WIP Wednesday and Yarn Along

I was taking some photos yesterday and happened to have my current WIP and a book to hand, so I thought I would take a photo for Yarn along and WIP Wednesday.

WIP Wednesday is self explanatory, Yarn Along requires a photo of the book you are reading and your current fibre WIP, so here they are:

The blue sock is my R sock for the A-Z sock knitting challenge, I am making Rick by Cookie A which is going ok, but is making slow progress, more details when it makes it to FO Friday, hopefully next week.

I have some other knitting WIPs, but they were not to hand when I took the picture since I had a tidy up at the weekend. I still have my YOP kilt hose, a pair of boot socks, a top that needs to be frogged and my sock yarn blanket on the needles.

Bookwise I have just finished reading Shelters of Stone, which is not in the photo, it is part of a series but I have not read the others (picked it up in a charity shop), it works ok as a stand alone book and was a good read, I did think the ending was lacking a dramatic finish though. I would read the others in the series, but probably wouldn't rush out to buy them at full price, at 780 pages it was a hefty book though, so you do get your moneys worth. I have to avoid reading fiction at the minute as I will often read until the book is done, ignoring everything else that needs attention, so a fat fiction book is now a rare treat.

Since I have a personal ban on any more fiction for a while I thought I would share my latest cookbook purchase. The River Cottage cookbook is not a new title, in fact it is dated 2001 so it was first published ten years ago. That does mean it is from the earlier episodes of the TV series, which I much preferred, when it was just one family doing the country life thing on their own small holding rather than a big business with a restaurant and large second farm.

There is lots of interesting information about all kinds of food and meat, including sourcing and growing your own. One of the main reasons I bought it (for a bargain price in T K Maxx) was the cuts of meat are shown for each animal and ways to use them are discussed. Making ham and bacon is in there, which I would love to have a go at. There are some tasty looking recipes too, but I think this will be more useful for the information than the recipes.

The spinning from last week's WIP Wednesday is all spun into a single, it is sitting waiting to be wheel plied, then I will start the second half of the fibre. I am trying to stick to only one spinning project at a time.