Books to Read Poster No 53

 

Yes. oddly enough, it is the other Murakami. I wouldn't necessarily have chosen to read them one after the other (in poster terms) but it seems I reserved this one at the library at the same time as Norwegian Wood but it took them a lot longer to track down. 

(I should say as well as single books I am ploughing my way through a multi book series from the poster so doing a little better than it might seem.)

I really don't know where to start with this one as it is so very odd. It's much more entertaining than Norwegian Wood though, so that's a good start. It's a surreal story which sends the narrator ( middling successful, younger end of middle aged, recently divorced, Tokyo business man ) on a strange journey to Hokkaido to look for a missing friend and a sheep with a star mark on its fleece. It's all to do with a sheep that wants to take over the world and features an appearance from a man who dresses as a sheep to avoid being sent to war. There's a suicide, and a murder, and a woman with the most beautiful ears in the world. 

It's highly symbolic and even I, who know less than nothing really about Japan, caught some of the subtext and it was nice to have a subtext because goodness knows Norwegian Wood didn't have one, unless it was that life is bewildering or damaging or both and possibly not worth it. 

I didn't expect to say this, but I actually enjoyed this book, and I would recommend it, if only because it is probably unlike anything you have ever read before. 

The blog is now going silent for a wee while. Tonight we sleep on a boat, tomorrow we go to Glasgow for  a very very  packed two days before getting up at daft o'clock on Friday morning to fly to Stockholm where we will be for a week. Back in Orkney on 9th, back blogging, possibly on the 10th. 

A Sample Sock and some Festive WIPs

 I was lucky enough to be chosen to do another sample sock for Helen at Giddy Knits recently. It was a quick turnaround so she just asked for plain socks with a contrast heel and toe. Here's the yarn she sent   

 

and here's the sock

The colours are from a new collection she will be launching shortly, not sure if it's in December or the New Year. It was a very pretty yarn and I enjoyed knitting it up. 

I usually get some of the West Yorkshire Spinners Christmas Colour each year and knit socks for the family. I wasn't  going to bother this year when I saw the Christmas yarn as it completely failed to float my boat - until I saw the other one, which is lovely and which I couldn't have ignored anyway once I discovered it was called Nutcracker. I am a bit of a sucker for Nutcracker themed things at Christmas. I decided to knit myself a shawl rather than socks, as my sock drawer, or that bit of my top drawer where I keep my socks , is full to overflowing, and it is currently looking like this.

This being code for 'a total rag'. It will be fantastic (I hope) when blocked. 

Meanwhile the OH is naturally getting his Christmas socks and, being in need of a comfort knit yesterday I cast on the first one, It's currently looking like this

This being code in this instance for 'I'm smugly pleased with how far I have got already'. Because the wool is striped I'm doing the shadow wrap heel again; I do like it but it can be fiddly with thin wool and small stitches and especially when you're working on the dark stripes. Pretty yarn though, eh? 

There is nowhere local to me, either in Orkney or Glasgow that stocks this yarn, the Yarn Cake having moved beyond Son No 2's ability to walk to it, so a very grateful shout out to my sister who bought me some local to her and posted it on. At less than I would have paid to get it mail order too. 

So, Yesterday

we did not discuss A Surfeit of Advents, because we had in quick succession, a long drawn out period of anxiety over a Missing Cat, rejoicing over a Returned Cat, concern over a Suddenly Very Poorly Cat and finally sorrow over a Cat who had Left Us. 

Lorenzo was very special and we will miss him. For  those not familiar with the story of how we came to be adopted by Lorenzo you can read it  here 

And here is one of the last pictures I took of him 

R I P 

'Tecs - The Short and the Long

 I may have left Saturday Slaughters but I'm still reading/listening to crime fiction. here's a round up of some recent ones. 

In Her Blood by Caro Ramsay.  I saw this in the library as I was passing the recently returned shelf and thought - 'oh we read one of hers in Saturday Slaughters and I enjoyed it'. Which was as good a reason as any to pick it up and take it home. Turned out it was No 2 in a series of which I had not, naturally enough, encountered No 1 (sigh)and there was a lot going on that reading No 1 first would have helped with, I got the feeling  that this one had been written in a bit of a hurry, as there were some places where I felt things didn't quite add up, or that some information which was fairly vital had somehow got lost in an edit, but that said, it was an enjoyable read. Well plotted, with a good twist at the end (which I felt I should have seen but hadn't - always the best sort - and some interesting characters. If the library have it I'll get hold of the first one at some stage and do a 'catch up'. 

The Twyford Code by Laura Hallett. I have seen Laura Hallett lauded up hill and down dale recently and described as a great story teller, master of the unexpected twist, etc etc so I downloaded this from my libraries Borrowbox service. I finished it but I didn't enjoy it. I certainly saw the twist at the end of this one, and basically it's one long (over) extended gimmick, that gets very old very quickly. If you're looking for something a bit different give it a go, but don't come whining back to me if you don't like it, because I warned you. 

So both the forgoing are a reasonable length which cannot be said of Robert Galbraith's (aka J K Rowling) latest Strike novel, The Running Grave. I used wasted an Audible credit on this. You sort of can't say you're not getting value for money if you judge a book by length, since it is over 30 hours of listening. JKR has obviously now reached that level of popularity where her publishers either don't bother to edit, or she doesn't let them, because this is far too long and would have benefitted from a massive cut - say 30%? The plot, which involves Strikes partner Robin going undercover to investigate a cult is good; and the sections dealing with her struggle to maintain her identity while bombarded with all of a cult's pressures to conform are so convincingly written they are difficult to listen to. I found them almost unbearable. I also think JKR may have fashioned something of a rod for her own back here as the psychological fall out from this experience would be huge and long lasting and that's a lot of baggage to saddle a recurring character with, if you're going to keep on writing about them and, moreover, writing them into dangerous situations. However that's JKR's problem, not the readers. So not a bad book, and I found myself mentally cheering at the loss of one recurring character, just far too long. Also I do not like Robert Glenister's way of narrating these books, and not just because one of his characters has an accent that wavers uncertainly between Glasgow and Belfast; it's too aggressive and shouty. I'd probably have enjoyed the book more if had read it rather than listened to it. That would also have meant I could have ignored the irritating quotations from the I Ching which head up every one of the book's 136 chapters, with bonus ones thrown in at the beginning of each of the book's parts. I would feel bad about saying all these harsh things if I hadn't read a shedload of Audible reviews (after I had done my own) that agreed with me. 

Since I can't grab a photo of the covers of any of these books off the web here is a photo of The Cat Lorenzo, now well on his way to recovery, although he is currently showing a weird preference for being out of the house in the wind and the rain rather than in it in the dry and the warm. Possibly he is attempting to avoid being 'dosed'. 

Tomorrow we may discuss A Surfeit of Advents. 

A Little Bit of Christmas Cross Stitch

So I regularly get a cross stitch magazine and it always comes with a little kit to stitch; sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, sometimes I start and then get bored and give up. These ones, which are from October I think, I actually stitched and made up. 

Definitely somewhere on the cuteness scale. 

If you're wondering why the snowman one is separate and has a picture all to itself it's because it was finished, attached to a present and then sent away before the others had been assembled. 

There are a couple of other small Christmass-y things from the same issue that  I'd like to stitch but I doubt I'll have time to get them done for this year. But who knows? 

At last

 some knitting I can post about since it's for me. 

A friend in America recently sent me some some super chunky wool and rather than let it languish in my stash I knitted it up immediately making myself a two colour cowl for our forthcoming trip to Stockholm. 

It will fold in half to keep my neck warm, and then as the day wears on I can unfold it to cover the bottom half of my face - I've experienced the seeping cold of a Stockholm December before! 

A couple of weeks back I was celebrating using up almost all  my February wool purchases, except for one lot of the wool I bought in Madeira, as I didn't know whether to use it for socks or mitts. 

The answer was mitts, and I am stupidly pleased with them. They're a slightly modified version of the Medley Mitts from Helen Stewart's Advent Collection from last year. My second pair and probably not my last.

I have hit a 'bijou snagette' with the OH's Finnish jumper as in the neckline per the pattern is too low and too wide for his liking, so it's currently resting in a project bag by the side of the sofa while I work up the enthusiasm to take a lot of the yoke out and then do some maths. 

We Went Out ...

 ... and not to a coffee morning!

That's me on the left near the back in the yellow jacket and the OH is right beside me in a not very flattering raspberry coloured  sweatshirt. 

This was an Orkney Archaeology Society talk last Tuesday. We've been life members of the OAS for about 3 decades and the OH was on the committee and for some of that time  Membership Secretary for a good few years as well, but as time wore on we got a bit tired of it all. Archaeologists can be as snippy and argumentative as any other type of academic and lay people who are interested in archaeology can sometimes be very tedious. And I think when he gave up the committee and we got all the related paraphernalia out of the house we were so relieved we just withdrew for a bit. We hadn't stopped altogether, but it took something special to get us out of the house and turn up - especially in the evenings  at this time of the year. 

There again this talk was about something special. During the summer a dig was going on in the parish of Holm which is the nearest part of mainland Orkney to us. I'm not saying it was all cloak and dagger but nobody really knew why they were digging where they were or what they were looking for and certainly nobody outside the circle of diggers and supervisors knew what they had found. A press release a couple of weeks ago however had everyone getting very excited; they had found what they were looking for, a neolithic chambered tomb and despite the fact that part of it had been robbed out ( i.e. stone taken away to build a house) in the 1800s the bits that were left were crammed with articulated skeletons. 

This is exciting on many different levels; the fact that it was known about and then forgotten again, , the number of bodies, the fact that the skeletons were carefully placed in unnatural positions and that they were articulated, plus the chance that there may be  a nearby settlement to dig- the list goes on. The talk will be up on the OAS You Tube channel shortly for anyone interested.

Obviously while there we bought raffle tickets, And obviously once again we didn't win. 

Cawdor Castle

 I know, it's been ages. I'm not sick, I'm just not doing much. However I was reminded the other day that I never blogged about our visit to Cawdor Castle way back in June so I thought I might do that. 

It was on my journey back from Paris. You may recall vaguely that I had caught a train to Inverness and been met by the OH and the next day  we had had lunch with some friends and visited Inverness Botanic Gardens (which by coincidence I heard a couple of women discussing when we were at the Celina Rupp cafe for hot chocolate and cake last week - on the way home from the dentists!) The next day we were booked on the evening ferry to Orkney so we had time to 'do' something and the something we decide to 'do' was Cawdor Castle.  

It was lovely. It helped that the day was very warm and sunny which meant we could spend a lot of time  in the gardens. There was also a very nice cafe where we had elevenses/early lunch. The inside of the castle is quirky, full of unexpected corners and the room commentaries contain some very tart and witty asides which I certainly appreciated. There was also some very nice contemporary art hung beside older pictures; sadly although details were given of the older ones there was nothing to tell you who had painted some of the modern ones, which was a shame as I would have visited websites and who knows? perhaps bought a print or two. If I had a grumble, and it was a very small one, the woman serving in the Gift Shop was apparently unacquainted with the art of smiling, or indeed of greeting people as they walked in, even when they were her only customers, or of making any sort of pleasant small talk while relieving them of their money. I must say though that everyone else we encountered on the staff were very pleasant and friendly indeed.  

Pictures? Need you ask? A small selection

No idea why they have a Minotaur, although that may be a nascent maze/labyrinth he's in? 

Bird feeder - we watched it for ages, amazed at the number of different species that visited. 

And who knows - maybe I'll do something interesting in the next week and then get to blog about it.