The craziness of the Christmas build-up and my commitment to blogging the Virtual Advent Tour last month (can you believe December was only last month?) led to an oversight on my part. While I acknowledged it on Twitter, I neglected to blog about The Broke and the Bookish Secret Santa and the wonderful package that came from Hannah on the Isle of Wight in Great Britain:

Hannah sent me two great books, some beautiful cards featuring photos she took of the area near her home, some tea, foxy socks (I love fun socks!), and two heads of locally grown garlic, which have made my living room (where they sat during the holiday season) smell divine.

All of which leads us to today:

I started Winter Holiday over the long blizzard weekend, since that seemed appropriate. It’s the fourth book in Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series and includes fabulous maps as the end-papers. Because it’s an old copy, it also includes these hilarious blurbs from reviews in the day that include things like comments about how ridiculous it is to expect an author to illustrate his own work. [In looking up the dates for Ransome’s books, I discovered there’s a film adaptation of the first book due out later this year. So exciting! Interestingly and perhaps alarmingly, it will include a new character played by the guy who plays Moriarty in Sherlock.] And earlier today I began Murder Most Unladylike, the first book in a recent middle-grade mystery series set in a girls’ boarding school in 1934. I’m enjoying both of them thus far. I love that the books both have 1930s England as their setting.

The knitting is that stupid lightning shawl that will never be done, except that I’m making it my goal to complete it in the next two-and-a-half weeks for my birthday. Because I want to use it during the cold months and I’m tired of it being on the needles, rather than wearable.

January has been, as it usually is for me, a good reading month, with lots of recommendations coming off people’s year-end best-of lists and the children’s and young adult award winners from the ALA Midwinter meeting. Rita Williams-Garcia’s latest book was recently lauded, and I decided that before I got to that one I ought to read her two previous historical novels featuring the Gaither sisters. One Crazy Summer is the first one, and so far I’m enjoying the story of three young girls from New York visiting Oakland in 1968 to get to know their estranged mother. I’m also back to listening to Anne of Green Gables, as well, and just tonight finished the puffed sleeves chapter. It was good to get the text of the book back in my head, since the film version differs slightly (although they did get the excruciating comedy of Matthew’s foray into shopping just right).

I’m up to the heel flap on this sock, although I did get a little carried away with the stockinette while we were watching the basketball game last week, so I wonder if I’ll run out of yarn on the foot. I suppose I can always rip back if it ends absurdly early (odd-colored toes really oughtn’t to start at the arch, after all), although I do object on principle to undoing perfectly good work when it’s just for vanity’s sake. But the socks are for Rudi and I object more to people mocking his socks. It’s one thing if they were mine and I could defend my thriftiness in person, but I wouldn’t want people feeling bad for Rudi that he was stuck with some crazy, unfashionable knitter who forced him to wear ugly handmade clothes. Pure vanity on my part, I suppose, but I guess there are worse faults to have.

That there is a shoe for a newborn, a gift for friends expecting a wee girl in the next few weeks. Also there is my current read, the 600+-page tome, Illuminae. It’s my fiery book for #TBRTakedown. It turns out that the book I decided to finish on Monday, Come Hell or Highball, is the first in a planned series, so Illuminae is off the hook for counting in that category. I’m also slowly taking in Honest Engine as my poetry read.

I’m about 270 pages in for the week. Slower than I’d hoped, but I’ve been tired the last few days.

In addition to counting for all these reading challenges, this post is also part of Ginny’s Yarning Along roundup.

I admit that I’m a sucker for needing to try any new apple variety I come across, so it may not be a huge surprise that Apples of North America, a coffee table guide to nearly 200 of them, was an impulse grab at the library a few weeks ago. Plus, it’s National Non-Fiction November and it’s good to learn something new.

I’ve also added the audiobook of Anne of Green Gables to my routine this week.

The blob of knitting is the ribbing and first couple body rows of Foliage. It’s not mindless knitting yet, but I have hopes for it becoming less focus-requiring in the near future.

Yarning along with Ginny at Small Things.

Back in June, I decided to sign up for a class at my local yarn shop to learn to knit two socks at once on the same circular needle. I’d been meaning to learn this skill for a while, but since I hadn’t gotten around to teaching it to myself, it seemed to make sense to avail myself of a professional.

Wanting to minimize purchases (and since it wasn’t a prerequisite of the class by buy supplies there), I opted to use stash yarn and an ultra-long circular needle. I cast on June 3 and cast off July 4, which corresponded to the four-week format of the class.

The yarn is Holiday Yarns Flock Sock in the colorway Yarn Fairy. I bought it at the New York Sheep and Wool Festival a couple years back. It’s intended to be used for knitting two socks at once, since it’s already been re-skeined into a cake with the two strands at the exact same point in the color changes. That way, your stripey socks should end up looking identical.

Starting out was awkward; because the two strands of yarn were wound together, they kept getting tangled with one another and I couldn’t just pull out one ball to unwind from around the second.

Also, the needle was just too long (longer than was called for) and kept getting tangled with the yarn. I’d like to try again with two separate balls and a shorter needle to see if that makes things any easier.

Regarding the class itself, the instructor’s teaching style and my learning style didn’t mesh well. I like to have instructions written out so I can follow along as I go. Her teaching style involved giving us a regular sock pattern and then offering oral instructions for us to follow and transcribe.

Also, she’d say things like, “Don’t do it the way that makes sense, because it will come out wrong.” Wrong was not defined, which made this rule-questioner gnash my teeth. Define wrong. Tell me that it’s going to end up with stitches oriented the wrong way so that I’ll have to pull the entire thing off the needles to fix it. Because otherwise it just seems like it’s going to come out in a way that’s going to make it more awkward for you to teach me, rather than for me to learn. (I was a ton of fun as a high school geometry student, let me tell you.)

Ultimately, I got a pair of socks out of the class, and that’s a good thing. And I have knit a pair this way, which means I can do it again, if I’m so inclined. I’ll consider taking another knitting class again someday, but maybe not too soon. Luckily for me, there are a plethora of books and free videos I can access that will teach me new skills in ways that are better suited to how I like to learn.

As you can see, not a lot has changed since last week’s Yarn Along. I’m well into Come Hell or Highball, Maia Chance’s Prohibition Era mystery and should finish in the next day or two. It features a young widow, whose recently deceased, run-around husband, it turns out, left her without fortune, home, or prospects. She and her Swedish cook (who refuses to leave until she’s paid her back wages) are squatting in his New York City love nest, but the rent is due in a couple days. She’s taken on a retrieval job for a Follies dancer, but the item’s gone missing and the last person she knows had it was murdered. And who, exactly, is the hot gumshoe who keeps following her? It’s cute, but not as quick-moving as I’d hoped.

I’ve been knitting more on my lightning shawl, but have pulled out this skein of Marigoldjen Yarns. It’s a dk weight blue-faced Leicester in the Levi colorway, and I’m going to turn it into a hat. The green is asking for something leaf-related, so I’m going to try it with Irina Dmitrieva’s Foliage Hat pattern, although I’ll be watching to make sure the design doesn’t get lost in the color variegation of the yarn.