Hooray! Two Books I Enjoyed

 and one I really didn't. 

The ones in the photo are the Waterstones Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books of the month for April and May. You honestly couldn't get two books from the same genre that were further apart but I liked them both. 

Fourth Wing is apparently very divisive amongst the Sci-F-/Fantasy community although I had no idea of this when I started reading it on the long drive back to Orkney after our aborted holiday. Luckily it was very immersive and I read almost the whole thing in a day. When I first started it I thought I was not going to like it - because let's face it I wasn't in a good to be pleased, and quite  a lot of the early elements of the plot were going over old ground; pushy parents, sibling rivalry, elite military squadrons, dragons, fatal training, etc etc. But the characters were largely quite engaging, some of the nicer ones did actually die, along with some if not all of the nasty ones, and, given that it's the first of a series, there was a nice plot arc developing by the end. I'm not quite sure what the controversy is all about. I've only seen it reported second or third hand in a few knitting groups, and I can't be bothered to enquire further. It seems to be mainly hard sci-fi readers moaning about how it's not hard sci-fi. Possibly they were led astray by the title and thought they were going to be reading some sort of Top Gun on a made up planet type thing. Given that it becomes obvious very early on that that is not what you're getting with this book I don't know why they don't just stop reading once they realise that. Anyway as I once said at Saturday Slaughters criticising a book for not being the sort of book you like to read isn't really valid criticism at all. (I don't think that was a sentiment that went down well but you know, it is true. I don't like psychological thrillers but I never dissed one in the group by saying well I didn't like this because it was a psychological thriller set on a sun kissed island  and I wanted to read a police procedural set in rain drenched  Manchester. I dissed them by saying the characters were cardboard, or the plot had holes in it you could drive  a tank through.) Anyway that was Fourth Wing; an enjoyable and entertaining, if shallow, read.

The Ferryman was something quite other. It was very readable, but it addressed some deep ideas in a challenging and sometimes disorienting way. There were a lot of twists and turns in it, and every time my reaction was, ' there's no way I could have seen that coming but now that it has come, yes of course it had to be that way'. And there isn't just one major twist but two and several smaller ancillary but important ones as well. It's clever, it's unsettling, its full of surprises, it's like nothing I have ever read before. If I have a teensy weensy criticism I would say it's maybe about 50 pages too long but that's nitpicking. Wholeheartedly recommended. 

I note in passing that this brings me almost up to date with the Waterstone's Books of the Month. So that's pleasing. I have yet to tackle February but I may get to that this month (no hard promise though)  and of course I won't be able to pick up June's until I pass through Glasgow next month. 

The one I didn't like was an Audible buy called The Charity Shop Detective Agency. A subpar Richard Osman rip off, also the first of a series. I shan't be getting any more, and indeed rather resent the fact that I was suckered into wasting an Audible credit on this one. 

The Great Wool Sort Out Update 4*

 First the stats which were very very pleasing. Wool in was 800g which is quite a lot but the bulk of that was my Monet 'Consolation for the lost holiday' yarn and the rest was a little bit of commercial 4-ply in solid colours to hold double with my sock leftovers in the granny stripe blanket where needed.

Wool out was a massive 4720g! There were two main reasons for this. One was the blanket in which I have used 2300g to date. Sadly there still seems to be a lot of left over wool to go ... but here are a couple of photos of it so far. It's not tasteful but I'm still very happy with it and it is gong to keep me very warm in the winter. 

The other reason I did so well with reducing the wool mountain was this. 

This was a crate of wool which has lived for a long time under the bed in the spare room and the contents didn't even really count as stash as some of it is so old it goes back to our first house in Leeds, and some of it came from my mother when she died.  And yes, that is some Rowan Denim there on the top and yes I did sell that. Most of the rest went off to the charity shop and the box now looks like this 

A few useful bits of DK which I have a project in mind for and some half knitted baby jumpers which I plan to finish and donate. Fingers crossed there will be another empty box by the end of this month. 

In the interests of full disclosure there is also another container of wool lurking under the spare room bed, one of those soft sided zip-up things. I'm really not sure what is in there, other than a half completed purple camel (probably best not to ask) but I plan to dig it out and have a look  sometime in July. 

I'm still thrilled that the cumulative reduction of stash for this year is 7099g. Amazing what you can do when you apply yourself. 

Completed projects in May - such a poor result they don't warrant a post to themselves. I did a pair of socks for myself 

pattern Vanilla Latte Socks, and the yarn was from The Lonely Knitter's Dr Who Collection in the colour Clara. 

And then the non-knitting thing was a cross stitch tree decoration for some friends who are coming to visit us, in their VW camper van, later this month. 

It is not an impressive total. I have been working on some things that are almost finished and of course the blanket takes up a lot of time and I've tended to privilege that because it is relaxing and oh boy have I needed thoughtless relaxing crafting this month. However I have marked my report card with Must Try Harder and hopefully there will be more to show at the end of this month. We're not planning on going anywhere, except the OH to the Ness of Brodgar dig at the end of the month so in theory I have lots and lots of time. 

* I don't really expect these posts to be of much interest to anyone other than me by the way, I just do it as an aide memoire so that I can see how I'm doing and how far I have come. 

Some Really Bad News, and some recent reading

 So the bad news is that our insurance company told us earlier this week that we weren't covered for losing our holiday due to a passport lost or stolen in the hours before leaving on the trip and it has taken me some while to get over this blow. We are registering a complaint; they are obviously obliged to tell you that you can do this although they also tell you it is unlikely to do you any good. I have now passed over dealing with this to the OH, partly because he is better than me at this stuff and partly because when all is said and done it's his fault. I don't suppose we will actually be able to screw any money out of the Scrooge McDuck Corporation that is NFU Mutual, but it gives me some satisfaction to reflect that we are at least inconveniencing them by not just going away and whimpering in a corner about their meanness. 

And now to some books. I have read some dark stuff lately. This was partly to do with the Bloody Scotland book club which is a Facebook based, three book, quarterly thing which sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. I've read two of the three books for the June one; The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves and an Icelandic thing called The Darkness by someone called Ragnor Jonasson. I do not recommend The Darkness unless you are looking for an entry way into a deep depression. It was bleak squared. The Crow Trap I had read before but as with all of Ann Cleeves books I can read them over and over because I never remember who did what to whom or why. I mean, I wouldn't have re-read this if hadn't been for the prompt of the book club but at least I didn't; spend half my team reading it thinking that yes I knew where this was going. The plot is quite good actually, she's good at plot, but it can't be denied this is one author who never bothers lightening her tale with even a glimmer of humour. Her characters are all totally without any sense of it. The third Bloody Scotland book is The Waiter by Ajay Choudhry and I have that on request from the library. Whether it will turn up before the discussion I don't know. So far, no show. 

On the way back from St Pancras I started a new Karin Slaughter  which I bought to read on the miserable trip back from London to Glasgow. Even for Karin Slaughter it was really dark. She lives in a world completely dominated by the evil of men and what they do to women and I thought here she slipped over into the realms of the incredible.  Even while realising that she probably hasn't and that what she describes is probably only too likely. Her redeeming features are  that she has good people, even some good men, who try their best to hold the line against the darkness of the world, and that many of her recurring characters are people who have survived terrible things and gone onto become beacons of hope to others. Even so, it will be a while before I broach another; too many too close together would not be a Good Thing. 

So after all that when I next went to the library  I ignored the fiction shelves, because I really couldn't face another slew of misery and murder and took myself off instead to the Large Books Art and Craft shelves where I picked up some stuff based mainly on how colourful the pictures were and how life affirming the contents were likely to be. The first two that I looked at were these

Only Us by Stuart Dunn which is a series of portraits of people taken by Dunn, a professinal photographer and filmographer all around the world and Arne and Carlos Twenty Five Years of Favourite Knits (or some other such celebratory title). These did do something to restore my equilibrium. I didn't see anything I wanted to knit in the Arne and Carlos book although if I were younger I might have thought that knitting baubles for my Christmas Tree was a good use of my time, and the portraits in Dunn's book were from a limited number of places - obviously those where he had made documentaries and had taken still shots as well as film. But neither  required anything from me other than to look and admire and drown myself in colour and texture  and that was restorative.  

Baking Subscription - The Final Box

 Long term readers will remember that I used to subscribe to a baking thing where every month I got a recipe, a set of dry ingredients and a list of the fresh ones I needed to supply myself and I then baked the cake/biscuits/muffins whatever with varying degrees of success. I stopped after three years because the recipes were getting a bit repetitive and I had collected a lot of nice ones along the way. Somehow two boxes from the final year stayed on the kitchen worktop unregarded for a very long time. 

Son no 2 was home for a week's holiday last week* and this seemed a perfect opportunity to make the strawberry shortcake celebration cake. especially as strawberries are coming into the supermarkets just now. It was a real joint effort; I made the cake and shortbread, Son No 2 made the strawberry compote and the OH whipped the cream and did the assembly and decoration ( decoration being, as long term readers will also be aware, my weakness when it comes to baking. 

A couple of photos

We all did a great job and the cake was delicious. 

As for the other box, which was soft pretzels and which I really had no motivation to make, as we are not really pretzel people, I raided it for the dry ingredients, labelled them for future use and dumped the box and recipe. So that really is the end of the baking boxes. It was fun while it lasted and I had the sense to stop it when it stopped being fun. And this last cake is definitely one to repeat for special summer occasions. 

* His presence accounts for my being MIA as far as the blog is concerned. Normal service now resumed although, much to the OH's disgust I suspect, there will be a lot of what he calls 'banging on about books' over the next couple of weeks. 

Happy mail - but not wool

So I've been doing a little bit of cross stitch recently and I had in mind to do some small 'one day' designs from a magazine and then I could be rid of the magazine. This has been a vague idea for  awhile and is the reason that I took advantage of an offer of a linen taster pack; five 8 x 8 " pieces in different colours. And  then I added a magnetic needle minder for good measure because however much you tell yourself you're not going to leave a needle to go rusty in your fabric and in the design area in a piece of work you then neglect for months or even years - it does happen. You can imagine how I know.  Plus it was cute. 

Voila!

The grey one second from the left has a sparkly thread in it so I don't know that I'll be using that any time soon; but the others are very nice. I'm pleased with them. And the mouse. 

A Sunny Stroll

I don't think it will come as a surprise to anyone that I have been feeling a bit down recently, mainly due to the difficulties of dealing with the insurance company with the underpowered server which has in turn brought back all the horror and shock of the loss of the holiday. I was very unhappy yesterday and although we had thought about going out, since the weather was good I couldn't face it. We postponed until today. 

Last night I had a nightmare in which our insurance claim was knocked back in its entirety on the grounds that the person here who had referred it to head office was known to be an alcoholic. I have absolutely NO idea where that came from. No surprise then that when I finally lifted my weary not-very-well-refreshed head from my pillow this morning - somewhat later than might be considered desirable - I really didn't feel like dragging myself out today either. 

I made myself do it though. The sun was shining, and it was time to have a bit of a stern word and do something other than moon about the house. Consequently we got in the car and drove right over to the other side of Orkney to the cliffs of Yesnaby. Normally when we get to Yesnaby we get out of the car and turn left to walk along the cliff but today, skittish types that we are (ha,ha), we opted to turn right. This led to a fearsome stile - 

seriously? 3 storeys? and took us towards the Brough of Borwick. We didn't go all the way to the Brough which involves fording a small stream and rather more up and down than I was happy to do given that it's not a proper path, I wasn't wearing walking boots and  the Brough isn't all that interesting when you get there. I have been to it once - and once was enough. In the days when the OH was a Volunteer Heritage Ranger he used to litter pick at Borwick, but that's a long time ago now. 

The views aren't really as interesting when you turn left as when you turn right as the coastline isn't quite so dramatically eroded and in any case you're rather further from the cliff edge so it's more difficult to see. But I did take  a couple of nice photos. 

As you can see it's a really beautiful day. We dropped into Stromness on the way back hoping to have coffee and cake at Julia's Shed, but all that was left was Malteser tray bake and date flapjack, neither of which floats our boats, so we came home. We stopped at Celina Rupp's, again in hope of coffee and cake, but it was the same story; cheese scones, flapjack, gluten free muffins and some lemon curd swiss roll. On another day I might have forced down the swiss roll, but it's not my favourite, it's always rather too sharp there for my taste and really what is the point of paying almost £4 for a slice of cake that you know before it arrives you are not going to enjoy? 

We're home now and after a late lunch I baked a cake which is even now in the oven. This is partly because our boy is arriving tomorrow night for a week's holiday from Glasgow and if your boy is coming home there has to be cake. The OH is out in the garden building a bridge; for which read playing with his new chain saw, but I think that's clearing the ground ready for the bridge building. It's to make easy access into our wood, all part of the pre-marketing house and garden spruce up. 

So after a fairly busy day, which has at least cheered me up a little bit, I'm off to do something relaxing. 

I need something soothing

 since I have discovered this morning that all the carefully collected information that it took so long to amass and then send to the insurance company yesterday did not arrive 'probably because our server could not cope with all of the attachments'. Since you are obliged to pursue your claim by sending a lot of documents and since they have to be attached to an e-mail this was not music to my ears. If they won't let you deal with your local branch and you can't send them the paper through the post the least they could do in my opinion is ensure that their s*dding server can cope with all the bumph it gets sent. 

I have now sent them three more e-mails with fewer attachments on each but since their server has only auto-acknowledged one I have a feeling it has only accepted one and the other two are still languishing somewhere in the ether. This fills me with neither joy not confidence. 

I am totally frazzled, I cannot settle to anything (not even knitting!) I tell myself all the things like 'the ball is in  their court' and 'you have done as much as you can' and  'park it until you hear back' etc etc but none of these helps.  Nor does it help reflecting that none of this is my fault - not the original cancellation of the holiday, nor the limited capacity of the insurer's server, and yet I am the one with shredded nerves wandering round unable to function. I know all the stuff about how life isn't fair and you shouldn't expect it to be but in this instance I do feel other people could be making more of an effort to make it slightly less unfair than it is. 

I was going to post some beautiful photos of a Japanese garden that we visited the day before our ill-fated flight to London but somehow I can't being myself to do it today. Maybe tomorrow if the insurance people have stepped up to the plate.