New books, new projects {yarn along}

Happy New Year!

The start of a new calendar year makes me eager to start a hundred new projects. My brain is bursting with ideas. But first, I’m finding energy to finish old things…books I’d made my way partly through, knitting and sewing projects I’d started, little jobs around the house that have sat, undone, waiting for attention. I think it’s something about my desire to start a bunch of new things and realizing that my lists already have things on them and feeling like making new lists and pretending the old lists don’t exist is somehow dishonest.

As Felix has been saying lately whenever he doesn’t believe someone, “You are not TRUE.”

In the interest of being TRUE, I’m trying to whittle down my stash a bit and finish some old projects and books before I jump headlong into the new ones I really want to be doing. So, I’m using some yarn I bought a few years ago from this farm to make a quick cowl. Working with this yarn is heaven! I wish now that I had bought so much more of it. I love the weight, the feel of it- it’s spongy and springy and has the perfect amount of twist so it never splits. The little variations in color are so beautiful, too. The pattern is Sweeping Angels Neck Cowl by Ivy Brambles (Ravelry link)…and the worsted weight is working up really quickly.

I’m hoping to finish it this weekend, because my yarn is coming for the Big Life Goal project I’m going to finish this year…and I really want to be able to start on it right away! More on that next week, I hope.

We are reading On Pilgrimage by Dorothy Day for our Well-Read Mom group, and I’m really finding a lot that connects with how my life feels right now. It seems Dorothy Day and I both like to ruminate on a broad range of things while we wash dishes, clean clothes, and care for people’s needs…and her thoughts are elevating mine these days. She’s all about the holy moments in the middle of the everyday ones, which y’all know is a favorite theme of mine.

“All things are His, and all are holy.”

                                 – Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage

I’m also working my way through The World’s First Love: Mary, Mother of God by Fulton Sheen and finding it jaw-droppingly amazing. I’ve never read any Sheen before (although I’ve always meant to) and he is wonderful. This book is Smart, Occasionally Snarky, the stuff of Light Bulbs Illuminating Inside My Brain every few pages- I really love it, but I can only take a few pages at a time or my head will explode.

In addition to finishing a few books this week, I’ve decided a few other books are not worth finishing right now and have put them aside. I never used to do this, ever, but my friend Katherine has persuaded me that a busy mama’s reading time is precious and that there is no shame in ditching a book if I really don’t like it or it isn’t speaking to me at a particular moment.

I can always go back for them later, right?

What are you reading? I’m still making my To-Read list for this year, and I’m open to suggestions- I like everything!

Linking up with Ginny Sheller’s Yarn Along…I’m so glad to see it back again as a monthly linkup.

The occasional knitting post {yarn along}

It’s not that often that my reading and my knitting end up being color coordinated.

The book is All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. It’s our Well-Read Mom pick for this month, and I’ve just started it. (Goodreads tells me I am 6% done, so I can’t really have an opinion yet- but I think I’m really going to like it.)

I’ve just finished the cowl I was working on before. (It still needs blocking- it’s curling up a lot on the bottom edge- will blocking fix that?)

This week, I cast on and started knitting a hat for Sam, which he desperately needs.

This is the last hat I made for him (and a pair of matching mittens).

It was 2011. He’s overdue.

The new hat pattern is Luuk by Annis Jones on Ravelry. I’m using a wool yarn from Knit Picks that I haven’t tried before. I was afraid Sam would say it was scratchy, since it’s wool, but he says he thinks it is going to be okay. The color is “sea monster,” which he loves. He’s calling it his Leviathan Hat.

So far, it’s working up pretty quickly. After the counting involved with the eyelet, it’s kind of nice to be back to just straight rows of knitting and purling. As often as I’m interrupted, the chances of my losing count on a complicated pattern are pretty high these days.

I’m linking up with Ginny’s Yarn Along again- head over there to see what other people are making and reading…and tell me- are you reading or making anything you really like this week? I’m always looking for more books for my list and more projects for my endless Ravelry queue. 

Yarn along, read along, get along

I’m in the middle of a few things that aren’t quite ready to share yet, but you can find me over at Blessed is She today talking about prayer…specifically about calling God “Father” and what that means for our relationships with each other.

In other news, fall always makes me feel like knitting. I’ve been a dormant knitter for a while, but I pulled out this cowl this past week that has been unfinished for a long time, and I got back to work.

I still really like it! This is significant, because usually when I’ve had something hibernating for this long, it just doesn’t make me as happy to work on it as it did before.

Nora says the needles are “more impressive” than the cowl. (I am really smitten with those, too.)

Our much-anticipated book club meeting is this Sunday afternoon, and I still have to make my way through about 40 pages of The Death of Ivan Ilyich. It’s not exactly a light read, but it’s not long, either. That’s okay with me. Next month, we’ll be reading All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. I’m pretty excited to be leaving Russian classics behind for a little bit.

What are you reading? What are you making? I’m linking up with Ginny at Small Things for the first time ever, because I always mean to and never seem to get around to it. (If you go over there, please be kind and don’t compare my knitting to those folks’- it’s amazing and inspiring what people can do with yarn).