When the world is too much with me, it is nice to have someplace to escape to and my place tends to be books and knitting.

Among the projects I picked up (and put down again) a few times in the last weeks are the fingerless mitts I started last year. I’m up to the thumb separation on mitt #2 (the thumb remains unfinished on mitt #1, as well), and if I could focus for half an hour, I’d make it past that part and be rapidly sailing toward home. The mitts are now in my bag in an effort to facilitate doing just that.

The book is one of two I’m currently reading and the one I just started today. It was an impromptu grab from the new books shelf at the library, but now it’s coming due and there are holds that prevent me from renewing it. As you might guess from the title Ho-Ho-Homicide, it’s a murder mystery. The protagonist has been asked to look into a Down East tree farm a far-off friend inherited recently, so she and her husband have just arrived there (somewhat reluctantly) from their home in Moosetookalook, Maine. There are mysterious circumstances surrounding the inheritance, and our protagonist has just sighted a grove of trees that seems sinister. I suspect the action is about to take off.

I’ll be honest. It’s a little hard to read when every word is being said aloud in your head by Cary Elwes over a Mark Knopfler track. But it is a burden that I’m willing to take on, even after my hot chocolate is gone.

That’s right, folks. The man behind the Man in Black has written a book all about the experience of making the most quotable movie of, if not all time, at least my lifetime.

I would read this book if it were terrible. But I am delighted to report that, as of 50 pages in, at least, it’s not. Elwes’ coauthor/ghostwriter/writer has done a good job of keeping his cadence and the first chapters are interspersed with sidebars from other people involved in the book, similar to how it would be to watching a dvd with the commentary track turned on.

As for what’s on the needles, I’ll admit that I’m carrying projects around with me everywhere these days, but not actually knitting on them a whole lot. I pulled the bags containing my Hey Teach sweater and the second skein of yarn out of storage more than a week ago, but haven’t done more than shift the baggies around. I cast on a new stripey sock at a meeting, but it’s gone back into the pie chest with only a few rounds complete. I moved my fingerless mitts into a project bag from the baggie where they’ve been languishing the last 10 months. And Rudi’s sock is stalled out just before the start of the heel flap. I’ve got no excuse for why the needles lie idle — and certainly it’s not for lack of projects or new project ideas — but I do hope productivity picks back up again soon.

What are you reading or working on?

Yarning along with Ginny.

Every year between Thanksgiving and Russian Christmas, I like to read Christmas-themed books. They aren’t the only thing I read, but I do like to mix them in liberally.

Already on this year’s radar are the following:

• My True Love Gave To Me (a collection of short stories by some of the rock stars of YA)
• The Stupidest Angel (which Karen gave me a couple years back and which I didn’t finish the first go-round)
• Ho-Ho-Homicide (it was in the new releases at the library last week)
• 2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas (this may not be a Christmas book technically, but it’s set on Christmas Eve, so I’m counting it)
• The Legend of Holly Claus (I bought this a couple years ago, and if I can figure out where it’s hiding, I’d like to read it)

Do you enjoy holiday-themed reading? If so, do you have a favorite to recommend that I should request from the library? (Thus the appearance of this post so early in the season.) And what’s on your list for reading this year?

I’ll be honest, I’ve been a little down recently. I’m not sure what the cause is, since it predates my grandmother’s fall, the loss of evening daylight, and the cool weather, so it’s probably just cyclical, rather than situational this time. But the net result is less reading and less knitting.

However, there’s nothing like the need for blog fodder to inspire picking a new book (I finally finished Flight Behavior last night), and I have a bunch out from the library to choose among. I settled on Deborah Wiles’ Countdown, the first book in her Sixties trilogy. The second book, Revolution, is a National Book Award finalist in this year’s young adult category. Set in 1962 here in D.C., I’m planning to read Countdown while listening to several of the compilations of music from that year that my dad has curated, which seems fitting for a book with a 45 on its cover.

The socks are for Rudi. The yarn is Wild Hare Studio’s Pinnacle Sock in I Want My Zombie, the 8th and final skein of yarn bought at Maryland Sheep & Wool this year. It is, at his request, a 2×2 rib, which is the most boring knitting ever, if you ask me. It’s not totally mindless, like stockinette would be, but it’s also not something that requires focus, so I often find myself floating away and with the wrong number of stitches at the end of a needle. That said, the spiraling stripe, which looks like a zombie’s wrappings (do zombies have wrappings or is that just mummies?), is a lot of fun, and they’re Rudi’s favorite colors, which means he’ll wear them lots when I’m done with them. And it is good knitting for the dark, so I got a lot done by the campfire when we were on vacation, and it’ll also work well for concerts and car rides, should either of those materialize in our future soon.

Sometimes (when I remember to take a photo), Wednesdays are for sharing books and knitting projects as I yarn along with Ginny.

This is a week for attempting to finish things previously begun. My reading is the verse memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson, who was one of the authors I listened to at the National Book Festival. I’m enjoying her poems about growing up African American in the late-1960s and 1970s. I’m hoping to finish by Friday, because the book has holds on it at the library and I need to return it before the weekend. On the audiobook front, I just tonight (since I wanted something for while I was dealing with peeling a pot of tomatoes) started listening to Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, via the CraftLit podcast.

My current knitting is the next in my stripey stockinette socks in progress. These, knit in Beyond Basic Knit’s Vintage Holiday, I started last fall in hopes of wearing them during the Christmas 2013 season, but that didn’t happen. Sock #1 is done and #2 is well started, so hopefully these will be completed well before this year’s holidays. I already have a skein of new stripey yarn waiting to be wound into a ball, ready to commence working on next week, although I probably ought to consider some baby knitting for the latest additions to the greater friend pool.

How about you? What are you reading and/or knitting this week?

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, asks participants to name ten books we plan on reading this fall.

Here’s some of what I’m hoping to tackle:

1. Kendall Kulper’s Salt & Storm: Kendall and I were Cybils judges together in 2012 and her debut novel was published today.
2. Eliot Schrefer’s Threatened: Honestly, I can’t tell you why I haven’t read this yet. It was on this summer’s TBR pile and I just didn’t come back around to it.
3. Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey: This is one of my college roommate’s favorite Bronte novels, so seems only fair I get around to reading the copy I’ve had since 1987.
4. Helene Wecker’s The Golem and the Jinni: I put this down earlier in the year and am eager to get back to it. A library copy is currently in my possession.
5. Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting (edited by Ann Hood): Rudi bought this for me for Russian Christmas last winter and periodically it whispers to me that it’d like to be read. As cool weather comes back around, it seems like a good time to pick it up.
6. Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior OR The Lacuna: One of these is getting read this fall. Whichever hooks me in 50 pages gets the nod.
7. Jasper Fforde’s The Eye of Zoltar: I believe there is a law that dictates I must read every Jasper Fforde book within a year of publication. The third book in the Dragonslayer series comes out next month.
8. Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming: Recently published, this verse memoir was just listed as a contender in this year’s National Book Awards and got a ton of pre-press love in my Twitter feed.
9. Sarah Mlynowski’s Bras and Broomsticks: Because witchcraft and Halloween go hand in hand?
10. My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories (edited by Stephanie Perkins): A dozen Christmas stories from some of YA’s best writers? Count me in!

How about you? What are you hoping to read before year’s end?