I bought some new shoes today. I went into TJ Maxx with a couple things I was hunting for and after I found these cute warm-weather Mary Janes I stopped looking. (Well, okay, I browsed through the dresses, but that’s pretty much mandatory every time I walk into one.) The photo shows them to be a little more grey than they are in real life; I’d say they are closer to periwinkle.

I’m up to the toe on my Smock Madness. I hope to finish before the noon deadline, but either way I’m moving back to my lightning shawl after this!

Progress on my two main projects — Jasper Fforde’s Early Riser and Smock Madness — continues apace. I’m nearly to mid-foot on the latter and, in the former, our protagonist Charlie (whose gender I decided on page 70 I’d incorrectly assigned at the start of the novel, but whose pronouns I keep ascribing to my original assumption) has gotten stuck in the worst possible region to overwinter due to a fit of retributive pique.

I need to finish a complete pair of Smock Madnesses by late morning on Sunday in order to advance to the next round. I suppose it’s possible, particularly as Rudi is leaving early on Friday, but I’ll chalk it up as unlikely. I need only finish one by that time in order to qualify as a cheerleader and to keep receiving the patterns to knit along with at my glacial pace, which seems a far more plausible — and, frankly, pleasant — outcome.

We watched the film adaptation of The Hate U Give last night, which was perfectly fine (Rudi, who hadn’t read the book, liked it quite a bit), but it paled in comparison to the book. (I sometimes wonder why they bother trying.) It made me want to get started on Angie Thomas’ sophomore novel, On the Come Up, which Rudi gave me for my birthday and which is sitting temptingly on our coffee table just beyond my reach. But first I need to get past the roving gangsters and winter monsters and viral dreams of Wales in order to move on.

I’m also listening to two audiobooks. Questlove’s Creative Quest is what I listen to while I’m watching dishes, because I’ve discovered I’m prone to dozing off if I listen to him on the couch, no matter how interesting I find his thoughts on creativity. The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, a followup to Mackenzi Lee’s The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue is much more suited to playing while I knit once I’ve tired of reruns of Agents of SHIELD and Miss Fisher for the night.

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

[March 23: I was just looking at my calendar and was confused to see an empty spot for the 10th. I’d written a post — what had happened? I don’t know. But here is the post that was scheduled for 1:39 a.m. that day that didn’t publish. -sprite]

Earlier in the week, I was feeling under the weather — mostly just exhausted and irritable. Tonight, Rudi had the same thing, so he went to bed early (a wise move, since he has to be in Pennsylvania at 7 a.m., which his body thinks is 6) and I spent the time working on my sock, watching an episode of Agatha Raisin, and listening to the end of Geekerella.

Next up on audio is either resuming Creative Quest or starting A Boy Called Bat (Kare, did Marshall ever read it and if he did, does he think I’d like it? If he didn’t, no worries…) or Aru Shah and the End of Time. Or, you know, something totally different.

The beginning of March may herald college basketball playoffs for some, but for many sock knitters it marks the start of Sock Madness, the springtime sock knitting competition.

The first pattern, Smock Madness, dropped on Sunday and I began knitting Monday evening. (I’m not feeling overly competitive right now.) The first round will end in ten days on the 17th, by which point I hope to have a complete pair of socks that will enable me to move forward into the next round. Yesterday evening, I knit for a bit next to the outdoor fireplace at Glen’s, which is what you see above. I’m a little further along now.

On the reading front, I have nothing new to report. I’m still working on Geekerella and Early Riser. I picked up Marlon James’ Black Leopard, Red Wolf at the member sale over the weekend at Rudi’s request. He’d heard an interview with the author on NPR while driving home one weekend and was really excited by it. I’d put a hold on it at the library, but since we both want to read it, it made sense to buy a copy.

Head over to As Kat Knits for more knitting and reading posts.

A kind Ravelrer, Chomp, saw my post seeking to buy leftover yarn to finish my shawl and sent me a message on the site earlier today. She had a smidge under 10 grams left from a project and would be happy to send the yarn my way. She then followed up to say that her husband had mailed the envelope. It is coming from across the country, so it might not arrive until next week, but it’s coming!

I am so delighted. I’m knitting my Sock Madness qualifier sock right now, so I will just let the shawl hang out in its project bag until her package arrives. Then I’ll lay out the five mini balls of yarn (her two, plus my three) to make the color changes between them work as well as possible.

I’m so excited that I’m going to get to finish the shawl the way I wanted to.

I’ve started a new audiobook and am loving it:

Geekerella, by Ashley Poston, is absolutely adorable. It’s about Elle, who lives with her stepmother and two stepsisters. She works in a vegan food truck, The Magic Pumpkin, and runs a fan blog for an old sci-fi tv series that’s about to be rebooted. Teen soap star Darien has been cast as the lead, Prince Carmindor, a character he adored and identified with as a kid, but his agent (who also happens to be his father), demands that he whiff the expert trivia question on morning tv for marketing purposes. They’ve started an anonymous texting conversation and while the characters are rather one-dimensional, I’m still enjoying it.

On the print front, I’m still working on Early Riser. So far, it’s predicated on a sense of dread, which does not make me want to speed through it, but there’s a love interest somewhere in the pages ahead, so I’m hopeful that it will pull me in yet.

My sock got wonky, so I’ve ripped it back to the picking up stitches point. I can see what I did wrong and hope to be able to fix that, now that I’m paying attention. (I was knitting it during Jasper Fforde’s author event, so my focus was divided.)

I finished the sixth strip of my lightning shawl and have determined I don’t have enough yarn to knit a seventh strip. I have a call out on Ravelry for the 10 grams I’d need to finish, but I’ll block it in the meantime to see if I feel like it will work without it if need be.

Sock Madness begins this weekend, so stay tuned for a new work-in-progress next week!

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