NOW it's a sock:



This is Trekking 129, which I think has been reprinted recently (I think Simply Sock Yarn has it?). This one is from out of my stash.

I am using 70 stitches done in a k3, p2 ribbing. I continued the rib down onto the heel flap but I don't think I'm going to do that again on socks as the heel flap isn't "firm" the way it needs to be - it's kind of loose and floppy.

I also spend not-enough-time on Saturday (because there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them) knitting and reading and listening to music.



I pulled out the stalled SitCom Chic that I'm knitting out of Second Time Cotton and worked towards finishing the second sleeve.

I also listened to a new-to-me composer, Roger Quilter. He was one of the "British Light Music" composers - 20th century folks working in what I guess you would call a classical idiom, but also incorporating folk tunes and dance tunes. A lot of them wrote for the stage or for movies. I really enjoy this style of music and, as I said, Quilter was a new composer to me. (The CD is on the Marco Polo label, the "discoveries" arm of Naxos music [Marco Polo, get it?], so I guess the assumption is Quilter is not well known).

I also started reading a book I'd had on the shelf for a long time, The Artificial River. I had been thinking about the Ohio and Erie canal (the remnants of which were not too far from where I grew up) and though there really aren't any books out specifically on THAT canal (except for a few cyclist-enthusiast guides to biking the trail, or some sort of amateur-history stuff from really small presses), I wanted to read something about the Canal Era of American history.

It's funny - there are certain bits of past history I learned about as a child because of my location in Northeast Ohio...the whole "Western Reserve" system that the colonies had, the Moundbuilders (though they were more a Southern Ohio group), and especially the canal, that I wondered about but never learned a whole lot about in school. I remember going to Deep Lock Quarry with my parents as a child and looking at the old quarry and the lock and feeling amazed that there were people who had lived and worked only a few miles from where I was living at the time, people I would never know, people who had lived long before I was born.

I'm not explaining that very well but I think some of my interest in history came from those trips, and from thinking about "how did those people live? What was it like so long ago?"

I was pleasantly surprised by Sheriff's book on the Erie Canal (the largest, and most famous, of the U.S. canals). It's very readable. A lot of times those specialized history books, I've found, seem to be written in a "Look how smart I am!" style that is very dry and not much fun to read. Also, she's not as agenda-y as some history writers, which is also enjoyable.

The funny thing - or maybe not so funny - is that some of the reasons I like the book are the same reasons the "1-star reviewers" on Amazon slammed it. (Oh, you read the one-star reviews of books you've read or are reading. I know you do. It's fun to see if you agree with them or of you can write off the reviewer as an idiot). Yes, she does a lot based on individual accounts...but for me a lot of the fascination of history is the "Come, tell me how you lived" aspect of it. I care less about battles or events or things like that than I care about the ordinary Joes and Janes making their living.

And the "God and Nature" theme...well, my understanding is that that was a major philosophical/social theme during the mid-19th century, so the fact that she seems "obsessed" by it doesn't seem so odd to me.

I don't know. Perhaps if I had been assigned to write a history report on the canal, and I read this book, I might feel cheated and angry, but since I don't have to do such a thing, and I'm just curious about the canal and the era surrounding its construction, I'm pretty happy.

(And I have to say...concluding a review with "well Duh" doesn't exactly give me great confidence in it. But that may just be me.)