What I made, by Sharon

 I wear shawls all year round, but Elise wears them more like scarves, to stay warm in winter. Still, I was thrilled when she asked me for a new shawl in purple. I bought the yarn in Bendigo and even more thrilled when Joji announced a one skein mystery shawl knitalong.  The MKAL was a lot of fun. Her Ravelry boards are very active, with a lot of chatter (also some people whinging because the mystery shawl has some repeated elements. Unlike another recently finished MKAL, this one hangs together as a finished object. it was a lot of fun to knit. Simple, but just interesting enough keep me going. The weather is going to be quite crap this weekend, so i might give it to Elise now, rather than waiting until autumn. If I do, I'll try to get photos and I'll update this post. if not, I'll get photos next winter! 

 I really couldn't find anything the link my activities this week! After I finished    Empire of the Dawn  I went back and finished    Scary Monsters  by Michelle de Kretser . It felt good to tick it off the list, but that's all I can say about the second half of that book. Then I decided it was time for something lighter, so I read  Autumn Falls  t he first in the romance series I started a couple of weeks ago and  An Occupation of Angels , a Lavie Tidhar book about angels in the cold war. It's even weirder than that sounds! Now I'm reading  How to Date Your Dragon by Molly Harper  a paranormal fantasy included in both Kobo Plus (which I have rejoined) and Audible Plus. I only started it yesterday, but so far it's fun. I'm listening to a NetGalley review copy of    The Heir Apparent by Rebecca Armitage.   Princesses! Royal succession! Family drama! It also has the most perfect narrator. I am enjoying it. In craf...

 I knit with hand-dyed yarn regularly. Sometimes I even dye my own. Earlier this year I was knitting with some natural plant dyed yarn, and it was rubbing off on my hands as I knit.  Eventually when I finished it I washed the finished object. And then i washed it. And washed it again. By the time I got the water to run clear the yarn was a significantly more muted colour. Now I'm knitting a purple shawl for Elise, and I noticed that the same thing is happening. Since I had two skeins of the yarn, and I'll probably only use one for the shawl, I decided to wash the second skein. And that was not the first rinse. it;s currently soaking in hot water and vinegar after three rinses. I really want to get this set enough to use in a colourwork yoke. I'm not feeling too hopeful about that. I know if I dye it myself I make sure the dye is set and any excess removed. I wish professional dyers would do the same.  

 Unsurprisingly I'm still reading   Empire of the Dawn . It's so good (if you like vampires and family and endless, endless bad things happening, which I do!) It's a big book, but it's not dragging at all. I'm near the dénouement, but I kind of never want it to finish, but I need it resolved! I'm going to have the biggest book hangover when I do finish it. I'll be returning to the second half of  Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser , so at least I know my next book will be well written. In audiobooks I finished  Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami . I didn't love it. Now I'm listening to  Persona Non Grata (Gaius Petreius Ruso, #3) by Ruth Downie . It's a relaxing, somewhat silly, cosy mystery series set in the Roman Empire.  In knitting I do have a new project on the needles: Backlit by Stephanie Lotven . This has been in and out of my queue for years - I've bought yarn for it at least three times, and as far back as 2022 . T...

 Today I have three finished items that are gifts, so, while I wrote about them while knitting them, I haven't had the opportunity to show you them on their intended recipients. First up is the Swancho that I knit for Kris, so that Kris, Nat, Katie and I can all match. She looks so cute it it! Then there is the Albizia cardigan for my mother. Practical and pretty, this was a (rather lengthy) very satisfying knitting adventure. It's made out of Holst Garn Supersoft, and while it washes up reasonably soft, i actually ended up with a cut on my tensioning finger from the yarn rubbing on my skin. I'm really pleased with how it fits her , and I think she is too. Then we have a charity jumper and hat, which I knit to try to minimise some of my every growing leftovers. here it is modelled by a bear. Hopefully the bear is smaller than a 9 month old. Also a  bonus pair of socks for my father, because he likes fun socks and complained that I haven't knit him socks for a while, wh...

 So, I did DNF    The Emergency ,  because I hated it. It was kind of wooden, and not very interesting. I got  Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser  from the library and started it. It's a book in two parts which can be read in either order - I remember when it was originally published the paper copies had one part starting on one side of the book - or turn it over and the other part starts from the other side of the book. The first half was very good - I am going through a bit of literary fiction by women stage. Anyway, just before we went away I found out that  Empire of the Dawn  the final volume of Jay Kristoff's E mpire of the Vampire series has come out that very day. Unusually for me, at the end of part one of Scary Monsters I set it aside and starting this amazing 800 page epic finale to this brilliant series. I am loving it - vampires, quests, endless dark, battles, love and so many emotions! After I finish this I'll go back to Scary Mo...

 This weekend we headed up to Marysville to hang out with my parents and run the 10 km in the Marysville Marathon festival. I did the half last year, but this year training did not go to plan, so the 10km it was! we did all our favourite things including walking up to the falls and getting a selfie.  Getting harassed by King parrots parrots. It was my mother's birthday last week, so I finally gave her the cardigan I made for her- and promptly forgot to take photos! Hopefully she'll wear it when I see her this week. It was  a very satisfactory weekend. the run started cold and a little damp, but was cool and delightful. Same falls, different day: We got home mid afternoon, which, after also being away last week was a bit of a relief. I've cleaned the bathroom, hung the washing and now I'm going to flop onto the couch and read the very excellent book I started on the weekend. If you come back on Wednesday, I'll tell you about that, and about what I knit this weekend t...

Last week I said I was going to read   The Emergency  by George Packer,  but we were going away for the weekend  and I didn't want to read dystopian fiction. One of my travelling companions was Bee and she is the romance queen (funny story - Bee didn't read fiction for a good long while and then she fell in love with romance. Now she reads more than anyone I know We have different tastes - she loves first person dual POV, I don't.) So I requested  Silver Sky by Taylor Gray  from NetGalley. It was perfect! Well written, lovable characters, third person. It's the second in a related series and I loved it so much I've bought the first one. (I think its on KU for those of you who subscribe).  Now I've gone back to The Emergency . I'm having mixed feelings - there is a lot of exposition and I'm not finding the main character at all sympathetic. Additionally, things just sort of happen and I can't see why - although that might be because our main chara...

 As has been our tradition for three years now, we spent cup weekend (which is Saturday to Tuesday, for you non-Australians) camping on Dick and Carly's bush block near Pomonal. I only took one photo because I finally got a phone plan that works even in the country and it turns out I don't really want my phone to work in the country, so I had it off for most of the weekend!   The rest of the photos here are stolen from Leon, who also didn't take many. We did all our favourite things- we went on two runs, a little bushwalk and even swam in a lake. We sat around a fire and bullshitted with out mates. Bee and I had a reading circle - which consisted of us sitting and reading.  We got to see how the bush is recovering after catastrophic fires over the last couple of years. We saw all out favourite animals, including loads of kangaroos, yellow tailed black cockatoos, gangang cockatoos and this wallaby with a joey.  We had a ripper of a time.  This is the last ye...