How can June nearly be over? Well, it is, so I guess I’d better get ready for July. The weather seems like it intends to welcome the change over with heat, although my weekend forecast now just shows upcoming temperatures in the upper 90s, rather than with a bleeding thermometer, like the long-term forecast had originally shown.

Nothing says heat of summer like some wool knitting, right? At least socks are small. I once spent an entire summer knitting a blanket with strips of Icelandic wool draped over my lap, which was not ideal.

My Posey socks are trucking along now. Amazing that sometimes all it takes is finding a way around the small problems holding you up (not being able to get the heel striping to work with the four-color sequence) to let you move ahead more quickly. (Or quicker, at least.) I am hopeful that I can get the pair finished before the Tour de France starts next weekend, when I want to start a shawl with some brightly hued gradient yarn my folks gave me last year. Photos and pattern mulling to come next week.

On the reading front, I’m still listening to Jenny Colgan’s The Bookshop on the Corner, in which only good things happen to the heroine, except for when they’re bad things that turn out to have been good things in disguise. There’s a lot of serendipity in the book and the heroine is instantly liked by everyone she meets and is good at everything she tries, seemingly without effort. Despite my seeming grumpy about the book, I am enjoying it (and the reader is excellent with all the accents!), but will require some “vegetable” books after finishing this very sweet one. I have several YA Sync downloads to listen to (maybe The Red Umbrella about the Peter Pan project that sent unaccompanied Cuban children to America in the 1960s) while I wait for books I’ve started to come back off hold. I’m #2 for American Street and it seems like a good time to dive back into a story about a young woman whose mother ended up in a detention center when they landed in the U.S.

On paper, I started Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli, her companion to Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, this week and am about halfway through. A friend had been lukewarm about it, which probably helped to temper my expectations, so I keep being pleased with how much I like the story.

I’m a couple chapters into both Children of Blood and Bone and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and it’s too early to tell how I feel about them.

Rudi is away this weekend and the Fourth of July gives me a day off next week, so I’ll have plenty of reading time in between protest marches and festivals. (And if the thermometer starts bleeding, I’ll take my book to the pool.)

Head over to Kat’s to see what other folks are reading and knitting.

I finished up Hello, Universe this evening, so I thought I’d show you my Posey socks with tonight’s library haul (which also included three dvds — the Studio Ghibli anime version of Tales from Earthsea, the Israeli film that inspired the Broadway musical The Band’s Visit, and Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool).

Elsa and the Night and The Room are both Scandinavian books in translation. Jeremiah Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase are both off the 100 best children’s books list that I was making my way through a few years back. And Puddin’ and Leah on the Offbeat are both new YA books by authors I really like. I also have Children of Blood and Bone out, which I’m eager to start.

I’m nearly done with my azalea stripey socks and needed something to tide me over to the start of the Tour de France knit along, so I decided to pull out the Posey socks and get back to work on them. The grey skein will be the heels.

I’m two-thirds of the way through listening to A Conspiracy in Belgravia, the second of the gender-flipped Lady Sherlock novels by Sherry Thomas, and enjoying it quite a bit. The reader fits well, so I’d heartily endorse listening to it. In fact, I might go back and listen to the first one, I’m enjoying this one so much.

Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly won the Newbery Medal this year. It’s about four sixth-graders at the start of summer break, and 80 pages in, that’s still all I can tell you. It’s easy reading and not unenjoyable, but it’s taking a meandering route to the story and I’m feeling impatient to be into it already. I have a pile of books out from the library, so there are options for what will come next, but Children of Blood and Bone is a likely contender.

Head over to As Kat Knits if you’re looking for more of what folks are reading and crafting.

Because I was having a mopey weekend, I did not finish knitting my sock. However, as you can see, I’m past the heel turn, so it’s all fast knitting from here. I’m going to an author talk tomorrow, so hope to be able to bang out several inches then. Then it’ll just be a question of whether I start something new before the Tour de France knit along or work on something unfinished. We have a trip during that time, so there will definitely need to be some portable projects.

On the reading front, I’m nearly done with The Hazel Wood (so close I can practically taste the ending — as it will include some perilous acts, I probably won’t want to taste it, though). It is excellent, and I recommend it to all who love YA fantasy novels. Murder at Brightwell was the mystery I took with me to New York; light paperbacks travel well. Plus, rain was predicted and I thought my book might get wet, so better it be something I owned, rather than a library book. In the ears, I’ve had the second Lady Sherlock novel by Sherry Thomas, A Conspiracy in Belgravia, going and I am enjoying it immensely so far.

Finally, I need to return to Little Fires Everywhere, which is overdue and which has a very long wait list resenting my cavalier approach to deadlines. I plan to give it back to the library this weekend.

If you’d like to see what other people are reading and knitting, head over to As Kat Knits for Unraveled Wednesday.

This is The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert, which is a really most excellent modern fairy tale that I am trying my very best to pace out over several days and not read through in a single sitting, but it’s really hard because it’s SOOOO good. Plus, look at that cover! (The end papers match, with a black background, silver flowers, and golden branches.) It’s designed by Jim Tierney, who has designed a lot of other cool covers, including Frogkisser!

I’m also still reading Killers of the Flower Moon, which is very good, despite my slow read of it; Little Fires Everywhere, which is a stressful slow burn (pun intended); Norse Mythology, which is a fun dishwashing listen and for which it is virtually impossible not to imagine the Marvel movie actors as Neil Gaiman reads about the gods’ adventures (although Lady Sif is way off from her actress); and Solo, which is interesting because I don’t fully know where it’s going to end up.

I suspect all five of these will be done by the end of the long weekend. And then on to new literary adventures!

On the needles I’m working on sock #2 of my In the Wildwood socks, which might also wrap up this weekend, depending on how much sitting time I get. I’m enjoying them, which means another stripey pair is likely to follow.

Check out As Kat Knits for more knitting and reading!

This past week, I started three books: Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees, a short story collection that’s been chosen as a D.C. Reads book for everyone in the city to read; The Folded Clock, by Heidi Julavits, a diary/collection of essays relating to time; and A Treacherous Curse, the latest in the Veronica Speedwell Victorian mystery series by Deanna Raybourn.

I’m also listening to Solo, a YA verse novel by Kwame Brown with Mary Rand Hess about the son of a rock legend/hot mess who finds out a family secret, and Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology, which I can’t help but populate with faces from the Marvel movies.

My sock is pretty much to the toe decreases. I really thought I’d get it finished tonight, but instead I dozed off (after a fun-filled day off for Rudi’s birthday), so obviously I should go to bed instead.

Hit up As Kat Knits for more posts about reading and knitting.