The Sunday Cardigan and A Room Full of Bones

 

The knitting is the Sunday Cardigan and the novel is A Room Full of Bones by Elly Griffiths.

After a couple of do-overs and buying more yarn, I finished the Sunday Cardigan pattern by Petite Knit.  I made this for myself, in a size Small with Patons worsted and some Shenandoah Fiber Mills Alpaca DK weight yarn held together.  The yarns held together make up a bulky weight, and most of the sweater is knit on Size 10.5 needles, so this was a fairly quick project.  My new favorite sweater style is this type of increasing rib.  It's fun!  

This is keeping me super warm, and the reinforced collar isn't as odd as I'd feared.  The Shenandoah Fiber yarn doesn't have a dye lot, and I got it out of a sale bin.  It's technically all the same colorway, but some skeins were significantly darker than others.  So I used a really light skein for the yoke, and then picked the darkest ones for the body.  I used an in-between shade of gray for the sleeves.  The Patons was the same dye lot, so that evened out some of the differences with the alpaca yarn. 

I still need to add buttonholes, and I think I will replace the buttons with something darker in the near future.  But for now I'm just wearing it on the weekends, either open or wrapped tightly around me in all its fuzzy glory.  

On to the novel!

The plot is that a museum curator is found dead next to a coffin of a famous bishop just before it was supposed to be opened for a ceremony.  But that's secondary to the stuff I care about.

Kate turns 1.  Nelson and Michelle are trying to Make it Work (TM) and Nelson is keeping his distance from Ruth.  Judy and Cathbad are having an all-out affair.  Max returns (from The Janus Stone!) and now he has a dog!  Ruth gets a new neighbor named Bob.  There are a lot of snakes, repatriation, possible poisonings, or maybe curses, rich people being horrifying, a twist, and horses!  And a bishop with a secret.  And drug smuggling.  As always, there's a lot happening and I enjoyed every twist and turn and philosophical digression about bones and history.

The happiest ending is that a museum on the brink of irrelevance is brought back to life a by a rich and eccentric woman.  Or that was my takeaway.  

Nelson almost dies, but then he doesn't.  It's one of those big disruptions that settles all his difficulties with Michelle, and then she insists that he spend more time with Kate. Ruth and Max are dating, but she knows she is not over Nelson.  I know we're supposed to eagerly await the inevitable breakup with Max because he's boring (and not Nelson), but I think he seems great!  

There's a fun blur between magic and science that you can wonder about if you're so inclined because this is fiction and we can do what we want--are some characters cursed, or were they poisoned by mold spores that were released during an exhumation?  Did Cathbad's drug trip to rescue Nelson from the spirit world actually help, or did Nelson just hallucinate a bunch and eventually recover after the mold spores left his system?  You can believe whichever option you like.  I'm just here to see what happens next. 

Judy and Clough have some adventures together and I love it.  They get a little closer and grow as detectives.  I love professional friendships, and it's fun to read about their bickering and investigating.  

For a change of pace, no one's life is threatened by an incoming tide.  And Ruth does not look at a rich person and realize five minutes too late that they are "quite mad." But!  A handsome man saves the day on horseback.  So there's that.