of authenticity, even if the ending was very tidy.  I'm very glad I stumbled across Michael Wojciechowskin, and will be looking up his back catalogue. 

I'm listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic. 

I'm loving it. She's quirky and sweet and reads it herself. And the book starts with saying straight out that you don't have to quit your boring day job, which I find very comforting, since, well I mainly work to pay the mortgage and buy  yarn! 

As usual on a Wednesday, I'm joining in with  Unravelled Wednesday, a weekly link-up hosted by Kat from As Kat Knits, where we talk about what we have been knitting and reading.