You’d think that after blogging for over twenty years, writing might come easily. But good writing is hard.

Good Writing is Hard to Do

I’ve been reading two books recommended to me.

• The Golden Thread – How Fabric Changed History by Kassia St. Clair is a well-written and extremely well-documented treatise on the importance of fabric in history.
• Half Double Murder by Marshall Thornton is a GLBTQIA+ murder mystery solved by the local fiber-arts group members.

I’ve finished Half Double Murder and am working on finishing The Golden Thread. I can’t say that I’d recommend either book.

The Golden Thread is the type of book that makes me feel like I’m taking a history course. The dates and facts and historical references are way more than I care to read. I have rarely enjoyed learning history. On the few occasions where a teacher has really brought history to life, I’ve enjoyed it. But even with a fiber-arts hook, I’m not enjoying this book very much. If you do enjoy history, this book will probably be right up your alley.

Half Double Murder, on the other hand, I think is just a poorly written and edited book. The story line is implausible and I didn’t relate to it at all even though it includes many knitters and crocheters and GLBTQIA+ folks. Character definition is erratic and sometimes just dumb. Worst of all is the dialogue. The conversations between characters don’t have any flow or consistency. Oh…I’m wrong, the worst part is that the book has at least a dozen mistakes that were missed in editing.

QueerJoe Confessions

Since publishing The Fabric We Make, I have attempted three or four times to write a second book. Each time, I’ve been overwhelmed by how difficult it is to write something of quality, so I’ve given up. Also, I originally sent out some early copies of and a good friend who read it found a typo that was missed during editing. Fortunately, the book is printed on-demand and was corrected before it got presented to the general public.

I think I’ll just stick to blogging. I find this kind of writing comes a lot more easily.

Current Knitting

The fifth demo swatch for steeking and sewing in a zipper is complete.

I have a total of nine steek-able sections that I can use at the Expert Table. I think I’ll make one more swatch so there will be a total of eleven steek-able sections that I can use in demonstations.

I’ve also almost finished spinning the midnight blue, merino singles.

You can see that there’s only a bit of roving left to spin up and then I’ll start plying.