yarn along: february 2022

Blessed Feast!

Little did I mean to drop off the face of the earth for January, but I did.  And that, for us, was January in a nutshell: everything virtual or cancelled, several non-Covid bugs (and then actual Covid), our co-op postponed, and frigid weather.  

The good news is that while the isolation wasn't great for our mental health, it provided ample time for me to knit.  And knit, knit, knit I did.  Purl, too.  I finished the summer shawl for our dear yiayia while recovering from Covid and have already passed that along.  The prayer shawl I gave to its recipient on Sunday; between chemo and a bout with Covid, she's been absent, too.  I've made remarkable progress on the shawl that won't end (although I may have to order more yarn to finish it), and have started a couple new things, too.

Z requested a hat to match her Selbu mittens.  Delighted to comply, I ordered yarn and cast on, modifying this free pattern, which I used for her mittens, to accommodate the number of stitches needed for her noggin.  It's humming along.  There's something about working a knitting chart that speeds up, or at least gives the perception of speed to, my knitting. 

The day before my Covid symptoms hit, I spent an inordinate amount of time re-hanking an entire 1,375 yard skein of cobweb-weight gray yarn that I've had for as long as my oldest son has been alive.  It wasn't quite the right color for the other yarns in the project (too pewter) and, rather than order something new, I over-dyed it with coffee.  Then I wound all 1,375 yards back up again!  To make a small  Quill shawl, I'll hold it double and pair it with two other yarns: some Brooklyn Tweed Vale in Arabesque, and KnitPicks Shadow Lace in Oregon Coast Heather.  (Both the Vale line and the Oregon Coast color are discontinued.) The Shadow Lace is left over from an Icarus shawl I made for my grandmother in 2008.  Wild to think about how much time has gone by since then; my grandmother fell asleep in the Lord in 2011 and I gave one of my cousins the shawl after her funeral.  I wonder if she even still has it...I certainly don't have many of my knitted goods from that long ago.  They've either worn out, or my tastes have changed.  

On to books:

I gulped down In the Wilderness in the space of a few days.  Last winter it was too boring, this winter it really hit the spot.  The little blurb on Amazon does it very little justice, though; how does one condense the internal suffering, the regret, but also the grace and peace that I know will eventually find Olav?  Or that Olav will find himself? Sigrid Undset is a master storyteller, she really is.  She has supplanted Dickens at the top of my favorite authors list.  (But he's still a close second!)

As a late January kick-in-the-pants, I am reading The Summa Domestica.  I need both Leila's encouragement and her common sense, no-excuses, stop-the-pity-party motivation right now.   I've ordered a few books on her recommendation (Auntie Leila, you enabler, you!), which are currently winging their way to me.