My brother's collarbone is merely broken; the specialist has said he does not think tendons and ligaments are harmed. He is in for a couple of weeks of discomfort and probably several months until things are back to normal. But the accident could have been far, far worse. I shudder to think. I know of someone who sustained a pretty serious closed-head injury on a bike, even though he was wearing a helmet.

Also, the second of the two papers (this one being the one based on my dissertation) is finally ready to go out. I am so ready to be done with this. It's been six years now since I defended - that SHOULD be enough time to get the dem thing published. At the very least I will be spared a few weeks of back-and-forth with my co-author while the thing is in review, and at the very best, it will go through effortlessly and I will be done forever with it.

The drop-stitch scarf is nearly done. So nearly, that I didn't think there'd be two more hours of knitting in it, thus making it unsuitable for proctoring-knitting. And, as I said before, explaining the "why" of handknit socks is not something I'm up to right now, and the Hiawatha shawl is too big (and requires too close of concentration to be a good proctoring-project). And the Zelda pullover is too wintry right now. (As my colleague said this morning, on a day when the high is predicted to be 86*: "Oh, good. It seems they have the heat working in our building again.")

So I cast on for a new project last night.

It's the "A World Lit Only By Fire" scarf from the Lavish Lace book. I don't normally go with the exact yarn recommended for a pattern, but in this case I really wanted to - even sought out an online yarnshop (Handpaint Heaven) that carried the "yarn packs" for this book.

I love the scarf pattern because I like that sort of diamond ferny lace (It's called "candlelight pattern" but it's very close to a Fern Leaf Lace I've used in the past)

I also love the name of the pattern - those who are interested in Classicism or Medieval History will probably recognize it as the title of a book on the medieval world. I read the book, years ago, and admit I don't remember all that much of it. But the title is so evocative - as the designer said, it conjures up images of rooms lit by torchlight or people reading by candlelight. Or, for me, people sitting around a blazing fire, perhaps even in an inglenook of an evening, some knitting, some perhaps reading aloud to the others, the children sitting on the floor playing.

There's another scarf in the book, called "A Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness" (from a Keats poem) that I think I will have to make too, just simply because of the name. Isn't that a great name? Doesn't it transport you to the autumn, maybe in a manor house, where a feast it being prepared? Or else people out riding early in the morning, in the haze of burning leaves and smell of the cider-presses?

For me, the name of a pattern, or the name of a color or colorway of a yarn, is enough to capture my interest. And in some cases it makes me want to make something that I wouldn't think twice about if it had a more pedestrian name.