August 7th Babies!

Happy Birthday, Thorny and Crafting Jen! (formerly FolkCat)Edited to add: Happy belated birthday to Jay of Jay's Craft Room.

In knitting news, I can't get the curved cable to work out the way I want it on Its Jacket. (The gauge is really different for the Silky Tweed than the Silky Wool - surely I knew that when I started? I did swatch, right? (hahahahahahaha). The problem being, I don't particularly want a jacket that's lighter than its shell, so I think I'm going to adjust the gauge a bit tighter (the yarn likes the tighter gauge, it drapes and feels better, is that odd or what?) and adjust the pattern. Since it's basically garter stitch and a 3/3 cable, it's not going to take much thought.






Pattern: Two Blue by Lily Chin from Knitter's Magazine Spring 1997
(The Shell. Its Jacket is In Progress. Sort of. Okay, I cast on the first 3 rows of I-cord, hopefully I won't be ripping these out. I think I've got the specs down.)
Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool. I love this yarn. Love, love, love. It's dream to knit with. I like that the dark brown yarn also has flecks of red, orange and blue.
Needles: Size 3 circular, Addi Turbos.
Modifications: None, conciously. The pattern is fairly simple, garter stitch interrupted by a 3/3 cable so it's nice and portable, reasonably mindless but not mind numbing. The knit on I-cord was surprisingly easy to do. (I hadn't done it before. Easy!) The only bit I would change is I wouldn't bother to invisibly cast on the I-cord cable side edges, that was a bit of a pain to sew up and needless aggravation.

Read Making History by Stephen Fry (of Jeeves & Wooster, A Little Fry & Laurie, etc) (380 pages) (L). After a slow start (the book concerns itself with Hitler and his legacy and I'm a bit burnt out on Hitler, World War II, current events in the Mid East etc) but once the plot unfolds (it involves time travel somewhat) it picks up and addresses the question, what would the world be like if Hitler was never born? The answers are pretty imaginative and surprising.

Finished A Pasage To India by E M Forster (372 pages) (Book Club). My, my. Speaking of class warfare and ingrained prejudices. (Jennifer had an interesting posting about this the other day.) No one was immune to it, no one fully overcame it, no one seemed to know anyone at all. A bit depressing, beautifully written, the best use of "He said/She said" I've read to date.