books

Drunk Irish Zombies who Knit for Comfort and Also Taxidermied Raccoons

I hope everybody had a good St. Patrick’s Day. We went to the Irish pub down the way, which we do frequently, to hear a band that we enjoy, whom we also hear frequently. Except that there were all these people there. Like Chreasters only drunk. Huh.

I don’t begrudge folk the right to have a whiskey or two on St. Paddy’s Day. That’s a thing; I get it. Being fairly sober amidst a mess of drunk people, though, is only entertaining for so long.

Except for the Bit about the Salads

In honor of the passing of Sir Terry Pratchett, I thought I'd share with you some of my favorites of his books. Perhaps those of you who also traveled Discworld would be so kind as to tell me your favorites in the comments and then we can all add them to our reading lists. It is the best way I can think of to thank the gentleman for giving us so very much to read.

Paper Hearts

February is Women in Horror month and my favorite fiction podcast is joining the party with a line-up of female writers who love their craft, or their Lovecraft, as the case may be. So if the standard February world dripping in red paper hearts is too much for you, you might head over to Pseudopod and check out some stories dripping in something else. If that's your cup of poison, that is. I found last week's story "The Godsmaid Clara and Her Many Smiles" by Sharon Dodge greatly entertaining, and the reader, Kim Lakin-Smith, nails it.

Trick and Treat

Halloween has arrived, and with it, one of my favorite traditions: All Hallow's Read. And so, dear friends, I give you two stories for your contemplation on this dark and stormy end-of-October day. I read these both in the last couple of weeks, to get into the spirit of things. I offer you the same spirits.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving

What to Read When You're on a Rock in the Middle of a River

The last few weeks have taken me on many adventures, traveling some of my favorite veins of California's water system. I've been camping in the woods along the Big Sur river, swimming with family in Lewis Creek, and drifting on lazy parts of the Merced River in Yosemite. A couple of the state's greatest hits, really.

Writing in the Dark

A Treatice on Speculative Fiction:
Why We Read it and Why We Write it

Wuthering the Storm

Whoosh. That's the way my days are going lately. Work's been a little hectic. Busy is good. I like feeling useful and I don't care for being bored, so I don't mind the busy. This is enough, though, that I'm coming home with my intellectual tank running on fumes. Things that take a certain amount of brain power have been going undone or underdone. Case in point, I cast on for another ribbed scarf over the weekend. This is getting serious. I'll have to change my Ravelry avatar to a knitted zombie soon. (Someone find me an amigurami pattern. You know there is one.)

And the Deep Blue Sea

I'm sure I've mentioned before that I help moderate a gothic literature group over on Ravelry. We pick one of the classics to read and discuss while concurrently knitting a project on theme.

Caper

I'm about to begin a cape knit-along. This is not to be confused with a caped knit-along, where one knits incognito. Or a crepe knit-along, which would involve breakfast, though that's not a bad notion either.

love + craft

If you love to craft, and you Lovecraft, or you've always meant to try, grab your yarn and head over to the Frankensocks board on Ravelry, where we'll spend a month reading the best of H.P.'s weird tales that the public domain has to offer and knit or hook something appropriate to match. An insanely good time is assured.

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