These are the yarns that will go into this year’s Fair Isle sweater project.
From Mountain View Coopworths.
I was on the fence between this and similar yarns from my pals at the Green Mountain Spinnery, but decided to go with the smaller business this year. If GMS had had any Mountain Mohair in natural, I would have gone that way.
My totally frivolous purchase at the Fair this year was curly dyed locks from American Teeswater Sheep Association. I’ve gotten one of these packs from them at least once before. Tytania, you really need more dyed curly locks in your life? YES! Something about this just makes me want to comb comb comb and see how the colors combine.
by Kingsley Amis
I picked up this book on someone’s recommendation and because I’m interested in sexual mores before the big revolution of the 60s. This book, published in 1960, was eye-opening.
Jenny is a pretty 20-year-old, away from her hometown for the first time, that men literally cannot stop throwing themselves at (despite her bust being only 34 inches, so she must have been QUITE a looker). It goes to show how horrible it must have been for a pretty girl back in the day when men could just make passes at you, and if anyone looked askance, it was to blame you.
The whole story was something like a train wreck I couldn’t look away from. On various levels, it was nothing less than horrible; yet I was dying to know, “Will they or won’t they!?”. The characters were almost all dislikeable. I only liked Jenny and – of course – Julian. Not coincidentally, Julian was the only man in the book that DIDN’T bodily throw himself at Jenny. Patrick Standish, her love interest, was a monster who just kept getting worse. I kept thinking, “he can’t possibly sink any lower”, and finding out that he actually could.
The book is humorous, in a way. But the many passages aiming for humor just, almost, never quite, managed to hit the mark, exactly.
The erstwhile brook behind my house… there is a tiny glint of water visible. They dry weather has been insane.
New placemats make every meal even more of a fiesta
by Steven Strogatz
A fun little book that explains various math concepts in crystal-clear language. My favorite was the derivation of the quadratic formula.
Cherry tomatoes AND cayenne peppers!
by David Mitchell
Utopia Avenue is a fictional late 1960s ensemble rock group. The band has no leader, and similarly, the book seems designed to have no main character – sort of. Bassist Dean really is kinda the leader of the band, and similarly, he really is kinda the main character, getting a bit more page space and depth of character than keyboardist Elf, guitarist Jasper, and drummer Griff. Still, we do get separate story arcs for each band member.
Jasper was the most compelling to me. He’s fighting schizophrenia and you really want to see him turn out OK. Much more seems on the line here than with Elf’s subplot of sexual discovery, and Dean’s woebegone travails of being a schlemiel. Griff’s plot twist was telegraphed way too far in advance.
But who doesn’t want to spend time in the psychedelic heyday of rock’s adolescence? I couldn’t possibly give this a bad review.
Xopher and I on a happier, sunnier day in Newport RI.
We spent three nights in Newport and two in the outer part of Boston. The last day in Newport we did the famous “Cliff Walk” where I tripped and fell on my knee, which hurts. My biking days might be over for the year.
Tytania 