Yarn Along 2015.11: Grandmother's Tools, Finished Socks, and Dressage Books

Happy Wednesday!  It's Yarn Along time again.  Joining in with Ginny today to see what everyone is knitting (or crocheting) and reading.

In my yarn along post a few weeks back,  I mentioned having received a box of DH's grandmother's knitting needles and crochet hooks several months back.

Since that post, I've thought that maybe some readers would be interested to see what all is in that box.  So, let's pull the box out from under the extra bed in the sewing room (formerly my sons' bedroom when they were growing up), and take a look-see!

Tons of stuff!

A bunch of metal crochet hooks in tiny, tiny sizes.

Now I know what DH's grandmother made all her beautiful doilies with! Which is cool to have these in my possession, as I have secretly aspired to someday make doilies like she did.  I believe it's called thread crochet.

There are also many other crochet hooks in the box; mostly aluminum, mostly in 'normal' sizes, although there are some wooden ones and some double-ended ones and some really huge ones!  

Check out the size difference!

And then there are knitting needles.  Oh, my the knitting needles!  Straights, and circulars and double points.  Many, many sizes.  Also multiples of quite a few of the sizes.  What a treasure trove.  Most are plastic, some are aluminum, all are old.  Quite a few of the intact packages had an original price from 25 to 55 cents.

Meanwhile, I finished my Rosamond socks over the weekend.  They came out beautifully, if I do say so myself.

 I have also been doing a bit of reading.  Still reading Sylvia's Farm, and enjoying it.  Also picked up a dressage book titled Ridden: Dressage from the Horse's Point of View and am really finding it interesting, thought provoking, and best of all I am feeling much more excited about riding again.  Hard to explain, but it takes me back quite a long time, more than a decade, in how I feel about my riding. *My* riding, as in how I want to ride, when I want to ride, how often I want to ride rather than riding that is dictated (or hampered) by other people's opinions, needs, or desires.

That's probably as clear as mud, but trust me, it's a good thing.  I also stumbled across a hardcover copy of Centered Riding 2 in excellent condition last Saturday, so I bought it.  I've owned Centered Riding since my single, childless, I'm-going-to-be-a-world-class-rider-someday days (now that's a long time ago!), but Centered Riding 2 came out right about the time I was married with four kids and in the midst of building the house at this little place here (so, no cash for 'frivolous' purchases like a sequel to a book almost two decades old and a dream--of being an international dressage rider--that  had been shelved for quite a while).

Thumbing through it and reading the captions on the illustrations has really been a trek down memory lane--seeing exercises I did while a working student in 1991, or looking at a diagram of a movement I once did on a horse that was training for 4th Level in 1992. . .  Also eye-opening seeing some of the author's words that could be a direct quote from my trainer in 2000 (this book was published in 2002!) and wondering if the author might have trained under the same person my trainer did back in the 1960s, as dressage in the US was still in it's infancy back then with not too many American trainers nor European ones coming here to do clinics.  It's really nice to feel the old fire--my burning love of riding--get rekindled inside of me.  And I've been spending more hours on horseback lately.

Tune in next week to see my next knitting project, which will be horse-related, and is due to be cast on any day now.