I am something of a binge reader. If a book or a series really captures my interest, I find it difficult to savour them. Case in point: I took the seventh book of the Temeraire series out of the library on Wednesday night, and was done reading it by Thursday night. Coming in at almost 400 pages, that meant a lot of reading in a short space of time. But I just couldn’t stop myself. It’s so good! (I also scored the first hold on the hardcover of the eighth book at the library, which gets released next month! That always feels good, to get that first hold. It’s like winning the lottery.) I did the same thing with The Parasol Protectorate series: devouring each book in a minimum amount of time, delayed only when the library didn’t have the third book and I had to borrow it from a friend.
It doesn’t happen with all books. I’ve been reading Last of the Sky Pirates for a while now, meaning I read a bit and then it sits on the side table until I pick it up again. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, because I do. The book’s world is a fascinating fantasy/steampunk blend, and I’m interested to see what happens to the characters. But I don’t feel the same all-consuming need to see what happens to them as I do with Will Lawrence and Temeraire, or Alexia and company, or Honor and the people in her universe (though I have been slightly disappointed in the last couple outings – didn’t mean I didn’t read them fast…). With them, I stay up until all hours, because unlike many other people I know, reading keeps me awake, rather than helps me wind down to sleep, and I have to be very careful if I do read in the evening, because often it’s, “One more chapter. Okay, one more chapter. Okay okay! But one more chapter!” until it’s three in the morning and I can pretty much write off the next day, and still may not have finished the book, depending on its size.
In any case, book 8 of Temeraire isn’t out yet, and I’m looking at David Weber’s book listing and seeing that there’s a new Honorverse ebook (maybe) that I might go and get, but I should be pretty safe for tonight on the reading front. Maybe. Unless I do get that ebook. Maybe I should wait…
Tour de Fleece is wrapping up, and though I’m not unhappy with what I’ve accomplished, it’s less than I would like. So tomorrow I’m going to try and fix what needs fixing, and then see where I’m at. Today I spun up the white for the final project, as I’d finished plying the brown yesterday, and gave them a wash and full.
I can confirm that some of the brown was unwashed wool, and I can also confirm that there’s a heck of a lot of lanolin in that white Corriedale, so much so that I think I need to give it another wash just to get the rest of it out before I start knitting with it. I hung them on the outside trellis to dry…
…so I’ll check it here in a bit, but I’m thinking I should give it another hot soapy wash. I don’t think it needs another cold shock or full; I’m quite happy with how it plumped up, but I think it’s still a bit too greasy for me to be comfortable working with.
Lessons learned from this exercise: do woolen spinning with completely clean, scoured, lanolin-free wool. Yeah. Trust me on that one. It’s not fun.
