Knit One, Kill Two: a book review

I’ve recently become a big fan of LibraryThing.com, a website that allows you to catalog and tag your books, write reviews, compare your library to others’, and talk incessantly about books.  Through their knitting group, I learned of several book series and standalone novels that involve knitting in some significant way, and immediately purchased several to try them out.

The one I most recently finished is Knit One, Kill Two, a murder mystery by Maggie Sefton.  Sadly, I was not a fan of this book. I wanted to be, so much–a mystery, set around a yarn shop, with lots of knitting….sounded perfect! And I did grow to like most of the characters (although I still couldn’t tell you the difference between Meghan and Lisa). But for me, the plot holes killed it dead.

For one thing, criminals don’t just confess, and certainly not when confronted with flimsy circumstantial evidence. Ok, maybe in “Murder She Wrote,” and if that’s the audience Sefton is writing for, then go team her! But I’m not in that audience, and I expect more at the end of a mystery.

For another, anything involving knitting and/or yarn was written so completely and lovingly that it was clear the author not only adored her subject, but knew it very well. This just made it oh so obvious how much she *didn’t* research any of the other technical details of the story–DNA testing, for instance. I can’t get into it further without risking spoilers, but let’s just say that when an expert is comparing two separate DNA samples, two things are noticed immediately, and if the expert has seen enough of the samples to know the answer to one of those things, he can’t possibly *not* know the answer to the other–literally not possible….unless you’re the DNA expert in Sefton’s Colorado, apparently. This mistake (and the unbelievably rapid turnaround for the DNA results) was such a big one that my head hurts every time I think about it, and it made me want to throw the book across the room.

And the ending? Or should I say, lack thereof? There were so many questions left hanging at the end, I had to doublecheck the page numbers to see if a chapter had been ripped out. (Sadly, no.)

Those are the biggest (but not only) plot problems I had. Then there was the annoying writing style in which the characters included the name of the person they were speaking to in nearly every speaking turn. Take, for instance, page 178. Seven paragraphs of dialog, taking up 2/3 of the page–not even a complete page. Martha speaks to Kelly three times, and uses Kelly’s name each time. Kelly speaks to Martha four times, and uses Martha’s name twice. They’re the only two people in the room! And this happened throughout the whole book!

I know for some people these may be small, nitpicky details that are better glossed over in favor of enjoying the story, but for me, they got in the way of the story, taking me out of the book in repeated exasperation, with frequent mutterings of, “doesn’t she have an editor??”

As I said before, I did grow to like the characters, despite their constant uses of names, but unless someone can assure me that these plot and style problems have been worked out in later books, I won’t be reading anymore Sefton books.

Categories
Knitting and Crochet

Le update

I’ve been working steadily on the little blankets for Grace and Noah.  Noah’s is finished except for the few ends I still have to weave (the main reason I rarely work in stripes).  Grace’s is about half-finished.  No pictures yet of either, I’m afraid.  Grace’s would be finished by now, except I stressed myself out so much trying to finish Noah’s as fast as I could, and worrying about running out of yarn, that I couldn’t bear to touch the needles for three days after it was finished.  I hate when that happens, when my fingers feel like they never want to be in those positions again.  Fortunately it wore off, as it usually does, and her blanket is now coming along nicely.

I keep the bag of yarn from Unwind next to my desk at home, the cotton yarn that I bought specifically for more Grace and Noah blankets, and the brilliantly bright colors keep calling to me.  I can’t wait to finish the current one so I can get started on those delicious colors.

Mom's BlanketAnd since I hate to write a post without including at least one picture, here is a pic of my very first blanket, made in 2004 for my mom’s birthday.  It was made with Cascade’s Lana D’Oro series, long since discontinued, to my great dismay.  It was my first experience with alpaca, and I’ve been in love ever since.  The blanket itself is terribly ugly–it was my first experience with squares, and they weren’t the same size, and I didn’t know how to crochet then to even out the smaller ones.  I ran out of time, and so I didn’t have the right balance of colors, and since they were all oddly sized, their placement depended on where each would fit, instead of where the color would look best.  Seriously, the ugliest blanket ever.  And I remember so clearly spending the entire day before Mom arrived for her visit stitching it together–a terribly hot day to be working with alpaca and wool.

But she said she loved it, and got mad when I apologized for its ugliness.  I wanted to include it in her coffin when she died, but I didn’t find it until a few days after her funeral, wrapped up and packed away to protect it from the cats.  It’s now wrapped up and packed away to protect it from my cats.  Sometimes I think about taking it out and trying to fix it–maybe adding more squares to balance the colors, or embroidering some designs on the plainer blocks, or adding a crocheted border around the edges.  Maybe I’ll make that a goal for the rest of 2007.

Categories
Knitting and Crochet

Pictures

I swiped the batteries from my old, deceased A300.

Hats
This is a picture of the two hats. The pen is there for scale. They both fit rather nicely over my middle three fingers, which reminds me of Mr. Hand from South Park, which is probably not a good association for itty bitty baby hats, but there ya go. [Pattern here.]

Noah's blanket (WIP)
This will be Noah’s blanket when it’s finished. I’m using the light pink from Grace’s hat for the accent color, and I’ll be using the light green for Grace’s accent color. [Pattern here.]

Categories
Knitting and Crochet

This week in yarn

The past week was a very expensive one for yarn. You see, on Tuesday one of my dearest friends went into early labor–three months early.  The darlingest little twins ever were born that night, but at only a pound and a half each, they were far too tiny for the crib blankets I was already working on for them, so of course I had to go out and buy new yarn for softer, smaller blankets and hats.

$95 later, I stepped out of Unwind with four balls of RY Classic Yarns Cashsoft DK (10% cashmere!) in pinks and greens; four skeins of Cascade’s Luna in red, yellow, green and purple; three skeins of Tahki’s Cotton Classic in green, blue and aqua; and a new set of size six Clovers.  Damn, but that adds up fast!

So far I’ve made two hats (one came out smaller than the other, despite casting on six extra stitches for it and following the row directions verbatim-wtf?), and half of a 15-in sq. blanket, all from the Cashsoft.  I’d post pictures, but my batteries ran out as I was photographing them, so it’ll have to wait.  I suspect I’ll be needing more Cashsoft to finish the blankets and to make a larger replacement hat.  Figures, it being the most expensive of the three yarns.

Categories
Knitting and Crochet

Blanket's finished, purse sadly not

Blanket, finishedI finished the blanket yesterday–my first crocheted project!  As you can see, it doesn’t lie quite as flat as it should; I had difficulty figuring out how many stitches to pick up along the edges, so it’s….oddly shaped, I guess.  Hopefully washing it will even it out a little, but if not, I’m not too worried–it’s a baby blanket, and babies are notoriously forgiving about such details.  Which is good, because I’m sure you’ve noticed the white isn’t pure white, it’s a baby blend with pink and blue mixed in.  This is what happens when I try to use stash yarn only.  But at least the Plymouth Encore is machine washable, which I think is key for any baby gift.  Alpaca may be the most wonderful fiber in the whole wide world, and would make marvelous heirloom quality items, but what mother of an infant has time to handwash anything?  It would sit in a box or drawer somewhere, lovely to look at, but never actually used.  Hopefully this blanket will be used and abused until there’s nothing left but string (which hopefully won’t happen until well after the baby has grown out of it).

WIP, purseIn other news, I had a brain fart, and forgot that this purse was supposed to be finished by a deadline–today, to be exact.  Yeah, that didn’t happen.  The knitting part was done long ago, but it needs to be stitched along the bottom and felted.  It’s the felting part that’s been holding things up, since I don’t have my own washing machine, and the water in the machines in my building’s laundry room isn’t hot enough to do the job properly.  I also haven’t tracked down the appropriate accessorizing hardware.  It was supposed to be finished today, because it’s a gift for my friend who took her black belt test yesterday (krav maga).  I suck.  I may show her a picture of the soon-to-be-a-purse, but I doubt it.  I’ll just have to surprise her with it later–hopefully sooner than her next birthday, though.

Also, this picture doesn’t do the colors justice–the red is much deeper and less bright than it appears here. Sadly, I can’t get the colors to be true to life with this camera. Makes me miss my old Powershot A300 sometimes.