Knitting Update, September

 I finished my Churfirsten socks!  They were finished before the end of August, and I remembered to take photos for posterity!  The first photo shows the pattern really well, but isn't very true to color.  The second photo has the color pretty much spot on.

Right after grafting the toe on the second sock, I went to my yarn stash and dug out the tote with the instructions and yarn for making Sixlet's Christmas stocking.  It's so nice that I've made this pattern four times all ready; all I need to do is to chart out the stitches for Sixlet's name and just follow my notes from making his parents' and siblings' matching stockings and it will come together easily.

Hoping that I can get this all knit up before Thanksgiving.  Barring any unforeseen time-consuming things happening between now and then, it shouldn't take more than two months of evenings to make.  I've all ready cast on and worked through the cuff portion and the first six rows of colorwork.  I forgot how much I like doing colorwork (although I'm out of practice keeping all the yarns from twisting together just in the course of knitting one row).  Perhaps next year I'll finally knit the sock pattern with tons of colorwork that I've been meaning to knit for about 10 years now. . . 

I don't feel like I've done much reading since the last yarn along, but I guess I've done enough to get through three books:

You Only Die Once by Jodi Wellman, is kind of an inspirational read, I guess.  It's meant to get you thinking about the things you want to do/see/be in the however many years of life you have left no matter what your age.  Judging from the number of notebook pages I filled while doing the exercises in this book, I definitely did some thinking as I read (mostly confirming thoughts I'd all ready had swirling in my mind for years).

The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason is another great Inspector Erlendur mystery.  I found it completely engrossing and had a hard time putting it down.  In addition to the great story-telling and keep-you-guessing mystery portion, there's a quite interesting bit of Cold War era socialist/communist theory and practice in the storyline that I think Americans could take heed (warning) of today.

The Museum of Lost Quilts by Jennifer Chiaverini is the latest installment of her Elm Creek Quilts series.  Long time readers of her quilt series books will recognize several parts of the story.  While they are woven together in an interesting way, I did find reading some of it a little redundant.  If you can't remember storylines of books you read years ago, this probably won't be an issue for you.  I just tend to have the kind of mind that hangs on to stuff and dredges it up from the far recesses if I try to read the same book, or watch the same tv show or movie more than once. (That tends to drive my husband up the wall as he'll be channel surfing on tv and land on a show for about a minute and a half before I'll say "seen it" and request a change of station.)