Yarn Along - March 12, 2014

Finally – back on the Yarn Along bandwagon! Joining with Ginny this week, and hoping to catch up with regular blogging after a very long, but very enjoyable winter.

And look – I’m still knitting the SAME SOCK I was knitting back in July! It’s not even the second sock – it’s still the first one! Part of the reason is that I have had numerous commissions to work on, so the personal knitting gets put on the back burner, and when you have as many projects going as I do, some really get neglected.

Another reason is that this pattern, although simple in concept, is just not laid out in a manner where I can pick it up and find my place and catch up. I know what I’m supposed to be doing, but just trying to double check the stitch count, etc. was a confusing chore, and I’d have to start reading from the beginning. Also, I’m not used to following a pattern to make socks, so I’d print out a copy, and then misplace it, and have to print another one. I’m sure I’ve filed many copies of it in with bills, recipes, and trashed it with the junk mail.

Last night I printed yet another copy, STAPLED it together, found my notes in my notebook, went to bed early, and finished the gusset shaping and started the foot. Now that I’m smooth sailing once again, I’m hoping it won’t take a whole year to get these socks finished and off the needles.

The book I started this week is These Rich Years – A Journal of Retirement by Jean and Robert Hersey. I will be eligible to retire in less than four years, and I’m hoping to have all my ducks in a row so I can do it, and start another chapter in my life. This book, written in 1969, is nothing like any of the contemporary information I’ve read about retirement. No how-to’s, or statistics or charts, or new age thinking. Just observations, good advice, simple pleasures, and even a few basic recipes. Here’s a quote from the opening pages, to give you some idea of why I like this book:

“There is no feeling in life thus far quite like those first days and weeks when we wakened to realize that Bob didn’t have to be anywhere at nine o’clock. It was October, and we reveled especially in things that happened on weekday mornings. Walking on the beach and around the marshes at low tide, contemplating snowy egrets and eider ducks, gathering armfuls of the last goldenrod, watching gulls soar over the whitecaps and blue, blue water offshore. Undeniably all this could have been equally fine on any Saturday or Sunday, but it has a very particular charm when it occurs on Monday morning at ten and when you are just retired.”

I’ve read several of Jean Hersey’s other books, and her quiet, conversational style is so gentle and unassuming. I’m looking forward to this one, another step on the path to a new adventure.