Santa Hat for a Wee Noggin and Listening Woman

 The knitting project is a Santa hat from Warm Hats for Wee Noggins by Glenna Muse and the novel is Listening Woman by Tony Hillerman.  Both were treats.

The knitting: a festive baby hat!  I've made several patterns from Warm Hats for Wee Noggins several times, but the real crowd-pleasers are the Punkin Patch hat and this little Santa hat.  

I followed the pattern, and used good ol' Red Heart because it wears well and washes up soft.  I'm going to mail it off to a little November baby friend.  The pattern comes in three sizes for premature babies and three sizes for newborn, 3-6 months, and 12 months.  I made it in the 3-6 months size because babies go from teeny tiny newborn-sized to full-grown baby in the blink of an eye.  

My very favorite part of the hat is the knitted pompom.  It will never lose strands of yarn and stuffing a pompom with fiber fill so it will remain extra round just tickles me.

This is the third Leaphorn book--and it's the third time Joe Leaphorn winds up being responsible for some white woman showing up where she doesn't belong and you can tell it's starting to wear on him.  That's not the crime, but it's there.  This is my first time reading the books in order, so I'm curious about how long this streak will last.

An old dying man goes to, well, a listening woman to seek a cure for his ghost sickness, but he's not quite forthcoming about what he thinks caused it.  But then he's murdered.  Leaphorn has to investigate.  He also has to look for a helicopter that went missing about a year earlier.  And a rich person is concerned about their daughter being out in the area.  That's the aforementioned white woman who not only burdens Leaphorn but is also is trying to drag away Benjamin Tso (grandson of the murdered man, it turns out) from the priesthood.  I feel as weary as Leaphorn just thinking about her.  

And!  Leaphorn almost gets run over by a man wearing gold rimmed glasses driving a stolen car with a big dog in the back seat.  

Investigating all of these shenanigans leads to a big long talk with the old man who owns the general store and trading post, McGinnis.  The talk lasts for quite a few chapters and I like it.  McGinnis drinks a lot of bourbon and tells stories about old sand paintings, secrets, and generations.

Leaphorn also attends a sing and finds clues about the missing helicopter.  And reads some FBI files about a group of radical terrorists.  I guess just regular terrorists.  There's a lot of build up to the last third of the book, and then it's nonstop action.  Leaphorn fights a dog!  There's fire!  Two Tso grandsons!  Caves!  Hidden stashes!  Kidnapped Boy Scouts!  So much dynamite!

Leaphorn saves the day.  He solves the crime and figures out the bad guys' plan and rescues the Boy Scouts.  He knows where the helicopter of missing money probably is, but leaves that for the FBI and another day. 

This book had everything but Emma.  Seriously.  Leaphorn does not interact with her, communicate with her, or think of her even when he's close to death.  I do not get it.  Page after page of Leaphorn thinking about his place within Navajo culture, a religion class he took as a college sophomore, some descriptions of the sky (those are great!), and absolutely nothing about the person Leaphorn lives his life with.  She's the greatest mystery of all.