Yarns

Big news at our house yesterday: Kit's going to be published! He wrote a great little short story for the Machines of Death anthology (it's new), and his story was picked to be in it! As it should have been -- it really is a good story, and I'm not just saying that because he gives me the good lovin'. Sometimes when I don't have anything to read or I'm tired so I'm just sitting and ruminating, a bit of a particularly good story will pop into my head -- there was a Kurt Vonnegut story that I searched for for years (I thought it was by Harlan Ellison which made it much more difficult to track down), for instance -- and this one keeps doing that. Every time, I think, "Wow -- that was a really good story. Where did I read that again?" and then I remember and the wow gets even bigger. I am exceedingly proud of my darling husband...of course, I always knew it would happen. His writing is too good for it not to have.

And now for the other kind of yarn...I was putting away some skeins this afternoon and came across one that just spoke to me and demanded to be knitted NOW. As luck would have it, the colors make me think of Wagner's Ring series, which I am going to see this weekend. Well, technically I'm only seeing the first half this weekend and then the second half next weekend, but you get the point. So, I am designing some Viking socks to knit on the trains and while sitting and waiting on those days. I doubt that I will be able to knit during the opera itself -- or even that I will want to. Wagner's pretty intense. For those of you keeping track, the yarn is a Merino/Cashmere blend from The Knittery in the Passion Fruit colorway. I purchased it from Sheri at The Loopy Ewe. Here, have a look (don't worry -- it's all out of stock right now so it's safe to click). I will be diligently knitting on my stepmom's socks tomorrow on the train and Friday on my way in, but will be working from home the rest of the week and we don't have the central air so it is unlikely that I will be touching anything wool in my home until this heatwave breaks. It's not as if my dad and stepmom would be able to wear their wool socks right now anyhow -- they're in Dallas so it's a tad warm for the woolies in July.

I do have new things to listen to while I knit, too -- I have a Barnes and Noble membership (10% off) and they sent me a coupon for an additional 15% off, so I got one of the Portable Professor CD sets (the one about Greek Gods). I miss school, truly I do. (Mom? Dad? Are you guys okay? Didn't mean to give you a heart attack there.) And with young Becky and another one on the way, it's unlikely that I'll be able to take any classes any time soon. So I thought this might be a good way to keep my critical thinking faculties engaged. I really need to get back into my Latin and German studies as well, but right now that would seriously eat in to knitting time, and it's one of those things that would only take more time as I progressed because I would have to continue to use it and practice it or I'd just be right back where I am now, with a bunch of half-forgotten endings and very little vocabulary. I basically remember enough to get simple jokes in both languages or to make a pretty good guess at what people are saying in the movies if it's very brief. I'd like to be able to be able to do more than that and I'll need to be able to do more than that if I'm going to pursue an advanced degree in the area of my choice. Although my undergrad is in Classics with an Archaeology minor, any advanced degree I pursue would most likely be in Art History, since that's where my main area of interest lies (Specifically in textiles. I know, that completely took you by surprise.). Also, for some reason, an advanced degree in Classics seems at most schools to really be an advanced degree in Latin and Ancient Greek, which is fine, I guess, but I really am not great at languages. It's kind of weird -- I'm pretty good at first, so like my first year of Latin I was feeling pretty confident. After that, it was all downhill. It's like I'm developmentally disabled in other languages -- I'm stuck with the language skills of about a 3rd grader and I find it very difficult to progress beyond that. Ah, well. We can't all be polyglots. Hell, from some of the emails I get, some of us have trouble being monoglots.

posted by Laura Y. @ 5:55 PM