The Plunge!

I took the plunge! The other evening I inserted a small double-pointed needle just below my error in the Slow Bee shawl. The next evening I looked at it - and trembled each time in superstitious dread. Finally, this evening, I was forced to act. I was unable to continue until SOMETHING was done. I'm pretty happy with the result. There is a ladder on the left margin of my repair, but I think I can work it out by spreading the extra yarn over several nearby stitches with a crochet hook. On the other hand, Clue 5 comes out this weekend and I am sprinting forward from row 5 of Clue 2. I'm afraid the sloths have overtaken me. I am now a stone (unfortunately NOT rolling) hoping gravity will step in as moss begins to accumulate upon my surface. Oh dear!

In the meantime, I have just now finished Jane Johnson's The Tenth Gift. If I was a trifle concerned initially with my purchase of The Cathedral of the Sea, this new book seemed an even riskier choice. The supposed diary of a talented needleworker kidnapped by Barbary pirates seems an unlikely vehicle for a satisfying historical novel, after all. However, the book was full of interesting information about a largely unknown aspect of early modern history - the trade in European slaves in Northern Africa incited, at least in part, by the expulsion of the Moors from Spain under less-than-salubrious conditions. Although many aspects of the novel were unlikely at best, the far-fetched items were not especially prurient - nor, thank goodness, did our heroine fall in love with her defiler (although he was her captor). I'll stop now before giving away too much, but this novel was certainly an excellent read for the history - and the textile - enthusiast!

Now, in an effort to spend a bit MORE time catching up to sloth speed in the Slow Bee KAL, I have begun a little mystery, A Killer Stitch by Maggie Sefton. I have read her other knitting cozies over the years, and this should be a perfect quick, light read. Although my favourite "textile novelist" is probably Jennifer Chiaverini, I have a weakness for the textile novel in general. I certainly enjoyed the Friday Night Knitting Club, which I read a few months ago.

Now the challenge is selecting plane reading for my upcoming trip to the West Coast. I often splurge on recent, still-in-hardcover murder mysteries from favourite series as plane fodder. I am thinking the latest by Nevada Barr, a great favourite of mine, and, perhaps, Linda Fairstein's latest as well. I'm not quite sure why the purchase of a very expensive plane ticket should authorize the consumption of books in pricey hardcover versions when I usually wait for the paperback edition, but it does. If enough tempting mysteries are published together, I begin to think of trips I MUST undertake. There must be some fancy psychological syndrome that explains this behaviour ....