FO: Lavalette

A lovely simple shawl perfect for mindless background knitting:


Pattern: Lavalette by Kirsten Kapur.

Yarn: Flamboyance Yarns Elysian in colourway Frosted Hedgerow (Fabulous Yarn Club Yarn January 2011).

Mods: None.
Project: Online at Ravelry.

Knit, blocked and finished in just over a week.

Books I Read in May

It's been a while...

Total 8 books:

American Wife (Curtis Sittenfeld)

KnitLit: Sweaters and Their Stories...and Other Writing About Knitting (Linda Roghaar & Molly Wolf)

KnitLit (too): Stories from Sheep to Shawl . . . and More Writing About Knitting (Linda Roghaar & Molly Wolf)

Confessions of a Shopoholic (Sophie Kinsella)

Shopoholic Takes Manhattan (Sophie Kinsella)

Shopaholic Ties The Knot (Sophie Kinsella)
Shopaholic & Sister (Sophie Kinsella)
Shopaholic & Baby (Sophie Kinsella)

The Lost Symbol (Dan Brown)

Easily my favourite book of the month, I read American Wife whilst on the canal with Hobnob and his parents. Beautifully written.

The KnitLit books were a recommended for you buy from Amazon based on my reading of (almost) all things Yarn Harlot. The second was probably better than the first, both were enjoyable with a mixture of tales but I probably wouldn't read them a second time (I hope I don't change my mind - they're waiting in the charity shop bag!)

I picked half the Shopaholic books up from BookMooch a while ago when I was craving trashy novels. Since I didn't have them all I never got round to reading them. In an attempt to clear the bookcase a bit I tracked the in between ones down and read them through. Done!

My final book of the month was Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol which I'd held back on until I spotted it in paperback and then a little longer in case I spotted it in the same size paperback as my other Dan Brown's - I didn't. Not bad but I prefered The Da Vinci Code to this (and I preferred Angels & Demons to that).

Er yes, so of those I'd probably recommend American Wife but wouldn't make any effort to talk you out of the others (I may even order the third KnitLit book sometime soon).

WIP Wednesday: Skew

This week's work-in-progress is a Sock Knitters Anonymous SOCKDOWN challenge sock...

It's the first of the month and accordingly my WIP is a brand new pair of socks cast on this morning. Unexpectedly, it's the second time I've cast on this project in two days - yesterday I had the date wrong! Fortunately, I also noticed that the yarn couldn't really be described as self-striping (stripes nowhere to be seen) which was this month's challenge so I didn't feel too terrible about ripping it back and starting over today instead.

Here's today's version:

I love the yarn - it's Wendy Happy which I've used this before for some bright red pink socks for my husband. I loved the sheen on the socks when they were done and in December when I visited Edinburgh I picked up two more colourways - one for him and one for me. This is the one for me (but he has his eye on it...)

The pattern will be one from a few knitty's ago: Skew.