Sunday, September 29, 2024

Homeless Blanket Project #32 - Finicky Freddy

I know this looks like gray, but it's not.  I'm using three big skeins of medium sage worsted with two shorter strands of various, multi-colored yarns that have been tied between each green.  I'm using the same crocheting pattern of one row of triple crochets followed by one row of single crochets.

Saturday, September 28, 2024

73. Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

listened on Libby
384 pgs.
2024
Adult spicy romance
Finished 9/28/2024
Goodreads rating:  3.67
My rating: 2
Setting: Contemporary Austin, TX

My comments: Bleh.  Disappointing.  Tried and tried to like the female protagonist, Rue, but we were only given snippets of her inner self, and many didn't come until later on in the book.  Ice skating was a life changing event for both protagonists, and it should have been a bigger part of the book.  Rue was fighting with her brother about a cottage left in a will, but why?  Only because it was needed to move/change the plot a few times.  Not well done.  A disappointment from this author.

Goodreads synopsis:  Rue Siebert might not have it all, but she has enough: a few friends she can always count on, the financial stability she yearned for as a kid, and a successful career as a biotech engineer at Kline, one of the most promising start-ups in the field of food science. Her world is stable, pleasant, and hard-fought. Until a hostile takeover and its offensively attractive front man threatens to bring it all crumbling down.

Eli Killgore and his business partners want Kline, period. Eli has his own reasons for pushing this deal through - and he's a man who gets what he wants. With one burning exception: Rue. The woman he can't stop thinking about. The woman who's off-limits to him.

Torn between loyalty and an undeniable attraction, Rue and Eli throw caution out the lab and the boardroom windows. Their affair is secret, no-strings-attached, and has a built-in deadline: the day one of their companies will prevail. But the heart is risky business - one that plays for keeps.

September 2024 Handwork

Completed Projects:


for Homeless Blanket Project
Finished afghan:  124 sts. in each row and 54 sets of tc/sc in length

On-going projects:


39 appliqued onto indigo (that's +16)
3 pinned on, ready to applique
10 flowers ready for pinning
42 other hexies complete & ready to form into flowers

total flowers: 52 (up 15)     total hexies: 406 (up 107)


Grey Hexie Quilt
23 rows (x28) all sewn together = 644 hexies
1 row ready to add = 28 hexies
25 triples,  18 doubles,  86 single hexies waiting

841 HEXIES TOTAL (that's up 75 hexies)


Finnicky Freddy
Homeless Blanket #32
two row pattern - one row of triple crochet, next row of single crochet
pre-wound yarn of 2 short bursts of color, then longer burst of mediium sage
166 sts. per row
30 (set of 2: tc & sc) rows

Saturday, September 21, 2024

72. Storm Child by Michael Robotham

listened on Libby
336 pgs.
2024
Adult Contemporary Mystery/Thriller
Finished 9/21/24
Goodreads rating: 4.26
My rating: 4.5
Setting: Nottingham, England, and the coast of Scotland

My comments: Back and forth between two points of view: Cyrus and Evie, detailing how Evie slowly gets her memories back and discovers what had happened to her, her sister, and her mother.  The first half of the book takes place in their hometown of Nottingham, the second half in Scotland, where the fishing families that continue to be involved in the movement of illegal aliens into Great Britain are still hiding their participation from ten years before....as well as currently.  Good story.  Very well narrated.

Goodreads synopsis:  The mystery of Evie Cormac’s background has followed her into adulthood. As a child, she was discovered hiding in a secret room where a man had been tortured to death. Many of her captors and abusers escaped justice, unseen but not forgotten. Now, on a hot summer’s day, the past drags Evie back as she watches the bodies of seventeen migrants wash up on a Lincolnshire beach.

There is only one survivor, a teenage boy, who tells police their small boat was deliberately rammed and sunk. Psychologist Cyrus Haven is recruited by the police to investigate the murders—but recognizes immediately that Evie has some link to the tragedy. By solving this crime, he could finally unlock the secrets of her past. But what dark forces will he set loose? And who will pay the price?