Mostly Knitting

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Apple Basket!

The Autumn break is coming up, a welcome breathing space during the long stretch from August to December, between the summer holidays and Christmas. This break used to be called the ‘potato break’, because the school children had to help at home, getting the potatoes in before the frosts.

Now, it is for many families more of an action-packed week, with child psychologists cropping up every year to remind stressed out parents of stressed out kids that a few days at home, doing not much, is in fact better for everybody than running around from theme park to museum to activity.

We are taking the leisurely path, with two family outings planned and not really much besides that. The boys need to relax, sleep in, play their games – and so do I (my ‘games’, of course, are knitting and reading and writing). Weather permitting, we may decide to go and admire a stretch of forest: I am continually fascinated by the riotous colouring of trees this time of year, and I want to just soak it up before the bareness of winter.

The Knitting

This week has been good for my knitting, and I’ve managed to make quite an impact on the wips (though this form, wips, is apparently incorrect, according to a post in a discussion thread on LI – but I’ll stick with it, claiming that the acronym has become a new word in itself and thus can be pluralised).

Anyway, back to the knitting: I finished a pair of socks that I have mentioned before, but can’t show you yet; I’m hoping to have the pattern included in the next Defarge book. I won’t know until mid-November if it will be, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

I made a second cowl from my Rêveur Cowl pattern, to test it before release. It’s a deceptively simple pattern, once you get the hang of the moebius cast-on; the pattern includes a link to Cat Bordhi’s YouTube video of it. And I have had fun knitting on the same side and on both sides at once, all at the same time – this is the magic of the moebius strip. Also, it’s a quick knit using aran weight yarn on 5 mm needles.

So, the first one was the bright red one that was directly inspired by Erin Morgenstern’s book The Night Circus – highly recommended, by the way, if you like magic dreaminess in a story.

I made that one in Sandnes Kashmir Alpakka, lovely soft and warm and fuzzy – and very red.

As you may have surmised, though, red isn’t really my colour; usually, I am attracted to purples and blues and greens; and I had lying around two skeins of Filcolana Peruvian Highland Wool in a soft lavender. Hence this second, purple version: slightly smaller than the cashmere alpaca version; less fuzzy, of course, not as dreamily soft – and obviously completely unsuited for proper rêveurs.

But I like it.

And I finished my second sleeveless, top down O w l s jumper – the popular design by Kate Davies – this time also in Irish yarn. The first one was made from Kerry Mills Aran, a 200-gram skein in a tweedy dark green that my parents brought home from a trip to Ireland last autumn.

This one, in purple (yes, I know), is made in Studio Donegal Aran Tweed in a – well, a tweedy purple, with flecks of blue, lilac, heather, light grey, and once in a while an olive green.

I bought this yarn in Dublin two summers ago and have tried out several patterns for it; it didn’t want to be a skirt, though, or a shawl – but the owls jumper seems to work out. A nice addition to my work wardrobe. (No pics yet; it has been drizzling all day.)

I worked it top down again to be able to measure the body length along the way; and because it makes so much more sense to me to work from the centre out, so to speak.

On top of all this, the grey socks for Victor are coming along – the first one, anyway – and the heel is already done. From here, it’s just plain stocking stitch in the round up the leg: perfect to bring along for the guitar concert he and I are going to tomorrow evening (David Russell is performing in Den Gamle By in Aarhus).

I suppose I should mention the Leaf Cardigan, which has been sadly neglected all week. I started on one sleeve with a certain interval between the decreases that would work out if I don’t want the lace pattern on the sleeves. Then, it was put a bit to the side in favour of the O w l s and the socks, both being more appropriate for the season than a cotton cardigan. Meanwhile, I have been wavering as to the lace pattern: if I want it, I need to decrease fast enough to have the right number of stitches when there are still 40 rows to go. In that case, I have to frog the admittedly not very long piece of sleeve that I have knitted, and redo it. Decisions, decisions.

I’ll let you know what I end up doing (I think I do want the lace).

The Books

I finished The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, a story of life, love, lies and secrets.

The narrator, Iris, is in her eighties, telling the story of her life and that of her sister, Laura, interspersed with comments on her daily life, of being old, of watching the changes to her home town. Inside Iris’ memoir is Laura’s novel, and inside that are several sci-fi stories told to her by her lover, stories that themselves comment upon the events happening in the world outside.

Another story featuring writers and their shaping of events is Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, which I am listening to – this one also contains a mystery and various, conflicting, views of what has happened and why.

Nick and Amy Dunne have moved back to his Missouri hometown after both losing their New York jobs, to take care of his dying mother and demented father. Nick borrows money from Amy to buy a bar together with his twin sister. After two years in Missouri, on their fifth anniversary, Amy disappears.

The big question is, of course, whether Nick killed her. I am not going to spoil it for you; suffice it to say that both of them kept secrets.

The narrative is divided between Nick (who has the bigger parts) and Amy, with two readers in the Audible version; this back-and-forth works very well to keep the suspension tight and make the reader (listener) want to know how it all plays out.

I finally got round to finishing The Hound of the Baskervilles, the well-known Sherlock Holmes story; my plan was to re-read them all and come up with a brilliant design for the book Defarge Does Sherlock. Well, the deadline is 31^st October, and I’ve read maybe a sixth of the stories so far. So, maybe not – unless I am struck by inspiration very soon.

That’s all for this time – I will be back with more knitting, more books, and an update of our autumn break activities.

Until then: have a great week – have a great break, if you have one – and take care of yourself and your loved ones!

Too much going on?

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Apple Basket!

We are having lovely October sunshine again after a couple of rainy days – the forecast promises more rain soon, though, and cooler temperatures, so this is only a short reprieve before the cold season settles in to stay. I have been out picking more apples and taking pictures of the glorious display of many-hued foliage that the trees are putting on.

This week, I am keeping it short and sweet; I have been grading the first test done by my Latin students, there are a couple of September short stories still waiting for my feedback, and I am working on two knitting patterns, writing, editing, and translating them for publication.

So right now, I am in that annoying state of feeling that I am neglecting at least three things no matter which one I am currently doing. You know what I mean, right?

Just before, I was trying to get back into writing mode and instead went upstairs to find yarn for socks – after having done some editing on the sock pattern while ignoring the untidy kitchen and forgetting my coffee that was cooling as I photographed autumn trees outside.

Some days are just like that.

The Knitting

The Leaf cardigan: I finished the garter edge and moved on to the first sleeve. It was quite a thrill to see the body of the cardigan gradually emerging from the scrunched-up state it had been in while bundled onto the cable of the circ, and resuming its proper shape, now neatly outlined.

I am really beginning to look forward to wearing this cardigan – though it may have to wait till spring. Depends on the weather, we’ll see. And on how much I let myself be distracted by other knits instead of plugging along on the sleeves.

The stripy socks have been marching along, if you’ll pardon the pun; I brought them for the day of the testing, when I spent one lesson of each double watching the students while they were toiling (well, some of them toiled, others did the thing and proceeded to be bored the rest of the time).

These are the ones I made in the inexpensive Bumbo sock yarn, in some purple (left over from my Fosco socks) together with a multi-coloured version, in greens, blues, and purples. The long colour changes have made for interesting stripes that were deemed ‘hippie-like’ by one of my students. Can’t blame him for that.

So, now I have a pair that should fit me well and fit into shoes; next, I will make a pair without stripes to a) keep my feet warm and b) have a pair to show on the pattern page, when I get to that.

And a pair in the XL size, for one of my boys (or maybe more pairs, for more boys), to check the numbers.  

I finished also the Rêveur cowl, the one inspired by Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus; it is lovely and soft and warm – and the moebius cast-on (which really is a lot easier than it looks) makes for a fun knit. The pattern will be coming out soon, in time for Christmas knitting :o)

Now, I announced last week my intention to knit another sleeveless o w l s jumper, partly to push myself into getting it started – or have to admit defeat. And that would have been embarrassing, right?

So, I cast on last night, in Studio Donegal Aran Tweed, something I bought in Dublin two years ago. I am working it top down like the first one, my Upside Down Owls. I’m at the bellies of the owls right now; the aran weight yarn on 5 and 5.5 mm needles make for a quick knit.

The Books

I haven’t done much reading this week; my current paper book is The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, which I really enjoy. Mostly, though, I only get to read in bed, and several evenings this week, I have been too tired to even reach out and pick it up. But, as it is a library book and due back next Thursday, I decided to make an effort – I may be able to extend the loan, but then again, it may have been ordered by someone else – and so it became a companion to the o w l s knitting.

The narrative has multiple layers: the present and the memoirs of the first-person narrator; clips from newspapers; a novel written by the narrator’s sister – and in that novel, a story told by one character to another, from which comes the title of the whole package. I love enveloped tales, finding threads between layers and marvelling at the complexities.

Listening is easier to get done, particularly of course while driving. And so, I have finished Silver, written by Andrew Motion and read by David Tennant. This is a sequel to Treasure Island, featuring Jim Hawkins Jr. and Natalie Silver – called Nattie or Nat – undertaking a voyage back to The Island (Lost, anyone?) to appease the ghosts of their fathers’ shared past.

We get the traditional adventure elements, known from the original story: the sea voyage, including storms, the island, the battle against the pirates – the three men who were marooned when Jim Hawkins Sr. and his fellows left the island 40 years ago.

Added to these are more modern themes: the flora and particularly fauna of the island turns out to be rather special; questions of slavery and gender are dealt with, and not surprisingly, we have a budding romance. The ending of the book allows for a sequel – I don’t know if Motion plans to write one, or is content to leave the rest to the readers’ imagination.

Well, that’s all for now; as advertised, the offerings are slim this week – thank you for stopping by, and I hope you will return next time for more.

Until then: have a lovely week, enjoy the season, and take of yourself and your loved ones!