The good news on the knitting front is that the heel has been turned and I’m on to the foot!

The bad news on the knitting front is that in the midst of last week’s … preoccupation … I temporarily forgot both to count the stitches on my heel needle and how to do do short rows. I mean, it’s fine. It’s fine! There were just two extra stitches on the heel. I temporarily considered ripping it all back and then I decided this is 2020 and that if the sock fits we do not toss things out for imperfection. And the short rows … I somehow decided to wrap about half the stitches the wrong way. Again, not a deal breaker; I just made picking up the wraps more challenging for myself. But as you can see, we’ve moved on. Now, as long as I remember to reorient the stitches to keep the heel centered when I start the toe decreases, we’re golden. (If none of that made sense the translation is: I messed up, I mostly fixed it, I may mess up again before we’re done.)

I started Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore tonight. I’d picked it up to be my waiting for the election results read. Instead it’s waiting to see how a coup is overturned in my own country read. It is not yet distracting enough, but I’m hopeful. About the book and our republic. Mostly.

I’m still listening to Alexandra Petri’s Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why while I wash dishes at night. I tried to keep listening one night after the dishes were done and awoke a couple hours later many essays into the future. This is way more a statement about my level of exhaustion than the writing.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are crafting and reading.

I struggled with this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic, Ten Book Titles That Would Make Great Song Titles, from That Artsy Reader Girl but I got there in the end. Here are ten from my TBR list:

1. The 10 P.M. Question
2. Always Emily
3. West of the Moon
4. This Is Not a Love Story (I feel like Taylor Swift may have already written this one…
5. Swing Sideways
6. One Last Stop
7. No Place to Fall
8. Love You, Hate You
9. Last Night in Montreal
10. I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears (obviously, a song for kids)

By this point in the week, I’d expected to be done with Brandy Colbert’s The Voting Booth, a book about two Black teens on Election Day. But I hadn’t counted on being swallowed alive by work or fighting off the anxiety of the election with evening naps. Silly me! I should have expected that!

I’m also surprised to still find myself (just) on this side of the heel of my sock. I’d planned on turning the heel last night (instead of working) and then working on the foot during the four-hour phone call I was doing that presentation for. The one that got canceled this morning. Good for the work I needed to do, but not good for my knitting.

Hopefully by this weekend I’ll be done with both. I’ve got other things waiting impatiently on the sideline.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see how others are spending their knitting and reading time.

This week brought some literal unraveling as I was knitting in the dark and managed, in a move I still don’t quite understand, to wrap the yarn entirely around my cuff without noticing until several rows later. I attempted to just rip back to where I made the mistake, but did I mention it was dark…?

Anyway, even if I do not finish by Halloween, I will finish in the next week or so, and I vote these are autumnal colors and I will wear them with pleasure in November. Then maybe I’ll finish the socks I started in March 2019…

In the last week I finished How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse and read more of We Ride Upon Sticks. (I’ve reached Halloween night in Salem, Massachusetts.) I started a middle-grade nonfiction book written by a guy I grew up with, but it’s about dinosaurs and I don’t feel like reading about dinosaurs right now.

So I started listening to Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why by Washington Post humor news columnist Alexandra Petri. Have you read her Petri Dishes column? May I suggest it may be the only thing to make you laugh over the next couple weeks while we battle for the soul of our country?

I also picked up two novels to keep my mind occupied in the next week. First, I’m going to read Brandy Colbert’s The Voting Booth, because it’s about young people being hugely invested in voting, and I’m desperately hoping they come through for us this year.

Then, while we wait to find out our fate, I’m going to read Evie Dunmore’s Bringing Down the Duke, which is feminist historical fiction and seems likely to have the happy ending I will require in every book until real life presents us with the same.

What sort of comfort reading do you have lined up for the next couple weeks?

Head over to As Kat Knits to see how others are channeling their stress.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl invites us to share a Halloween-themed list.

I’m not a fan of horror or thrillers, but I do like cozy mysteries and detective stories, so I thought today I’d share ten series I’ve enjoyed to date:

1. Phryne Fisher by Kerry Greenwood — Set in 1920s Australia, a wealthy single woman has grand adventures in between solving mysteries for those with nowhere else to turn.
2. Lady Sherlock by Sherry Thomas — A Sherlock Holmes adaptation featuring genius Charlotte Holmes and Mrs. Watson.
3. Hamish MacBeth by M.C. Beaton — Hamish is a constable in the Scottish highlands, charged with keeping the peace, except when it comes to poaching or other minor crimes.
4. Commissario Brunetti by Donna Leon — A Venetian detective with a loving wife, beautiful penthouse, and happy home life deals with crime on an off the canals.
5. The Discreet Retrieval Agency by Maia Chance — Set in Prohibition Era New York, a once-wealthy widow and her Swedish cook are supposed to be in the business of retrieving items that could be embarrassing, but instead keep getting sucked into solving murders.
6. Veronica Speedwell by Deanna Raybourn — A Sherlockian series in Victorian London featuring a female lepidopterist and a male taxidermist with tons of chemistry.
7. Fox and O’Hare by Janet Evanovich and (mostly) Lee Goldberg — Technically a heist series, this pairs a by-the-books FBI agent with one of the world’s best thieves to take down bad guys.
8. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache by Louise Penny — A Quebeçois detective ends up in a small village solving a number of well-plotted murders while befriending the townspeople.
9. Mary Russell by Laurie R. King — If you don’t mind May-December romances, this one has the great Sherlock Holmes, retired and raising his bees in the country, mentoring a young orphaned woman with a keen mind.
10. Constable Evans by Rhys Bowen — A Welsh village constable solves crimes during the day and sings in a choir by night.

How about you? What mystery series do you enjoy?

I was perhaps not as dedicated to the Readathon as I should have been. I finished one book, started a second, and made progress on a third. But I also went to a (socially distanced) concert, played too much on my phone, cooked supper, watched SNL, and knit.

But I still think that’s okay. I mean it’s 2020. Any forward progress that doesn’t come with a slap across the face has to be considered a win, right?

And I had fun reading, which is its own reward.