Socks, Sweater yarn, and Somber Stories

One of the nice things about driving to your vacation destination is that I really didn’t have to worry about space.  I packed 3 projects and gave 2 of them serious attention.  I started a new pair of socks for my Personal Sock Club. This yarn, Wonderfully Super from Yarntini, was picked as the sock yarn for April or May, and sat in a nice yarn cake on my desk since then. I’m letting the stripes speak for themselves and knitting a plain vanilla sock, toe-up, two at a time. I’ve really missed having a pair of socks on the needles! I think I need another 4-6 stripes and I’ll be able to do the heel.

I first used Spud and Chloe’s Sweater yarn last month when I crocheted Nate’s stegosaurus. I loved working with it so much, and they have such wonderful colorways, it was the first yarn I thought of when I read the description of Project #3 for Camp Loopy: “Make a project using one of your favorite colors – a color that makes you happy. (You can use other colors as well – the project doesn’t have to be just one single color.) This third project must have a minimum of 800 yards, used in one project.” I pulled together the pile of colors (sort of dinosaur-ish, I think) and decided to make a new blanket for my son, a Happy Throw. I made each of the kids a blanket before they were born, but they have grown, as kids do, and Nate’s blanket was really for the car seat! My grand plan is to follow this with a different color scheme (or maybe rainbow striped) for my daughter.  I love how this is working up. The pattern is not difficult once you get past the initial set-up – and even that is not hard, but I was distracted by the audiobook!

My most recently finished reads include The Mouse and the Motorcycle (with my daughter) and Vanishing Acts. When we were away on vacation, we borrowed 11/22/63 on audiobook for the travel time in the car but only made it halfway through. This is such an amazing story that I quickly downloaded a copy to continue reading it. I don’t want to give anything away – it’s a complicated story that has surprised me along the way and I’m curious to see where it ends up. It also makes me think about other world and events in my own life… (to quote the book) “The past is obdurate.” I picked up The Dead Beat from the library before we left as well to have something else to read. I forget where I originally heard about this book, but it was on one of my many to-read lists. It is about obituaries, but it’s not a sad book. It has given me a different perspective on obituaries and the last few days I have taken a few extra minutes to read the ones in the local paper – I have seen mentions of unique lives, varied careers, many knitters, and one mention of “world-famous pepper-jelly”.

Linking up! Feels good to be back to blogging again!