Pattern: Icy Seas by Hunter Hammersen
Yarn: KnitPicks Palette in the Clarity, Kumquat Heather, Macaw, Pool, Semolina, Seraphim, and Serrano colorways
Needles: Size 3 DPNs
More leftover Palette used up! Love this pattern set – they’re quick and fun to make.
I was definitely looking forward to reading this book – it’s the back story for the mage Numair, when he was still a young man named Arram Draper. It’s how he studied in Carthak and became the mage that he is in later books, and how he knew Orzone, before he become emperor.
I really enjoyed the story – the mage’s academy is really fascinating, and the viewpoints from the mages from various lands and how they shaped Arram are well drawn. I really need to go back and read the Wild Magic books. I can’t remember if his friend Varice figures into them or not (she must, based on how that friendship is going, but I really can’t remember that in the more “present” day stories. Granted, it has been a while since I last read those.)
I’m very interested to see where thing go next – there’s definitely trouble viewing – both from the set up in the book and since this is a prequel. I’m excited to see the whole story.
How pretty is this? It must have been the owners before the family we bought the house from that decided to plant this magnolia in the backyard. Whoever it was, I currently love them.
Sunday was a bit of miscellaneous garden work. I bought myself a dahlia with a gift certificate on my birthday walkabout – that’s in the blue pot, which is currently hanging out in the sunny dining room window near the baseboard heating. I also found the iris rhizomes I’d pulled out of our old garden very late in the season before we moved. I really wasn’t sure what they’d do, but was pleasantly surprised to see that they all sprouted. So they’re in pots just to get them a little more sprouted up, and I’ll try to find them a permanent home. I’m still trying to get a better idea of how the light is in play in the yard.
And finally, I got a soil samples from the back yard and front yard done and sent off to UMO for analysis. Hopefully they don’t come back with anything more than elevated acid levels since we have so many pine trees in the backyard.
A little birthday present to myself. Which I have had no time to test out yet, of course.
A chilly birthday walk. The wind was insane.
I have got to read this series more regularly – every time I come back to it, I enjoy it immensely, and then I wait forever to read the next book. I realized a while ago I’m basically hoarding the next books’ enjoyment, since it is a finite series. But is that really a good thing?
Anyway, in this seventeenth story, Brother Cadfael is called in to help survey a new field that has been donated to the Abbey. One of the local landowners had donated it after the tenant, a potter, had left to join the the abbey as a brother. The potter had left his wife on the land, but when it became clear that her husband was serious in his vocation, she left. She had been very angry before leaving, and no one thought much of it. So now the field is in abbey hands, but when they begin to plow, they find a body there, clearly a woman, but too far gone to be able to clearly determine who she was.
At the same time, the younger son of the landowner who had donated the land has returned from a far off monastery where he had gone to take vows, when it’s become clear to him that it was a mistake to do so. His fate is tied up with the body found in the potter’s field.
There were some great twists to this book – the identity of the body has several very plausible turns, and even when it’s determined who is truly is, the why came out of left field for me. I absolutely did not see the final resolution coming, which made for an oddly exciting ending. I really enjoyed this book.
Pattern: Remige Shawl by Emily Greene
Yarn: Quince and Co Wren in the Bosque colorway
Needles: Size 6 circs
I actually finished this shawl back in February, but the pattern is being released next week, so I’m finally able to post about it.
The fun thing was that I got a use a new yarn that’s just now coming out. Wren’s a wool/cotton blend. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of knitting with pure cotton – I don’t love the texture. But this was nice. It’s a 60/40 mix, so it’s got all the things I like about wool, but lightened up a bit with the cotton.
This was a fun pattern – enough interest to keep it from being boring, but not super difficult.
This is a wide variety of stories, some connected to various books by the author, but some that are stand alone. She introduces each story, and in some cases, this was collected long after the stories were written, so it’s interesting to see her comments.
Some of these I enjoyed more than others, but like anything by Le Guin, they’re well worth the read – she was indeed a fantastic writer.
The North Wind and the Sea 