yarn along: february 2023

Behind the scenes, there's a lot of reading happening.  More reading than should probably be happening, given the amount of non-reading work that needs to get done.  But! No matter how late I've gone to bed the night before, I try to rise at five every morning and spend some time with my nose buried in a book.

I'm a few pages from finishing Searching for and Maintaining Peace, another Fr. Jacques Philippe gem, and will begin Time for God next.  Both eminently fit this helter-skelter, mostly solo-parenting season.  Fr. Jacques Philippe's simplicity and directness, his common sense without over-philosophizing, remind me a little of St. John Chrysostom's arrow prayers.  

For genuine pleasure, I'm re-reading Boris Akunin's Erast Fandorin series, which I first read with Z was a baby.  I can't even believe how long ago that seems! My preference would be to listen to the audiobooks, but they're unavailable on Audible for me.  I looked in our library catalog, and couldn't pull up any of the books, so I called our local branch to inquire.  Would you believe that they'd been withdrawn from the shelves just the day before?!  The librarian said I could take home whatever they had, so I scored two: The Winter Queen and Murder on the Leviathan.  The kids and I are reading Michael Strogoff together right now, so 19th century Russia is very much in my imagination.

I again set my monthly crafting goals at an all-time low: finish one pair of socks, using some KnitPicks self-dyed yarn, and make progress on a shawl (the briogarter split, shown here) and afghan (here).  Progress is defined by any work at all, so boxes for the last two goals are checked already!  The first goal is slooooow going, but I need socks.  All of my recently made pairs are falling apart simultaneously, and more socks must be made! Maybe the above pile of squishy sock yarn skeins* will inspire my fingers to knit faster?  

*Lichen and Lace, some coveted Viola Yarn, and new-to-me Exmoor Sock.