Yarn Along (#3)

I'm joining Ginny at small things for another Yarn Along.

(My pictures this week look a lot like last week's. I promise they're different. The most important difference for me is that I ate all the chocolate eggs I had last week and now I have none left.)

I finally finished The Woman in White earlier this week. I started this book back in late September/early October, and I finally finished it!

This week I'm starting Franz Kafka's The Trial. I'm trying to read classics that I haven't had the chance to read before.

I'm still working on the pair of Low Tide Convertible Mitts that I'm making for my cousin. When I designed the pattern, I didn't think to design a thumb that could flip back. But the more I thought about my cousin, the more I realized that she probably texts, and so she'd need that. I knit the thumb as though it were for a pair of fingerless mitts, and I added a cap. I worked on one thumb last night and I'm finishing up the second today. I'll just then have to knit the mitten caps onto both hands.

snow day

No time for knitting when there's a driveway to shovel!

Yarn Along (#2)

Joining Ginny at Small Things for another Yarn Along...

Growing up, I read all the time. As an adult with children, I rarely have time to read anymore. I only have time to read at night, so I try to read as I'm going to bed but usually fall asleep quickly. I just zoomed into last week's Yarn Along picture to see what kind of progress I'd made on The Woman in White, and I've discovered that I only read 32 pages in 1 week. At this rate, I have about another 3 weeks on this book.

My cousin asked me to knit her a pair of the convertible mittens I designed. She sent me the yarn and I jumped right on the Dream in Color "Some Summer Sky" colorway. It was such a treat to find this beautiful blue (with splashes of purple) yarn in my mailbox, especially when summer skies are still a long way off. I finished the first part of one mitten last night, and I've just cast on for the second today.

My head is in a fog today and I was craving chocolate. I was just about to raid my children's little stash of chocolates from Christmas (terrible, I know--but they got so much and they've forgotten about most of it), when I found the Cadbury Mini Eggs my husband put in my Christmas stocking. These are by far my favorite candies. I look forward to these things all year. He won't tell me whether he saved these from last year or found them in the stores right before Christmas. My guess, based on last year's experience, is that they're already in the stores. While the commercialization of holidays drives me up a wall, I'm willing to forgive it in this instance, as long as I can get my mini eggs.

Yarn Along

I'm in the middle of testing a new mitten pattern that I've designed. One of my testers, who blogs here and who dyes gorgeous yarn at Sweet Basil Fibre Works on Etsy, recently posted as part of a yarn along. I'd never heard of a Yarn Along before, but some searching brought me to the blog Small Things.

A Yarn Along is a single photo that captures what you're reading and knitting or crocheting right now. When I took my pictures today, I forgot about the "single photo" concept. So here's my 2:

I'm reading The Woman in White, published in 1860 by Wilkie Collins, and have been since September when I got my Nook. I had to take a break from this book to read another, which I'm hoping explains why I'm moving so painfully slow on this one. I'm really enjoying this novel.

I'm knitting a Tickle Hat designed by Kristi Pyatt of Tree Frog Knits. This is the third Tickle Hat that I've knit in undyed organic cotton. I love that Knitpicks named this undyed yarn "Marshmallow." The picture below is of an earlier hat I knit.

a room of one's own

I last read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own as an undergrad. I forget the particulars of the book, but her argument that women need a space for themselves to create has always stayed with me. She believed that a woman could have written classics, like Shakespeare did, if only she'd had her own space. (As an aside, I'm sure her argument was more complex than that, but this is what I remember 15 years later.) I'm not trying to write Shakespeare. I'm just trying to knit.

I've been working on 2 designs in the last few weeks. I've got notes spread all over my desk, pieces of knitting scattered about my room, and more thoughts in my head than I can keep track of. My desk is in the bedroom I share with my husband, and my kids have free reign of our room. That means that my notes get moved about, my pattern notes get scribbled on, my pattern notes get cut into tiny pieces with preschool scissors, my knitting gets moved down the hall and stashed under someone's bed. In my zeal to declutter one day--given that my bedroom gets covered in kids' drawings, books, toys, shoes, clothes--I tossed a pattern I had written, but not yet typed into the computer, into the recycling. I still don't have the energy to recreate that one.

I daydream about having a space that's all mine. In my head, I sometimes "convert" our shed into a little one room studio with a wood stove, some curtains, a desk and a chair.

In my head, I sometimes build us a barn with studio space above. Or build a third floor onto the top of our house with a little staircase and a door with a key that only I have.

In my head, I sometimes think about a house for sale in our old neighborhood that had a bay window in front and shade trees in the back.

In reality, my desk is a mess, I have a hard time keeping track of my needles and notes, and it takes me 5 times longer to do something than it should. Until I'm able to take over the shed out back, this is how it'll have to be.