Halloween? Where?

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Apple Basket!

This week, I am posting early and not much. Next time will be better, I promise – this weekend, Andreas and I are going to Nottingham, UK, for the Black Library Weekender II.

Very exciting; I have been looking forward to it for a long time, much more, of course, than last year, when I didn’t really know what it was all about. Andreas didn’t either, exactly, but at least he knew a lot more about the whole world of Warhammer (and still does).

I have planned and am packing my knitting and all the inconsequential stuff (clothes, passport, all that); also getting the house in order for the ones left behind: tidying, baking, grocery shopping.

The Knitting

This week, I am concentrating on the Coalminer socks for Thomas; I’m trying to get them done by end of play today, so he can get to wear them. I’m on the leg of the second one, toe-up, as you may recall, so there is a chance.

And now for the Travel Knitting:

The Black Library Weekender events are mostly panel talks, Q&A sessions and the like; so for listening in dimly lit audience rows, a simple, ribbed hat in aran weight wool on 4.5 mm needles seem like the perfect project.

Andreas decided he needs a hat soon, and Victor concurred on his own behalf. They both prefer something simple, masculine, and non-fussy, so I found the simplest hat possible, a ribbed beanie that doesn’t really require a pattern, but the photos of soldiers in the snow sold the concept.

I ordered some Filcolana Peruvian Highland, 2 skeins for each hat, in black for Andreas and hunter green for Victor. So that’s that taken care of. Yarn and needles packed.

For variation, I will be knitting socks (for me, this time) on bamboo needles that won’t be taken away at the airport. I’m using my own Foot Hugger pattern and the Filcolana Arwetta in the colourway Perfect Storm that I bought a bunch of last year for my BOTI scarf and then used less than half of, because I decided to do the TARDIS section in solid blue. So, lots of lovely sock yarn – and it’s in a skein, so I get to try out my nøstepinn to make a centre-pull ball.

The Books

I’ve finished a couple of books this week, somehow:

Dead Beat by Jim Butcher, book 7 of the Dresden Files. In which our hero stands up to fight against the disciples of a notorious necromancer, rescues a polka-playing mortician, and is required to consider the attentions of a fallen angel. Also, there’s a dinosaur.

The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse, another story set in the Pyrenees in southern France, where in the 14^th century, the Cathars hid in mountain caves in an attempt to avoid being slaughtered. I have previously read The Labyrinth and The Cave by the same author. While reading this one, I had a feeling that this author writes the same story in different variations – some authors do that, and it gets old pretty quickly. Part of the reason for this turned out to be that the novella The Cave, which I have read a few years ago, is in fact the same story as the one in Winter Ghosts.

The October group read in the Ravelry group on Goodreads has been The Yarn Whisperer by Clara Parkes – apparently a wise and witty book of a life in knitting. I say apparently, because my copy arrived from Amazon this Monday. Still in October, still, theoretically at least, with enough time to read it before the end of the month. This week, though, is one of those weeks from Hell in which everything wants to happen at once.

As I have mentioned, Andreas and I are leaving for England on Friday morning – very early. So everything that needs to be done around the house this week needs to be done by Thursday. Which is today.

And this week, Victor and a friend of his from school have been trying out university life in a 4-day training programme at Aarhus University, meaning that I on Tuesday and Wednesday was the one to drive them. No problem in the mornings – except maybe for the poor kids who had to be ready at 6:30 AM to go with me – but in the afternoons, I had to stay at uni until they finished at nearly 4. Long days for everybody. Luckily, the father of the other boy works in Aarhus, too, so he was able to drive them on Monday and Thursday.

And happily, they are having great fun with geology, physics, maths, data science and all that. So it’s all good.

Oh, and we had a storm on Monday, in the late afternoon and evening. Our area wasn’t one of those most affected, though we did have fierce winds and bits of trees lying around everywhere.

Victor and his geology group for the day were supposed to have been out digging in the University park, but that was deemed too dangerous, so they got to play with sand and clay indoors instead.

Thomas was out having a driving lesson that was cut short when the warning announcements on the radio included Viborg: the police advised against all unnecessary driving. So now, he has tried driving in a storm – quite useful, though he was glad to have an experienced driver by his side.

So, what would be a sane reaction to a very busy week inaugurating a rather busy month? Well, to sign up for NaNoWriMo, of course! If you are not familiar with it, this is National Novel Writing Month – the ‘national’ part ought maybe to be replaced by ‘global’, as this is the nature of online activities. So, we could call it GloBoWriMo instead.

The idea is to write 50,000 words on a new novel during November; on the first draft of it, anyway, as editing and rewriting will have to be done later. And probably finishing this first draft.

I have no idea whether I will be able to write an average of 1,667 words a day for a month, but I’ll give it a go, in between everything else going on.

So, wish me luck!

And that’s that for now – I have to go and get the cake out of the oven, review my shopping list, and try to write a short novel synopsis.

I will be back next week, so until then: have a great week-and-a-half!