Yarn-Along (First in A Long Time)

It has been quite awhile since I posted a yarn-along post.  I haven't been able to clear as much time for knitting as I used to do.  It's quite sad, actually.  I have these dishcloths to show for the last several weeks of summer and the beginning of Fall.  If I was knitting at all it was on these.

 Have you ever had one of those experiences where it felt like people all around you were morphing into rhinoceroses?  Eugene Ionesco, my favorite Theatre of the Absurd playwright, wrote just such a play, and I am reading it now.  Rhinoceros.  It's symbolic of the rapid descent of European society into fascism before World War II, and makes a good counterpoint to Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which I am also reading.  But there are certain parallels with teaching middle school Latin, I suppose, if you don't get too literal.  This is going to make me want to re-read The Chairs.

There are two new yarn stores in town!  The closest is just a hop skip and jump away, and that is where I bought this lovely skein of Madeline Tosh Merino Light in "Chickory."  (Sure about that spelling, are we?   Sorry, it's just that I think it should be "Chicory.")  It's a very moody melange of blues and grays and I am working on Azzu's Shawl with it.  My other knitting projects have had no attention for months, I am sad to say.  Since school started there has been a lot of falling into an exhausted but restless sleep at 8:30 p.m., waking up with insomnia at 3:00 or 4:00 and reading about the Night of Long Knives or the Anschluss, and then packing lunches and getting Tertia to brush her teeth before the bus comes.  And then it's off to school myself, where I dish out nouns and verbs and try to avoid being wounded by the "Grammar Nazi" label.  I mean really, some perspective:  if the subjunctive mood is the worst obstacle your kid ever has to face, that's better than ISIS or Ebola, right?