Frozen Heat – Richard Castle

Ok, I freely admit, the Nikki Heat books are not high art.    But they’re really fun to read, and they’re getting better the further into the series they get.

This book delves into the mystery of Nikki’s mother’s murder.   Granted, that’s supposed to be modeled on Beckett’s mother’s murder on the show, but they take it in a completely different direction in the book, and I didn’t figure out who the murderer was ahead of time.   That’s the mark of a good mystery to me.

It’s also totally great if you watch Castle.    And let’s face it – if you don’t watch Castle, I would totally forgive you for never picking up this book.

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Knitting Notes

Pattern: Nennir by Lucy Hague
Yarn: Claudia Hand Painted Yarns Fingering in the Teal Party colorway
Needles: Size 4 Circs

Once I got the right needle size, I really enjoyed Nennir.    It’s really fun watching the cables grow, and the pattern is complex enough to not be boring, but still relatively easy to do (as long as I read the chart and the knitting pretty well with cables, I’m happy).     I would definitely make this again.

The Claudia’s yarn is lovely to work with, and I really like this colorway.    It’ll be making some nice hexipuffs.

The Blizzard of 2013

Why yes, it was drifting inside the garage.

The cars next door.

The hilarious spot between BF and Ed’s car that was free of snow the entire storm.

BF with the “Pile at the End of the Driveway” ™.

Can you spot Ed’s car?

The one window we don’t put the storm on – little bit of drifting going on…

BF next to the drift at the garage.   (Can  you spot El’s car?)

 So we had this little weather event last weekend you may have heard of.    Single biggest snowfall at one time ever recorded in Portland (31 and some change inches – and we didn’t get the jackpot).    Started Friday and went pretty much all day Saturday.     The wind was crazy (but fortunately, not bad enough here to lead to power outages).     I got to leave work at noon on Friday.    Celebrated by baking muffins and mainlining Lizzie Bennet Diaries episodes.

Saturday, I baked rolls, and we had the neighbors up to play games.   There was some hilarity when BF decided to go out in the afternoon and explore a bit, and discovered that our back door was completely snowed in.

Sunday – well, that’s about three and a half hours of my life I’ll never get back.    That’s how long it took us to clear out – bearing in mind that we own a snow blower.    I do have to say though, I’ve been going to the gym since October, and I think this was the best evidence yet that it’s been doing something.   I should have woken up Monday morning so sore I could barely move, but I felt fine.   So yay for that.

So, all in all, not a bad storm, kinda fun, but still nothing I need to see again for another couple of decades.

Cordelia’s Honor – Lois McMaster Bujold

I can knock another one off my I really need to track this down and read it list.    I’ve had this on my radar because my friend B loves these books.

This omnibus is the story of how Cordelia Naismaith meets Aral Vorkosigan, who starts out as her enemy, and later marries him.    I love Cordelia.    These are my kind of scifi books, plenty of science and space, but great relationships too, not just with Cordelia and Aral, but with their friends on Barrayar.

There’s plenty of intrigue (Barrayar being a somewhat backward planet that’s only recently starting talking to the other human colonies again), and Cordelia is uniquely both suited and unsuited for her new life in the ruling class of Barrayar.    Her actions in the second book are great – completely unbecoming of a Vor-class lady, which makes them completely awesome.

So now, I need to track down the books about their son Miles (whose birth in the last part of Barrayar was anything but normal).    I can totally see why B loves these books.

Knitting Notes

I got bored with the Pookies.    So, here’s the Nennir cowl, by Lucy Hague.   I’m using Claudia’s Hand Painted fingering weight yarn, in the Teal Party colorway.

I’m not going to lie, my first cast on was a disaster.   I used size three needles, somehow managed to drop a stitch in the provisional cast on, and was never able to get back on track.   I even started looking for a different fingering weight cowl pattern, but this was the one I wanted to do.

So, second time around, I moved up a needle size, and that seems to have worked much better.   It’s still slow going (there are a LOT of cables), but I’m enjoying it now.

In other news, I taught my friend B to knit on New Year’s Day.    Ran into her at the mall yesterday, and I’ve created an addict.    She even managed to figure out how to design her own mitts.   (To my shame, she caught me buying new hats, but I’ve never been able to make one that was warm enough for daily wear up here).    I’m just so proud 🙂

Craft Notes

The DIY jewelry holders worked out great.    Turns out I have less pins, and less earrings than I made space for, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.     The pin holder will be living elsewhere (just haven’t decided where yet), but the earring holder is in situ, since if I’m going to use it, it would be silly to have it attached to the wall.

I think the earring holder will work well for me because I don’t change my earrings that often.    If I was going to be switching things out everyday, I think the aida cloth would get unwieldy, and would probably not stay attached to the frame without more shoring up.   But, I have seen versions of this using screening, so that would definitely work for higher usage.

For the pin holder, the one disadvantage is that I can’t put the backs on stick pins.   But, some of the fabric bands are tighter than others, so I was able to stick those in there, and they will stay.    However, that’s definitely a flaw in this design.    Still, I think it’ll work for me, since this is for the pins I want to display, not wear.