Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from April, 2014

What I'm writing in YEAR OF THE DOG

I just finished writing Year of the Dog ! It had a massive plot hole that I had to fix which turned out to be more work than I expected. Here’s a snippet: “Hey, Auntie Nell.” He wrapped his arms around her, bussing her on the cheek and breathing in pikake flowers and shortbread cookies. And suddenly he was nine years old again, and her solid presence had made his chaotic world stable once more. “What are you doing here?” He usually took her to dinner on Wednesday nights, but today was Tuesday. The edges of her smile faltered a little before brightening right back up again. “What, I can’t visit my nephew?” She angled around him to enter his home. “Is this your new house? Looks lovely.” Which was a blatant lie, because the fixer-upper was barely livable, much less acceptable to a neat-freak like his aunt. She also left four matching pink and purple floral suitcases on the stoop behind her. Only then did Ashwin notice the cab driver standing slightly to the side of the walkway. “Can ...

Necessary Proof free ebook novella!

Free! My romantic suspense novella, Necessary Proof , is free on Kindle , iBooks , Smashwords and Kobo ! Originally published in First Kisses , a novella anthology with Linda Goodnight, Janet Tronstad, Debra Clopton, Margaret Daley, and Lacy Williams. After opening his heart to Jesus in prison, Alex Villa has left his criminal past behind him. However, his efforts to take down a gang producing meth in Sonoma have made him a target. Set up to look like he’s being bribed by the gang, the police blame him for the death of a cop. Only the evidence on an encrypted laptop can prove he’s innocent. Software engineer Jane Lawton has been betrayed by the men closest to her, including a God she thought would protect her. She won’t let Alex down, because she knows what it feels like to be disbelieved and abandoned. However, the men after them have orders to repossess the evidence and make sure Jane and Alex take their knowledge to the grave. Can they prove Alex’s innocence before time ru...

Boucle V-neck top knitting pattern

Update: I also did this in a non-boucle yarn at a smaller gauge. The textured patterning showed up much better and the smaller gauge made the tee smaller, if you're interested in downsizing this pattern. Info on the second tee is at the bottom. I had some boucle yarn I had bought for another project, and I wanted to get rid of it. I came across the Summer-weight Woolly vintage pattern by Jane Koster & Margaret Murray that called for boucle yarn, so I decided to try it. My yarn ended up being much thicker than what was used in the pattern and I had to almost completely rewrite the pattern for the yarn and for my larger measurements, so I decided to post the pattern here. Man, what a lot of work! Someone else might as well benefit from it. :) The color patterning of the yarn kind of hides the subtle texturing of the pattern. This probably would have looked better with a solid color boucle, but I'm stash busting to get rid of this yarn, so I used it anyway. I think it l...

Lacy Red Bolero knit pattern

I’ve been trying to get rid of yarn in my stash this year. I came across these two red yarns that look similar but are slightly different. I didn’t have enough of one yarn for a scarf, and while I had enough of the second yarn for a scarf, I have TONS of scarves. So I decided to use both yarns to make a lacy bolero that I can wear over tank tops to make them into T-shirts (it’s still a little chilly here in California, not quite tank top weather). I wrote down the pattern here. I based it off of the Anthropologie-Inspired Capelet pattern by Julia Allen . This is a good pattern to use if you have between 250-300 yards of a worsted/Aran weight yarn, or between 150-200 yards of a worsted/Aran weight yarn and about 90-100 yards of another yarn to use for the ribbing and edging. I think this might look really good with a contrasting color for the ribbing. The yarns I used were a wool worsted/Aran weight (I’m not sure since I got it when my mom cleaned out a friend’s house for her, b...