Ten things

If you want knitting content, visit Tuesday's post and add a few inches to the scarf. What can I say? The days leading into Thanksgiving are always busy for me - mostly because work picks up in anticipation of year-end deadlines. (Also, I pulled or tore a muscle in my abdomen, so I'm not quite working at full capacity.) So today I offer up the following diversion, inspired by Claudia via Carole.

Ten things I wish I knew how to do – and the likelihood of actually learning/doing

1. Sew a complete garment for one of my girls that looks professional in every way. Pretty high probability- I love to sew and smaller people mean faster projects (in general).
2. Code an awesome website. Probable. I'll need a good website professionally at some point - don't want to look like a fool to the funding agencies, eh?
3. Knit a pair of Anemoi mittens (aside: in my head, I call these anemone mittens). This requires learning stranded colorwork. Probably. As soon as I finish the rest of my queue, that is!
4. Raise confident, intelligent, compassionate daughters. This is not a cop-out! Every day, I try to better myself as a parent – how can I modify my behaviors to improve the environment in which they grow. Unknown, but I do hope this is highly likely. Only time will tell.
5. Write a novel (or novella) that I am not embarrassed to show friends (requires having an idea worthy of a novel). Rather unlikely, but you never know when inspiration will strike.
6. Have a house (or at least the downstairs) that does not look like the decorator was three-years old. Very unlikely.
7. Visit Alaska. Definitely - headed there this summer.
8. Walk part (all?) of the Kerry Way. Possible.
9. Draw. Incredibly unlikely. It is why I never finished my art minor - couldn't handle the drawing requirement!
10. Write an advice column. Incredibly unlikely. But I do read a bunch - from Auntie BubboPants on Ravelry to the traditional Dear Abby to the new traditional Dear Prudence to Savage Love. Working in a world where egos are larger than the suburbans the people drive, it's my little indulgence.
    

A sock knitting meme and a hint at an FO

Yeah, I love memes. Great for blog fodder (when I think about posting, that is) and this one is even relevant to the blog - sock knitting (which makes me nauseous in early pregnancy). Today's meme courtesy of Claudia.

When did you first learn to knit socks?
About three months after I learned to knit. So Sometime in 2003 or 2004? Not sure the exact date, but I am sure the motivation was something along the lines of: there’s got to be more than squares to this knitting thing.

What's the first sock you ever knit?
A very simple pair in a self-striping Regia color-way.

Favorite Sock Pattern?
No specific pattern, but I do love short-row heels and toe-up socks.

Favorite needle method?
DPNs. Makes the project look edgier, scarier.

Favorite sock needles?
Wooden or bamboo, size US 0 or US 1, 5 inches in length.

Who do you knit socks for?
Anybody – family, friends, animals. It’s been brought to my attention that I have ignored the feet of my daughter and should feel enough guilt to make all of her winter socks this year. Doubtful that will happen, but I should be able to squeak out a pair.

How many pairs have you knitted to date?
No idea. More than a breadbox?

What is on your sock knitting to-do list?
Knit a pair for above-mentioned daughter (she’s under 2 – it should be quick).
Knit the purple Socks that Rock into a pair for Mother-in-Law, in time for Christmas. Don’t laugh!

What kind of socks to you like to knit?
Striped? Yes.
Colorwork? No.
Plain Stockinette? Yes.
Cabled? Definitely.
Lace? Most assuredly.
Anklets? Yep.
Knee Socks? Boy howdy, yes. I’ve made two pair, neither stay up the way I’d like. I see this as a challenge.
Solid colors? I’d like to say yes, but I’ve only knit one pair of solid socks. Wonder what that says about me?
Bright and crazy? Just wait until you see what I’ve in store for Toddler Jeneric.
Faux Fair Isle (the yarn doing all of the work)? Have done this, not keen on it.
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What a difference a sleep makes. I've been speeding through the Baby Yours Sweater (Ravelry Link). There was a brief moment of terror as I attached the sleeves (I know - you attach 2 squares, but WHERE do you attach them? How does one figure that out? Because yes, in every other pattern I've made, the sleeve is shaped! There are indicators for attachment! But I digress). Never fear, I did indeed conquer the sleeve seaming (all while watching Murder on the Orient Express - what a cast! What bad acting!). Next up: seem the side and sleeves. Easy, peasy, says I. Pick up the little bar on one side, then the little bar on the other side. Yeah. Only it wasn't quite working that way last night (could be the suspense of the movie). I gave the sweater an overnight time-out, and this morning, in the 5-minutes before I ran to catch my bus, I totally figured it out and cruised halfway up one side. I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll finish the seaming tonight. Next up: a quest for buttons.

Procratina-meme

I saw this on And she knits, too, and thought to myself, self, you've read a lot of those books. Let's tally the data on this.

The guidelines: bold those books you've read; underline those that were read for school; italicize those you began but never finished. For simplicity, I'm just going to bold books I've read and italicize the one's I never finished.

Ready? Here goes:

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Summary:
31 of 106 books read
7 out of 106 started and unfinished

Conclusions:
1. I usually finish what I start. Wish it were the same for my knitting.
2. I've not read nearly as much as I thought I had. Should I create a reading life list?
3. The Red Badge of Courage, which I read at least 6 times for school, was not on that list. To this day, I hold a grudge against Stephen Crane.