Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Tuesday book reveiw

It's been a few week's since I finished a book, hence, no book reviews. But today I have one for you.


Lethal White (Cormoran Strike, #4)


Four star review of Lethal White by Robert Galbraith

Enjoyable mystery. I enjoyed this as I have all the Cormaron Strike books. When a government minister asks Cormaron to find out who’s trying to blackmail him and, almost at the same time, a man who seems deranged comes to talk about a killing he’d witnessed as a child, the stories don’t seem to be related. Robin goes undercover while Cormaron handles other aspects of the case(s). The ending wasn't as surprising, and as a writer myself, I couldn't help noticing the head hopping, especially towards the end. (Spoiler alert) I am glad Robin has finally ditched Matt.

Sunday, April 28, 2019

Sunday is for knitting

A recent post from Kay Gardner of Mason Dixon Knitting is about sleeves. Specifically a reply to a letter they received

The Trouble with Sleeves
There are no perfect solutions to knitting small circumferences in the round. For me, anyway, it’s a pick-your-poison situation. I have been known to knit them flat and seam them, and I think that’s a perfectly good answer. But I also appreciate the elegance of a sweater with zero seams, so I want to knit these sleeves in the round.
The tried-and-true, traditional way of knitting a small circumference in the round is double-pointed needles. I get along OK with DPNs, but I don’t love them. I have never been able to overcome the tendency to pull out the wrong needle, and they don’t travel very well. I’m either anxious about losing one somewhere in the seat of a plane, train, or automobile, or actually losing one in the seat of a train, plane, or automobile.
The alternatives that I know—Cat Bordhi’s two-circulars method and the Magic Loop—are clever and secure, but they both require frequent interruption of knitting to readjust the stitches on the needles.  I know that you can get into a rhythm with these methods, but I’ve never been completely convinced. Maybe I just don’t do it often enough. Maybe I’m a weenie.
What if you could combine the 2-circs method (in which the stitches are divided between just two needles) and DPNs?

There is the first way Kay mentions, of course. Knit the sleeve flat and seam it. I've tried the other ways. DPNs work all right, until you get to the cap of the sleeve. I'm working on the sleeve of my Taina sweater. Make that sleeves, as I like to knit them at the same time so I don't do the increases and cap shaping differently. Since I'm not including any of the three stitch patterns in the fronts of the sweater (I knit both of those at the same time, too, for the same reason), it's going quite well. I'll deal with the seams when I reach that point.

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Tuesday Book Review

All the books I'm reading now are quite long, so I haven't finished one for a few weeks. Here's a four star review from a book I read in 2016:

The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth̢۪s Past #1)

The Three-Body Solution by Liu Cixin

The author alternated between writing a parody of scientific research and reporting, a story about the results of the cultural revolution in China, and a sci-fi novel about aliens sending an attack on Earth that would arrive in 400 years. Oh, and then there was the virtual reality game and the cults it created. He tried to do so many things and didn't succeed completely with any of them.