Dinos, elephants, and other big news

This week has been great fun, as I’ve been knitting dinosaurs. RAWR! They’re presents for the various little ones in my life. I have to say these are the most fun thing I’ve knit in ages; I keep looking down and thinking, “Look at that tiny dinosaur leg!” and then chuckling to myself. I’ve made them half the size of the pattern by halving the number of stitches – this stegosaurus was supposed to be 30 cm, much too big for the 1-year-old it’s intended for. Also, part of the reason I went for making toys in the first place is that I wanted to use up some of the double knit yarn in my stash.

I’ve not been reading much recently, but I did squeeze in another Tom Cox book, The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society, the end of The Matchmaker, and am currently reading The Sense of an Elephant. Hm, that sounds like more than I thought…but they are all light hearted reads, apart from the last one. Some random thoughts:

• I would like to meet Tom Cox’s cats, but also his dad, because he sounds awesome.
• The Matchmaker was underwhelming. I really wanted to like it, but the plot wasn’t strong enough for me, nor were the characters people I liked. While a couple of lines were funny, overall I thought the book was a bit lacking in something indefinable. There were also interruptions from the writer (ala Jane Austen & the Bronte sisters), which didn’t really work in this context. I managed to finish it, and liked the very last page best out of the whole book. However, I could easily have not finished it & just forgotten about it. I may give Gibbons another go later, but I suspect she’s not for me.
• The Sense of an Elephant is enjoyable so far. It revolves around Pietro, the concierge at an upscale Milan apartment building – his past and his relationships with the tenants. The writing’s nice, and I think the book has a good structure.

Finally, the big news. As of yesterday, R & I are homeowners! We got our keys yesterday and will be moving early next year. It’s not a big fancy house, or anything approaching our dream house, but when we started thinking about buying we realised quite quickly that a period home like we would have really wanted was out of our budget. Yes, maybe we could have gotten one that needed a lot of work, but neither of us have any experience of DIY & we were a little too intimidated (though I personally am hoping our next house, if there is one, will need an overhaul!). The one we’ve got is a sensible house with a good kitchen & enough space for us to live in for quite a while. Expect photos soon.

Update: linking this with the yarn-along.