Book Review

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella by Stephenie Meyer


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
For being just another way to make a few more pennies off the Twilight Series, this book really isn't too bad. I'm glad that it was short, though. It would have gotten somewhat boring if it had been a full-length book since you know the ending from the get go.

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What's (New) On My Needles: Ashley's Baby Blanket

I've finally started work on Ashley's Baby Blanket. The original pattern is free from The Running Yarn. As written, the blanket is large and worked in intarsia. I wanted to have it a bit more portable (and baby-sized), though. So I'm making it with 3x3 blocks using double knitting to avoid having a wrong side.

The method that I'm using involves carrying both colors of yarn across while you knit a 1x1 ribbing. Color A is used for the knit stitches and Color B is used for the Purl stitches. The nice thing about this method is that when you wnat to add a design to the pattern, all you have to do is reverse which color is used for which stitch. (Example: Color B will be used for the knit stitches and Color A will now be used for the Purls.) If you are following a graph for the image, keep in mind that each block on the graph will actually be 2 stitches (one knit and one purl) so that you get the same image on both sides of your fabric.

I had some hesitation with using the double knitting method for this blanket because the fabric it produces can get very dense and I had also been told that this is a very tedious form of knitting. However, I've found that I really love this technique. Watching the double-sided fabric emerge from the needles is still just as thrilling to me as when I started and, in my opinion, the fabric is a nice thickness for a blanket. If I was planning on making a reversible sweater with this method, though, I would definitely use a yarn of a thinner weight (think sport or fingering).

As far as I'm concerned, though, double knitting will probably be my choice for any color-work projects that I attempt in the future. It's much less fiddly than Intarsia and Fair-Isle and it produces no wrong side. (For whatever reason, having a wrong side on a knitted object really really bothers me.)

Ashley is due in about a week, so I doubt that the blanket will be done before the baby is here. Hopefully, though, I'll have it ready shortly thereafter. Right now I'm just really hoping that the doctor is right and that it is a girl. ^_^

Book Review: Under The Dome

Under the Dome by Stephen King


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I loved this book!! This was my first experience with reading a Stephen King. (If his other books are just as good, I'm hooked!) While listening to the audio-book, I was constantly amazed at the amount of detail that was included in every aspect of life under the dome. Everything from the eco-system, to nuclear missiles, to lists of extensive biblical quotations was researched very thoroughly to create a truer sense of what it would have been like had a dome actually descended on a small farm town.

Stephen King had an extensive cast of characters to personalize and orchestrate, he did so amazingly well. All the main characters were well developed, of course, but I loved that even the side characters had their own lives and traits that rounded the story to include perspectives from every person trapped in Chester's Mill. The ending certainly held no twist (in my opinion), but I think that it was better that way. This book really was one that had a pretty obvious beginning and ending, but the way that you got from one to the other was what made it so very enjoyable.

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