A June Busted Out in Weird Weekly Link Round-Up

I started to call this the Knitting Up a Storm round-up, but after thinking about it, I decided that it didn't quite fit. June was just plain weird. We've had an ice cream truck prowling the neighborhood playing Christmas carols. Let me tell you, I thought I'd blown a connection between my ears and my brain when I first heard "Adeste Fidelis"-- but then it went on to "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "White Christmas." That driver was in the spirit! (Which reminds me... not only has Stephen King totally ruined clowns for me, he's done it to ice cream truck drivers, too.)

I started to call this the Knitting Up a Storm round-up not necessarily because I have been knitting up a storm but because of what I've been knitting. No, I didn't knit the cover for that camper; it just made me smile! I've been working on afghans, and I just don't do that in June because it's too blamed hot.

The days we spent in Ramsey Canyon don't count because the elevation makes it a good twenty degrees cooler. Nope, I've been knitting afghans down here, too. I finished an eight-foot-long afghan for a friend made with a double strand of heavy yarn. (I hope he's not too disappointed when he finds out that it's longer than the requested eight feet...) June is the month when the temperatures normally soar into the 120° range, but this year, they've stayed right around 100° and one weekend even stayed in the 90s-- unheard of! These abnormal temperatures prompted me to start work on an afghan for another very special person who, thankfully, is much shorter than the first, although the afghan is also made of very heavy yarn. You probably want to see them, but you'll have to wait. I'm very close to finishing the second one and once they both have their loose ends taken care of and are freshly laundered, I'll just have to have another edition of While Miz Kittling Knits.

Oh oh. Those links have gone all quiet again. I'll have to go out there and see what's going on. Head 'em up! Moooove 'em out!

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• How sharing books with my dad in prison made life bearable for both of us.
• The million dollar princess and the murder mystery. American heiresses + British aristocrats = Recipe for murder.
• Sherlock Holmes' afterlife in India. 
• Reading New Mexico-- literature that reveals life at a cultural crossroads.
• Agatha Christie and the case of the unwieldy adaptation. 
• The difficulty ratings of trails in literature.
• Tony Hillerman: A Crime Reader's Guide to the Classics.
• The Emily Dickinson Museum has received a $22 million gift.

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• The long-lost Lewis Chessman has been found in an Edinburgh family's drawer.
• Only a fragment of St. Nicholas Church's 15th-century Danse Macabre survives today. 
• Dinosaur bones shimmering with opal reveal a new species in Australia.
• Ancient fingerprints show men and women both made pottery in the American Southwest. 
• Ancient DNA reveals a complex story of human migration between Siberia and North America.
• A hidden water lily has been found beneath a Monet painting.
• A historic treaty has been returned to the Navajo.
• An incredibly rare 1572 map of London has been discovered-- and the roads are the same.

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄

• Why have thousands of puffins and other seabirds died en masse in the Bering Sea?
• After escaping a Kansas zoo, a fugitive flamingo has been seen in Texas for the second time in fourteen years.
• Specially trained dogs help conservationists find rare Iowa turtles.
• A single dragonfly eats hundreds of mosquitoes per day. Here's how to attract them to your yard.
• Researchers avoid "messy" hormonal female mice, and that hurts women. (Why am I not surprised? We may have come a long way, baby, but we've still got a long way to go.)
• The National Zoo's female Asian water dragon successfully reproduced without a male. 
• Elephants use their sense of smell to sniff out snack quantities.

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Meet Jay Matternes, the master muralist who inspired today's generation of paleoartists. 
• Jacqueline and Eileen Nearne, sisters and spies: How did some of the most highly decorated spies of World War II end up spending decades in quiet obscurity?

►The Happy Wanderer◄

• Most of the world's macadamias may have originated from a single Australian tree.
• Sixteen real castles that make the world more wondrous. 

►I ♥ Lists & Quizzes◄

• The five best books about D-Day.
• Merriam-Webster's challenging vocabulary quiz returns.
• Ten facts about Dr. Seuss's Oh, The Places You'll Go!
• Fifteen books that are (almost) as good as taking a vacation. 
• From Dickens to Roth: the top ten novels about pariahs. 
• Five great novels of Italian-American immigration. 
• Eight novels of displacement, diaspora, and the traumas of exile. 
• Spelling out the pronunciation of ten U.S. state names. 

That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure.

Have a great weekend, and read something fabulous!