It’s been a long time since I stayed up late reading a book. I got home late last night and was up until 2 a.m. this morning reading. I slept until 11, woke up and read for another hour before finally emerging at noon to drink coffee and finish The Namesake. Her strength is definitely in her short stories, but it’s a solid first novel.

Dan has the dog and is out helping friends on their goat farm today (the absence of a dog with bathroom needs is what kept me in bed so late). It’s nearly 3:30 pm and I’m still in my pajamas, having spent a couple hours finishing the book and then watching the finale of Project Runway (meh … I knew who the winner was after the runway show but it wasn’t who I’d wanted to win).

My room has become a study in mass confusion; the cut pieces of my coat are stacked in a corner, yarn is exploding everywhere, and the floor is covered with scraps of fabric and pattern paper. The weather has been very mild lately, so my room is going to get a good cleaning today so I can spread out my coat and finish it up this week before the weather turns on me again, and start on my Christmas projects.

I’m on to the sleeves of my NaKniSweMo sweater and not sure if I’ll be able to finish before the month is over. But hopefully some picture-worthy posts coming soon …

I’ve started. I stopped at the library last night before heading to Booze ‘n’ Blankets and picked up Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake and Bill Bryson’s Neither Here Nor There. I’m starting with The Namesake – I read Interpreter of Maladies last summer and I’d go so far as to say it’s the best book I’d read in a long time. She has a talent for capturing emotions and situations in a way that is so relatable and realistic – no melodrama, no pages of gratuitous description to wade through. Every sentence works. It’s great stuff.

I also started a new volunteer gig today at the Chicago History Museum. I get to play with photos from the 1970s and sometime in the next few weeks I’ll be working on some preliminary cataloging for them, too. I’d forgotten how long a full day is and am glad to have an hour for lunch every day. I’ll be there two days a week for the foreseeable future, until something that pays money comes along, and I’m glad. I enjoyed my first day, and Dan is treating me by cooking dinner tonight. It’s something I’ve been doing most of the time as a “stay at home” spouse, and while I like cooking, it starts to feel like a real chore when you have to do it every night.

We went to see Kari this weekend; I returned her coat (and now must finish mine) and took her a couple knitted thank yous – one for lending me the coat

[We've had two hard drive meltdowns since I made it and took photos. I am thusfar unable to find it on my computer or any of the three photo services I use, but if you are on Ravelry, you can see it here. It's this pattern from Knitty.]

and another for the big sack of yarn.

Thermis, knit in mystery yarn on 4.0mm needles

I was poking around on Ravelry, and as I’m wont to do once in a while, I started clicking through friends’ friends and their friends and I somehow ran into this:

“Ooo la la! Your cat will be très sophistiqué sporting this chic beret. The swirling decrease and tiny nubbin atop this hat sets this cat beret apart from the rest.

“Don’t be surprised when your cat dons the beret and demands a cigarette and coffee for breakfast.” (spindlesandspices.blogspot.com)

Awesome. That, of course, led me to what might be the greatest, most impractical, and guaranteed to piss off your pet creation ever.

Click the picture!

I love Ravelry.

I make New Year’s resolutions every year. And then I forget about them. Last year, I made some and wrote them all down and hung them up. I took them down to move, and then I spilled a glass of water on the list. And quite frankly, I have not given them another thought since. Even though my fiber-y, fabric-y resolutions have been sitting here the whole time (for the record, while I made some progress on 3 and 5, number 4 is the only one I completed; let’s not even talk about 1 and 2).

Anyway, it’s a little early for New Year’s resolutions, so I’m going to call this my Thanksgiving resolution. I was walking to the library earlier today, carrying a book that was insanely overdue (the clerk at the counter gasped and said $4 when I asked how much my fine was). And it occurred to me that for someone whose professional aspirations are centered around a library, I’ve read shockingly few books this year. I didn’t even finish the overdue one I took back.

So my resolution is to read 25 books before Thanksgiving 2010. That’s 25 grown-up length books. Much as I like kids’ picture books, I’m not going to count them. It’s not a crazy lot of reading – only about 2 books a month – but it’s a lot more than I’ve done recently.

If you have any favorites you think I should read, shout them out here or lend me a copy. I’ll give just about anything a try. In fact, maybe this will be the year I finally read Harry Potter.

And so I don’t forget about it or spill water on it, there’s a new page for the books I read this year right here.

Last Saturday, the group I knit with organized a trip to Lorna’s Laces (thank you!) – big groups can arrange to go in on a Saturday to wander around the dye studio and purchase mill ends. And purchase I did. I only went $10 over my allotted budget, and exercised what I consider an impressive level of restraint by putting a few skeins back on the tables. So I only came home with this:

The colors are off; that orange-ish one is actually a camel color. A new camera is definitely on my want list for when I'm working again.

I think all but the dark purple and the camel color are going to be knitted into something similar to this sweater (Ravelry link). I’m not decided on the fate of the other two skeins.

This is all part of a behavior I’ve been having a harder and harder time suppressing. As my unemployment benefits get closer to expiring, I feel an urgent need to hoard yarn. As if the year’s supply I have laid away will not be enough to sustain me, and one day Dan will find me huddled in the corner of the closet surreptitiously unraveling his sweaters, hissing and swatting at him like a cat when he tries to intervene.

I buy yarn to keep Dan and his sweaters safe. Yeah. Yeah, that’s the ticket.