Friday Joy | Are you surprised that it’s books & knitting again?

Good morning, friends! I hate that I missed posting on Wednesday but I had technical difficulties with WordPress and haven’t been able to finish my Booker prize post. I’m hoping that I’ll at least be able to finish this post without too much of an issue! I’ll keep it short, just in case.

This week has been almost humidity-free and so beautiful! We’ve gone out after school every morning and picked cups full of blackberries. Most of them were eaten before we got back inside, but I think I’ve finally collected enough for a custard pie. I hope to get that done this weekend! In the meantime:

Not gonna lie – I was hoping to shock you all with a finished Junction sweater today but I’m not quite there yet. I’m still deciding how long to knit the arms and am considering 3/4 length because I wash a lot of dishes and get annoyed by pushing up my sleeves constantly. A significantly shorter sleeve might solve that dilemma for me!

You might remember that I had three balls of the main color for this sweater and one was from a wildly different dye lot (you can see that picture in this post). I tried to work around that dilemma by alternating skeins every row and I think it did a fairly good job of masking that oddball skein. You can see where it finished and I stopped alternating yarns, but I don’t think it’s too obvious? What do you think? It’s more obvious in natural light than it is in this picture, so I’ll try to get some outside pictures when it’s totally finished and see what you think about it then, too.

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Should we talk Booker prize? I’m nervous because I have a lot to say about it and technical difficulties always arise when I try to write about it! But I’ll do my best.

I am thrilled by this year’s list! As I watched the release video early on Tuesday morning (there were literally zero views when I pushed play — I think I may have been one of the first people IN THE WORLD to watch it!!), I got more and more excited. I’ve only read one book on the list and it was the very last one revealed, so I was beginning to think that I had read none of them.

Some of these books aren’t available to purchase in the US yet. If you’re itching to read any of them, I’d suggest placing an order at Blackwell’s. They’re based in the UK, have competitive prices, and ship to the US for free. I love ordering from them!

This is just the checklist that I’ll be working from in future blog posts. I’m hoping to get a better post up about these books next week!

❒ A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀- Libby waitlist
❒ Old God’s Time by Sebastian Berry – Libby waitlist
❒ Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein – Blackwells order
❒ If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery – no wait on Libby
❒ How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney – Blackwells order
❒ This Other Eden by Paul Harding – Libby waitlist
❒ Pearl by Siân Hughes – Blackwells order
❒ All the Little Bird Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow – Blackwells order
❒ Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (not published in the UK until the end of August)
❒ In Ascension by Martin Macinnes
❒ Western Lane by Chetna Maroo – will use August’s Audible credit
❒ The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
✔️ The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

I hope to share a more in-depth post about these books soon, but this will have to do for now. There are three books that I don’t have a plan for yet. I’m thinking another Blackwell’s order might be in my future in mid-August. We’ll see how everything shakes out!

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Okay — I must go now. Things are quite rocky with Colton right now and I have to go into Applied Behavioral Analysis mode this morning. I hope you have a great weekend!