April 2022

I’m reading: Uprooted by Naomi Novik. I read Spinning Silver by her last year and loved it; this one is in the same genre and maybe I still prefer Spinning Silver but it’s very good! Lots of fantasy and magic and evil trees.

I’m knitting: Still working on my stripy tank top. I haven’t been knitting at home much recently so I’ve mainly been working on this during long car journeys (I can’t read or use screens in a moving car without getting a headache but also I get bored so I take some fairly plain knitting I don’t have to look at) (obviously I am not the driver). It’s worked bottom-up and I’m nearly at the armholes. I might have to knit at home for a bit then while I divide for the top parts etc.

stripy colourful tank top knitting project

I’m drawing: Lots of sketches at the moment! Trying to work from photographs and it’s very tricky. I can get better results by using a grid but I’m trying to learn how to sketch people freehand. I’ve managed one or two that are recognisable which I’m happy about!

sketches of my daughters, some better than others (the sketches, not the daughters)

I’m learning: How to do more lettering and doodle illustrations, from this course on Domestika, Creative Doodling and Hand-Lettering for Beginners with Grace Frösén. I like the Domestika courses, I’ve done a couple of others (Creative Watercolour Sketching for Beginners with Laura McKendry and Artistic Portrait with Watercolours with Alejandro Casanova). I like how they’re easy to pick up and do bits when I have the time and inclination and I’ve learnt a lot from each one. I do find it difficult to make myself watch videos, I usually have to be doing something else at the same time, something crafty or playing a computer game. I bought a bundle of courses in a Black Friday sale and still have three more to do but there’s no rush.

doodles!

2021 Books

I read fifty books last year!

Reading was another one of those things that fell by the wayside when the children were small. I missed it, but I felt like I didn’t have time, and I didn’t know what I wanted to read. I’d take the children to the library and maybe get out a book for myself but never get round to reading it. I read on my kindle sometimes while knitting but not a huge amount.

In 2018 or so I decided I wanted to start reading more again. In 2019 I started making lists so I can tell you I read twenty-four books that year, and twenty-three in 2020. How I managed so many in 2021 I don’t know – a combination I think of being furloughed for a chunk of the year, and the library continuing to offer free reservations (which I LOVE and hope never goes away), and also the library being open meaning that every time I went to return books I found something interesting on the shelves! Our local library service has also started using Libby, which is so convenient. It means that whenever I’m at a loose end I can quickly find a book that’s available and start reading it straight away. If I can’t get into a book after fifty pages or so I put it down and move onto the next one – life’s short and there’s always something else I want to read. I only count books I finished on my reading list.

Here are my favourites from 2021!

The Wayfarer series by Becky Chambers is actually four books (The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet; A Closed and Common Orbit; Record of a Spaceborn Few; The Galaxy and the Ground Within) and I loved them all. They’re all set in the same future universe where creatures from many different planets live and travel throughout the galaxy. None of them is plot-heavy but the characters are great and the world-building in particular is incredible.

Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren was the best romance novel I read last year. Very fun, with some excellent pining and a great resolution. So good I finished it then immediately read it again, which is very unusual for me! Other romance novels I enjoyed in 2021 were The Bride Test and The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang, Life’s Too Short by Abby Jimenez, and Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert (I read the other Brown sisters books in 2020).

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik is a fantasy story, of the fairytale type. There is magic and fairies (not the good kind) and well-drawn characters in a world that feels very real.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro I only read because the Libby app had it featured on their front page for a book club thing – I didn’t do the book club part but I read the book. It’s speculative fiction, Klara is an Artificial Friend bought to be a companion for a teenage girl, and I love books with an unreliable narrator who sees the world differently. Very thought-provoking.

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey is more speculative fiction! Which I do enjoy very much but tend to stick to female authors. This one is about cloning, so lots about ethics and what it means to be a ‘real’ human being, with an intriguing mystery at the heart. Got a little bit scary for me in places but I pushed through because I wanted to find out what happened.

So far in 2022 I’ve read eight books – so on track for a similar amount this year as last, if I keep it up.