And posting something happier, almost immediately, to get THAT out of my mind:

I cast on for the Grasshopper socks last afternoon. And I also pulled out the long-stalled Eccentric Cable socks and worked some on them, still beta-testing the pattern.

With the Grasshopper socks, I'm using the spiral-rib that Nancy Bush used on the Finnish socks in "Folk Socks." It's a nice little change from the ordinary rib. It's stretchier than the 1x1 rib, but I think it's a bit less stretchy than 2x2 (or any of the other permutations like 1x2 or 4x4). It will be an interesting color combination, it looks like.

I also got the Summer Interweave Knits. One reason I like Interweave is that they're not afraid to show "big" sweaters (that is, ones you could make of wool) in their summer issues, instead of going to all-tanks-all-the-time. And also, they have the habit of publishing small projects more than some of the other mags. I'm very happy that just about every issue recently has had an interesting pair of socks in it.

I will remark that the shrug seems to be the new poncho. I don't know - I do have yarn in-stash for one shrug I plan to make, but it seems all the shrugs I've seen are shown on tiny, fragile, ballerina-like women. And that makes me wonder - is it simply the typical photographing bias of using tiny waiflike creatures, or do shrugs transform into something truly ogreish on women with boobs?

(I will remark that in Vogue, all the shrugs once again fell into the "No knits for you, fatgirl!" category, with one having a 38" bust as an "XXL." It is to laugh.)

I also think I'm probably really too old to be wearing a shrug. Or at least after this week, I feel too old.

Read more in "The Hobbit" last night. I'm up to the point where they're camping out in the rain and encountering trolls (? I think it was, or did they call Bill and Tom and them ogres? I can't keep the humanoid monsters straight). I think part of the pleasure of this book is the schadenfreude of being safely in one's warm bed, while reading about Bilbo & company shivering out in the cold, and trying unsuccessfully to make fires (even though dwarves are particularly good at that sort of thing...). One of the other things I love about the book - and I had forgotten about this, or maybe only noticed it on this particular re-reading - are Tolkein's little matter-of-fact asides, written as if we know all of these bits of Middle-Earthen lore, like for example, that dwarves are particularly skilled at making fires when it's wet out. I don't know why I like it - I suppose it's because to me, it speaks of an internally consistent alternative universe. I like the fantasy that characters and settings in books represent some kind of alternate universe that we're allowed a peek at, and that they have an existence BEFORE the story started and (provided they're still alive at the end of the book) AFTER the story ends.

(Which is why I dislike the "series" novels where an important and sympathetic character is killed off partway through the series).

I like the idea of there being alternate universes, where life goes on its own way, totally unaffected, and perhaps even unknowing, of what happens here.

I suppose if that were true, though, somewhere a Hobbit, or a resident of Barsetshire, or one of Inspector Maigret's colleagues is picking up a novel of my "adventures" and probably throwing it aside as being too whiny and depressing and ultimately boring.