Skip to main content

Linky Wednesday - the one where the yarn is good and the books are not

Last week I said I was struggling with   The Intrigue* by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Unusually for me I put it aside and read The Music Between You And I by Quiana Glide* a book that was full of grammar and plot errors. After that I returned to The Intrigue, but I didn't suddenly start caring about the characters or plot. I had just read three 5 star books in a row, so I guess I was due a slump.

Now I'm reading Double Standard*: An 831 Stories Romance by Mallory Thomas. All 831 romances have the same boring cover, in different colours. The book itself is an easy read and I'm liking it.

I have an unusual number of ARCs to read - after Double Standard  there are four due on the 11th of August, which should be quite achievable, none of them are particularly long. Although i really should stop requesting ARCs with short timeframes! these all sounded really good. They are Ninefox Gambit* by Yoon Ha Lee (military space opera) Never Date a Celebrity* by Claire Forsythe (Sapphic romance) I Love the Whole World!* by Victoria Hannan (Australian Women's fiction) and Preaching to the Choir* by Adrian Tchaikovsky  (horror novella). So, a really good variety of books coming up!

The knitting has been fun - I've been working away on my 'in public' socks, which are coming along nicely.

I'm also swatching for Alpine Bloom by Caitlin Hunter. I was planning to turn it onto a dress, but I'm now considering my options.

I'm also enjoying all my new yarn - the planning, the playing the hope and the expectations. 

As usual, all books marked with an * are digital review copies, provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

To read my all my book reviews, and to see everything I knit, you can find me on Ravelry as Sharondoubleknit and on GoodReads as Sharondblk. I'm on BlueSky as Sharondblk.

I'm linking up with Kat from As Kat Knits for Unravelled Wednesday, Kat from the Bookdate for It's Monday, What Are You Reading and Sam from Taking on a World of Words for WWW Wednesday where we talk about what we are currently reading, what we have just finished and what we are going to read next.  

Comments

  1. Anonymous22 July, 2026

    That is a gorgeous Caitlin Hunter design, and I can't wait to see your take on it! Like you, I have a glut of books from NetGalley to read right now, too. Luckily, they all sound interesting . . . but it really is feast-or-famine sometimes, isn't it? I hope you have some good ones in your "pile."

    ReplyDelete
  2. (Oops. I guess I wasn't signed in when I left that comment (above). It was me . . . )

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Unravelled wednesday and WAYRN - the one where I prepare

We are heading off for some camping and hiking and general R&R on Friday, so I'm currently in planning and preparing mode. Of course that mainly means deciding what to knit - I'm going to make the Old Romance cardigan by Joji Locatelli. The yarn is wound and I'm ready to go. I completed Leon's Winter Set (2023) just in time, and it's currently blocking. I'm reading Georgette Hayer's Fredrica , which I am enjoying very much. Regency romance is so sweet and, unlike current romance offerings, I know it won't suddenly tumble into gynaecological territory!  For unexplained reasons, NetGalley is offering some Georgette Heyer books at the moment - (maybe it's re-release?) and I'm taking this opportunity to read a few more of them And that's my week in knitting and reading.  To read my all my book reviews, and to see everything I knit, you can find me on Ravelry as  Sharondoublekni t and on GoodReads as  Sharondblk .  I'm joining in with Kat ...

Yarnalong - the one with the final bit of transport

Remember how I took every form of transport known to man a fortnight ago? Well, I was missing just one thing, suburban trains. But today I got to remedy that, knitting my way to Dandenong for work. Yay? My Char jumper has been knitting up ridiculously fast. It's easy, pleasant and a well written pattern. I'm reading Rachael Herron's latest book The Ones Who Matter Most . It's a good read so far, family centered fiction, easy to read but still emotionally challenging. I'm listening to Evelyn Waugh's Men At Arms . I'm enjoying it, I didn't really know what to expect, but some of it reminds me of Catch 22, in that it catalogues the absurdities of war and bureaucracy. The narrator has the perfect upper crust English accent and I'm very pleased it's the first of a trilogy.   And that's another week of reading, knitting and catching trains everywhere for me. Do pop along to Ginny's blog to see what she and the rest of the yarnalong ...

Why Andrea Mowry, why? (A rant and a rather nice finished object)

As mentioned, prior to our hiking trip I suddenly, and rather randomly, decided to knit  Andrea Morwy's Traveler Shell . It's basically an open fronted rectangle in a knit purl pattern. The pattern is FOURTEEN pages long. Why is the pattern 14 pages long? Because, instead of explaining the ten row repeat and then putting the shaping on top of that (e.g. decrease while continuing to knit in pattern), she writes out the entire ten row knit purl sequence every time something changes. Additionally, most of the time she starts with even number being the right side and wrong numbers being the right side,which is just plain odd. It's confusing and it's like she wants to keep you looking at the pattern for every row, rathe than following the very intuitive stitch pattern, which I had memorised after one repeat.  The instructions for the band just say 'pick up x number of stitches'. No ratios, no acjnowledgement that different bits of the band have different ratios. Afte...