I’ve been a bit busy, which has kept me from posting all of the things I wanted to post about.  Well, hang that nonsense.  Here’s what I can think of off the top of my head.

I went to the Knitter’s Review Retreat, which was absolutely wonderful, as usual. My friend Ruadhan was able to go with me for the first time this year, and it was great to share this particular annual event with her.  Clara always does an amazing job finding great teachers, making sure the Inn is just right, and generally encouraging an open, welcoming atmosphere for all of us.  This year felt like the best one yet, partly because I got to drag a good friend into this cozy little circle, and partly because I was reminded of exactly how gracious and kind the KR folks are.  The market was full of goodies, the classes were excellent, the food was good, but what really matters to me about that event is the people.  I love them.

I led the stash lounge organization for the first time this year, as I mentioned.  It was a huge task, but I was floored by the amount of assistance the other retreat attendees gave us.  When we decided to start setting up the lounge Thursday night, so many people volunteered to help that we didn’t really need to walk around the rooms as we worked.  Instead, we were tossing yarn and giggling for a few hours, and then suddenly we had a great, boutique-like space to share with the others.  Throughout the weekend, many folks stepped in to help keep things organized, take in more yarn as additional attendees arrived, and help people find just what they were looking for.  The corps of volunteers was excellent.

At the end of the retreat, another big group of friends gathered to help me box up the remaining yarn so I could take it home and ship it off to Afghanistan. Again, I was astounded by the generosity of all of the people who donated yarn and who volunteered to pay shipping costs for yarn we were sending off to those far away knitters.  I was initially dreading the thought of the final packing and shipping tasks, but, as usual, some friends joined in and turned that into a bit of a party too.  We sorted, boxed, taped, and labeled.  And then we monopolized a postal worker’s time for about an hour.  We kept her giggling the whole time, so I think it ended up being relatively painless for the whole gaggle of participants, postal clerks included.  I’m waiting to hear back about our donations, but I hope it make a real difference for those families.

While I was in Massachusetts, my Mom had her final surgery.  She is officially cancer free, and that is a wonderful thing.

And then, all of the sudden, it was Thanksgiving.  Luckily, most of my family lives close by, so it’s a short drive to my folks’ place for dinner.  It was lovely, as always.  I cooked some, I knit a very cute little baby sweater, we talked and talked.  We did what we do.

And then, Booksgiving took over.  As ever, it was a lot of work, but it felt really good to get together with friends, talk about Mike, share out his library, and generally celebrate reading.  I know not everyone is as obsessive about reading as I am, but I feel so lucky to have so many friends who are.  We encouraged friends to bring books for the baby Ward who will be coming this winter, and who will (I hope) share his parents’ love of reading.  We also made sure that baby will have some hand-knits, but you probably would have guessed that.  We ate, oh how we ate.  I made a huge pile of bridies, and a New York Strip roast, and we had lots of delicious cheeses and desserts and, oh, how we ate.

Now we have a garage full of books to donate.  Remind me later that the hauling and schlepping is worth it, please.  And also, remind me to post some photos of at least some of this autumnal nonsense.  There are some pictures hiding in a camera somewhere.  I’ll try to share some of those.  Well, I’ll try to try.  I may need a nap first, and I definitely need a new knitting project, and some restraint when choosing what to read next.

London Fields by Martin Amis.

I read this book so slowly not because I didn’t love it, but because this time of year is just plain too busy for me.  I spent a lot of stolen moments reading just a few pages before returning to some pressing task or other.  It’s a mystery, sort of.  And it’s comedic, sort of.  It’s brilliant, and dense, and deserves a slow, contemplative reading. I fell hard right at the beginning.  Amis’s language is amazing.  He’s witty and smart, but it doesn’t feel like a gag. None of the characters are particularly likeable, which could be a problem for many readers, but which I actually enjoyed.

The book, written in 1989, is set in London at the turn of the millenium.  Amis envisioned a future of excess, environmental decay, international disputes, and general unpleasantness.  The narrator, Samson Young, is an American writer who travels to London to convalesce and to attempt to overcome his writer’s block.  He swaps apartments with a British author of dubious talent but great fame, of whom Sam is both jealous and dismissive.  I ruin nothing about the story by telling you  that the book has a foregone conclusion, which is on the dust-jacket and is revealed early in the story.  The female lead character, Nicola Six, expects to be murdered on her 35th birthday, so she sets out to find and encourage her murderer.  She shares her story with Sam, who then takes it up as the subject of a novel.  Guy Clinch, a banker, looks like the dupe in the murder plot, while Keith Talent, an uneducated misogynist cheat, looks like the murderer.  As the book progresses we realize how dishonest and flawed all of the main characters are, and wonder who will actually do Nicola in.

That description doesn’t do the book justice, of course.  It’s funny.  No, really, it’s a seriously funny book.  But it’s also poignant.  For all of his sarcasm and wit, Amis has a sort of open-hearted love even for the worst of us.  It’s such a writerly novel–it’s less about plot than it is about the act of writing, and how writing makes liars of us all.  I plan to read it again, and soon.

And now, on to Chris Offutt’s The Good Brother.

There is a small chance that I am freaking out. Just a small chance.

We had a wonderful visit with Scott’s Mom Karen and her beau Lee. While they were here, we relaxed, and we ate at restaurants (soooo many restaurants), and I cooked a couple of nice meals when I was able to slot it into our busy visiting schedule.  Karen and I knitted away on simple projects and chatted and planned future visits. It was wonderful, and it was too short, and it was a fantastic way to spend a week in autumn.

My afghan even has more squares.  Which I will show you.  Eventually.  I hope.

Because then they went back to Utah and I realized I had far, far too much to do before the Knitter’s Review Retreat next week.  I volunteered to organize the Stash Lounge this year. The Stash Lounge at the KR Retreat is a thing of wonder. Apparently, once upon a time, there was just a stash table, where one could drop off yarn that wasn’t quite right, and someone else could take it home and do something lovely with it. Those days are gone. The Stash Lounge is now two adjoining big hotel rooms. Intake, sorting, lay out, and donation are all major tasks now. And last year, while I was high on wool fumes, I volunteered to harness the Stash Lounge and the resulting donations so Clara and Martha could focus on the thousands of other things they need to do at the Retreat.

Yeah, so now I need to gather my supplies and talk to the staff at the inn and wrangle volunteers and keep in touch with the recipients of our donations and generally not lose my mind over this whole thing. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. The Little Hater in my brain is convinced that no one will like me anymore if I don’t make the Stash Lounge exactly what 100+ people want it to be. Ahem. The Little Hater needs to have her mouth taped shut. Thankfully, many people have volunteered to help, and planning what we want the lounge to be like and how to handle distribution has become a big group discussion.  I have a van to carry all of the organizational junk to and from Massachusetts, and I’ll be accompanied by the amazing Ruadhan, who can organize anything, and who will probably slip me a valium if I freak out too much.

I also have homework for a couple of the classes I’m taking at the retreat.  Um, yeah.  I may not be an A student this year.

And finally, because I hate rest, I also decided I needed to make a few dozen bags in time for the retreat.  Cataloging all of my yarn and fabric has been a great motivator, but it’s also a bit of a tool for self-flagellation.  Ahem.  I do use a production line method when I make bags, so I do think the pile I’ve cut is possible to finish in time, but it’s definitely cutting down on time for relaxation.  And cooking.  And eating.  Sigh.

I take all of this as proof that I am neither reading nor writing enough poetry. Translation, in particular, silences the Little Hater. I think it either confuses or fascinates her.  Writing has been one of the slowest things to return to normal for me, since the year of hell that was 2009.  I think my first depressive stabs at writing scared me off of it for a while.  I kept finding dark pools I was afraid to disturb.  But I have a few good things underway I really want to return to.  And, clearly, if I don’t write in private and revise until the work is ready to share, my oddities will bubble through here, and in actual public, and will perhaps make me drink too much of Jenny’s amazing, spicy Krupnik and act like an ass at Samhain.  I’m not saying–I’m just saying.

I had a birthday over the weekend, and made sure to spoil myself while my family and friends were spoiling me.  Look at the fantastic knitter’s rule I ordered for myself from Karastix.

I also secured some yarn for the wool-along afghan, including this amazing handspun.

I’m busily trying to prepare for the Knitter’s Review retreat in a few weeks.  That involves sorting out yarns to donate or swap, finding tools to organize the stash lounge, doing my class homework, and hopefully making a huge pile of bags.

I picked this for 12 books in 12 months because I’ve started it at least once or twice before and abandoned it each time, so it seemed to fit right into the spirit of the project.  I’m so glad I read it, though I can see why I hadn’t stuck with it previously.  I opted for the audiobook version of this book as well.  It’s beautifully read, and I need to give some thought to a Booksforears review.  The book is very dense and incredibly detailed, and as I listened, I wavered between loving the layered detail and thinking Byatt should have edited out more and simplified the book.

Possession follows a frustrated English Literature graduate student working on the (fictional) poet Randolph Henry Ash, who discovers some heretofore lost drafts of a letter to a woman.  Roland, the student, becomes obsessed with tracking down the unnamed addressee and discovering the nature of his relationship to the woman Ash addressed.  He meets Maud Bailey, a young professor and expert on the under-appreciated (and also fictional) poet Christabel LaMotte.  The two contemporary academics studiously pick through letters and poems and search for lost or unknown correspondence, and end up uncovering wonderful connections between the historical writers and developing an interesting relationship of their own.

What’s fascinating about this book is how layered it is, and how much attention it pays to topics that are very dear to my heart.  It delves into Breton and Scandinavian mythology, poetry, feminist theory, embroidery and knitting (though only touches of those, sadly), the nature of love, the nature of poetry, the nature of translation and retellings of myths (my nerdy heart sings!) . . . it’s so rich.  One could argue that it’s too rich.  Byatt gives us stories within stories within stories within stories.  We get Ash and LaMotte’s letters to each other, wherein they discuss mythology and poetry.  We get their original works, which are of course actually Byatt’s original works.  We get so very much detail about the vagaries of modern academia, and the fights between feminist academics and “traditionalists.”  It’s all just so very entwined.

Byatt was so brave to write this meta-romance.  I honestly don’t know how she pulled it off.  The greatest danger in works like this is that the supposed masterworks the characters are studying need to be excellent enough for the characters’ interest in them to seem just.  Byatt does manage that, for the most part.  As a writer and quasi-academic (frustrated academic? failed academic? stalled academic?  whatever I am.)  I felt Byatt’s role so keenly.  She wrote those pieces in a way that seemed so familiar to me.  It’s odd to be a writer who works in a form and genre that is essentially lost to most readers.   This book turned out to be such a fantastic outlet for many forms of the author’s creativity.  I think I love it.  I certainly love many aspects of it.

Tags: 12 books in 12 months

In addition to tallying up and recording all of the pertinent information about my yarn and fabric stashes, I’m trying to finish a bunch of projects that I had started but never finished. I’m not promising to finish them all before I start any new ones, but having a spreadsheet of all of my works in progress and what is required for each is turning out to be a great tool for me.  I finished a few garments that just needed some hemming, cut out several items on my list to make for other folks, and actually started a couple of sewn garments for myself.

I finished the first of my embroidery projects for those wacky Celts.

It’s a helmet drape. Our Samhain is early this year, so this will find a home this weekend. Once one is out there, I know many people will request one of their own. I need to come up with a better way to get the design onto the linen, because my normal methods weren’t catching the details well, and I can’t expect someone who can draw the design to always be on hand when I’m ready to start a new one.

I also made myself a fun little sewing accessory.  It’s a pincushion organizer from a free Sew Mama Sew pattern.

Sorry the pictures are so dark–we had a rainy week.  I picked some well-matched fabrics out of my stash, and used a scrap from a shrunken kilt hose (why is there no singulative for hose?) for the wool felt portion in the middle.   It’s already getting a lot of use, but there are a few things I may change about it.  It likes to slide if it gets heavy, so I may add some sort of non-slip treatment on the underside.  I may also add more weight to the pincushion.  And I may remake the thing entirely, because these fabrics may be a bit too sweet together (and the way I placed them is making me itchy . . . that crazy part is literally true).

I also got back into the swing of things with my woolalong afghan.  Here are the yarns I have in store for squares.  I’ll dye the light natural skeins in one of the colors I’m using for the blanket.  Starting from the top left, these are Roubaix CVM/Romeldale, Thingamastring Columbia/Southdown, Solitude Suffold/Dorset, Elemental Effects natural Shetland, and then the bottom three are two naturally dyed Icelandic skeins from Solitude flanking a dark brown Shetland from Elemental Effects.

I may decide to eliminate the dark brown Shetland, depending on how the pallet evolves.  These are the squares I’ve finished so far.  These first three are in a Cormo/Yak blend I dyed myself.

These are a gorgeous BFL from Laughing Rat.  The orange makes me so happy!  I hope I can dye something similar.

Look how lovely they are together!

I got myself the sort of (quite early) birthday present I always want, but would never ask for.  There’s just no way to send someone out to find the perfect handmade journal for me, you know?

It was made by Kreativlink on Etsy. I got one of the larger format ones, since I like a lot of space on my pages. It’s gorgeous.  I can’t wait to start using it.  It may even warrant a new pen.

I also finished that bit of embroidery for a special project.  A project I may repeat 30 or 40 times if I can keep up the momentum.

It’s very simple work, but it will make someone pretty damn happy, once I finish it and decide who gets it.

And here is that lace cowl I made while I was on vacation.

And the blanket I accidentally started:

which I’m working in stockinette, this time around.  I’m restricting the color palette of this one, and banding the inner squares in black.

Finally, I picked my Cat’s Paw rug up again last weekend.

I’m a bit shocked by how huge the thing will be, and how slow going it is.  But it doesn’t involve any gauge issues or sleeve trouble, so I’ll keep at it.

In and amongst my 12 books in 12 months reading, I’ve been wallowing in Alan Bradley’s two Flavia de Luce mysteries.  My Mom, an inveterate reader of mysteries, handed off her copies so we could titter over this hilarious new mystery heroine.  Flavia is a 10 year old English girl who happens to be obsessed with chemistry and poison.  She lives with her terrible sisters, her distant filatelist father, and his shell-shocked butler/gardener in a crumbling country house.  The books are set in post-WWII Britain, where Flavia’s enthusiasm for science and her meddling in police affairs generally go unappreciated.

The first book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, centers on a murder in the deLuce’s garden.  The second, The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, focuses on the strange death of a neighborhood boy five years earlier and on another mysterious death that takes place during the course of the story.   And I shall say no more, knowing how mystery readers love their actual mysteries.  Well, I will say that I loved the books, and particularly love their heroine.  I can’t wait for the next four.

You should watch these though, because they’re beautiful, and quite short, and spoil nothing.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks measuring and cataloging and giving some serious consideration to all of my supplies and tools here in my sweatshop studio.  I officially have an embarrassment of riches, my friends.  I knew that before I started, but now that I have a handy spreadsheet with all of the details waiting for me on google docs, I can figure out whether I already have the supplies to make something before I get that terrible urge to buy some more goodies. Compared to a lot of people I know, I have relatively little yarn.  But the fabric–oh, the fabric.  I have a lot of fabric.  But all of that tallying and sorting and organizing and pressing and folding and re-skeining and winding has left my studio looking absolutely lovely.  So come on in and have a peek.

Only one question remains . . . What do I work on next?

I decided to read this first because I love Morrison so.  I have the book on paper, but when I saw there was an audiobook version read by the author, I went with that.  I loved the book, but I am not so sold on Dr.  Morrison reading the audiobook herself.  I love her readings–I’ve been lucky enough to go to several–but a whole book’s worth of reading was a bit too much.  Audiobook narration is a very particular skill, and I wish she’d had a skilled professional reader take care of that aspect of the job.

That said, the book itself is great, and I am so glad I have it on paper as well as on audio.  I listened to the whole audio version so I could review it for Books For Ears, and then I cracked the paper book and really got into the story.

Like most of Morrison’s books, A Mercy is beautifully written historical fiction.  It is set in 17th century colonial America. It follows Florens, a young girl born on a Portuguese-owned tobacco plantation who is sold as a young girl to a expunge a debt by her original owner. Separated from her mother, Florens comes into the care of landowner Jacob Vaark, his wife Rebekka, and their Native-American slave Lina. The book delves into the multi-racial slave system in play in the colonies, sexual mores, inter-religious strife, economics, betrayal, family, American history, relationships between women. Like most of Morrison’s books it’s thickly layered and meticulously researched.

Now, on to Amis!

Tags: 12 books in 12 months