Rudi was away tonight and instead of being responsible and getting some of the cleaning done that absolutely needs to get done in the next few days, I opted to while away the hours on the couch with books and knitting. (I’m behind on both of those as well, and, honestly, if you’re going to pick things to get caught up on, those tasks seemed so much more appealing than recycling and cleaning the bathroom.)

I read two graphic novels and started the book you see below on the left:

The knitting is the fingerless glove that I decided was too wide since last you saw it, causing me to rip it back and start over. I’m nearly done with the thumb gusset now, so there’s a possibility the pair could be done by this time next week. It’s mindless knitting for the most part, so fits well with holiday movie watching and party attending.

The books are Mary Oliver’s latest poetry collection, Dog Songs, which combines well with plain knitting, and The Universe versus Alex Woods, which I’ve seen on a number of best-of lists so far. Since I’m only in chapter two, I can’t speak yet to whether it will appear on mine.

(Yarning along with Ginny.)

I wrote last week that nothing had been capturing my fancy in either my knitting or my reading. I’m pleased to report this week is much more focused.

On the reading front, I’m listening to David Levithan read his latest novel, Two Boys Kissing. The book’s device of being narrated by the ghosts of America’s gay male AIDS victims in the form of a sort-of Greek chorus really works for me. Because of that, it feels like the first book I can recall that authentically feels like the novel of my generation. I’m only partway through the book, though, so it may be premature to say that. Either way, I will probably need to obtain a print copy at some point to read read. (For me, in my own head, listening to and reading a story are two different experiences.) Since I’m listening to the book through the Overdrive app on my phone, it’s not pictured here.

On the knitting front, I pulled out a bunch of skeins of yarn on Saturday and wound several of them, including these two skeins of stripey Christmas yarn. I think one will be fingerless mitts and the other socks, but it may turn out that both will become socks. A swatch (read: failed start to a project) showed I wanted US1 needles, rather than US1.5, so that’s what I’m knitting with for the red and green cuff. Self-striping yarn has been scientifically proven* to be the fastest thing you can knit, so I’m hopeful these will be done in short order. (That bottom heap of yarn in the bowl is my Éclair shawl, which is nearing the 2/3-completed mark.)

(Yarning along with Ginny.)

It’s been a full week, with festivals and visits from an old friend and cleaning, so the post where I was going to get a little caught up by telling you about the National Book Fest will have to wait (although at least now photos are off my phone).

In the meantime, I’ll join with Ginny and share what I’m reading and crafting:

Work continues on my shawl, but it’s now reaching the halfway mark, which makes it cumbersome to carry around with me. Plus, during the aforementioned festivals, it’s nice to have mindless knitting to work on and that means a stockinette sock. The yarn is Tangy Self-Striping Sock Yarn in Purple Rain from Twisted Limone Designs, and I love it.

On the reading front I’m all over the place. I’m listening to an audiobook while cleaning and, otherwise, I’ve got three titles on the go: Virals, which I was reading a month ago and then put down because it got more stressful than I wanted from my reading (but since the library would like it back, I’ve circled back to it); Flight Behavior by the wonderful Barbara Kingsolver (who is one of my favorite writers of all time); and Platypus Police Squad: The Frog Who Croaked, a middle grade title by Jarrett J. Krosoczka about a rookie platypus police officer. I saw it at Politics & Prose when I was up for their last member sale, but passed it by at the time. Later that week, I was at the library and didn’t repeat the decision.

My mailbox has been filled with goodies recently and I wanted to share:

I recently was the winner of a set of books from YA Highway. I won the Regal Literary Prize Pack, which means I get to read five books, only one of which was on my radar:

• Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard
• A Scary Scene in a Scary Movie by Matt Blackstone
• The Different Girl by Gordon Dahlquist
• Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard
• Starglass by Phoebe North

I’d better pick up the pace of my reading!

I also was a winner in a Sock Knitters Anonymous contest on Ravelry for completing languishing projects during August. For finishing my Sockdolagers, I got to pick a knit sack from Peg’s Procrastinations. Peg had lots of fun fabrics to choose from, but ultimately I decided on this green bag, which has been getting lots of use recently (as you can probably tell since it appeared on the blog last week, too). It’s currently holding a sock I cast on over the weekend at the National Book Festival, where I didn’t want to be hindered with a large project. This knit sack is ingeniously designed so that the caribiner on the drawstring can attach to a ring on the inside of the bag, allowing it to stay open while draped over your wrist or attached to a belt loop for knitting on the go or while standing at the back of a tent listening to an author talk.

Thanks to Peg (and the organizers of the August Sockdown on Ravelry) and to YA Highway. I really like my prizes!

With the weather starting to crisp up, I have put socks on hold in lieu of larger, warmer work-in-progress. You may remember this shawl from the Tour de France knit-along, when I last worked on it.

I’m nearly done with panel #2 (of six or seven). What you see peeking over the book is all remains of that section — one zig and one zag. While I had a hard time at the beginning of the second panel with cleanly picking up the stitches at the edge of the first panel to tie them together, it’s gotten easier with time. That part’s still not mindless, but it’s the only part that isn’t. It makes for good tv/line knitting.

The book is Jasper Fforde’s latest, The Song of the Quarkbeast, recently released in the U.S. It’s the second title in his Chronicles of Kazam series. I started it at the beach on Sunday and it’s quite enjoyable so far. (I did consider putting Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the picture instead, since it’s my bag book right now and since Harry’s scar ties in well with the Lightning Shawl, but the Fforde book was on the table, so its handiness merited a starring role in today’s blog post.)

(Yarning along with Ginny)

I thought I’d take the opportunity to show you some bad photos (please disregard the unvacuumed rug) of the socks I finished during August. For some reason, my knitting has been really slow this year, so these are only the second and third pairs I’ve finished so far this year:

These are my Fruitcake socks, so named for the colorway of
Wisdom Yarns Marathon Socks–North Pole yarn that I knit them in. They are 60-stitch vanilla socks that I cast on in December during our pre-holiday-lunch all-staff meeting.

They were smooth sailing until the foot of the second sock, when the stellina (that’s the sparkly strand of yarn that’s plied with the wool-nylon blend) clearly started causing problems for the machine when it was being skeined. I’d noticed the stellina was broken more often than usual and then came the knots. The yarn, I assume, had gotten stuck in the skeining machine, they’d cut it and tied it back on. Mostly this is fine. It happens; we know it does. It’s just frustrating in a self-striping yarn where you’ve managed to make a matching pair. Running into a knot that turns the run of a particular color into a different length understandably affects the appearance. Unless you get a little anal and decide to switch to another repeat of the colors to try and sub in, which works, until the next time the problem repeats itself.

Anyway, that’s what explains why the red section on the one toe is longer than the other. But it won’t matter to me and I’ll be happy with my brightly-hued sparkly socks.

This pattern, Sockdolager, was the first round for Sock Madness contenders this year. I had a lot going on at that time and failed to get them finished, but they’re done now! I knit the medium size on 2.25 mm needles. The yarn is Trekking XXL that was among my final purchases from A Tangled Skein before they closed last winter.

This pair was the only one that was finished in time for the Ravelry contest for finishing socks during August (the others were about 90 minutes too late) and, coincidentally, it won a random prize. So they are now award-winning socks!