Mid December

Hello Gentle Readers and welcome to wool sock weather. The chilly days with a landscape of browning lawns and bare trees looks like December. Wool socks, sweaters, and mittens are in order for walking. Over the weekend gentle rain fell but we have not seen any snow. By Saturday, our packages were all in the mail. This week will be quiet with time for baking and a pot of soup or two. Last week, I dried orange slices in the oven and hung them outdoors on a small tree. The squirrels consumed most of a seeded wreath with a few juncos joining the party. I also hollowed out orange halves and filled them with birdseed. I didn't attract a lot of birds but I enjoyed the making. 

Today I'm joining Kat and the Unravelers for what may be the last link-up of 2024. Time does fly. I finished the Candy Cane socks and am wearing them today. Since then I've picked up the other pair of winter/Christmas socks. The simple stockinette is the perfect project right now. I do need daylight to knit the heel flap and gusset in that dark green. 

I am also knitting on a top-down sweater mentioned earlier. Before we traveled, I decided it was too big and I didn't care for the open neckline. I measured the gauge in several places and then ripped it out. This time I cast on using a sweater recipe from Ann Budd's Handy Book of Top-Down Sweaters. I want a simple sweater as a canvas for fading the gray and some handspun. I'm making progress and will try it on soon. Here's hoping its a go.

Now, I'm going to write knitting heresy. Before beginning the first version of this project, I knit a swatch in the round and chose a pattern based on that gauge. However when knitting the sweater on circular needles instead of a swatch on DPNs, my gauge in the gray yarn was looser. The swatch should have been bigger or I could have knit it using the method of leaving a loop of yarn behind the fabric. When knitting a fairly standard top down sweater in stockinette stitch, I may let the beginning of the sweater be the swatch. If I'm open to trial and error it could work for me. At any rate I've learned something about my tension on different kinds of needles which perhaps I should know given the size of DPN's I use to knit sleeves. Sometimes gauge lies.  Any thoughts?

I read Brightly Shining by Ingvild H. Rishioi and translated by Carolyn Waight. (My apologies for not being able to type the o with a slash through it. I did try.) This novella is a story of two young sisters who live with an alcoholic father. The girls take things into their own hands and pick up his job selling Christmas trees when he abandons it for the local pub. They are industrious girls who take care of each other. Along the way, they meet with some small kindnesses. I felt like the ending with its magical realism was tacked on because the author didn't know how to resolve the story. Although I read to the end, this novella just wasn't for me at this time and place.  

I hope you are enjoying this week of the Winter Solstice. Peace to you my friends. 

And it's December

Hello Gentle Readers. We've been away and are home. We had the best Thanksgiving with our daughter and her family. We flew out on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The weather held and the Kansas City airport was well staffed. Our travel day was smooth sailing. I helped Kate in the kitchen Thursday morning. We made an excellent Mushroom Wellington and favorite side dishes. She baked lemon cranberry bars and bought an apple pie for dessert. Jonah and I made the sauce for baked Mac and Cheese and whipped the cream. 

That weekend is their church's annual fund-raising Christmas Tree sale. All proceeds go to local charities and it's all hands on deck to unload and set up 500 trees. The kids love the event, not to mention the doughnuts and hot chocolate, so it was fun to be there in person. 

On Monday Kate and I walked around New York City enjoying all the festive decorations and store windows. We shopped at the McNally Jackson bookstore and were treated to lunch at The Bakery Room, a Greek bakery also serving soup and salad. The owner is a friend and member of Kate's running group. 

Her hat reads, "Pray for Snow." I think we were the only two people in NYC not wearing black coats.

In their little town, I walked to school with the kids. Instead of bringing gifts, we take them to the local indie bookstore to choose a book. It's fun to watch their reading tastes grow and change. A visit with Thanksgiving and a little bit of Christmas was such a nice way to celebrate the holidays. Our nonstop flight home last Thursday was delayed by 3 hours so I came home with one and a half new socks.

All of this brings me to Unraveled Wednesday with Kat and company. Since I didn't want to juggle three balls of sock yarn seen in the previous post, I searched my stash for an appropriate single skein. I found this West Yorkshire Spinners Christmas yarn named Candy Cane and cast on my version of the Candy Floss pattern. It was perfect travel knitting. My plan is to finish this pair and go back to the Comfort and Joy socks. Before we left, I ripped out the sweater but that is a story for another day.

As for reading, I'm almost finished with One of Ours by Willa Cather. Rereading a good book always brings a new perspective. As I read about the main character as a doughboy in France, I wondered how Cather researched the fighting in the trenches. She wrote one vivid scene about Claude experiencing the effects of being very near a large explosion. Perhaps by 1923, the information was available. It's also obvious that Cather loved rural France. While in Connecticut, I reread some of Ship Fever, a collection of short stories by Andrea Barrett. The stories revolve around science and love and are well written. The collection won the National Book Award in 1996. By the time I got into bed to read, I was tired so I only read a few stories. I'm currently listening to an old comforting favorite, Winter Solstice by Rosamund Pilcher. This is a re-listen but right now I'm in need of a happy ending. 

Look what welcomed us home. Have a good week friends.