I'm back. The train trip this time went pretty smoothly. Vacation itself was generally good with a few minor issues I will not talk about here.

I worked pretty exclusively on small stuff - finished two pairs of socks and several amigurumi (pictures to come later on). I also found some new-to-me yarns - "Yummy" sock yarn (and, though you may think it churlish of me, I really don't like that name, nor do I like the name "Smooshy" - which is applied to another yarn. Oh, I like the yarns themselves fine, just not the names. "Smooshy" makes me think of that movie, "Smoochy Must Die" (about an icky Barney-the-Dinosaur type figure), and calling a yarn "yummy" bugs me a bit. "Yummy" is a child's word for a delicious food. Oh well, at least it's not "Yummo!" which would be even worse...) I also bought a skein of "Paca-peds" - a partly-alpaca sock yarn. There's a woman who comes to the farmer's market in my parents' town that sells yarn - she has her own alpacas and I guess sells their fleece, but she also has some commercial yarns.

Anyway. I also finished the two mysteries I had in-progress (more about that later) and I re-started "The American Senator" (Anthony Trollope). I was reading this - oh, a year or two ago - and got perhaps 5/8 of the way through and stalled out, or the book got shoved under my bed and I forgot it, so I decided just to start over from the beginning rather than try to trace back the thread of the story to the last point where I remembered it. I'm almost up to the point where I left off before, now.

It's interesting upon re-reading: I see much more the parallels between the stories of Mary Masters and Arabella Trefoil (both are torn between two "suitors" though in each case, one of the "suitors" is apparently not aware of the fact that the woman intends him to be such). I'm also getting a better understanding (I think) of the fine nuances of Victorian-era British class system. It's very different living in a society where class is much less of an issue, and where within, say, the middle class there are not myriad divisions between clergy and doctors and merchants and "gentleman farmers" (i.e., farmers who own their own land).

Another thing I find when I read things like Trollope: I am very grateful to live in a society where it is not generally required for a woman to marry in order for her to avoid poverty. Apparently in Victorian England, unless you came from a very wealthy family (and were one of only a few children), and you were an "old maid," your choices were mainly to do things like be a governess or teach piano or teach French - and basically have great insecurity in terms of housing, food, and other things you need money for in this life.

(That said? If I were Mary Masters I wouldn't have turned down Larry Twentyman in the hopes of capturing Reginald Morton's heart. Nothing good can come of that, I am sure.)

No, as much as I enjoy Trollope's novels I'm glad I don't have to LIVE one.