{Yarn Along} Just Enough

When I bought this skein of Patons Stretch Socks, it would have been more than enough to make a pair of socks for my daughter. These days, it was just enough for a pair of anklets.

But that works. It's another pair of socks for my kid and a little yarn used up from the stash.

I've been reading a slew of fun young adult horror novels.




Zomburbia by Adam J. Gallardo is set in Salem, Oregon, the town I grew up in. That's as good a reason as any to read a zombie novel, right?  This is a different kind of zombie book than anything I've read. The apocalypse has already happened and, while there are still shufflers wandering the streets, Courtney Hart goes to a school surrounded by security fences and armed guards and works at a fast food chain to save for college. Life is pretty normal. Except for the fact that she sells a drug made from zombie brains while she's manning the drive thru and checks the news daily, hoping that New York City will be retaken from the shufflers because she plans to move there, she's got the same concerns as teenage girls in most other young adult novels.




A couple of years ago, Teenage Daughter came home from the library with a copy of family by Micol Ostow.  I'm not sure if she ever got around to reading that book or not, but I was intrigued by the story. When I saw that the same author had taken on the Amityville Horror in the new young adult novel Amity , I knew I wanted to read it. It's been a very long time since I've seen the movie and I'm not sure if I ever did read the original book, so I can't vouch for how closely the details in Amity match the origianl story. It seems to me that she just took the idea and ran with it, and she went in a much more interesting direction than the original hoax took. Take a notorious haunted house and rework its history to literally bring the house to life, then weave that together with the stories of two disturbed teens living in the house ten years apart. It's a wonderfully creepy little book, a good choice for when you're in the mood for something quick and spooky.





Last summer, I was blown away by Contaminated by Em Garner. The sequel, Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode is out and as soon as I got my hands on it, I couldn't wait to start reading. It picks up a while after the first book left out, with the Connie outbreak mostly under control and the government controlling the news, the food supply, and the work force. The book starts slowly and, if I hadn't read the first book, I think it would've taken me a while to figure things out. Velvet and her younger sister, Opal, are still living in their own house in a neighborhood that has been officially cleared, hiding their contaminated mother.  This book deals with the threat that the government poses and didn't pull me in nearly as strongly as the first one did.

For more fun projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis. For more finishes, check out Sew Much Ado, Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?,  and Freedom Fridays, Wonderful at Home, and Inspired Friday.

Disclosure - the publishers provided me with ARCs.