Once again, at the beginning of the month I assumed I would have more time than I would actually have. This is not to say that I am scrambling to buy Christmas gifts with only a few more days left (I got the final bit of wrapping done this morning), just that I’ve been out doing things and generally wondering where the time got off to.
1. I’ve been doing a lot of baking this weekend. I don’t normally do all that much baking, aside from my little twice-weekly loaf of bread, but as I said I would bring cookies to the family Christmas gathering, this means I’ve been baking cookies. I made the dough last night, and have been baking batches throughout the day today. My regular-sized baking sheet gave up the ghost partway through, so I’ve had to rely almost entirely on the smaller baking sheet I bought for breadmaking. I’ve been able to bake about eight cookies at a time, and given my two recipes have indicated that they each make 40-48 cookies, progress has been slow. At least the place smells great. 2. I’ve felt significantly more holiday cheer this year than last, mostly because I’m actually mostly healthy this time around. Last year, on top of my other health issues, I came down with a nasty cold that lingered for ages. This time around, I’ve only developed a minor cold that’s been more tiring irritant than an illness that knocks me flat for a few days. I’ve also carved out enough reading time to read some Christmas-themed books like Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Letters from Father Christmas, which is a collection of the twenty years’ worth of letters that ‘Father Christmas’ wrote to each of Tolkien’s children that detailed the adventures of Father Christmas, North Polar Bear, and several other characters who help Father Christmas deliver packages to the world’s children every year. These letters are accompanied by Tolkien’s charming illustrations of their adventures. I bought the centenary edition a few years ago. It was definitely worth the price. I also began listening to the BBC audio drama based on Susan Cooper’s book The Dark is Rising, which is another solstice/Christmas-based book that is significantly darker in tone than something like A Christmas Carol, for all that it is a book meant for younger teens. In The Dark is Rising, young Will Stanton discovers, on his eleventh birthday, that he is one of the Old Ones who are born to push back the forces of darkness. As Will comes into his mystical inheritance, he must learn to use his powers and find the six signs before the evil Rider and his minions can overcome the Old Ones and cover all the world in darkness and terror. Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence draws upon all sorts of British legend and folklore which when combined with her beautiful writing, gives us a story with levels of meaning that will bring you back to it time and time again. Hollywood made a terrible movie based on The Dark is Rising some years ago. Ignore that and read the book instead- or else listen to the excellent audio drama produced by Robert Macfarlane, among others, in 2022. There are twelve episodes. I listen to one episode each day, beginning on December 20. 3. I finally gave up on the sad little sock I was trying to knit. I’m going to have to try another method for making socks, because the magic loop method combined with the fine sock yarn was driving me nuts. I didn’t want to pick up the project because I found it so frustrating, and that’s never what you want out of a hobby. So I cast on a new, relatively quick project: a basic kitchen towel.
Sharp-eyed knitters will notice that in the midst of the moss stitch there are rows of ribbing. This is because I thought it would be a good idea to knit while listening to NCAA tournament volleyball games. This was a mistake, though. I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing, and so miscounted the rows I was working on without realizing it until later. Could I have frogged the incorrect rows and done it all over again? Yes, I could have. But I decided not to because I think the mistake is funny. And also because, once finished, this towel is going to spend most of its days folded up on my kitchen counter, so I will rarely see the mistakes. Once the towel is done, I plan to make a basic hat with some beautiful green yarn from a local dyer I bought at the local yarn shop. Eventually, I want to make the gorgeous colorwork hat with the beautiful wool in the kit my friend bought for me when she was in the Shetlands last summer. I am very intimidated by this kit, but I also definitely want to make it, so it’s a matter of building up the necessary skills to begin my adventures in colorwork knitting. What I’ve been reading: The Lady Sherlock series by Sherry Thomas
There are two more books in the series (A Tempest at Sea and A Ruse of Shadows), but I haven’t gotten to them yet. This is a remix of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories with the conceit that “Sherlock Holmes” is an alias that Miss Charlotte Holmes takes on in order to solve mysteries and aid detectives from Scotland Yard. She appears to the world to be the great detective’s sister, who serves as a go-between between him and the world because “Sherlock” is bed-ridden due to physical incapacitation. Only a chosen few know of this ruse, and they help Charlotte investigate the mysteries that come her way and help her to maintain the illusion. I’ve been flying through this series via audiobook, as they’re exactly the sort of series I want this time of year when so much is going on. The mysteries keep me guessing, but the stories aren’t so complicated that I can’t keep track of what’s going on from one listening session to the next. One criticism I have, however, is that some of the books’ structures can be frustrating, as key scenes will be left out of the current thread of the story only to be revealed near the ending. This is meant to maintain an air of mystery, but it makes the narrative frustrating because, instead of being able to follow the clues to try to figure out whodunnit on your own, important pieces of information are deliberately withheld so you can’t predict the culprit. Isn’t that part of the fun of mysteries, though, to try to guess who the guilty party is? Overall, though, I’ve been having a good time with this series, and Kate Reading’s narration is pretty much perfect. The Memoirs of Lady Trent by Marie Brennan
The Memoirs of Lady Trent is a fantasy series set in a Victorian-esque secondary fantasy world where dragons exist, and Isabella Camherst is obsessed with them. As this is not a properly ladylike thing for her to be interested in, Isabella’s desire to go out into the world to see and study dragons seems as though it may be over before it begins, but when the opportunity to go abroad to study them arises, she grabs it with both hands and sets out into an unorthodox life of scientific study, adventure, and love. This series has been an absolute delight, and truly reads like a memoir written by an older woman looking back at her younger self’s successes, failures, and foibles. The world reads very much like a real world analogue with similar politics, but that’s fine with me. You see Isabella grow from a naive nineteen year-old woman setting out on her first adventure and struggling to be taken seriously into a mature woman of nearly forty with a proper career, peers who respect her, and a body of scholarly work behind her. But she never loses her love of dragons and anything to do with them. I’ve come to love Isabella’s point of view and her dry wit regarding her younger self and the boundaries of her society. I also love that this series really feels like it was written by a proper naturalist, as there are plenty of brief scientific asides that Isabella can’t seem to help but provide. I’m about a third of the way through the final book, Within the Sanctuary of Wings, and I’m already sad that there won’t be more Lady Trent books to look forward to. I’ve been listening to the audiobooks, which are also perfectly narrated by Kate Reading. Ragwort (The Eythin Legacy #2) by Sam K. Horton A year after the events of Gorse, Mirecoombe’s new Keeper, Nancy Bligh, is struggling to keep up with her duty to protect the village and its people from the fae creatures who would harm anyone in their path. Her task is not helped by the fact that her mentor refused to teach her so many of the things she needed to know. It’s also not helped by the fact that she is ignorant of much of her family’s past, and the people who do know have neglected to pass on her family’s history. When Nancy comes across rumors that her witch grandmother might still be alive, she takes the chance and heads out into the Cornish wilderness to find the truth about herself and her magic. I’m only about 80 pages into this, despite it being one of the books I was looking forward to the most this year. This cold I’ve been dealing with has been wearing me out, meaning I haven’t been able to read much before bed. But I’m starting to feel better, so I’m hoping to finish this up before the new year. I love Nancy, and I love Horton’s writing and how he has blended local folklore into this creepy historical fantasy.
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Sunday, 21 December 2025
Three Things #10
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