Three More Squares....Or Eight....Or Sixteen...

It's starting to look like I could have made the afghan without buying that extra skein of thrift store yarn. Now I need to decide whether to start seaming all of those blocks together now or wait until I do more sorting and find out if there's more old green yarn hiding in the sewing room.

I know that there's at least one skein of a paler green acrylic that I'm never ever going to use for anything else, so I figure I'll dig at least until I find that one.  If I make this bigger, I can use up more stash yarn. I estimate I'm at 1200 yards so far and since that green was never going to be suitable for anything else, I'm thrilled!



I happily lost myself for a while in The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror by Joyce Carol Oates. The title story was chilling, but it was the others that really pulled me in. "Gun Accident," about a teenager who is asked to house sit for her favorite teacher, was my absolute favorite. Mrs. McClelland is oddly frantic and Hanna is so careful to do the job well and not betray the older woman's trust.  It's set in 1961 and I wish the author hadn't felt the need to interject that "This was in an era before voice mail. A phone simply rang and ran in an empty house, with no way of recording a lost call."  That bit was jarring and unnecessary. I was thoroughly enjoying the historical settings and didn't need a reminder that it was a brand new book.

The description of Perfect Days by Raphael Montes had me hoping for something along the lines of You or The Collector. The plot was similar -- a psychopath succesfully abducts the object of his desires and a twisted relationship develops -- but the book never really grabbed me. All of these plots are improbable, but I hard a harder time than usual suspending my disbelief with this one.

Disclosure -- I was provided with an advance review copies by the publishers. All opinions are my own. This post is linked to Patchwork Times, Yarn Along, iknead2knit