Yarn Along: "Lab Girl" and a Wizard Scarf

Yarn Along is a weekly link-up hosted by Ginny at the Small Things blog about two of the best things in life -- books and knitting.

This week I made a little more progress on the Newt Scamander Hufflepuff scarf a friend commissioned me to knit. I've got a loooong way to go (I haven't had much time for knitting lately) but I think it's working up well, and I'm really glad I decided to go the route of knitting it as a tube in the round. I'm not a huge fan of the yarn (Lion Brand Heartland) -- it's irritatingly splitty -- but it is definitely the best color match to the movie for a reasonable price. And it's soft, which is always good for a scarf.

I'm doing something I seldom do (not very well, I must admit) -- I'm a polygamous book reader this week! I almost never read more than one book at a time, but my main read (an advance copy of "The Lonely Hearts Hotel" by Heather O'Neill) is in a format I can only read on my laptop (ugh!). So I'm reading "Lab Girl" in teeny tiny bits and pieces on my lunch breaks at work. I'm enjoying what I have read, and I'm extra-interested in this memoir because the author works and lives here in Hawaii! I don't feel I've read enough yet to adequately explain what it's about in my own words, so here's the Goodreads blurb:

Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory treatise on plant life -- but it is also so much more. 

Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren’s stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom’s labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands”; and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work. 

Yet at the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a brilliant, wounded man named Bill, who becomes her lab partner and best friend. Their sometimes rogue adventures in science take them from the Midwest across the United States and back again, over the Atlantic to the ever-light skies of the North Pole and to tropical Hawaii, where she and her lab currently make their home.