Progress Markers

A few flurries fall on this cold morning. Temperatures are in the single digits and wind-chill makes them even lower. Tuesday I made some lentil soup and hard rolls. It is a soup week. Today I have Ginger Tea in my mug in order to stay warm. 

I finished the pillow case for my living room pillow. I didn't have enough of any one of the fabrics to make a continuous strip of binding with mitered corners so I used leftover strips. I prefer mitered corners but this is fine in our living room. The fabrics were leftover from prints purchased years ago. I like making do with what's on hand.

Knitting keeps me warm and sane these days. I am posting a picture of my sweater mostly to remind myself I am making progress. This sweater of fingering weight on size 2 needles is meditation knitting but even meditation knitting requires a visual of progress. I clipped on a progress keeper and move it every Sunday night. This strategy keeps me from feeling I've entered the black hole of knitting where no progress is being made. I still enjoy the knitting and this sweater will remind me of the gift of yarn from my sister and also (fingers crossed) of spring. Between March 17 and 21, the landscape begins to green just a little. It's a seasonal progress marker on the horizon. 

When I had a few odd moments and wouldn't be able to finish a knit and purl row on the sweater, I put a few rows on a cowl. I prefer not to leave a back and forth stockinette project at the end of a knitted row. Stopping in that place often leaves a line showing in my knitting. I suppose it blocks out but I prefer not to leave that to chance. 

I just finished listening to A Tale of Two Cities via old CraftLit podcasts and found it well done. I don't listen to all of the books available on this podcast and I missed this was one from early in the podcast. Heather Ordover with her background as an English teacher, does an excellent job of annotating books in the public domain and making them interesting. The scenes in A Tale of Two Cities relating to mob behavior and the portrayal of vengeance as opposed to justice are a cautionary tale for our time.  

I am reading All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family's Keepsake The research that the author put into this book is fascinating. Tiya Myles, a history professor at Harvard, is a skilled writer and storyteller. Recently she published an essay for the New York Times titled, "When Everyone About You is Talking about the End, Talk about Black History." The essay is about this book and the resilience of Black Americans. I am enjoying the historical connections to textiles, women's history, and the history of slavery. I appreciate Myles' thoroughness in distinguishing between facts and opinions as well as her ability to look at more than one explanation for a behavior or fact. This is excellent nonfiction. 

I am late in linking to the Unraveled Wednesday Party but I will link just the same.  I enjoy reading about others' making and reading. 

March is around the corner and with that the end of winter. Progress indeed.