The Just City – Jo Walton

Athene and Apollo decide to do an experiment – create Plato’s Just City. They bring men and women from all over time that believe in Plato’s principles, and have them set up the city. It’s populated by children purchased from slave ships, and Athene brings in some robots from the far future to do some tasks for them.

Apollo decides to become fully mortal to experience the experiment fully (and because he’s still seriously confused by what happened with the nymph Daphne, and he suspects being mortal will help clear that up.)

The story is told through several viewpoints. The primary three I focused on are Apollo, Maia (a Victorian woman who was educated by her father and prayed to Athene one night when it was clear that her life was not going to live up to what she’d been taught), and Simmea, one of the girls bought from the slave ships. It’s really interesting to see how creating the city changes them – Apollo learns quite a bit being mortal, and Maia and Simmea’s journeys are very interesting.

The book comes to a rather interesting end that could be seen as just an ending, but there are more books in the series, so it’ll be interesting to see what else the author wants to explore.

Advertisement

Knitting Notes

The first Nain sock is done. I’m enjoying this so much more than my recent failed sock attempts.

The picture is not adequately capturing how pretty this yarn is. The colorway is Aurora Borealis, and it’s the prettiest mix of blue, purple and green. It’s got enough silk to have a lovely sheen to it – I’m really enjoying working with this yarn.

Two Lights State Park – Cape Elizabeth, ME

Saco Heath Preserve – Saco, ME

I managed a two hour walk at a not very large preserve. At no point would I have been able to consider that walk to have any redeeming aerobic qualities. I did however, work in squats like a champ. That was a quick 851 pictures.

A Naturalist’s Book of Wildflowers – Laura C. Martin

This is a lovely book of botanical illustration with interesting little anecdotes about the various flowers portrayed.

It covers the whole of the US (and a good chunk of Canada), so it’s necessarily a little broad, but does have an interesting variety of flowers included. It’s a lovely little survey of what’s around in our country for wildflowers.

Embroidery Notes

I have two fairly small square frames that I had old sun and moon cross stitch patterns I’d done ages ago in, and I wanted to refresh those. I found two patterns I liked in Punochka’s Etsy shop (Russians really do have fantastic embroidery patterns). This is the Halloween moth – started it on Monday.

Garden Notes

I pulled this out of the garden on Monday. It’s the large tomato plant, the remaining pumpkin, two delicata squash, and most of the gem marigolds, which I didn’t set out to pull, but accidently came up with little effort.

I’m mostly down to the herbs and flowers now – we’re on death watch for the dahlias. It could theoretically frost at any point now, though that doesn’t seem to be in the long range forecast yet, so I’m enjoying things while they last.

Wharton Point, Maquoit Bay – Brunswick, ME

Mast Landing Sanctuary – Freeport, ME

Knitting Notes

This is as far as I got with the Josaqan socks. I actually got a little further into the toe, and definitely didn’t have enough yarn. I briefly considered doing a totally different colored toe, but I also did not love how huge these socks were looking, so ultimately, I decided I need to go in a totally different way to use this yarn. So that’ll be frogged, again, by the end of the day.

So, in the meantime, I’ve cast on these Nain Socks. They’re also from Hunter Hammersen’s Silk Road Socks, and I’m already enjoying making these more than I was the Josaqan socks. The yarn is Seven Sisters Arts Apex in the Aurora Borealis colorway. It’s such a lovely yarn to work with.