Happy Socktoberfest!
I am making the second Log Cabin sock. It doesn’t look any different from the first, so I won’t be giving you pictures of it much. I am also making some progress on Pipes. I am eager to get back to Erin as well, and the yarn for #2 son’s sweater will be arriving soon — he has alerted me that he wants it for Christmas. I also have a long-ignored prayer shawl on the needles. And there is the other long-ignored shawl, one I am making for myself but which has been languishing unworked for about a year now.
As you may have noticed (if you always read my blog and have total recall) I am not one of those knitters who has lots of Works in Progress. Two is about my speed. I am currently letting the socks be my epic project and Pipes be the zombie project. Once the socks are finished (this week) I could shift and let Erin be the epic project.
Or I could do some sort of rotation: socks on Monday, Pipes on Tuesday… Or be a mad sock-knitter during Socktober and go back to sweaters in November.
One thing that I am sure of is that I don’t have time to do calculations and trial and error for #2 son’s sweater. He wants a plain gray sweater shaped like a sweatshirt. If any of you can point me toward a good, accurate pattern for such a sweater in a boy’s size 14 in worsted weight, I’ll be very grateful.
While I am still reading The Physics of Superheroes, I am also doing some creepy reading for the Autumn Challenge. I am afraid that the timing is a little off for where I live. Reading creepy books in front of the fire while the sky drips cold rain from its dismal gray clouds would be the best, and we are still enjoying Indian summer here. Nonetheless, I am reading The Black Opal, by Victoria Holt. The Little Friend, my first creepy book for the challenge, was distinctly Southern Gothic. The alcoholic mother, the absent father (he wasn’t a riverboat gambler, since it’s set in the 1970s, but he could have been), the assorted mad relatives, the crumbling ante-bellum mansion — she might have written it with a checklist by her side. The Black Opal is British gothic — pregnant governess, gypsies in the woods, mad servants…
Both are well written, though The Black Opal has no pretensions to literariness. But I disliked The Little Friend enormously, and am enjoying The Black Opal enormously. I think it is the level of realism.
In the same way that I never minded reading my kids fairy tales (which are full of gore and horror) but dislike their playing video games like Vice City, I like a good formulaic gothic story. The Little Friend did, it is true, have its madwoman in the attic, but it had meth labs and child abuse and an ambiguous ending, all of which unpleasant things are all too common in real life. The Black Opal has so little in common with reality, or at least with my own personal slice of reality, that I can enjoy it as I would a fairy tale. We are not going to see scenes reminiscent of Wuthering Heights on the news.
Today we are expecting a book shipment — though it will not include The God Delusion, as we missed the narrow window between the street date and the warehouses being sold out. And there is an alto sectional tonight, at which I will be caught not knowing all the notes. Since I am only barely literate in music, I have to learn the music by rote. In a full rehearsal, I can follow my neighbor (although this results in one’s being a fraction of a second behind, and is therefore not a good strategy) when I forget how the piece is supposed to go. Obviously, I will have to devote part of this morning to plunking out the shaky sections on the piano.
But tomorrow is our average first frost date. It may soon become autumn here, and I will be able to sit before the fire with my creepy novel and wooly sweaters.
frost already? Ugh. Enjoy some creepy reading…
We are getting a frost on Thursday.
I would be interested in knowing how a “prayer shawl” differs from an ordinary shawl….
creepy books and wooly sweaters sounds like a lovely combination….
We don’t usually have frost around here until about Halloween.
I tend to do knitting projects sequentially rather than several at the same time. The exception to that is when a project gets too big to carry around. Then it becomes my “knit at home” project, and I pick a smaller one to haul around with me. I don’t know if I could keep track well enough to rotate that many projects every day.
Finish the socks first! You’re more than half-way through, there’s not much more to do on them, and with frost coming, you’ll be happy you have them.
Clarification on the art contest: it was almost like painting a masterpiece, showing up at the art show and discovering that you won first prize, not for the masterpiece, but for the palatte you didn’t clean while you were painting the masterpiece. It was a frustrating day, which started off with taking a header off my bike, and skidding down the graveled road on my chin on the way to school. I ripped my brand new skirt (which my aunt made and gave me for my birthday) and had blood on it when they told me about the prize. And this was all before school even started!
I agree with your mom. How is a prayer shawl different from a regular shawl? I’ve never been able to figure that out.
I’m looking around for creepy books to read, too.
I also quite like Victoria Holt’s books although it’s been quite some time since I’ve read any. Her books are so prototypically gothic that after reading about 4 of them I started to get bored. She was the first author I knew about who used different author names for different type of books. While I was reading ‘Victoria Holt’ creepy books as a kid my mother was reading Jean Plaidy’s and Phillippa Carr’s historical novels. I found it fascinating when I learned all these 3 women were actually the same woman. I used to have fun imagining what different pseudonyms I would use for the different styles of book I was going to write as a rich and famous authoress (I actually made a list of them in a notebook). From a psychological point of view I have always wondered what it says about an author when she/he used her/his own name for one type of book and false names for the other types. Sort of like a literary equivalent to an ink blot test. Why choose that sort of book to tag your own name onto?
Oooh, I forgot one of the things I was going to tell you.
Interweave has out a book that’s just all the information you need to knit plain sweaters and hats, mittens, etc. It’s got all the measurements for all the sizes, etc., and you can knit the projects in any weight yarn. See it at http://www.interweave.com/knit/books/knitters_handy.asp.
I’m at a computer where I could look that up, but I don’t have the info to make it a button.
When I have the person I’m making something for, I can get measurements and make something for them. But sometimes, I’m knitting for a baby that hasn’t been born yet, or sombody that doesn’t live nearby, and someone will tell me their size. This tells you how big to make things according to size.