When I was in high school, I liked joining things — French Club, Key Club, Environmental Club, volleyball, softball, basketball, drama performances, creative writing magazine, yearbook…. You get the idea.

I thought that had worn off as I’d gotten older, but in the last week, the joining gene seems to have resurfaced since I have signed up to take part in two new projects:

The Kat with a K Summer Reading Program
Kat thought back to her childhood summers and remembered how much fun those summer reading programs the public library used to offer were. So she decided to create her own summer reading program and invited folks to join her. How could I resist?

For this challenge, I aimed low: only 10 books over the course of the summer. I thought about 15 or even 20, but given I only managed two last month (and since I can’t read and knit at the same time (see below)), I decided to play it safe.

But Kat also offered the chance to have a bonus goal and here I aimed high. As I mentioned here, I want to read Alexis de Tocqueville. So my goal is to read the complete text of Democracy in America — all 769 pages of it.

The Knitting World Cup 2006
Since I did eventually finish my Knitting Olympics projects, I thought I would try my hand at the Yarn Monkey’s World Cup knit-along. Who knows? Maybe I’m more of a summer sport girl. (I also thought I would hand the mousie booties from the Olympics over to their new owner, and Heidi seemed pleased by them.)

So what am I turning my needles to? A summer tank top from the most recent issue of Interweave Knits. I’m adapting it to work with Rowan’s Summer Tweed in Exotic (a turquoise tweed in cotton-silk).

The project has stumbled a bit in the early days as my guage swatch seems to have no bearing on either the pattern or the yarn’s specifications. I gave up on the math and decided to just cast on. Except that the pattern calls for a provisional cast on, which I didn’t know. Rudi went to sleep last night to the sounds of my bemoaning the yarn, the needles, the pattern, and my own inability. To give you some clue of how miserable I was, it took me about three hours to cast on and to knit three rows. Three hours. Today’s work is still moving slowly, but there does seem to be actual progress. Let’s just hope it’s not for naught and that the silly thing fits.

And let’s keep our fingers crossed that this is all I sign myself up to do for the next few months….