Earlier in the winter, Emily suggested that a swap might be in order to help cheer her up. A bunch of us agreed that we’d like to be cheered up, too, and a few days later The Swap of Discontent was born.

Emily suggested that we try to give our recipient a cozy night in with makings for tasty drinks or treats, media to enjoy, and a one-skein project. Hand-me-downs were perfectly fair for sharing.

Late in January, a package arrived. The cats were very interested in the box itself, but I found its contents very appealing:

Inside were all sorts of goodies from Colleen in Pennsylvania: There were interesting sounding fruit-flavored teas made with German rock sugar (which I keep thinking of as Pop Rocks, but which hopefully is nothing like that). There was a book, The Light between Oceans, that had appeared on a number of best-of lists at the end of 2013. There was super-soft yarn and a pattern to make a cowl. There were keychains and a row-counter and temporary tattoos and stitch markers…

… and there was an LED barrette that Colleen assured me could be used as a cat toy.

I just don’t think she meant simultaneously.

Thank you, Colleen, for such a great package. And thanks to Emily for suggesting a swap was in order.

Today I’m yarning along with Ginny.

Look! For the first time in ages (or, at least, since Rudi’s injury), I’m reading a book (or two) and working on a knitting project in the same week!

The knitting is my Ravellenic Games project. It’s a turtleneck sweater (Hannah Fettig’s Lightweight Pullover), which you might be hard-pressed to identify, since all I’ve succeeded in knitting is the 9″ of neck. (And, yes, I am thinking about quickly casting on a new project like a hat or a cowl just so I can finish something during the games.)

The books are Marissa Meyer’s Cinder, a futuristic retelling of Cinderella featuring a protagonist who’s a cyborg, and Patricia Lynch’s The Bookshop on the Quay, which I bought on my birthday last year from a used bookstore simply because it contained the word “quay” in the title.

This is the second of my fingerless Christmas mitts. (The Christmas socks didn’t get finished either.) I don’t know exactly why I can’t seem to focus on the work, but it seems like I’m ignoring every warning sign, knitting along merrily even as neon-hued doubts flash across my brain. So each new day usually begins with frogging and reknitting.) But I will persevere. The mitts can be worn off-season and will be ready for the 2014 holidays.

Reading-wise, I’m more focused (although people subscribed to my Goodreads updates might disagree). This is Ruta Sepetys’ Out of the Easy, a novel of historical fiction that takes place in New Orleans in the 1950s and focuses on Jo, a poor bookworm who’d like to get out of town for college, but who is held back, in part by being the daughter of a prostitute. I already had the book out of the library when it earned a finalist spot on the Cybils list, so I quickly bumped it up to being one of my first reads this year. So far, so good, although I fear the book is about to get tense.

(Yarning along with Ginny.)

Rudi was away tonight and instead of being responsible and getting some of the cleaning done that absolutely needs to get done in the next few days, I opted to while away the hours on the couch with books and knitting. (I’m behind on both of those as well, and, honestly, if you’re going to pick things to get caught up on, those tasks seemed so much more appealing than recycling and cleaning the bathroom.)

I read two graphic novels and started the book you see below on the left:

The knitting is the fingerless glove that I decided was too wide since last you saw it, causing me to rip it back and start over. I’m nearly done with the thumb gusset now, so there’s a possibility the pair could be done by this time next week. It’s mindless knitting for the most part, so fits well with holiday movie watching and party attending.

The books are Mary Oliver’s latest poetry collection, Dog Songs, which combines well with plain knitting, and The Universe versus Alex Woods, which I’ve seen on a number of best-of lists so far. Since I’m only in chapter two, I can’t speak yet to whether it will appear on mine.

(Yarning along with Ginny.)

The Broke and the Bookish’s Top Ten Tuesday list asks about the Top Ten 2014 Releases I’m Dying To Read. I’m pretty sure I’ll still live if I don’t get my hands on these, but they have top billing on my radar for next year’s new releases:

1. Landline by Rainbow Rowell (Because she is awesome.)
2. The Eye of Zoltar by Jasper Fforde (Book 3 of the Dragonslayer series)
3. Threatened by Eliot Schrefer (The next ape book by one of my favorite Cybils authors)
4. Hollow City by Ransom Riggs (Sequel to Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children)
5. Being Sloane Jacobs by Lauren Morrill (I’m thinking this could be the female version of Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
6. The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith (It looks charming in the same way her
   The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight was.)
7. Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins (The latest novel from the author of Anna and the French Kiss.)
8. Salt & Storm by Kendall Kulper (A debut novel from one of my Cybils co-judges.)
9. The Princess in Black by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale (A graphic novel along the lines of Rapunzel’s Revenge, perhaps?)
10. My Real Children by Jo Walton (Her latest novel about alternate-timeline lives of a woman.)

(Yes, I’m tardy with the list. I was tired last night!)

In between the skeins of yarn and the mail, ball winder and tins, sits a pile.

I know that Two Boys Kissing will end soon and I wanted to be prepared for its conclusion with something new to read. Despite having a whole list (and corresponding copies) of books I meant to read this fall and towering piles of books I own that sit unread, I decided the answer to this impending scenario was a trip to the library.

This is what I brought home (and why):

• The Universe versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence — This was on my radar, but I saw it on someone’s favorite books of the year list last week and I thought it might help pull me out of my reading funk.
• Egghead by Bo Burnham (with drawings by Chance Bone) — A finalist in the GoodReads reader’s choice awards. It sounded like it might be a sort of Shel Silverstein for adults.
• William Shakespeare’s Star Wars by Ian Doescher — Because I am a child of the ’80s and because it’s also a finalist in the GoodReads awards.
• Out of the Easy by Ruth Sepetys — Another GoodReads finalist, this was on my radar, particularly because I thought New Orleans would make an ideal location for a mystery novel when I was there last year.
• Dog Songs by Mary Oliver — Because she’s one of my favorite poets and because there’s not an audio version of it on Overdrive, which seems like an excellent way to have an at-home poetry reading.
• The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion — Another GoodReads finalist and another title on a best-of list, this one caught my eye in part because of the cover design. Also, Matthew Quick blurbed it, which seems like a decent endorsement.
• The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger — The first book in a middle grade series that appeared a couple years back, this one has been on my to-be-read list for a while. Plus, during the National Book Festival, the woman who took me up on my tshirt’s challenge to guess what I was reading said this was the last book she’d read.
• The Perks of being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky — This has been on my TBR list for a while, and I put off seeing the movie because I hadn’t yet read the book.
• Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen — I went to the library seeking M.C. Beaton, but once I was there, she didn’t appeal. Bowen’s first series about Constable Evan Evans is not dissimilar from Beaton’s Macbeth series and this, the first book of her third series, also has gotten good reviews.
• Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware — An impulse pick-up. I’ve heard good things about Ware’s work, but haven’t sampled it myself. This is a doorstop of a graphic novel, but one with a good reputation.
• Johnny Hiro by Fred Chao — He was a random author whose session I attended during the National Book Festival and I’ve been meaning to give his food worker-cum-superhero graphic novel series a shot.

This joins Mister Max: The Book of Lost Things by Cynthia Voigt, who wrote some of my favorite books as a kid, which I borrowed last week on a whim. The New York Times Book Review liked her new book, but doubted whether its intended audience would, so I decided to assess that myself.

(Thanks to Amanda for the prompt, even if I’m writing about it on the wrong day.)