As you can see, I’ve been knitting! I have at least one and a half more repeats of the pattern, I think, before I decrease for the toe. But I’m definitely nearly there!

I recently finished both print and audiobooks, so technically I’m less in the midst of reading Stacey Lee’s The Downstairs Girl and more that I’m about to start it. Set in Atlanta in the late 1800s, the novel focuses on an Asian American teen who works as a lady’s maid by day and an anonymous advice columnist by night.

Head to As Kat Knits to see what else folks are working their way through.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is a freebie, but I’m tired enough that I’m having trouble coming up with my own topic. So I’m going to riff off Jana’s topic and give you ten authors I’ve read whose next book I’m looking forward to:

1. Sherry Thomas — Luckily, I only have to wait until October for the next Lady Sherlock novel.
2. Robert Galbraith — Similarly, the next Cormoran Strike novel is also due out this fall.
3. Virginia Kantra — I just finished (and adored) Meg and Jo, and at the end the first chapter of Beth and Amy was included. She answered a question on Goodreads that says she’s hoping it will be published later this year, but who knows…
4. Deanna Raybourn — Sure, the latest Veronica Speedwell only just came out this winter, but that doesn’t mean I can’t look forward to where the story goes next.
5. Kate Racculia — I loved Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts and am looking forward to what this author brings out next. Luckily, I can explore her two earlier novels while I wait.
6. Jason Reynolds — I haven’t read everything in his back catalog, but this week brought the news that he has a novel for adults coming out in 2022. He’s such a prolific writer, though, that’s probably half a dozen releases from now.
7. Maia Chance — I love The Discreet Retrieval Agency mystery series and look forward to whenever the next one appears.
8. Sonali Dev — This one is my fault. Her latest book in The Rajes series came out this spring; I just haven’t had a chance to access is yet.
9. Elizabeth Acevedo — Similarly, Clap When You Land also came out this spring, and I just haven’t gotten to it yet .
10. Jasper Fforde — His latest book is already out in the U.K., but won’t reach the U.S. until the fall. I’m looking forward to it already!

How about you? Which author can you not wait to read the next book from?

Look! I finished my Smock Madness gusset, so now I just have to knit a foot! Simple! It’s practically a full sock! (Well, maybe not. I wear size 11 shoes, so the foot is just as long as the leg. But still! More than halfway on the second sock!)

I shared with you last night my audiobooks, so tonight I figured I’d show you what I’m reading in print: Virginia Kantra’s Meg & Jo, a modern retelling of Little Women.

In this version, Marmee runs a goat farm in North Carolina. Mr. March is a former army chaplain who now runs support groups for returning soldiers. Meg is a former bank loan manager who now stays home with her toddlers, Daisy and D.J., while her husband John works at a car dealership for the Laurences.

Jo is in New York City, where she’s anonymously writing a food blog and making ends meet with a job as a prep cook in Chef Bhaer’s restaurant after having been downsized from her newspaper job.

But when Marmee gets sick, her two eldest children are going to have to take hard looks at what’s most important to them.

I’m halfway through and really enjoying it so far. All the key scenes are there, but altered, but our heroes remain themselves even though they communicate via text instead of post box in the hedge. But as we all know, the first half of Little Women is the easy part, so I’m steeling myself for a weepy weekend ahead.

Want to see what others are reading and crafting? Head over to As Kat Knits for her weekly Unraveled roundup.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share the top ten book events or festivals we’d love to attend someday.

Who knew back when Jana set this topic that we’d all still be wishing to go anywhere?

Anyway, mine are all real:

1. BookExpo (I used to take part in a virtual version — Armchair BEA.)
2. Hay Festival (I have been to Hay on Wye on a normal day; I can’t begin to imagine it during a festival.)
3. Edinburgh International Book Festival (Scotland is on my list of places to visit, and this event coincides with the Edinburgh Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival.)
4. The Fforde Fiesta (The intermittent festival celebrating Jasper Fforde’s works held in Swindon, the real-world home of the fictitious Thursday Next.)
5. Shakespeare in the Park (this seems the easiest one to cross off my list once we’re allowed to gather in groups again)
6. YallFest/YallWest (I partook of YallStayHomeFest this spring and loved it.)
7. International Quidditch World Cup (Because don’t you just wonder…?)
8. Utah Shakespeare Festival (Oregon’s would also be great.)
9. Miami Book Fair (It’s the oldest book festival in the U.S. apparently. Who knew?)
10. The Youth Media Awards (Presented annually at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting, this breakfast is where you hear who’s won the biggest and most prestigious prizes in children’s and young adult literature. I went to several Midwinter meetings, but never managed to get to the YMA breakfast.)

How about you? Are there real-world or fictitious book events you’d like to be able to visit?

Today was National Ice Cream Day, which seemed the perfect opportunity to make some homemade ice cream.

I froze the bowl this morning and washed all the other parts of the ice cream maker. (It had been a while since we last used ours.) I bought cream. I read through the manual and recipe.

I remembered that in past occasions the ice cream maker has overflowed and set out a cookie sheet on the stove (outlets are at a premium in my kitchen, so things that need to be plugged in are often used on the stovetop) to hold the contraption and catch any overflow from seeping down into my burners.

I plugged in the base, pulled the bowl out of the freezer, added the blade and lid, and poured in milk, cream, and sugar. I turned it on, and the lid started to click past its stopping point. This was a problem.

With the lid off, I attempted to shift the blade and realized I’d made a tactical error: it was frozen in place. The liquids had already started to freeze, locking the blade where I’d put it. (I should have turned it on and then added the ingredients.) I rocked the blade out slowly (it’s plastic, so there was a good chance of breaking it in the process), and started to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a plastic scraper.

Eventually I got it to a point where I could get the blade back in, but couldn’t get the lid all the way down. Would that work? No — if the lid isn’t locked in place, the entire thing spins together, and the cream doesn’t churn.

More scraping, and eventually I got it to a spot where the lid nearly latched in place. No problem, I thought to myself, I’ll just hold it in place until it spins down enough to get it down that extra quarter inch.

This is the point in a sitcom where you at home in your comfy chair shake your head. Mishaps are about to ensue. An outside observer can see where things are about to go off the rails. The unwitting actor does not have the benefit of your wisdom.

I flipped the switch and pressed down on the lid.

The ice cream started to spin, but I was holding it down from above. Physics still exist, though, so the only thing not being held down started to spin — the cookie sheet the whole thing was sitting on. It crashed into the pepper mill and the milk pitcher and the tea kettle in quick succession. Realizing my mistake, I reached for the off button. But to do that, I let up slightly on the lid, and the base started to spin with the cookie sheet — and the off switch went out of sight.

In this moment, the only obvious thing that occurred to me was to pick up the entire contraption off the cookie sheet in an effort to find the switch.

“Help! Help!” I shrieked.

Rudi, who’d been taking a nap, stumbled in to find me holding this Exorcist device, and I, the cookie sheet, the stove, and everything in the vicinity (which he’d literally just scrubbed down earlier in the day) covered in cream.

We had very thin milkshakes to celebrate National Ice Cream Day instead.

The unraveling is mostly only in my reading. In Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore, the main character suddenly starts experiencing years of her life in non-chronological fashion. In Livingston Girls by Briana Morgan (thanks, Jenn!), Rose’s new all-girls school turns out to be a little … witchier … than she expected. In Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez, Sal accidentally brings his dead mother back to life for a little while for a festive meal. And in Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed, Jamie and Maya are trying to figure out what their relationship is during the final, frantic days of a crucial local election.

On the sock front, I have turned a heel! Now I just need to pick up the stitches and we can start flying toe-ward! I’m looking forward to taking something off the needles finally!

Head over to As Kat Knits for more of what folks are crafting and reading.