The Improbable Read: Dialing back the big plan

One or two of you may be starting to wonder whatever happened to my Impossible Read project. To be honest, it’s still sitting in a tote bag next to my Comfy Green Chair in my home library.

I have been very frustrated at running out of time before being able to sit down and work on the project. Eventually I realized that this was happening because I took an admittedly very very long book list and converted it into an extremely time-consuming project. Not only was I planning to read some of the greatest books of all time, but I was also going to create a series of books filled with my own thoughts and annotations. And not only that, but the physical space necessary for working on these notebooks wasn’t even anywhere in my own house.

So I am setting aside the idea of creating a multi-volume artifact for myself. Instead I have a new plan, and I hope that you are sitting down as you read this. You’re simply not going to believe it.

I’m just going to read the books.

You heard me.

I will just read the books, and then watch the movies. I have plenty of other places where I can write about my reactions to the texts — in my morning freewriting, in my evening journaling, and here in my weekly blog posts. It’s even possible that as I work on my two primary writing projects, the great works and my thoughts about them may spill over into the writing I do there. (That’s kind of the point — to finally read these books and be influenced by them in my thought and my expression. To be edified, and to be improved.)

So hang on, Wart! I’ll be back soon to enjoy all of your adventures with Merlyn. I’ll just try not to be taking notes at the same time.

This weekend, for the Impossible Improbable Read-ing list, I found a very good used copy of Grendel by John Gardner. (I’m frustrated that I had to buy it at all, because I recognize the cover but cannot find the copy that I surely already own. ANYWAY.) Then I splurged on a new unabridged copy of The Tale of Genji, translated by Royall Tyler. Evidently this edition was originally published in 2003. It’s more than a thousand pages long and includes exquisite line drawings, a timeline, and a glossary. It’s full of helpful notes to the reader (hooray!) and it’s printed on paper that is soft to the touch (a high clay content?) and makes you want to just sit and pet it.

I marked these titles as “owned” in my Google Sheet, then scanned down the list to what I would next need to acquire. There are several books in a whole time period that I need to find — but they were written in the late 1600s and the 1700s. Before I even get to that point, I will have read The Once and Future King, The Mists of Avalon, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Grendel, The Tale of Genji, The Arabian Nights, The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales (in Middle English), Orlando Furioso, Don Quixote, and Salman Rushdie’s novel Quichotte. I have no idea what that cumulative page count even looks like (and I think it will go better for me if I don’t work it out in advance; I will log them in the spreadsheet as I finish each book [I have already created the formula]). There are also movies planned for viewing at the end of each segment, and those (so far) are The Sword in the Stone, Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, Beowulf, Aladdin, and Man of la Mancha (okay, I do need a DVD of this).

It may be two-three more years before I reach Oroonoko by Aphra Behn or Pamela by Samuel Richardson. But if you do see a nice used copy, could you let me know about it?

---

On to the Primary Projects mentioned above.

For Black Walnut (the fiction project), I continue to collect and listen to bluegrass music. I’m reading mostly about the early years because that’s the timeframe that will impact my characters, and I’m doing a little side research into the bluegrass radio shows of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly in the Ohio-Appalachia area. In the last few days I managed to pick up a used DVD of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a CD of the soundtrack, and a CD of live music from the groups on the soundtrack. I also snagged CDs by Mac Wiseman, Alison Krauss, and Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. From the reading I’m doing, I am starting to recognize the names of key bluegrass musicians. Some of these names may or may not sneak their way into the manuscript when I’m writing again. (I also promised an archivist that I would name a character after him, and I have absolutely no problem with that.)

I can see now how thin and underdeveloped my original storyline was. I’m reminding myself that it was a NaNoWriMo project from 2014 and that it didn’t have to be any better than it was. I wrote 22,500 words in 30 days and it was okay. But now I want to meet the characters and their parents and grandparents, get to know them, get to know the time and the region, and find the big story that’s worth telling. Every so often I get a glimpse of it.

For the Development of Mathematics project (doesn’t that sound thrilling?), I have catalogued almost every annotation in the copy of the book held by my own university’s library. When I’m done with that, the logical next step is to do the same for the other copies in the University of Wisconsin System libraries. The catch is that Inter-Library Loan operates by choosing a copy at random from the system holdings. I’m in consultation with a research librarian and our library director as to how to tweak that system so that I efficiently receive each copy in the system for evaluation and possible cataloguing. That phase will start in June so that I will have the maximum possible time with the books.

Another thing I need to do for this project is to brainstorm until I understand what the core project actually is, then what are the possible spin-off projects. That was something I had hoped to tackle this weekend, but plans changed and that’s been postponed until next weekend.

---

Knitwise, this week I did put in a few sessions of work on the Habit-Forming Scarf. This evening it measures 15 inches from the cast-on edge, and the remainder of the skein weight 51 grams (out of 100). This backs up my calculations from last week about getting 30 inches out of each skein. Hooray, my scarf is now 25 percent complete.

I’m going to have to normalize adding a couple of inches every couple of days if I want to get out of “slog” territory.

And with that in mind, it might be nice to have a small and colorful project to do on the side, to keep me motivated to work on something so long and grey (although certainly elegant and sophisticated).

My friend Nicole recently crocheted an office plant for me, and my friend Mary sent me a link to some crochet patterns published by the U.S. National Park Service. Here is one for a halibut. Here is another for a walleye. There are some fun patterns out there, including one (somewhere; I don’t have a link) for a crocheted Scottish thistle. It’s time to go stashbusting and color this place UP.

Minor adjustments

This weekend was the first one in which Youngest, who has lived all their life-so-far in my house, was a guest here — having shifted their primary residence to a site closer to a potential full-time job. I was a bit anxious about it because we didn’t have anything special planned to do and because hanging out with me is rarely particularly interesting. But we managed by going grocery shopping, visiting Goodwill, cooking and baking, and providing an occasion for me to watch them play an incredibly silly game on the GameCube. (In case you’d like to get a glimpse of the silliness, check out this video of the Wario Ware Mega Party Game$! from 2003.)

The change in dynamic is one that I have to keep reminding myself is The Way of the World. It’s supposed to be the case that your children grow up, are not children any more, and move on with their own plans. All of my offspring are at different stages in this process.

The house is also transforming — albeit mildly — in other ways. I ordered a woven jute runner for the dining room, and it finally arrived on Friday morning. Here it is, providing a path for the office chair to move from desk to desk. It also provides a variety of spots on which the dog may lounge (not pictured).

The chair doesn’t exactly roll along the heavily textured weave, but I can raise it slightly and move it to where it needs to be. I do love the look of it, which will be more dramatic when I’m able to move the four-drawer metal filing cabinet and two typewriter tables (topped with typewriters, of course!) out of the dining room. Maybe it will all look better in Next House.

I have gradually begun to make more progress on a couple of my writing projects, not that I’m less likely to be interrupted in the evenings. I’m thinking about setting evening “office hours” for myself so that I can focus on the correspondence I need to keep up for these projects.

The Impossible Read is on hold until I decide how I’d like to proceed with my reactions and annotations. I don’t want to write directly in the books I’m reading, but my method for creating a record of my comments has shown itself to be rather cumbersome. I hope that after I develop a more practical and efficient process I will be able to get back to the reading.

Yet, in the course of the week I have been doing regular freewriting and journaling, coming up with some ideas and concepts to work into the stories that are also hanging out in my head.

Spring? I know you’re trying, but you can’t come soon enough.

---

Knitwise, I did get in a few more rows on the Habit-Forming Scarf. It is now slightly longer than it is wide. Unfortunately, I neglected to bring it home for the weekend so I can’t measure it and provide any numerical evidence of my progress.

The bigger news on the knitting front is that I’m organizing a get-together for campus knitters and crocheters on the first day of Spring Break. That won’t be until next week, so we’ll see what elements might come together. People bringing projects? Swap yarn? Free patterns? Bring it on, Yarnhawks.

Off to a flying stop

Last Monday I kicked off my Impossible Read by beginning my first book, The Once and Future King, in the first minutes of the new year. I hadn’t intended to do so, but when I found myself awake in bed at 11:40 pm it seemed like a low-effort idea to just stay awake for a few more minutes.

The plan backfired slightly when I found it hard to get to sleep after reading one chapter, but that was just because I enjoyed the book so much. After a good night’s morning’s sleep I resumed reading and finished six chapters. I marked all kinds of passages that I particularly enjoyed — twenty-five of them, in fact, including two descriptions of Merlyn that brought to mind the River Song character from Doctor Who.

It was my copious notations that brought the project to a halt. I had stocked up on plenty of Artist’s Loft sketchbooks to use for recording my notes as I read, but two qualities of the sketchbook have proven to be problematic.

The first issue is the thickness of the blank page. I wanted plenty of room to write, draw, and include any kind of scrapbook-y things that I wanted to, but I also didn’t want my writing to be sloppy. So I decided to slip a lined page behind the page I would be writing on. The notebook paper I used for this was barely visible through the thick sketchbook page, so I used a ruler and pen to go over the existing lines and darken them as much as I could. Now I have lines to go by without having lines on my page.

Unfortunately, the available light at home comes from the wrong direction; my hands cast a shadow and I can’t see the lines I’m aiming for. So I took my book and sketchbook to work, thinking that in the better light there I could make my notes neatly. But on this particular week I didn’t have much extra time in the morning before my work day began; I wrote out almost two pages of notes, and that was all I could do this week. I didn’t want to read ahead in the book when I was already so far behind on my notes, playing catch-up.

The second issue is the sheer size of each page. Last year for my reading journal, I used a dot journal with a 5-1/2 by 8-1/2 inch page. It’s the perfect size to write on at a desk, at a table, or even curled up in a chair. The sketchbook pages measure a little over 8 by 11 inches, and the the book is opened it is a heavy 11 x 17 product — not something you can curl up with at all. Even on a table it takes up quite a lot of room. (Just for fun, I put a blank sketchbook on my kitchen scale. It weighed 2 pounds, 3 ounces.)

So I have to work on my logistics. Perhaps electronic notes would be better. Perhaps I should just read the book, then enter all of my notes. Perhaps I should do whatever works and not put quite so much overthinking into the project. I could just annotate the books directly, but I would like to pass them along to new readers when I’m done with them. That’s why I would like to allow my notes to be detailed: they are my lasting record of the project.

So I have some thinking to do before I move ahead.

I have also done some reading in the books I didn’t finish by the end of 2023, and I’m still adding items to last year’s reading journal. (I’m not keeping a reading journal for this year other than what I document for The Impossible Read, but I will be reading other books.) But the end is near: after I write entries for two books I finished and one that I didn’t, I will add lists of Did Not Finish titles and Did Not Start titles and call it a year.

The Did Not Start list might seem to be infinite, but it will consist of books I planned to read, assumed I would read, and printed out mini covers to add to the journal. Here’s one:

I’ll glue in these little covers, which will make space in the list for me to record the dates when I finally do read these books (anything’s possible). So my 2023 reading journal will include what I meant to read as well as what I started and what I finished. Returning to it to add this kind of data might tempt me to review the rest of the pages — and to enjoy the memories of the year I read more than 10,000 pages.

I have no new typewriters to report; I had meant to take the Skyriter out of its shell yesterday and start to give it a cleaning, but I spent much of the weekend sorting paperwork in the dining room. The dining room table was cluttered with this effort until this afternoon, when I was too tired to take on a brand new task. Next weekend should work out better, and I’ll take photos of the process.

Next weekend I’m also planning to do a mini writing retreat for myself and a friend, and I’m spending this week thinking about what kinds of texts and supplies we might need. It’s really going to be a “sit our butts down and just start writing” event, so I’ll have to restrain myself from over-planning. Paper, pen, and coffee should do it.

I don’t know yet which story I’m going to work on, so I’d like to plan that much. But you know what I mean.

---

Knitwise, I added a few repeats onto the Thrift Stripe scarf. I’m now at 39 repeats out of 45. That would be doable within the next week, except that I keep occupying myself with activities — like reading — that are incompatible with knitting.

I didn’t start or finish any other knitting, but this week my Facebook friends and I came across a photo of a knitted (crocheted?) Coleus that has us all wanting to cast on.

Maybe I’ll start it on a day when I don’t have anything good to read.

Wet it and forget it

After one week spent in a moist environment, the peach seeds softened enough that it was easy for me to peel off their protective layers. (No, there are no peaches yet).

These bits of seed-skin are resting on the top layer of damp paper towel. I covered the “naked” seeds with a freshly dampened piece of paper towel and tucked them back inside their plastic container. I’ll check on them again in another week, and I’ll be looking for tender little roots that should start growing from the seeds’ pointy ends.

We won’t have peach trees or peaches any time soon, but this is about as relaxing a gardening process as I can possibly think of. Any other plant I ignore for a week at a time is likely to be crispy when I finally remember it, and its only fruits are guilt and shame.

The peach seeds are developing in the background of quite a few other things I have going on. Let’s make a list, shall we?

1. Work. New office, new supervisor, new semester in about 36 hours as I write this. (To my colleagues: no pressure!) I’ve been doing the daily tasks of monitoring enrollment numbers for the fall semester, combined with helping those last-minute enrollees get into the classes they need to take, helping instructors get everything they need to be ready to teach on Tuesday morning, and getting next spring’s classes entered into the system. I’m also on University Staff Council and an Audit and Review committee, so there are meetings to attend in addition to department meetings. On the plus side, there is good coffee every day.
2. Home. This weekend, a major clean of the bathroom was an absolute must. We took down some loose shelves, tossed the old shower curtain rod and rings and bought new ones, and threw away many expired items from the family first-aid kit. Nobody wants corn remover tables from 2009 or Oragel from 2015. I also bought a couple of new shelves that won’t quite work, and I’ll return those while we think about how we’ll now fill the wall space above the toilet (Eldest and Youngest have some pretty strong feelings about what they *don’t* want to see there). I’m also washing off a collection of dubber duckies that I had not remembered was so extensive. They’re destined for Goodwill unless someone else wants to adopt them.
3. Health. I’m making a very slow recovery from my misstep on the stairs a few weeks ago, and last Friday I also banged up a finger. Everything is sore, all my leg muscles are tight, and I can’t climb stairs. Please pass the ibuprofen. I’ll need to check in with my doctor soon, and the best-case scenario would be to get referrals to a physical therapist and a good foot doctor.
4. Graduate school. That will start next week Monday. I know the instructor and I already have the textbooks. The deadline of my first paper is September 26, and now that I have double-checked my syllabus I see that I need to read 50 pages in Student Development in College: Theory, Research, and Practice and another article on our Canvas module before the first class session. I also need to customize my Canvas profile. I hope that I get access to the Canvas module soon.
5. Research project. With the start of school imminent, I’ve run out of “spare” time to research the UWW Math Department’s personnel history. However, I’m continuing to make gradual progress on reading through a key work of the author I’m studying. Last week I finally received a copy of the first edition of one of his works. Oddly enough, the first two times I ordered it via Amazon sellers, each one substituted another title — the one I’m currently reading. Now the library can have their copy of Men of Mathematics back, because I now own it in hardcover and paperback. But now I own a gorgeous, almost-never-touched first edition of Development of Mathematics. (When I tell people this, they say, kindly, “That’s interesting.” I always reply, “It really isn’t.” What’s interesting is that nobody ever asks me about this project twice. HMM.)
6. Jewish holidays. The coming months will have several major holidays, each of which calls for reading, introspection, and communal activities. I’ll also be working on the October issue of my congregation’s newsletter. Last month I hit a distribution-related snag when Microsoft flagged my newsletter’s email address as a spammer after I had sent out only one-third of the newsletters. Obviously we’ll have to do some things differently, so I’ll work with our temple’s tech guru and hope that doesn’t happen again.
7. Senior year. While SecondSon and ThirdSon are off at college, Youngest has already started his senior year of high school. One more year of the drop-off line, just one more year of the drop-off line….
8. Other reading. Shoot, it’s a new month and I need to update the reading journal again before it gets completely away from me. Just before September began, I started reading a book on trauma that a friend recommended highly. I’m going in small segments so I have time to think about what I’m reading. I probably have a dozen texts that I would say I’m reading right now, but there’s not a single book that’s going to command my full attention — at least, not until I start doing the readings for my graduate course. Every other book will have to be read in tiny increments of free time.
9. There’s probably some other thing that I’m forgetting to mention. Keeping up with the Formula One season? Triaging all my surplus belongings and getting them out of my house? Learning Ladino? Getting back to exercise and yoga? Fixing up old typewriters? Worrying about my aging dog? Learning how to play (or just practicing) the accordion, guitar, keyboard, piano, or saxophone? Writing fiction or poetry? I’ll let you know when I remember what it is.

---

Knitwise, I made good on last week’s promise and started a project bag for the scarf for SecondSon and I added a circular needle of the right size. I’m really on a roll here and maybe I should take a short break before my productivity gets completely out of hand. I mean, nobody needs a warm scarf while it’s hot outside, right? I’d better pace myself.

I don’t remember if I mentioned here that someone had written a book of patterns for crocheted succulents. Well, now there is a book on crocheted houseplants. There is also this book if you insist on trying to raise real plants. If the peach seeds never develop into fruit-bearing trees, I may seriously consider turning to crochet to decorate my home and office. Maybe I could even craft something to fill that wall space in the bathroom.

27 for 6

On the last day of June I came to the end of one of my daily journals. At the end of my previous journal, a friend reviewed it and noted that I had asked a lot of questions in six months of entries. Intrigued, I decided to fill the remaining journal pages with all of the questions I had asked myself. I thought this would be good fodder for introspection, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t go back and review it. I opened a fresh journal and forged ahead!

In that same spirit, when I finished this journal — again, after exactly six months — I reviewed the content to see if I could figure out an overarching theme. I thought it might once again be the questions I asked myself, but it wasn’t. Instead, the word “maybe” kept popping up more than almost any other. (My intent was to write about writing and how that was going, but that would have been stacking the deck. I wanted to see what was coming up subconsciously, not consciously.)

Not my grandmother’s Louisville Slugger, but that’s another story.

I wrote “maybe” sentences 27 times in the course of six months. If this ratio represented a slugging percentage, it would be over the maximum (4) that a batter could earn — better than hitting six grand slams in six at-bats. It works out to one speculative entry every week.

Most of these maybes were in the form of “maybe I need to…” or “maybe it would work if…” but there were some interesting exceptions, such as:

“May need to send out apologies tomorrow to keep the peace.” (February 9)

“Maybe [da Vinci] would be surprised that dip pens and fountain pens are still in use.” (June 1)

“Maybe it is time for Spring Break.” (March 23)

But compare this with the previous journal, in which I wrote 35 entries that contained questions. Since some of those entries consisted of lists of questions, they add up to 72 questions that I asked myself in 26 weeks. That’s about three questions a week.

I’m not going to go back and count the number of words that I’ve handwritten in my journals in the last year. The important thing is that, with only a few exceptions, I have gotten in the habit of writing in this series of journals every night. It has become something to which I look forward and it gives me a way to look back. (Those February apologies, though? No idea what that was about.)

In other numerical news, my Forester got to 222222 on the odometer, and I have proof!

…proof that I pulled over to take the picture, proof that I turned on my hazard lights while I was taking the picture, and proof that I need to do a better job of keeping my dashboard clean.

---

Knitwise, I have made no progress at all. I didn’t even rip out the scarf; I just stopped working on it and set it aside. But a local knitting friend recently shared a photo of a crocheted cactus on social media, and it was absolutely adorable. It was from the book Crocheted Cactuses by Sarah Abbondio, who has also written Crocheted Succulents.

I don’t make a dime if you click on the link or buy Abbondio’s book (or books). I just think her work is adorable, and these look like the kind of plants I might be able to keep “alive.”

Parodia Scopa

I have spent the last week triaging old papers, moving items to my new office, doing my walking inside to limit my exposure to the smoke from Canadian wildfires, ferrying Youngest to his new job and to the DMV to get a state identification card so he can access the money he’s making, catching up on my reading, and catching up on recording the entries in my reading journal. Tomorrow I’ll have a day of work, then a day of vacation, three days of work, then the weekend… it’s already a blur. Maybe I’d better keep writing so I can keep track of the time.

My life as a cat

Recently I’ve been catching up on a podcast to which I haven’t listened for over a year. Now that my morning and afternoon commutes have been somewhat lengthened by the lateral journey to Youngest’s high school and back again, I’ve been firing up the Bluetooth speaker (thanks, Sheila!) and listening in for at least thirty minutes a day. The episodes vary in length but average 20-25 minutes each, so I have been clipping through them fairly quickly. I started re-listening about a year further back than I needed to, but it’s been rewarding to hear the episodes again (occasionally hearing [again] the answer to a question I had submitted — which, ironically, which was about what other podcasts I should listen to when I had finally caught up with this one).

This weekend I caught up to where I had left off almost exactly a year ago. A few minutes ago I listened to the last five minutes of an episode I started this morning, which turned out to be largely about, of all things, the philosophy of mathematics and its relationship to Talmud study. And right at the end of the episode, host Xava made the comment, “I can’t live all of the lives that I want to live.”

I may have mentioned one or twice that my house contains the necessary items for living several lives. Since I don’t know yet which life I’ll live, I don’t know yet which items will prove to be necessary and which items I can sell, throw away, or hand off to others. As my offspring make their own decisions, I can reward their decisiveness by letting them raid my stores. Over time, that will help me to narrow my own choices. (Mama can’t go first. That would be rude.)

Do I have enough items to live for a thousand lives before using them up? Not quite. (And would I want to live like The Doctor, outliving everyone I love? No. But I can’t get rid of my Tardis full of time-travel items — no, not yet. Somehow I might find the time to read and watch them all….)

But perhaps, just perhaps, I could narrow my lives down to nine.

There’s a life where I can finally set up my Macseum, creating networks of similarly aged Mac hardware and installing each piece with the optimum operating system. The laser printer and the DeskJet can finally come up from the basement and be used again, and I can write (and print out) stories on everything from a Mac Plus to an iMac or MacBook.

There’s a life where I can learn all the languages I want to learn: Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino; Spanish; American Sign Language; Latin. And why not French and German and Arabic, too, while I’m at it? Japanese? Afrikaans? Sanskrit? No problem! I remember checking out, when I was in about the fourth grade, a library book about the way basic Chinese characters were created. The character for “house” actually looks like a house, if you know what you’re looking for.

There’s a life where I have the time to read all of the books I have accumulated over the years. Fiction, essays, nonfiction — all of them, in any order I want.

There’s a life where I draw, paint, and just plain create all the things that flash through my mind. I take my own photographs, develop my own pictures, and design the house I live in.

There’s a life in which I do nothing but write, with pencils, pens, fountain pens, typewriters, and computers.

There’s a life where I travel the world, using my languages and my art to get around and meet people, discover and tell their stories, and find out who I am.

There’s a life where I cook my way through every cookbook I own, and I master the techniques of Jacques and Julia, of Anthony Bourdain and Bert Greene, of the Top Chefs and the anonymous cooks representing a thousand years of Chinese cuisine. I bake every loaf and cut out every cookie, and there are fresh loaves of challah on every Shabbat.

There’s a life where I’m just the wacky old lady who lives next to the middle school, pointing my finger at the kids who struggle to pedal the ill-fitting hand-me-down bikes of their older siblings. “Come here,” I say. “Let me fix that for you. You can pick it up on your way home.” While they’re in class I check the brakes, adjust the gearing, put the seat at the proper height, fill the tires to the right pressure, and lube the chain. I get to make something better, and they get to have something that works better — something that might bring them freedom rather than frustration.

That sums up eight lives, leaving only one in which to do everything else I’d like to do. Is the ninth life the one in which I knit, crochet, make quilts, rehabilitate owls, foster cats, dogs, horses, and alpacas, research genealogies, and finally learn to play and write music for the piano, guitar, and accordion? When do I study geometry, astronomy, and mathematics? When do I set up my invention lab? When do I meditate and do my yoga? And when can I just be?

I may need to rethink this plan.

---

Knitwise, there hasn’t been a stitch of work going on. Knitrino did recently email me about my last chance to purchase a pattern for knitting a smol apatosaurus. It’s tempting, I tell you.

Book end

At work and at home, I’ve been in the middle of several long-term projects. After the metaphorical starting gun goes off, there are basically two modes: keeping up, and trying to catch up. That doesn’t stop my brain from coming up with even more long-term projects that I really should take on just as soon as I find some spare time. Yes, I like working on projects. Yes, I enjoy being creative. But I’d also like to have the time to just sit still and think. Or just stare out the window. Or sleep.

I don’t intend to just stop doing things, like my dryer did on Saturday morning, but it would be nice to finish something once in a while. It doesn’t seem to happen as often as I would like.

This weekend — this morning, in fact — I finished reading a book. As I am surrounded by hundreds of other books, hundreds of thousands of pages, and many millions of words, this event should not have very much meaning. Yay, I can put this book down and pick up another one and never live long enough to read them all. Yet this moment does have meaning.

Doo doo doo doooooo….

I feel as if I have arrived at some sort of checkpoint, and I’m trying to figure out why. This isn’t the first book I’ve finished this year. This was a novel, and while it was well researched and well written it was not Literature. In fact, it’s not only the kind of book that would be read in a Book Club, it was a book that was read in a local Book Club last year.

With regard to reading lists, I am usually not reading what anyone else is reading. I am most often following my own little star, which looks like a star but is really a comet and will be supplanted, after it passes from view, by a different comet headed in another direction, or a Strawberry Moon, or Venus at dawn, or perhaps a satellite like the ones my Uncle Rex taught me to find in the night sky decades ago. Reading Irving Wallace at age 13 and re-reading Norton Juster at age 55.

But here I am, not just reading a contemporary novel but borrowing it from a friend, finishing it in a reasonable time, and getting it back to her. (The last time I borrowed a book from a friend, she asked to have it back when I was about halfway through. I suppose that I was taking too long.)

Perhaps I feel like I’m finally part of the group, keeping the social contract, keeping up with the others. This is probably something that everyone else already does, and perhaps it won’t happen again for a while, or ever.

At any rate, I finished a book and now it’s time for me to try to sleep.

---

Knitwise, I have been making more times to work on the Blue Blanket. Particularly this weekend, I combined my graduate school reading with my knitting by viewing PDFs one page at a time on the screen of my Mac while I worked more decrease rows. At this point it’s easier to tell that the rows are getting shorter. I was surprised to count 49 stitches on the needles, because I thought there would be fewer.

I know that I promised to take some progress shots of the blanket, but if I made the space to take them at home it would take so long that you wouldn’t get this post until tomorrow. (Besides, the light here is horrible.) So bear with me; since I’m bringing the project with me to work anyway, I’ll shoot the photos there and post them when I’m able.

Less than 50 rows to go, and even less than that if I grossly miscalculated and will lose at Yarn Chicken. That’s not bad. I’ll be finishing the Yoga Socks (or at least resuming work on them) before you know it.

SO close….

The neverending conversation

Yesterday my brother and I had either the conversation that we have every couple of years, or another installment in the conversation that never ends. Each of us is struggling with a type of artistic blockage (ironically, mine is music and his is writing), and both of us are struggling with the physical blockage of Too Much Effing Stuff In Our Way when we go to create. We had a Long Talk about the possible reasons for Why This Is So. I think that each of us is ready to start letting go of the physical things that are getting in our way both metaphorically and tangibly, but there is still a bit of magical thinking involved. My master plan involves winning a lottery I haven’t played more than five times in my life, and his involves a housefire that destroys every possession except his cat.

Okay, so it needs some work. But at least we are talking about how to move ourselves forward. I’m going to start by publishing this blog post, walking the dog, and crawling into my beloved bed and getting the sleep I haven’t been getting on my mother’s couch for the last few days.

---

Knitwise, I was able to deliver the Pink Project to its recipient last week. I did make a feeble attempt to get the different shades from the different skeins to blend by washing the item in hot water and letting it soak in that water for a few minutes, but nothing really happened. It is still a project that’s going to be lain upon by cats, so eventually it’s going to be pink with white highlights. Or maybe even white with pink highlights.

From this angle, the color differences are almost impossible to see.

One of the cats, the all-white Lucy, has already lain upon it and seems to like it. And my mother, when chilly, has already wrapped herself in it as a blanket/stole. We’re going to call this one a success even if I didn’t add tassels to each end. (Lori, I know that I still owe you for the yarn. I can pay you now!)

While I was visiting my mother I also visited a Goodwill store and scored some really nice yarn. All of the local thrift stores that MiddleSon and I usually visit over the holiday were pretty picked over, so we pulled out our smartphones to search for additional stores. Lo and behold, within walking distance of where I lived in the late 90s there was a new Goodwill location. While MiddleSon looked through the CDs and vinyl, I searched for alphabet mugs and yarn. On the first pass, I didn’t notice any yarn at all. This wasn’t too surprising, as the other stores had been pretty well picked over with regard to any craft supplies that would make easy holiday gifts.

On a second pass, when I started looking under and behind other things in what seemed to be the craft section, I noticed a plastic bag that was stuffed with a few skeins of yarn and a ball/skein of crochet thread in a rich burgundy. The whole bag was priced at $6.99, which was already a steal. When I got to the counter, I asked the clerk if we could remove the crochet thread and donate it back to the store. “Oh,” she said, “I don’t know if I can do that.” But she did take it out, and without saying a word she reduced the price by $2 (MiddleSon and I checked the receipt afterwards).

So here are the three skeins of worsted weight fine Peruvian Highland wool from Blue Sky Fibers, still tagged at $8.75 a skein, that I bought for $3.99 for the three. The colors are Spring Ice, Dark Chocolate, and Loon Lake. Gadzooks! they are pretty. Spring Ice is a bit darker in person, and the other two colors are a bit lighter. Many, many thanks to the knitter (or non-knitter) who donated them to Goodwill. And thanks to the Goodwill employee who ignored the original price tags!

Unfortunately, I didn’t find any reasonably sized knitting needles at the thrift stores while I was out of town — just teeny crochet hooks and enormous aluminum needles. But I have plenty of needles at home, and I can squish these lovely skeins until I think of something to do with them. Maybe a Fair Isle pillow?

The vintage Packer scarf sat at home while I was away, so there is no progress to report or anything new on the needles. Let’s see what happens by the end of next week.

Now playing

Eldest and I went out to the movies yesterday afternoon. I can’t remember the last time we went out to see a movie, but I’m sure that he can. It was a bit strange in that no one (except some of the superheroes) wore masks and there was little artificial distancing other than cheerful stickers (which everyone respected) on the floor in the concession line. Other things, like popcorn and a drink costing more than two adult movie tickets, were comforting “normal” occurrences.

Honestly, it would have been cheaper to pony up for the Disney Premier pricing for this one, but then it wouldn’t have been an event. We wouldn’t have taken a bit of a scenic route to the theater to look at the old cars in everyone’s backyards. We wouldn’t have stopped by Taco Bell for a pre-movie “dinner.” And we probably wouldn’t have spent so much time talking about the movie, its mixed reviews and the possible reasons for them, its place and function in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and how its events have consequences that will play out in future films and TV series (Clint, watch your six).

I won’t give my own review of the movie here, but I have invited Eldest to access my movie-specific blog, Take Five Film Reviews, to not only review it but contribute some other film-related writing. The last movie I reviewed there was “Captain Marvel” in 2019, so I’d better blow the dust off it before I provide a link. (I also have a lot of broken links to repair, but perhaps Eldest can help with that as well.) Eldest was a bit wary of the offer at first, but after we talked about it he seemed to warm up to the idea. (Please don’t remind him — or tell him — that MiddleSon has contributed at least two guest posts to Chocolate Sheep.)

Eldest also took on the role of writing down the titles of the trailers that played before the feature. We saw at least three movies that I think we’d like to see (for me, they were “Reminiscence,” which comes out on August 20, “The King’s Man,” which has a release date of December 22, and “The Protégé,” which was apparently released on April 21), which made me think about establishing a more regular pattern for going out to the movies. And that seems strange. Or maybe normal. I’m not sure anymore.

Some of the promotional materials we saw in the theater were dated 2020, which makes sense — it was a “lost year” for the industry, and to catch up with all the movies that would have been released back then we have to do a bit of time travel and then fast-forward up to the present. (I wouldn’t be surprised if this kind of time-skip becomes something of a trope in movies that come out in the next few years. We write about what we suffer.)

We hadn’t really planned to see a movie this weekend, but circumstances arranged themselves so that we wouldn’t be leaving anyone out if we did. So we tightened up our morning schedule as much as we could, and bolted for the theater as soon as we were able. We kept ourselves as safe as we could. And I think we both look forward to going out again and having something new to talk about.

---

Knitwise, there’s been no knitting at all. That might change next week, when I may have time to take on a simple, relaxing project. What I have been doing, suddenly, is math. (That’s not to say that knitting doesn’t have math. It has math and algorithms, and please feel free to leave a comment if you’re a crafter — particularly a knitter, crocheter, or quilter — who was absolutely ambushed by precision mathematics after the beginning stage of your craft/hobby.) I had been working my way through a book of very practical mathematics up until the last week or so, when I hadn’t found time to move forward. Then, suddenly, my work called for some projections to be figured out very quickly, and because of the time that I had spent with the Very Practical Book I was able to reason my way through generating the numbers I needed to generate. It wasn’t quite like “I just started working out last week and then today I needed to lift a ’68 Chevy Impala and now I can,” but it kind of felt like it on Friday afternoon. I knew what I needed to determine and I knew the starting point I needed; once I had the starting point, the rest followed with a combination of logic and intuition.

I’ll check my work on Monday morning. I promise.

In other news, I had an emergency tooth extraction last week, which was really a much better event than if nature had been allowed to take its course with an abcessed tooth. (DO NOT Google this!) So after a couple of days of living on yogurt, energy drinks, and spoon-fed milkshakes, I am starting to put solid food back in my diet. Last night I even had some of our house favorite, the Saturday night slow-cooked beef stew, without a problem.

I’ll work on the relaxing, and the knitting, and the math. I’m willing to use whatever tools may help.

Time to call Sears

My Sears saga has taken an odd turn since I last wrote about it. To recap, the dryer was fixed and I set up an appointment to have the washer repaired. The appointment was set for the morning of the first day of Eldest’s spring break. Splendid, I thought. He will be here when the technician arrives and I won’t even have to leave work. How convenient!

Then I received a robocall informing me that my appointment had changed from Monday morning to Friday afternoon. That’s fine, I thought. Eldest will still be here when the technician arrives and I won’t even have to leave work. How convenient.

All week I was also receiving random sales calls from all across the country. I don’t usually answer the phone unless I recognize the number, so most of the time I let the call go to voicemail — if one is left at all — and sometimes I Google the phone number to see if it’s a caller I need to block. One number in Los Angeles was especially persistent, but finally left a voicemail: it was Sears, calling about the renewal of my maintenance agreement. Unfortunately, when I called the number back I got the main menu for the front desk of a calling center and I couldn’t connect with people I actually wanted to talk to.

On Friday, just before 1:30pm, Eldest texted me to inquire about the repair visit, as a technician had not yet arrived.

Just before 2pm, he texted to report that a large box, presumably the remanufactured transmission for our washing machine, had been delivered to our porch. Nobody called or rang the doorbell.

2:47
Still nothing.

3:28
More nothing.
          That’s a lot of nothing.
Sure is.

4:08
Boys are here, still no repairman.

5:07
Boys are going.
Still no repairman.

5:56
Still no repairman…

6:48
Are you sure the repair didn’t get rescheduled for next week?

This afternoon I received a phone call from somewhere in Wisconsin. I had seen the city name come up in my received calls before, so I decided to answer it. Lo and behold, it was a robot from Sears. “Please call to reschedule your service appointment!” Whenever it takes place, this should be an interesting conversation. Great, I’m thinking. Nobody will be here when the technician arrives, and I’ll have to leave work. How inconvenient.

I hope that I can get the maintenance agreement renewed before someone shows up to fix my washing machine.

In other news about service providers continuing to provide service even as they go out of business, we recently got the news that ShopKo would be closing all of its stores, and not just the small number announced earlier in the year. Our closest ShopKo is basically the only small discount store for thirty miles. If you don’t want to go to Walmart for your everyday items, you’re going to be driving for quite a while to do your shopping; the Kmarts in this area are closing now or have already closed a few years ago.

I stopped by our store yesterday to see if I could pick up any bargains — I found a few — and decided to ask the Optical department what would be done with the records of my eye exams. It had been a long time since my last exam, but that was where I had gone.

The conversation was slightly awkward; the employees didn’t know whether or not a buyer for the optical business would be found, so their jobs were pretty much up in the air. And on the one hand, they were supposed to keep all patient records for seven more years. On the other hand, who was “they” and how would people access them? Nobody knew.

Well, the easiest thing to do would be to schedule an eye exam, since that would be possible for the next six weeks. I gave my name and birthdate, but it seemed to be taking quite some time to find my records. Finally the tech looked up and asked, kindly, “It is possible that you could have had your last appointment under a different name?”

They were right. I have not had an eye exam since before my divorce…five years ago? Six?

I scheduled an appointment for two weeks from Friday, in the afternoon.

---

Knitwise, I have actually been doing some knitting. (Well, I did start one project by crocheting, but as my crocheting skills have now proven to be utterly unreliable, I have frogged the project and restarted it as knitting. I don’t have a progress shot, but I will take one when there is more…progress.)

I finished another pair of slippers for my grandmother, and I’ll ship them out next week.

Then I finished the Secret Project I hinted at a few weeks ago. It didn’t actually take too long to knit — three sessions of sitting down and knitting, perhaps? — but it was a while in my Lost and Found section. I don’t know when I will send it out, and the recipient might be reading this blog, so here is a picture of the back of the project. It’s somewhat in disguise.

While I had out the needle and scissors (my tool kit had been in the Lost and Found for a while as well), I decided to weave in the ends of the scarf I had made for the Student Food Pantry. I will save it to donate to them in the fall, when they will need scarves again. They spent this week moving from their current location and are thinking up a new name for themselves, since they are much more than a food pantry. While they’re busy, I will turn my other two skeins of this yarn into a matching hat. I’d also like to come up with some designs for tags for the items that I donate to the Pantry. If you’re going to get a hand-knitted item, you should also get some care instructions for it, no?

AND THEN I started another nursing shawl for another mom-to-be in my building. She was due this week, so it’s one of those knit-like-the-wind-Bullseye kind of projects. She mentioned a severe wool allergy as well as a liking for turquoise. I was stumped until I saw a friend in my Tuesday night yarn group crocheting with a lovely colorway of sea greens. “Wow, that’s beautiful,” I said. “Do you know if they have a similar colorway in blue?” Eventually, someone pointed out that the pattern on the ball band was done in a similar colorway in blue. I picked up two skeins of it the same night and cast on for a slightly modified version of a shawl I had knitted several years ago: Chastain Park.

To shift gears slightly, it’s a Formula One weekend and tomorrow I will be trying to cook some item from the national cuisine of Bahrain. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to send them my way. I have already taken care of the relevant beverage: coffee made with 100% Arabica beans.