Review: Nymphomation by Jeff Noon

VERDICT: This alt-Manchester-set thriller and urban fantasy is exceptionally well written

This is an exceptionally hard book to review. Not because it's bad – it isn't, it's excellent – but because it's almost impossible to define what it's about.

Gambling? Definitely. It nicely sums up our seeming obsession with the National Lottery and Euromillions, the faith of the poor and the desperate that a game of chance will turn their lives around.

But it's about much more than that. Love, friendship, mystery, murder, maths and the idea that information creates more information – it reproduces, hence nymphomation.

It’s 1999 and Manchester is in the grip of a new gambling game based on dominoes – match your domino with the randomly chosen one to win. One side means a smaller win, getting both means winning big. Every Friday night the populace of Manchester hold onto their ‘bones’ and hope to match the winning numbers. A double six garners the best prize, while a double blank (the ‘joker bone’) is the booby prize – no one knows what it is, but everyone knows it’s bad.

A double six garners the best prize, while a double blank (the ‘joker bone’) is the booby prize

But of course there’s much more to it than that, and a small group of Mancunians are brought together to look at what really might be going on. What does the joker bone really represent? Who is the mysterious Mr Millions? What does all this have to do with groundbreaking yet dangerous maths research from the 70s? And what it the true nature of luck?

It’s hard to go into further detail without giving the game – pun intended – away. Suffice to say this is an exceptionally well written thriller crossed with urban fantasy. It’s part of Noon’s Vurt series, but doesn’t require the others to have been read.

On the needles: Rainbow blanket

My latest project is a crocheted blanket in a rainbow of colours

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I wasn’t meant to be starting another project (I still have a dress to knit and a blanket to crochet), but someone on a Facebook group I'm a member of advertised for sale a pack of acrylic in rainbow colours and my brain just went ‘That would make a great blanket!’ So I bought it.

I knew I wanted crochet rather than knitting, and I knew I wanted granny squares: something plain to show off the varigated nature of the yarn combined with something more lacy for interest. I found two suitable – and free! – patterns on Ravelry and started crocheting.

I knew I wanted granny squares – something plain to show off the varigated nature of the yarn combined with something more lacy for interest

I didn’t know how many squares I’d be able to make with a single ball of yarn, so it was really just a case of getting on with it and hoping I’d have enough squares to make a decent-sized blanket. I wanted one colour per row, and I figured I’d need two of the lacy squares and a minimum of four solid so that I could swap the positions of the former around in each row.

It turns out that I can get two lacy squares and five solid ones from each ball. Each square is 18x18cm and there are eight balls of yarn. That gives a blanket of 126x144cm, which is a pretty good size. I’ve done six of the eight balls so far, giving me 42 squares, of which 18 have been pinned out and blocked. I hate blocking, but the squares do look so much better afterwards, so I can’t help but think it’s worth the extra bit of effort.

Nine squares blocking.

What remains is the decision on how to border and join the squares. I see three options. One, no border – just join. The second option is to join the colours in a strip and then put a white border around each of these before joining them. Third would be a border around each square and then joining the squares. With each option I would finish by crocheting a white border around the whole blanket.

The first option would best preserve the rainbow effect and involve the least work, but the colours might not stand out enough and the effect of the lacy squares could be lost. I think the third one would look good, but the rainbow would be lost – it’s also the most amount of work.

Trying to picture the three options in my head, I think maybe the second could be a good compromise between one and three. A thin white border between each strip should make the different colours stand out and show of the lace squares, while preserving those rainbow shades that really were the whole point of the blanket in the first place. I would then add a slightly thicker, possibly even scalloped, white border around the whole thing. Decision made!

I might not enjoy the blocking, but the squares do look better, especially the lacy ones.

All sewn up: The Jane Deep V sweater

My latest finished project is a sweater that I designed to replace a worn-out but favourite item of clothing

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I recently put the final stitches in my Jane Deep V sweater. This is a sweater design based on Jane Norman piece I bought secondhand. The original was starting to fall apart and really needed replacing, so I took some measurements, bought some gorgeous alpaca yarn and started knitting.

I’ve changed a couple of things. The Jane Norman sweater has this thing at the front that I can only describe as an insert. I don’t really know what it’s there for – I guess it’s so that you can wear the sweater without something underneath, but why design a top with a deep V neck and then chicken out and put in that insert? It’s surely much better to keep the V and then use a different range of tops underneath to vary the look?

The Jane Deep V Sweater. It's very pink, and I'm not sure about the shoulder shaping, but overall, I'm
pleased with how it's turned out.

I also wanted more contrast between the collar, cuffs and hem and the main body of the piece, so I went for a pale pink for the latter and much brighter shade for the former.

It’s taken ages to finish this piece. It really has. Knitting the sweater was simple enough; it’s just a 2x2 rib for the edges and stocking stitch for the main body. But working out the maths to get that V right was complicated. Then I made a few mistakes as I went along and had to undo it several times. I forgot how to shape the sleeves at the shoulder, too, and had to redo those three times. I’m still not entirely happy with how they’ve come out. They look a bit puffy to me, but they’re close enough.

Can anything really be too pink?

I’m not sure about the colour either. I never thought I’d say this, but maybe it’s too pink? Can anything really be too pink? I’m not sure. The size and shaping are pretty spot on, though. It fits really well and I love the way I can change the look just by changing what I layer underneath. A plain black polo neck with jeans and I’ve got a work outfit; a lower-cut lace-fringed strappy top and I’m set for going out.

I’d quite like to make this again in different colours. I think white with black trimming would work well and allow for some really bright colours to be worn underneath.

Overall I’m happy with the result. I think it looks better than the Jane Norman sweater it’s based on. What do you think?

My take (left) on the Jane Norman sweater (right). I think I prefer my version, although I might be biased.

Review: Survivor by K R Griffiths

This novel take on the serial killer plot didn’t quite hit the spot

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THIS is an interesting take on the serial killer story – told from the point of view of the killer. This gives us the opportunity to see how a person comes to be a serial killer.

We first meet Clive Barrett at work. Barrett is the perfect employee for his City bosses: quiet, successful, unassuming, he keeps to himself and doesn’t cause trouble. If anything the only problem is that he doesn’t join in enough, and in fact in these opening passages he is making his excuses and leaving his colleagues to their Friday night drinks. Barrett has other plans for his evening.

Barrett wants to be the most notorious serial killer the UK has ever seen. But there’s set to be a spanner in the works; one of his previous kills didn’t stay dead, and she wants revenge. Thus begins a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Barrett is a fledgling killer; he makes mistakes – the biggest of these leaving his new adversary alive. He tries to learn from these slip-ups. He has big plans. This is a completely different approach to the serial killer plot as I know it. The Dexter series of books is the only other story I know of that takes the serial killer as the main character. I haven’t read these but as far as I’m aware Dexter is already established as a very competent and deadly killer.

There is an awful lot of violence against women in the book. But it’s well handled. It can be easy for such stories to descend into misogynistic torture porn but Griffiths manages to avoid this.

So why only two stars? I don’t think we get enough into Barrett’s head – we don’t really understand why he’s a serial killer (unlike with, say, Dexter). Also the man is clearly a psychopath and it’s hard to have any kind of emotional connection to a character who himself is lacking emotions, even if it's just to dislike him. This is also my issue with Dexter and why I haven’t read it.

My main problem, though, is the ending. I found it deeply unsatisfying and unconvincing. I feel that Griffiths has sacrificed a realistic ending for the sake of a twist. And unfortunately I didn’t think the twist was that good. I won’t say what it is – you’ll just have to decide if you want to read the book!

For sake of clarity, I’m not comparing this book to the Dexter series, just using the latter as a reference.

I received this book as part of the GoodReads FirstReads scheme.

Update: the Jane Deep V sweater

Holiday knitting meant some serious time devoted to finishing off this long-standing project – as well as plenty of eating, drinking and reading

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Well, the Christmas break is well and truly over. Nine days of not having to get up and go to work, of time to just knit or read, of presents, food and family – bliss. I used a lot of it to really get on with some knitting. I’ve been working hard on the Jane Deep V sweater, and I’m almost at the sewing up stage (my least favourite part, but never mind).

Front, back and one sleeve are all knitted up and I’ve already blocked the front and back. Sleeve one is currently on the blocking board. Sleeve two is almost finished, too. I cast on for it just before Christmas and had hoped to finish it before heading back to work. I didn’t quite manage that, but I was close.

The Jane Deep V sweater on the blocking board.

As you can see from the photo above, this sweater has a really deep V neck (hence the name). I’m going to finish the V off with about 5cm of rib in the bright pink. Usually when I do the neckline on a sweater I sew one shoulder together and then pick up stitches around the whole thing, knitting the collar in one go. But I’m not sure if that will work on this sweater.

The depth of the neckline means I’m going to have to pick up a huge number of stitches along the two downstrokes of the V, and I simply don’t know if even my 100cm circular needle is going to be able to cope with that many stitches. If I don’t do it in this way, though, how am I going to make the bottom of the collar work properly?

Design is all about experimentation!

Normally with a V neck, you knit the collar in a single piece, using decreases at the bottom of the V to pull it in and preserve the V shape. If I have to knit the two sides separately I’m not sure how I’ll be able to replicate this.

The only thing I can think of is to pick up stitches down one side and along the bottom of the V, knit the 5cm collar and cast off, then pick up the stitches along the other side, knit the 5cm and cast off again. This will give me two separate pieces of collar, with the first side having an ‘extra’ bit from the stitches along the bottom of the V. This would then be sewn into the edge of the light pink section, covering the edge of the second layer of collar. But I don’t know if this will look as good a ‘normal’ single-piece collar. This really isn’t easy to visualise, so I’ve sketched it out. Badly. The first sketch below illustrates my usual way of knitting the collar; the second my alternative.

The top image demonstrates a 'normal' V neck,
while the above image shows my alternative.

I can see this neckline turning out to be something of a challenge. Even if I do manage to fit all the stitches on the needle, it’s going to involve an awful lot of picking up of stitches and then of knitting all those stitches to complete the collar. And then I may well end up picking up several hundred stitches only to find that I can’t fit them all on the needle and have to undo all I’ve done and start again. Oh well – design is all about experimentation after all!

Rainbow blanket

Despite having several projects ongoing, I decided to start a new crochet blanket. It is winter after all, and you can never have too many blankets

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Given that I’ve already got three projects on the go, it probably wasn’t the best idea to start another one. But I bought some Ice acrylic yarn via a Facebook Group, wool for sale, and felt inspired to crochet a blanket. There are eight balls of wool, each a different colour and varigated, so the idea was to make a rainbow blanket.

Magic Light from Ice Yarns in rainbow colours.

I knew I wanted to create the blanket using crochet squares, using two or three different styles. The main square would be very plain to make the most of the varigated colours; the other squares would be lacy and there would be two per row. So I headed over to Ravelry and started searching. I quickly found three free patterns that exactly fitted what I wanted.

A couple of weekends ago The Chap and I went to Edinburgh for a long weekend, so I packed the patterns, a ball of yarn and my trusty crochet hook. First things first, I needed a sample of each square to see if they were the same size, or at least could be made to be the same size. And that’s when things started to go wrong.

Locutus.

I started on the first square, Veolias Mormorsruta. It soon became clear that the pattern was impossible to follow. It’s translated into English from Swedish, but I don’t think the translation is the problem. The pattern reads much like a technical challenge from Great British Bake-off: I’ve got the materials needed and some basic instructions, but half of it seems to be missing. I couldn’t work out what to do by studying the photo, and even checking Ravelry didn’t turn up any errata.

The pattern reads much like a technical challenge from Great British Bake-off: I’ve got the materials needed and some basic instructions, but half of it seems to be missing

So I had to move on to the next square, Locutus. This was much easier – I couldn't follow a couple of the instructions, but happilty I could work out what I was supposed to do by looking at the photo. The final square was a simple, solid granny square. So having made a couple of samples of Locutus, all I had to do was work out how many rounds were required to make the solid square the same size. Turns out it was eight rounds of treble crochet with a final round of double. Simple.

Solid granny square.

One ball of the Ice yarn will produce two Locutus squares and five solid ones. This should give me a blanket that’s about 130cm wide. With eight balls of wool, each in a different colour, it should be about 150cm long. So a nice size and when it’s done it’ll be perfect for wrapping around me when it’s cold.

All sewn up: Sirdar hooded baby jacket

I’ve got several projects on the needles at the moment, so it’s been nice to finish this one off

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I have finished the Sirdar baby jacket I’ve been knitting for the past few months, and I think it’s looking good.

The finished article. I really like the way this has turned out.

I really like the way the yarn has knitted up. The speckle effect works really well and the yarn is super soft (read my full yarn review), so ideal for baby clothes. This is the first time I’ve used this yarn and I’m pretty impressed, although it did get rather splitty when reknitting after having undone a few rows.

I really enjoy learning new techniques, and this pattern involved two novel things for me: making a hood and raglan sleeves. The former was great. Hoods are so easy! This is good because I want to make a Little Red Riding Hood cabled cape with a hood. So now I should be able to work out how to make one in the right size.

Overall I really like the finished piece, but I’m concerned about the size – I just hope the recipient gets some wear out of it

It’s really just a case of casting on sufficient stitches for it to go all the way round your head, knitting until it’s the right height, casting off a third of the stitches, working a third and then casting off the remaining third. You re-attach the yarn to the remaining stitches, and continue working on them until the piece is deep enough to cover your head. This forms the top of the hood.

Hood detail. Photos by Idoru Knits.

The raglan sleeves, on the other hand, were a bit more tricky. This was down to different tensions, and is explained in more detail here. But after a few attempts I got it right and they look OK. I’m also pretty impressed with my seaming. It’s so neat.

Overall I really like the finished piece. But I’m concerned about the size. I made the 6-12 months version and it matches the measurements given. In fact if anything it’s a few milimetres over. But it seems really small. I know babies are small, but they do grow quite a bit in their first year and I just don’t know if this will fit. But there’s not much I can do about that now. I just hope the recipient gets some wear out of it. And that both mother and baby like it.