Last week, I shared that I was waiting for the arrival of more Tides to finish Shakerag Skirt #2… The Holst Garn shipping department is magnificent… It should have been here yesterday – 6 days from order to my doorstep, but thanks to the epically lame USPS it won’t be there until today. Once it arrives I will be back to knitting round and round… on my way through the decreases on towards the waistband and completion! A good thing because Shakerag Skirt #1 is getting heavy rotation… it is the perfect summer skirt!
Thankfully in the interim I have been in the Land of Knitting Delight… truly… Delight! Martina is the most ingenius knitting designer! The “teeth” arrive magically and the knitting is utterly wonderful. All knitting… so it is an almost mindless knit. My rows are getting longer so my completed “teeth” are slowing slightly but all this joy-filled knitting means that I am oh so close to the “weight” needed to move onto the next phase of the pattern!! Oh… and the delight is not just for the pattern… these yarns together are perfect… the colors work well together with enough contrast to make those “teeth” shine! It will be a welcome addition to my fall/winter wardrobe!
Now… lest you think that it is just Knitting Nirvana here… well! The reading has been stellar! I have read a book that I think will be one of the best I will read all year (if not THE best!) The Future by Naomi Alderman is that book… oh.my.gosh. I have not stopped thinking about it since I finished it last weekend. And couple that with my other finishes this week and well… my summer reading is off the charts good! I believe that Sarah Winman has become my favorite author of all time… A Year of Marvellous Ways was spectacular… magical… brilliant! And add to that the audio version of Mick Herron’s soon to be released The Secret Hours and you have the perfect week of reading!
And I have not yet left the Peak of Awesomeness in my reading… no, it continues. I began listening to Jenny Odell’s Saving Time (it is off to a rousing start!) and at night I am reading another ARC: Alice McDermott’s Absolution.
And!! With my eyes… the magnificent Project 562! I am so grateful that my library has a copy of this incredible work… I am in awe of the images and the stories contained within.
Mid-July life at its best… amazing project and spectacular reading. I’d like to freeze these days and stay here for a long time! (preferably sans humidity and smoky air!!)
That is all I have to share today… what about you? Please tell me what is bringing you delight!
As always, if you wrote a post to share, please leave your link below and thank you!
Welcome to this month’s exhibit which has been a bit hastily put together… I forgot that a new exhibit was due!
This month suggested exhibit: Put together a soundtrack for a day in your life. What songs do you choose and why?
What songs and why… well, I think the songs sort of explain themselves. But the why… well a perfect day is not every day. So the music I selected is for that perfect day.
I cannot start the day without coffee… really. And my favorite “coffee” song is Java Jive by The Manhattan Transfer!
Once that coffee is made and Sherman has been walked… I savor the quiet. Cue Simon and Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence (I know, I know… this song is about much more than silence… but it still works!)
In my perfect day, I would have uninterrupted knitting time… and who knew there was a knitting song?! Thanks Bill Eddie for The Knitting Song!
As the day winds down, that magical hour arrives… you know it… the Happiest Hour! LOL UB40’s Red Red Wine works for most days!
The perfect day is one where I don’t have to answer the dreaded question… what’s for dinner. I so appreciate a night of “to go” delivered! We don’t do this often so when it happens it is a real treat! Manhattan Transfer’s Soul Food To Go…
I know I said the perfect day… but really… most nights Bruce Springsteen’s 57 Channels (and nothin’ on) is reality.
Finally… the perfect night means one with no insomnia… Bing Crosby’s Count Your Blessings from White Christmas has some great advice.
I hope you all found this musical interlude into my day as fun as I did! See you all back here next week!
I am in a bit of a “holding pattern” on my second summer skirt (darn and blast it… I am not going to have enough yarn so I ordered more yesterday) Sigh.
So I had no choice but to finish off that bit of spinning… which I did! Hello dear Hitch on the Move! I cast on yesterday… it’s early days but so far, so very good!
And… Thea Coleman dropped an enticing pattern this week. I have added “knit a swatch” to this week’s list!
The reading is much less rocky (although I did bail on a book that was just not for me) but aside from that book the reading has been wonderful.
I am reading A Year of Marvelous Ways in the morning with my coffee and I am about halfway through. It is delightful… but I am not enjoying it thus far as I have previous Winman books!
In my ears is an advance “listener” copy of Mick Herron’s latest – The Secret Hours. I am about halfway in and loving it. The narration (Gerard Doyle) is excellent! (and the story is not bad either!)
And I just began another advance reader copy of Naomi Alderman’s latest – The Future. I enjoyed The Power and, thus far, this is better… more twisted… and after getting started (it is a bit of a slow start) I am having a hard time putting it down to go to sleep!
So… my rough week of making is being moderated by my good reading! Ha!
What about you all, is it smooth making for you this week (I hope!!)
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
A new quarter… a new currently list. I love these post to look back on and see what I was doing 3 months ago but I hope you find something interesting or something inspiring in them too!
Soaking In —
Rainer Maria Rilke… I am so in love with him. I have been reading (again) through two of his books – Letters to a Young Poet and Rilke’s Book of Hours. The pages are becoming more dog-eared and I have underlined so many passages in each. And yet, if I turn back to pages I had read before… I still find something new, something moving, something inspiring. Recently, two things keep jumping out at me… surrender
“If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees.”
and live
“…the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Surrender to the day and just live it fully! That is my new morning mantra. Good direction for my day and so I will joyfully continue soaking in some Rilke wisdom and see what else he has to show me!
Savoring —
The final episodes of Endeavor. It has been such a great series and I am sad to see it end, but I will be savoring each episode… and then I think I will queue up some vintage Inspector Morse to complete the circle. In the things I did not know category… I had no idea that John Thaw’s daughter had a part in the Endeavor series. She played the delightful Dorothea Frazil. I shall miss them all terribly! And if you have finished them… no clues please. Ha!
Appreciating —
While I am very much wishing that former me had spent more time thinking about what I would do with my Year of Stitching. And while I very much like each month, I have been stymied about the “final product” for them. I have toyed with a multitude of ideas on how to display them but they are each so big… I don’t have the wall-space to hang them! And so the conundrum of what to do with them continued….until I got some incredible inspiration from a much wiser maker about putting them together in a book. And that inspiration has me very excited. I have begun the process of pulling out fabrics to begin my “page” construction. I think there will be a bit more stitching as I pull each month together. I have some foolish idea that this won’t take all that long once I get everything cut… but my wiser inner voice is telling me that this won’t be a July Finish, but if I stay focused it will be the thing that gets me through the Heat of Summer!
And there you have my current situation. Of course, there are many other things going on… but these things are things I want to remember when I look back on my year. I will see you all back here Wednesday!
**Sorry about this, but I have no clue what happened to my published post, but it is MIA… if you are getting a second notification, that is why.**
July brings the beginning of the third quarter… and, more importantly, it means that I have done half a year of Temperature Stitching! To say I love it is an understatement… it brings me the greatest delight and I thing this will be stunning once completed and hanging on my wall! I love how I have moved into The Season of Yellows and Reds… and while I don’t love the 90’s (which are burgundy/purples) hopefully there won’t be any icy blues and chilly greens back until November! Ha!
Something else has been rattling around my head ever since Bonny shared it on her blog! Yes… Hitch on the Move has been consuming my thoughts and so I began to look to see what I might have in my stash to get it started! Imagine when I found a delightful skein that pairs beautifully with some Polwarth from Wee Chickadee that I was lucky to get from one of Cara’s destashes. I have been joyously spinning it up and have about a bobbin and a half full!
And speaking of spinning… I was divinely inspired with some Targhee in the Freshwater Pearls colorway (divinely… see what I did there, those sisters have some inspired fibers!) and I love how it turned out. It is a 3-ply fingering weight with excellent yardage (sorry, I have not weighed it yet to know.) I have no plans for it yet… I am just happy to squeeze it every so often… it is so squishy and soft!
I also am plodding along on my second Shakerag Skirt, sigh. This won’t be a 15 Day Knit but I am through the lace portion and am so close to being done with the optional necessary backside short rows! Then I will shortly begin the decreases and the mindless round and round. My hope is to have a second skirt to sashay around in this month though! So on I knit!
The reading has been good. I am back in Bath with Sully… and although I miss some characters (Miss Beryl for one!) the shenanigan’s are plenty! I am laughing and loving every bit of it. I am trying hard to slow down but it is a challenge! Ha!
I am also listening to The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida which is for the Read With Us gang. I am about half way though and the writing is so good (the narration is also so perfect!)
I had two finishes… I enjoyed them but I did not love either of them (Happiness Falls and Under the Whispering Door) but 3-star books are not bad reads (I had originally given Happiness Falls 4-stars but after thinking about it for a few days, for me it was not more than a 3-star read.) The problem is I have read much better books last month that might be coloring my opinion. Book Hangover is a thing and Sully is just the thing to clear my head! Ha!
Whew… this was a wordy post… sorry about that! What about you all… what is “consuming you” this week?!
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
