etc.

Atonement, Ian McEwan
Unabridged Audiobook 2003

I’m not sure why it took me four tries to get through this book. By the time I was on track 14 on disc 10 (I “read” it on audio), I was tightening my grip on the steering wheel, pursing my lips, and willing it not to end. It’s been a little while since that happened and it almost never happens with audio.

The book is set in the summer of 1935, Briony Tallis is a precocious 13-year old aspiring playwright/author who has written a short play to honour the return of her brother. A lot of the action, probably all of Part 1, takes place on the day of his arrival, which is also the day the young Tallis cousins from the North arrive for a respite away from their feuding (and divorcing) parents. Briony enlists her cousins to act in the performance but a series of events makes the impending performance fall apart, and her ensuing actions make most everything else fall apart too. One element that struck me about this book was the way McEwan managed to capture the melodrama and euphoria of youth which left me partially annoyed with Briony but also rooting for her all the way. And no more spoilers, the narrative has a delicious what’s-next feel to it, in the manner of a lot of good, Victorian storytelling, and I’m wont to give any of it away.

I don’t know what sort of dubious distinction it is that the craft of knitting has one word that captures the essence of “I’ve-screwed-this-up-so-bad-that-there-is-no-other-option-than-to-rip-it-out-and-start-over”. For the uninitiated, in case you haven’t already guessed, “frogging” is that word.

Dubious distinction aside, I like that there’s just the one word for it. Because it makes me feel better to say “I had to frog the bucket hat I knit for four hours on Saturday” rather than “I screwed up the bucket hat so bad that I…” You get the idea. All this is to say that I started the bucket, as promised, and this being my first go at knitting in the round, I made the mistake of not checking that my stitches were all lined up right (with their “butts” hanging down as Debbie Stoller would say) and I knitted the entire brim (about 2 inches of double yarn that gave me tight stiches on small needles, or FOUR HOURS OF WORK) before realizing that it had a nasty twist in it. I was in a bit of a shambles at that point, but I wound up my yarn, put it away, and went to sleep. Not to be defeated by disappointment, on Sunday morning I started again. And it went well! It looks like it should look! I’m about an inch and a half above the brim and I expect to have most of it done by tonight. Pictures forthcoming!

later that day: At first I found it hard to believe the “fly off your needles” claim that this pattern boasts. But look – it’s true! I got most of it done (above the brim) in my lunch hour, and so now I’m off to wrestle double pointed needles to the ground. Send happy thoughts my way.

• I did indeed go in search of a knitting victory and found none. But that’s OK because I’m feeling a lot better today and fortified enough to take on the bucket, I think. Apparently confidence easily shaken is confidence easily restored.
• I ate a Jamaican patty yesterday that rendered me sleepless most of last night. The only thing I have to say is: bad, patty! Bad!
• Atonement has turned out to be a fantastic book, just like you said! I have to go back and reassess what it was that made my first three attempts to read it completely unsuccessful because I can’t get enough of it on audio on my way to/from work.
• This is turning out to be an unusually busy summer, workwise. I often get asked: “you work in a university, don’t you get the summer off?”, to which I often answer: “well, wouldn’t that be nice.” Truth is, summer is often our busiest time of year, not from a public service standpoint surely, but in terms of all the projects we have to undertake/complete in the span of a few short months while most of our patrons are away. And, to be sure, they’re never completely gone, you know. The nature of a university library is such that patrons don’t go away, they just rotate depending on time of year (more faculty, researchers, and genealogists in the summer, less undergrads). So, no, I don’t get the summer off. And if I get asked that again, I’m going to get testy.
• The mister stayed on vacation while I went back to work. He’s been a worker bee, yes he has. Stripping 90 years-worth of paint from our banisters and painting the porch. He’s a good mister!
• We’ve been watching films! Honest!
• And since I started with knitting, why not end with knitting? I’m ready for a poncho pattern, I think. A light summer poncho, nothing too difficult, simple stocking or garter, and no seams, OK? Does such a pattern even exist?

did you know that the new-fangled Blogger now allows users to photoblog via IM? new goodies discovered daily!

I had my first knitting disappointment yesterday. Ever since I finished the afghan and bound-off the scarf that has been on the needles for a couple of weeks, I’ve spent my knitting time getting to know the ins and outs of 100% cotton. As I admitted a couple of days ago, cotton is working out well for me, better than I expected in fact. So by the time I’d finished three dishcloths in variations of knit/purl, I thought it might be time to get adventurous and try a pattern written in knitter’s code (you know, k2tog and ssk, etc. [that's knit 2 together and slip, slip, knit for the non-knitters amongst you]). Well, I went from casting on 29 stitches to having 34 on my needle at the end of the 2nd row, and while time-of-day might have had something to do with it (it was 1am when I started), I couldn’t help but feel like I had come face to face with my knitting demons and said demons had in fact stared me down and spat in my eye.

I’m feeling a bit better this morning, although still a little shaken and completely unprepared for the Bucket Hat Knitalong that I was supposed to get working on this weekend. I need a quick knitting victory to fortify me, so now I go in search of just such a victory. Wish me luck?

We’ve been good homeowners the past few days, the mister and I. Nothing major really, just the little things that get overlooked because they’re so little that you can do them anytime, only they don’t get done and then there you are with a list of about 100 little things to do that takes you five days to do it all. Our little things: caulking the leaky porch, rug-washing en masse, unpacking and putting away of items in various boxes scattered throughout the house, cleaning the basement (where we spend most of our time), cleaning the deck, and fixing to seal and paint the porch floor and ceiling. I’m back at work to-morrow so the mister will be taking that on himself. After his recent plumbing victory, I am brimming with confidence.

Alongside scoring these niggling tasks off our to-do list, we’ve also made arrangements for bigger changes. To-morrow, a couple of roofers are scheduled to start work on our two flat roofs (aside: this resource proved invaluable in educating ourselves about the process of reroofing a flat roof, and would probably come in handy for all sorts of other house-related light construction), Saturday we have an electrician coming in to up our electrical from 60 to 100 amps (insurance-appeasing, weather-permitting), and next week Pierre, the neighbourhood contractor and deck-builder extraordinaire, is scheduled to build a deck on the flat-roof off the third floor. That constant metallic ch-ching you hear is the bank’s money falling out of our pockets.

Oh and look! A new flavour on the creampie menu: grapefruit! While it’s true that you’d be hard-pressed to find a pie made from grapefruit, I couldn’t come up with a fruit that better captures the citruses and pinks in this design. I ask that you suspend your disbelief. And if you’d like one, they’re now up for trade.

As someone who is just starting out with the fine craft of knitting, it would be remiss of me not to extol the virtues of Lion Brand Wool-Ease yarn. This stuff is great, very forgiving when you’re trying to figure out the whole tension thing, and no funky loose stitches at the end of your rows! And if you package and mail any of your knits, it’s perfectly compactable and mailable! I have 6 more skeins awaiting an as yet undetermined project or two and I’m already looking forward to getting underway.

In other yarn news, this morning I picked up a couple of decent-sized skeins of Bernat’s handicrafter cotton for some dishcloths. I expected 100% cotton to be more difficult to work with given that it doesn’t have as much give as wools and blends, but this stuff slid off my bamboo needles just swimmingly.

Some have asked how I could have gone so long, being a librarian and general book-geek, without reading Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series. There’s no good reason for it but I am happy to report that The Eyre Affair recently arrived at the library for me and I started reading it last night. It’s a lovely quick read so far and I can’t tell you how much it pleases me to stumble upon a good, bookish series when it’s already four books in.

If you haven’t noticed, I finished one of the afghans. As I admitted in the comments below, Sebastian has claimed this one for himself and I’m feeling a bit guilty for Heidi because I’m all afghaned-out right now so she won’t see hers for a while yet. I’m making no promises.

And oh look! The mister put on a brave display of plumbing prowess today and replaced our funky old kitchen faucet with the shiny new one my parents gave us nearly a year ago. For months we’ve contemplated hiring a plumber to do the scary removal and installation for us but this morning the mister extracted the new faucet out of deep-storage, pulled out the instructions, gathered his tools, took a deep breath, and completed the removal & installation in under an hour. He even had to make some minor adjustments as he went along, I was very proud. So yes, there was a whole lot of high-fiving and chest bumping going on in our crazy-little-house today.

It’s hard for me to put into words what it is about this film that made me enjoy it so much. Maybe it was Tokyo (which has been at the top of my dream-vacation list for as long as I can remember). Maybe it was the wickedly-earnest performances of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. Maybe it was because most of us have at least one of those chance-moment-in-time meetings with a total stranger that have some sort of idelible impact on us. Whatever it was, I loved this film.

Did I mention that I’m on vacation for 5 days starting to-morrow? There’s much to be done in the house, apart from the regular maintenance that has fallen to the bottom of the priority list lately. What with all the seaming that has to be done.

Turns out seaming is as little fun as I expected. I can only manage about 30 minutes at a time, which is OK because getting sidetracked from seaming has seen the completion of one scarf and this quick little 30-minute job: a PDA slip. I doubled the length of my PDA, added a half inch, cast on 15 stitches on 4mm needles, folded the completed length in half inside-out, seamed the sides, et voila! No more threat of imminent damage from the detritus in my bag.