Reading away

Well I've been terrible about keeping up with the blog. My apologies. Last I posted I was scurrying to finish some projects by the end of the month and getting ready to leave on vacation. I'll have to do a separate vacation post (sometime soon!) because I haven't gotten the photos off my phone yet. I will recap my knitting progress though (though I don't have any photos of that either).  I was able to finish one of my full size socks and a mini sock out of my Sunshine Yarns Snape. I'm not thrilled with either. The regular sock is a bit to large- entirely my fault. I over accommodated for my slightly large ankles. I'm pretty sure I'm going to frog and restart, but I haven't done so yet. The mini sock is fine, but I think I cut it a little short since I didn't have any measuring tools with me on vacation. Since this is the swatch for my OWL (hopefully) I want it to be perfect, so I may redo that as well. I finished the green dishtowel and I'm currently about 25% on the second (in a nice linen color). I've been working almost exclusively on this because its for a wedding at the end of the month. I'm also hoping to make a dishcloth too, but we'll see. What other projects are still WIPs? My brother's vest still sits about a quarter done. Once September hits that will be my detention knitting for a little while. The only other project that is still on the needles is my scarf I plan on selling. This is nice mindless knitting that I do while watching TV or riding in the car. I am seriously considering perpetually always having one of these going!

You're probably wondering why I'm blabbing on about knitting when the title is about reading. The knitting part did go on pretty long, didn't it? I've been doing lots of reading thanks to my Nook. I realized I haven't blogged much about what I'm reading, so this is a bit of a catch up post. Here are the books I've read so far in 2011: The Mists of Avalon, A Great and Terribly Beauty, Faerie Wars, The 5 Love Languages, Shop Smart, Save More, The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy, The Last Olympian, and I reread Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I wasn't super impressed with the Mists of Avalon, A Great and Terribly Beauty, or the Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy. Mostly they just didn't interest me or weren't the type of book I felt like reading at the time.

I really liked Faerie Wars- its the first book in a series and I plan on continuing it! I think there are five in the series and I want to read the second one as soon as I clear a few more books off my "to read" list. I haven;t read any books based solely on fairy folklore, so its been interesting. The second book is called "The Purple Emperor". I think it might be next on my list after the current read.

 I was sad to finish the Percy Jackson series, but I have a couple other Rick Riordan books queued up. I REALLY enjoyed that series. Even though it was written for a younger age group I still related quite well to the characters and the part mythology plays in the series interest me also.

I'm currently rereading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Katie Couric's book "The Best Advice I Ever Got". I'm only about 50 page sin so far, but its pretty motivating. Stay tuned for a vacation recap and pictures!