What I made, by Sharon

I wouldn't normally request a picture book from NetGalley, since I am not a childhood educator, parent or grandparent, but when I saw the charming Who Will Adopt This Pet by Melanie Middien   I could not resist.  This is the description:  A boy and a girl go to a pet shelter to find the perfect new pet. Instead, they find a very scruffy, unloved dog. Who will adopt it? Not them! They go on a mission to find an owner for the toothless, farty, yappy, three-legged canine but no one wants him. But when they are offered a perfect dog, what will become of their scruffy new friend? This is a charming book, with fun illustrations and a rhyming scheme that I could imagine reading with and to a child who was too young to read. It has the underlying message that a pet doesn't have to be perfect to be perfect for you, overlaid with really fun illustrations and text. I would loved to have had this in my hands as a paper, rather than e-book.  

I am on the cusp of finishing my mystery gnome. There are just two more clues. I guess we are going to add her features, arms and accessories. This has been so much fun. We're also on the cusp of starting Stephen West's  Shawlography MKAL . While I wait I'm knitting a pair of socks for Leon. I'm using my oldest sock yarn, which is woollen spun and 50 percent mohair. I wanted to do a nice cabled project, but it just wasn't showing up, so instead I'm doing Reverso from Knitty, which is basically a broken rib, and it knitting up very quickly. I'm still reading Empire of Vampires - it's a big book, but has also been quite a quick read, because, while dark, it has a fast moving interesting plot. Highly recommend.   I'm not listening to an audio-book right now, although I am chewing through pod-casts. I started David Mitchel's T he One Thousand Autumns of Joseph De Zoot  and I just could not get in to it. Endless tedious descriptions. Maybe it's...

The balcony is finished! The scaffolding is almost down, and it looks really nice. They are putting scaffolding up on the bedroom side of the flat, but I won't be looking at it all day. Hearing the work, maybe, but I won't be doing a blow by blow account of that part of the renovations here. I never actually meant to do weekly updates of it, but nothing else was happening in my life for the last 13 weeks! Not a lot continues to happen. Leon and I have sore throats, running noses and a cough, so we go tested yesterday. It's very unlikely to be COVID, since the outbreaks here are happening on the other side of town, but we do have to self isolate until the test results come back. I'm reading Modern Lovers by Emma Straub. It was literally the oldest book in my Goodreads "To Be Read" list. It's a multi-generational family and friends drama. The fun part is that the drama is all actually quite low key. The characters are relatable and the New York settin...