nerakrose

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Current Mood: tired
Current Location: on my Chandler/Joey chair
Current Music: the voices in my head :D

***

Kat Reads Books

Hildur by Satu Rämö - Hildur is the only detective in the sparsely populated western fjords of Iceland, busy dealing with childhood trauma (a mysterious disappearance of her little sisters) by surfing in the freezing waves of the Atlantic and having a casual no strings attached thing with a neighbouring P.E. teacher. Then a local drug dealer and child abuser is killed and Jakob, a police trainee from Finland arrives on a Nordic exchange programme. This was the first of the series that's proven super popular in Finland, and other Nordics I think. No idea if it's been translated to English yet but if you like 'Nordic noir' that isn't actually that dark, then I would recommend. The case is interesting, the characters are all very real, and the book does a really good job at weaving in information about Icelandic society and mythology without slipping into info dumping.

Rosa ja Björk by Satu Rämö - Second in the series, named after the missing sisters, whose fate starts to unravel on the background while Hildur and Jakob get busy with a murder of a local politician. Like the first book, this does a great job at weaving multiple timelines and storylines (the case, but also Hildur's family, and Jakob's custody worries) without getting confusing. The society and landscape play almost as large a role as the actual characters. I've decided that since my own Iceland trip is almost certain for August, this book series counts as like, work related research, which is obviously why I'm moving through it at a pace.

Kat Watches Things

BTS Arirang on Gwanghwamun Square - The Netflix comeback concert which I watched at pushkin666's. It was a spectacle for sure but so lovely to see the guys back and the live performances of the new album song (damn those new choreos). Camerawork was a bit too much on the crowds at times and wasn't always following the singer quite as tightly as I would've liked to see but on the whole it was fire. Special mention from me to the sit-down performance of Like Animals (equal amounts flustering and heart-wrenching, how?)

Stray Kids: Dominate Experience - The concert itself was, as I knew from personal experience thank you very much, amazing and the sit-down mini interview sections causes me Many Feelings. Probably 75% of them are about Chan for reasons I will not be elaborating on outside fanfic fjkdagtwankfmwalnf (please, someone find his off button, I am begging).

Luca - Rewatch but still excellent. Off the coast of Italy, Luca is a seamonster boy looking for adventure. He finds it with Alberto, another seamonster boy with equal amounts of bravado and insecurities. Together they embark on a quest to win the local race with a local human girl Giulia so that they can buy a Vespa and travel the world together. Listen. You will not convince me this is not a queer love story in the making. I have AO3 receipts to prove it. Anyway, this is a love animation about acceptance and found family.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire - Another rewatch. Well, I mostly put it in the background whilst writing. Fun and flashy, the family dynamics are cute and generally I would watch Paul Rudd read the phonebook so... Phoebie/ghost girl Melody had some potential. It was lovely to see the old crew having a blast.

Madame Webb - In the early 00s a NY paramedic Cassie dies for a bit and activates a mysterious power to see to the future, well, a few minutes only, stemming from her mother being bit by a spider in the Amazon whilst pregnant. She ends up protecting three teenagers who will grow to kill the bad guy in the future. Look. I have absolutely no idea about the Marvel canon for this character so can't comment on the adaptation. Things Iiked: found family of women kicking ass, no romantic subplots, the spider aspects not as creepy as I feared. Things that annoyed me: the logistical plotholes, like I'm sorry but do you know how long it would take to travel from NYC to deep in Peruvian jungle and how unadvisable it would be to go there with like a backpack and a sleeveless top. Also the actual motivation of the bad guy was just... not explained. Sure, he was all 'I will not lose everything I've built' and had some cool spider powers but like... Greed? Was that really it? Boring af. I will give the movie a Very Clever character backstory, which I absolutely did not get until like 15mins after the film ended and I was like '...omg CHARACTER NAME'.

The Curse of Bridge Hollow - A family moves to a small town obsessed with Halloween which suits their teenager paranormal enthusiast daughter well except for how she accidentally releases the spirit of Stingy Jack, who then makes al the Halloween decorations come to live. Yes, I absolutely clicked on this because it was Halloween themed and it provided perfect breakfast watching. Fun little family romp, plus Kelly Rowland as the mother. Very watchable.

メアリと魔女の花 | Mary to Majo no Hana | Mary and the Witch's Flower (2017) - Bored and in a new town, Mary discovers mysterious flower in the forest that gives her magical powers and leads her to a magical Endor College where she discovers dubious transmogrification experiments... And also sort of gets the local delivery boy kidnapped. Rescue mission ensues. This was a beautiful animation with suitably unsettling feel at times. The messages of 'you don't need magic to be special' and 'animal experimentation bad' weren't like, subtle, but they're good messages to deliver to the target audience so. Yes. Liked it.

Migration - A duck family decides to leave their safe pond and migrate to Jamaica, encounter many eccentric birds on the way and one scary chef with obsession for duck a l'orange. Adventures are had, bravery is discovered. This was a fun a fun animation, with shout outs for Danny DeVito as Uncle Dan (I see what they did there), Carol Cane as Eron the elderly heron and David Mitchell as Googoo the yogic farm duck.

Borderlands - Lilith a first grade (not scumbag) bounty hunter gets a gig to find a kidnapped teenager on her home planet of Pandora where she swore never to return, since it's mostly a shithole overrun by psychos and hopeful explorers looking for a mythical alien vault... That the teenager girl in question may just be a key for. A ragtag of people band together to fight against a greedy corporation looking to use the alien technology in the vault for nefarious purposes. Including a snarky robot. Listen, this was So Fun, just a lot of smash bang quip. A twist that I absolutely saw coming. Also, did I say Lilith is played by Cate Blanchett? In a fire red hair. MmmmHhhmmm. Also, I love Jame Lee Curtis.

Zootopia 2 - Ahhhhhhhhh. Okay, I love the first movie so much I was a little apprehensive about going into the sequel but happy to report that my heart-eyes for this franchise remain. Nick and Judy are struggling to adjust to their partnership and like Talk About Their Feelings (not like that in the movie though I would say it's Very Open To Interpretation) due to hiding them behind incessant jokes and trying to save everyone, respectively. The plot involves a stolen diary of the inventor of Zootropolis' weather wall and a hundred year conspiracy that saw reptiles banished and becoming second class citizens. The themes of differences are our strength and looking beyond stereotypes are present and accounted for and I loved all the new characters, and the old of course. BRB, off to check if the fandom on AO3 has my back because I need approximately 348290 post-canon feelings fic.

***

dolorosa_12

I've just rushed in to gather the remainder of the laundry, as it suddenly began bucketing down rain. Amusingly, the neighbours on either side sprinted out to their own gardens at exactly the same moment to do exactly the same thing, and we all gave each other rueful smiles. It's that time of year.

I was recovering from a fairly mild cold this weekend (the worst of it was on Wednesday and Thursday, so by Saturday I was just at the stage of sniffling a bit, and having constant nosebleeds), so things have been relatively quiet, even by my standards: no pool, no gym, very limited activities. I did go to Waterbeach with Matthias yesterday, to sit for a few hours in the taproom of the brewery that only opens up one Saturday a month (where we listened to the couple next to us plan their wedding, with much arguing over seating plans and whether or not to have a traditional fruit cake, but general agreement as to the — seemingly bottomless — quantities of alcohol they were going to serve their guests), and eat handmade pizza from the food truck next door.

Otherwise, the only eventful stuff this weekend has been gardening: readying a few containers with compost in order to transfer the mixed lettuce, dill, and spring onion seedlings out of the growhouse some time later in the week, and planting the next batch of growhouse seedlings (rocket, radishes, corn, zucchini, butternut pumpkin, garlic kale, red spring onions, giant cabbages, and peppermint chard). I'm feeling quite smug that we managed to get all this done this morning, before the rain began.

I think I've only finished two books this week — probably not helped by the fact that I spent Thursday in bed dozing — but both were relatively satisfying.

The first was The Rider of the White Horse, continuing my Rosemary Sutcliffe reading with a big shift from her Romano-British trilogy to the time of the English Civil War, and from her resolutely male protagonists and worlds to a female protagonist: the wife of an aristocrat from the north of England fighting for the Parliamentary cause who follows him across the various battlefields as their fortunes wax and wane. As with other Sutcliffe books, it has a very strong sense of place, as well as a strongly crafted depiction of life with an early modern army on the move: the muddy plains of battle, the besieged cities, with their populations' fate resting on the choices and consequences happening outside their walls, but here also with an additional focus of what this world might have been like for its women. The other feature that I've come to recognise as a Sutcliffe staple — the sense of the catastrophic ending of a particular kind of world, and the disorienting horror felt by people as old familiar certainties are cast aside, unmooring them from former expectations and reference points — is also present and correct. The central relationship — between the protagonist and her husband — is an interesting authorial choice, in that it is an aristocratic arranged marriage which opens with one spouse (the wife) loving the other while knowing that this love is not returned, and over the course of the book, and all the pair experience together and separately, their feelings shift and change until their love for each other is mutual, and more mature, being based, at this point, on a deeper understanding of each other as people. In general, I found the whole book very solid, although it didn't resonate quite as strongly with current global politics as some of her previous fiction that I've read.

I followed this with Mythica, in which classicist Emily Hauser uses the women of and adjacent to Homeric epics as a jumping off point to explore the lives of women in the historical record, and in the material culture of west Asia and the eastern Mediterranean, with digressions into reception studies, and many millennia of literary criticism, historiography, and the shifting western literary canon (as well as some contemporary female character-centric Iliad and Iliad-adjacent retellings).

It's a good thing that although Hauser's name seemed vaguely familiar to me, I had forgotten that this was because she had written a Briseis-centric Iliad retelling that I absolutely detested, because if I'd remembered that detail, I would never have picked up Mythica. (In a very comical moment, she mentions her own retelling as one among many supposedly feminist recent takes on Homer's epic that restore interiority and agency to its women: you and I remember your novel very differently, Emily Hauser.) I'm not enough of a classicist or an archaelogist to know how solid her pulling together of the various threads was, but I felt that as a picture of a specific region in a specific moment in time, shedding light on its non-elite residents (women, enslaved people, ordinary artisans and traders) it did a pretty good job, although Hauser had a frustrating tendency towards certainty where I felt she could stand to be more equivocal when it came to the evidence available. When it came more to the literary and intellectual history of the many millennia of human engagement with Homeric epic, I found the book to be more superficial (is it really news to anyone that for most of recorded 'western' history, the male intellectual and political elite were either silent or misogynistic about the women of the Iliad and the Odyssey?), but possibly this is a reflection both of the type of fiction I tend to read for pleasure (I have a 'briseis fanblog' tag for a reason) and my academic background. Ultimately, I felt that the 'women of the Iliad and the Odyssey' framing of the book was a convenient structure and marketing gimmick for what in reality was an interesting and accessibly told survey of the history and material culture of the lives of ordinary people of the eastern Mediterranean (she does a particularly good job at emphasising the extent that the sea operated as a road, and how outwardly oriented everyone's lives were) that might otherwise have struggled to find a publishing foothold.

In the half-hour or so that it's taken for me to write this post, the rain has, of course, stopped, and my laundry — now laid out on every available surface of the house — is looking at me in a somewhat accusatory manner!

zimena

Believe it or not, I've bought my own flat!!!

I can't move in until June, but that's still not very far away.

In fact, I've been searching for a flat for many years. I think I started even before I moved out from my childhood home in 2020, so probably around 2018 or so. In 8 years of searching, and going to look at various places, I've never found anything that felt right. Either, I had to discard it because the bathroom was impossible for me to use, and also because of things like doors being too narrow for me to get through with the wheelchair, or once - when I thought I had found a perfect place - I had to discard that idea because the building had no lift. Or also, I've been to places where I just didn't like the area at all.

Then, about 2.5 weeks ago, just before Easter, I got a non-renewal notice for my current flat. I live in an adapted council flat, and they apparently decided that I don't need those adoptions anymore. I don't really understand their reasoning, because my disability is life-long and static, so what changed since I moved in six years ago?

Well, whatever - the important thing is that I ended up flat-searching again... and I found the dream place. It is:

* Brand new, in a building that's still being finished up as of now.
* Sold for a fixed price, because of the point above.
* Near the main bus line in my town - 5-6 buses per hour.
* A little bit outside the main town centre - about 10 minutes by bus or so.
* Near a shopping mall with basically everything, and also near a couple of streets with things like a pharmacy, a sushi place, a pizza place, and the local branch of the activity centre where my exercise group is.
* 66 square meters - a little bit bigger than where I live now.
* It has two bedrooms. I intend to make the smaller one of them a combined guest room and office/computer room.
* There's no separate kitchen - the kitchen is in a corner of the living area.
* I'm getting a dishwasher for the first time in my life - yes, it's included, and so are a number of other fancy kitchen appliances.
* On the first floor when you see the building from the front, but it feels more like a "high" ground floor when you see it from the side where my flat is.
* It has its own terrace space, which is partly roofed. It's very big - 27 square meters!

I've already signed the first papers for it, and I have a legal document saying that I've bought it. The contract itself will be signed during next week, though. But still - I'm a flat owner now!

The next few months will be wild! I need to sort through all of my stuff from here, and probably through away a bunch of things. But also, in about two months' time I'll be living in a different place and learning to feel at home there.

I'm so excited and happy! ❤️

kat_lair

***

Title: Window Box
Author:

kat_lair
Fandom: Grimm
Pairing: Nick/Monroe
Tags: Drabble, Gardens/Gardening
Rating: G
Word count: 100

Summary: Monroe wakes to the sound of hammering.

Author notes: Spring defiance from under the crushing forces of capitalism = a drabble a day in April. This one for verdande_mi who wanted something for Grimm.

Window Box on AO3

( Window Box )

***

chez_jae

Ladle to the Grave (Soup Lover's Mystery, #4)

Ladle to the Grave by Connie Archer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

In addition to finishing my ‘work’ book on Thursday evening, I also finished my ‘spare’ book that night. It was Ladle to the Grave by Connie Archer. It’s the fourth book in the “Soup Lovers’ cozy mystery series. The main character is Lucky Jamieson, who owns and runs the local soup shop.

As May Day draws near, some of the local women have decided to honor pagan traditions by holding a ritual in the woods. It seems like harmless fun until one participant drops dead after drinking the May wine. While it initially appears that Agnes died of a heart attack, the police aren’t ruling out poison. This alarms Lucky because it was her grandfather, Jack, who provided the herbs for the wine. Now Jack is blaming himself, and the woman’s husband is pointing the finger at him, too. Lucky is determined to clear her grandfather’s name to restore his peace of mind. In the meantime, she’s also helping her BFF, Sophie, prepare for her upcoming wedding. As if Sophie doesn’t have enough on her plate, her estranged brother arrives in town and throws shade on her hopes of selling some of the property their parents owned. It’s all Lucky can do to help those she loves.

There were two plots going on, but they wove neatly together. Lucky is an engaging protagonist, and I always love reading about the food being served in the shop. There is one aspect of these books that nags at me: Jack is a WWII vet, but (as of the publishing date of 2015) he would be about 90 years old. I think the author would have done better to make him a Viet Nam vet.

Favorite line: “Yes, ply me with food.”

“Holding my breath” lines:
♦ She hadn’t realized she had been holding her breath as she stared at the photos.
♦ She shuddered and breathed deeply, aware now that she had been holding her breath.

An interesting story that held my attention. Four stars.

Current Mood: tired

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

I keep forgetting to post about this: we've been troubleshooting the "missing notifications" problem for the past few days. (Well, I say "we", really I mean Mark and Robby; I'm just the amanuensis.) It's been one of those annoying loops of "find a logical explanation for what could be causing the problem, fix that thing, observe that the problem gets better for some people but doesn't go away completely, go back to step one and start again", sigh.

Mark is hauling out the heavy debugging ordinance to try to find the root cause. Once he's done building all the extra logging tools he needs, he'll comment to this entry. After he does, if you find a comment that should have gone to your inbox and sent an email notification but didn't, leave him a link to the comment that should have sent the notification, as long as the comment itself was made after Mark says he's collecting them. (I'd wait and post this after he gets the debug code in but I need to go to sleep and he's not sure how long it will take!)

We're sorry about the hassle! Irregular/sporadic issues like this are really hard to troubleshoot because it's impossible to know if they're fixed or if they're just not happening while you're looking. With luck, this will give us enough information to figure out the root cause for real this time.

pushkin666

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: good
Current Location: on my Chandler/Joey chair
Current Music: Watching The Brokenwood Mysteries

kat_lair

***

Title: Medovina
Author:

kat_lair
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing: Radek/Rodney
Tags: Drabble, Alcohol
Rating: G
Word count: 100

Summary: Radek cradles the bottle with care and reverence.

Author notes: Spring defiance from under the crushing forces of capitalism = a drabble a day in April. This one for verdande_mi who wanted something for SGA and remembered that I was fond of Zelenka.

Medovina on AO3

( Medovina )

***

kat_lair

***

Title: Manual Labour
Author:

kat_lair
Fandom: Shetland
Pairing: Jimmy/Duncan
Tags: Drabble, Gardens/Gardening
Rating: G
Word count: 100

Summary: “What are you doing?”

Author notes: Spring defiance from under the crushing forces of capitalism = a drabble a day in April. This one for verdande_mi who wanted something for Shetland.

Manual Labour on AO3

( Manual Labour )

***

anais_pf posting in

thefridayfive

1. What was the last book you read (or are currently reading)?

2. What was the last movie you watched?

3. What television series are you currently watching?

4. What are some of your favorite blogs or communities online?

5. What social media do you belong to and check often?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

dolorosa_12

This week's prompt was sparked by an interesting conversation with

hamsterwoman in the comments to a previous post, in which we were discussing the extent to which we felt our childhood environments influenced our interest (or lack thereof) in playing board games as adults. And so:

Did you grow up regularly playing board games (either with your family, or in other contexts)? Do you feel that this affected the prominence (or lack of prominence) of board games in your later life?

( My answer )

What about all of you?

chez_jae

Murder by the Book (Beyond the Page Bookstore Mystery, #1)

Murder by the Book by Lauren Elliott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

I only had a few short chapters of my work book to read, and since I’m on the brink of a 3-day weekend, I brought it home and finished reading it last night. It was Murder by the Book by Lauren Elliott, and it’s the first in her “Beyond the Page” series of cozy mysteries. The main character is Addison “Addie” Greyborne.

After the death of her fiancé, Addie relocates to Greyborne Harbor where she has inherited a spacious old home from her great-aunt. The woman left behind many small treasures from her travels, as well as a large collection of old and rare books. Addie is inspired to open a store selling both old books and antiques. Rather than the fresh new start she envisioned, however, Addie is beset by troubles. The shopkeep next door takes an instant dislike to her, both the store and her home are broken into, Addie is nearly run down by a black sedan, and when a local businessman is murdered, Serena, Addie’s new (and seemingly only) friend in town is blamed. Addie’s job in Boston entailed tracking down, identifying, and even searching for lost or stolen books of value, and she begins applying that skill to the investigation.

The book was interesting and certainly kept my attention. I did feel, however, that there were far too many “bad guys” to keep track of, and that Addie needed to get a dog and/or a gun after her house was broken into multiple times. She did eventually get an alarm system, but even that failed when she stupidly left the front door unlocked. Speaking of….( Spoiler Alert! )

Favorite lines:
♦ “You look like you need a stiff drink, not a cup of tea.”
♦ “You didn’t tell her to consult a witch. You’re joking, right?”
♦ “She’s our local cat lady, and every once in a while, she gets it in her head someone’s tried to break in and steal her cats.”
♦ “You have a bruise coming up on your jaw.” // “Don’t worry about me. My mother’s needed a good hair-pulling for a long time. Although, I never realized she had such a solid right hook.”

Holding my breath lines (Yes, lines):
♦ She took in a deep breath, not aware she’d even been holding it.
♦ Addie let out the breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding.
♦ She sucked air into her burning lungs, only aware then that she had forgotten to breathe.

Very good story, overall, in spite of the things that got me hackles up. Four stars.

( Trope Test )

Current Mood: rushed

loopywhisk_feed

Posted by Kat

https://theloopywhisk.com/2026/04/10/gluten-free-blueberry-upside-down-cake/

https://theloopywhisk.com/?p=24229

The post Gluten Free Blueberry Upside Down Cake appeared first on The Loopy Whisk.

https://theloopywhisk.com/2026/04/10/gluten-free-blueberry-upside-down-cake/

https://theloopywhisk.com/?p=24229

chez_jae

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Blackhawks vs Hurricanes

kat_lair

***

Title: Spring Rain
Author:

kat_lair
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing: Nick/Stephen
Tags: Drabble, Kissing in the Rain
Rating: G
Word count: 100

Summary: It catches them by surprise.

Author notes: Spring defiance from under the crushing forces of capitalism = a drabble a day in April. This one for

kitarella_imagines who wanted some Primeval characters.

Spring Rain on AO3

( Spring Rain )

***

kitewithfish

Personal update: I have indulged – I got a Kobo ereader to replace my somewhat elderly Kindle Paperwhite. It has BUTTONS - actual, physical buttons! It’s so nice and the lighting is good, and I am at last free from the Amazon ecosystem. On the downside, a good deal of the fic that I have saved for myself the last few years in ebook form was transmitted to the Kindle as emailed attachments, and so I have a new part time job of saving and converting all of those and sending them to the Kobo.

What I’ve Read
Gaudy Night – Dorothy Sayers – I finished this slowly, in writing, and I am glad I took the time. This book is a wonderful summation of the series, giving space for Harriet’s introspection and allowing her to slowly come to terms with her own growing trust in her own judgment. It’s full of allusion, jokes, and self-reflection. I often fall back on the metaphor of fiction as light striking a jewel – a skilled writer can draw out subtle meanings and highlight contrast by what facets are lit by the writer’s attention. By the end of this book both Harriet and Peter are illuminated. Wonderful book, glad I decided to give the series a proper and slow read-thru rather than just goof around.

Sidebar: I have an exacting requirement about English writers, which is that I want them to show their work – I want to see them thinking about what it means To Be English in their works, rather than taking their Englishness for a universal and inevitable norm, like gravity or light. In the case of Sayers, it often takes the form of thinking about time, about changes, about class, about academics, about social roles, about dignity and decency and what is or is not “done.” This book makes me see a vision of Oxford as Harriet Vane loved it, and I think that’s very worthwhile.

Busman’s Honeymoon – Dorothy Sayers – I am glad I picked this up so soon after Gaudy Night! They are very close in time. This book is fascinating because the beginning frame is an epistolary section from Peter and Harriet’s friends and family about how happy they are to see them married, the middle of the book starts as a sort of cozy “murder in a locked cottage” mystery, and then the ending is a gradual examination of what it costs Peter, as a human being, to send another person to be tried and executed for their crimes. It’s book about marriage, and figuring out how to be in a life together with someone else, with all their scars and foibles, and how to do it honorably, without pulling them into being your plaything. It’s moderately incredible and also tonally complex in a way that Sayers’s earlier detective novels just wasn’t. Honestly, great and nothing like I was expecting.

The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison – I didn’t know this was a murder mystery, and I think that works because the main character didn’t know either, until he was well into it. It’s short and sweet and mostly complete, and delves into a bit of the social reaction to the reign of Emperor Edrehasivar VII aka, Maia the protagonist of the first novel in this series. Orb does not stand up on its own without that book, and I suspect it does not stand up without the Witness for the Dead novels, and since I have read all of those multiple times, I don’t mind. I am not sure if this book is a cash grab from Addison or an attempt at a palette cleanser, but I can't tell if its successful because I can't tell why she wanted to write it. I also don’t think it holds up well against Sayers (unfair comparison, who could??) and I would not have read them so close together if I had known it was a murder mystery.

Sidebar: This is the third time Addison/Monette has linked being a gay man with murder, that I know of. I rather wish she were a little inclined to ponder if there’s something there, there.

Honorable mention – not a novel, but this excellent fic based in Much Ado About Nothing made me very happy – Reprise by Perennial - https://archiveofourown.org/works/26980378

What I’m Reading
The Fabric of Civilization – Virginia Postrel. The deeper we get into this book, the more interested and niche the information gets. I had some background in textile history – New England children all get a visit to a fabric mill and a maple sugar shack as mandatory field trips, and we also got a background in the Bread and Roses textile workers' strikes in school – so I think I am perhaps unusually versed for the average person on the history of textiles up to and immediately into the 1800s. That said, this was the first time someone really explained the mechanism that punch cards looms DO to make the punch cards impact the cloth, and that alone was worth the price of admission. I was listening to the audiobook but switched to the digital text when I realized I was missing the PICTURES.

What I’ll Read Next
Sunshine (Robin McKinley, a re-read)
Catching Fire

Knitting reflections – I just got the notice that the next Sock Madness pattern is a heel-up pattern, not unlike the Hyrde Sokker I recently did for fun. https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/hyrde-sokker I really enjoy this style of heel-up, in the round sock, as I find it has a comfy padded heel and a high instep without too much fussing. My first pair were these Nordwand socks, one of the few times I am pleased I was briefly on TikTok. https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/nordwand-socksI’m kicking doing this round just because I do actually want these socks for my own. https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/whisky-ahoi

kat_lair

***

Title: Thaw
Author:

kat_lair
Fandom: The Professionals
Pairing: Bodie/Doyle
Tags: Drabble, Spring
Rating: G
Word count: 100

Summary: Everything is dripping

Author notes: Spring defiance from under the crushing forces of capitalism = a drabble a day in April. This one for

kitarella_imagines who wanted some Bodie/Doyle.

Thaw on AO3

( Thaw )

***

chez_jae

A Party To Die For (Julia Blake Murder Mystery, #3)

A Party To Die For by Gillian Larkin

View all my reviews

I knocked back A Party to Die For in one sitting. It’s the third book in Gillian Larkin’s “Julia Blake” series of cozy mysteries. One sitting because it was short, not great.

Julia owns and operates a cleaning business. Today, however, she’s helping her sister Anna with a catering gig. The party is for the daughter of one of Julia’s clients, Fiona. Things are going well, but Fiona is stressed because she wants everything to be perfect. Julia suggests she go lie down for a brief period, but when she checks on Fiona later, the woman is dead in her bed. The DI has told Julia to keep her nose out of his investigation, but she can’t help her curious nature.

An okay read. Neither awful nor great. Characters were so-so. Despite how short the story was, the plot at least made sense.

Favorite line: “Why do children’s parties have to be such a nightmare?”

Short and simple, average score of three.

Current Mood: calm

kat_lair

***

Title: Yellow
Author:

kat_lair
Fandom: My Chemical Romance/Bandom
Pairing: Gerard/Mikey
Tags: Drabble, Sibling Incest, painting
Rating: T
Word count: 100

Summary: There’s yellow paint on Gerard’s wrist.

Author notes: Spring defiance from under the crushing forces of capitalism = a drabble a day in April. This one for

pushkin666's prompt 'MCR - Gerard/Mikey – yellow'.

Yellow on AO3

( Yellow )

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Page Summary

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kat_lair - Spring Drabble 10/30: Shetland, Manual Labour
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kat_lair - Spring Drabble 07/30: MCR, Yellow

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