yarn along: november 2021

 

After finishing The Inferno, I lost Dante-reading steam.  I confess I wasn't really that into it; each canto seemed like a who's who of 13th century Italy.  Dante's nods to his contemporaries in hell just felt like burns, rather than a timeless statement about sin.  I didn't really see the spiritual magnitude of Paradise Lost, and hoped that by reading How Dante Can Save Your Life I'd be convinced.  Whatever I think of Rod Dreher as a writer, he had some good points about Paradise Lost, and I'll be picking it up again soon.  In the meantime, I reached for a palate cleanser: My Cousin Rachel.  It's fantastic, although I've heard that some of my people didn't like the ambiguous ending.  I'm right at the part where Rainaldi arrives in Cornwall; I'll probably finish it by the end of the week.

I needed a palate cleanser after finishing the Evol sweater, too.  Something quick and easy, that required winding up a skein of yarn, and nothing that I'd already started.  Enter socks.  I'm knitting the Yanagi socks, a free pattern by Maiko Hikosaka. They're basically a vanilla sock with a small pattern panel, something I've been embracing: just enough pattern to keep things interesting, just enough stockinette to make it fairly mindless.  For my next socks, I'm scoping out some pattern panels in this book. I tried something new for the heels, incorporating a slipped stitch panel at the place where my socks always get holes, using the Knit Picks free pattern found here.  It seems really sturdy and, while I hate to abandon my tried and true and easy heel, this may be my new go-to, especially if it saves me from darning.  I've also been working secretly on Father's Musselburgh hat when he's out of the house.  It'll definitely be finished in time for Christmas. I cast it on this summer, in Malabrigo Sock held double with alpaca laceweight (two different brands, one as a backup when the first ran out), both in black.  When those are off the needles, I've got a bowl of yarny beautiful bits that are to be a woolly tattoo on as yet un-knit tea cozy.  I've been dreaming of said tea cozy for years now, and will use the Musselburgh pattern to make it a top-down knit.