If you like colorwork and making socks, then Charming Colorwork Socks is a must buy for you. This book contains 25 adorable patterns, including holiday themes, animals, and my personal favorite: coffee socks. Most of the patterns involve only working with two colors at the same time, so it’s ideal for colorwork beginners who don’t want to manage too many strands at once. There isn’t much in the way of tutorials in the book, although … Continue reading Charming Colorwork Socks by Charlotte Stone →
Villette is such a frustrating book. It’s a book that makes you work hard, and it’s a book that refuses to reward either the reader or the character with a happy ending. It took me two weeks to read through Villette, and I was irritated for every minute of it. However, by the end of the book I felt a weird compulsion to immediately read it again. Villette is a puzzle. An annoying and sometimes … Continue reading Villette by Charlotte Brontë →
Back when I started the Real Life Romance column, I promised to bring you love stories that had an impact on history – but I never promised that those romances would be pretty. One of the messiest and most famous romances in literary history was between Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Their romance was full of tragedy and drama and mayhem, but it also gave us two literary geniuses who assisted and inspired … Continue reading Real Life Romance: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Shelley →
This month’s Kickass Woman is Mary Wollstonecraft. I am sad to say that Mary Wollstonecraft never, to my knowledge, literally kicked anyone in or on the ass, although I’m happily writing fanfic in my head in which Wollstonecraft spends her days beating up her oppressors with Regency English Kung Fu. In real life, Mary was a kickass woman in the sense that she insisted on living her life on her own terms, she was a … Continue reading Kickass Women in History: Mary Wollstonecraft →
One of my favorite weekends of the entire year is the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival. I save my yarn shopping money just for this weekend and make plans to go with my fiber-inclined friends. Sheep and Wool Festivals (there’s one for NY and MD too) are different than yarn shows and cons. One of the reasons I love Sheep and Wool Festivals is that you get to experience the process of fiber arts from … Continue reading Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival Recap →
Add a dash of whimsy to your knitted socks as you work your way through this colorful collection of patterns. While stranded colorwork can seem intimidating at first—especially on such a small accessory!—beginners to both knitting socks and colorwork are in good hands, as prolific knitwear designer Charlotte Stone walks you through all her most helpful tips, tricks and techniques. You’ll learn how to carry your yarns with proper tension, choose colors that work well … Continue reading Charming Colorwork Socks →
Dr. Charlotte Stone sees what others do not. A sought-after expert in criminal pathology, Charlie regularly sits face-to-face with madmen. Obsessed with learning what makes human monsters commit terrible crimes, Charlie desires little else from life—no doubt because when she was sixteen, she herself survived a serial killer’s bloodbath: A man butchered the family of Charlie’s best friend, Holly, then left the girl’s body on a seaside boardwalk one week later. Because of the information … Continue reading The Last Victim →
I should probably have stopped with The Last Victim—a romantic suspense thriller I reviewed previously and found to be liberally dosed with crazysauce. If you haven’t read that review, do so now, because you need backstory to understand my reaction to The Last Kiss Goodbye. The Last Kiss Goodbye picks up almost immediately where The Last Victim left off. These books really do need to be read in order, so if you want to read … Continue reading The Last Kiss Goodbye by Karen Robards →
I’m not sure what to say about the Last Victim by Karen Robards. I sort of liked the book, and I’m sort of shocked I did, and I’m mad at the book too. I am angry at the heroine. I’m not cool with the hero at all. I haven’t been this conflicted about a book since sixth grade when I snuck a Sandra Brown book and thought the heroine was literally ‘milking’ the hero during … Continue reading The Last Victim by Karen Robards →
This was simply delightful. I’ve always wished for Lydia Bennet and Mary Crawford to run away together and be pirate queens. This is not that book – but it’s the next best thing. Told from Lydia’s point of view, the book posits that Lydia is a witch and that her sister, Kitty, is in fact a cat and Lydia’s familiar. In a world of secret magic where every spell has a cost, Lydia must figure … Continue reading The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub →
Love and Fury: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft is one of those books that feels as though it was written just for me. As a Mary Wollstonecraft fan, I’m always happy to see her getting some attention above and beyond her role as the famous Mary Shelley’s mother (Full disclosure: I am also a fan of Mary Shelley). This historical fiction novel tells Mary Wollestonecraft’s story from when she first stands up to her father … Continue reading Love and Fury by Samantha Silva →
