March

Read:

• Learn to Crochet, Sue Whiting*
• Man Overboard, Tim Binding
• Lunar Park, Bret Easton Ellis
• Farthing, Jo Walton**
• Temeraire: Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• The Android's Dream***, John Scalzi

Studied:

• AA302, Block 1

Submitted:

• TMA01 (half)

Wrote:

• "The Collector"****
• "Standard Delivery"
• "Hubris"*****

Learned:

• Triple crochet
• Short row heels on socks

Finished:

• Crochet needle roll (aka practice square of triple crochet)
• Baby socks

Goodbye to:

• Another guppie (Yellow, I think)
• 1 (unnamed) neon tetra

* Key information: "Traditionally the yarn is held in the left hand but, if you are a knitter, you may find it to control if you hold it in your right hand." Eureka! So this left-hander who knits right-handed, crochets right-handed, but throws the yarn with the right hand. (This book made no mention at all of left-handers and how they should proceed and was all the better for it: tokenism doesn't help.)

** Yup, Tor's freebies again. And books are added to the wants list, again. Free books really do work as an incentive to buy. Kinder than being given a chapter or two--which feels coercive (is that too strong  a word? "now you're hooked, pay up?")--and much more persuasive. Those of us who buy according to the last page as well as the first are much more likely to play along. And I appreciate the generosity of being given the whole thing, on trust, and want to reciprocate because I can, even having finished the whole book, rather than because I must, to ever find out what happens next.

*** So, for me at least, being given a free novel as an e-book means I go and buy two novels by the book's author.

**** 110 words, and a whole life stolen.

***** Yup, there's nowt like (micro-)micro-fiction (nope, haven't really had to worry about a 300-word limit, yet) for adding to the list of work completed.