Knitting.

Progress is being made. Since you last saw Boxy I have separated for the front and back. The knitting stopped for a few days at that point as I considered how to continue in helical stripes in the flat.

I don’t know why it took more than five seconds to figure that out.

Helical stripes, as you know, are a way to knit one-row stripes in the round without the dreaded jag.

One solution to simulate one-row stripes in the flat would be to knit one row in color A and purl back with the same yarn to where color B is waiting. Repeat, using color B; continue alternating the colors in the 2-row pattern established. The obvious flaw in this method is that there would be two rows of each color rather than just one. While the knitter might be able to get away with that in a very small section, I thought the difference would be obvious in this sweater.

My solution was to knit from right to left with color A, slide the knitting back to the other end of the circ and knit one row with color B. Now both working yarns are at the end of the row. Turn the work and purl back, first with color A, then with color B. Success! I’m a genius!

These are the yarns I am using. Top row: Debbie Bliss Cashmarino in ‘Russet’ Belle in ‘Scarlett’; [probably] Dream in Color Everlasting Sock in ‘753 Passion’.

Middle row: Malabrigo Finito in ‘Ceriza’; Brooks Farm Acero in the creatively named ‘6 AC’ (the tiny ball is practically invisible in the photo).

Bottom row: a Blue-faced Leicester whose ballband was lost long ago; an unnamed Sunshine Yarn in ‘Brickness’; Dream in Color Smooshy with Cashmere in ‘Cranberry Melt’; in the lower right corner a teeny ball of Black Bunny Fibers Bamberino in ‘Strawberry Girl’ tea-dyed by me to a less pink shade of red. If you are desperate to see it, click here.

The sweater is looking more pink than I like. Back when I first started I planned to over-dye the pinkest of the yarns with a highly diluted brown or yellow or orange. Now I plan to postpone the over-dying until all the knitting is done.

Reading.

An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym. Here is my Amazon review:

Not my cup of tea. Overly prim and conventional characters, hampered even more by convention and expectations, do not an interesting book make. Just as I am not fond of Jane Austin, I did not care for this book. YMMV.

Lola on Fire by Rio Youers. This book jumps around in time from 1993 to current days, plus the title character is not introduced until nearly halfway through the novel. The relationships between characters are only slowly revealed. This is a decent suspense novel, with a distinctly odd structure. 3★

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty. One of my book clubs read this one last month. I haven’t attended their in-person meetings since the pandemic started, and I did not want another Zoom obligation, but this book sounded interesting. One of the members goes south for the winter; she reads the book and emails her thoughts to the group. She had a big problem with this book for some reason, so naturally I had to read it. It is a collection of essays focused on the author’s experiences as the crematorium’s person in charge of the actual cremation. She also includes thoughts on death in general and how various cultures handle it; she majored in medieval history and, iirc, wrote her thesis on medieval funerary rituals. I enjoyed the book, but YMMV.