Yarn Along: finishing the blanket, and starting new books

I cast off, today. If I gave it a twenty stitch border I think it would be roughly single bed size, but I'm still thinking ten stitch will be fine. I just have to decide what colour. I'm deciding between a greeny-turquoise, or a grass green, I think. I want to bring those colours a bit more into balance against the slightly dominant oranges.

This blanket has been my colour play and my meditation for two weeks now, so I'm at a bit of a loss! I plan to get at least one smaller project cast on by the end of today though and I'm pretty sure I've picked which ones.

I've not been reading much. I'm a third of the way in to The Mime Order now but I think it was a mistake not to reread the first book before attempting it, because I have struggled so much to make sense of such a busy landscape of characters and setting.

I started two other books last week and quickly put them both down again, so I don't know. Maybe it's just the same busyness sapping my attention. I might go back to comic books again for a bit!

Yarn Along: American Gods and some marl

So, I started reading about a week ago and finished a couple of days ago. Proper book hangover this week! I read the abridged release a long time ago and wasn't nearly as taken as I have been with this. What a bloody gorgeous book.

I've been playing with the marled blanket a few days longer than that. It's getting huge now. Still at the fun stage of wanting to see the next colour change.

Between projects and the children and the odd excursion on my own, I've had a busy-peaceful couple of weeks. And now Martin is off work for a couple of days helping to Spring clean the house a bit. :)

Yarn Along: January catchup

Ash inspired me to knit socks again. I've completed a (lovely deep orange) pair for Rowan and a (rainbow stripe) pair for Talia too. As well as finishing the Sockhead I cast on just before New Year, and making myself a pair of mittens.

I think I'm on a knitting roll.

Baby socks for my nephew next, I think. Then perhaps the Barley hat from Knitting from the North in really tasteless clashing jewel colours.

Not that I'm avoiding Jenna's Hogwarts shawl at all...

Meanwhile, I've not been reading all that much. I finished the Storm Siren series and *whispers* found them really predictable. I've re-read Earthsea alongside them though which is probably horribly unfair and would tarnish a lot of writing by comparison.

I also picked up The Darkest Part of the Forest, remembering quite enjoying the dark fae stories as a teen. If you like a slightly more dangerous breed of fairy, these are good solid diverting fiction with a good take on the alternative fairytale. I enjoyed this not-Snow-White almost as much as I liked Ash by Malinda Lowe. 

In the same dark-fairytale vein, this just arrived. Always one of my favourite short stories by Neil Gaiman, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this new format has changed it if at all.

Yarn Along - actually casting something on

Lots of reading and not much knitting still but I have cast on a pilot cap for a sweet little toddler without procrastination which is something of a miracle.

Reading: Accidental Saints by Nadia Bolz-Webber which is funny, deep, challenging abd warm. Its theological standpoint (liberal but Lutheran) is somewhat different to mine (sort of Messianic nerdy-studious ultra-liberal Celtic-inspired mishmash), and to the one I grew up with (conservative but Evangelical), so it's interesting to explore. After a couple of years of, to be honest, barely identifying as Christian, I'm reading the Bible again and picking up the kinds of books I think are likely to challenge my views of what the Bible says and what it means to be a follower of Christ.

Aaand also I'm re-reading Hellblazer. Because Constantine.

Yarn Along during troubling feelings about how fast time is passing

I'm still setting aside projects and picking up something else, over and over again. Jenna's shawl is waiting for cables. Talia's coat is waiting for its button. I'm knitting back and forth on an experimental ribbon toy thingy that I planned to be finished with weeks ago. But at least I have lots to read. Okay that's an exaggeration, because these all arrived two days ago and I read them all within twelve hours. I have new fanfiction to read. That's good enough for me. :)

     *     *     *

You guys, this was ten years ago.Ten.Years. I was horrendously sick (again), pregnant with Morgan, and I felt like my life was simultaneously coming together and falling apart. I still feel like my life is simultaneously coming together and falling apart, and I look about that much pregnant even though I'm not, and I honestly feel like nothing has changed in any essential way and I sort of thought I would have my life a bit more together by 31.

I mean, the sort of together where you don't phone HMRC the day after the tax credit deadline to sort out the renewal. The sort of together that does laundry before we run out of pants. That sort of together.

Alas...

In ten years I have learned to knit, and stopped wishing I was an artist and started claiming the fact that I already am because I can't not create and it doesn't even matter if almost all of it sucks and I have no idea what I'm doing.

In another ten years maybe I won't feel so much like an overgrown kid trying to fake being competent at things. Or maybe I will. Hopefully I'll still be able to take it all on one moment at a time, one stitch at a time.

Yarn Along - Polkadot and Dominion

This week I had to set aside Jenna's Hogwarts Express as the tiny cables are tricky and need my full concentration. I've switched to a Polkadot for Talia, who picked out the yarn herself. Big yarn, big needles, speedy progress. Just what I needed!

I've started reading Dominion by C.J.Sansom but it hasn't pulled me in just yet. I loved the Shardlake books though so I'm willing to give it a fair chance.

Yarn Along - Sockhead(s)

Knitting: I finished my Sockhead, and had just enough left of the rainbow tie dye blank to attempt a tiny one for my smallest bean. I don't know if it will be slouchy, but it will just fit her. That's yarn economy for ya.

Reading: Weeell I'm still bitting and bobbing really, but I did read a couple of good entertaining Agatha Christie-esque Sherlock fanfics today. Neither of which I'm going to link to, on the grounds that they're incomplete (rather than, say, for example, that you might all look at me differently if I admit to shipping Mystrade). If you have no idea what that means, I would caution you against feeling the need to find out. Though of course, if you have a teen or tween in the house you probably already speak fandom to some extent or another. I could pretend that it's Jenna's fault, but she sadly got most of her embarrassing internet speak from me.

Just, okay, go back to looking at the pretty knitting now, thankyouplease?

Yarn Along - miles of stocking stitch and some childishness

For some reason I am totally wiped out and exhausted today, so it is definitely a knitting and reading day. All of the children seem to be doing similarly too. Jenna has Neverwhere. Morgan has Matilda. Rowan has Minecraft on the laptop. Talia os snuggled up next to me with a huge book of Star Wars technical drawings. And I'm sitting here alternating chapters of Earth X with a couple of rows of the Sockhead hat.

My autocorrect doesn't like me typing "Sockhead" and I have to keep correcting its correction, which is causing childish sniggering here. I'm easily amused when tired.

After knitting 2:2 ribbing until I was sick of it, I am now going to knit the slightly more soothing stocking stitch until I start to hate this hat. I mean, the goal is "love in every stitch" but sometimes vague loathing of the project is just as helpful, an easy target for mild frustration that I can whine about and notice my own ridiculousness. Doing the small things with love. Patience. Impatient muttering. Persistence. One of those.

I'm pretty sure when I finish this I will choose something with the same sort of mind-numbing characteristics, because I need all the car knitting and projects that otherwise don't require my full attention.

There's similar logic in the graphic novels too. That and poetry and fanfiction are where I'm at for interruptibility and emotional energy. I'm taking my self care in snippets. :)