Olive's Blanket and "A" is for Alibi

The knitting: Olive's Blanket by Pernille Larson (Knitting for Olive on Instagram)

The novel: "A" is for Alibi by Sue Grafton

I know this project looks like a partially finished sweater with a bag at the bottom, but don't be fooled.  This is definitely a baby blanket project.

2 or 3 years ago, I thought it would be fun to knit a sweater for myself out of Aran weight cotton/nylon blend yarn.  A friend destashed some Cotton Ease and I had enjoyed making the Flax sweater by Tin Can Knits enough times in the past that I thought I would do it again.  So I got started and things were going fine.  So fine, in fact, that I bought some more yarn in a similar colorway so that I could make my husband a matching sweater.  I think we had just celebrated an anniversary and I was feeling very in love on top of feeling happy with my knitting progress.

But then I got to the body of the sweater.  And it just kept going.  I kept doubting the length.  The fit across the shoulders, which I thought I had wanted when I first started, just wasn't quite what I wanted after I kept trying it on every few rows.  I kept trying to press on and even completed a sleeve before I decided to let the project rest.  

Fast forward to this summer, when people had babies.  Just babies all over the place.  I realized I had been eyeing the pattern for a good while and even though it's written for fingering weight yarn, I thought the Cotton Ease yarn would make a nice summer blanket that would wash well while still looking pretty.

When it feels right, it just feels right.  Once I muddled through the cast on a few times, and got started in general, I loved this pattern.  I made 2 blankets for a couple of my husband's co-workers out of the yarn that was supposed to make his sweater (he is at least a size XL in the Flax sweater.  There is no way I would have survived!) and they were great.  Due to the big difference in yarn weight, I only have to work 3 chart repeats instead of the 6 called for in the pattern.  And while I would love to make this with lighter weight yarn in the future, I am feeling incredibly satisfied that these blankets are helping me knit through TWO sweater quantities' worth of yarn.  My stash is a little more pared down and I am delighted with the extra space--how wonderfully these blankets are turning out.

Look at the seemingly fancy lace!  Look at that cute border!  I washed and dried these blankets on high heat and they're sturdy enough to go to nonknitter homes while looking fantastic.  Making so many blankets with cotton yarn in such a short period of time is taking a little bit of a toll on my joints, but the end result is super rewarding.  And I have to admit, I did take a break between Blanket #2 and #3 with the socks I talked about last time.  After wrestling a big cotton monster for the last few rounds, knitting socks for myself was a tiny treat.

But! I press on.  I'm using up stash and feeling extra practical and happy with my choices.  It doesn't happen too often with gift knitting and I felt like all this confidence and thrift paired well with the novel.

I've seen Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone books on shelves for as long as I've been able to read, and I was probably seeing them before that without realizing it--"A" is for Alibi was published the same year I was born.  But as much as I love private detective stories, I hadn't been all that interested in trying these out until I read this post (side note: I miss this website.  I miss so many websites).

Like I said, I love detective stories.  But detective stories featuring a protagonist who's sensible and self-reliant and talks about money?!  I had to try it. And I loved it.

"A" for Alibi doesn't quite match the tone of most of the other Kinsey Milhone books (I would prefer to never read a romance scene ever, and something about the way Sue Grafton writes them feels out of place.  Or maybe I'm just turning into a prude in my older age).  But it's a fantastic introduction nonetheless.  By the time Kinsey starts talking to us in the first book of the series, she's been married and divorced twice, changed her career a few times, and become fairly well established in her career as a private investigator working for an insurance company and as a freelancer.  

She lives alone, she has very simple pleasures (be prepared to read about so many McDonald quarter pounders with cheese), and she's frugal in a way that maybe borders on self-deprivation.  But the choices she makes are by design.  She's careful enough with her money that she can turn down jobs and annoy powerful people.  What's so striking to me is how content she is with this life she's made for herself.  She has friends, a favorite bar, the world's best landlord, professional contacts, and routines that bring stability to her life.  She knows what she wants and what works for her and she sticks to it.

I love it. I know I've already used the word a few times in this post, but this is a satisfying read.  The characters feel realistic, you can practically see the locales described in the book, and I keep smelling that way a room with linoleum floors and fake wood paneling smells when it's filled with cigarette smoke (but without the attendant headache and asthma attack I get in real life) when I read this.  

I just realized I was prepared to wrap up the post without even talking about the plot.  The plot is fine!  Kinsey is hired by a woman just released from prison for murdering her husband. The woman wants to prove her innocence.  The murder victim is extremely unsympathetic.  There is a lot of drinking in the middle of the day.  There's a subplot about insurance fraud that doesn't really go anywhere but does tell us a lot about Kinsey's moral code.  There's a love interest and some scenes that I didn't want because I don't like them and I didn't think the love interest sounded attractive.  There's a lot of traveling between Las Vegas and the fictional town of Santa Teresa that also tells us a bit more about Kinsey's habits.  Old secrets come to light.  More people get murdered.  People are haunted by regret.  Violence is swift and unexpected.  There's a lot of jogging, white wine, and references to the answering service that Kinsey has because she's a woman on the go.  It's fabulous and gripping and excellent.