{Yarn Along} Self Patterning Sock Yarn

When I showed my sock in progress last week, there were some comments on the design the yarn was forming and whether or not it did that all by itself. It does. I like those chevrons, but no way would I put in the work involved to make that happen!

In addition to self-striping sock yarn, there's self-patterning sock yarn. It's dyed to create a specific effect, which you can reproduce if your gauge and stitch count is right. If it's too wrong, though, you might wind up with a blinding nightmare like this sweater that I knit for my oldest son.  I'm drooling over Regia's Arne & Carlos yarns right now. If any of the local yarn stores sold it, I'm sure I'd be knitting with a skein.

In addition to the knitting, I've been reading.

Candy Corn Murder by Leslie Meier is the perfect read if you're ready for Fall to arrive. The Great Pumpkin Fest is in full swing, complete with pumpkin catapults, an underwater pumpkin carving contest, and a pumpkin boat regatta. But the event isn't going as planned. Someone is destroying the candidates for the title of biggest pumpkin and tearing apart the scarecrow displays. And when the first pumpkins start to fly from their catapults, a corpse is discovered in the trunk of the junky old car that they were using as a target. The book opens with a chilling prologue and, as the plot unfolds, more and more details of a decades old crime are revealed. I enjoyed the contrast between how women of different generations deal with things.

Cancans, Croissants, and Caskets by Mary McHugh is the third book in the series and the first one of the Happy Hoofers mysteries I've read. The five member dance group is performing on a dinner cruise in Paris when a body is discovered on the upper deck. While they try to figure out who the killer might be, they spend their days seeing the sights. There's a lot of detail about the city here, and a cooking class in one of the chapters, but not a whole lot about the characters or the mystery itself.

For more pretty knitting projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times.

    
Disclosure -- the publishers provided me with ARCs.