I’ve been doing a lot of knitting and reading recently, so thought it was time for an update on both. I’m Yarning Along with Ginny.

It’s the final week of the Once Upon a Time Reading Challenge and I’m on my fifth and final (new) book for the challenge. Fablehaven is the first book in a middle-grade modern fantasy series about two young siblings who spend a few weeks with their somewhat estranged grandfather one summer. I expect to finish it up in the next couple days and then it’s on to Station Eleven (which I hear is dystopian for those who don’t normally care for dystopian) and Saint Maizie (a historical fiction about the Queen of the Bowery). And I started Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on audiobook last night, for listening while knitting.

My two-at-a-time socks are speeding along. I’ve picked up the stitches after the heel turn and am now decreasing toward the toe. My final class is next Wednesday, so they’ll be done in a week. So excited to add a new skill to my knitting toolkit.

Today’s Yarning Along shot shows you two projects I’m working on:

The knitting, cast on this evening, is the project for the class I mentioned last week. I’m learning how to knit two socks on a single circular needle over the course of four weeks in June. This week’s class was devoted to casting on, so you see I’ve got a couple rows on a pair of socks. The yarn is Holiday Yarn’s Flock Sock in the Yarn Fairy self-striping colorway. It’s wound for two-at-a-time knitting, with both strands of yarn emerging together from a center-pull ball. The staff at the yarn store were excited by the idea of it and suggested they might see about carrying it.

The book is Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper and is the story of an 83-year-old woman who decides to walk 3,000 km alone to see the ocean for the first time. One of you recommended it last month on your blog, but I can’t find whom it was just right now.

I’m reading it as part of the #TBRTakedown challenge Leaning Lights is running this week. Since I picked this up at the library last week, it counts as a book from my most recent library haul. I’m not firmly committed to matches in the other categories, although Fablehaven and Ms. Marvel Vol. 2 are probably going to be the two series finishers:

Challenges:
1. A book that’s been on your TBR shelf over a year!
2. An unread sequel sitting on your TBR shelf.
3. A first book in a series on your TBR shelf.
4. An “out of your comfort zone” book on le TBR shelf!
5. A book from your most recent book haul!

I am done knitting the body of my shawlette and need to move on to picking up the stitches around the edge for the border next. Conveniently, the pattern calls for yarn overs on every row for the ease of just this task, so I hope to be nearing the end of this project this month.

Tonight brought some bad news, so I opted to start a new book by the most amusing author I know, Jasper Fforde. It’s the third Jennifer Strange novel and the first few chapters promise as entertaining a read as the previous two books in the series.

I’ll be honest: I haven’t really felt like reading or knitting anything in the last few weeks.

Every few days I knit a couple rows on my Lazy Katy shawlette. The yarn is Lang Yarns Jawoll Magic Dégradé and there was a knot partway into the skein, which explains the weird color changes that will jump out at knitters, but hopefully not to too many other people. I am nearly done with the expanded stockinette body and will next turn to the lace edging. Despite my slow progress, I am looking forward to wearing it.

The books are ones that I’ve dipped into over the last month: The Pratchett is the first in the Discworld series, of which I’ve only read the first Tiffany Aching novel. Fablehaven was a Christmas gift from Karen, and I purposely put it aside to read this spring during my annual fantasy readalong. The Soul of Baseball is about one of the Negro League’s great names and promises (literally, in several places on the dust jacket) to be uplifting and make you feel better about life. I could use both right now, as well as being a general fan of baseball stories. Finally, the Sherlock Holmes companion piece is a collection of short works that accompany works in Conan Doyle’s canon. I admit I haven’t actually opened that one yet, but I’d like to see if I can’t read Gramma-style stories without weeping through them.

Technically, this photo is a lie.

I am NOT currently reading Lola and the Boy Next Door because I just spent six hours power reading it nearly non-stop. Stephanie Perkins writes YA contemporary romance and composes fun protagonists and swoon-worthy love interests. I might like Cricket, the scientifically minded guy in this story, even more than I liked St. Clair in Perkins’ debut novel, which is saying something significant.

And while that looks like the top of a sock and DOES, in fact, constitute two concerts’ worth of knitting, I’m just not completely sold on it becoming what I told it to be (which, yes, was a sock). It’s sport-weight yarn and it feels too thick to be a sock, but it maybe just wants to be a thick sock? I’m still mulling… which is fine because the next round of Sock Madness should begin by the weekend.

I’m still working on my Lightning Shawl and am loving the color changes along and between the panels and the bright hues of the yarn on such grim winter days. I am excited to wear it, even if that doesn’t seem likely for Hungary.

I’ve got a couple different physical books I’m wrapping up, but am listening to Anne Ursu’s Breadcrumbs, a modern retelling of the Snow Queen that seems especially apt in a week that involved several days of shoveling and a cold between two weekends of being home alone.

I’m looking forward to the start of Sock Madness next week and to picking a couple non-library books to take with me on vacation. My audio book selection is already downloaded to my phone — the fifth Harry Potter.