Shawl from Paton Lace

IMAG0162.jpg, originally uploaded by fudh4x0r.

80% acrylic, 10% wool, 10% mohair. This yarn has a nice halo but after knitting with it for several hours over the last 2 days, it's sort of irritating to my index finger, which I use to tension the yarn. It is super pretty though, and machine washable.

I started with the old garter nubbin-- cast on 3, knit 6 rows, turn 90degrees and pick up 3, turn 90degrees and pick up 3 more. Then some exploding increase rows with the old KFB. Pattern started once I got a good half moon:

It's stockinette stitch with 3 stitches in garter on each side. When this is blocked (with steam on account of the acrylic) that garter stuff will be the top edge.

Increases are on every other knit row, 10 KFBs, evenly spaced

I'm throwing in eyelet rows on the knit side about every 8 rows. Like a fool, I decided to do the decreases differently on each half of the rows. K2tog on first side, KRS on the other. My K2tog leans to the right. KRS, which leans to the left is made by Knitting a Stitch, Returning to Right Needle, Slipping the Second Stitch over. So it goes for the left handed mirror knitter.

To make a neater edge along the sides I knit the last stitch twisted-- for me that is through the front loop, but for standard knitters that is through the back loop. Then after I turn the work, I slip with the yarn in front, move the yarn to the back and continue in pattern. I can't believe how much I was bungling that for YEARS.

I am considering a picot bind off. . . .but that is a few days off yet.


I have another skein of this yarn and I don't think this shawl will require it, so I'm planning a lengthwise feather and fan scarf for myself.

Organic Cotton Scarf

IMAG0157, originally uploaded by fudh4x0r.

I hope this means I've linked my blog to flickr correctly. Considering that I don't know how to turn pandora off when I use it on my droid, I don't hold out a lot of hope. I am remarkably lazy about learning to use technology if I'm not getting paid for it. I could be learning knitting instead! Or a new recipe. Or reading some genre fiction.

Cheers!

Cotton Scarf

This is my latest finished object: a scarf knitted lengthwise from knit picks sport weight organic cotton. It's a nice cotton, not too hard on the hands. I like the natural shades of the yarn.

Books 5 and 6: My Lord and Spymaster and Forbidden Rose

I also read these two books while sick last week. I really should have had a fainting couch. I was that pathetic.

I would not say the particulars of these books are any more realistic than book 4, which I panned. However, these were very compelling. The suspense and danger were paced with near perfection. The tension in the relationships was great without the hero having to be an insulting dickhead. I so despise the 80s style alpha hero. These guys were wicked smart, as were the heroines. They were quick thinkers, rugged, good at manly stuff without being dumbass macho pigs. That's a fine balance in books and real life.

Book 4: Scandal of the Year

This book was a sidebar ad on Smart Bitches. It was one of 3 books I read last week when I was sick. Bronchitis bites it. Hero had a stick up his butt. Heroine was Victorian Emo. Eh. There were some good scenes, but the overall conflict keeping the two apart was . . . lacking something. It wasn't that I don't believe that women got divorced from rotten husbands in that day. But the husband was so ridiculously villainous, he may as well have twirled his mustache.

The Week In Review

I have to send weekly updates at work on a project basis. I'm almost in the habit. Well, I would be if not for the fact that they are due to be emailed on Thursdays and I have 8.5 hours total meetings scheduled on Thursdays.

Jason's Aunt Doyle passed away, so he's out of town. Aunt Doyle was great. We will really miss her humor.

We haven't made much traction on the house. We did get the tree down. And I hired someone to make a run to the landfill with the old drain stack pipe, the old dishwasher, the old water heater, and some other old house debris. Now we can make more debris. I think the replacement windows for the basement would be great to work on, but I'm not the project manager. I'm just the minion!

I am keeping up with the laundry still, and it's such a relief to know that there are school shirts and socks and underwear every morning. I do have a little pile of mending to do and will probably tackle that today.

Speaking of mending, I FINALLY seamed the Baby Surprise Jacket and put on some buttons. It's . . . enormous. It would fit a 3 yr old. Trouble is, I don't know any 3 yr old boys. It's a very boy sort of color scheme. I will get a pic up on flickr today. This is my favorite part of the droid-- I can upload photos without finding some stupid usb cord.

I found a list of the books I read last year and didn't review! Then I lost it again! I did read Jane Eyre, which I'd never read before. I really liked it a lot, but I honestly wonder if Mrs. Rochester wasn't gaslighted by Mister Rochester.

The prototype shawl continues along. I am not sure which way to go with the Real Yarn. I may take the Citron and put different stitch patterns in lieu of the ruched bands. I read about Crazy Lace on ravelry, but cannot find a copy of it anywhere for less than $70. No. Just. . . .No. Apparently it is a way to knit lace without charts or instructions. I am dubious. There is a rav group, but they don't have much to say that is useful-- it's all adoration for the designer. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I just need actual information.

As it is the time of year when I often have a little windfall at work, I ordered Vogue Stitchionary 2: Cables,
2-at-a-time Socks, and Sock Yarn One-Skein Wonders. I really want to also get Stephen West's delightful pattern Clockwork. Of course, since I want to make it in Knit Picks City Tweed DK which I do not have in stash, I will have to get medieval on some other stash busting projects in order to buy the yarn. Note-- I have added the knit meter gadget to the sidebar.

First Finished Objects of 2011

An acid green cowl for my coworker Stacy. Ravelry pattern is Ruched Cowl and it's free! I only used the smaller sized needles and it was plenty ruchey. It was a fun knit. She loves it!

Too bad that STUPID BLOGGER won't actually upload my damn picture. You'll just have to click the link.

There is another dumb bathroom shot of me in the hat I made for my other coworker, who had to fly up from Argentina in order to test unmasked data for me. It's summer there and of course, totally vile here. I finished this last night and errr, he flew home this morning. Sadly my droid is not uploading pics to flickr anymore. It's probably user error. I'm not reading a manual for a damn phone.

As it happens, I have 2 knitting related resolutions this year. I resolve to replace yarn at only half the rate I knit it. I further resolve that my yarn depletion method is not going to be FIFO or LIFO but instead will be cost based. I have several skeins of Supah Fancy Stuff that I really want to show off. And let me tell you, I've learned that anyone can appreciate a fantastic scarf but if you try to get people to pet a skein of yarn they just think you're off your rocker.

Book 3: Feeling Sorry For Celia

This is a young adult book in the epistolary form, where some of the letters are real and some are from pretty funny imaginary societies. Elizabeth, the heroine has a completely out of control BFF named Celia, and a great penpal in a nearby school-- Christina. I believe that this was one of the recommendations I got when I looked for similar titles to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

I really liked that in this teen book, teens actually HAVE SEX. Because let's face it, in real life, they do HAVE SEX. I also like that this book talks about consequences- emotional and otherwise.

There were a couple of unlikely twists that I didn't care for, regarding Elizabeth's dad and his new family.

Book 2: Seven Nights To Forever

I must say, I am always dubious about happy endings for couples where one of them starts as a whore. The book was ok, but I agree with the commenter on the Smart Bitches site who wondered why the hero didn't exercise his rights as a husband on the bitch he married. If anyone deserved The Mrs. Rochester Treatment, it was whatshername.

Book 1: The Spymaster's Lady

I did read additional books last year, but I just couldn't be arsed to write reviews of them. 2010 got a lot less pleasant there for a while, mostly due to work. (My new year's resolution for work is No Crying At Work. So far, I've kept it, but I did have to take a brisk walk a couple of times and there have been more cocktails in my evenings.)

Book 1 of this year was Joanna Bourne's The Spymaster's Lady. Pretty fun read, I must say. I loved how completely brilliant and wily Annique was. She kicked all sorts of ass, physically and mentally. I do like that in a heroine. I didn't much care for the Startling Conclusion About Her Mysterious Parents.

DIY = GFYS

We are still working on the house in the hopes we can move to some place larger. We currently, by code, have about 900 sq. Our basement and much of our bedroom is nonconforming. We are still putting a bit of work into the basement because while the ceiling clearance is about 2 inches shy of conforming, it's still a useful space.

Jason and I were discouraged to see that several houses are being listed for about 88% of what we hope to get for our place. I suspect some of the properties are rentals being dumped. Jason says our garage is going to be a big selling point, as we have a 2 car detached and many houses in our zipcode don't have garages at all, and most of the ones that do have 1 car. I am not sure that will make the entire difference. We do have newer vinyl siding and windows, making the place a little greener and also quieter.

I am so very sick of the construction. We have tools all over the place. We spend great wads of cash at home improvement stores. We fight and fight during the work. I cannot really start talking about how miserable working on the house makes me because a.) words fail me and b.) no one wants to hear that random babble of whining. I have come to believe that old houses are like casinos-- the house always wins. The House Always Wins.

We do have mad-equity due to our shorter term loan, so staying and enjoying the economic freedom is not off the list of possibilities. It's a first world sort of problem, not being able to sell your house for enough money to buy twice as much square footage. I wouldn't mind though having a kitchen where I could comfortably feed 8 to 12 people and a finished basement where the boys could have sleepovers.

Book 34: Medium Raw

I finished this some time ago and forgot to review it. I was only reminded of my lack of documentation because I had a sex dream about the author that was so shockingly filthy that I apologized to my husband the next day. I will not be blogging that.

Medium Raw is another installment from Anthony Bourdain. He has developed a better focus for his punk-rock rage and learned to apply compassion sparingly but appropriately. I both loved and hated his chapter on McDonalds. Well, I hated myself for the rather unpleasant amount of fast food I get for the kids. I have cut down though since we got a pizza place near us that always has cheese pizzas ready to go. I would dearly love to send my kids to uncle Tony's for a week so he could break them down. Picky little creeps.

Edited to add that this was in my drafts folder and I just never got around to posting it. Sigh. Rough year for writing.

Book 25 - Book 33

So about 2 months ago, I got a promotion at work so work got busier. Then J and I decided we have had enough with our tiny house of eternal improvements. Work has been frantic. Home has been full of drywall dust and decluttering. I have a few post-its on one of my two desks at home with some scribbly notes about the books I've read in July and August. I'll be damned if I can find them.

Here is a list extracted from my pisspoor memory:

Book 25: Surrender of a Siren by Tessa Dare. Grade C. Decided to forgo the 3rd in this set.
Book 26: Succubus Shadows, by Richelle Mead. Grade B-, time to wrap up the series, I think.
Book 27: Werewolf Smackdown, by Mario Acevedo. Grade B+, sort of a downer ending, but action packed.
Book 28: Mapping of Love and Death, by Jacqueline Winspear. Grade C+, just lacked a certain something in terms of the mystery, but the action in Maisie's life is good stuff in this one.
Book 29: Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, by Alison Arngrim. Grade A-, so much fun to read. Arngrim has a great outlook on life despite some rough times. I admire her humor and her spirit a great deal.
Book 30: The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein. Grade B. It's a dog book and we all know how it ends in dog books. The last time I read a dog book, I had never had a dog before. Now I have Barkimedes and this was a hard, hard read. Sniff.
Book 31: Other People's Love Letters, edited by Bill Shapiro. Grade A- Some very touching letters, some painful, and some bugfuck crazies.
Book 32: Twice Tempted by a Rogue, Tessa Dare. Grade B-
Book 33: Three Nights With a Scoundrel, by Tessa Dare. Grade C-. Sort of dreadful, really.

So here it is, week 36 and I am 3 books behind schedule.

The house is nearly sellable though. I packed up an entire carload of books and took them to the Omaha Public Library. I have taken about 3/4 of a carload of clothes to the Goodwill. I need to continue to purge. Apparently, you have to make your house look like you have not outgrown it in order to sell it. The people who buy our house should be so lucky as to have their lives expand to overflowing like our life has. We came in as two people and three cats. Now we are four people, two cats, and a hobo-dog. (RIP Melee, you were a good kitty, in your way.) It will be hard to leave behind the house where we made our kids.

In the last 10 years, we have gutted and redone the kitchen and bath. We ripped out a lot of disgusting carpet and redid the wood flooring underneath. We did vinyl siding, insulation, and new windows on the house. Siding and a new roof on the garage. We are repairing a few areas of drywall, installing a new waste stack, hanging gutter heaters, and freshening up the paint. So if you know anyone in Benson looking for a starter home, they would be lucky to get the place.

Book 24: Sweater Quest

In this book Adrienne Martini knits a sweater by the Crazy Scottish Lady Who Sues People. I find it interesting which projects and yarns consume different knitters. I can certainly appreciate how much thought and work went into the design of this sweater but I find it unattractive and shapeless.

Martini has done a lot of research about The CSLWSP, fair isle knitting, wool, the Tudors, and Scotland. Of course, your average sweater project doesn't involve this much research. Generally, you rummage through the yarn store or your accumulated stash and then look at patterns on ravelry or in your favorite pattern book and then you knit it up. Martini had a book deal. Which is an ingenious way of writing off one's stash as a business expense. HATS OFF!

I would highly recommend that the confused spouses, domestic partners, coworkers and general acquaintances of the yarn obsessed pick this up. It will help you understand your knitterly loved one.

Book 23: Ten Things I Love About You

I've lost my notes on this one. It is rather telling that without them, I am hard pressed to write a review. Very lukewarm reaction all around from me. I normally like Quinn's books because they don't have a lot of life threatening danger in them and the characters have sort of normal neuroses and petty quarrels. I read this while sick-- which I was for about two weeks. Also, while there are no library stickers on this book, I don't remember buying it. So I am not sure how it got in my hands.

Book 22: Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs

I was home sick for a bit this week and turned to some light reading when my head was too hurty to knit. In two days, I didn't even complete 2 rounds on the Pinwheel! So I picked out of my library stack this book by Molly Harper. The heroine is Jane Jameson (no, not like the porn star: JANE), a recently unemployed librarian whose severance package was a gift certificate to Shenanigans. That's just harsh. Unlike Electric Lemonades and Mudslides. She drinks away her severance, and climbs into her clunker only to have it break down on the side of the road. After Jane gets out to walk, she is mistaken for a deer by a road hunting driver who is even drunker than she. And along comes the mysterious guy from the bar, offering a cure for what ails her. I am deeply disappointed that Gabriel, our vampire hero, would drink at Shenanigans. Or any brass-and-fern place where the staff wears Pieces of Flair.

Jane rises 3 days later with the Unholy Thirst and no clear picture of what has happened to her. She is in different clothes and Gabriel's bed. Naturally, she freaks and runs to her home. Her ancestral home has a name and the sort of Southern Gothic charm that is probably not as common in the actual South as it is in the Fictional South. Everyone in books lives in spacious, charming old places that drip in moss instead of big old places that are hot as hell in the summer and leaky in the rainy season. When Jane gets home she finds her BFF, Zeb and almost feeds off of him.

Thankfully, Gabriel is a little stalkery-- he follows her home, rescues Zeb, tells a cautionary tale and then wipes Zeb's memory on the way home. MAN, I wish I could wipe peoples' memories. Or boost my own. Either way. Oh, and vampires have a variety of ancillary powers here. Strength, speed, heightened senses, blah blah blah. The set up of the vampire code in each series is a bit tedious. Fortunately, Jane has the Welcoming Committee basket, with a guide book even. And Jane has a roommate-- the ghost of her kooky grandmother. So, let's see we have Neophyte Vampire, Broody Sire Vampire, Naive Human Sidekick, Kooky Ghost. Don't worry, meddlesome family and surprise Werewolf will be along before you know it.

So Jane begins to settle in to her new life. She hangs out with Missy, the matchy matching realtor vampire. She meets a nice volunteer donor named Andrea. Jane even goes to Walmart where she gets some super sunblock, synthetic blood, and super vampire vitamins. She debates whether or not to come out to her family. Yes, this book takes place in a world where Vampires are Out. Meh.

It soon becomes obvious though that someone is out to get Jane. She fights with a guy in a bar and he ends up dead. Someone scrawls mean stuff on her car. Everyone thinks she's sleeping with Dick Cheney. Not that Dick Cheney. The Vampire Dick Cheney. No, the one with the gambling problem, the inappropriate banter, and the thirst for blood. Turns out that Dick was a buddy of Gabriel's back in the day. Gabriel was turned and then cast aside by his family. Several years later, a vampire turned Dick so that he'd be assured of being paid back on a gambling debt. Frankly, I find Dick more interesting than Gabriel. I am a big fan of inappropriate banter.

Jane's worsening reputation finally gets her called up before the Vampire Skull and Bones Club. When her enemy is unmasked, it's not a big surprise, and the reason was sort of boring and pedestrian. The Fight to the Death is pretty funny though. Since this is a series, you know Jane wins, right? She also comes out to her family with mixed results.

I am told by my coworker, who is an expert in the vampire contemporary, that there are 3 books in this series. I think that is about enough time to spend on these characters. I will probably check out the others eventually. However, since I haven't finished the Bloody trilogy about the Nazi-vamps, don't hold your breath waiting for more reviews. This was a light read, and pretty funny. Not a lot of sex, but it was umm. . . avidly described. I wouldn't go so far as to call it graphic.

Book 21: Ghosty Men

Franz Lidz has intertwined the stories of the Collyer Brothers and his uncles. The Collyer brothers, Langley and Homer were New York City's most famous hoarders. The whole Collyer family had moved into Harlem in 1909-- right at the end of the housing boom there. Their father, Dr. Collyer moved out, or was crowded out and left to their own devices the bothers and their mother went Hoarder Wild.

When Homer was found dead in their home in 1947, over 130 tons of rubbish surrounded him. His younger brother, Langley, was nowhere to be found. The boys had long been media curiosities and rewards were offered by the major papers of New York City. Sixteen days after Homer was found, a workman removing garbage found the body of Langley. He had been pinned and smothered under a booby-trapped pile of junk.

Lidz's four uncles were varying flavors of crazy. Obsessive compulsive, paranoid, agoraphobic. I found it unsettling that Lidz dismisses the seriousness of their conditions and is further dismissive of pharmaceuticals to help treat those conditions. Not just unsettling: irresponsible, judgeworthy, crazy in its own way. He's pretty clearly reshaping their problems in a way that makes it tolerable for him to remember his uncles. People don't collect suitcases full of baggies because it makes them happy. They don't hoard shoelaces because it brings them joy. People hoard and keep and collect and squirrel away stuff, meaningless stuff because it helps them push away anxiety. It dampens a fire of misery that springs up out of smoke and nothing and mixed up brain chemistry instead of from some explainable event. If there was just an event, time would heal it, right? But this soup of crazy that afflicts people may as well be left under the pillow by the monster under the bed. And it's my second-hand understanding that long stays in asylums are not like relaxing vacations.

It's called Mentally ILL, not Mentally Awesome. And another thing! Pharmaceuticals are not the easy way out, or a way of making eccentrics conform. For FUCKS SAKE! They don't even make you feel high! If you're lucky, maybe there is a med that works for you. Maybe they make you feel like getting out of bed in the morning is not an insurmountable task with no conceivable reward. Suddenly, you could be able to be out in the world. Maybe the right pill will keep your brain from spinning out anxieties in the middle of the night like tops run by a monkey on crack.

So, if you read this book, or another book or see a movie where mental illness is sort of shrugged off as quirkiness (I could start a list here, but I won't. You're welcome.)I hope you SNORT DERISIVELY at that crap. Because it's not fun like a collection of vintage hats. It pretty much sucks.

Round and Round She Goes

I'm knitting another pinwheel blanket. I just love the way these things look. Babies-- ROUND. Baby Blankets-- MYSTERIOUSLY RECTANGULAR. There is not much difference between a Pi Shawl and a Pinwheel. They are both more based on guidelines than rules. Very good for knitters who like to improvise, who don't like to follow patterns or who can't read patterns.

Last year I made a pinwheel in Knit Picks Swish Bulky, about 650 grams of yarn total. There were stripes of increasing widths alternating in melon and cypress green. I had 12 evenly spaced increase stitches (yarn-overs) in the even rows. I bound it off with an applied i-cord. That bind off about killed me. It took several hours only to end with a kitchener stitch.* Pinwheel 2009 was a bit ripply when done, but blocked out as flat as central Nebraska. The yarn did shed a lot in the first wash. The only pictures of it are on someone else's facebook page, because I'm a tool. I may bogart one for flickr. I am curious how the blanket has endured baby's first year and have sent an email for more info.

I am making the Pinwheel 2010 of Hobby Lobby's I Love This Yarn, which is worsted weight, using about 22 ounces of yarn. I chose the Autumn Stripes colorway, because it goes with Baby T's crib set. It is hard to find a machine washable striping colorway in heavier yarn. I just cannot face the number of stitches a sock-weight blanket would require. No. Way. I started with 8 evenly spaced increases (also yarn-overs), right before some white stitch markers, in the even rows. On the non-increasing rows, I knitted the yarn-overs to twist them. (For me, this is through the front leg, for conventional knitters it would be through the backleg). This creates a nice ridge for the increases without as much of a hole as a yarn-over knitted in the usual way. Then after 24 increase rows, I added 4 more but on the odd rows, between every other pair of white markers, these marked with green. After 18 of those increase rows, I added 4 more between the unsplit pairs of white markers, these marked with blue markers. So now there are 8 increases in each row. I thought this would help flatten the blanket. Since it is acrylic, I don't want to have to steam block. (Bawk! Bawk!)I may modify the modifications next time. I would keep all the increases on the even rows so that I could sail through the odd rows. I would go from 8 increases to 12 increases sooner so that my move to 16 was a little more balanced. However, my big modification for next time is that I am going to make a super long i-cord and then pick up and knit in an inward spiral. I have an aversion to eternal bind-offs.

However, I have another entire skein of yarn to go on this blanket before I dive into another blanket. The baby is due in 6 weeks and I think if I keep on with a round a night, I shall be ok. Granted, a round on this thing is now almost an hour long process. I will NOT be doing another i-cord bind off. Probably a crochet bind off. I am deeply irritated by the fact that in 4 skeins thus far I have found FIVE KNOTS. That is some poor QA at the Hobby Lobby Factory.

*You know how many good tutorials there are for left handed kitchener? Not many. Most of the tutorials start out with my most hated phrase in ALL OF KNITTING. "Since Knitting is Two Handed, Left Handed Knitters Should Consider Learning to Knit Right Handed." One day, when I've had too much to drink, I will really go to town on my hatred of that mentality and all the teachers and designers who say that. Bitches. The lot of them!

Book 20: Sleepless At Midnight

I barely finished this book. There was a prodigious lot of skimming. The heroine was in a perpetual downward spiral of low self-esteem. The hero, despite being on the lookout for both buried treasure and an heiress wife, just couldn't stop himself from having his way with the heroine. A Major Violator of the Campsite Rule. It was too bad the villain had to monologue at the end. I'd have found that ending happier.

Book 19: Goddess of the Hunt

After Book 18, I went right to the library and got this Tessa Dare title. I liked this one even more than the previous entry. This is the first of the Goddess Trilogy. On the whole a better name. The kids were with me at the library and in fact I had to bribe them to go, as they were totally in the middle of a level on Lego Batman for the Wii. I bribed them with Sonic. My idea of a great summer day: Giant Coke with Lime, Trashy Book, Low Pollen Count, Gentle Breeze. A Regency Great Summer Day: HOUSE PARTY IN THE COUNTRY! With ladies seeking husbands and gentlemen seeking fortunes. Also, there are picnics, walks to the village to look at bonnets and/or ribbons, hunting, and sometimes people get caught in the rain and are forced to make out shamelessly in gameskeepers' cottages.

Our heroine is Lucy Waltham. She's a bit of a hoyden as she has been allowed to run wild by her brother since the death of their parents, where run wild equals fishing and jaunting about outside. She's decided that she is going to marry her brother's friend, Toby, but that she needs to hone her feminine wiles in order to prey upon him properly. Naturally, she hones them on some other unsuspecting fool. Our unsuspecting fool-- sorry, hero! Our hero is Jeremy Trescott, Earl of Kendall. He's another of her brother's friends. Lucy sneaks into Jeremy's room in the middle of the night and hones him mildly. He promptly scolds her as he knows that Toby intends to marry, Sophia of the Giant Dowry. He's all discombobulated. As we all know, from our extensive reading of the genre, discombobulation is the first sign of True Luv. It is often mistaken for agitation.

The next day, the gentleman have a little discussion about What Is To Be Done. Henry, Lucy's brother, encourages Jeremy to flirt with Lucy in order to distract her while Toby snares his heiress. And so, they distract each other's brains out. Naturally, this is a massive violation of the Dude Code, whereby one may not bone a buddy's sister.

Sophia, it turns out, is a lot of fun. Lucy can't help but like her. There's no Chick Code, in case you are wondering. Mean girls often tell nice girls there is a Chick Code. They are only doing that to snatch a guy right out from under you. And then they are invariably mean to him too. I digress. In the absence of a Chick Code, Lucy keeps honing her wiles on Jeremy, and trying to make Toby jealous. Toby keeps dragging his feet about getting engaged to Sophia because he likes being in demand.

Naturally, Lucy backs herself into a corner with the wiles and suchlike. WHAM! Compromised! Parson's Noose! At this point, Henry starts acting like a cross between a concerned older brother and a garden variety jerky older brother. There is some fighting with Jeremy but in the end, the wedding happens and they are off to Jeremy's family home. Cue ominous music. Jeremy had an unhappy childhood. He wasn't supposed to be the heir, but his older brother died. His mother was a big old crazy drama queen and his dad was a first rate asshole. Oh, and all the tenants hate the family. So Lucy and Jeremy have to work their way through the pile of whackadoodle to get to the happy ending part. Naturally, the very end of the book contains the lead in to the next book-- Sophia has jilted Toby and R U N N O F T! That book comes out in a couple more weeks.