Cheap knockoff?

I realized I haven't posted a photo of my baby blanket project yet, and it's far enough along to show off a bit, I think. If it looks familiar, it's because it's Orangina:Baby Blanket Edition. You may recall that I abandoned Orangina (really Natural Cherry Soda, given the color I picked) due to concerns about the fit, body type, etc. After a lot of pattern-seeking and more swatching than I think I usually do in a year, I decided on a baby blanket, figuring that 4 Ply Cotton = absorbent + machine washable. I liked the Orangina lace pattern so much that I thought of making a baby blanket shaped-version, just a big square in the lace pattern. But then I thought of doing a baby blanket in squares, with each square a different texture. After doing half a 7" square in seed stitch (on size 3 needles), I decided that wasn't quite right either. So I went back to the Orangina idea, starting with one square, turning 90 degrees, and picking up and knitting for a second square. Then turned that one 90 degrees, and picked up and knit for a third. After the third, the squares will turn in a rectangle with twice the length of the width. Anyway, it'll end up with 16 squares sort of spiralling out. Except some of the squares will be rectangles. Mmmmhmmm. I have six balls of the yarn, and it took less than one ball to make three squares, so I should have plenty of yarn. I'll add a border if I have enough left.

Here's where I am:


I'm pretty happy with it, though my method of securing the fourth square to the first square is a little gappy. Instead of sewing it all together at the end, I thought I could ssk, p2tog with the cast on stitches on the first square as I went along. It's maybe too half-assed an attempt, and maybe I need to just suck it up and plan on a LOT of sewing at the end. We'll see.

Reading: I forget to mention a mystery novel I finished in about two hours the other day, This Pen For Hire by Laura Levine. It was short and breezy, and I've forgotten almost all about it. The amateur sleuth is a writer for hire, who writes a love letter for this shy, awkward guy who ends up accused of murdering the woman the letter was for. It was on the fluffy end of the cozy mystery spectrum, and was fine and kind of cute, but nothing special. I was going to make a snarky comment about the sleuth being a writer for hire, and geez, is there a mystery series for everything nowadays?, but then I remembered I'm writing a murder mystery set at a theater company, so I decided not to say anything. I finished Death in Lacquer Red, and it was pretty good. I usually read contemporary mysteries, so the historical element was a little different, but Jeanne Dams makes the world she writes about very rich and believable. The melting pot she has going is interesting--the heroine is Swedish, her sort-of boyfriend is Irish, one of the neighbor maids is snobby because she's a "real American" not a foreigner. The police suspect a Chinese immigrant, and Hilda, an immigrant herself, feels bound to try to help him.

Writing: Still stalled on 25,000 words. I'm trying to write the funeral scene, and it's harder than the flirting scenes. Yeesh.

Cooking: Still no calzone recipe. What on earth did I write that down on the back of? I made very disappointing pasta soup last night. Too much pasta, the wrong seasonings. Eh, you win some, you lose some.