On my list of projects I’d like to get off my needles is my mother’s Christmas shawl, which will likely arrive to her with fall’s first frost. My progress is infinitesimal at this time, but I’m down to four more rows (or, roughly 1200 stitches) of that patterned section before I move on to knitting that lends itself to doing other things at the same time, like listening to an audiobook. (I tried to jump the gun on multitasking and ended up with an extra stitch a couple rows back. I’m hoping I corrected it properly after some time out to consider what it had done, but, Mum, if I didn’t, we may have to consider it a design feature.)

On the reading front, I started two new books this week. The first is Great or Nothing, a Little Women retelling set during World War II authored by Joy McCullough, Carline Tung Richmond, Tess Sharpe, and D.C. novelist and librarian Jessica Spotswood, each of whom voices a sister.

The second is The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams, which I’m listening to on my phone. I’d picked up the second one a couple years back and hated the “voice” of the main guy character, so had put it back down. In this one, the first book of the series, that guy is a secondary character and talks less. So while I still don’t love him, his obnoxious tone is less grating. But I borrowed the audio because a D.C. librarian recommended it as humorous. Once I remembered I could adjust the speed of the reader (we’re up to 1.4 times the normal speed), I found myself better able to relax into the story, which focuses on a major league ballplayer whose wife has just asked him for a divorce. His buddies (including the irritating guy) and some other high-powered Nashville men come to his rescue by inviting him to join their bookclub, which reads only romance novels in an effort to better understand the women in their lives.

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I continue along The Lincoln Highway with Emmett and Billy and Duchess and Wooly, but theirs is not a journey that can be hurried. So I’ve dipped into a couple of other books, looking for a companion read. I’ve found it with Kelly Barnhill’s The Ogress and the Orphans. If you read her The Girl Who Drank the Moon, you’ll know that she is an amazing fairy tale storyteller, and the first chapters of this book do not disappoint. I only wish I had a small person to read it aloud to. I read the first chapter to the cat, but he didn’t seem impressed. I think it’s his loss.

My rainbow socks are finally off the needles, and the Tour de France knitalong begins in a little more than six weeks. Rather than start something new, I’m trying to see what other lingering projects I can wrap up. Next up are my Smock Madness socks, which date back, I believe, to 2018. As you can see, this is not asking for a huge time commitment, because all I have are a toe to finish (and I think a hole to patch on the foot).

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are reading and crafting.

While Sunday was overcast, it was not pouring, which was a pleasant change from Friday and Saturday. I was going to Sheep and Wool regardless, but I’ve been in the rain before and it definitely is a drawback. So to only have to deal with mud seemed pretty easy. I pulled on my wellies, and headed up to the fairgrounds.

It ended up being a nice afternoon all things considered, without the need for my coat, but with the advantage of it being cool enough that all the knitters were able to show off our handknits one final time for the spring.

I went with a limited budget and I stuck to it. I wanted something I couldn’t just buy at one of my local yarn shops, and I think I found it. Urban Girl Yarns is made locally in Virginia by a Black woman knitter and dyer. This is her Virginia Fingering in Caliente. The necklace matches a shawl pin I bought a number of years back and is made by a Maryland metalworker, Silver Siren Designs. I also came home with two jars of local honey and six seedlings, which have already been planted.

On the reading front, I’m still alternating between two print novels, The Lincoln Highway and Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake. I gave up on the overly descriptive romance novel I’d been listening to when it came due and I’ve downloaded Ruth Hogan’s The Keeper of Lost Things to try instead.

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It occurred to me suddenly last week that this coming Sunday was Sheep and Wool and that if I wanted to debut something new (weather-pending), I’d need to get a move on finishing a piece. So I’ve pulled out Fully Charged, my Tour de France 2021 shawl, to see if I can finish it. Technically, I could do the border rows now, but I still have yarn and, frankly, the shawl seems a little small at the moment. So I’m just continuing on with the stripey section until one of the balls gets small enough for me to start feeling worried.

I have not yet started Amor Towles’ The Lincoln Highway, but I’d better get started because it’s 600 pages and due back in less than two weeks. It’s in my knitting bag for tomorrow.

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Look! Different knitting and different reading!

The knitting is Mum’s (2021) Christmas gift, Campfire Cozy, which I picked up again toward the end of last week. I have eight more rows of the textured stitches to get through and then it becomes mindless tv knitting. I’m hopeful I’ll be able to hand the shawl over sometime before Christmas 2022.

I put Fools in Love back into the rotation because it’s overdue to the library and I forgot to put it in my bag last week when I went to Virginia. I took that as a sign I was meant to finish this collection of YA romance short stories after all. I also started Saint Young Men, a collection of comics translated from Japanese about religious figures Jesus and Buddha rooming together as young men during a gap year in Tokyo in the early aughts. It’s less sacrilegious than it sounds, but also maybe less funny than I’d hoped it would be. I’ve also started a new audiobook, Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop by Roselle Lim. I’m not yet sure if I’ll keep going with it. It probably depends on how many more times she describes food with multiple adjectives.

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I’m happy to report that the title for this post refers not to a hot mess in my crafting, but to the way I’m leveraging my leisure time right now.

I’d hoped to show you a finished sock, but I kept dozing off while knitting and watching tv, which seemed more an indicator that I should put my head on a pillow than that I should continue with pre-planned blog fodder. But I’m about four rows away from the toe decreases, so it shan’t be long now.

I finished one book last week, abandoned a second, put a dent in two others, and resumed a fifth, which seems like a pretty good way to pass seven days. These are the two I’m currently working on in print and I continue to enjoy listening to Cassandra Peterson’s memoir.

You can visit As Kat Knits to see what others are crafting and reading.