I am actually knitting, though you wouldn't much know it from recent posts, to be sure. The Gladys socks are done and waiting to be photographed, as many things have interrupted, including -- hurray! -- a spate of rainy weather, much welcome in the parched Southland, though just not very good for photographing indoors. I've also started a "hug-me-tight" of sorts, from a 1917 Priscilla book, hoping to race through its simplicity in time to take advantage of it in this sudden chill. (Quick! garter stitch!!)
(This first ball of Matchmaker had FOUR splices and a knot!!)
Well, it is the time of year, of course, for looking back and then ahead. I didn't accomplish many of my sewing ambitions at all, I'm afraid, finishing only two of the nine projects I named. Sigh. Sometimes I look back, say twenty-five or thirty years, and wonder how on earth I managed to read so much, and write so many letters -- long ones, too, fifteen or twenty sheets of airmail paper sometimes! -- but then I remember that of course that was both pre-children and pre-internet (which came in that order for me), and both can be massive time-devourers. I still do want to sew all of those projects I chose, and have fabric ready for the apron for sure, so that may be on the schedule fairly soon. Laura has in fact made some tentative I-want-to-learn-to-sew noises lately, which might help get my sewing inspiration warmed up again.
(And wouldn't you know it, as I write, Julia comes creeping in -- it is 5:45 in the morning on the first day of school after the holidays -- and says, "Um, it's raining and I have to take my clarinet to school, could you drive me, please?" I have added the "please" myself, but as it happens even without it this was very polite for Julia. Well, I can't really be annoyed at the interruption, as I am frequently saying, "Careful! don't let your clarinet get wet!" as she now has a very nice wooden one for concerts and fine days!)
Talking of fine days, we stayed at David's parents' house in Pasadena on New Year's Eve, to get Julia up for her three a.m. call before the Rose Parade. It was alarmingly windy in the night, but dawned, as it so often does for the Parade, cold and sunny. We didn't get grandstand seats this year, but watched the first half or so on television, then walked over to the park at the end of the route, where the floats and equestrian units broke off in one direction, and the bands went in another to have something to eat -- it was past ten by that time, a long stretch for teenagers to go without food, let alone after a 5 1/2-mile march! -- and then to get back on the buses which would take them back to the starting point. So we had to stand to see the end of the parade, and not quite optimally, but this photo shows how close we were to the bands! They sounded great, too -- at the Parade and a few days earlier at Disneyland -- we were very proud parents!
I still have a few letters to go on the ABChallenge, and it's getting a bit harder now as the last letters are not so ubiquitous -- oh, there's another "u" word! I found this rock on the trail (urban, another "u" word) where I walk, and took it home because it is so pleasingly different. No idea what it is -- the lighter parts look granitey, but then there are those curious strata, quite different from our common salt-and-pepper native granite. Folded granite or migmatite, maybe? (Whew, that Wikipedia article is like the Peanuts "wa-wah-wah wah wah wa-wah" to me! I still really like my rock, though.)
That challenge reminds me that I actually still have a couple of project left to do on my "Knitting the Knitter's Almanac" project, since I, er, paused after the Nether Garments Event. I didn't mean to give up, and so still consider that I haven't, although twelve years is a fairly long time for just a pause! I still have October's Open-Collared Pullover, November's famous Moccasin Socks, and December's Hurry-Up Last-Minute Sweater to go.
And a pair of plain socks on the needles for something portable -- plainish. This is Loops & Threads Perfect Pair sock yarn in the puzzlingly-named color "Drive All Night," which is actually very charming and springlike.
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