Friday, December 13, 2013

Yarn Along

I wistfully follow Ginny Sheller's blog, "Small Things," admiring her peaceful voice, beautiful photography, and lovely family.  I stumbled across her on Ravelry, while doing a random search for projects including the name Silas, as a way of pointing out to my husband that Silas is a name skyrocketing in popularity.  The name is growing on me, as being attached to my son, but it's still not the name I would have picked for any reason ever except that Ryan wanted it so badly.  Anyway, I was fascinated by the little glimpses I caught in her project page, both of beautiful knitting and photography and wonderful literary names for her six (now seven!) children.  What really caught me by the heartstrings, unsurprisingly, is that she, too, has sons named Silas and Gabriel.

She has a weekly Yarn Along that beckons to me, as she posts a picture of a book and a knitting project that she's reading and working on, respectively, and the picture always hits me right in my coziest spot.  I've refrained from joining, because I feel the disparity in the comparison of her pretty, soft, woolen projects and my acrylic monstrosities.  This week, however, I'm joining in, late as always, self-consciousness be darned!


When I started the New Ancestral Christmas Stocking from Mason Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines, I knew it was big, but I don't think it was really impressed enough upon me just how big.  It's a lovely Christmas decoration, but as something that I'm supposed to fill with gifts, it makes me feel . . . daunted, to say the least.  What on earth am I ever going to put in this gargantuan sock?  We don't even have a fireplace!  What am I thinking?

Part of it is the longing I often felt for a Christmas stocking as a child.  Part of it is how much I like argyle.  Part of it is how darn inviting Ann Shayne and Kay Gardiner make all of their patterns sound.  They have a gift for imparting their love of knitting in their writing, and it makes me want to have as much fun knitting log cabin afghans as they do.  Then I try it and discover that endless permutations of garter stitch make me ill.  Life is so unfair.

I'm very eager for this stocking to be over with.

Right now I'm reading Jane Eyre (or more accurately, re-re-re-re-reading it) on my Kindle, but I threw my hardcopy into the photo because I thought it would make the picture more dynamic.  Jane Eyre is just one of those books that I am always in the mood for.


2 comments:

  1. Bwahahahaha! re re re re reading? You've got it bad. And that is one huge stocking. A couple balls would help take up space in there. I'm sure little Silas would love a couple of those.

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