The Saga of the Feral Housecat... and Yarn-along

This is Muffball, the feral housecat, when she is on good terms with her humans and not on the defensive. She came to us as a stray, and let's just say she has trust issues. She doesn't like to be around people unless it is on her terms, and the humans are seated and not looking like they are going to try to corral her and take her to the vet.

That is exactly what I did on Monday; she had a raging case of fleas a month ago that needed a cortisone shot... but that did the trick, that and giving her the proper dose of flea medicine. This week was the checkup and catching up on basic vaccinations. But to go to the vet, I have to pick up a wary cat and put her into the cat carrier. This was much harder than you would think a month ago; Monday, it only took two tries, but she was so spooked that she peed on the kitchen floor, and my leg, as I was getting her in. She complained very loudly all the way to the vet, where she got shots and $60 flea collar ("it's a bargain because it will last for 8 months.") It took 3 people to put the collar on her Tuesday, after she had recovered from the vet trip and even been a bit affectionate to her humans; she peed on the Persian rug in the process, but we got it on her. We weren't able to clip off the extra length, but we called it enough for one day. She was even mildly affectionate yesterday evening, as we watched The Crown.

But today she slipped back to the basement after a quick breakfast, and was invisible most of the day. This is what a feral housecat looks like, sitting on a heating duct (and cutting off the heat to the upstairs in the process) in the narrow crawl space under the oldest part of the house. Humans do not go back there, not if they can help it.

 With flash, it looks even more spidery. (Warning to my boys, Christmas spoilers ahead).

 I do not think the collar is here, but if we could find it and try putting it on her again in a few days...

But I sure don't want to crawl back there. Frustrated, I spent a little time cleaning other parts of the basement this morning and afternoon. I have a pile of things to give away and maybe it's time to get rid of the crib and crib mattress too.

So here below is my entry for this week's Yarn-Along. The socks have advanced since a few weeks ago when I had just finished the first pair and cast on the toes. I have now turned the heel and am a third of the way up the leg. So both boys should have Stashbuster Spirals socks for Christmas. I am currently reading Death of a Nurse, the recent Hamish MacBeth mystery, and listening to an audiobook of Gone Girl.

Here's hoping that the missing collar turns up somewhere easily accessible, and dear little Muffin decides to be sweet again and go back to sleeping on the couch.

Yarn Along and a few flyby book reports

Spoiler alert: If you are one of my sons, don't scroll down below the top two pictures of Smudge. Or Christmas Will Be Spoiled and it won't be my fault. Daniel -- and this counts as a book report too -- I finished book 4 of the Wheel of Time this morning. I have no idea what is going on... they're in the desert, then they're in some kind of archetypal dream world and I'm never sure how they got there. I will have to read the summary notes for the first four books here, because there's no way I'm listening to them again before moving on. Peter, you can take comfort in the fact that my Spotify discover weekly list is much cooler than your father's. He was mocking one of my '60s songs (you know he spies on your Spotify playlist, right?), but his songs are mostly from the 1560s.

Smudge is a hard cat to get to pose, because he always wants to jump up on your lap and purr, and he can't hold still. I got these two shots, which will have to do. It's a bit cute and pathetic to see the kitty pawprints by his empty food bowl. He's not losing weight though, and no sign of fleas. He seems very sleek and fat, and has been chasing birds. There was a slug that got stuck between his food and water bowl when they were stacked and brought inside last night. I hate it when slugs sneak into the house.

Other books I am currently reading are Tom Clancy/Mark Greaney (the designated successor for Tom Clancy) "Full Force and Effect," which is about North Korea trying to get nuclear missiles, and I am midway through the most recent release of Vince Flynn's designated successor, Kyle Mills, "Order to Kill," which is about Russia assisting ISIS to try to get nuclear missiles. Because of the way I request loans from my library's Kindle app and never know when they'll show up, for a brief time I also had the first Brad Thor book out along with the other two, an author I'd like to start reading. And I decided that I can't really give my full attention to more than one thriller at a time, so I'm just actively working on the Clancy one now. I don't usually read only thrillers, it just happened that way. I also have an audiobook of Gone Girl I started listening to. I hate both characters so far. Not sure if I'll continue.

I am just now getting back into quilting and sewing after too long a hiatus, and the blog has been very neglected, but I have been knitting slowly but fairly steadily all year. So I'm linking up today to Ginny's Yarn-Along, where many knitters share their progress.

These Stashbuster Spirals socks were finished last week. They have Kat's Sweet Tomato Heels, which I've always really liked in combination with the pattern. This pair came out looking very handsome, and used up a lot of small bits and balls of yarn leftover from other socks.

This pair was started a few days ago, and though it probably will look a little more patchwork-y than the first, I think it will still look handsome. I am really hoping to have it done by Christmas. I recently took stock of my sock yarn stash: I have two skeins that I purchased at Sock Summit 2011, and I really need to knit them up rather than hoarding them. There are a few others besides those, and I probably have odd balls enough for at least 3 more Stashbuster Spirals. So when at least 3 additional socks are done besides these, then I will allow myself to go off my sock yarn diet. 

Yarn-Along

For the first time in many months, maybe the first time all year, I'm linking up to Ginny's Yarn-Along, which is a great way to be inspired by other knitters' work and show and tell your own. I have not been knitting as much as I like this year, although it's still more than I've been sewing and quilting. I'm hoping that, with Fall weather here and having more free time since I'm not teaching anymore, I'll be able to crash out of my knitting slump and enjoy some creativity. So first off, here are the socks for Steve that I finished on Monday:

 The yarn is Online Supersocke, which I've never used before. It's a colorway that's supposed to make you think of butterflies, and it's a little splitty but a nice sturdy yarn to work with. I finished up the super-stretchy bind-off Monday evening while watching the last episode of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell with Steve. This is a book I read years back and it was fun to see it visualized. Now I want to read the book again.

Yesterday was my birthday (It's Hip to Be Square is my theme song for the year). But since I was born in Europe, I've always been able to take advantage of the time zone difference. Steve made my birthday Pad Thai Monday night, right before I had to dash off to volleyball class with Quarta, and then we relaxed in front of the TV for the rest of the evening. On my birthday proper, I decided to go for broke and cast on TWO pairs of socks in one day. I'm all about overcommitment. On the left is the toe-up start of Stashbuster Spirals, my favorite scrap sock yarn pattern. And on the right, another pattern I've made before, but this time I'm following the directions and knitting them top-down. Hermione's Everyday Socks in Three Irish Girls. I would have made more progress if I hadn't also looked up how to do a Twisted German Cast-on. So now I have projects for each of my two sock bags, and I just need to resurrect and finish some long-time hibernating projects on a larger scale. And maybe really start that T-Yarn rug I'm planning.

For the rest of my birthday, Steve and I left the girls to eat macaroni and we went out to Cactus Ya-Ya, a Mexican/fusion restaurant I hadn't been to in about 10 years. I had Baja fish tacos. Yum. And leftover ice cream cake when we came back home, and watched episode 2 of Designated Survivor. I'm ready for some binge-TV watching and knitting.

But lest you think I haven't been reading anything, my most recent books list follows: I've finished Spark Joy by Marie Kondo, The Survivor by Kyle Mills/Vince Flynn; currently working on SPQR by Mary Beard, The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan, Apollo: the Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan, Full Force and Effect by Mark Greaney/Tom Clancy. And my Latin project continues, as I investigate deponent and defective verbs for my latest installment in my completely unofficial series on the Duolingo forum. I still haven't found a better textbook for learners than Henle, and I'm aiming to work through the 3rd and 4th books of that while continuing free lessons. Yep, retirement is great so far. I might even get my house clean and tidy. And knit my entire queue. Just kidding about one of those.

Argyle Progress

The first argyle sock is at this point.  I did the two repeats of the diamond pattern, then I worked a heel flap over the first half of the stitches, then turned the heel, and most recently I picked up 17 stitches on each side of the heel flap and worked the first row of the final diamond repeat on the instep.  Now it is a matter of decreasing the gusset stitches and finishing the final diamond repeat.  I feel the momentum is on my side!  If this pair works out, I might eventually attempt to size up the chart and make a pair for Steve.

What I am reading: I have two audiobooks going at the moment: The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan, listening to that with Quarta on the school commute; and The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan from the Wheel of Time series.  It's got 300 and umpteen chapters and it will probably be something to work on for the next two months.

Regular reading: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.  It hasn't changed my life yet, but I haven't really done any, other than killing flying ants. Does that count?  I finished Sejanus by David Wishart, in his Marcus Corvinus series of mysteries, and promptly checked out The Lydian Baker, which so far is much less political.  After Sejanus, I guess you need a break.  I also recently finished Rick Riordan's new book, Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes, which is a fun, wisecracking take on mythology, and is pretty much the logical conclusion of the way I annotate Myths of Greece and Rome for my 8th graders.  I also just started The Legend of the Rift, the final book in the 7 wonders series by Peter Lerangis. A horrid thought occurs to me; will I be able to justify reading all these YA adventures and Roman historical fiction next year, when I am no longer teaching Latin to middle schoolers? Or will I have to grow up and read adult best-sellers or classics of indisputable literary quality?  Nah.

Linking up to Ginny's Yarn-Along, where there are both masterful knitting projects and intriguing books to add to your queue.

Yarn-along, and Little Quilt Blocks

I have my first knitting finish of 2016 to report... a pair of socks I've been working on since about October, for myself:

Lime Green for Me  from Kertzer On Your Toes yarn I found at Tuesday Morning.

 They fit perfectly and I'll wear them tomorrow.  I finally started the button bands on my Mint Chocolate cardigan, and after that there are 2 other long-term hibernation knitting projects I need to whip into shape.  I'm sharing this to Ginny's Yarn-Along.  And I have been reading things too...most recently I finished the second of the historical mysteries by David Wishart, Germanicus (the first was Ovid, and I have checked out the third, Sejanus).  The detective, Marcus Corvinus, is a clever and witty guy with a complicated family life and unhealthy levels of curiosity; imagine Lord Peter Wimsey time-warped back to I, Claudius, with perhaps too strong a penchant for the Falernian and for ticking off the empress Livia. For historical authenticity the books are very believable, except for Corvinus' very un-Roman tendency to use 4-letter Anglo-Saxon invective. If I keep up with these I may just finally figure out the Julio-Claudian family tree.

 There hasn't been too much quilt progress in the last 2 weeks; I think I know what I need to do for the borders of Allietare, but haven't done it yet.  I have been dabbling with the 365 challenge and the above are the February blocks I've completed so far.  But I draw the line at 1/2" finished size triangles like the below block for Feb. 3 called for, so I upsized it to 6" instead of 3":

I like the lost ships much better if they don't make me insane, and as a bonus, this block could take up the space of 4 days' blocks that I might decide not to do.  I am reserving judgement on this challenge but I have always enjoyed making a variety of patchwork blocks.  I'm just not going to do miniatures right now.  You can see my design wall with the rainbow string stars.  I am still cogitating on how to set them with the big one in the center.  I need to make time to take my machine in for servicing, too.  Its timing is all off and the feed dogs are not in sync with the stitching action, or something.  I've been giving it a workout recently!

Yarn-along

I can't even remember the last time I linked up to Ginny's Yarn-Along. I just haven't been knitting enough this year, I guess, and certainly not blogging enough.

Well, here is a finished project:

Socks for Steve, given to him on his birthday but finished at least a month before that.  The yarn is Palouse BFL sock yarn that I bought at Blizzard Yarns, and it is basic stockinette knitting, toe-up, with a Sweet Tomato heel. I haven't even entered it on Ravelry yet, but the yarn is a winner, having been worn at least three times so far without felting. (Part of my sour attitude toward sock knitting has come from some felt-prone yarn that spoiled 3 pairs of socks in a row that I knit for Steve. I don't think I'll ever buy Knit Picks sock yarn again).

And here is my current pair on the needles. I'm almost finished turning the first heel. The yarn is Kertzer On Your Toes that I bought at Tuesday Morning, they will be for me, and the heel is the basic toe-up gusset heel that I learned from Wendy Knits.

Books! I have been reading books, and not writing book reviews, all this long time I have not been blogging.  Most recently I finished To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis.  It would be a great book if you like Dr. Who, Jerome K. Jerome, Agatha Christie, P.G.Wodehouse, Dorothy Sayers or any combination of them. Time-travelling, historical incongruities, inscrutably wise butlers, eccentric Oxford dons, witty dialogue, and lovable animals.  Oh yes, and the Bishop's Bird Stump.

Then there is Magnus Chase: The Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan, where he is attempting to do for the Norse gods what he did for Greco-Roman mythology.  It looks like he has a pretty good chance of doing that, and there is the same ADHD action and sassy humor that you probably love from his Percy Jackson books.  Spoiler alert: the 1st person narrator dies (right at the beginning).  It gets wilder from there.  I haven't finished it yet, though.

Midweek Updates on Quilting and Knitting

It has been a hard few weeks at school, and I have come to realize that I cope with it so much better if I insist on doing some creative work with my hands every day.  So this week has been a little better, so far.  Because I have insisted on going into my little cubby and doing a little sewing every day.  Also, if you haven't seen already, Sew Mama Sew is doing their giveaway week, and that will lift any crafter's spirits! Currently, I'm plugging away at Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion Mystery.  I didn't finish clue 1 until yesterday, and now I have a start on clue 2.

 I don't have the same Easy Angle ruler as Bonnie uses: mine is the Fons & Porter ruler designed for flying geese, but I use it for both half-square and quarter-square triangles.  I wavered a bit on which of the three methods for clue 2 to use; I was going to just use the stitch-and-flip method, but after looking more carefully at method 2 I decided I would try it and not have to waste fabric or stress about what to do with my bonus triangles.  So I sprayed the paper template with a few shots of machine applique adhesive and taped it onto the ruler like this, and it seemed to work fine.

 This is how my ruler works cutting the neutral diamonds... you can see I'm using some of my vintage sheets.

 And you can still use it to cut the corner triangles, just don't look at the paper template while you do it.

 I have 6 of my diamond units so far.  I think the rest will go fairly quickly once I get a little more cutting done.  I am loving the color combination in this quilt!  It makes me think of my grandmothers' generation, living in the Midwest in the mid-century.  I'm trying to pick very scrappy fabrics that mostly have a vintage feel.

 This is last week's clue: all finished at last.  Maybe the skull and crossbones fabric is not so vintage looking!

And I am still knitting on Azzu's Shawl, which I started more than 2 months ago.  It only has 10 more rows to go, though.  On the Kindle, I'm still working on reading Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and my daughter is still disgruntled with me for not having finished the latest Percy Jackson book yet.

Now, I've chatted long enough and I need to go do some therapeutic sewing.  Enjoy checking out the other projects on display this week:

Quiltville's Mystery Monday Link-Up
WIP Wednesday
Yarn-Along

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?

A Little Bit of Handwork

I have been neglecting the blog of late, and here are some projects that really deserve to be seen.  First, some of my mother-in-law's quilts that I pinned for her over a month ago:

Pretty and sweet.

This one's intriguing, all in plaids.  You have to step back to see the overall pattern.  She's probably got both of these tied and finished by now!  My own quilting and sewing has not been progressing at all, but I remain hopeful that I'll be able to get back into it now that the school year has started up.  If I can just shake the first week exhaustion.

I have a finished project in knitting to share with the yarn-along.  I started this rug from T-shirt yarn in July or so, after I finished Daniel's Ipad cover.  My original thought was for him to be able to use it in college, but he ended up taking a braided rug that his grandmother made (the same one who made the above quilts).  I packed it along in the car when he and Steve left, and finished it while we were on vacation.  The t-shirts that provided the yarn were some of the boys' when they were small: the "Montana Bear Patrol" and the different striped ones that they got sick of wearing.  Tertia's Pooh dress is the pink, and there are a few other nostalgic memories in there.  I pretty much cleaned out all my t-shirt yarn for this, and it's quite heavy, although not quite as long as I had hoped.  Also on my travels I worked on the Mint Chocolate sweater sleeves, and made several dishcloths, not pictured.

Reading: I am starting Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich after reading some fairly lightweight books over the summer.  Also, encouraged by Daniel, I have an audiobook of Robert Jordan's Eye of the World out from the library, and am a little over halfway through it.  I'm not sure I'm sold on this epic many-book saga quite yet, but I'm a little more interested in it than I was at first.  I won't do a thorough book review this post though.  I hope to bring the travels up to date soon with the next installment(s) of our summer vacation.

Yarn-Along and a finish

 It is a modest finish, a case for Daniel's Ipad mini, but this is my very first finished knitted project of 2014.  That's just a little embarassing!  But combined with my finish yesterday of the Celtic Solstice quilt top, I'm having a very productive July.  I hope it continues.

I put a little pocket on the back so it can hold his earbuds.  I want to make a similar one for my Kindle and one for Tertia's Samsung tablet eventually.  I'm also binding off the lower hem of my "Mint Chocolate" sweater, which will leave the sleeves yet to do.  I have pretty much given up on spinning during the Tour de Fleece, but who knows? Anything could happen.

I recently finished reading Mission at Nuremburg, by Tim Townsend.  I highly recommend this book.  It is the story of an American Lutheran pastor, Henry Gerecke, who in 1943 at the age of 50 decided to enlist as a chaplain in the Army, eventually becoming pastor to some of the most vile of the Nazi  war criminals at the Nuremburg trials.  It reads as a combination of military history, biography, and devotional theology.  What level of compassion would it take for any of us to pray with and for men such as these, and come to see them as individuals, even friends?  Material well worth pondering.  It was especially meaningful to read with a young son in Basic Training; I tend to worry about him, and this book is a good reminder of what the American military looked like in the past, and that sometimes the simple things; human contact, love, forgiveness, attention to basic needs -- are the things that make the difference on the spiritual level as well.

Another book I highly recommend is Things that Matter, a collection of essays and lectures by Charles Krauthammer.  He is a true intellectual renaissance man whose rich experience and life challenges have caused him to think deeply on a wide range of topics, and whose writing is a thing of beauty as few Beltway pundits ever achieve.  From the space program to chess to bioethics to foreign policy, I found him inspiring.  I listened to this as an audiobook, much of it read by Krauthammer himself, and I found myself agreeing with the vast majority of his thoughtful positions even if I differed on points of policy.  The only irreconcilable difference between us is apparently the Oxford comma.  And who knows?  He may eventually convince me on that.

Yarn-Along and Bloom

So, knitting.  The Yarn-Along.  I am approaching the bottom edge of the interminable cardigan.  It seems like I've been approaching the right length for a month but it's been shrinking as I knit.  But, I knit another inch on Monday and it's about time to start the border pattern.  And I started a sleeve for Daniel's I-pad.  This is the third time I've started it, and I think I might keep going now.  Sometimes you just want to knit garter stitch, and I'm having one of those summers.  Maybe next week I'll be knitting dishcloths.

I recently finished reading Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected, by Kelle Hampton.  It's a sweet and very real book about the unexpected birth of a baby with Down syndrome.  I've been a follower of Kelle's blog for some time now, so I was glad to be able to read this book.  It's funny, the things we DS moms have in common, and the things we do not.  If I wrote my memoirs of giving birth to Tertia, it would be much more Erma Bombeck, and with not very good photography, and not nearly enough of the chatty girlfriends camping in my hospital room.  What a great idea, a pajama party at the hospital!  But most of the book is not so frivolous and is really a nice, personal memoir that could be appreciated by many families who receive an unexpected diagnosis.  The author is an accomplished photographer so the pictures are lovely, too.

Daniel and Quarta have been reading a lot this summer; here they are teasing Tertia by taking over her bed.  Daniel is somewhere deep in the Wheel of Time saga; Quarta is tearing through Muddle Earth, Edge Chronicles, the Oracles of Delphi Keep, and a bunch of Warriors books.  Tertia is comfortably re-re-reading the Harry Potter books.

No Disney Princess posters were harmed in writing this blog.

Yarn-Along, and What I've Been Reading

Just a little blog post to try to get back into the blogging game, to share how much progress I've made in the last few months on my sweater, and what I've been reading.  I'm linking up to the Yarn-Along at Small Things.  It's been awhile!  The sweater is almost long enough to start on the pattern I want to put in for the waistband and ribbing.  This is the sweater that I knit from the yoke up for my Olympics project, then I've just been inching along ever since.  Made from reclaimed yarns from thrift store sweaters.

I have finished quite a few fiction books recently; here are a few:

What Angels Fear, by C.S. Harris.  This is the first book in a mystery series set in Regency England, featuring a memorable aristocratic detective with a dysfunctional family and plenty of neurotic, Napoleonic PTSD induced angst, Sebastian St. Cyr.  He is a romantic figure, however, with abilities of intuition and quickness of thought that make him something of a superhero. Historical mysteries have an intrinsic appeal because in the lack of modern scientific evidence gathering, the mystery of human character is heightened.  This book perhaps overuses the red herring and introduces postmodern sensibilities where they don't belong.  The actual crime and psychological investigation thereof is a bit too graphic for anyone who started reading this hoping for a Jane Austen style period novel.  I will probably read more in the series.

Longbourn, by Jo Baker.  I listened to this on audiobook, with lyrical narration by Emma Fielding.  This is a quite different take on Jane Austen fan-fiction, kind of an Upstairs/Downstairs, servant's eye perspective on Pride and Prejudice.  If it were not for its beautiful writing, I would probably have lost patience with it for the same, postmodern sensibilities superimposed on a period piece, issue that I mentioned above.  Sarah, the young housemaid at Longbourn, interacts in mostly superficial ways with the familiar characters while longing for self-determination and love.  If you dislike characters like Wickham and Mr. Collins, you will probably find even more reason to dislike them.  But I am a little concerned that characters like Mr. Bennet and even Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy may come off as having been reconstructed into passivity in order to give a foil for the grievances of the lower-class.  It's a worthwhile story in its own right, however, and I will do my best to dissassociate it in my memory from the well-loved Austen characters it hijacks.

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon, by Alexander McCall Smith.  I think I have mentioned a few times that I really love these books?  So evocative of Africa, with not just memorable but lovable characters.  This is the 14th book in the redoubtable series, which shows no signs of running out of material.

Death of a Policeman, by M.C. Beaton.  I've lost count of how many Hamish MacBeth books there are, but this is the latest one.  And it follows the formula that made her earlier books so successful, but with somewhat diminished charm.  Hamish, the highland policeman with the sixth sense and bad luck in love, is indeed an endearing character, but it's been a good run and it's time to give him a happy ending.  This wasn't it.  In fact, the way Beaton has written his character, there may not be a possibility of a happy resolution for his life (and as long as he's selling well, no reason to stop writing them, I guess).  He is perpetually at odds with both the criminal class and the bureaucratic management of the police, and at this rate, there will be no unmurdered people left in the Highlands to settle down with.  Characters are introduced only to be dispatched in a gruesome way a few pages later.  It's a shame; Beaton's ability to bring a story with delightful characters to a satisfying conclusion was what started her in the detective genre.  Witness the various 6-volume series of Regency romances she wrote (under the name Marion Chesney) in the 1980's and 90's.  I recently finished the Traveling Matchmaker series (last book, Yvonne Goes to York), which is a good example of light fiction not taking itself too seriously or trying to prolong the story arc beyond reason.  This recent book doesn't suffer from a lack of imagination; rather, the character development that we enjoy has to be sandwiched between clues and red herrings for a murder we don't really care about.  Suggestion: abandon the mystery genre altogether and write Hamish one last, grand story.  Preferably where he actually connects with Elspeth around something other than a random murder.

And that's all for now!

April Fools, April Goals, WIPs and Yarn-Alongs

I finished all my March goals... April Fools!

No, really.  The only goal I actually worked on at all was #3, knit the Mint Chocolate sweater to the halfway point.  It might be halfway, but I'm not that confident.  I also worked a tiny bit - microscopic - on the string star quilt.  I didn't expect everything that happened in March... the walking pneumonia, the son enlisting in the National Guard, which looks like it's really going to happen.  The coyote in the back yard -- turns out it was actually a dingo.  The neighbor kids' pet dingo.  Who is supposedly good with cats.  Yeah.  It was that kind of month.  I pretty much gave up on the crafting.

I read a lot of books - most recently The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley, Elantris by Brandon Sanderson, and Keep it Pithy by Bill O'Reilly.  Never say I am not eclectic.  I'm overdue for a book review day sometime soon.

I may not be sewing much, but Quarta whipped this little table-topper scrap quilt up Sunday afternoon while I was napping.  It was from some scraps from that epic estate sale I went to last year, and she just improvised it up.  Pretty cool for an 11-year-old.

She's made three quilts so far.

So, should I even bother to set goals for April?  Let's just modify the March goals:

1. Knit the body of the sweater.  Sleeves can be another month.
2. Make small progress on the string star.
3. Make small progress on the machine quilting of Farmer's Wife.
4. Do a spring cleaning of the sewing area.

I'm really looking forward to Spring Break next week.  I hope to get rid of the last of the pneumonia cough and have lots of time to read and craft.  I've been too tired to stay up later than 9:30 most nights lately.  Steve will be taking Secundus on college visits and I will try to keep the girls from going stir crazy here while not actually doing much.  It sounds wonderful to me, but I'm afraid the natives will be restless.

Yarn-Along, and a teeny bit of Work in Progress

It's Wednesday again and I have a bit of progress to report.

I have officially separated the stitches for the sleeves from the ones for the rest of the sweater.  I think I finally got the math right and it's just more or less basic knitting from here.  This is Mint Chocolate, a free Drops pattern that I am heavily modifying.  The yoke alone was my Ravelympics project.  All the yarn has been sitting unloved in my stash for too long, but I like the combination of colors.  Now for the slow process of knitting the rest of the sweater.

Over last weekend Steve helped me figure out what has been going wrong with my Amazon links.  See, I signed up for the Amazon associates program, which means that if anyone wanted to click through to Amazon and order through the link on the right sidebar, or from any individual product link I put in the text of a blog post, a portion of the order would benefit our family.  But something about Blogger didn't get along with Amazon, and none of my links were actually good.  So after Steve's tutorial, I'm going to try to put in the links for the books I've been reading.  Hopefully the links from here on will be good... I enjoy writing about books, but I just don't have terribly good computer skills!

I've been listening to the audiobook version of Brandon Sanderson's fantasy novel Elantris.  Daniel and I attended Sanderson's book signing a few weeks ago for his latest novel, and I've read The Rithmatist, a much shorter book for the YA market.  Elantris is an interesting world of political and religious intrigue, where the main character, a prince, wakes up one morning to find himself dead - or something very like it.  It's long, though.  66 chapters, but who's counting?

Another book I'm still slogging through is Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles.  Ancient history is always fun for me.

In quilting, a teeny tiny bit of progress: Celtic Solstice is just a few long border seams away from being a finished top.  Twelve border seams, actually.  Still, not too much more to go.  And I've begun the slow and painstaking process of seaming together the diamonds for the Rainbow String Star I'm working on, inspired by the Santa Fe String Star in Bonnie Hunter's book String Fling.  Very excited about how this one looks in my mind's eye, anyway!

Check out the other linkups at Ginny's Yarn-Along and Lee's WIP Wednesday.

Magistra's Day Off

"All me life flashed before me eyes.  It was really borin'."

- Babs the knitting hen in Chicken Run

So what has Carpe Lanam been up to lately, since she clearly hasn't been blogging?  Not much that is blogworthy, that's for sure.  I've been busy, yes.  I've been trying to shake the cold that has been plaguing me since Christmas.  Now, with the Ides of March fast approaching, is the busiest time of year for Latin teachers.  I'm kind of at the eye of the hurricane today, since I had the day off.  This is because my classes are all taking the National Latin Exam today and, by the very specific rules, the Latin teachers can't be present for that.  I guess they're afraid we'd coach our kids or something.  It's a welcome break, particularly since last Saturday I spent the day ferrying kids to the Latin Olympika, yesterday I was at school all day for an inservice, and tomorrow I'll be ferrying kids to practice for the Spring program, and next week will be both parent-teacher conferences AND the pretest for the final, and the end of the 3rd quarter is just a week after that.

 This morning dawned sunny -- wow!  And Tertia is naturally sunny.  She dressed up because she was supposed to give a presentation about rainbows in science class.  I started to try to steer her towards more carefully coordinated clothing, but then I decided that her ragamuffin chic fashion sense is pretty okay and anyone who doesn't like it is the one with the problem.  She wanted to pose with the other flowers.  She can blend in with the bed of daffodils, right?

 And just then the bus came along and she was off.  We had the big meetings last week for her evaluation and IEP... I'm impressed by how much her teachers genuinely like her.  It makes it a little easier sending her off to school when I can't be there with her every day to watch over her.  High School next year, though.  That's gonna be hard.

 The violets have been pretty lately.  A few more days of this sun and I might be able to get rid of the sore throat/ cough thing.

 Daffodils.  That's what happening in our yard in March.  Lots and lots of daffodils.

Since there was no school for me this morning, I did my weekly grocery run early, when Winco is less crowded.  I had a couple of appointments already scheduled for the afternoon even before I knew I would have the day off.  I scrubbed a toilet and unloaded the dishwasher and cleaned Malvolio's fish tank for the first time in I'm embarrassed to say how long.  After a bit I will make Mongolian Beef for supper with this recipe I pinned, and then I need to take the girls to buy new shoes.

And - the knitting.  So yesterday I discovered a slight error in my math calculations for the yoke, picked back 1.5 rows and added two extra stitches on the section that will eventually become the sleeves.  I think I have a handle on it but I'm not completely sure even yet.  I need to lengthen the yoke by about an inch before I separate for the sleeves, and the speckled pattern has to be worked over a multiple of 6 + 1, and I am a better Latin teacher than a math teacher.  I'm craving an evening where I can just sit and knit, but that's not so very likely.  No progress on sewing or quilting this week at all.

Books in brief:

I've almost finished The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.  I like it but I'm not sure I like the heroine, Flavia de Luce, a rather horrible 11-year-old girl with a disturbing interest in deadly poisons.  I recently finished Branded: the Buying and Selling of Teenagers, by Alissa Quart, a dated (ten years in popu culture IS dated) bit of social criticism on the over-commercialization of American teenagers.  It was assigned reading for all teachers, and I suppose there is helpful information in it, but it annoyed me with its hand-wringing without any prescription to fix the problem.  And since I believe the author is secular, I felt that the only prescriptive advice she would have given in any case would be for government intervention.  It made me a bit more cynical as we began reading the now thoroughly dated (30 years) classic, Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman.  Can a classic be dated?  Well, it merits further discussion after I've made it through the whole thing, but I was annoyed at the outset by Postman's assertion that it is impossible to "do" political philosophy (or any other important work of the mind) on television.  Really?  I'm pretty sure that I've seen George Will, among others, "do" it many times, quite capably.  I'm working on an idea, something about reverse chronological snobbery and dystopian literature, as if somehow our era (or the 1980's, in this case) is the most at risk of cultural collapse of any era in human history.  But as I say, I should really bear with it through reading the whole book before I do a full book report.  This is just a teaser.  Speaking of cultural collapse, I am about halfway through Carthage MVST Be Destroyed, by Richard Miles, which provides a lot of insight into the decline and fall of a civilization that one of the 5th graders, bless his heart, guessed was located in Australia at the Latin Olympika.  Study of the ancient Carthaginian culture is very helpful to understanding ancient Rome and also the culture of ancient Near East in Bible times.  Africa, not Australia.

WIP Wednesday, Mini Yarn-Along, and March Goals

 Well, it's Wednesday again.  It's pouring down rain outside, I am trying for the Guinness Record for World's Longest-Lasting Cold (not really) and my craft achievements in 2014 are as abysmal as the weather and the leaky basement.  I don't think I knit a single stitch this last week.  But I did make this miniature broom out of some handspun flax yarn from years back.  You see, Tertia is in her school's production of Snow White, as the castle maid.  And cast members are supposed to dress up the stuffed apple with items that exemplify their character.  I think the broom is rather cute.  And it's all the work I've done with yarn this week.  The napkin is for size reference.

 There it is, stitched onto the apple.  I really do want to pick up my knitting again but there's this math that I'm balking at, a bit.

I have at length assembled enough string-pieced diamonds to consider sewing them into strips for the String Star quilt.  Not much sewing has happened this last week, either.  But it surely will change!

I have been reading - currently, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  And Carthage Must Be Destroyed , in the non-fiction category.

I hesitate to report my progress on February's crafting goals.  The only thing I made any progress on at all was my Olympic sweater - I did finish the goal I set for myself there, by finishing the yoke only.  The other 3 goals were ignored.

(This is the math that I'm balking at - I have to calculate how many stitches for each section and continue from the yoke downward).

So, time to set some new goals in the "get it done" challenge, which I will probably ignore in March as well:

1. Random UFO goal: #4, the Scrappy Trip Around the World., 
2. Farmer's Wife Quilt machine quilting ... to the 3/4 point of the main top.
3. Knitting - Either continue the sweater above to the halfway point, or finish the argyles.
4. String Star - time to make some progress on this.

Bonus points if I finish the sewing room cleanup that needs to be done, or shift focus and make significant progress on any of my other projects.  At this point, I just need to make a little progress on something more than a miniature broom.

Yarn-Along and WIP Wednesday

Olympic knitting continues.  I am heading into the last two decreases of the neck for my Olympic knitting project, the yoke of a Drops cardigan, knit with my thrift store sweater yarn.  I'm liking the colors a lot and I think when the whole thing is finished it will be a sweater I will wear often.  Getting it finished will be the trick.

I'm reading, among other things, 7 Men by Eric Metaxas.  It is a selection of short biographies of, you guessed it, 7 men who positively changed the world, starting with George Washington.  The author has written full-length bios of Dietrich Bonhoffer and William Wilberforce, condensed versions of which are included here.  I also enjoyed reading about Jackie Robinson and Eric Liddell.  I'm recommending the book to Secundus, who is doing his junior thesis on the theme of leadership.  It's a good one, easy to read if you're busy but still quite well-written.

Not much progress in quilting at all... this is my mother-in-law's top that I pinned for her over the weekend. I like the scrappiness of it... she doesn't think there are any repeats in the fabrics. Celtic Solstice is still being worked on when I work on anything sewing-related.

 Quarta was assigned Filippo Brunelleschi as her Renaissance artist, and so here is her Sculpey/craft foam rendition of Il Duomo.

Today her class is having the Hobbit Feast that was postponed because of the snow two weeks ago.  We made pflaumenkuchen, which seems like something Hobbits would eat.  But they would probably call it plum cake.